Astronomy/Astronomy

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Expert: Jesse Martinez - 9/17/2009


Question
What would the seasons be like the the earth were tipped 35 degrees instead os 23.5? What is the earths axis was perpendicular to its orbit?

Answer

Habitable areas of Ear
Good question. Knowing that the Earth’s inclination on its axis affects the seasons is the key to comprehending the answer. If the Earth’s inclination were 35° the seasons would be more severe. Areas around the equator would be the best places to live. In the latitudes father away from the equator, colder winters would be the most prominent change. Our current arctic and antarctic circle latitudes are at about 66½°. This change would drop them to 55° latitude. A significant portion of he world would be in a very hard environment to live in, but overall the earth would be habitable. There are two other conditions that would have extreme ramifications, if the Earth had no tilt and if it was tilted with a pole pointing towards the sun continuously.

In the first case, with an inclination of 0°, the seasons would not change. The equatorial region would probably not be habitable. The temperate zones would be much narrower. The arctic regions would as the equatorial region be much more severe in its temperature range. Without seasonal change, the equatorial region would get to a very high temperature on a constant basis and the arctic regions would become much bigger and settle into a constant subfreezing condition. That would leave us with a much more narrow temperate zone. I would say that the easily habitable regions of the planet would lie between 35° and 55° latitudes, north and south, which if you look at a world map, cuts out about 70% of the currently habitable space. The last scenario is the worst of all.

If the rotational axis, lets say the north pole of the earth was pointed directly at the sun, we would be in a situation in which only one side of the planet ever gets sunlight. The other side side, the dark side would be dead due to the extreme cold. The side that faces the sun would have large area that would be perpetually hot, too hot to sustain life. This would leave only a small strip near the equator where the sun supplies enough heat to keep the area habitable. In this area, the sun would always be low in the sky, never setting and never rising. It would be a perpetual sunrise/sunset. Meanwhile, at the pole, which now faces the sun in constant noontime, the heat is tremendous. The Arctic Ocean below would provide water for a massive storm that would be everlasting. The attached image shows how little of the Earth's surface would be habitable under these two scenarios. This situation would also be true if the Earth was gravitationally locked with one side facing the sun, like the moon is with the Earth.  

Jesse Martinez

Expertise

General and specific questions about the solar system and stellar and galactic astronomy, are what I can easily answer off the top of my head. For example, what is the largest planet in the solar system? How far away is the moon? Have there been any confirmed planets in orbit around stars other than the sun? How many stars are there? The tougher ones like explaining the big bang theory and black holes I will leave to the PhD’s. Even though I could muster an answer, I would have to research it more than I would like. I would also like to answer questions that involve Astronomy with other sciences, chemistry, biology, physics, geology and mathematics as long as they are not PhD level.

Experience

I have been into astronomy since I was 8 years old. I have kept detailed journals of my observations through small telescopes. Over the years I have participated in amateur observation projects for organizations like ALPO. My personal research has involved "discovering" the moons of Jupiter with a 4½-inch Newtonian reflector without any outside information like charts and tables. In a summer long project, I determined the existence of and plotted the orbits of the four major moons of Jupiter. From these observations, my data on orbital elements was surprisingly accurate (orbital radius and orbital period).

Education/Credentials
80 hours of college credits while studying physics and geophysics. Completed correspondence photography course while in high school. Took two semesters of electronics training at a community college. Studied computers and graduated from a technical school at the turn of the millennium, gaining A+ and Microsoft Certified Professional credentials. Hablo Español. Si quieres preguntar en Español, estoy a su servicio.

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