Venus and Jupiter distort the orbit of the Earth

A team of American scientists from several scientific centers confirmed the hypothesis that the Earth’s orbit is distorted by the gravitational attraction of two planets. The first – Venus – our immediate neighbor, whose mass is slightly less than terrestrial. The second – Jupiter – the giant of the solar system, whose magnetic field, as it turned out, is ten times stronger than the earth’s.
This process, as it turned out, is cyclical: “flattening” occurs every 405 thousand years, and this is the longest known astronomical gravitational cycle. Moreover, this has been going on for at least 215 million years, and the deformation of the Earth’s orbit entails changes in the climate.
The researcher of geomagnetic phenomena and co-author Professor Dennis Kent of Rutgers University explains: previously it was assumed that such cycles existed for about 50 million years. However, now there is evidence that they are at least four times older. And many significant climate changes that have occurred on Earth only confirm new data, the authors say.
The phenomenon, when the orbit of the planet changes form from the ideal circle to the expressed ellipse (shift of the shape to 5%) and back, is called the change in the eccentricity of the orbit of revolution around the Sun. And yet this is a striking example of Milankovich cycles – the so-called various kinds of fluctuations responsible for natural climate changes. These cycles are of interest to both paleoclimatologists and ecologists who study the modern situation.
To understand how long the double action of the gravitational fields of Jupiter and Venus changes the orbit of the Earth, the authors of the work needed empirical evidence. However, it is impossible to get any others: for computer simulations and various theoretical studies, simply there is not enough data.
Therefore, in 2013 geologists went to study ancient rock samples. They chose the Chinle formation in the Petrified Forest Forest Park (“Petrified Forest”) in Arizona. The fossilized trees of 225 million years old, due to which the park got its name, were found in the Chinle rocks.
The team used the drilling technique, which allows extracting cores – rock samples, which are a monolithic cylindrical column (the cut of such a core is shown in the photo below). The drilling depth was 457 meters.
Specialists analyzed samples of zircon mineral for uranium and lead isotope content. Zircon was extracted from the core. Based on the obtained data, the changes in the polarity of the Earth’s magnetic field were reconstructed. The results showed that the changes were cyclical, and they could be dated.
Comparison of samples with other prehistoric samples confirmed that the length of each cycle is 405 thousand years. And the first changes began at the end of the Triassic period of the Mesozoic era, 215 million years ago.
According to experts, these conclusions are extremely important for many scientific fields, starting with the analysis of fossils and evolutionary processes and ending with the study of the motion of the planets.
But, perhaps, the greatest value new information is for climatologists. Of course, we can not assume that in the offensive of the global warming era, the Milankovich cycles are to blame. But to track and explain the historical and modern changes has now become much easier.
For example, now the Earth is in that phase, when its orbit in shape is more like a circle than an ellipse. In the future, with increasing eccentricity, the climate on the planet will become sharper: colder in winter and hotter in summer. And it is possible that these changes, against anthropogenic background, will once again affect the evolution of living organisms, experts conclude.
A scientific article with a more detailed description of the research was published in the journal PNAS.

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