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!"
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
Meanwhile, Pluto and Charon noticeably orbit each other, the barycenter being fully outside of Pluto's surface.
And Jupiter is so massive that its barycentre is (barely!) outside of the sun!
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
Stupid lazy ass diabetus planet doesn't even have enough mass to fuse its hydrogen.
So doesn't that mean the earth and sun do not orbit a common center but a varying point based on mostly Jupiter?
Centrists have bamboozled me again!
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
Is this... an introductory course in relativity, disguised as a joke?
Am I accidentally learning something here?
Guys?
xkcd
yes it is
Not really, relativity plays no role here. It's classical Newtonian physics.
relativity plays no role here
I still count that as learning.
XKCD is basically all math jokes.
I appreciate the origin story being included in this cliché, cuz it got repeated so often on Reddit that people seemed to forget it was said by a parody of an obnoxious heartless bureaucrat and repeat the phrase without irony.
You know, you are technically correct.
Which is a kind of correct.
What kind we’ll never know.
Apply that to the flat earth debate and you get an oblate spheroid.
You're an oblate spheroid
…fuck
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.
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.
Except that any two gravitational bodies orbit a common center...
The Earth orbiting the Sun causes the sun to wobble slightly, moving its orbital center away from its center of mass, which means the sun and earth actually orbit a common center point no?
Even if that center point is within the other body it still isn't the center of that body, therefore they both orbit a shared gravitational center that is not the center of either body.
Technically, the sun is pulled by the earth too so it’s sort of true.
Except it's still inside the sun, so depending on how big you view the center of the sun it could still be wrong.
My thought exactly but isn't the common center still inside the sun?
Yes, but they still both orbit the black hole in the center of our galaxy
Yeah, any 2 bodies actually orbit a common point in between themselves. In case of the Sun and Earth that point is probably still inside the Sun, not far from the center.
the three body problem being one of my favorite scifi until it was kinda solved a couple years ago
What are you referring to? I haven't heard anything about the three body problem being "solved" - there's still no general solution afaik
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