Marss gravity may help control Earth’s cycle of ice...

What’s Happening

So get this: Despite its small size, Mars seems to have a huge impact on the orbital cycles that govern Earth’s climate, especially those that cause ice ages Space Mars’s gravity may help control Earth’s cycle of ice ages Despite its small size, Mars seems to have a huge impact on the orbital cycles that govern Earth’s climate, especially those that cause ice ages By Leah Crane 26 January 2026 Facebook / Meta Twitter / X icon Linkedin Reddit Email Mars has a surprisingly large influence on Earths climate NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems Compared with Earth, Mars is tiny, yet it seems to have an outsized effect on our planet’s climate cycles.

Similar small planets could affect the climates of worlds beyond our solar system, which we must begin to take into account when evaluating their potential habitability. Stephen Kane at the University of California, Riverside, and his colleagues found this effect of the influence Mars would have on Earth’s orbit if it were a different mass, from 100 times its actual mass to if it were gone entirely. (let that sink in)

“I came to this from a perspective of scepticism, actually, because I had trouble believing that Mars, which is only a tenth the mass of Earth, could have such a profound effect on Earth’s cycles, so that’s what motivated this study to turn that knob of Mars’s mass and see what happens,” says Kane.

The Details

Earth’s climate has many long-grow cycles based on the eccentricity of its orbit – how stretched out its path around the sun is – and the tilt of its axis. These orbits, governed of the sun and the other planets in the solar system, govern such crucial events as the timing of ice ages and the intensity of seasonal changes.

Is gravity a new type of force that arises from cosmic entropy? One of the most influential is known as the grand cycle: over the course of 2.

Why This Matters

4 million years, the ellipse of Earth’s orbit around the sun elongates and shortens again. This affects how much sunlight Earth’s surface gets at any given time, regulating the timing of long-term changes in climate.

This could have implications for future research in this area.

The Bottom Line

This story is still developing, and we’ll keep you updated as more info drops.

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