why doesnt the earth fly into the sun?

Question

as we use up the oil ,gas,coal the earth gets lighter right so why doesnt the gravity of the sun pull the earth into it seems to me if gravity is pulling on a object that weighs say 10 pounds and then suddenly the object only weighs 8 pounds shouldt it be pulled towards it faster because of the less weight

Answer 1

All we do when we "use up" oil, gas, coal, etc. is change the chemical into other chemicals - the mass of the burned fuel plus the mass of the oxygen used in combustion reamains either as gas and particulates (we call it pollution), or as ash. So the net mass doesn't change and the earth doesn't get lighter. BTW, didn't you learn that matter isn't created or destroyed? All you can do is convert it to energy, but you can't do that by chemical processes such as combustion.

Answer 2

weight is relative, when speaking about gravity it is the mass that u need to talk about. Mass generates gravity which determines weight. The same mass on earth weighs less on the moon.

If u could somehow get enough mass out of the earths gravity then there would be less gravitational attraction between the sun and earth and earth would establish a different orbit or maybe take off into another solar system. Fortunately, there isn't a mechanism to do this today. However, the Sun is different.

The Sun is burning mass converting it to heat and releasing the heat energy via radiation along with other atomic particles. This is causing a mass reduction which is causing less gravity on the Sun which is causing the atmosphere to expand and the Sun to get larger.

Now if u go back in time far enough when earth was a small sun, that process caused it to move away from the Sun to the point that the surface cooled and it stopped loosing mass.

here we are billions of years later.

Answer 3

The astronauts have already got the angular momentum of the Earth's rotation from the variety they have been released from. the reason maximum launches are to the east is using the fact the Earths rotation from west to east provides acceleration to the fee of the launch, and angular momentum is conserved. Astronauts do no longer bypass into geosynchronous orbit, as stated above, because of the fact they do no longer bypass into orbits at 22, 3 hundred miles intense, it particularly is how intense a geosynchronous orbit is. Many orbits of the Gemini, Apollo and area shuttle missions that are no longer ISS missions are basically ninety to ninety six minutes for each orbit. The Earth's gravity and the conservation of angular momentum from rotation and revolution around the solar keep the astronauts in orbit around the Earth, basically because it retains the moon in orbit around the Earth. The Earth's rotation fee is slowing down slowly, it particularly is why bounce seconds are further directly to the top of the 300 and sixty 5 days some years, dropping angular momentum, at a similar time as the moon strikes 3.8 centimeters better remote from Earth, gaining the angular momentum that the Earth has lost, so as that angular momentum is often conserved.

Answer 4

Hi ,

What you said is not correct and FYI we are only using 3 percent of the resources we have . If we are using oil coal and gas regaularly it does not mean that the complete earth is made up of it, its only a limited % of natural resources that are available.

So dont worry it will take time for us to reach Sun and get fried.

Its not earth getting closer to Sun but infact its Sun which is increasing in Size because of the gases in its athmosphere hence we feel that we are moving close to sun.

:)

Answer 5

And if you did use up stuff, then we would have less mass and therefore we would move away from the sun.
You said it backwards, if something is 8 pounds it's easier to pull away from gravity because of less weight.

Answer 6

Give the first guy best answer. Beautiful,