Earth orbital consequence......

[mmkilani]

I need a serious clarification about possible consequence of the scary Earth wobbling orbital manouvres around the sun. The orbiting is not regular and its sometimes oval or stretchy to one side and makes the Earth sometimes farther away and a consequent eccentricity from the solar centre. What is responsible for this phenomenon and how does it affect the earth seasons. :?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Rats, my ISP ate my first post.

First of all, stop worrying. None of the changes in the earths orbit occur at time scales short enough for any of us alive today to worry about.

The eccentricity (how much more elliptical the orbit is compared to a perfect circle) changes over periods of a hundred thousand years or so for earth.

No orbit is perfectly regular. The gravitational influences of all the other planets, moons, asteroids, comets and relativity gradually change the circular to elliptical range of all the orbits of all the planets.

It has nothing to do with the seasons; in fact in the northern hemisphere, the earth is furthest from the sun in summer, and closest to the sun in winter! That is caused by a wholly different effect; which direction the earth's rotation axis points at the time of the year.

Over periods of hundreds of thousands of years the amount of insolation (heat received from the sun on the different hemispheres) causes long term changes in the earth's climate which helps cause ice ages.

It ain't scary, it's just physics, and will affect none of us who are alive today. Unless you are going to live 10 or 20 thousand years, which seems unlikely.