Try this fun experiment.

Ask some friends which season of the year they think the Earth is closest to the sun. Unless your acquaintances are atypical, I'll bet most will guess that we're nearer the sun during our summertime.

But this just isn't true.

Like most celestial bodies, the Earth orbits the sun not in a circle, but along an ellipse. An ellipse is simply a circle that's been squashed. And, because we orbit along an elliptical path, our distance from the sun varies ...

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