Undeniable wrote in message
m...
Uncle Al wrote in message
...
Grok wrote:

Some of us computer scientists were sitting around, bored, and decided
to nudge the Earth towards the Sun. It'd be convenient if it would
hit within our lifetime, so we could finish at least one project on
time and under budget in our lifetimes!

I'm not a physicist, nor did I take enough math or physics to figure
this out, so would like your help.

My guessing says we have to slow the Earth's rotation so that its
gravitational acceleration to the Sun overtakes it's angular momentum,
allowing us to smack into the big one.

How much force is required to slow us down enough so that the big
splashdown is within 50 years?

Boy, are you ever muddled. The Earth masses 5.9742x10^27 grams. Its
average orbital acceleration around the sun (at 1 AU or 499.004782
light-seconds) is 0.593008 cm/sec^2. Stop it cold in its orbit, F=ma,
and it falls into the sun nice as you please. Was that so hard? Go
figure out how long a non-orbiting Earth requires to fall from here to
the sun and get back to us with your calculations,

[snip]

Let's see. It's been a long time I played with planet but...

I think Uncle Al that if you just stop the motion of the earth it's
total mechanical energy E will still be negative, E0 , due to just
the potential of the sun and it will again attain an elliptical orbit
around the sun but with some other radius and we will fry anyway.

All E 0 orbits are elliptical, including that for L = 0. By what
means will the Earth "again attain an elliptical orbit around the Sun"?
[Old Man]