What would happen if the earth started to accelerate?

[Mday]

scrapster, the earth is accelerating as there is a force acting on it.

earth's rotation has to do with the momentum of the dust cloud as it formed the planet 5 billion years ago.

 

[Mday]

i swear, the centrifugal forces would be immense =P

 

[RossGr]

Moombeam:

The space stations mass changes each time the shuttle docks and leaves. Each time they add a new structure it will increase in mass but it remains in the same orbit. The radius of the orbit is indepentent of mass, it is a function of velocity alone.

Consider the radial component of the orbital velocity vector, it points radially towards the center of the earth. To move to a higher orbit you must accelerate radially AWAY from the center of the earth. This will REDUCE the radial velocity vector component thus reducing the magnetude of your orbital velocity. If you kill all of the radial component, you will now be in orbit about the sun.

 

[bigredguy]

we would all die.

 

[Moonbeam]

Ross, I'm not real clear on the vector stuff. Let me ask the question this way. Suppose you are in a rocket that can magically propell itself, ie doesn't loose mass via acceleration. You point the nose of the rocket in the direction of the orbit, so that the rocket is tangencial to the earth. If you fire the rocket wouldn't that take you to a higher orbit. I'm visualizing a circle with a tangent drawn on it. At the center or the circle is a point representing the sun. One segment of the tangent is the rocket thrust and the other the direction the rocket seems to me it would head. No? I just can't see how the rocket would get closer to the sun and not farther away. To get clocer it seems to me that you would have to turn the rocket engine away from the some small degree outside the tangent so that the nose would point inside the circle.

Edit: This would be like firing a rocket at the horizon. Assuming it doesn't hit a mountain or run out of fuel, it will eventually head out into space. Meanwhile, as the rocket sat there ready for launch, it's orbit around the earth is at its minimum. The only variable here would be acceleration which would take it into orbit upon firing.

 

[RossGr]

I am not an expert by any means so I found this site to help me Orbital mechanics . A key equation from this page is

v = SQRT[ GM / r ]

G is the Gravitational Constant
M is the Mass of the EARTH
v is orbital velocity
r is the radius of the orbit

This is for CIRCULAR orbits.


Your tangential acceleration would create a more eliptical orbit. I believe that is the way that you would finally move from an earth orbit to a solar orbit.

 

[LuNoTiCK]

If the earth stopped on a dime, everything would go flying at really fast speeds, and we'd all die.