Toronto posted this comment on another thread:
A privileged planet, ( for observation of the universe ), would be one that could see “most” of the universe, i.e. not part of it.
We would sit on “top” of the universe so we could see more star systems than having to look “through” a mass of stars.
This position would also cut down on the effects of gravitational lensing.
We would also have a unique orbit both within our solar system, and as part of it.
Our solar system’s orbit would take us close to other star systems so we could investigate them without having to build spaceships that take more than a scientist’s lifetime to get anywhere.
Our atmosphere would shield us from almost any deadly radiation but not impede any signal we require for observing the universe.
Sadly , none of these things are true.
In reality, like any other planet, our positions are relatively fixed for much longer than our lifetime and radiation from the stars would kill us if we got close enough to observe them, provided the gravitational forces or asteroid impacts don’t kill us first.
which sparked a lengthy discussion, which at first I moved to Sandbox, but will now move here.
Enjoy 🙂
What’s so difficult about that? The earth with its moon rotating about the sun is one such design.
What happens when you stretch out a piece of fabric, say a bed sheet, and then put one heavy bowling ball on it and then try to get two much smaller marbles to stay a specified distance- relatively close- away from the bowling bowl?
You need a way to keep the bowling bowl from making too big of a dent, which is difficult to do wrt ONE heavy object. If the fabric is too tight the bowling ball will go all over the place.
Not that Rich will be able to grasp any of that…
LoL!!!11!!! :razz:- the earth and moon going around the sun does NOT exist by itself, oleg.
Epic FAIL. Try again…
It exists only because it was designed to exist.
Design is both and you can do neither.
This analogy works for middle-school students, but we as grown-ups don’t need to rely on it and just work with real theory of gravity. The Newtonian version will suffice.
Let’s put a star somewhere in space. If you wish to put a planet a fixed distance away from it, all you need to do is launch the planet round the star with the orbital velocity in the direction normal to the star-planet radius-vector.
You don’t have to be very precise, however. If the planet velocity is slightly lower or higher than the orbital speed then it will follow an elliptical trajectory. It won’t fly away from the star, however. To accomplish that you will need to launch it with a much higher speed, which exceeds the orbital one by the factor of the square root of two, or roughly by 40 percent. So unless you’re a real bumbler, putting a planet into an orbit around a star is a cinch.
Repeat with the moon around the planet.
Good luck demonstrating that.
Could people live on such a planet? And what prevents it from falling into the star?
So to be clear, a simple system of one star a planet and moon will inevitably have the planet falling into the star because it’s not ‘balanced’ (?!?) by other masses?
If you’re not happy with this description, please give your own, more detailed one.
Yes! Doubledown!
LoL! Except we see systems that do not have circular orbits.
But anyway you don’t have any idea and are just making it up.
We live on such a planet. The earth’s orbit is not exactly circular. The closest approach to the sun is 147 million km, the farthest 152 million km.
Joe, shall we rehash Newtonian mechanics? Open a new thread.
Now confronted with this, You’d say “prove it”.
And as your so big on context, the context is with regard to a very capable designer who can make these things ex nihilo. Your objection seemed to be it would be catastrophically unstable. Do you still think this?
LoL! No, oleg, we live on a planet that is part of a solar sytem, which is part of a galaxy, which is part of a universe.
You need a sun earth/ moon system to exist in isolation with the right rotation and revolution rate to allow for our existence. AND you need to keep the planet from falling into the sun.
olegt: Joe, shall we rehash Newtonian mechanics? Open a new thread.
Please! Joe’s going to learn something from Oleg. Something very basic, that most of us learned a long time ago. But there’s no shame in not knowing, only in being willfully ignorant.
Richie- all you are doing is making stuff up. That is because you are a clueless evoTARD who is also a Captain Coward.
I understand that it bothers you that you cannot support your position.
This is silly, Joe. In a two-body system of a star and its planet, you don’t need to keep the planet from falling into the star. It stays away from it very nicely on its own. It might have a circular orbit or an elliptical one, but there is no need to prevent its fall into the sun. This is basic Newtonian mechanics. 🙂
Here’s something new- why don’t YOU open a thread in which you actually support your position?
How does it stay away, oleg? Remember there is only that system in the entire universe.
:”t just does” is not an answer.
Here: Kepler’s law of planetary motion. No hands, ma. Just gravity plus inertia. 🙂
The star is attracting the planet and the planet is accelerating toward the sun by moving in a circle or an ellipse. It does not fall into the star.
Again THAT is in a much BIGGER SYSTEM- heck we already have evidence of big gas planets spiraling into their star- what is wrong with you?
Dude, it doesn’t in this universe because it is balanced. However even with that there is evidence of planets spiraling into their host stars.
In an unbalanced system- one in which you had a super-heavy object and two much, much, much lighter objects, they will fall in.
No. Kepler’s laws are valid for one planet rotating around a star. They can be derived from Newton’s equations of motion for this two-body system. Which is what Newton did.
Hey Kepler was a Creationist and he had no idea if such a simple system could exist in isolation.
No. 🙂
Yes 😛 and I can prove my claim…
Planets spiral into their host star in this universe oleg.
It does not matter what Kepler believed. Kepler’s laws of planetary motion can be derived from Newtonian mechanics. They state, among other things, that a planet follows a circular, elliptical, or hyperbolic orbit with the star at the focus. You have to aim very, very, very precisely to get the planet to fall into its star. For the vast majority of initial states, the planet will either stay forever in an elliptical trajectory or fly away from the star along a hyperbolic one. Falling into a star is essentially impossible.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17044-missing-planets-suggest-stars-eat-their-young.html
Question for Joe: Is the moon falling into the earth, or is it receding?
Effects of tidal friction are important for large planets orbiting very close to their stars. For a planet like the Earth, which is small and is sufficiently far from the Sun tidal effects are tiny.
I believe the large, close to their star, exoplanets are being torn apart.
For systems like the earth/moon, tidal effects transfer momentum from one body to the other. The earth’s rotation is slowing and the moon is receding.
But I really like the image of the universe suspending the earth and preventing it from falling into the sun. That’s cool. Makes reading this thread worthwhile. The energy involved must be very dark.
You’ve based this on how many observations?
Many seasons of Star Trek, where orbits invariably decay in days, sometimes in hours, often before the commercial break.
*This is the lull where he’s reading wikipedia, horrified*
Classic Joe.
Argue first, understand later (if ever).
Joe, you’ve seen astronauts floating about in the space station, yes? How is that possible?
I puzzled for a while over what Sagan meant by a “demon-haunted world”, but gradually I’m coming to understand what this means. Some people live in a universe governed by principles that are either suspicious or incomprehensible, whereas demons are pretty easy to understand. Now I’m seeing that even the simplest principles are trumped by demons. Fascinating.
Oh come on you guys, you know darn well that there are invisible wires attached to all of the stars, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and other stuff in the universe, and Joe’s designer god is pulling on those wires to make everything rotate and orbit and not fall into suns. Who needs physics, laws, or other explanations when there’s a supernatural puppeteer controlling the positions and movements of everything in the universe?
The trouble with you guys is that you just don’t understand the cosmic and extra cosmic knowledge and philosophy of privileged geniuses like Joe. His knowledge and philosophy comes from messengers sent to his basement by his designer god. Those messengers (who also built Stonehenge) appear to Joe as aliens from another planet or as ticks and they telepathically transmit every bit of information about the universe and beyond into Joe’s unique, massively complex mind. Out of the kindness of his heart Joe then shares that knowledge with us lowly peons. We are so lucky to have such a generous, all-knowing master of science and all things holy as Joe to keep us on the straight and narrow in scientific matters and moral behavior. My appreciation for his intricate, deep, wise, and informed explanations of how everything came about and how it all works is beyond measurement. Praise be to Joe!
Yet planets spiral into their star, oleg.
But anyway it is easy to see that you can demonstrate that a simple universe, a universe with one star, one planet and one moon could even exist.
Not only that but you cannot demonstrate that such a simple system would be more conducive to scientific discovery than our current universe is. And THAT is what RichTARD was trying to say.
LoL! Again you are confused because you are talking about the current universe.
Unfortunately we are NOT talking about THIS universe.
Classic woodbrain- can’y gollow alog so it has no idea what we are even talking about.
Just the scientific literature. You should look it up, or are you proud of your ignorance?
A gas giant orbiting close to the star, maybe. An earth-sized planet orbiting at 1 a.u. away from the sun, no. The mechanism of this spiraling is tidal friction. It isn’t nearly strong enough for the earth.
So no, planets do not, in general, “spiral into their stars.”
Actually they spiral into those close orbits and then into the star.
Again your inability to focus is very telling- we are talking about a universe with one heavy star orbited by a very light planet/ moon system.
Not in this universe but we ain’t talking about this universe.
But anyway it is easy to see that you can’t demonstrate that a simple universe, a universe with one star, one planet and one moon could even exist.
Not only that but you cannot demonstrate that such a simple system would be more conducive to scientific discovery than our current universe is. And THAT is what RichTARD was trying to say.
Way to ignore the obvious oleg
That’s precisely what I am talking about. The Sun’s mass, M = 2 × 1030 kg, dwarfs the Earth’s, m = 6 × 1024 kg. The Earth is lighter than the Sun by a factor of 330,000.
LOL. I sure can. Thanks for acknowledging that.
No oleg- you have no idea if such a universe could exist. Focus on that
But anyway it is easy to see that you can’t demonstrate that a simple universe, a universe with one star, one planet and one moon could even exist.
Not only that but you cannot demonstrate that such a simple system would be more conducive to scientific discovery than our current universe is. And THAT is what RichTARD was trying to say.
And that you ignore the meat of the argument tells me you are more of a coward than I thought.
Do it then- I have been waiting
Not only that but you cannot demonstrate that such a simple system would be more conducive to scientific discovery than our current universe is. And THAT is what RichTARD was trying to say.
But it exists right here, in the solar system. The presence of other planets perturbs the motion of the Earth very little. We know very well how the Earth would move around the Sun in their absence (Kepler). We also know quantitatively how the other planets perturb its motion. There are no mysteries here. It’s eighteenth-century physics.
No, it doesn’t. Only a moron would say that our solar system existing in this universe is actually just a universe with one star with one planet/ moon system.
And here you are