Disntace from the Sun

Hey everyone!

This post is going to be about our distance from the sun.

Our Solar System

Now I'm sure you have all seen a picture like this one here. And you all probably have a good idea of where our planets position is. But do you know how important our position is?





First off what would happen if we were any closer to the sun?

Venus

Well, we live in the "habitable zone" of the solar system. All stars have a habitable zone, it's the region around a star where temperatures allow for the presence of liquid water, which is vital for life to exist.
You only have to look at Venus to see what would happen to Earth if we were too close to the Sun. Venus is just outside the habitable zone and it is almost the same size and structure as Earth. All the water that ever existed in liquid form on Venus has long since been boiled away, its a wasteland.
So you can see that we'd only need to be slightly closer to the Sun before our oceans would start boiling away.

Ok what about being further away from the sun?

 The first thing we would notice is the longer years. Being further away means that it takes longer to travel around the Sun. This means that all the seasons would be extended, so we would have longer summers and longer winters
Most drastically would be that the solar energy we receive from the sun would drop, therefore
we would see a massive decrease in the earth's ability to produce food, leading to wide spread starvation.
The solar power also drives our climate and weather patterns, so our weather would be drastically changed, that would only further the damage to the environment and mass extinction. And I imagine that things would get rather cold.


I have read that we are moving away from the sun, I have also read that we aren't. So I'm not positive about this. I figured I would put why this would be happening, if it really is.
The theory is that the Sun is constantly losing mass because of the solar
wind and other activity on the sun, As the mass of the Sun decreases its pull on the Earth decreases and so the Earth moves slightly further away.

There are moments when the utter hugeness of the universe scares me. The thought of one little thing moving and sending the earth spinning out of control scares me. But I know that this wont happen and I know that everything is in God's hands.

Isaiah 40:26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing.

Our Solar Systems Posititon in the Milky Way

Yesterday afternoon I watched a documentary entitled "The Privileged Planet" by Illustra Media.
Can I just recommend this to everyone? It explains so much and has really opened my eyes.
They talked about something I had never really realized before. Our planet is in the optimum position for scientific study and discovery!
Our Solar system is positioned in the outer reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is a spiral galaxy. Now, there is strong evidence that supports the theory, that there is a super massive black hole in the galactic center of out galaxy... That wouldn't be fun to be close to. Thankfully we are about 30,000 light-years away from the center of the galaxy, so even if you could travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second,) it would take anywhere between 20,000 - 80,000 years to get to the center of the Milky Way.
Now what about the arms? Spiral arms typically contain more interstellar gas and dust than the Galactic average as well as a high concentration of star formation. So that isn't too safe either. With stars being born and dying it would be very chaotic and dangerous for earth. But we are placed in-between two of the arms. So not only are we in one of the safest parts of the Galaxy, we are also in an amazing viewing position. If we were in an arm we couldn't see anything but the gases and dust, we wouldn't be able to see out into our Galaxy and beyond.
This is just the position of our solar system in the galaxy, our planets position in our solar system is even more perfect and amazing! So I look forward to writing a future post about that :)