When the Earth orbits around the sun, relatively speaking, does it circle in the same path each time?
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No. It’s ALL moving!! The Earth circles the Sun while the Sun moves along on its own path. So Earth is kinda doing a corkscrew thingy through space on and on forever.
Short answer yes.
Less short answer. In the absence of other planetary bodies, yes.
Long answer. Everything has mass (and by extension gravity) and pulls on everything which includes other distant galaxies. This means the planets in the solar system will slightly alter the Earth’s orbit, same as all galaxies in the universe.
Not five year old answer. The solar system is constantly moving through the universe so the earth TECHNICALLY will never be in the same spot twice because the solar system will also never be in the same spot twice.
Depends what you mean, the answer is always no but it’s less no some times than others. Relative to the sun, all celestial bodies undergo what is called precession, meaning that their elliptic orbits themselves get rotated a bit, so that the path they trace out over time looks like a flower, but with petals extremely close together. Each orbit is just a tiny sliver “off” from the previous one. This is because other things besides the sun and the earth exist. Jupiter is pretty massive and while it does orbit the sun, it exerts its own gravity on the rest of solar system. Just less gravity than the sun.
On the other hand, the sun is also not stationary. It orbits the galactic center. With respect to the galactic center, everything out here is zooming along at a million miles per hour (probably, i am a math guy but i don’t know the actual speed off the top of my head, it’s very fast). Relative to the galactic center, we are still making that flower shape around the sun, but also traveling along as we do, making it more like a slightly off kilter spiral.
The galaxy is also moving towards other galaxies. Nothing in the universe is truly stationary in any absolute sense. That’s relativity, folks.
Technically yes and no. Same orbit? Yes. We stay in the same path around our sun.
However our solar system itself is moving very very fast in relation to other stars etc, so technically the earth won’t ever be in the same space twice.
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