When the Earth orbits around the sun, relatively speaking, does it circle in the same path each time?
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Speaking in 3 dimensions, the orbital path looks kinda like a corkscrew if that’s helpful. A video really would do it more justice.
Relative to the sun it very roughly does but the closer you look, the more you see slight differences:
* The earth doesn’t orbit in a perfect circle but in an elliptical (oval) shape. The point where it’s nearest the sun rotates a little each year, taking 108 000 years to make a complete circuit; the oval shape is itself revolving. Put another way, the time the earth is nearest the sun is almost 5 minutes later each year. Also, the shape of the orbit changes over time, sometimes being more circular and others more oval-shaped.
* The earth’s orbit is almost perfectly flat but it isn’t lined up exactly with the orientation of the sun’s rotation on its axis. The plane of the earth’s orbit also revolves around the sun in a 7110-year cycle.
* The moon has an effect on the position of the earth. It’s really the centre of mass of the earth and the moon that orbits the sun; the earth and the moon in turn orbit that centre of mass. Since there are 12.4 months per year—not a whole number—the earth is in a different offset from the centre of mass at the start of every year.
* The other planets in the solar system also exert forces on the earth that change its orbit slightly, although these are relatively minor (because the planets are very distant and much less massive than the sun).
The concept of circular and elliptical orbits is only an approximation to our reality; it’s a simplification assuming there are only two spherical bodies. Even in an ideal two-body case, relativistic effects as theorised by Einstein would cause some gradual changes.
You’ve very nearly stumbled upon the reason why I think time-travel is impractical, if not impossible.
If you look at the universe as a coordinate plain (disregarding the *z* axis for simplicity’s sake), everything is moving. Moving towards, moving away. Terra moves around Sol. Our solar system moves around the center of our galaxy. Our galaxy is moving, in relation to other galaxies.
If we were to plot our position on the cosmic coordinate plain, there would be no overlaps of your current position if indeed you could calculate to that small a degree on the cosmic scale. Even if you were to remain perfectly still, you would still be moving, in relation to the cosmos.
Furthermore, you would never be able to occupy the position you were at even a second ago Ever.
Even if we were able to somehow send ourselves “back in time,” the point in space-time to which we were going wouldn’t be under solid ground. That isn’t also assuming we calculated for all spacial dimensions, and that our concept of using 3 dimensions to calculate one’s position in space-time is tantamount to calculating weight using a hammer.
The destination at best would be empty space.
Tl;dr: No
It does absolutely not take the same path each time.
This has various reasons, our galaxy is dragged around something large.
Our sun is dragged through the galaxy but drags the whole solar system with it.
Due to the “geometry” or “3 body problem” the orbit of the earth is affected by the rest of the planets.
And as we saw with the Turkey Syria earthquake, scientists are capable of assuming tectonic activity just based on how the earth is dragged by the gravitation wells of other bodies.
This sadly has lead to a few issues with people who do not believe in science and number hundreds of millions.
Because no person could assume anything like that, so it must have been the US and their earthquake weapons in a bid to destroy the Islam faith.
If you check out any of the relevant videos, you will see thousands of comments along this line, where they were written in english, no idea about the rest but I assume the same just in a different language.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles) the orbit of the earth changes so much and in a cyclical nature that regularly there is a difference in solar radiation influx that amounts to a 6.8% difference in energy despite the distance only varying by 3.4%
This is a very helpful video that uses a visual display to show what Earth’s path looks like in space. If you’re a visual learner vs a reading learner, this video is useful!
Not at all.
I know you asked about the Earth’s orbits relative to the Sun, but it’s important to note the Sun is moving in the galaxy, and the galaxy is moving through the void, so the Earth’s motion could almost be better compared to a squiggly line than a circle, depending on your point of view.
First off, the Moon has gravity and it tugs on the Earth, so at the very least that tug would make the line of any orbit wriggle. The other planets also tug on the Earth, and although their influence is resonant (meaning, it’s a stable ratio), it does matter and also wriggles the Earth’s orbit.
Anyway, Earth’s orbit isn’t circular, it’s very slightly elliptical, meaning there is a part of the orbit closer to the sun and a part of the orbit farther from the sun, shaped kind of like an egg, but it’s pretty close to a circle so we usually show it like that on pictures. The influence of the Moon and planets tugging on the Earth means it’s not a perfect ellipsis either, so the egg shaped orbit rotates year by year, meaning the Earth won’t be in exactly the same place this time next year. It’s kind of like a Spirograph.
Earth’s orbit also isn’t “flat”, in the sense that the ellipsis is slightly tilted relative to the earth’s axis, the sun’s axis, and the solar systems axis. The tilt also changes over a period of tens of thousands of years, varying up and down, partly accounting for imperfections in the resonant orbits of other planets and the Moon, like a wobbling top or gyroscope. Space is 3D after all.
So, you could say the Earth’s orbit wriggles and swirls up and down and in and out as it goes round and round the Sun.
The result is, currently, the southern hemisphere gets more light from the sun in summer than the northern hemisphere gets in summer, while the northern hemisphere gets more sun in winter than the south does. This wouldn’t happen if Earth’s orbit was perfectly circular and flat. Because northern summers are cooler, northern snow wouldn’t melt as much in the mountains, and warmer winters also mean more snowfall in the north, so it’s believed that the tilt and ellipsis cycles are key to the growth of glaciers and the Earth’s ice ages. In fact, there’s some evidence that we’d be in the beginnings of an ice age right now if it wasn’t for human-driven global warming.
Not exactly, no. The ellipse (an oval shape, almost a circle but not quite) rotates slowly as well. One side of the “circle” is a bit farther away from the sun than the other side, and the line between the two is slowly spinning, moves around the sun. A lot slower than the earth moves, but because this “major” axis (the term for it) moves relative to the sun, the oval of the orbit also moves.
Almost every comment in here ignores the “relatively speaking”. Relative to the sun, the sun is not moving through space so you can ignore all this galetic movement.
The orbit of earth around the sun is very stable, only having very small changes over long periods of time.
What’s really interesting is that the sun is also moving in its orbit, so the planets aren’t on a plane with it all together, rather they’re spiraling around it like leaves in a whirlpool.
When I saw this, or something similar to it, it actually made way more sense to me than the idea of planets all orbiting the sun like they were caught in grooves on a record.
I’m going with no, purely because this time.last year a tree was blocking my last 3 hours of sun in the garden so I cut it down, this year the tree next to it is blocking the sun, exact same time of year
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