What would happen if the earth stopped moving/rotating around the sun or we get blown off course somehow?

Question

I heard that we would all fall out into space?

Answer 1

We're all going to die.....The Earth orbits the Sun it doesn't rotate around the Sun. If we stopped orbiting the Sun the Earth would fall into the Sun, and we would all have a very bad last couple of days.

The Earth is a satellite of the Sun, very much like a man-made satellite we put up around the Earth. If the satellites don't orbit fast enough the gravity of the object being orbited will capture the satellite and draw in.

It's the old centripetal force off setting to pull of gravity thing. If the Earth slows down or stops our centripetal force will lower and the Earth will succumb to the gravitational pull of the Sun. Things will get too warm to support life, and we would all die long before the Earth eventually crashed into the Sun.

Keep in mind the Suns gravitational pull far exceeds the pull of the other planets, so we would head into the Sun, and not into deep space in which case we would freeze to death.

P.S. The Earths rotation and orbit have absolutely nothing to do with the passing of time as stated below.

Answer 2

You would not fall off of the earth if it went off course out into space. Gravity would still work just fine.

Now, if it just suddenly stopped dead in it's tracks (in it's orbit) some of us WOULD fly off of the earth. The earth goes around the sun at about 66,000 mph. The escape velocity on earth is about 17,000 mph. So people on about 2/3 of the earth would fly off into space. The rest would be smashed flat into the earth and probably sink quite a bit in. In other words, all humans and anything larger than a flea would be gone or dead.

Answer 3

we will die.... if the earth stop moving/rotating around the sun, half of the earth will freeze while the half will burn... that's what i learned from the montessori school... ;)

Answer 4

Well, first the temperature would change dramattically killing everything on the planet and the nothing else would matter would it.

Answer 5

we would die and after that no one would be around to care what happened next.

Answer 6

THE EARTH WOULD BE LIKE A BALLOON.

Answer 7

evrything on earth will be in a standstill situation