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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.
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.
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.
It says it’s so massive they orbit a common point. That directly implies this only happens over a certain mass.
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.
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.
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?
The sun isn’t a perfect sphere.
Kinda feels intuitively correct
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.
Related: https://xkcd.com/2898/
Jokes aside : being right for the wrong reasons is being wrong
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
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?
i mean, with that logic, nothing orbits anything
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.
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…
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”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.
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.
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.
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 :-(
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.
Same. That’s why I was lazy and didn’t even mention them ;)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’ ;)
Since definitions are not facts, the word factoid itself being a factoid is a factoid
I like this
I’d say that the original statement not including “sometimes” does in fact make it the ‘not a fact’ type of factoid!
Good point!
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.
Your mom’s so fat, she pushes the barycenter of the solar system outside of the diameter of the Sun
[
]So the Sun is wobbling arround, because of the 3 giants. Fascinating.
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:
Jeeezzz…Gravity is relentless.
Gravity always wins
That’s why I lose my balance!
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.
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.
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.”)
Just wait until you see their periodic table of elements.
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
how much wobble does the earth add to sun? over 1m?
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.
Imagine a stack of glass cups. It gets tall enough that the bottom glasses break under the weight of the new glasses. Tada!
No one objects orbits another. There are no stable orbits since there are no examples of two perfect point masses in an isolated space.
