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
Technically yes, we are slowing down. Space after all is not absolutely empty, there is stuff to slow us down out there – just very little of it.
However, the amount we are slowing down is so infinitesimally small that the Sun will expand and consume the Earth long before we would notice any change in orbit.
In order to hit the Sun we would need to slow down by tens of thousands of mph.
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