Summary<\/p>\n
The axial tilt (angle between the axis of spin and the axis of orbit) for a planet controls how the energy of a star is distributed on the planetary surface. In the case of earth this results in the seasonal changes in our environment that plants and animals have to adjust to. Not only is the atmosphere or our weather patterns affected by this but so too are the ocean currents. Everything in Nature must respond to this change. This is a basic fundamental property of the story of life and all the rest of it on our planet.<\/p>\n
In the drawings below the rotational, spin, axis is shown for the planet. Note that one half of the planet enjoys daylight while the other half is in darkness. This axis extended into space in the case of earth will always point to Polaris for a northern hemisphere observer. As the planet travels around the sun the axis points in a parallel direction, always towards the North Star, any hour of the night any night of the year that star can be found in the same place in the sky. Or thought of in another way, even though the orbital diameter of the earth is large as viewed from Polaris, that length is just a dot. So Polaris will always stand over the north pole of earth as it travels around the sun. Note that if you placed an igloo at the north pole of earth and spun the planet there are times when the igloo will be in daylight for twenty-four hours and times when the igloo will be in darkness for twenty-four hours. <\/p>\n
Potential Problems<\/p>\n
A) Student shading of earth.<\/p>\n
B) Leaning earth suggests closer distance. 6,400,000 km. 6,400,000\/150,000,000* = 4% change (* Average distance) Suppose you were standing 100 feet away from a campfire and then moved 4 feet closer, would such a change be very noticeable?<\/p>\n
C) Flipping axis. Remember any night of the year Polaris, the North Star, is visible in the same location of the sky. This star marks the position where the rotational axis of the Earth touches the sky. So as seen by the consistent location of Polaris there is no \u201cflipping\u201d of the axis as shown:<\/p>\n
Extensions<\/p>\n
The distribution of the energy from a star would result in very different conditions for planets illustrated below. The system on the left would have rather consistent conditions throughout the year while the drawing on the right would show an extreme variation for an orbital year. As this planet orbits its star the northern hemisphere will be in constant daylight for half of the orbital cycle and darkness for the other half. What adaptations would the biology invent on such a world? What extremes in weather and circulation of all fluids would be set in motion?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summary The axial tilt (angle between the axis of spin and the axis of orbit) for a planet controls how the energy of a star is distributed on the planetary surface. In the case of earth this results in the seasonal changes in our environment that plants and animals have to adjust to. Not only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-93439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-paper-writing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}