Posted on 02/24/2015 11:08:07 AM PST by Red Badger
If you've read your share of sci-fi, and I know you have, you've read stories about another Earth-sized planet orbiting on the other side of the Solar System, blocked by the Sun. Could it really be there?
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Color illustration showing the scale of planets in our solar system, focusing on Jupiter and Saturn. Credit: NASA
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No. Nooooo. No. Just no.
This is a delightful staple in science fiction. There's a mysterious world that orbits the Sun exactly the same distance as Earth, but it's directly across the Solar System from us; always hidden by the Sun. Little do we realize they know we're here, and right now they're marshalling their attack fleet to invade our planet. We need to invade counter-Earth before they attack us and steal our water, eat all our cheese or kidnap our beloved Nigella Lawson and Alton Brown to rule as their culinary queen and king of Other-Earth.
Well, could this happen? Could there be another planet in a stable orbit, hiding behind the Sun? The answer, as you probably suspect, is NO. No. Nooooo. Just no.
Well, that's not completely true. If some powerful and mysterious flying spaghetti being magically created another planet and threw it into orbit, it would briefly be hidden from our view because of the Sun. But we don't exist in a Solar System with just the Sun and the Earth. There are those other planets orbiting the Sun as well. As the Earth orbits the Sun, it's subtly influenced by those other planets, speeding up or slowing down in its orbit.
So, while we're being pulled a little forwards in our orbit by Jupiter, that other planet would be on the opposite side of the Sun. And so, we'd speed up a little and catch sight of it around the Sun. Over the years, these various motions would escalate, and that other planet would be seen more and more in the sky as we catch up to it in orbit.
Eventually, our orbits would intersect, and there'd be an encounter. If we were lucky, the planets would miss each other, and be kicked into new, safer, more stable orbits around the Sun. And if we were unlucky, they'd collide with each other, forming a new super-sized Earth, killing everything on both planets, obviously.
What if there was originally two half-Earths and they collided and that's how we got current Earth! Or 4 quarter Earths, each with their own population? And then BAM. One big Earth. Or maybe 64 64th Earths all transforming and converging to form VOLTREARTH.
Now, I'm now going to make things worse, and feed your imagination a little with some actual science. There are a few places where objects can share a stable orbit. These locations are known as Lagrange points, regions where the gravity of two objects create a stable location for a third object. The best of these are known as the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points. L4 is about 60-degrees ahead of a planet in its orbit, and L5 is about 60-degrees behind a planet in its orbit.
A small enough body, relative to the planet, could hang out in a stable location for billions of years. Jupiter has a collection of Trojan asteroids at its L4 and L5 points of its orbit, always holding at a stable distance from the planet. Which means, if you had a massive enough gas giant, you could have a less massive terrestrial world in a stable orbit 60-degrees away from the planet.
Well, it was a pretty clever idea. Unfortunately, the forces of gravity conspire to make this hidden planet idea completely impossible. Most importantly, when someone tells you there's a hidden planet on the other side of the Sun, just remember these words:
No.
Nooooo.
No.
Explore further: Earth's orbit around the sun
Source: Universe Today
Diagram of the five Lagrange points associated with the sun-Earth system, showing DSCOVR orbiting the L-1 point. Image is not to scale. Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team
Probably because we discovered 'dark matter'.
I often think that we're living there.
>>Neither is opinion. You stated as fact that Gor is vilified and 50 Shades is mainstream. Neither is true, the fact is both are considered crap and neither is mainstream.
50 Shades is in movie theatres right now. It occupies an end cap at Target. Your opinion that it is not “mainstream” is wrong. You don’t like 50 Shades and neither do I. That’s why I said that we are in the dark ages now. But pretending that it doesn’t exist as a real part of our sick culture is like refusing to call terrorists Muslims.
And yes, Gor has always been crap. But, it was entertaining crap when I was young and it is vilified today (Google it).
Nope. See post 35 for the diagram. The article gets it right. The point directly opposite the earth would be the L3 Langrange point. That point is unstable in the direction tangetial to the orbit. That means that a planet at that point would stay put if the earth, the sun and that planet were the only bodies in the solar system. They are not. Peturbations from other bodies would lead to the planet moving just a bit ahead of the L3 point or just a bit behind. Once that occurs, the earth’s and sun’s gravity would tend to exacerbate the shift away from L3. That’s what it means when we say a Langrange point is unstable. For the stable ones, such as L4 or L5, peterbations tend to be counteracted by the earth’s and sun’s gravity, so the object stays put. Of course there cannot be planets at those points; we would have observed them by now.
“Doppleganger’.
Astronomers noted a gaseous discharge from the core.
And is protested by both the BDSM community and Christian right. Lots of stuff hits the movie theaters without being mainstream. Even a movie that grosses $129 million is actually only watched by a very small number of people (easy math is divide by 10, $129 million means about 13 million people, or about 4% of the population, hardly mainstream).
Gor should be vilified. It started as crap and turned into violent pornographic crap. Really all the same criticisms lodged against it are lodged against 50 Shades also. Both are criticized for presenting abusive behavior as good. The only real difference between them is point of view, one is from the rapist guy, the other is from the willing to be raped girl. And the complaints reflect that, google them both. They are both equally vilified.
Kill joy!
:)
Actually, if a planet was there, I think its presence would have been deduced from its gravitational pull on Venus and Mars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamera_vs._Guiron";
Gamera visits a planet on the opposite side of the Sun.
Watch the MST3K version...it’s more coherent.
No No No!!! If there was another planet that would me that there would be two Obamas and two such egos would surely cause the solar system to collapse in on itself and create a black hole. OOOPS! Th think I just made a racist comment!
Everything is opposite! The Obama on the ‘Other’ Earth would be a Raging Right Winger!...............
Paul McCartney and Wings would still be cool.............
He would be escorting illegals across the Rio Grande.................
Everyone has seen Uranus, dude....
That's unfortunate, I always wished that planet was inhabited by nubile maidens intent on invading earth and making men their sex slaves........Oh well....
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