Question about the Sun: Solar galactic orbital path

First, watch a few seconds of this video:

You see how the Sun is blasting out gases in all directions, but not perfectly?

My question is: If the Sun has a big enough explosive outburst in one direction, is that enough to push the Sun in a particular direction and shift its orbital path around the galaxy just slightly?

Follow my logic to understand. We've all seen satellites and space craft like Apollo 13 or the space shuttle change their direction slightly by using little jets that make quick bursts. I'm talking about slight orbital adjustments. A little this way, a little that way.

Well, we know the Sun orbits around the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, much like the Earth orbits around the Sun, or the Moon orbits around the Earth. The Sun follows an orbital path and all the planets (and their moons) get dragged along with it.

All that gas blasting out from the sun for the most part cancels itself out so the Sun's orbit isn't effected. But I wonder if every once-in-a-while a major "blast" could nudge the sun out of it's "normal" path around the Milky Way galaxy. And if that happened, what would happen to the orbits of the Earth (and other planets)?

Anyone here know anything about orbital mechanics enough to speculate at least what the effect would be on Earth? If the Earth's orbit changed even slightly, wouldn't we feel the effects temperature/climate wise?

Thanks to anyone who has any ideas they'd like to share on the subject.

reply to post by harrytuttle


Well orbital mechanics aren't my forte, however, I can speculate that because the sun's mass is SOO huge compared to the rest of the bodies in our solar system it would take an explosion or ridiculous proportions to have moved even an inch in orbit It would assume.

That and the fact that really the sun is burning ball of fire, it has no real "hard" mass for something like that to push, I would figure it would simply go straight through or the blast would just be reflected off the surface in to other various directions.

But I am no expert and these are just my assumptions.

~Keeper

If I understand correctly, it takes the sun around 250,000 years to go around the milky way, but it could be closer to 250,000,000 years, I forget which it is, either way, its a long time, and its an even longer distance, because we are booking pretty fast.

With that in mind, the sheer circumference of the orbit is MASSIVELY large, like as big as the milky way itself, obviously. it is gravitationally locked, so any bursts it could produce would have a less than negligible movement to it. like exponentially less than your average sky scrapper sways in the breeze.

all that being said, its not really an easy task for us to know what path the earth took last time around, because obviously, it was before modern man and the age of science and religion and everything, so how would we know if we are on the same path or not?

I dont think there could be an answer to your question, and even an astrophysicist would have a hard time giving you a solid answer.

"If the Sun has a big enough explosive outburst in one direction, is that enough to push the Sun in a particular direction and shift its orbital path around the galaxy just slightly?"

Hmmmm. From what I know (not much), the sun revolves around the center of the galaxy just like the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the moon the Earth. If the sun were to have a big enough expulsion to move, it would drag the entire solar system with it. And maybe so, the Sun could be locked in its orbit around the Galactic Core no matter what.

It would be like a moving a red ball with a spec of dust

Our solar system is found on the outer edges of the Milky Way Galaxy. Obviously this means we are not tightly fitted into the electromagnetic field this spiral galaxy has. Do we exist in a grey area where uncommon extragalactic activity may occur? absolutely so, our electromagnetic fields are weaker than that of those systems closer in the center of the galaxy. Could we be recalled to the center by a black hole? The possibility does exist. Although the proof of that only exist around larger stars along the great rift, riddled with black holes. Now, on extragalactic black holes, the distance between the galaxys will factor in a least than likely interactive scenario, but still a .0165 chance of an event occuring.

Our orbital path, as grey as it is, stands to see more intereactions with extragalactic situations than that of our stronger center, just as our fingers reach out to touch in curiousity is our very existance in our galaxy. Although our center views us as weak, we are the tentacles that learn, as dangerous as that may seem. We are truly blessed indeed.

P.S. we still travel along the ecliptic like the other planets travel. We are now in relation to the constellation Virgo, which is showing to be very dangerous in past years. But it has always been this way. Mother will not let go and Father is calling out to us. This is our relation to the orbital path of the galaxy. Honor your mother and thy father, you are the center of their spectrum of light, the event itself. We are truly blessed.