The 'Technosphere' Is Getting Heavier as World Becomes More Urbanized, Geologists Say

The "Technosphere," though not yet a widely acknowledge word, is a term to represent all the human-made machinery, devices, and marvels in the world. For many scientists, the continuous increase in the development of technology, modernization, and urbanization has made the technosphere at a worrying weight.

The technosphere is divided into two categories: areal and physical. The areal technosphere is a portion of the Earth's atmosphere that contains satellites and other space junk. On the other hand, the physical technosphere is the layer in or on the Earth's crust that houses structures and other technologies.

According to a report from the Science Magazine, the total approximate weight of the entire technosphere could amass to an estimated 30 trillion tons. It is also in their approximation that as the world becomes more urbanized and modernized, this number will continue to increase. Until large corporations find a way to recycle or reuse older technologies, all electrical wastes have nowhere to go but stay on Earth.

A study from the Anthropocene Review has indicated that the total mass of electronic wastes which are not immediately recycled or reused is five times the total biomass of humans. According to the study, this large number already deserves a new classification in itself, thus the name technosphere. The study also noted that there is a diversity in the elements within the technosphere which could span from terrestrial to marine and areal.

There are also reports of the worrying amount of space junk that are orbiting the Earth right this moment. There are even websites online that allow anyone to take a look at all the metallic objects circulating the earth at real time.

 According to a report from Popular Science, although it is true that there is a number of debris and satellite mass on the earth's atmosphere, these websites are actually not reliable. Sites such as SpaceTrack can only "plot" instead of monitor space junk floating around the earth.