When the Earth orbits around the sun, relatively speaking, does it circle in the same path each time?
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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.
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