What would happen if the sun were one mile closer to earth?

Answer 1

The difference would probably be not all that significant.

There's a myth that even a 1 mile difference could make the earth too hot to live on, but that isn't true. The Earth's orbit isn't a perfect circle, and we actually get about 3 million miles closer to the sun. Even 3 million miles doesn't make much difference, in fact we're closest to the sun during the month of January, the middle of winter for the Northern Hemisphere.

Answer 2

The more gross and apparent things would be;

The moonshine would be brighter.

The tides would have a greater range.

A lunar month would be shorter.

The day would be lengthening more quickly.

The moon would appear larger.

Answer 3

Yes, the Earth would be cooler if it were farther away. However, it would take a big distance to make much change in temperature, the Earth already moves several million miles closer and farther from the sun in its orbit each year.

Answer 4

If the moon were farther away from Earth, then

-- it would appear smaller and dimmer,

-- it would take more than 27.32 days to revolve around the Earth,

-- it would take more than 29.53 days to display a full cycle of phases, and

-- the tidal extremes on Earth's oceans would be somewhat smaller.

If the moon were nearer to Earth, then

-- it would appear larger and brighter,

-- it would take less than 27.32 days to revolve around the Earth,

-- it would take less than 29.53 days to display a full cycle of phases, and

-- the tidal extremes on Earth's oceans would be somewhat larger.

Answer 5

If the moon was closer, first it would look a lot bigger. And it would dramatically change the tides. Ex. When we could see the moon in the sky, the tides would have risen x amount of feet ( depending on how close it was) and when it is not visible, it would have dropped e amount of feet. This could result in massive floods daily, dangerous water, no food for sea animals, because there all dead, not being able to travel by sea, no beach front homes, ect.

Answer 6

Depending in how much closer the moon gets, the tide would inevitably become more extreme on either end. Unless the moon somehow crashes into the Earth, it is extremely unlikely that the Moon's gravity will throw Earth off the set course around the Sun.

Answer 7

If you were on the far side of the Moon, it would be bright and sunny in the lunar day - but you wouldn't see the Earth at all.

If you were on the near side during a solar eclipse, it would be dark and cold, because it would be night on the Moon. Days and nights on the Moon last for 14 days each. You would be able to see the full Earth, almost completely illuminated by the Sun.

You probably wouldn't notice the one dark spot on the Earth. From 250,000 miles away, the Earth would look the size of a Baseball 10 feet away; would you be able to see a dark smudge on the Earth from that distance? Perhaps... and perhaps not. After all, the Earth is 8000 miles across, and the dark spot on the Earth, which is the shadow of the Moon, would only be about 300 miles across - and maybe not even that large, depending on whether the Moon was fairly close or further away in its orbit when the eclipse happened.

Answer 8

If the moon were closer to Earth than it is now . . .

-- It would appear bigger in the sky than it does now.

-- It would appear brighter in the sky. It would light up the streets, yards, etc. at night

more than it does now, and it would be visible during daytime for a greater portion of the

full cycle of phases.

-- Stargazing would be more difficult and less popular, since a larger number of stars

would be invisible for a greater fraction of the time, than is the case now.

-- The moon would appear to orbit Earth in a shorter period of time, and would

complete a full cycle of phases in a shorter time. Considering how the concept of

"months" originated, our calendars would most likely have more than 12 pages in

a year.

-- There would be many more eclipses, both solar ones and lunar ones. But when

one of either kind happened, its duration would be different from what they are now.

I'm not sufficiently motivated at the moment to figure out whether they would be

longer or shorter than they are now ... a very complicated question.

-- Depending on the moon's actual distance from Earth, eclipses might appear very

different. The moon might appear big enough to block any view of the solar corona

during totality of a solar eclipse, or might be bigger than the Earth's shadow and so

present itself as an "annular moon" during a lunar one.

-- The female human reproductive cycle would most likely either be shorter, or else

totally unrelated to the lunar cycle. (I mean, like, how often could men stand it!)

-- Low tides would be lower, and high tides would be higher, because of the greater

mutual forces of gravitational attraction between the Earth's components and the

moon's components.

-- Also related to the tides, earthquakes might be more frequent and more energetic

than they are now.

-- Also related to the tides, the Earth would be "running down" faster than it is ...

the length of the day would grow more each century than it does now. Records of

eclipses, kept by Chinese astronomers of the 4th Millenium BCE, would be more out

of whack than they are now.

-- The precession of the equinoxes would proceed faster than it does now, since

the moon and the Earth's equatorial bulge would be attracted to each other more

strongly than they are now. Polaris would become the north pole star more often

than once each 26,000 years, and the sun would have slithered more than one

constellation along the zodiac since the age when Astrology was dreamed up.

Answer 9

No. In a solar eclipse, the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth, and the shadow of the Moon hits the Earth. Maybe you mean what kind of solar eclipse occurs when the Moon is further from Earth than it usually is during an eclipse, in which case the answer is "partial" or possibly "annular".

Answer 10

Partial lunar eclipses would be less frequent.

Total lunar eclipses would be slightly more frequent than they are now.

When a total lunar eclipse occurred, the partial phases would last shorter,

and the total phase would last longer.