And will this change in distance affect our planet's climate?
The sun moves in such a predictable way across the sky that you might never suspect that its relationship with Earth is changing all the time. In fact, the average distance between Earth and the sun is not static year over year. So do we know if Earth is getting closer to or farther from the sun? And what forces are acting on our planet and our star to make this happen?
Although 0.1% may not sound like a lot,"this is a lot of mass," DiGiorgio said."It's about the same amount of mass as Jupiter." Jupiter, in turn, is about 318 times Earth's mass, according to the Exploratorium in California. The effects of tidesJust as the moon's gravitational pull results in tides on Earth, so does Earth's gravity tug on the sun. This stretches the side of the sun that faces Earth, resulting in a"tidal bulge," Britt Scharringhausen, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Beloit College in Wisconsin, wrote for Cornell University's Ask an Astronomer page.
Rogue influenceRecent work suggests the orbits of Jupiter and other planets in the solar system have changed over time. So could their orbits grow unstable enough to one day influence Earth's orbit, hurling it closer to or farther from the sun? Or might some other rogue body pass close enough to the solar system to have a similar effect?
A 2009 study in the journal Nature that performed about 2,500 simulations of the solar system found that in about 1% of them, Mercury's orbit became unstable, causing it to crash into either the sun or Venus."So it is theoretically possible for Mercury to move by the Earth and change its orbit substantially, as it did to Mars in one simulation," DiGiorgio said."This is very unlikely, though, as seen by its rarity in their simulations.
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