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At the last day, the Earth reached the most extreme point of its orbit, known as aphelion. All the inhabitants of our planet were nearly five million kilometers away from the Sun. The change occurs every July, because the orbit of our planet is not perfectly circular, but elliptical. Also, each January is located at the nearest point of the Sun, called perihelion.
The astrophysicist and disseminator of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, Nayra Rodríguez Eugenio, explained to the BBC Mundo that "in perihelion the sun is approximately at about 147 million kilometers from the Earth, and when it is in the aphelion, it is about 152 million kilometers from the Sun. "
The fire temperatures recorded in the northern hemisphere, which triggered d & # 39; huge forest fires, they can induce to think that the Sun is too close and punishes the Earth, although in fact the opposite happens. The additional distance determines that the amount of light received decreases by 7% compared to January.
But, the inhabitants of the northern hemisphere – for example, the United States and the European Union – should not expect high temperatures. this summer. The seasons on Earth are the result of changes in the amount of direct light received by our planet because of the tilt of the Earth's axis of rotation relative to the plane it describes around the Earth. Sun, and not because of the orbit.
Rodríguez Eugenio said that "this axis is inclined at about 23.5 degrees and so, when we are in summer in the northern hemisphere, the north axis, it is to say the North Pole of the Earth, points more towards the direction of the Sun ". He added that "the north summer coincides with the aphelion, but we receive solar radiation because the sun is higher on the horizon and we also have more hours of Sun."
In the southern hemisphere, the phenomenon is the opposite. because summer coincides with perihelion. "This could make us think that in the southern hemisphere, the temperature rises more than in the north in summer, because off the slope, the Earth is also closer to the Sun," says Rodríguez Eugenio. In fact, it's not like that, but "in the southern hemisphere, the Earth warms much more easily than water and, as the southern hemisphere has a larger surface covered with water, the excess energy is absorbed by it ". Therefore, in summer, both north and south, the temperature is about the same.
Astrophysics has stated that the greater distance results in a lower speed. As Kepler's second law emphasizes, when the planets are close to the Sun in their orbit, they move faster than when they are farther away. The greater distance in the aphelion means that the translational orbital velocity is less than 105,536 kilometers per hour, or about 3,600 kilometers per hour less than the speed of perihelion.
In other planets, the situation becomes difficult in these circumstances. For example, if we consider what life on another planet could be in these orbital circumstances, the amount of light received may vary by up to 31% during the planetary year. Because the orbit of Mars and its curves are much more spectacular, the drop in the amount of sunlight creates a softer northern summer and an icy winter in the south. Then Mars approaches the Sun, leading to a milder northern winter and a hot southern summer.
The orbit of the Earth ensures that it will never have extreme seasons like Pluto or Asymmetric as in the case of Mars. On the other hand, our planet will remain relatively stable, a feature that could have been decisive for the emergence of life. SOURCES: NEW YORK TIMES AND BBC WORLD .
Lights 1 – They are out of control in the West Zone
The fires that erupted in the western United States are not related to the current distance between the Earth and the Sun, as some believe it. More than a hundred houses have already been destroyed.
Lights 2 – Flames advance and destroy
California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, among other states, are fighting thirty fires that have already burned as much as 40,000 hectares of land. In 2017 Fires 3 – Thousands of acres were razed
In southern Colorado, the fire has already swept 32,000 hectares, while in California, where they mobilized more than 2,100 The damaged area is 28 300 hectares. It is controlled only by 5%.
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