Posted on 01/04/2019 12:07:50 PM PST by LibWhacker
On January 3rd, 2019, Earth reached the point in its orbit where it's at its closest approach to the Sun: perihelion. Every object orbiting a single mass (like our Sun) makes an ellipse, containing a point of closest approach that's unique to that particular orbit, known as periapsis. For the past 4.5 billion years, Earth has orbited the Sun in an ellipse, just like all the other planets orbiting their stars in all the other mature solar systems throughout the galaxy and Universe.
But there's something you may not expect or appreciate that nevertheless occurs: Earth's orbital path doesn't remain the same over time, but spirals outward. This year, 2019, our perihelion was 1.5 centimeters farther away than it was last year, which was more distant than the year before, etc. It's not just Earth, either; every planet drifts away from its parent star. Here's the science of why.
The force responsible for the orbits of every planet around every solar system in the Universe is the same: the universal law of gravitation. Whether you look at it in terms of Newton, where every mass attracts every other mass in the Universe, or in terms of Einstein, where mass-and-energy curves the fabric of spacetime through which other masses travel, the largest mass dominates the orbit of everything it influences.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
At that rate, it’ll take 10.7 million years to move 100 miles further away.
That might drop our average temperature 0.00001 degrees.
If we are moving further from the sun, the earth will get colder. So global warming will be taken care of. We don’t have to worry about it.
This was an extremely complicated explanation of a simple situation. I would sure hate to be in one of the author’s classes. He’s the kind of guy who likes to impress you with his brilliance by not giving any of it away.
Because physics is just a trick, designed to tell you a bunch of lies. Some of you are strange people.
In any case, if you'd read the article you'd note that it's not a measurement. It's a calculation based on the various forces at work.
And science is capable of measuring a great many things very precisely. You'd obviously be surprised.
LOL!
The Earth will still be vaporized when the Sun goes helium burning red giant.
The Sun also loses mass due to the solar wind.
Good point. I just looked it up; the sun loses 4 million tons per second due to fusion, and 1.5 million tons per second due to the solar wind. At that rate, in the next 5 billion years it will have lost only about 0.034% of its current mass.
Mind you, it will be turning into a red giant around that time, so we'll have other worries.
That’s what I get for not looking it up and trusting my memory. 93 million miles is the correct so I was off by two orders of magnitude. The point still stands- if the sun expands its influence several orders of magnitude faster than the earth moves away eventually the earth gets charred.
As the Sun loses mass the gravitational field will weaken ...
Looking at it slightly askew, as I often do, woo-hoo-hoo:
We’ve FINALLY found the source of PERPETUAL MOTION! YAY!!
Looking at it slightly askew, as I often do, woo-hoo-hoo:
We’ve FINALLY found the source of PERPETUAL MOTION! YAY!!
15 millimeter = 0.000 009 320 567 883 6 mile
Go with RINGWORLD!
93 MILLION MILES, not 9.3 billion.
From your homepage:
Bits of data mined from my first month on Free Republic:
Many are given to careless reading, careless thinking and careless responses.
The same people seem to think ignorance is no excuse for not commenting, being called out on their slovenly thinking and ignorance doesn’t cause them rethink, but running to a moderator.
Would not an error in the realm of an order of magnitude be “careless”?
Yeesh!
I don’t think our sun is big enough to go nova. I thought it was going to be a burn out.
Six in one half...either way! lol
Yep - and the moon is moving about a mile further away from us every 50K years - the flip side is that since other gravitational factors come into play, having an orbit fast enough to move you away from a star ever so slightly is better than to have a decaying orbit - satellites with such orbits tend to burn up on entering ....
I acknowledged my error and corrected myself. It did not invalidate my argument though because it wasn’t off by enough orders of magnitude to change the result.
My profile observations come for seeing many around here who will not correct themselves or accept that they are commenting from ignorance. I am human and made mistakes, but a number of people here seem to think it beneath themselves to be wrong.
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