Latest Axial tilt Stories

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 marks the Summer Solstice.The Summer Solstice, or "Midsummer," derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), occurs exactly when the Earth's axial tilt is most inclined towards the sun at its maximum of 23° 26'. This is the time when the Sun is at its highest, or most northerly, point in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere. Except in the polar regions, where daylight is continuous for many months during the spring and summer, the day on which the...

The change of seasons on Earth has been a cause for celebration since time immemorial. Caused by the tilt of Earth's axis relative to its orbital plane around the sun, seasons have profound changes on our weather and climate. When seasons change, nature reacts differently, depending on location. Temperatures change, rain or snow falls, rivers may flood, to name just a few effects.From space, NASA satellites record the change of seasons. Satellite images show large parts of the landscape at...

In an analysis of the past 1.2 million years, UC Santa Barbara geologist Lorraine Lisiecki discovered a pattern that connects the regular changes of the Earth's orbital cycle to changes in the Earth's climate. The finding is reported in this week's issue of the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.Lisiecki performed her analysis of climate by examining ocean sediment cores. These cores come from 57 locations around the world. By analyzing sediments, scientists are able to chart the Earth's...

Ice ages are the greatest natural climate changes in recent geological times. Their rise and fall are caused by slight changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun due to the influence of the other planets. But we do not know the exact relationship between the changes in the Earth's orbit and the changes in climate. New research from the Niels Bohr Institute indicates that there can be changes in the CO2 levels in the atmosphere that suddenly reach a critical turning point and with that...

The U.S. space agency says martian soil its Phoenix Mars Lander collected this year is very cold and dry, but during climate cycles it might become moist. Phoenix found clues increasing scientists' confidence in predictive models about water vapor moving through the soil between the atmosphere and subsurface water-ice, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said, noting the models predict the vapor flow can wet the soil when the tilt of Mars' axis, the obliquity, is greater than...

By Deborah ZabarenkoWASHINGTON -- An early gravitational dance made the giant planets tilt the way they do -- which is different from the way Earth and the other smaller planets tilt, an astronomer reported on Wednesday.The shift probably happened billions of years ago when the bigger planets in our solar system were closer together than they are now, and the gravity of each one exerted a pull on the others, said Adrian Brunini of the Facultad de Ciencias Astronomicas y Geofisicas in Buenos...

Tilt is a 100,000-year planetary pacemaker Woods Hole -- Scientists have long debated what causes glacial/interglacial cycles, which have occurred most recently at intervals of about 100,000 years. A new study reported in the March 24 issue of Nature finds that these glacial cycles are paced by variations in the tilt of Earth's axis, and that glaciations end when Earth's tilt is large. With more than 30 explanations proposed for these glacial cycles, researchers at the Woods Hole...