Will the asteroids take more time, or less time, than the Earth does to complete one orbit of the Sun?

Question

If the astroid belt lies inbetween earth and Jupiter?
Please explain why!

Please dont make the answer to complicated though because im 14 and understand very little physics!!
Thanks!!

Answer 1

And it's a pretty interesting question. The orbit depends mostly on the speed, on the mass of the Sun and on the mass of the asteroid, on the distance between them, in fact on the distance squared. This means that, when the distance gets the half, the force gets 2^2= 4 times greater. If d is 1/3 from the original one, the force will get 9 times greater, etc.

Things aren't that easy, though. Jupiter and other planets are too attracting the asteroids. They are not still, the Sun is not still, either. So, what I wrote above is just a simplified description of reality. Most Science has to use modells to try to describe reality, and these modells are valid if the values are not far away from the averages one. As you probably have already noticed, things are not black or white, there are lots of grey nuances, if you know what I mean. This works for people and it works too for Science. I am not an expert, I don't now too much about Physics, Astronomy or many other Sciences but this is the realisation I've got to due the little amount I know about all this stuff.

About your question, there is a balance in the asteroids motion, their mass, and the distance they are from the Sun at a due moment. It must not be constant, it might happens that tomorrow the distance could be say 1% greater than today, and in 6 months it could be 0.1% less than it's today. The orbit's shape is called an ellipse, this looks like a football you could draw in a sheet of paper. The ellipse has 2 points, each of one is called "focus". And it has 2 axe, the greater and the smaller one. The relationship between them is called "excentricity". The Earth's orbit has a low excentricity, this means that it's almost a circle. But this could be different in the case of other planets or asteroids.

Hope this helps you. Go on thinking about things, it's a good exercise and it's what makes a good scientist. Perhaps you will become one sometime in the future

Ilusion

Answer 2

The asteroid belt does *not* lie between Earth and Jupiter but between Mars and Jupiter. Most of the major bodies in our solar system, like asteroids, comets, planets, orbit around the sun. Without getting into the mathematics of it all, Sir Issac Newton showed us that the farther away some object is away from the sun the slower it will orbit around the sun. The same principle holds true for artificial satellites that we've placed in orbit around Earth -- the farther away they are the slower they travel.

Answer 3

It depends solely on it's distance from the sun.
The farther away the longer the orbit and the orbit would actually be slower.
It it's closer to the sun the orbit is shorter but also the speed would be greater. Some thing to do with Newton.

Answer 4

Basically it's this. The closer in to a mass you are, the faster you have to rotate around it to maintain that ballance between gravity and centrifugal force that -keeps- you in orbit. Since the asteroid belt is a lot further from the Sun than we are, they don't have to move anywhere near as fast as we do.

Doug

Answer 5

Draw a circle on a piece of paper, and put a dot in the middle, now draw another at the outside of the first circle.
The inner circle is the orbit of the earth.
And the outer circle is the asteroid belt.
Which has the longest length?
That is why.
Easy eh!

Answer 6

More time as they have farther to go.