this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] LarsIsCool@lemmy.world 179 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] mEEGal@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Jokes aside : being right for the wrong reasons is being wrong

[–] essell@lemmy.world 150 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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.

[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 65 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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 15 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Don't forget the other 3 bodies in the Pluto/Charon system

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] 9bananas@feddit.org 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

depends! do you wanna know how the system will evolve over long periods of time?

... then yes!

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[–] stevedice@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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

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[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 11 points 1 week ago

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.

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[–] Eranziel@lemmy.world 129 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 38 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm kinda stunned that it's EVER outside the sun.

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[–] setInner234@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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' ;)

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[–] Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 91 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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.

[–] BillBurBaggins@lemmy.world 35 points 1 week ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Orbiting a point within the sun is still orbiting the sun.

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[–] nuko147@lemmy.world 62 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (9 children)

[Solarsystembarycenter]

So the Sun is wobbling arround, because of the 3 giants. Fascinating.

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 45 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] ItemWrongStory@midwest.social 36 points 1 week ago

Well, mostly Jupiter and a little bit of Saturn.

[–] yogurtwrong@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

Like a brick in a washing machine

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[–] Thorry@feddit.org 53 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Your mom's so fat, she pushes the barycenter of the solar system outside of the diameter of the Sun

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[–] WraithGear@lemmy.world 47 points 1 week ago (4 children)

i mean, with that logic, nothing orbits anything

[–] pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 56 points 1 week ago

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

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 28 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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…

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[–] Boddhisatva@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] fedditter@feddit.org 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fun fact: You actually pull the Earth up with the same force it pulls you down.. Newton’s Third Law.

[–] vic_rattlehead@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I've been told that certain peoples mothers happen to pull the earth with a bit more force than others.

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[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (6 children)

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.

[–] dmention7@midwest.social 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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!

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (8 children)

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.

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[–] s@piefed.world 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 21 points 1 week ago (8 children)

no material object orbits another material object and they instead orbit their collective center of mass somewhere in space.

That’s exactly what happens. Why do you think this is incorrect?

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[–] vestigeofgreen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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!

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[–] bennypr0fane@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Do all the planets also orbit around that same barycenter, or does each planet have a different one?

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[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Jupiter is so massive, if you give it more hydrogen, it gets smaller.

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (8 children)

My dumb friend wants to know why adding more mass would make Jupiter smaller, can you help explain it to him?

[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] bss03@infosec.pub 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Sidhean@piefed.social 10 points 1 week ago

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).

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