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Can We Move The Earth To A Different Orbit?

EnolaGaia

EnolaGaia

I knew the job was dangerous when I took it ...
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Here's the background ... Earlier this month a US Congressman asked if it would be possible to alter the moon's and / or earth's orbit(s) as a way to reduce global warming.
For understandable reasons, hearings held by the House Natural Resources subcommittee on national parks, forests and public lands do not generally attract a great deal of attention. ...

But not always. Sometimes there’s a question that’s so odd it slowly makes its way from the hearing to the national consciousness. As did a question posed by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) to Jennifer Eberlien, an associate deputy chief at the U.S. Forest Service. ...

“I understand from what’s been testified to the Forest Service and the BLM” — referring to the Bureau of Land Management — “you want very much to work on the issue of climate change,” Gohmert said.

Then:

“I was informed by the immediate past director of NASA that they have found that the moon’s orbit is changing slightly and so is the Earth’s orbit around the sun,” he continued. “And we know there’s been significant solar flare activity. And so is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit or the Earth’s orbit around the sun? Obviously, that would have profound effects on our climate.”

It took Eberlien a moment to reply.

“I would have to follow up with you on that one, Mr. Gohmert,” she said with a chuckle.
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SOURCE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...g-earths-orbit-was-dumb-not-reason-you-think/
 
Still, the notion of what it would take to shift the earth's orbit, and the risks in trying, make for some interesting speculative calculations.

This lengthy Scientific American article addresses the question at face value and provides some clues concerning what it would take to shift our planet's distance from its sun.
A Modest Proposal: Let’s Change Earth’s Orbit

What’s the worst that could happen?

During a congressional hearing last week, Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas asked a U.S. Forest Service official if her organization or the Bureau of Land Management could change the orbit of the moon or Earth to reverse the effects of human-caused climate change. That seems like a perfectly reasonable idea, doesn’t it? Let’s do it. ...

So let’s take Representative Gohmert’s advice and simply increase X, the distance to the sun. All we have to do is find a way to move all 5.972 septillion kilograms of Earth’s mass farther away from our star. Easy, right? ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-modest-proposal-lets-change-earths-orbit/
 
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There was a movie called The Wandering Earth where they try to move the Earth, but to a different solar system as I recall. Despite being written by Cixin Liu, it's rather bad.
 
I dont think its a very good idea at all.

How about we alter the output of the sun?

Perfectly natural, and the worst outcome is an Ice age.
 
We need to give Earth giant sunglasses.
 
How about we do nothing so barking mad?
I can't believe this kind of thing is being discussed in Congress.
 
Mythopoeika said:
How about we do nothing so barking mad?
I can't believe this kind of thing is being discussed in Congress.
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It's not really being discussed. If you check the first link above you'll see it's presumed to have been a strange and oblique gambit by a well-known climate change denier to shift attention away from human involvement in global warming.
 
EnolaGaia said:
It's not really being discussed. If you check the first link above you'll see it's presumed to have been a strange and oblique gambit by a well-known climate change denier to shift attention away from human involvement in global warming.
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Link doesn't work for me.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Link doesn't work for me.
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The basic point made in the article was:
There is good reason, then, to think that perhaps Gohmert actually wanted to know whether the Forest Service had a tool in its arsenal to move the moon around. In reality, though, Gohmert was embracing a different goofy theory.

Gohmert was being ironic. He wasn’t actually suggesting that the Earth’s orbit be shifted but, instead, suggesting that, since climate change is a function of those orbits and solar flares, altering the orbit would be what those agencies need to do to combat climate change.
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OK, he's got a point.
 
Xanatic* said:
We should also slow down the Earth's rotation. 24 hours in a day just isn't enough for me.
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Sure, you'd get a lot more sunshine. And droughts. And other weather events.
 
Mythopoeika said:
OK, he's got a point.
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No he doesn't. He's being a typical politician jerk saying and making sure that the media get (and he'll tweet it to make sure) what the lowest common denominator of his electorate want to hear. So help me there ought to be an intelligence test for running for office and we ought to ask for references.
 
There are ways to alter the Earth's orbit without requiring magical technology. Paul Birch described some of them in this paper to the British Interplanetary Society.
https://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/MoveAPlanet.pdf
A real-world application of this method would take thousands of years, and the end result on Earth's climate would be unpredictable. By the time Earth arrived in its desired orbit, Earth would have run out of fossil fuels, and we'd need to move it back.
 
As the Earth is flat, we could build a giant weight on one side of it causing the spin to turn into a wobble and throw it off orbit a bit. Once that’s done, we redistribute the weight mountain back where it all came from and return to normal planetary spin. Attaching the moon onto the end of a long stick would ensure it travelled with us.
No complicated science necessary.
 
BTW. The Horror channel have just bee showing Space 1999 again and if you get the Horror Channel app you can watch the series when you want.
 
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