Mountains and Earth movement?

Question

I heard that, according to a theory, mountains prevent the Earth from moving away from its orbit.

Is this theory really confirmed?

Answer 1

It is false...

Answer 2

If the equator has the highest mass concentration, think of mountains near the equator, then this may help keep the Earth's axis aligned perpendicular to the Moon's orbit and the Sun's equatorial plane.  Uranus seems to have flipped on it's side.  Venus rotates backwards.

But i'm afraid we're stuck with our orbit, unless we really want to do something about it.  And we may want to do something about it as the Sun heats up, which is what stellar evolution suggests will happen.  We could do that by getting a big asteroid to do a funky figure 8 loop between Earth and Jupiter.  We'd steal orbital energy from Jupiter and give it to the Earth.  Calculations suggest that we have time to do it.  It won't be very easy.

Answer 3

No, it certainly isn't confirmed!  On a human scale, mountains are huge.  On a scale of the diameter of the Earth, they are mere specks of grit.  Of all the way out ideas promulgated on here, this one has to be one of the wackiest!

Answer 4

NO! That's Ridiculous!

Answer 5

I  never heard of such a thing before.   I don't see any way it can be true.  

Why would the Earth move away from it's orbit in the first place?  The mountains on Earth have no effect on Earth's orbit.  The tallest mountain is only 10 km high (Mauna Kea).  The Earth's orbit radius is 150,000,000 km.  Even if all the mountains were on one side of the Earth, it would change the orbit by less than 1 meter.

Answer 6

Mountains are formed by volcanic activity, glaciars carving them out (like in yosemite), or the last possibilty, (the one i think is what your question is regarding) which is plate tectonics, when two of the earth's tectonic plates smash into each other at super slow speeds (this causes earthquakes), eventually one plate gets pushed under another plate, forcing the top plate to rise and make a mountain (the himilayas North of india, for example).  This area where the two plates touch is called the "fault line".

Now back to your question, the hot liquid magma in the earth is spinning along with the earth, when a plate which pushes underneath the earth's crust (which is comprised of all the pates combined) this redirects hundreds of millions of tons of inertia which could, by a minsicule amount, effect the earth'0s orbit, like the cause of the micro ice age in 1000 a.d. caused by a giant volcanic erruption which rediected the magma  causing the earths' spin (or orbit) to be slightly off, changing the seasons.

However, the distance from the earth and the sun has to do with the sun's gravity (and the earth's gravity) pulling on it, and mountains, to put it plainly, "don't have **** on the sun"  So your answer is No it is not confirmed that the mountains prevent the earth from moving away from its orbit.

the earth has been the same distance from the sun since before the earth cooled down enough to have mountains!

Answer 7

That's the first time I've heard that one.  I can't really comment except to observe that I don't know of any mechanism which would make it be true.

Doug