If the earth accelerated, would we feel it?

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Im having a hard time understanding why we feel acceleration. If a rogue planet crossed our solar sistem close enough to pull us away from the sun, accelerating us until we are expeled into the cosmos, would we feel this acceleration from the surface of the earth?

In: Physics

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Our orbit around the sun isn’t a perfect circle. There is a periapsis and apoapsis. These are the points where we are at the furthers and closest to our star. We are going at our slowest at the peak distance away from our star and our fastest when we are at our closest.

Think of it like throwing a rock into the air. As it reaches its peak height, it slows down and then accelerates back to the ground. Same things happen in an orbit except the fall misses the object it’s accelerating towards and flings back around it.

Essentially, we already experience shifts in the speed the earth goes around the sun, but tbf it is quite minimal. 30.29 km/s at its fastest and 29.29 km/s at its slowest. It takes about 6 months then to accelerate 1 km/s.

If it accelerated faster, like from says 30 km/s to 100 km/s in the space of let’s say, a second. Then yes. You would feel it. And you would find yourself either 70km from where you were in 1 second if invincible or instantly dead if vincible. Exactly like if you were standing atop a train. If it instantly accelerated to 100 km/h, that shit leaving you behind.

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