Re:Ancient shell shows days were half-hour shorter 70M years...
by tenant on Thursday March 12, 2020 @09:18AM
(#22556472)
I'd like to know too how they can confidently state that Earth's orbit does not change. Would it mean we'd spiral into the sun or out of orbit if it did?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Ancient shell shows days were half-hour shorter 70M years...
by contravariant on Thursday March 12, 2020 @09:38AM
(#22556659)
Without any outside input of energy we probably can't really escape the Sun's gravity well.
Oddly enough it's pretty tricky to steer the Earth into the sun as well, but we should be losing minute amounts of energy that will eventually put the Earth closer to the Sun. This probably won't happen before the Sun explodes though.
Re:Ancient shell shows days were half-hour shorter 70M years...
by pjc50 on Thursday March 12, 2020 @09:26AM
(#22556541)
From Newtonian mechanics, the orbit can only change by applying a force from somewhere, and a big move would require a lot of energy. And there's no evidence of such an event in the geologic pas; if it was triggered by an impact, it would be far larger than the one which killed the dinosaurs.
Re:Ancient shell shows days were half-hour shorter 70M years...
by wool_gather on Thursday March 12, 2020 @11:26AM
(#22557817)
There's a reasonably thorough discussion of this topic, from an...interesting...perspective, in this essay: "How to Destroy the Earth" https://qntm.org/destroy
Re:Ancient shell shows days were half-hour shorter 70M years...
by dr_zoidberg on Thursday March 12, 2020 @10:18AM
(#22557106)
Addendum: far larger than the one that created the moon.
Re:Ancient shell shows days were half-hour shorter 70M years...
by cjensen on Thursday March 12, 2020 @11:49AM
(#22558052)
Rotational speed of Earth is 1,000 mph at the equator where it is moving fastest. Other parts of the mass are moving slower.
The entire Earth orbits the Sun at 67,000 mph -- around 67X faster. And note that it is the entire mass of the Earth moving at that speed, not just the equator.
Changing the rotation speed by 1% is a whole lot easier than changing the orbital speed by 1%.