It kind of does actually. If you read up about Mylankovitch cycles, you’ll see that there are periods of time where earth spends more time per year further away from the sun, and if you take that and run the simulation let’s say for 1 million years, you’ll see that at some point the climate is plunged into an ice age state, then the cycle reverses and it becomes warmer again (interglacial period), which is where we are now and probably one of the big reasons why we even exist as Homo Sapiens and evolved how we did. However, if you’re talking about a gradual one way movement (like moving closer or further away) over time, then no, it’s not really happening. The orbital radius of Earth should remain the same as long as earth and the sun retain the same mass.
TheMightySwiss t1_is23mlk wrote
Reply to comment by PeanutSalsa in Ask Anything Wednesday - Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science by AutoModerator
It kind of does actually. If you read up about Mylankovitch cycles, you’ll see that there are periods of time where earth spends more time per year further away from the sun, and if you take that and run the simulation let’s say for 1 million years, you’ll see that at some point the climate is plunged into an ice age state, then the cycle reverses and it becomes warmer again (interglacial period), which is where we are now and probably one of the big reasons why we even exist as Homo Sapiens and evolved how we did. However, if you’re talking about a gradual one way movement (like moving closer or further away) over time, then no, it’s not really happening. The orbital radius of Earth should remain the same as long as earth and the sun retain the same mass.