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[–] 181 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 149 points 1 year 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.

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  • [–] 64 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Correct.

    I also believe that one of the criteria for a binary planet is that the barycenter is outside either body. Like Pluto/Charon.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year 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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    [–] 131 points 1 year 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.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year 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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    [–] 91 points 1 year 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.

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    [–] 63 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

    [Solarsystembarycenter]

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

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    [–] 53 points 1 year ago (1 child)

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

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    [–] 46 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    i mean, with that logic, nothing orbits anything

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year 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.

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year 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.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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!

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year 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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    [–] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.

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    [–] 15 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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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    [–] 13 points 1 year 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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    [–] 12 points 1 year ago (1 child)

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

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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

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