Math Problem: How Long Until the Earth Falls Into the Sun?

Our earth has orbital motion, revolving once around the sun in about 365 days. Suppose that this orbital motion suddenly stopped completely, but everything else remained the same. How long would it take for the earth to plunge along a straight line into the sun? [...] Kepler's law applies to planetary orbits, whether they be of circular, or elliptical shape. It says that T22/T12 = R23/R13, where T is the period of an orbit and R is its semi-major axis. The semi-major axis is the average of th...

 The Population Explosion of Celebrities are Cancelling Ea...

The Internet has made me very casual with a level of omniscience that was unthinkable a decade ago. I now wonder if God gets bored knowing the answer to everything. The Internet forces me, as a creator, to figure out who I really am and what is unique to me — or to anyone else, for that matter — I like this. ... The Internet forces me to renegotiate my relationship to the celebrity dimension of pop culture. There are too many celebrities now, and they all cancel each other out (15 minutes!) s...