A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
Alt text:
"Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"
And that point is inside the sun.
No actually. Due to Jupiter, the centre of mass of the solar system is actually very slightly outside of the sun
Leave it to Jupiter to mess yet another thing up
Wouldn’t the center of mass constantly be shifting by the planets’ varying positions in orbit?
Yes, but it's mostly shifting because of Jupiter. It's just so dang heavy. Like, a couple times heavier than every other planet put together. I don't have the brain wattage to do the cool math right now, but a quick google search says that while the barycenter of the solar system does depend on all the planets, more often than not, it is outside the sun
Easy reminder:
sun ~ 10^30 kg
jupiter ~ 10^27 kg
earth ~ 10^24 kg
so the ratio is always 1000:1
Technically, the sun is pulled by the earth too so it’s sort of true.
I mean, yeah. That's the joke.
No it's not. The common center here is the center of our galaxy which both orbit. Even if the sun wobbles a miniscule bit there is no common orbit between them.
it is possible for objects to orbit multiple objects at the same time. Add the moon to the system. The moon is orbiting the earth that is orbiting the sun that is orbiting the center of our galaxy. And yes each of them have a common center, just that it is very very close to the center of mass of the larger object in each case.
For the moon the earth is the dominant gravitational force, for the earth it is the sun and for the sun it is the center of our galaxy
for the sun it is the center of gravity.
You mean the galactic center, which in turn orbits a point somewhere in the middle of our local galactic cluster.
youre right, i miexd up the words and edited it. thank you.
Oh thanks! I wasn’t sure. /s
A cunning display of deception!
It's called a barycenter, kids, a common center that both objects circle around. That common center happens to be inside the sun, but that's a topic for next week's class in this semester's AP Astrophysics program.
Same for earth and moon. The center is inside earth. But not that close to the center of the earth itself
I mean, no, not really. The gravitational center of the sun-earth system is within the sun itself, so the earth definitely orbits the sun and the sun definitely does not orbit the earth. Let alone the fact that the sun’s movement is predominantly driven by Jupiter. (The gravitational center of the sun-Jupiter system is just above the sun’s surface.)
Pretty sure you can chose earth as fix point and have everything rotate around it on really strange orbits. Everything is kind of relative.
Wouldn't that break relativity tho if you treat the earth as a fixed point? Stuff really far out would have to be going absurdly faster than light to orbit the earth once every 24h. I feel like that's one of the ways to tell whether or not you're rotating, or stuff is orbiting you.
Why would objects far out need to orbit earth every 24h?
Wouldn’t that break relativity tho if you treat the earth as a fixed point?
To be honest, physics was never my strong point. If I remember correctly you could chose any point as your observational (?) point but maybe someone with some real physics cred can chime in.
Is this... an introductory course in relativity, disguised as a joke?
Am I accidentally learning something here?
Guys?
Sometimes, both can be wrong. Both orbit the moon
The Earth–Moon–Sun three body problem is apparently something that has been studied quite a bit in physics.
And of cause there are 3 camps and alot of disagreements but essentially, the majority of scientists argue, like me, that it is the moon which is the center. You can always cite some fringe scientists arguing otherwise, that doesn't change the general consensus.
you are the barycenter of your own opinion
yo opinion so massive she needs a crane to get out of bed.
As a middle ground kind of guy, I would like to pre-emptively state that a lot of us don't actually think the answer is always the middle ground between two stances. It's just that we're more likely to propose a middle ground solution because we evaluate the plausibility of both stances in a more balanced way (as opposed to existing-stance-holders who are prone to bias towards their own stance.) When the two seem roughly equal in plausibility (which happens fairly often, otherwise the argument would be more one-sided,) that's an indication to evaluate the middle ground as well.
Middle ground folks are often caricaturized as wanting to find the middle ground between an objectively sensible point A and a radically wrong point B, when the spectrum of opinions is sort of like [ - - - - - A - | - - - - - - B ]. In that caricature, we're looking for a middle ground at point C [ - - - - - A - | - - C - - - B ], when in actuality we're evaluating (and not automatically accepting) something two or three steps closer to A. In some such cases, A might already be the most sensible middle ground.
Middle of the ground people are mostly cowards too scared of conflict, or devoid of insight.
Maybe there's a middle ground between our two views.
Why are you so scared of conflict?
Why waste your time fighting when there's a solution everyone is happy with?
More likely a solution nobody is happy with but everyone can live with. Your point stands though.
"compromise is when all sides are unhappy"