As far as i know earth’s orbis is stable.
If i understand it correctly it means that small perturbations in earth’s position or mass won’t change its orbit (like a spring effect that goes back to its rest state unless you break it), but if i simply balance out sun’s newtonian gravity vs the centrifugal force any little change would modify earth’s orbital speed and distance from the sun, so there’s something i’m missing, otherwise anytime a meteor hits or we send stuff to space we would be changing earth’s orbit.
So, IF my initial statement is correct, earth’s orbit doesn’t change for small perturbation, how do we know so? Secondly how big a perturbation would you need to change earth’s orbit?
On the other hand, if earth’s orbit changes with any minumum change, how big of a change in orbit would be needed for us to sebsibly perceive it?
Thanks
In: 4
Earth’s orbit isn’t self stabilizing in the way that you propose. Any little change will affect the orbital parameters, but as the Earth is extremely heavy and going extremely fast it’s really hard for us to make any measurable difference.
The only kind of self stabilizing orbits you’ll find are ones around Lagrange points, specifically L4 and L5. The ballet of gravitational forces from the Earth and the Sun work together to pull nearby small objects into that specific orbit, and a small perturbation will be corrected with time.
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