WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE EARTH STOPPED ORBITING THE SUN

By Kurt Keiro

The starter

Lots of different things could happen if the earth stopped orbiting the sun, but let’s just suppose for now that the earth just stayed in the same place in the sky, spinning on it’s axis.At the moment, the earth takes 365 days to orbit the sun.

The tilt

The Earth's movement around the sun causes the seasons.

When the north pole tilts away from the sun we get winter in the northern hemisphere.

The earth

The North pole always points the same way as the Earth revolves around the Sun.

Disaster!

If the earth stops going round the sun, there will be no more changing of seasons and we will stay forever in the season we were in when the orbit stops.

summer

winter

Vote for one

Perpetual summer!

It would be nice… to begin with. But can you remember hearing this summer that it was so dry in the Isle of Skye that they ran out of water to make whisky. There’s plenty rain now that summer is over.

But what happens when summer is never over?

The biggest problem will be getting plants to grow.

photosynthesis

As you can see from this slide plants cannot make food for them to grow without water.

We would run out of food fast.

Perpetual winter

It would be nice to begin with going sledging every day but the super markets would run out of food after a few months. Remember plants need sun to grow.

Fix the problem

Somehow move water in to places where there is enough sun energy to grow plants.

Could we organise it in time?

Thank you for listening to me

And don’t worry because it will never happen…or not for millions of years