the path of the earth is not circular around the sun why?

Question

the circulation of the earth around the sun is due to gravitational force and tht is mass * g ..... the mass of the earth is keep same in all direction during the circulation and the g is constant.. thn why path is in ovel shape? another question is as mass of the jupitur is 1300 times more thn the earth thn why jupitor is not near with the sun thn earth? and why the moon is not attracted by jupitor?

Answer 1

It is an ellipse, as are all orbits... a circle is a very special ellipse, one with the two focii in the exact same place. There are infinitely more ellipses than circles for the same orbital energy, so the odds that an orbit is not a circle is infinity to one.

Answer 2

Nothing is perfect. Any slight imbalance when the Earth formed was enough to cause the robit to be off-circular. Any impact from large meteorites or proto-panet (and there was one huge that caused the moon to form over 4 billion years ago) would add to the orbital assymetry. Any planetary influence (attraction of other planets) will also cause a slight shift. No planet's orbit if perfectly circular, in fact space agencies are going to greath lenght sometimes to make satellites orbit circular, and that is a very delicate procedure.

Why should Jupiter be closer to the Sun? Its mass has nothing to do with its position, in fact if it had condensed closer to the Sun, its outer layers of hydrogen could have been prevented from condensing in the first place, and it would have just been a small rocky planet instead.

Why is the moon not attracted to Jupiter? Because Jupiter is 2000 times further from the moon (on average) than it is from the Earth, and gravity reduces by the square of the distance; despite its great mass, Jupiter will have 12600 times less pulling power on the moon than the Earth does (by the way, Jupiter's mass is 317 times that of the Earth, not 1300)

(And when you are considering it, you could have asked why is not the moon going around the Sun, since the Sun is much closer to the moon than Jupiter is, and its mass is a 1000 times that of Jupiter...)

Answer 3

You are right that Kepler's laws only describe the shapes and speeds of orbits mathematically. However, newtonian universal gravitation (that is, gravity proportional to mass and decreasing by an inverse square law) explains why orbits are elliptical in the first place. Slight adjustments need to be made for general relativity, but most objects are light enough and moving slowly enough that the newtonian model works fairly well. Of course, a circle is just a special case of an ellipse. You could in theory have an orbit that was exactly circular. It just happens though that the clouds of dust that form into planets are somewhat chaotic, and so through collisions, gravitational interactions, light pressure, electrostatic forces and so on, the dust from the early Solar System ended up with momentum that didn't quite match that necessary for precisely circular orbits, so the orbits ended up with a slight eccentricity.

Answer 4

The ancients believed that the planets wandered through the Heavens on perfectly circular paths, forged in cosmic crystal. The fact that they also orbited the Earth and not the Sun just added to the frustration.

When Copernicus pointed out that visual evidence suggested the Sun was at the center of the Universe, somehow, being a decent religious fellow, and not one to flaw God's handiwork, he postulated they were also moving on perfectly circular paths.

Kepler was the first to realize that observational evidence showed the planets did not move at an even pace in their path around the sun, sweeping out more or less of their orbits in some times than in others. He was the first to profess that the planets moved in elliptical orbits with the Sun located at the one of the focal points of the orbit's ellipse. His work went a long way in assisting Newton to devise his Laws of Gravitation.

Since every object interacts with one another in their motions around the Sun, and gravity is not the only force involved in effecting the movement of a body, it would be very difficult to find anything that had a perfectly circular orbit - or that had one for any prolonged period of time.

Answer 5

Like all planets in our solar system, the Earth is in an elliptical orbit around our Sun. In Earth's case, its orbit is nearly circular, so that the difference between Earth's farthest point from the Sun and its closest point is very small. Earth's orbit defines a two-dimensional plane which we call the ecliptic.
The combined effect of the Earth's orbital motion and the tilt of its rotation axis result in the seasons.

The slower a body rotates, the farther out will be any surface-synchronous orbit. Jupiter's rotation (lenghth of one day) is approximately 1/3 that of earth while it's mass is 300 times that of earth. Therefore the gravitational force of Jupiter is 24.79, while the gravitational force of earth is 9.80.
Earth's geosynchronous orbit lies some 23,000 miles above the surface, which means that only bodies within this range would be affected by the earth's gravitational force.
Jupiter's geosynchronous orbit lies some 58,000 miles above the surface, which means that only bodies within this range would be affected by Jupiter's gravitational force.

Answer 6

Actually earth and sun revolve around a common point of centre of gravity, where gravitational forces of both nullify each other.And this point is not at the centre of the sun, although not far away from it, hence the orbit of earth is elliptical and sun seems to wobble.The orbits of the planets does not depend only on mass but on angular moment also.During early days of solar system formation, a sort of equilibrium is achieved and orbits of planets finalised.
If you add some mass to Jupiter keeping its speed of revolution constant, it will surely come closer to sun until a new equilibrium is achieved.

Answer 7

The reason they are oval shaped is because the closer the planet gets to the sun the stronger the gravitational pull is. So when it gets close the the sun, the sun pulls on it even stonger then it did when it was faller away causing the planet to pick up speed and sort of sling shot away.

When the planet gets far again it slows down. This speeding up and slowing down causes a sling shot affect on each side of the orbit creating an oval shape.

Answer 8

Path circle to ellipse to parabola will follow due to earth's speed is on increase as g shall decrease. Because conversion of mass to energy at sun. Volume of gas planets like Jupitor is more but mass is lesser than earth not as stated in your question Moon can't go out of Earth's gravitational effect as effective effect of Earth is more than others.

Answer 9

earth orbit is affected by of the gravitation's from other planets. the reason Jupiter is further away from the sun than earth is because from the very beginning it formed in that position, it hasn't been moved by any force since then, its the same story to why our own moon isn't formed around Jupiter. some scientists say that the moon may have been part of earth and it was separated by a very big and violent impact, so it couldn't have been formed around Jupiter because the force of gravity from earth was greater on it that the gravity from Jupiter.

Answer 10

In space.. for any object to revolve around another object, two things are required... 1) the centripetal force which is provided by gravitational force and 2) critical velocity. Critical velocity is that horizontal force which is required to keep the object moving around the other one.
Now if the critical velocity is exactly equal to that if the gravtiational force.. then the path traced by the object around the other would be perfectly circle. But if the critical velocity is slightly greater.. then the path traced would be ellpitical.