Re: Planets and Stars - an idea

On Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:42:46 GMT, Terence Nesbit <TerryKidd@xxxxxxx> wrote:
| I posted this on the scifi newsgroup, so maybe I will post it here since a
| few of you were discussing the rotational effect of launches.
|
|
| "Terence Nesbit" <TerryKidd@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
| news:kqBAl.93782$4m1.88719@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
|>I had a discussion on the Sci-Fi Bulletin Board a while ago concerning the
|>Earth and why it does/does not revolve around the sun. Recently I was
|>watching PBS and on came a science teacher talking about a red planet in
|>space that could be seen during March/April (or Feb/Mar) that is located 65
|>million light years away.


Have you got a reference for this? Are you sure they said it was a
planet?

Did they mention how hard it was/is to see?


|> In the prior discussion I had mentioned that the Earth does not
|> necessarily have to revolve around the sun because the Earth's tilting
|> could presumably guide the seasonal shifts. During the winter the sun can
|> be seen at a lower angle than in summer, where it is almost directly
|> overhead. This being the case, what is the utility of the Earth circling
|> the Sun?


Mainly it stops us from falling into the sun and vaporising.


|> After hearing about the red planet and star (called beetlejuice and
|> Andromeda I think, the latter I'm not sure about), why can the citizens of
|> Earth see the same planet and star, year after year, from 65 million light
|> years away? The Earth and that planet and star would have to be in the
|> same position, or a similar one, comparative to the Earth. Of course,
|> this realization can only lead to one conclusion, but here are a few:
|> a) both reach the same spot at the same time every year (rather chancy if
|> you consider that everything moves in space, and the other Planets in our
|> solar system circle the Sun at its own timetable;
|> b) Beetlejuice and the other planet/star do not move (again in
|> contradiction to everything else in space, as we know it);
|> c) Each has their own path that places them close to each other at these
|> points, but neither circles the sun. This suggests that the Earth doesn't
|> circle the sun. Of course this latter answer would suggest that the
|> planet and star may be seen from other points from Earth, or at a greater
|> distance.
|
| Let me clarify one thing.
|
| Since the Earth tilts, it should be apparent that the four seasons humans
| experience are due to that tilting, and not Earth's orbit around the sun.


Actually, it takes both the tilt and the orbiting to get seasons. The
tilt always points in the same direction, so as earth orbits the sun the
hemisphere pointing towards the sun changes from the northern to the
southern, and back.

Do you think that the direction of the tilt changes during the year?
Remember that the earth's axis of rotation always points to the North
Star. If the axis moved during the year, this would not be true.


| Let's consider a day. A day is one revolution of the Earth on its axis.
| The sun rises and the sun sets. So why is it so far fetched for the tilting
| to control the seasons, it would fit. This does not mean that the Earth
| never circles the sun, just that it isn't done in one year. A year for us
| is the beginning and completion of four seasons, or some variation thereof.


Grab a couple of spheres (like a basketball and a tennis ball), mark the
north and south poles on the smaller one, and see what happens when you
keep the tilt the same while you move the small ball around the larger
one.


--
Reverend Paul Colquhoun, ULC. http://andor.dropbear.id.au/~paulcol
Asking for technical help in newsgroups? Read this first:
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#intro
.

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