Re: Did earth's axis undergo a radical shift in the past 18 months?

Hello!

To directly answer the question, no, the earth's axial tilt (about 23.493 
degrees in 1990) is not going to decrease a lot in our lifetimes (less 
than one ten-thousandth of a degree per year, I think it was).

You probably know that this axial tilt is what causes the seasons on Earth.

Changes in the length of the day and orientation of the Earth in respect 
to the Sun are caused when the Earth moves around the Sun. At the poles, 
as the Earth spins on its axis, during summer or winter, the poles are in 
constant sunlight or darkness. During the spring or the fall, the axial 
tilt doesn't alter the amount of daylight/nighttime received; everyone 
gets twelve hours of both, more or less.

You live in Connecticut, eh? That's fairly northerly (like Seattle, where 
I am). You would be noticing lengthening days in summer and longer 
darknesses in winter (like this summer, we had a couple of days that were 
about 15 hours long and last winter the middle days were about 9 hours 
long, so it all averages out). If you were in, say, California or Florida, 
you would hardly notice any effects like that, and along the equator, 
there would be practically no change at all. Oppositely, someone in Alaska 
would have days in which the sun never really quite sets in the summer or 
rises in the winter.

Someone on the other side of the world from you would be experiencing just 
the opposite effects. (It's summer in Australia when it's winter here).

Want to think of something REALLY crazy? What would happen if you lived on 
a world with NO axial tilt or a 90 degree axial tilt? What do you think 
the days and seasons would be like?

I hope this has been of some help. You could look up 'Earth axial tilt' 
or 'ecliptic to the equator' on the World Wide Web for more details.

Steve Laybourn