Why isn the earths orbit a perfect circle What would happen if it what?
theEarth’s orbit is NOT a perfect circle, it is an ellipse; in Jan, the Earth is about 91.5 million miles from the sun and in July about 94.5 miles all planets have orbits that are elliptical, although Venus’ is pretty close to being circular. The reason for this stems from the fact that gravity is a 1/r^2 force. The orbits that you get from a 1/r^2 are hyperbolae, parabolae, ellipses and circles. In fact, a circle is just a special case of an ellipse. What determines the shape of an orbit is how much energy the orbiting object possesses. If the object has enough energy to orbit but not enough energy to escape, you will get elliptical orbits. Only if the object has EXACTLY enough energy to orbit and non one bit energy more, will you get a circular orbit. Since it is very unlikely that planets in their formation would have exactly thsi amount of energy, you tend not to get circular orbits of planets. If the Earth had a perfectly circular orbit, seasons would be a little more moderate, b
