Showing posts with label Orbits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orbits. Show all posts

Monday, March 7, 2011

Two Planets Sharing Same Orbit?



Chown, M., Two Planets Found Sharing One Orbit, New Scientist, Issue 2801, March 6th 2011
Buried in the flood of data from the Kepler telescope is a planetary system unlike any seen before. Two of its apparent planets share the same orbit around their star. ...

The two planets are part of a four-planet system dubbed KOI-730. They circle their sun-like parent star every 9.8 days at exactly the same orbital distance.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Backwards Planets



Mel Acheson: Backwards Planets.

What force determines the direction and angle of planetary orbits?

A new study of exoplanets finds that many have orbits that are tilted relative to the equators of the stars they orbit. Some even revolve in the opposite direction (retrograde) to the rotation of the star.

Standard theory requires planets to move in the same direction as the star and to orbit in or near to the star’s equatorial plane. This is because the planets are thought to condense out of a rotating protoplanetary disc that is spun out as the star collapses from a cloud of gas.

In an electrical system, planets may form in the polar “jets” (Birkeland currents) of young stars (such as Herbig-Haro objects), or they may be ejected from active stars much like CMEs from the Sun. When the polar jet discharge quenches, the planets will “scatter like buckshot,” as seen in lab discharges. The planets may then be gravitationally captured in any configuration of orbit, although a prograde equatorial configuration is most likely.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Johannes Kepler Didn't Believe In Gravitation



"The example of the magnet I have hit upon is a very pretty one, and entirely suited to the subject; indeed, it is little short of being the very truth." -- Johannes Kepler, astronomer/mathematician, 1609

"It is therefore plausible, since the Earth moves the moon through its species and magnetic body, while the sun moves the planets similarly through an emitted species, that the sun is likewise a magnetic body." -- Johannes Kepler, astronomer/mathematician, 1609

"But come: let us follow more closely the tracks of this similarity of the planetary reciprocation [libration] to the motion of a magnet, and that by a most beautiful geometric demonstration, so that it might appear that a magnet has such a motion as that which we perceive in the planet." -- Johannes Kepler, astronomer/mathematician, 1609

Martens, R., Kepler's Philosophy and the New Astronomy, 2000