I believe that’s the same for every planet. And every moon. For every orbit.
Its just that the barycenter is inside the more massive object when one is much more massive than the other. Not that this makes much of a difference to anything.
BurgerBaron@piefed.social
on 04 Sep 00:41
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Asteroids everything does to some degree even if miniscule I'd assume.
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz
on 04 Sep 00:41
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Correct.
I also believe that one of the criteria for a binary planet is that the barycenter is outside either body. Like Pluto/Charon.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Sep 01:24
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Don’t forget the other 3 bodies in the Pluto/Charon system
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
on 04 Sep 01:36
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If you have ever done a handstand then you have lifted over your head the weight that the entire mass of the earth has in your own gravitational field.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net
on 04 Sep 03:08
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Pluto and it’s biggest moon Charon about for the very center outside of each other. This means that you could build a space elevator directly between the surface of each of them and it would rotate around that point since they’re also tightly locked.
Is it more true to say that Jupiter (and the other planets and asteroid belts and dust clouds in our solar system) orbits the Sun, and the Sun orbits the barycenter? The barycenter that the sun revolves around is influenced (marginally) by the other bodies in the solar system and not just Jupiter. If the definition of a barycenter is to be interpreted as this image suggests, that would mean that no material object orbits another material object and they instead orbit their collective center of mass somewhere in space.
Edit: to clarify, I understand the physics and motion at play. The phrasing just seems misleading/incorrect to me.
It seems to fundamentally change what it means “to orbit” something.
As I understood the term, orbiting would be used correctly in these cases:
A lighter object orbits a heavier object, and both of their paths of motion are elliptical about their barycenter
Two objects of identical mass orbit each other, and their paths of motion are circular about their barycenter
In contrast, the image above implies the following:
A lighter object does not orbit a heavier object; they both orbit their barycenter with an elliptical path of motion
Two objects of identical mass do not orbit each other; they both orbit their barycenter with a circular path of motion
Even the Wikipedia page for barycenter, which OP linked to, opens with the following:
“the barycenter… is the center of mass of two or more bodies that orbit one another and is the point about which the bodies orbit.”
Perhaps “orbit” as a verb has two meanings, depending on the specificity of the context.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Sep 01:23
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No, your earlier definitions are incorrect. All orbits happen around the barycenter. The only question is whether one of the bodies is large/massive enough that the barycenter is located within it
Just because a more accurate description exists, doesn’t mean that the less accurate description is fundamentally wrong. Depending on context, the less accurate description may be perfectly suitable for the subject at hand. If your priority is to be the most correct, then by all means go ahead and use the more accurate description.
It’s articulated as “it’s wrong”, while the message they’re trying to convey is more like “it’s not the entire truth”. The latter is hard to get across is a handful of words though, likely leaving more questions than answers. I believe they did a decent enough job that most of us can read the point between the lines.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Sep 16:19
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I guess your conclusion is right. In situations where the barycenter of two (or more) objects is not sufficiently different from the center of mass of the heaviest object, we simplify the description by assuming that the barycenter and the center of mass of the heavier object are equal.
Just because I’ve already edited it, here’s an animation of Earth orbiting the Earth–Moon barycenter:
When I was a kid, we were taught there’s 9 and only 9 planets, they all orbit the sun, and humans have existed for at least 30 years.
Now I find out 1 of those 9 planets was a fraud. Theres also thousands of OTHER planets outside our solar system. And also, time is an illusion only placed in our reality to distract us from the concept of a realized immortality. We die when we want. We come into this world naked, bloody, covered in goo, and getting spanked until we cry. And we die the same way…when we WANT to!
School is all a bunch of lies man! Trust your instincts! Consume prilosec!
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
on 04 Sep 02:30
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this disgruntled me as a biochem grad and we think the periodic table is
H C N O P S Na Mg Cl K Ca Mn Fe Co Cu Zn Se Mo I F
dmention7@midwest.social
on 04 Sep 02:40
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Nah, there is no way any astronomer studying orbital mechanics in our solar system is rounding pi to 1. There is virtually no practical calculation you could do on the mechanics of the sun or planets where rounding a known constant by a factor of 3 would yield any useful result whatsoever.
Rounding pi to 1 only makes sense when the uncertainty in the numbers is large, not the magnitude of the numbers, and we know the masses and distances of the objects in our solar system to an amazing level of precision!
Plus, the fact that Jupiter is massive enough to actually exert an influence that large on the sun is pretty fucking cool!
The reason being, that once you go large enough, a multiplier of three is irrelevant, and they only really care about orders of magnitude. You might be tempted to argue that that doesn’t happen inside the solar system, and you’d be right. Mostly.
Except that astronomy doesn’t concern itself with just our system. So yes. Astronomers do frequently round to 1 because it really doesn’t matter that much in the scheme of things. (particularly talking about distances.) it’s even more so for cosmology.
davidagain@lemmy.world
on 04 Sep 06:10
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You’ve got to be a little bit careful, surely, because then one squared is ten in the sense that log pi is about half.
Sure, I totally agree that when you’re dealing many with orders of magnitude, the factor of 3 is dwarved by the other uncertainties.
But we’re talking about our solar system, and specifically the orbital mechanics of our planets and sun, where the quantities and scales only span a couple orders of magnitude in total. A factor of 3 absolutely makes a difference. That’s the difference between the orbit of Mercury and the orbit of Earth.
Then there’s the practical point that, regardless of scale, rounding a known constant by that much makes no sense at all, unless you’re trying to estimate huge numbers in your head. If you’re using even the simplest of calculator, estimating pi as 1 is a deliberate choice to reduce accuracy.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Sep 16:17
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This. Most calculators and programming languages already have pi defined, there is no reason to round it nowadays
Not when that definition of pi goes to all 300 trillion decimals that we have resolved. (To be fair, I don’t know of any that do… but eh…yeah. And I’m pretty sure it was defined by a masochist if one did.)
That leads to unnecessary time spent calculating even simple equations. That level of precision is almost never actually needed.
With fermi problems, usually that level of precision is moot and potentially a waste of time. (Particularly when the math is requiring some kind network cluster to do.)
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Sep 23:23
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Pi has it’s own button on most graphing calculators, and those that don’t usually only requure 2 button presses to get it. Meanwhile, there’s some iteration of ‘pi()’, ‘pi’, etc. in most programming languages
But sometimes, the problems are complex enough that solve time becomes a concern. When they’re complex enough, you start asking “is everything these precise enough to justify that” and when the answer is “no”, then you don’t do that because runtime on networked clusters like AWS costs money.
And when you’re talking about scales that encompass the galaxy…. Well. There’s just not a lot of precision there to begin with.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Sep 16:22
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The counterpoint to that is that including a term for pi (or even rounding it to 3.14) would insignificant to add and look way more professional
Yes. For simple, common problems. You are correct.
But sometimes they’re not running simple problems. Sometimes, the run time on servers costs money. Sometimes, there’s no value to be gained by being any more accurate- and it increases those costs.
Now, in those times…. Are you really going to tell me that costing your organization more money without any useful gains…. Is “way more professional”?
Also? Don’t get me wrong, that threshold is getting and higher every year. I have more computing power in my cell phone than they used to put a man on the moon.
None of that changes that astronomers sometimes use 1 instead of pi, and that the barycenter of Jupiter-sun orbit is close enough to say Jupiter orbits the sun.
JackbyDev@programming.dev
on 04 Sep 15:59
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Rounding pi to 1? Not even 3? Source please? Because what?
fermi approximations happen all the time in astronomy. The numbers are frequently so large that the only meaningful quality is how many orders of magnitude it has.
More to the point, using pi makes calculating things much harder. For example, we don’t really need a precise distance for most things; so using “3” makes the calculation unnecessarily spend time in computation.
It’s like the old joke, “what’s the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire?” (“About a billion.”)
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
on 04 Sep 09:22
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Yeah, that’s the first thing I checked reading the og post before I was about to write ‘there is no was it’s outside the sun!’ … its such a tiny supergassy mass.
Well, while we are being ‘that guy’, factoid is one of those words which has changed its meaning by being used wrongly for so long that the original meaning has all but vanished.
A factoid is technically supposed to be something resembling fact, but not actual fact. (The Greek suffix ‘-oid’ normally being used for that purpose, like in paranoid, “like knowledge” or asteroid, “like a star”).
The best thing about factoid, is that factoid is now a factoid. Because it resembles what it is not lol…
Anyway, nowadays, you are allowed to use it the way you did, at least in the descriptivist world view. The prescriptivists may disagree, however. And those people are often ‘that guy’ ;)
Well, now I want to know if there’s a regular schedule to the Jupiter-Sun barycenter being in or outside of the Sun, and how we can schedule holidays around it.
I think Lagrange points are where geosynchronous orbits are possible without constant corrections.
CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world
on 04 Sep 04:21
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Geosynchronous means the orbital period is a day and relatively circular. Satellites with these orbits basically look down at the same part of the Earth.
Lagrange points are locations along an orbit where gravitational forces balance out with the centrifugal force of the orbit. This does allow less fuel expenditure to maintain.
For the Earth-Sun or Earth-Moon systems, the Lagrange points do not occur at the altitude of the geosynchronous orbit. The Lagrange points are either significantly further away or at a different orbital phase.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
on 04 Sep 03:36
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Jupiter is so massive, if you give it more hydrogen, it gets smaller.
My dumb friend wants to know why adding more mass would make Jupiter smaller, can you help explain it to him?
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
on 04 Sep 04:25
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I misrembered, it remains roughly the same volume, until 1.6 juipiters of mass, at which point the effect of gravity from each additional hydrogen is greater than the intermolecular forces and additional hydrogen would cause it to compress more than it would grow.
The increased mass increases the force of gravity on the outer particles which ends up reducing the radius more than the increase due to the layer of new hydrogen, IIRC.
The volume of Jupiter is mostly gas. If you increase the mass enough, at some point the higher gravity and thus higher pressure at the center causes a phase change of enough mass (from gas to liquid or liquid to solid) that the lost volume from the phase change exceeds the original volume of the added mass.
It’s like pushing a bunch of origami paper into a box until a bunch of them collapse and fall flat instead of filling the volume.
My friend is silly - he was thinking of smaller as in by mass, not by volume. Thanks for explaining it to him.
Sidhean@piefed.social
on 04 Sep 04:18
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Fun fact: if I threw a rock hard enough, it and the sun would orbit around their "barycenter" which would happen to be just about the center of the sun (probably, i dont work here).
I think if it’s to scale, Jupiter is way offscreen, like in another room in your building far away.
Evilsandwichman@hexbear.net
on 04 Sep 05:21
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I was curious about if Jupiter could be ignited and got (it’s an AI answer btw):
Why Jupiter can’t ignite:
Lack of Mass:
Jupiter is a failed star because it doesn’t have enough mass for its core to reach the extreme temperatures and pressures needed to start nuclear fusion.
So Jupiter is the inferior brother to the sun that has to live in its shadow. Jupiter’s such a loser, lol; get rekt Jupiter.
ItemWrongStory@midwest.social
on 04 Sep 05:40
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(not popping off at you just clarifying the AI answer)
Jupiter is NOT a failed star, the lowest bounds for a brown dwarf are 13x Jupiter’s mass, and even brown dwarfs are classified as “substellar objects” (actual failed stars?). Wikipedia says Jupiter would need to be 75x more massive to fuse hydrogen.
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
on 04 Sep 08:53
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The Man-in-the-middle’s statement is akin to the following :
2 = 3 thus, by multiplying both sides by 0, we get 0 = 0, which is true !
He said it’s in the middle because 2 people disagreed, and he states that the truth lies always in she middle in these situations. which is false, exactly as false as 2 = 3
ProbablyBaysean@lemmy.ca
on 04 Sep 06:26
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I really want a space station in the barycenter of Pluto or something. It would be as close to true neutral of gravity instead of the gravity negated by acceleration of mass that may or may not screw up gravity experiments
There are a few more problems than material strength
For one, the moon isn’t geostationary, and my napkin math says its ground track probably progresses at over 1000 kilometers per hour. Not to mention the inclination of the moon’s orbit (about 5°) and the obliquity of earth’s axis (about 23°) mean the track wouldn’t be a single track around earth, but instead would wander anywhere between the 28°N/S latitude lines over the course of the year
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Sep 03:29
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Not a space elevator between the Earth and Moon. A space elevator for just the moon.
While a railgun is a more practical option to set up, it’s still fun to think about.
And for non-rocket launches feom Earth, we’re probably better off setting up orbital rings
No one objects orbits another. There are no stable orbits since there are no examples of two perfect point masses in an isolated space.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
on 04 Sep 10:53
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just assume a spherical cow, dude
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
on 04 Sep 10:49
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The way this is phrased makes it sound like there’s a certain threshold where this starts happening. That’s not right. Even a grain of dust wouldn’t orbit the sun, they still orbit their common barycenter. A less misleading way of phrasing would be that Jupiter is massive enough that the barycenter of it and the sun actually lies outside the sun, which is still a cool fun fact.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world
on 04 Sep 13:29
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Orbiting a point within the sun is still orbiting the sun.
BillBurBaggins@lemmy.world
on 04 Sep 13:44
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I mean that’s literally the point the image is trying to make. The last sentence says the point is outside the sun for Jupiter.
I don’t think nitpicking the title achieves anything and it’s not even misleading unless it’s only taken in isolation.
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
on 04 Sep 22:50
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It says it’s so massive they orbit a common point. That directly implies this only happens over a certain mass.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world
on 05 Sep 02:13
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It says it’s so massive they orbit a common point outside the sun. Smaller planets don’t have their common point outside the sun.
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
on 05 Sep 09:57
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I mean, the sentence either implies what I said before, or it implies that the barycenter is a point outside the sun. I really don’t see any other reading than those two.
That’s the way I understood it at first. But after reading it again after reading the comments above, I can see the other way of viewing it.
I do agree with you that how the sentence is currently written it’s confusing.
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
on 06 Sep 08:55
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Yeah pretty much my point. I know you can maybe kinda construe it into the truth if you already know about the topic, like other commenters age saying, but it’s presented as educational, and does a poor job at educating with how misleadingly it is phrased.
That’s still not entierly mass dependant, the point is at a distance based on a ratio between the two masses, if Jupiter were closer to the sun then the point would be inside the sun. Its still impressively massive to pull the point outside of the sun at any functional distance but so could a grain of dust with sufficient distance and a big empty universe to prevent anything else from interupting things.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 04 Sep 16:13
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I was going to complain about the use of “barycenter” instead of the more commonly known “center of mass”. But after some searching, I guess barycenter is more obscure because it’s more specific. I’m ok with that.
WraithGear@lemmy.world
on 04 Sep 13:32
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i mean, with that logic, nothing orbits anything
JackbyDev@programming.dev
on 04 Sep 14:37
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No, this is actually really relevant. This is part of the logic applied to labeling Pluto a dwarf planet. Pluto and it’s moon do this, Earth and our moon do not. Yes, obviously the center of mass of the two isn’t the exact center of the earth but it’s still within the earth.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world
on 04 Sep 15:12
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Asking a physicist about the center of an object is like asking a Tumblr user about thr color of the sky. The only response will be “which one?” And a sigh of exhaustion
Center of volume ≠ center of mass ≠ center of systemic gravity ≠ center of lift…
MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip
on 05 Sep 11:05
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Not to mention “an object” is just a construct describing a collection of molecules that themselves don’t necessarily sit still or all stick around.
WraithGear@lemmy.world
on 04 Sep 16:30
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but the density of an object is variable. i mean you can define the diffrence between an orbit and a co-spiral to be based on the physical size of the denser planetary body containing the orbit center point, though that seems arbitrary.
And Pluto knows that Pluto’s
Hot shit
And you know Pluto knows it
“I won’t ever be a planet
It don’t matter 'cause I know that I’m still”
Hot shit
“And you’re hot shit too, so get out of your brain
And just do what you’re supposed to do”
pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 04 Sep 15:52
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For most bodies the barycenter, while not the same as the center of mass, is still inside the sun. This one isn’t, making it notable
You’re not wrong. Everything orbits the center of mass of the system, meaning the mass of the star and the body in orbit. And that is handy for astronomers, many exoplanets have been found using the Doppler spectroscopy method. Doppler spectroscopy measures the Doppler shift in the star’s light as it is pulled towards and away from us by planets in orbit. The newest spectrographs are sensitive enough to detect a star’s wobble caused by an Earth sized body in orbit. The barycenter is still within the star, but not at the center of the star’s mass.
how much wobble does the earth add to sun? over 1m?
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 04 Sep 22:11
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Jeeezzz…Gravity is relentless.
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world
on 05 Sep 05:04
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Gravity always wins
MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip
on 05 Sep 10:57
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Dark energy would like a word
bennypr0fane@discuss.tchncs.de
on 04 Sep 23:23
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Do all the planets also orbit around that same barycenter, or does each planet have a different one?
badcommandorfilename@lemmy.world
on 04 Sep 23:44
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I guess they all orbit around the solar system’s center of mass (negligibly affected by the universal CoM), but that CoM probably moves around as the planets themselves move.
Relative to what, you might ask? That depends who you’re asking 😉
The barycenter is different for each planet-sun (or any two object) pairing.
The earth and moon have a barycenter which is beneath the surface of earth. Likewise, the barycenter of the sun-earth pair is below the surface of the sun
Edit:
The barycenter of our solar system orbits the center of our galaxy (again in a barycentric manner)
untorquer@lemmy.world
on 05 Sep 12:02
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All the solar system matter contributes to an object’s orbital center but that’s constantly moving as the system moves.
I think (?) most planets have their barycenter inside the sun’s surface
The gravitational pull of system matter pales in comparison to the sun so you don’t need to consider it for amateur purposes.
You can try KSP (Vanilla) versus Kopernicus mod if you want to feel the difference.
Also called n-body
CompassRed@discuss.tchncs.de
on 05 Sep 15:35
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Technically speaking, no celestial body in our solar system orbits around a single point. The barycenter thing only works with two bodies. When there are more than two bodies, such as in our solar system, the orbits become chaotic. Granted, the influence between planets is small, so they all appear to orbit their barycenters with the sun, but there are small perturbations to the orbits caused by the locations and masses of all the other bodies in the solar system.
No, it is not true in general that the barycenter lies outside both objects.
ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social
on 05 Sep 20:14
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I mean, sure, but you can reasonably glean that I’m just talking about the fact that any 2 objects with mass exert gravity on each other. The OP is facebook-tier
I can’t reasonably glean that, because the OP clearly says this:
It is so massive that both Jupiter & Sun orbit around a common point that lies outside the Sun known as the “barycenter”.
I agree that OP is facebook-tier but your reply is reddit-tier :P
ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social
on 06 Sep 09:51
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You’re being pedantic to levels most redditors could only dream of. A barycenter isn’t even necessarily outside the 2 objects, if you took the OP to mean that, it’s incorrect information anyways.
The OP does not claim that all barycenters are outside of the sun. OP correctly claims that Jupiter & Sun orbit a certain point, and that point is known as the “barycenter,” and that point is outside the sun. I’ll admit they could have gone further to convey the additional curiosity that for other planets the sun-planet barycenter is within the sun, but then it might not be facebook-tier anymore.
I literally do not understand why you think I’m being pedantic here. The OP text is short and contains no obvious errors that I can see. Perhaps to someone who has made a mistake and doesn’t want to admit it, attempts by others to point out this mistake must resemble pedanticism.
threaded - newest
I believe that’s the same for every planet. And every moon. For every orbit.
Its just that the barycenter is inside the more massive object when one is much more massive than the other. Not that this makes much of a difference to anything.
Asteroids everything does to some degree even if miniscule I'd assume.
Correct.
I also believe that one of the criteria for a binary planet is that the barycenter is outside either body. Like Pluto/Charon.
Don’t forget the other 3 bodies in the Pluto/Charon system
Is that a problem?
depends! do you wanna know how the system will evolve over long periods of time?
… then yes!
So you’re saying it’s a Three-Body Problem
Technically 5, but yes
I’ve always preached inclusivity and would welcome 3 more planets
I just can’t remember their names :-(
Same. That’s why I was lazy and didn’t even mention them ;)
The only one I remember is Styx cause I remember the river from mythology cause I thought it was cool. Not a damn clue what the others were.
Oh yeah! Also Nix and Hygea i think.
I mean, sure, but that’d be like saying I’m pulling the earth towards me when I jump.
You don’t have to jump, you’re already doing it. Some of us more than others… *Looks in mirror and hangs head
Isn’t that canceled out by the pushing you do when you start to jump?
Yeah, but then I pull it back as I’m falling.
If you have ever done a handstand then you have lifted over your head the weight that the entire mass of the earth has in your own gravitational field.
Pluto and it’s biggest moon Charon about for the very center outside of each other. This means that you could build a space elevator directly between the surface of each of them and it would rotate around that point since they’re also tightly locked.
Is it more true to say that Jupiter (and the other planets and asteroid belts and dust clouds in our solar system) orbits the Sun, and the Sun orbits the barycenter? The barycenter that the sun revolves around is influenced (marginally) by the other bodies in the solar system and not just Jupiter. If the definition of a barycenter is to be interpreted as this image suggests, that would mean that no material object orbits another material object and they instead orbit their collective center of mass somewhere in space.
Edit: to clarify, I understand the physics and motion at play. The phrasing just seems misleading/incorrect to me.
I thought it was a like Jerryboree but for Barys, which I think makes way more sense.
Jerry loves Pluto, but Bary thinks very little of it
That’s exactly what happens. Why do you think this is incorrect?
It seems to fundamentally change what it means “to orbit” something.
As I understood the term, orbiting would be used correctly in these cases:
A lighter object orbits a heavier object, and both of their paths of motion are elliptical about their barycenter
Two objects of identical mass orbit each other, and their paths of motion are circular about their barycenter
In contrast, the image above implies the following:
A lighter object does not orbit a heavier object; they both orbit their barycenter with an elliptical path of motion
Two objects of identical mass do not orbit each other; they both orbit their barycenter with a circular path of motion
Even the Wikipedia page for barycenter, which OP linked to, opens with the following:
“the barycenter… is the center of mass of two or more bodies that orbit one another and is the point about which the bodies orbit.”
Perhaps “orbit” as a verb has two meanings, depending on the specificity of the context.
No, your earlier definitions are incorrect. All orbits happen around the barycenter. The only question is whether one of the bodies is large/massive enough that the barycenter is located within it
I mean, the Wikipedia page for Jupiter says “Jupiter orbits the Sun”
Just because a more accurate description exists, doesn’t mean that the less accurate description is fundamentally wrong. Depending on context, the less accurate description may be perfectly suitable for the subject at hand. If your priority is to be the most correct, then by all means go ahead and use the more accurate description.
I think this logic applies to a lot of things.
I take issue with how the meme says “Jupiter doesn’t orbit the Sun”, which rejects one valid and common way of using the verb “to orbit”.
It’s articulated as “it’s wrong”, while the message they’re trying to convey is more like “it’s not the entire truth”. The latter is hard to get across is a handful of words though, likely leaving more questions than answers. I believe they did a decent enough job that most of us can read the point between the lines.
All models are wrong. Some models are useful.
I guess your conclusion is right. In situations where the barycenter of two (or more) objects is not sufficiently different from the center of mass of the heaviest object, we simplify the description by assuming that the barycenter and the center of mass of the heavier object are equal.
Just because I’ve already edited it, here’s an animation of Earth orbiting the Earth–Moon barycenter:
<img alt="" src="https://files.catbox.moe/jz76dy.gif">
I’m no astronomical guru, but I’m surprised I didn’t know this.
When I was a kid, we were taught there’s 9 and only 9 planets, they all orbit the sun, and humans have existed for at least 30 years.
Now I find out 1 of those 9 planets was a fraud. Theres also thousands of OTHER planets outside our solar system. And also, time is an illusion only placed in our reality to distract us from the concept of a realized immortality. We die when we want. We come into this world naked, bloody, covered in goo, and getting spanked until we cry. And we die the same way…when we WANT to!
School is all a bunch of lies man! Trust your instincts! Consume prilosec!
True
I’m actually faithful to the Church of Last Thursdayism, so I do not believe that.
In a field of study where it’s not just acceptable, but prudent to round pi to “1” because the numbers are that big….
I gotta say, it’s close enough to say Jupiter orbits Sol. Just saying.
Just wait until you see their periodic table of elements.
H, He, Z
this disgruntled me as a biochem grad and we think the periodic table is
H C N O P S Na Mg Cl K Ca Mn Fe Co Cu Zn Se Mo I F
Nah, there is no way any astronomer studying orbital mechanics in our solar system is rounding pi to 1. There is virtually no practical calculation you could do on the mechanics of the sun or planets where rounding a known constant by a factor of 3 would yield any useful result whatsoever.
Rounding pi to 1 only makes sense when the uncertainty in the numbers is large, not the magnitude of the numbers, and we know the masses and distances of the objects in our solar system to an amazing level of precision!
Plus, the fact that Jupiter is massive enough to actually exert an influence that large on the sun is pretty fucking cool!
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4874456f-30b3-44b9-9211-45969739d452.webp">
The reason being, that once you go large enough, a multiplier of three is irrelevant, and they only really care about orders of magnitude. You might be tempted to argue that that doesn’t happen inside the solar system, and you’d be right. Mostly.
Except that astronomy doesn’t concern itself with just our system. So yes. Astronomers do frequently round to 1 because it really doesn’t matter that much in the scheme of things. (particularly talking about distances.) it’s even more so for cosmology.
You’ve got to be a little bit careful, surely, because then one squared is ten in the sense that log pi is about half.
Sure, I totally agree that when you’re dealing many with orders of magnitude, the factor of 3 is dwarved by the other uncertainties.
But we’re talking about our solar system, and specifically the orbital mechanics of our planets and sun, where the quantities and scales only span a couple orders of magnitude in total. A factor of 3 absolutely makes a difference. That’s the difference between the orbit of Mercury and the orbit of Earth.
Then there’s the practical point that, regardless of scale, rounding a known constant by that much makes no sense at all, unless you’re trying to estimate huge numbers in your head. If you’re using even the simplest of calculator, estimating pi as 1 is a deliberate choice to reduce accuracy.
This. Most calculators and programming languages already have pi defined, there is no reason to round it nowadays
Not when that definition of pi goes to all 300 trillion decimals that we have resolved. (To be fair, I don’t know of any that do… but eh…yeah. And I’m pretty sure it was defined by a masochist if one did.)
That leads to unnecessary time spent calculating even simple equations. That level of precision is almost never actually needed.
With fermi problems, usually that level of precision is moot and potentially a waste of time. (Particularly when the math is requiring some kind network cluster to do.)
Pi has it’s own button on most graphing calculators, and those that don’t usually only requure 2 button presses to get it. Meanwhile, there’s some iteration of ‘pi()’, ‘pi’, etc. in most programming languages
Sure.
But sometimes, the problems are complex enough that solve time becomes a concern. When they’re complex enough, you start asking “is everything these precise enough to justify that” and when the answer is “no”, then you don’t do that because runtime on networked clusters like AWS costs money.
And when you’re talking about scales that encompass the galaxy…. Well. There’s just not a lot of precision there to begin with.
The counterpoint to that is that including a term for pi (or even rounding it to 3.14) would insignificant to add and look way more professional
…. Are you reading what I’m saying?
Yes. For simple, common problems. You are correct.
But sometimes they’re not running simple problems. Sometimes, the run time on servers costs money. Sometimes, there’s no value to be gained by being any more accurate- and it increases those costs.
Now, in those times…. Are you really going to tell me that costing your organization more money without any useful gains…. Is “way more professional”?
Also? Don’t get me wrong, that threshold is getting and higher every year. I have more computing power in my cell phone than they used to put a man on the moon.
None of that changes that astronomers sometimes use 1 instead of pi, and that the barycenter of Jupiter-sun orbit is close enough to say Jupiter orbits the sun.
Rounding pi to 1? Not even 3? Source please? Because what?
fermi approximations happen all the time in astronomy. The numbers are frequently so large that the only meaningful quality is how many orders of magnitude it has.
More to the point, using pi makes calculating things much harder. For example, we don’t really need a precise distance for most things; so using “3” makes the calculation unnecessarily spend time in computation.
It’s like the old joke, “what’s the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire?” (“About a billion.”)
The barycenter is sometimes outside the diameter of the sun. Not always, and I believe not even usually.
Yes, today I’m being that guy. Still a cool factoid.
I’m kinda stunned that it’s EVER outside the sun.
Yeah, that’s the first thing I checked reading the og post before I was about to write ‘there is no was it’s outside the sun!’ … its such a tiny supergassy mass.
Outside the sun? Typical Visiblist. The Alfvén surface would like to have a word. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfvén_surface
Well, while we are being ‘that guy’, factoid is one of those words which has changed its meaning by being used wrongly for so long that the original meaning has all but vanished.
A factoid is technically supposed to be something resembling fact, but not actual fact. (The Greek suffix ‘-oid’ normally being used for that purpose, like in paranoid, “like knowledge” or asteroid, “like a star”).
The best thing about factoid, is that factoid is now a factoid. Because it resembles what it is not lol…
Anyway, nowadays, you are allowed to use it the way you did, at least in the descriptivist world view. The prescriptivists may disagree, however. And those people are often ‘that guy’ ;)
I’d say that the original statement not including “sometimes” does in fact make it the ‘not a fact’ type of factoid!
Good point!
Since definitions are not facts, the word factoid itself being a factoid is a factoid
I like this
Well, now I want to know if there’s a regular schedule to the Jupiter-Sun barycenter being in or outside of the Sun, and how we can schedule holidays around it.
Aren’t we simply talking about LaGrange points? Or am I misunderstanding?
I think Lagrange points are where geosynchronous orbits are possible without constant corrections.
Geosynchronous means the orbital period is a day and relatively circular. Satellites with these orbits basically look down at the same part of the Earth.
Lagrange points are locations along an orbit where gravitational forces balance out with the centrifugal force of the orbit. This does allow less fuel expenditure to maintain.
For the Earth-Sun or Earth-Moon systems, the Lagrange points do not occur at the altitude of the geosynchronous orbit. The Lagrange points are either significantly further away or at a different orbital phase.
Jupiter is so massive, if you give it more hydrogen, it gets smaller.
My dumb friend wants to know why adding more mass would make Jupiter smaller, can you help explain it to him?
I misrembered, it remains roughly the same volume, until 1.6 juipiters of mass, at which point the effect of gravity from each additional hydrogen is greater than the intermolecular forces and additional hydrogen would cause it to compress more than it would grow.
Thanks for the explanation, clears it up completely.
The increased mass increases the force of gravity on the outer particles which ends up reducing the radius more than the increase due to the layer of new hydrogen, IIRC.
Thank you - my friend was only thinking in terms of smaller by mass not thinking about volume.
Is your friend the same crazy person I know who doesn’t eat meat? Are they crazy?
_i don’t know why your comment made me think of that reference _
…
Lots of people don’t eat meat.
It’s a Simpsons quote.
Imagine a stack of glass cups. It gets tall enough that the bottom glasses break under the weight of the new glasses. Tada!
The volume of Jupiter is mostly gas. If you increase the mass enough, at some point the higher gravity and thus higher pressure at the center causes a phase change of enough mass (from gas to liquid or liquid to solid) that the lost volume from the phase change exceeds the original volume of the added mass.
It’s like pushing a bunch of origami paper into a box until a bunch of them collapse and fall flat instead of filling the volume.
My friend is silly - he was thinking of smaller as in by mass, not by volume. Thanks for explaining it to him.
Fun fact: if I threw a rock hard enough, it and the sun would orbit around their "barycenter" which would happen to be just about the center of the sun (probably, i dont work here).
Simeon’s cousin is definitely going to say that their dad owns the Gary Center.
[<img alt="Solarsystembarycenter" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Solar_system_barycenter.svg/800px-Solar_system_barycenter.svg.png">]
So the Sun is wobbling arround, because of the 3 giants. Fascinating.
The link in your post links to a different image. Was that on purpose?
Links to some AI slop
Yeah, i forgot how to post an image here without uploading it, so i used a random pic from that site to copy the Markdown code.
Oopsy, fixed.
Well, mostly Jupiter and a little bit of Saturn.
<img alt="" src="https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/6201a2b7-233c-44cc-a898-045021032642.png">
Here’s an animation
<img alt="" src="https://files.catbox.moe/2339s6.mp4">
Universe Sandbox
3D makes it 100 times better!
Like a brick in a washing machine
I wish that was updated for the current year (and beyond) It’s important to know when giving OP’s statement whether it’s outside the sun at the moment
Here you go: <img alt="" src="https://www.skymarvels.com/infopages/images/Sun%20Motion%20Around%20Barycenter%20006.jpg">
I found it super helpful to have the Sun’s center of mass labeled!
I only wish Jupiter’s center of mass was also labeled in this graphic. I’ve been trying to puzzle it out myself, but I’m stumped!
I think if it’s to scale, Jupiter is way offscreen, like in another room in your building far away.
I was curious about if Jupiter could be ignited and got (it’s an AI answer btw):
So Jupiter is the inferior brother to the sun that has to live in its shadow. Jupiter’s such a loser, lol; get rekt Jupiter.
(not popping off at you just clarifying the AI answer)
Jupiter is NOT a failed star, the lowest bounds for a brown dwarf are 13x Jupiter’s mass, and even brown dwarfs are classified as “substellar objects” (actual failed stars?). Wikipedia says Jupiter would need to be 75x more massive to fuse hydrogen.
I’m a failed gorilla.
The friends of Wigner will turn it into a black hole eventually
Your mom…
Related: xkcd.com/2898/ <img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/682edef8-f808-43c3-83fe-9c202f4be1c5.png">
Jokes aside : being right for the wrong reasons is being wrong
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem
Unjustified true belief
Thanks for the read !
If we’re strict, being right is always being right. If we’re not strict, wouldn’t that imply that being wrong “for the right reasons” is being right?
It’s not wrong. The “common center” lies inside the Sun.
Therefore, the Sun orbits itself and the Earth orbits the Sun.
The Man-in-the-middle’s statement is akin to the following :
2 = 3 thus, by multiplying both sides by 0, we get 0 = 0, which is true !
He said it’s in the middle because 2 people disagreed, and he states that the truth lies always in she middle in these situations. which is false, exactly as false as 2 = 3
I really want a space station in the barycenter of Pluto or something. It would be as close to true neutral of gravity instead of the gravity negated by acceleration of mass that may or may not screw up gravity experiments
Except there are all the other planets swinging in the way, with their own gravitational influence.
I think what you’re looking for is a Lagrange point, specifically L1, where the gravitational pull from both bodies are equal, so they cancel out
Fun fact, we can theoretically use that to build a space elevator on the moon. Last I checked, Nylon was strong enough to build the needed cables
There are a few more problems than material strength
For one, the moon isn’t geostationary, and my napkin math says its ground track probably progresses at over 1000 kilometers per hour. Not to mention the inclination of the moon’s orbit (about 5°) and the obliquity of earth’s axis (about 23°) mean the track wouldn’t be a single track around earth, but instead would wander anywhere between the 28°N/S latitude lines over the course of the year
Not a space elevator between the Earth and Moon. A space elevator for just the moon.
While a railgun is a more practical option to set up, it’s still fun to think about.
And for non-rocket launches feom Earth, we’re probably better off setting up orbital rings
Your mom’s so fat, she pushes the barycenter of the solar system outside of the diameter of the Sun
Top tier comment right here!
That’s why I lose my balance!
No one objects orbits another. There are no stable orbits since there are no examples of two perfect point masses in an isolated space.
just assume a spherical cow, dude
The way this is phrased makes it sound like there’s a certain threshold where this starts happening. That’s not right. Even a grain of dust wouldn’t orbit the sun, they still orbit their common barycenter. A less misleading way of phrasing would be that Jupiter is massive enough that the barycenter of it and the sun actually lies outside the sun, which is still a cool fun fact.
Orbiting a point within the sun is still orbiting the sun.
But orbiting a point 1 meter outside the sun is not orbiting the sun?
Kinda feels intuitively correct
The sun isn’t a perfect sphere.
I mean that’s literally the point the image is trying to make. The last sentence says the point is outside the sun for Jupiter.
I don’t think nitpicking the title achieves anything and it’s not even misleading unless it’s only taken in isolation.
It says it’s so massive they orbit a common point. That directly implies this only happens over a certain mass.
It says it’s so massive they orbit a common point outside the sun. Smaller planets don’t have their common point outside the sun.
I mean, the sentence either implies what I said before, or it implies that the barycenter is a point outside the sun. I really don’t see any other reading than those two.
That’s the way I understood it at first. But after reading it again after reading the comments above, I can see the other way of viewing it. I do agree with you that how the sentence is currently written it’s confusing.
Yeah pretty much my point. I know you can maybe kinda construe it into the truth if you already know about the topic, like other commenters age saying, but it’s presented as educational, and does a poor job at educating with how misleadingly it is phrased.
That’s still not entierly mass dependant, the point is at a distance based on a ratio between the two masses, if Jupiter were closer to the sun then the point would be inside the sun. Its still impressively massive to pull the point outside of the sun at any functional distance but so could a grain of dust with sufficient distance and a big empty universe to prevent anything else from interupting things.
I was going to complain about the use of “barycenter” instead of the more commonly known “center of mass”. But after some searching, I guess barycenter is more obscure because it’s more specific. I’m ok with that.
i mean, with that logic, nothing orbits anything
No, this is actually really relevant. This is part of the logic applied to labeling Pluto a dwarf planet. Pluto and it’s moon do this, Earth and our moon do not. Yes, obviously the center of mass of the two isn’t the exact center of the earth but it’s still within the earth.
Asking a physicist about the center of an object is like asking a Tumblr user about thr color of the sky. The only response will be “which one?” And a sigh of exhaustion
Center of volume ≠ center of mass ≠ center of systemic gravity ≠ center of lift…
Not to mention “an object” is just a construct describing a collection of molecules that themselves don’t necessarily sit still or all stick around.
but the density of an object is variable. i mean you can define the diffrence between an orbit and a co-spiral to be based on the physical size of the denser planetary body containing the orbit center point, though that seems arbitrary.
And Pluto knows that Pluto’s
Hot shit
And you know Pluto knows it
“I won’t ever be a planet
It don’t matter 'cause I know that I’m still”
Hot shit
“And you’re hot shit too, so get out of your brain And just do what you’re supposed to do”
For most bodies the barycenter, while not the same as the center of mass, is still inside the sun. This one isn’t, making it notable
Fun fact: You actually pull the Earth up with the same force it pulls you down… Newton’s Third Law.
I’ve been told that certain peoples mothers happen to pull the earth with a bit more force than others.
Thats a pretty thick attraction. Newtons 7. Street Law.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/2c31206a-3cf7-4b98-a134-dcf5ed5fd540.webp">
You’re not wrong. Everything orbits the center of mass of the system, meaning the mass of the star and the body in orbit. And that is handy for astronomers, many exoplanets have been found using the Doppler spectroscopy method. Doppler spectroscopy measures the Doppler shift in the star’s light as it is pulled towards and away from us by planets in orbit. The newest spectrographs are sensitive enough to detect a star’s wobble caused by an Earth sized body in orbit. The barycenter is still within the star, but not at the center of the star’s mass.
how much wobble does the earth add to sun? over 1m?
Jeeezzz…Gravity is relentless.
Gravity always wins
Dark energy would like a word
Do all the planets also orbit around that same barycenter, or does each planet have a different one?
I guess they all orbit around the solar system’s center of mass (negligibly affected by the universal CoM), but that CoM probably moves around as the planets themselves move.
Relative to what, you might ask? That depends who you’re asking 😉
.
The barycenter is different for each planet-sun (or any two object) pairing.
The earth and moon have a barycenter which is beneath the surface of earth. Likewise, the barycenter of the sun-earth pair is below the surface of the sun
Edit:
The barycenter of our solar system orbits the center of our galaxy (again in a barycentric manner)
All the solar system matter contributes to an object’s orbital center but that’s constantly moving as the system moves.
I think (?) most planets have their barycenter inside the sun’s surface
The gravitational pull of system matter pales in comparison to the sun so you don’t need to consider it for amateur purposes.
You can try KSP (Vanilla) versus Kopernicus mod if you want to feel the difference.
Also called n-body
Technically speaking, no celestial body in our solar system orbits around a single point. The barycenter thing only works with two bodies. When there are more than two bodies, such as in our solar system, the orbits become chaotic. Granted, the influence between planets is small, so they all appear to orbit their barycenters with the sun, but there are small perturbations to the orbits caused by the locations and masses of all the other bodies in the solar system.
Isn’t that the 3-body-problem? That already with 3 bodies affecting each other a system is chaotic.
This is true about any 2 objects with mass.
“outside the objects”
It was outside the environment.
The front is not supposed to fall off
A wave hit it.
Barycenters are not necessarily outside the objects, either.
No, it is not true in general that the barycenter lies outside both objects.
I mean, sure, but you can reasonably glean that I’m just talking about the fact that any 2 objects with mass exert gravity on each other. The OP is facebook-tier
I can’t reasonably glean that, because the OP clearly says this:
I agree that OP is facebook-tier but your reply is reddit-tier :P
You’re being pedantic to levels most redditors could only dream of. A barycenter isn’t even necessarily outside the 2 objects, if you took the OP to mean that, it’s incorrect information anyways.
The OP does not claim that all barycenters are outside of the sun. OP correctly claims that Jupiter & Sun orbit a certain point, and that point is known as the “barycenter,” and that point is outside the sun. I’ll admit they could have gone further to convey the additional curiosity that for other planets the sun-planet barycenter is within the sun, but then it might not be facebook-tier anymore.
I literally do not understand why you think I’m being pedantic here. The OP text is short and contains no obvious errors that I can see. Perhaps to someone who has made a mistake and doesn’t want to admit it, attempts by others to point out this mistake must resemble pedanticism.