If earths velocity is what keeps us in orbit then if we slow down do we fall into the sun? Are we slowing down? And if not why not? Isn’t there a tiny fraction of friction in space that might slow us down eventually? It seems so unlikely that we would enter the solar system so perfectly that we would start to orbit. Have there been a thousand planets before us that just missed the mark or is there something keeping us on track?
In: Physics
Considering it’s been there for billions of years… pretty stable.
It’s not easy to fall into the sun from orbit. You have to have a high angular velocity relative to the sun to be in orbit in the first place. Canceling out a planet’s orbital velocity at once would take an immense amount of energy… nothing short of a planetary collision, at which point, falling into the sun isn’t as much of a worry as the planet being utterly destroyed– but if it was just the right impact, all the pieces would fall into the sun or rain down on the inner planets.
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