Looking at the Professor in a rather vagie way, connecting all that she'd said, Jake tilted his head and stared at her before raising his hand.

"We'd... die?"

Erm.

...

"Or... sssomething."

"Well surely if that were to happen, the gravitational field would not change, because gravity is to do with the size and spin of the planet. But if it did, then we would evolve into something heavier or adapt to the change," Dylan frowned. He couldn't say what he was picturing. It was hard to describe.

Rachel blinked as she listened to the Professor speak. This ALL tickled her memory somehow yet she couldn't for the life of her remember what the book she had read had said about this. !! She really WAS going senile.

Plus, the seventh year wasn't even sure what the Professor actually meant. She could me asking about the Earth's position in the sky, gravity on Earth or even the fate of human kind. Those things were intertwined, obviously, but STILL. Explaining about all THREE of them would take HOURS.

Writing down the title of the lesson, Rachel resigned to note-taking for a bit, since others were obviously YOUNGER and therefore had more to say today.

... Bleh.

Miles looked at the professor thoughtfully for a moment and then raised his hand, "Well...if that happened it would pull us closer or farther from the sun. Too close and we'll...well...burn up, too far and we'll be too cold. If the planet is too hot then the water evaporates, plants die off causing animals to die and eventually causing us to die. If it's too far the water would freeze, plants would die causing the same cycle. Eventually yes, we'd adapt but it would depend on how dramatic the climate change was." He looked around at everyone and scratched the back of his head. Right? Well it made sense to him....

"Yes, Gold's correct," Kiri said, nodding. "I doubt a change of one centimetre would do anything - I mean, Earth's distance to the Sun varies by a few thousand kilometres because its orbit isn't a perfect circle, but if it was just... you know, yanked sideways, the gravitational balance of its orbit would be disturbed, and the planet would veer off into space. If we came much closer to the Sun, the atmosphere would simply boil away. If the distance increased too much, everything would freeze to death."

Another thought crossed her mind. "Oh, and while there might be other stable orbits around the Sun the Earth could have, none of them would be in the right spot for life to exist," she continued. "So even if the planet doesn't just journey out of the Solar System or something, we'd still all die."

Okay.. so this Advanced Astronomy was harder than Oliver had thought it was going to be. With a frown of deep thinking and the start of a headache from too much brain strain, he raised his hand.

"Professor, Earth is in just the right position for it to support life. if it changed orbit, even slightly we would all die. Say we moved towards the sun by just a small percentage, all the water would evaporate and life on earth would die. Or... if earth went off orbit away from the sun all the water would freeze. Life would be doomed either way.”

Guh. He should have gone to the dunces beginners class.

Miranda's thumb nail was nearly dangerously close of becoming grined between her teeth. This astronomy class was haaard, and she was getting worried she'd gotten way to confused. But... then the Professor turned to her and gave her a...coupon!
Her jaw dropped in surprise, but snapped it shut immediately, taking it. "Whoa, thankyou, Professor." She smiled.


Heh! This got her more motivated. Maybe she'd get a coupon for CHOCOLATE CAKE! Gaspeth.

Miranda raised her hand. "Miss... I think that would mean us actually floating away from here. If gravity gets disturbed, we wont have anything to keep us in place on earth. It could mean all sort of disasters..." She grimaced at this horrible horrible thought. "Would that mean that maybe we could get...sucked out of earth? If gravity is gone, then maybe our little shield will get destroyed, and then all the oxygen will get sucked out because there isn't any in space." Oh dear... "And then...earth...er, dies?" Now, Miranda had scrunched up her face as if she'd smelled something disguisting. Like poo.

She turned to hear Oliver speak and what he said made sense. He was one smart dude. Hehe.

"Yeah, err. I don`t have anything to add. Too close and everything dies from the heat and too far and everything freezes" Barry said. Then he noticed something. He didn`t know what Astronomy was! Or Astrology!

Matheu shot up at that question. It was in the last chapter of the standard text. Matheu paraphrased: "The alternation of the alignment of Mercury would unbalance the other planet's orbit. Venus would gradually seep into Mercury's old orbit because of the gravitational pull of the sun. Then Earth would be attracted more to Sun and everything on planet would suffer. Mars would take Earth's spot. The whole orbital cycle of the Inner Planets would be shifted. There is also a possibilty that Mercury would either fall into the Sun and causing a supernova, I believe, or it could fall into another planets orbit. If that is the case, then Mercury and Planet B - B being the other planet in which orbit Mercury joined - would eventually collide."
Matheu felt pretty good about his answer. It seemed logically and an appropriate explaniation.

Herminny began ro rapidly take notes, she had no idea there were such smart people in the class amongst those who stated the obvious. Some really knew their stuff and she was happy to learn from them. She had no ides what to add but she thought she would try and said, "If Earth nudged a tiny bit in one direction it loose it's axis and the Earth would float off into space and since the Eath is just in the best place as it is to support life we would suffer because if goes toward the sun it will be too hot and water will evaporate away and we need water for survival to grow and live and oxygen is produced by water so with no water there is no oxygen and we die from suffication. If it goes in the other direction toward Mars the planet would get too cold and all water would become ice everything feezes and although we will still have oxygen eveything else will die from the cold so we would all die".

"Um, we would die because if the Earth is nudged toward the sun the planet would be too hot to be inhabitable and water which is essential to life would evaporate away and without water there is no oxygen so we woulsd all suffecate and die. If the Eath is tilted toward Mars then then everything will freeze including water which is essential to life and with no way of heating it we would all die", Fred said just hoping he had contributed something decent to the conversation.

Cela raised her hand thoughtfully. "Hasn't the Earth tilted further on its Axis over time anyway? Possbily caused by... gravity stuff in space and all? And, what about that whole Atlantis thing? Like, maybe there is some truth in it in the sense that Eath has had severe Axis shifts in antiquity?"

Blink. Blink.


Did anyone know what she was on about?

"I get that being nudged into a different orbit is one consideration, but what if its just an Axis shift? Even a really extreme one?"

Jack turned to address Cela, but not before raising his hand first. He nodded his head to show he was agreeing with her before putting in his two cents as well. "I actually think that the axial tilt on Earth is changing constantly...it usually doesn't change very much, only about two or three degrees, but it happens over such a long period of time that it is barely noticed. I think," he added. Axial tilts were not his speciality.

He didn't want to get TOO off topic, but now he had a lot of questions about what would happen if the axis DID get all messed up--it would certainly have more effects on the Earth than changing its orbit by a centimeter or so, right? "I believe HUGE tsunamis and earthquakes can actually change the axis a bit, but not by a lot--if the axis was shifted a LOT, though, wouldn't that mean that the seasons would be all messed up?" he suggested. "I think THAT might be worse for us than an orbit change...if areas that were traditionally warm suddenly turned freezing, people in that area would have no idea how to adapt...plus the tides would be all messed up too," he added, thinking of what Cela said about the whole Atlantis mystery.

"'s called obliquity," Kiri supplied, but not very enthusiastically. Her beautiful equations had gone by completely unnoticed! "The angle between the axis of rotation of Earth and the orbital plane."

Kiri picked up the parchment with the article and held it out horizontally. "That's the orbital plane. And the axis of the Earth is tilted relative to that." She held up a finger next to the parchment. "If the axis," she wiggled her finger, "is at a 90-degree angle to the plane, then the obliquity is zero. Earth's obliquity is... 23 degrees or so." She titled her finger to visualise this.

"It's not fixed," Kiri continued, putting down the parchment, "like Jack said, the Earth sort of wobbles back and forth a bit, but one cycle takes more than 40 thousand years. There are other axial movements like that, precession and so on... They have some climatic influence," she concluded with a shrug, "but nothing as sudden as what we've been talking about."

Gold raised her hand. "As far as I know, Cela, that doesn't actually count," she said cheerfully. "The obliquity of the ecliptic goes through a change we can consider, only over a time-period of about 41, 000 years. In other words, if the earth moved away, all of a sudden, by even a tiny but measurable quantity like a centimetre, that could have a huge effect."

She could be wrong but, well, there was no harm in speaking out. Her knowledge on astronomy wasn't the most extensive thing ever, but it was alright, for someone who didn't find astronomy the best subject on planet earth... and she was kind of sure she was correct, at least about a point or half, right now. Beside, this class was real fun!

"... and like I said before, there would probably be an Ice age, if we go off on a tangent, away from the sun. On the other hand, if we're nudged towards the sun, we would get to be exposed to super-hot solar winds and, well, roast. The planet would just ... burn up." Ouch. OUCH.

Maidee was only slightly disappointed. The discussion didn't quite work the way she had hoped, which was too bad. However, it did seem that at least a few had learned a few things from their fellow classmates. It just seemed a little like a rollercoaster UUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup and dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooownnnnnnn uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup and doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwww wnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.

Yeah. That's how it had gone. Oh well. 'Twas an experiment and it wasn't totally a fail. She could take pride on that aspect, anyway.

"Very good, ladies and gentlemen. Unfortunately, our time is up for the night."

With that, the homework appeared:

Done?

Gold blinked, then grabbed quill and parchment, to jot down the homework. That done, she picked herself up, slipped her astronomy textbook back into her bag, and smiled at their astronomy teacher.

"That was an informative lesson, ma'am," she said cheerfully.... and now, of course, for the homework. Eep, so much to do!

SO much.