doi.org/10.1088/1538-3873/ae2800
Credibility: 989
#Mars
Recent research reveals a surprising discovery: despite being much smaller and more distant, Mars exerts a significant gravitational influence on our planet’s orbit and climate over thousands and millions of years
Earth’s climate cycles, known as Milankovitch cycles, determine the slow changes in the shape of the orbit, the tilt of the axis, and the moment when the planet is closest to the Sun.
These variations control how much solar heat reaches different regions and help explain the major ice ages that have occurred several times in Earth’s history.
Scientists at the University of California, Riverside, led by Professor Stephen Kane, conducted computer simulations of the solar system to better understand this process.
They discovered that if Mars were removed from the simulations, some of the most important climate cycles would disappear completely-especially the cycle of about 100,000 years, which marks the transitions between glacial and interglacial periods, and another of approximately 2.3 million years.
A longer cycle, of 430,000 years, continued to exist even without Mars.
Furthermore, by artificially increasing the mass of Mars in the models, the cycles became shorter, showing that the red planet has a real and measurable effect.
Despite being only one-tenth the mass of Earth and being very far away, Mars “hits over its weight” because its more distant position from the Sun causes its gravity to affect Earth disproportionately, even helping to stabilize the tilt of the Earth’s axis (currently around 23.5 degrees), which prevents extreme variations in climate.
These results show that Mars contributes to shaping the climatic rhythms that have influenced the evolution of life on the planet, including changes in landscapes, the expansion of savannas, and even aspects of human history.
The study also suggests that, in other planetary systems, distant planets may play similar roles in the climatic stability of Earth-like worlds.
The research was published in December 2025 in the journal “Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific”.
Published in 03/17/2026 01h51
Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption. Information about DOI, author and institution can be found in the body of the article.
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