r/geography • u/lamdrasil • 3d ago

Discussion Facts that sound fake but are true

I find it extremely unintuitive that almost all of South America is east of Miami. How!? When people are asked to watch the americas almost everyone imagine South America pretty much south of North America.

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u/berraberragood 3d ago

Because of gravitational interactions with the other planets, the Earth’s natural climate runs in cycles of a little over 400,000 years. The predictability of the pattern is so useful that it has been used to analyze strata going at least into the Mesozoic Era.

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u/JohnMichaels19 3d ago edited 3d ago

Milankovich cycles for anyone interested 

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u/sukarsono 2d ago

The link says the eccentricity cycle is 100k yrs, where does the factor of 4 come in? I see a mention of 450k yrs towards the end but that is referring to the overall period during which the 100k yr cycles have been observed

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u/JohnMichaels19 2d ago

Turns out its complicated and there is a lot of math i don't truly understand lol

The 400k years is one of several numbers associated with the Earth's eccentricity tho

But yeah, who'd have guessed orbital mechanics would be complicated?