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Is the Sun a binary?
- tvanflandern
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- MarkVitrone
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18 years 4 months ago #4224
by MarkVitrone
Replied by MarkVitrone on topic Reply from Mark Vitrone
Now everyone must contribute the national average of $600/credit hour for graduate credits. If you read this thread today, then you were the happy recipient of one credit hour in advanced celestial mechanics. Make checks payable to Mark Vitrone
Yes I am joking
Nemesis,
I think the most compelling argument against the binary system is the observation noted by Tom that the precession is dependant upon the oblateness of the planet. Clearly each planet experiences this because of its own shape, mass, composition, and rotation and not because of another star.
A widget is an invention that fixes your theory, just like PAM keeps eggs from sticking to a frying pan, a widget is something scientists try to use to keep eggs from sticking to their faces.
Mark Vitrone
Yes I am jokingNemesis,
I think the most compelling argument against the binary system is the observation noted by Tom that the precession is dependant upon the oblateness of the planet. Clearly each planet experiences this because of its own shape, mass, composition, and rotation and not because of another star.
A widget is an invention that fixes your theory, just like PAM keeps eggs from sticking to a frying pan, a widget is something scientists try to use to keep eggs from sticking to their faces.
Mark Vitrone
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18 years 4 months ago #9147
by nemesis
Replied by nemesis on topic Reply from
Tom, I went back and reread some of what you had written, and I have a couple more questions.
"Gravitational tugs from a distant star, much like those from other planets, would change Earth's orbit around the Sun, but have
essentially no effect whatever on precession. That is because precession is not caused by inverse square forces acting on its
center of mass, but rather by inverse cube torques acting differently on different parts of the Earth's non-spherical shape. A very distant body, because of that distance, would apply essentially identical forces to every part of the Earth, causing no precession." -TVF
I must be missing something. The precession effect (shift of the fixed stars) would be caused by the rotation of the entire solar system, not gravitational torquing of the Earth's equitorial bulge like lunisolar effects do. And of course nobody claims that such lunisolar effects do not occur. At that distance the torquing effect of a hypothetical binary companion could be ignored completely. The question is, are lunisolar effects alone enough to account for observations? And,
"Other planets have spin axis precession also, but at drastically different rates that depend on the amount of spin flattening and
distance from the Sun of those planets. The unseen companion is supposed to produce the same change for all planets because it is
rotating the whole solar system. But that is contradicted by observations." - TVF
I'd think we couldn't expect to see the effect on the other planets caused by the solar system's rotation from the vantage point of the Earth, since we are all on the same merry-go-round, so to speak. We should see only their local gravitational torquing from spin flattening, etc. We could in principle test the binary hypothesis by placing a camera on the surface of Mars and having it measure the position of the fixed stars at Mars' own vernal equinox for a few orbits. If all we see is Mars' measured local precession of -707" per century, the binary hypothesis is falsified. If extra shifting of the stars is seen, an additional effect is there which needs an explanation. (Don't ask me to ask for funding for this.)
I think I mentioned the seasons regressing through the calender, and you said the calender was set up to track the tropical year so that does not happen. What I intended to say was that today, the winter solstace in the northern hemisphere takes place when the earth is near perigee. Lunisolar precession or "wobbling" of the spin axis indicates that in 12,000 years the solstace will take place near apogee. The calendar will still say late December, and it will be winter, but the seasons in the northern hemisphere may be a little more extreme. On the other hand, if most of the precession effect is from solar rotation around a companion, the solstace will still be near perigee.
Finally, in your discussion of possible planetary explosion mechanisms elsewhere on the site, you state that stars need an ignition mechanism, which could be a fission chain reaction, but "...then dark stars of all masses might exist for which no ignition occurred." Would such a "dark star" be cold as well as dark?
"Gravitational tugs from a distant star, much like those from other planets, would change Earth's orbit around the Sun, but have
essentially no effect whatever on precession. That is because precession is not caused by inverse square forces acting on its
center of mass, but rather by inverse cube torques acting differently on different parts of the Earth's non-spherical shape. A very distant body, because of that distance, would apply essentially identical forces to every part of the Earth, causing no precession." -TVF
I must be missing something. The precession effect (shift of the fixed stars) would be caused by the rotation of the entire solar system, not gravitational torquing of the Earth's equitorial bulge like lunisolar effects do. And of course nobody claims that such lunisolar effects do not occur. At that distance the torquing effect of a hypothetical binary companion could be ignored completely. The question is, are lunisolar effects alone enough to account for observations? And,
"Other planets have spin axis precession also, but at drastically different rates that depend on the amount of spin flattening and
distance from the Sun of those planets. The unseen companion is supposed to produce the same change for all planets because it is
rotating the whole solar system. But that is contradicted by observations." - TVF
I'd think we couldn't expect to see the effect on the other planets caused by the solar system's rotation from the vantage point of the Earth, since we are all on the same merry-go-round, so to speak. We should see only their local gravitational torquing from spin flattening, etc. We could in principle test the binary hypothesis by placing a camera on the surface of Mars and having it measure the position of the fixed stars at Mars' own vernal equinox for a few orbits. If all we see is Mars' measured local precession of -707" per century, the binary hypothesis is falsified. If extra shifting of the stars is seen, an additional effect is there which needs an explanation. (Don't ask me to ask for funding for this.)
I think I mentioned the seasons regressing through the calender, and you said the calender was set up to track the tropical year so that does not happen. What I intended to say was that today, the winter solstace in the northern hemisphere takes place when the earth is near perigee. Lunisolar precession or "wobbling" of the spin axis indicates that in 12,000 years the solstace will take place near apogee. The calendar will still say late December, and it will be winter, but the seasons in the northern hemisphere may be a little more extreme. On the other hand, if most of the precession effect is from solar rotation around a companion, the solstace will still be near perigee.
Finally, in your discussion of possible planetary explosion mechanisms elsewhere on the site, you state that stars need an ignition mechanism, which could be a fission chain reaction, but "...then dark stars of all masses might exist for which no ignition occurred." Would such a "dark star" be cold as well as dark?
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