Is the Earth slowly moving further away from or closer to the sun over time?

Question

If the Earth is traveling around the more massive sun, what keeps the earth from eventually crashing into the sun? What is the driving force that is resulting in a net migration of the Earth towards or away from the sun over millions of years?

Answer 1

its moving closer every year. That is one reason the earth gets a degree hotter every year. Gravity keeps the earth from crashing.

Answer 2

The Earth, like the other planets, are being slowly driven away from the Sun. Two mechanisms explain that: one is the rotation of the Sun on its axis, which creates a coupling and momentum transfer between the Sun (which slows down over time) and the planets which pick up this lost rotational energy as additional potential energy making them drift slowly (very slowly) out. For the record, the same coupling exists between the spinning Earth and the Moon, which also drifts away.
The second mechanism is that the Sun is losing 4 million tonnes of mass (converted into energy, as a result of fusing hydrogen into helium) every second. A progressively less massive Sun makes for a body that does not hold its satellites in a constant "grip".

Answer 3

The orbit of earth is constant. We are neither getting closer or farther away.

As a side note, the distance from the earth to the sun varies over the course of a year because the earth's orbit is an ellipse with the sun at one focus. During January, we are closer to the sun than we are during July, but this is a result of the shape of the orbit, not an increase or decrease.

The earth, as with all the other planets, are in stable orbits. If nothing comes in to perturb that orbit, it will remain as long as the sun is there to warp the space and sustain the orbit.

Answer 4

Good question, but uhmmmm I aint biologist or no shitness. But it makes sense that we are moving away from the sun, because the sun is losing mass every second therefore decreasing its attraction to earth. But uhmm, being at certain position or receiving a certain amount of temperature from the sun..doesnt mean youre going to get an atmosphere similar to earth..There are tons of planets with the same temperature on earth. There is super earth, its a real planet, in a different solar system that has the same atmosphere as earth....the same color and everything...and its position from its super big sun its just perfect...there could be life there too. But it isnt about the temperature, it has to be about the total atmosphere. Take jupiter's moon, its super really far away from the sun yet scientists believe there is some form of life there... Besides, I dont think its possible that life can migrate from a planet to another planet. The ingredients, for life to be created, can migrate through asteroids..etc. But life itself, cant migrate, we might have gotten some of those ingrediants from outter space who knows. Was there life in mars? Probably. But life itself migrated from mars to earth? I dont think so. If we were to colonyze earth....then that would be written somewhere....unless we were apes...but apes don't do technology.

Answer 5

The earth's speed around the sun is gradually slowed down by various forces, so its average disstance to the sun decreases ever so slowly.

I say average distance becasue all planets' opbits are elliptical, meaning that they are sometimes further and other times closer to the sun that is at the focus of the ellipse.

Answer 6

As our solar system spins through space it is slowly expanding, pulling the outer planets away from the sun. I expect the Earth will end up in the same state as Venus but we will never know.

Answer 7

Earth is in a stable orbit around the Sun because our planet's forward motion exactly counterbalances the gravitational pull of the Sun at this distance (about 93 million miles). All orbiting bodies have achieved this balance between gravitational pull and forward speed.

Answer 8

well one of the many theories covered by global warming states that those effects can cause the earth to move closer or away from the sun, the closer we get the hotter it gets and farther way we get the colder. nobody knows exactly which way we will spin just yet. the weather change is due to global warming not that we are moving any which direction.

Answer 9

The sun is the center of our galaxy, so all the planets move around it. The sun is very far from the earth, but is technically moving towards the earth. BY the time it reaches us we will all be dead anyways by the heat, don't worry about this, we have thousands of years to go.

In the winter time we are closer to the sun in distance then we are in the summer. It is just hot in the summer because the angle of insolation is at a higher point.

Answer 10

The sun is expanding very slowly, and it probably will have no effect for quite a long time to earth.