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
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Well it depends what you mean by stable. If you mean stable as in it’s largely the same over very long periods of time, then yes. The Earth will not be crashing into the sun or flung out of the solar system or anything like that, at least for a few billion years. If you mean stable as in it’s perfectly 100% unchanged ever, then it’s *not* stable. All of the bodies in our solar system interact with each other gravitationally, and that changes the orbits of those bodies by small but measurable amounts. Earth particularly is gravitationally perturbed by Venus due to its proximity and Jupiter due to its mass. The Venus-Jupiter gravitational pull slightly alters Earth’s orbit ever 405,000 years.
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