Since there is gravity from the sun acting on the earth, doesn't this mean?

Question

this mean that the earth is slowing down and will eventually fall into the sun?

Answer 1

The change in earth's orbit will take much longer than the sun will remain stable. By all accounts, the earth should pretty much stay in the orbit it is in now relative to the sun until the sun destroys the earth. The earth is supposed to lose its Moon during this time, which most likely means the earth will be uninhabitable from all the impacts of the moon pieces. This is hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years from now. Not even the Matrix will last that long.

Answer 2

The Earth is falling but it is not slowing (or speeding for that mattger).

An orbit is a state of constant falling, but with a velocity that displaces you from the line of the fall faster than you can fall. This is easy to visualize for a close circular orbit around the earth. By the time you fall a small distance, you have moved far enough that the Earth's surface has curved down away from you as much as you have fallen. This is why being in orbit is called "free fall." you are falling towards the Earth free of other forces acting on you.

The Earth is constantly falling towards the sun. It also has a significant velocity perpindicular to this acceleration. By the time it falls much towards the sun the sun has curved out from under it

Unless the Earth's perpindicular velocity is removed through some sort of dissipative effect (like friction, or a gravitational interaction with another body) it will never fall into the sun.

And the sun can't supernova either...it is too small.

Answer 3

NO!!
Gravity is a centripetal force, a force that causes an oobject to circle another bject.
Even though there's gravity, there's also something called inertia, that what makes the Earth keep moving!!
Imagine a satellite or the moon, they keep going around the Earth because of its inertia.
So, the Earth will never be sucked to the Sun.

Answer 4

No. The Earth is orbiting the Sun, which means that the centrifugal force keeping it out away from the Sun exactly counterbalances the gravitational force pulling it in. Because there is no air in space to slow it down, it will go on revolving like this for billions of years without a significant change in its distance from the Sun. The Moon does a similar thing around the Earth, as does every other object in orbit around another object.

Answer 5

No. As Newton said "Objects in motion stay in motion so long as there is nothing to stop it" However when the sun swells into a red giant, the earth will probably be engulfed by the suns edge and the resulting drag will cause the earth to fall in then.

Answer 6

The earth is in a decaying orbit. The 'friction' or forces acting to slow the earth are pressure from the sun's light and the solar wind. Light has momentum and thus pressure associated with it.

Answer 7

No, the Earth is in a stable orbit, and will be still (assuming nothing big hits us) until the sun runs out of fuel.

Answer 8

no. the earth is a satellite of the sun and is in a stable orbit. it would only slow down if there were friction to impede it's movement, however outside the earth's atmosphere in space there is very little air friction.

Answer 9

Lol no that's not what it means. We have moon obiting around us that has not moved significantly since we began rocording that kind of thing. So there is no way we will fall into the sun. the Creator designed it that way, and wasn't he a genius in doing it.

Answer 10

No. However, the sun will eventually explode in a supernova, which will engulf the earth.