What force provides the centripetal force between the earth and the sun?

Answer 1

The force that makes the Earth travle through space is the suns gravitantional pull on the Earth. The way the Earth travels through space is by the suns gravitational pull on the Earth making it go around the sun.

Answer 2

Gravity. The sun's gravity is so strong, that it keeps the planets in their orbits. think of the sun as an orange on a blanket that is held up only in the corners. The orange makes a dent in the blanket, a bowl shape. If you rolled a grape throught the "bowl" it would go down toward the orange. But if you rolled it fast enough, it would just keep going. The planets are stuck in the sun's orbit because are going fast enough not to crash into the sun, but slow enough so that they cannot escape the sun's gravity. Hope that helps.

Answer 3

The Earth's surface rotates at about 1000 mph (.465 km/sec) at the Equator, so (except at the poles) things on the surface are always in motion. The Earth orbits the Sun at a speed of nearly 30 km/sec, so everything on Earth (including the poles) is moving that fast through space. But in addition to that, the Sun is circling in the Milky Way Galaxy at a speed of more than 200 km/sec, so Earth and the rest of the solar system are moving through space at that velocity. So someone, somewhere on Earth can be travelling through space at more than 230.5 km/sec (nearly half a million miles per hour) while standing perfectly still!

Answer 4

1) Earth's movement around the Sun is called a revolution, not a rotation. The term "rotation" is used when something turns around its own axis - that is, around a point inside the object.

2) No force is needed to maintain a movement. A force is needed to CHANGE a movement. Read about "Newton's Second Law" for more details.

Answer 5

The sun's huge amount of mass results in an attractive force known as gravity. The earth is not moving fast enough nor is big enough to escape the sun's gravity well (think of a gravity well as those big funnel shaped coin donation acceptors at the mall with the coin as the earth) or cause the sun to orbit around the earth. The earth is, fortunately, moving fast enough to avoid falling into our star.

It may be helpful to think of the earth as a ball on a string that has been struck resulting in the ball "orbiting" the pole in which the string is tied to. As long as the ball maintains a critical velocity or speed, the ball will continue to "orbit" the pole. If the ball slows down below the critical threshold, the ball will begin to approach the pole as its orbit deteriorates. This example works because the earth's gravity pulls the ball toward the ground and seems to pull it toward the pole.

The earth affects the sun's position in space as well, as do all the planets, becoming apparent in a very slight wobble of the sun. Due to the sheer difference of size and mass, the resulting effects on the sun are very minimal.

Answer 6

The mutual gravitational force of attraction between the sun and the earth

keeps them revolving around their common center of mass.

(Because of the great difference in the masses of the sun and earth, their

common center of mass in inside the sun.)

Gravity affects everything, so gravity is the force pulling us torwards the sun. It is the inertia of the earth that keeps us from being pulled into the sun, but inertia is not a force. Gravity and inertia keep us in orbit around the sun.

Answer 7

The force that keeps earth orbiting the sun is the mutual force of gravitation

between earth and the sun.

We're lucky that it's the only force required, because it's the only force that exists.

Answer 8

Gravity holds us to Earth. It is a force that tries to pull us to the center of the earth because of its magnetic properties some items like water stops us from doing that
Actually, it's a combination of two forces.

Gravity attracts us towards the center of the Earth.

Electromagnetic force keeps us from falling through the ground and reaching it.

Answer 9

The sun and earth or any planet in our solar system exert an equal and opposite force... the inward being gravity and the outward being the centripetal force of the moving projectile (in this case Earth)..

The force is equal or nearly equal to each other..and unless an external force tips off either bodies or there is a drastic change in body mass (significant weight increase or loss...but not as limited as cosmic dust) it will continue to travel in its said motion(s)

Answer 10

As far as we are aware, there are NO astronomical bodies in perfectly circular orbits. EVERY orbit is elliptical. Elliptical orbits are the natural order of things.

If a planetary system had formed with the planets in highly eccentric orbits, then over the course of a few billion years, all but a couple of the planets would have been perturbed out of the system, or into the star itself.

In a planetary system in which by some far-fetched chance the planets had developed in perfectly circular orbits, then any gravitational perturbation - such as a big solar flare, an asteroid impact, or just the gravitational interaction between the other planets - would have nudged each of the planets into elliptical orbits.

A perfectly circular orbit would be like balancing a table on a needle; ANY disturbance would spoil the balance.