The Earth is slowly drifting away from the Sun.

As the Sun loses its mass and gravity, the Earth floats away from the Sun at a rate of about 1.5 cm per year.

As the Sun "ages" and loses its mass, the gravitational force that affects the surrounding planets is also weakened, Register said on January 19. This means that the orbits of the planets orbiting the Sun, including the Earth, are increasingly expanding at very slow speeds.

The Sun loses matter when charged particles are swept away. The process of synthesizing hydrogen into helium in the Sun core also causes some of the mass of hydrogen to be converted into energy. Because the mass is related to gravity, the gravitational force that the Sun acts on planets is also weakened.

The Earth is increasingly away from the Sun.(Photo: Metro).

The process of Earth going away is very slow, according to Antonio Genova, an expert at NASA's Goddard center and author of the study. Specifically, Earth's orbit around the Sun only extends about 1.5 cm per year. Meanwhile, is nearly 150 million km.

This is just an estimate because the Sun's mass reduction rate changes during the period of about 10 billion years of the Sun's existence. Assuming this speed is almost fixed, Earth's orbit will expand 150,000 km before the Sun dies, equivalent to 0.1% of the distance from the Sun to Earth.

"This effect will increase with distance. Saturn and the planet are 10 times more massive than the Earth, drifting more than 14cm each year," Genova said.

Scientists use NASA word data, which is responsible for measuring Mercury's position to calculate the Sun's mass reduction rate."Mercury is the perfect object for this type of experiment, because Kim is very sensitive to the effects of the Sun's gravity and activity," Genova said.