Need to know: if you move the earth and moon about fourteen million mile further back from the sun will it cause a disturbance of any significance in the rest of the solar system.
Big Mike
Define significance.
No.
The gravitational attraction of the Earth-Moon system to the other planets is insignificant. It could be detected by careful measurements, but moving the Earth is not going to perturb their orbits significantly. It might change the orbits of some asteroids, though.
Presumably you are also slowing down the Earth’s orbit around the sun, right? Otherwise, the Earth would take on a significantly more elliptical orbit which might result in a collision. I don’t know the math on that.
Yes.
Of course, you have not defined the forces causing it, nor the reason that force fails to affect the rest of the Solar system, so it is entirely up to you to decide what affect it has, since it is an imaginary solar system now.
However, the motion of every object affects every other object in a dynamic system such as the Solar system. Two fairly massive objects changing their orbits by as large a distance as that would have significant effects on mars, and the many smaller bodies crossing the prior orbit of Earth, and its new orbit.
Tris
To most planets it wouldn’t have much effect, but it’d mess up Cruithne’s orbit something fierce:
I’m not so sure that it wouldn’t have a significant effect over tens or hundreds of millions of years. Wasn’t the early solar system somewhat unstable at first? It won’t affect the gas giants certainly, but what about Mars? It’s plausible that cumulative effects could perturb Mars’s orbit. Anyone got a cite that talks about this?
I was in a bit of a hurry earlier – Cruithne is almost certainly the largest body (outside of the moon – which you’re already moving) that will be significantly affected by moving the earth. it comes closer than any bodies not already in orbit around the earth and is very clearly synched to Earth’s orbit through gravitational interactions. If the Earth wasn’t there any more, it wouldn’t feel that regular tug, and would stabilize in a slightly different orbit.
Fourteen million miles further from the Sun would be a significant departure from the Titus-Bode rule, and would almost certainly (eventually, like milliions of years) disturb Mars’s orbit, as the closest approach distance would then be 2/3 what it is now.