Question

Does the earth orbit the sun? or does the sun orbit the earth? How do we know?

Answer 1

Hint: The earth is the only planet with life. It is because the earth is at the right distance from the sun and is protected from solar radiation by the magnetic field. Also, the Earth is kept warm by an insulating atmosphere and has the right chemical ingredients for life including water and carbon.

Complete step by step answer:
There should be an apparent shift in the positions of the stars if the earth is moving around the sun which is called stellar parallax. In general, this is a long pendulum that changes the plane of the oscillation due to the rotation of the earth.
Orbit is defined as the Earth’s path around the sun. As it rotates it also revolves around the sun. It takes 365 days for the Earth to completely orbit the sun. Thus as the earth orbits, the sun and the moon orbits the earth.
Earth goes around the sun every Earth year once. Earth’s rotation is defined as the rotation of the planet Earth around its axis. To the Sun, it rotates once in about 24 hours.

Note:
1. Earth is the third planet from the sun and it takes 24 hours to rotate.
2. The name Earth is derived from Anglo Saxon word erda. It means the ground or the soil. It became later eorthe and later erthe in Middle English.
3. Sun is not stationary in the solar system and is in orbit around each body which is also in orbit around itself like all the planets.