Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi all,
Vanilla are planning an update to the site on April 24th (next Wednesday). It is a major PHP8 update which is expected to boost performance across the site. The site will be down from 7pm and it is expected to take about an hour to complete. We appreciate your patience during the update.
Thanks all.

Is our Solar system tumbling?

  • 25-03-2012 6:52am
    #1
    krd
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭


    Is our Solar system tumbling through space?


    Since motion is relative, if the sun started life as a spinning ball - it still should be spinning or tumbling, through space right now. And we'd orbit in the same way we do, but relative to the stars we would be tumbling.

    As far as I understand this isn't happening. Or is it?

    Are the rest of the stars tumbling?...........I can't think of why they wouldn't.. unless there's cosmic gravity that stops them.


Comments

  • #2
    Gurgle
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,064 ✭✭✭Gurgle


    Not so much 'tumbling' as orbiting the galaxy. At 200km per second, it takes about 200 million years to complete a lap.


  • #3
    MajorMax
    Registered Users Posts: 865 ✭✭✭MajorMax


    Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
    And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
    That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
    A sun that is the source of all our power.
    The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
    Are moving at a million miles a day
    In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
    Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
    Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
    It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
    It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
    But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
    We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
    We go 'round every two hundred million years,
    And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
    In this amazing and expanding universe.

    The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
    In all of the directions it can whizz
    As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
    Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
    So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
    How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
    And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
    'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

    :D


  • #4
    beardedmaster
    Registered Users Posts: 614 ✭✭✭beardedmaster


    Wooo! Love that song.
    It's suprisingly accurate considering the age of that film, too..


  • #5
    eskimocat
    Registered Users Posts: 1,204 ✭✭✭eskimocat


    What's the name of the song and what film please? The words are great!! And fairly accurate you say beardedmaster?

    Okay, googled it and realised its from Monty Pyton, The Meaning of Life...horrified to report i still haven't managed to see that film... must sort that out. :)


  • #6
    krd
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭krd


    Gurgle wrote: »
    Not so much 'tumbling' as orbiting the galaxy. At 200km per second, it takes about 200 million years to complete a lap.

    I know we're orbiting the galaxy. Does that make the sun have an axis that is set in a tilt, in relation to the rest of the galaxy?

    I tell you why I asked this question - because I was thinking and something struck me.

    Imagine if a sun was initially created by spinning tumbling mass coming together. I believe, the net spinning and tumbling would be conserved - the star would be tumbling.

    Since the motion is relative - you could be in a frame of reference where the sun does not appear to be tumbling - it could be rotating and have poles (but I think the poles and that rotation are a different process from the initial rolling - I don't see how the sun can stop rolling).

    If you were on a planet - orbiting this sun, like earth - you wouldn't see the sun as tumbling.......But you would see the stars rapidly pass by as the solar system rolled over and over.

    If that solar system is in a galaxy, does the galaxy stop the solar system from tumbling?

    Do the galaxies we can see roll through space?


  • Advertisement
  • #7
    shizz
    Registered Users Posts: 1,506 ✭✭✭shizz


    But the sun is rotating about its axis. This would have been spin conserved from the original rotation of the assembling mass of gas and other materials coming together. I would imagine we just rotate around the galactic centre the same way we rotate around the sun. With our neighbouring stars gravity influencing the sun the way the planets influence each other.

    Also I think gyroscopic effects would prevent the sun from tumbling. Considering it is spinning, it's axis wants to point in the same direction.

    Seeing as we don't see, as you described "the stars rapidly pass by as the solar system rolled over and over." I would say no we aren't.


  • #8
    krd
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭krd


    shizz wrote: »
    But the sun is rotating about its axis. This would have been spin conserved from the original rotation of the assembling mass of gas and other materials coming together. I would imagine we just rotate around the galactic centre the same way we rotate around the sun. With our neighbouring stars gravity influencing the sun the way the planets influence each other.

    I think that might be the case. Though I'm not sure.
    Also I think gyroscopic effects would prevent the sun from tumbling. Considering it is spinning, it's axis wants to point in the same direction.

    A gyroscope against what? Motion is relative. If you're on earth, you have no real perception that you're on a spinning ball, travelling at thousands of miles and hour. And even if you do notice the earth is turning, you have no perception that it's turning around the sun.

    So, if we couldn't see the other stars, and the solar system was tumbling - then we wouldn't be able to tell it was happening - it isn't happening,

    But we are orbiting around a huge black hole. So maybe that sets the tilt of the sun so the solar system doesn't roll.





    Seeing as we don't see, as you described "the stars rapidly pass by as the solar system rolled over and over." I would say no we aren't.


  • #9
    shizz
    Registered Users Posts: 1,506 ✭✭✭shizz


    krd wrote: »
    A gyroscope against what? Motion is relative. If you're on earth, you have no real perception that you're on a spinning ball, travelling at thousands of miles and hour. And even if you do notice the earth is turning, you have no perception that it's turning around the sun.

    The gyroscope will spin and it's axis of rotation will keep pointed in the same direction. It always wants to. Its motion is relative to space. That's how they are used in navigation systems. What I'm saying with this is as the sun is spinning it is under gyroscopic effects, this would prevent it from tumbling. At the most it would wobble due to precession but that wouldn't last long and would take a huge force to do so.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdAmEEAiJWo&feature=related

    I found this video very good.


  • #10
    amen
    Registered Users Posts: 2,781 ✭✭✭amen


    Of course the earth its self while rotating(spinning) dose actually wobble (Chandler wobble) around its central axis.

    I think the sun also wobbles due to planetary effects but I'd have to check


  • #11
    krd
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭krd


    That video is really uncanny
    shizz wrote: »
    The gyroscope will spin and it's axis of rotation will keep pointed in the same direction. It always wants to. Its motion is relative to space.

    When you say relative to space.........what do you mean?...........

    When I think of the conservation of momentum.....space would have to act on the CD/gyroscope to cancel out the tumble.

    Something has to signal to CD player. that there is an absolute space.

    The switched off CD players thumble - they exhibit conservation of momentum. But when the CDs are switched on the momentum is cancelled out.

    The only way I can think of this happening is the torque of the CDs in players, eats the momentum of the thumble - it only allows movement in a two dimensional space (I'm not sure..either along the axis, or perpendicular to the axis - or is it limiting movement to both the axis and perpendicular)....Combining three CDs all at right angles, could cancel out the momentum in all directions.

    I'm still confused....Now I'm thinking of a washing machine in its spin cycle - the torque makes it want to flip itself over - I'm wondering why the CD platers don't spin.


  • Advertisement
  • #12
    krd
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,455 ✭✭✭krd


    amen wrote: »
    I think the sun also wobbles due to planetary effects but I'd have to check

    I think all suns with planets wobble. I think that's how the astronomers can tell there's a planet orbiting a star.


  • #13
    Spear
    Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Help & Feedback Category Moderators Posts: 25,047 CMod ✭✭✭✭Spear


    krd wrote: »
    I think all suns with planets wobble. I think that's how the astronomers can tell there's a planet orbiting a star.

    No, not quite. The wobble is in the light profile, not a physical motion of wobbling.


  • #14
    Micheal H
    Registered Users Posts: 158 ✭✭Micheal H


    We are *sort of* tumbling through space in relation to the galaxy. The solar system has a different axis of rotation to the galactic plane, in the same way the Earth has a different axis of rotation to the solar plane. Here's two short videos that touch on some of the stuff you've asked about...


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44scJrLT6sE&t=4m5s


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D-OBZaInt4


  • #15
    Beeker
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 3,643 Mod ✭✭✭✭Beeker


    eskimocat wrote: »
    What's the name of the song and what film please? The words are great!! And fairly accurate you say beardedmaster?

    Okay, googled it and realised its from Monty Pyton, The Meaning of Life...horrified to report i still haven't managed to see that film... must sort that out. :)
    Worth watching, great laugh.:)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk


Advertisement