what if Earth and Mars switched places?

Why Doesn't Earth Get Pulled into the Sun?

Newton's laws of motion

tell us that things with mass accelerate

things towards themselves the more mass

something has the more influence a task

everything around us from planets and

moons to each and every grain of sand

and speck of dust is essentially saying

hey accelerate towards me because of

this ninety-nine-point eight six percent

of the mass available in our solar

system has been collected and condensed

into one super massive object the Sun

what that means is that the earth along

with everything else in our solar system

is constantly accelerating toward the

Sun but if this is true why doesn't the

earth get pulled into the Sun why didn't

the earth and all the other planets get

pulled in the Sun a long time ago well

as we already mentioned gravity

accelerates the objects it acts upon so

in order to understand what's going on

here it's important that we fully

understand the concept of acceleration

first, we don't want to confuse

acceleration with velocity although they

is closely related velocity describing?

how fast your position is changing while

acceleration describes how fast your

velocity is changing and velocity isn't

just speed velocity describes speed and

direction for example 50 meters per

second South is a velocity on us 50

meters per second is a speed so if

acceleration is the change in velocity

you can have an acceleration by changing

your speed and/or by changing your

direction if you accelerate forward you

speed up then if you accelerate backward

you slow down

that's called decelerating and if you

accelerate to the left or right you turn

in that direction but maintain the same

speed and with earth as well as other

planets the same system acceleration

applies the Sun is always accelerating

the earth towards itself but the earth

is moving fast and without the Sun

pulling on it it wouldn't even travel

towards the Sun without the pool of the

Sun the earth wouldn't travel in an

elliptical path at all instead its

trajectory would be straight but the Sun

is pulling on the earth accelerating the

plant towards itself in this diagram the

earth is being accelerated to the left

by the Sun but the planet is moving fast

enough that by the time the Sun is

curved its trajectory little

in a new position but the Sun is still

90 degrees to the side of the direction

the planet is moving and this movement

is really stable every planet moving

around the Sun in a mostly circular

orbit always have the Sun about 90

degrees the side of the direction

they're moving that's why the earth can

be forever accelerating towards the Sun

without falling into it if the earth or

any other planet for that matter had not

been moving sideways fast enough it

would have fallen into the Sun a long

long time ago remember when I said that

the Sun contain ninety-nine point eight

six percent of the mass in our solar

system well the reason is that nearly

all the matter in our solar system just

wasn't moving sideways fast enough and

was collected into the Sun all that's

left planets moons and asteroids are

just the remaining tiny fraction of a

percentage that happened to have been

moving sideways fast enough this kind of

stuff is really fun to think about