does any one believe that the earth is moving slowly away from the sun?
452121
Every 100,000 years the earth's orbit changes and gets farthur away from sun, when this happens another "Ice Age" occurs but eventually the earth returns to normal orbit after a long time.
440880
Well I am not sure if it is proper to apply the term to the sun, but the sun's apparent motion against the background of fixed stars is always in the same direction as that of planets that are moving in the prograde direction.
611229
Due to the direction of rotation of the earth, remember the sun is not actually moving at all we are rotation and rotating around the sun (days, years).  Galilao got into a lot of trouble with the vatican to teach us this :)
35993
It is a matter of Occam's Razor: It is the simplest explanation that explains the evidence. \n\nI might mention that the earth does not actually orbit the sun: it orbits the center of mass of the solar system, known as the barycenter (at least according to Newtonian gravity; I am not sure how the more accurate Einsteinian gravity alters this, but it does not change it very significantly if at all). So the heliocentric view is not actually strictly correct!
123056
The Earth would immediately leave it’s orbit in a direction tangential to the current orbital plane at a velocity equal to it’s current orbital velocity, roughly 11 km/s.  The final path will be modified by the gravitaitonal force of the other solar system bodies, but since the Sun’s gravitational attraction is much greater than the others,  the solar system would just fly apart.  \n\nThere’s no delay in gravity force propagation, so the effects will be instantaneous the moment the gravity is “turned off”.\n\nEDIT:  \n\nmrjeffrey 321:  It is correct.  The information of the sun's gravitational field really does travel faster than the speed of light.  I don't have any vested interest in any particular theory, I prefer to look at the facts and the experimental data.  Ask any astronomer who performs astrometric or planetary position calculations using celestial mechanics.  The positions of the planets are always calculated using instantaneous gravity.  The positions are then corrected for aberration, the visual position error caused by the fact that light is speed limited.  So, we really calculate the actual positions of the planets, and then we correct for where we actually see the light coming from these planets, delayed by the speed of light.\n\nIn fact, if you model the solar system by adding in a delay for "gravity propagation" at the speed of light, the orbits of the planets in the solar system begin to slowly deteriorate.  This is most obvious with observations of certain binary double stars, where any delay in gravity would cause the star pairs to fly apart.  According to actual ephemeris measurements, the Earth is being accelerated to point about 20 arc-seconds ahead of where the sun appears in the sky.  This is because gravity is pulling us instantaneously towards the true position of the sun, not the apparent position we see in the sky.\n\nI'm not an expert on relativity, so I'm not going to argue fine points about what general  or special relativity either does or doesn't say or is interpreted to say.  What matters is the actual evidence, and the evidence says that the effects of gravity are instantaneous.\n\nNote that there was a paper published back in 2003 regarding the measurement of the speed of gravity, which resulted in it being very close to the speed of light.  There are several errors in this paper that were pointed out after publication.  The calculations used were shown to be incorrect.\n\nAn interesting question on this subject is black holes.  If we agree that gravity is a particle or wave, and we agree that nothing, no information, can escape a black hole, then how is it that black holes exhibit gravity? If they are truly so massive that they warp the very fabric of space-time, then how is it that gravity waves can escape when light cannot  If we accept the fact that black holes are "information holes" in the sky, how can they reveal themselves through gravity?
455854
Yes, the moon is moving away at a rate of 3.8 centimetres per year. This was discovered by lunar laser ranging. Don't worry though, it's practically nothing.
1218
nothing to do with daylight savings. Daylight savings is a human invention, not a natural phenomenon.\n\n...because leap seconds are not being added to compensate for the Earth's rotation slowing down.\n\nThe amount of time it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun is 365.2425 days.\n\nEven that is an approximation, the decimal digits can keep going on.\n\nSo initially, the calendar was divided evenly in 365 days. But about every 4 years, you'd be off 1 day. A century later, you've drifted off by a whole month!\n\nSo, leap years came into effect. Febuary has another day every 4 years. \n\nBut now you've approximated a year to 365.25 days, when in reality, its 365.2425 days.\n\nEvery century, you'll be off 1 day.\n\nSo that's where the next rule comes into play: "If the year is divisible by 4, but not by 100, its a leap year."\n\nNow we've approximated it to 365.2425, but because its always going to be an approximation, our calendar days are always slipping. All because the earth doesn't take exactly 365 days to go around the sun.\n\nThis is why leap seconds are added, and not to account for the slowdown of the earth's rotation.\n\nAs to why days are divided in exactly 24 hours, I'm not sure. But I would think the time difference is WAY less than 20 minutes, or we'd notice that soon enough, its dark at noon! :)  Time was divided a long time ago, and a simple system was sought for keeping track of it, so the minuts/hour/year thing is a nice division thats easy to do math with. The lost time, if its accounted for by leap years and such, could be easier to manage.\n\nFirst, I never said the earth is not slowing down. I said its not why leap seconds exist. And ok, I can entertain my explanation may be wrong, but that's no reason for your condescending tone, Jolly Roger. But look, your link brings me to a christian science evanglism site, where is the evidence that my answer is incorrect? \n\nYou haven't bothered to explain his original question. If leapseconds account for the slowdown of the earth's rotation, why are there leap seconds and not leap milliseconds?\n\nIf you want to append to your answer, at least try to do so while respecting the other users on this site, and not insult their intelligence.\n\nThis has piqued my curiosity, if there's anyone out there that has a source that says my explanation is incorrect, I mean an actual science website, you know, one that steers clear of religion, please let me know.
71870
Yes,\n\nIt takes light sometime to get from the sun to the earth.  But if you look at the sun, you see it instantly, so I guess it would be the speed of sight if there is such thing.
266795
It will be from way out on a plane based on our orbital track. I think the intensity of the sun will block out the view of whether or not it goes behind or in front of the sun. The center of the universe, even though it is a non-existent place, for arguments sake, would be moving as everything in the universe is dynamic. (There is no end to infinite, therefore the center cannot be defined.)
910552
Do you really believe that the position of the Earth in its orbit around the sun at the time of one's birth has anything to do with personality or compatibility?  What is this, the Middle Ages?  Wake up and smell the 21st century!
1105582
The eccentricity of earth's orbit varies over a period of about 100,000 years. Currently, we are in a phase of decreasing eccentricty, so the answer is YES, but not by much.
70899
Why would you think that the sun does NOT move? \n\nThe sun moves in many ways. It rotates on its axis; different latitudes of the sun move at different rates, as can be observed with sunspots. The sun moves in its orbit around the barycenter of the solar system, which can be quite far removed from the sun's center. The sun's surface oscillates in different modes, similar to the ringing of a bell that has been struck by a hammer. The surface of the sun moves, and we observe solar prominences and other phenomena. The sun's surface will eventually expand as it changes character and becomes much larger as it moves through its lifespan. The entire solar system is moving through our galaxy at a tremendous speed, and our galaxy is moving as well very rapidly.\n\n\nI might also note that for vamsee, the answerer below, it is true that the distance from the earth to the sun is slowly increasing, but this is better attributed to tidal effects than the Big Bang:\n\nhttp://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=317
29462
No.  The sun is one of the stars. The earth and the other planets move around the star we call our sun.
39332
The does get closer to the sun every year but the order of magnitude is so small on astronomical scales it has no impact on the ice caps. This is for the same reason that the moon moves slightly closer to Earth by about 1 cm or so every year, orbital decay, which is a lose of energy due to tidal forces and drag. \nThe earth does get closer and farther away for the sun at different points of it's orbit because the orbit is a ellipse and not a perfect circle.
1139974
It may well be!\n\nThe problem is that we haven't really looked. It's true that the probes we've sent around our own solar system have drawn a blank when it comes to life. Life as we know it seems to prefer a certain range of temperatures and habitats, and those conditions aren't all that common. But they do exist, both here in our solar system and (almost certainly) in other solar systems as well.
156888
300 million years ago the day was about 22 hrs long. Earths rotation is getting slower and the days will be getting longer. This is because of the tidal forces between the earth and the moon. Earths oceans are being pulled on by the moons gravity. But as the moon moves in its orbit the oceans cant follow in a nice bulge because of the continents. So the oceans form another gravitaional centre offset from the center of the earth. This out-of sync tug is whats making the moon move farther away from the earth. The same force is slowing the earhts rotation. The moon is moving away from the earth by a couple of cms/year. How much longer the day gets each year I cant remember. It´s in the neighbourhood of nanoseconds. A leap second was acutally added to 2005.
364601
If that direction were opposite the direction of the \nearth's rotation, I think the answer is theoretically yes.\nIn reality there's not enough mass of people relative to the mass of the earth to have any effect.