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.
Say hello to Bary
Submitted 1 day ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/19bb073c-2be9-4762-8782-3a8e7b07283d.png
Comments
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 1 day ago
BillBurBaggins@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
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.
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
It says it’s so massive they orbit a common point. That directly implies this only happens over a certain mass.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Orbiting a point within the sun is still orbiting the sun.
sus@programming.dev 1 day ago
But orbiting a point 1 meter outside the sun is not orbiting the sun?
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
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.
essell@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 1 day ago
Correct.
I also believe that on of the criteria for a binary planet is that the barycenter is outside either body. Like Pluto/Charon.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Don’t forget the other 3 bodies in the Pluto/Charon system
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I mean, sure, but that’d be like saying I’m pulling the earth towards me when I jump.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
You don’t have to jump, you’re already doing it. Some of us more than others… *Looks in mirror and hangs head
davidgro@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Isn’t that canceled out by the pushing you do when you start to jump?
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 1 day 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.
BurgerBaron@piefed.social 1 day ago
Asteroids everything does to some degree even if miniscule I'd assume.
Eranziel@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
bdonvr@thelemmy.club 1 day ago
I’m kinda stunned that it’s EVER outside the sun.
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 1 day ago
Yeah, that’s the first thing I checked reading the og post before I was about to write ‘there is no was it’s outside the sun!’ … its such a tiny supergassy mass.
Zuriz@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Outside the sun? Typical Visiblist. The Alfvén surface would like to have a word. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfvén_surface
setInner234@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
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’ ;)
TipsyMcGee@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
Since definitions are not facts, the word factoid itself being a factoid is a factoid
davidgro@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’d say that the original statement not including “sometimes” does in fact make it the ‘not a fact’ type of factoid!
GraniteM@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
WraithGear@lemmy.world 1 day ago
i mean, with that logic, nothing orbits anything
pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
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
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 day ago
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.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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
deltapi@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
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”WraithGear@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
Boddhisatva@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
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.
fedditter@feddit.org 1 day ago
Fun fact: You actually pull the Earth up with the same force it pulls you down… Newton’s Third Law.
vic_rattlehead@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I’ve been told that certain peoples mothers happen to pull the earth with a bit more force than others.
ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social 18 hours ago
This is true about any 2 objects with mass.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 17 hours ago
No, it is not true in general that the barycenter lies outside both objects.
ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social 1 hour ago
I mean, sure, but you can reasonably glean that I’m just talking about the fact that any 2 objects with mass exert gravity on each other. This post is facebook-tier
Thorry@feddit.org 1 day ago
Your mom’s so fat, she pushes the barycenter of the solar system outside of the diameter of the Sun
The_Che_Banana@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Top tier comment right here!
nuko147@lemmy.world 1 day ago
So the Sun is wobbling arround, because of the 3 giants. Fascinating.
ItemWrongStory@midwest.social 1 day ago
yogurtwrong@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Like a brick in a washing machine
davidgro@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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
SimpleMachine@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
The link in your post links to a different image. Was that on purpose?
nuko147@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Oopsy, fixed.
bennypr0fane@discuss.tchncs.de 21 hours ago
Do all the planets also orbit around that same barycenter, or does each planet have a different one?
CompassRed@discuss.tchncs.de 5 hours ago
Technically speaking, no celestial body in our solar system orbits around a single point. The barycenter thing only works with two bodies. When there are more than two bodies, such as in our solar system, the orbits become chaotic. Granted, the influence between planets is small, so they all appear to orbit their barycenters with the sun, but there are small perturbations to the orbits caused by the locations and masses of all the other bodies in the solar system.
saimen@feddit.org 1 hour ago
Isn’t that the 3-body-problem? That already with 3 bodies affecting each other a system is chaotic.
untorquer@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
All the solar system matter contributes to an object’s orbital center but that’s constantly moving as the system moves.
I think (?) most planets have their barycenter inside the sun’s surface
The gravitational pull of system matter pales in comparison to the sun so you don’t need to consider it unless you’re navigating satellites.
You can try KSP (Vanilla) versus Kopernicus mod if you want to feel the difference.
Also called n-body
badcommandorfilename@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
I guess the all orbit around the solar system’s center of mass (negligibly affected by the universal CoM), but that CoM probably moves around as the planets themselves move.
Relative to what, you might ask? That depends who you’re asking 😉
deltapi@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
The barycenter is different for each planet-sun (or any two object) pairing.
The earth and moon have a barycenter which is beneath the surface of earth. Likewise, the barycenter of the sun-earth pair is below the surface of the sun
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
dmention7@midwest.social 1 day ago
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!
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 day ago
Rounding pi to 1? Not even 3? Source please? Because what?
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
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.”)
s@piefed.world 1 day ago
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.
bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
no material object orbits another material object and they instead orbit their collective center of mass somewhere in space.
That’s exactly what happens. Why do you think this is incorrect?
s@piefed.world 1 day ago
It seems to fundamentally change what it means “to orbit” something.
As I understood the term, orbiting would be used correctly in these cases:
A lighter object orbits a heavier object, and both of their paths of motion are elliptical about their barycenter
Two objects of identical mass orbit each other, and their paths of motion are circular about their barycenter
In contrast, the image above implies the following:
A lighter object does not orbit a heavier object; they both orbit their barycenter with an elliptical path of motion
Two objects of identical mass do no orbit each other; they both orbit their barycenter with an circular path of motion
Even the Wikipedia page for barycenter, which OP linked to, opens with the following:
“the barycenter… is the center of massof two or more bodies that orbit one another and is the point about which the bodies orbit.”
Perhaps “orbit” as a verb has two meanings, depending on the specificity of the context.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 hours ago
Jeeezzz…Gravity is relentless.
vestigeofgreen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
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!
ABetterTomorrow@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
That’s why I lose my balance!
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 1 day ago
Jupiter is so massive, if you give it more hydrogen, it gets smaller.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
how much wobble does the earth add to sun? over 1m?
Sidhean@piefed.social 1 day ago
Fun fact: if I threw a rock hard enough, it and the sun would orbit around their "barycenter" which would happen to be just about the center of the sun (probably, i dont work here).
Gladaed@feddit.org 1 day ago
No one objects orbits another. There are no stable orbits since there are no examples of two perfect point masses in an isolated space.
ProbablyBaysean@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I really want a space station in the barycenter of Pluto or something. It would be as close to true neutral of gravity instead of the gravity negated by acceleration of mass that may or may not screw up gravity experiments
magnetosphere@fedia.io 1 day ago
I’m no astronomical guru, but I’m surprised I didn’t know this.
ODuffer@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Your mom…
Evilsandwichman@hexbear.net 1 day ago
I was curious about if Jupiter could be ignited and got (it’s an AI answer btw):
Why Jupiter can’t ignite: Lack of Mass: Jupiter is a failed star because it doesn’t have enough mass for its core to reach the extreme temperatures and pressures needed to start nuclear fusion.
So Jupiter is the inferior brother to the sun that has to live in its shadow. Jupiter’s such a loser, lol; get rekt Jupiter.
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Aren’t we simply talking about LaGrange points? Or am I misunderstanding?
altphoto@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Simeon’s cousin is definitely going to say that their dad owns the Gary Center.
LarsIsCool@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Related: xkcd.com/2898/ Image
mEEGal@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Jokes aside : being right for the wrong reasons is being wrong
Natanael@infosec.pub 1 day ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem
Unjustified true belief
unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
It’s not wrong. The “common center” lies inside the Sun.
Therefore, the Sun orbits itself and the Earth orbits the Sun.
TipsyMcGee@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
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?