The Earth is slowly moving away from the Sun; Is it necessary to worry?

The movement of the sun across the sky is so predictable that it is impossible to believe that its relationship with the earth changes all the time, but this is a fact. In fact, the average distance between the Earth and the Sun is not constant, as it changes year after year. Therefore, we know that a file The earth is slowly moving away from the sun. In this sense, is it necessary to worry? What are the effects of this? Check out all of this information in the content below!

Read more: Asteroids that can collide with Earth worry China

Earth’s slow departure from the sun

The fact is that over time, the Sun is slowly moving away from the Earth. However, its orbit is somewhat elliptical and not completely circular. So, according to NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the distance between stars can vary from about 147.1 million to 152.1 million kilometers.

However, on average, the distance between the Sun and Earth increases very slowly over time. This distance occurred for two important reasons:

• The first is that the sun loses its mass;
• The second reason relates to the same forces that cause tides on Earth.

The sun loses its mass

Just as the sun always generates energy, mass is also lost. Some models, which determine how stars change over time, predict that over the Sun’s life, estimated at 5 billion years, it will lose about 0.1% of its total mass before it begins to die.

While 0.1% may not seem like a lot, according to scientists, it is a huge amount when referring to the big star. To give you an idea, this amount would be roughly equal to the mass of Jupiter (about 318 times the mass of Earth). The gravitational force of an object is proportional to the amount of mass it has. When the Sun loses its mass, its gravity on Earth weakens, causing our planet to move away from the star by about 6 cm each year. But you don’t have to worry about anything now.

Forces that cause tides on this planet

Similar to the way the moon’s gravitational pull causes the sea to form on Earth, the planet’s gravity also pulls on the sun. The result is a “tidal bulge,” according to Brett Scheringhausen, professor of physics and astronomy at Beloit College. However, these tidal forces have a very weak effect on the entire orbit of the Earth. Because of them, the Earth is moving away from the Sun about 0.0001 inches (0.0003 cm) each year.