Planets around the Sun

[dkatwa]

Hi all..is there a website that shows the path of the planets around the Sun in 3D, where you can zoom in/ out and do time travel to see changes in 1 year, 100 years, 1 million years etc...
I gather the Earth does not go around the sun in a circle and the planets are constantly moving in orbits in different planes to the earth...

[dkatwa]

Einion Yrth said:

You might find this interesting.

WOW...great site...many thanks to you all

[dkatwa]

Is there a site that shows how the Earth's surface moves over millions of years, whether in the past or forward?
My thinking is that the Blue whale is not the biggest animal to have ever lived...I think there were sea- borne dinosaurs much bigger, but when they died, they would sink to the surface of the ocean...
so, if we look at how the continents moved over the last 65m years, there would be land now that was previously under water, potentially containing the bones of those sea dinosaurs

Anyway, it would be nice to see how the continents have/ would move over the next 65 million years..or whatever timescale

Happy New Year!

[dkatwa]

Is there a site that shows how the Earth's surface moves over millions of years, whether in the past or forward?
My thinking is that the Blue whale is not the biggest animal to have ever lived...I think there were sea- borne dinosaurs much bigger, but when they died, they would sink to the surface of the ocean...
so, if we look at how the continents moved over the last 65m years, there would be land now that was previously under water, potentially containing the bones of those sea dinosaurs

Anyway, it would be nice to see how the continents have/ would move over the next 65 million years..or whatever timescale

Happy New Year!

[dkatwa]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

dkatwa said:

My thinking is that the Blue whale is not the biggest animal to have ever lived...I think there were sea- borne dinosaurs much bigger,

It's possible, but there is not one iota of evidence to support this. I note you don't say "I think it's possible there were...." but you actually say "I think there were...".

Given that the blue whale is 3 times the size of the largest known dinosaur (180 tn compared to 60 tn), it is extremely unlikely that there was one species of dinosaur that was say 200tn, and the next biggest was so much smaller. The blue whale isn't the only whale, there are many different sorts of whale varying sizes culminating in the blue whale being the largest.

What has led you to this conclusion?

Hey, my English is not up to the standards required for scientific debate so thanks for correcting me :-)
I was merely trying to say that everything 65m years ago was huge so why couldn't there be huge creatures in the sea, bigger than the blue whale?

As has been mentioned on this topic, the plates constantly change but what I would like to see is a map of the Earth where I can go back in time 65m years and see how the plates have moved since then...land now, that was in the sea 65m years ago, would be a good place to start looking for said huge sea dinosaurs...or whatever they are called :-)

[dkatwa]

RobM77 said:

Eric Mc said:

dkatwa said:

Hi all..is there a website that shows the path of the planets around the Sun in 3D, where you can zoom in/ out and do time travel to see changes in 1 year, 100 years, 1 million years etc...
I gather the Earth does not go around the sun in a circle and the planets are constantly moving in orbits in different planes to the earth...

None of the planets' orbits are perfect circles. They are all elliptical to some extent. Some are more elliptical than others.

All of the planets lie roughly in the same plane - which is more or less in line with the sun's equator and is referred to as the plane of the ecliptic. The planets don't lie absolutely on this plane but they are pretty close. That's why you will only ever see planets in a distinct band in the sky, which is referred to as the Zodiac.

Thanks...but my brain can only handle animations and/ or words of one syllable :-)




The OP may find these links interesting:

Firstly, something about how planets orbit in ellipses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_p...

Secondly, something about the variation in orbital inclination that Eric mentions above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_inclination

Incidentally, something the OP may find interesting is that the earth's elliptical orbit means that we're closest to the sun on January the 3rd (~147 million km) and furthest from the sun on July the 4th (~152 million km). More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perihelion_and_aphel...

[dkatwa]

Eric Mc said:

Think of dinner plates revolving on a stick - similar to what magicians and jugglers sometimes do as a show trick.

You will probably recall that the plates don't revolve in a perfectly stable way. They wobble up and down somewhat. Planets revolve around the sun a bit like that - although not as extremely. And they all do it differently to each other to some extent.

The "ecliptic" is an imaginary line drawn through the centre of the sun and out through its equator. The planets are more or less on that line - apart from the fact they wobble up and down a bit as described above.

The planets don't orbit the sun in perfect circles. The orbits are slightly stretched into an oval shape - or an "ellipse".

None of that should be hard to visualise.

Makes sense..thanks..so, is there a website that shows this visually? For example, if I speed up the process, say, 100 times, then I would see the Earth spinning like a top, with the pole moving away from the current North star due to precession..

I am sure there are sites but I have yet to find one

cheers