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
A better way of thinking about this isn’t that Earth was some random floating rock that happened to get captured by the sun. Earth was formed over billions of years as gas and dust settled together under the forces of gravity around a similar distance and velocity around the sun. Anything that was slower and closer to the sun helped to form Venus. Anything that was faster and farther away helped to form Mars. Our orbit is stable because that is the very nature of planetary formation.
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