Suppose that the Earth were moved to a distance of 0.25 AU from the Sun. How much
stronger or weaker would the Sun's gravitational pull on the Earth? Explain.

It increases by 16 times

Explanation:

The magnitude of the gravitational force between two objects is given by the equation

where

G is the gravitational constant

m1, m2 are the masses of the two objects

r is their separation

In this problem, we call:

is the Earth's mass

is the Sun's mass

is the initial distance Earth-Sun

So the gravitational force between the two objects is

Later, the Earth is moved to a distance of

r' = 0.25 AU

which is equivalent to write

from the Sun.

Therefore, the new gravitational force will be:

So, the gravitational force increases by a factor of 16.

i think it’s a. this is because if they measured the mass of something with a mass of 150g, then their final answer would have to be approximately 150g. though all of their answers are almost 150, rosa and tran have the closest answers (or the exact answer) to the accurate one.