Earth's orbit: an extraordinary journey around the Sun

We race around the Sun with incredible speed - about 100,000 km / h. And every year, flying about nine hundred million kilometers, we return to the same point from which they began this incredible journey through the twilight and vacuum of the cosmos. Three main parameters: the orbit of the Earth, its rotation around its own central axis and the slope of this imaginary rod, called precession, formed the appearance of the planet and are still forming its appearance. This means that they determine the entire life of mankind every minute of any day during the billions of years of the Earth's existence.

But there is another fourth fateful parameter, without which both the Earth's orbit, and its circulation around the central axis, and precession would be meaningless in terms of forming such an unusual appearance of the planet, and, most importantly, the birth and development of life on it.

The fact is that the Earth in the solar system occupies a perfect incredible, ideal, unique (here any epithet will be appropriate!) Position, already called the world science "Goldilocks belt". By this concept is meant such an arrangement of the planet relative to the heavenly body, in which water is in a liquid state, and, therefore, the emergence of life becomes possible. The Earth's orbit is located conveniently at such a comfortable and favorable distance from the Sun.

Since our birth, our blue planet has already made over four billion turns in its phenomenal orbit. And everything, by which the Earth flies, again and again making its cosmic path, is an extremely hostile environment. This is the most extreme journey in the history of mankind.

The orbit of the Earth around the Sun is a very dangerous route, where deadly solar radiation and pernicious cosmic cold are accompanied by fierce attacks of comets and asteroids. This is not to mention the colossal number of less likely threats. But, in spite of the many dangers that lie in wait for us on the way, the Earth's orbit, as was said above, is located in the absolutely right place. Ideal for the birth of life. The rest of the planets of the solar system were much less fortunate ...

The Earth was born just over four billion years ago from the clouds of cosmic dust and gas that remained after the formation of the Sun and revolved around the newborn star. This birth was a severe test, both for the planet itself and for its orbit. As it grew, the young Earth was attacked by other cosmic bodies - the era of the Great Collisions began, which ultimately predetermined the entire orderliness of the structure of our planetary system.

There is incontrovertible evidence that during this period of chaos the Earth collided with a certain small planet, also revolving around the Sun. The result of this cosmic cataclysm was the phenomenon of precession. The earth began to rotate at an angle of 23.5 degrees relative to the vertical, which caused such a variety of climatic zones on the planet. If the central axis were perpendicular to the orbit, the day on our planet would be equal to the night. And we would never see sunrises and sunsets ...