by neufer » Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:30 pm
ta152h0 wrote:How do you know if there is only one planet ? and how do you know they are not evenly spread, if so ? pass the beer
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
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Counter-Earth From Wikipedia
<<The Counter-Earth is a hypothetical body of the Solar system first hypothesized by the presocratic philosopher Philolaus to support his non-geocentric cosmology, in which all objects in the universe revolve around a Central Fire. The Greek word "Antichthon" means "Counter-Earth."
By 500 BC most contemporary philosophers considered the Earth to be spherical - there was obvious evidence for this from the behaviour of objects near the horizon. This meant that all objects on the surface of the Earth had to be attracted to its centre in some way, otherwise they would fall off. It also required other objects, such as the stars and planets, to float above the earth in relation to its centre, otherwise they would presumably move rapidly away. This argument - reasonable in view of the data available at the time - resulted in a geocentric world view.
When the movements of celestial objects convinced Philolaus that the world must be not only turning on its own axis but revolving around a fixed point elsewhere in space, he was faced with the problem of explaining how a spherical world could move in this way without spilling everything on the surface into space. He came to the conclusion that the directions of up and down do not exist in space, except in that all things must fall towards the center of the universe, around which all things (including the Earth, Sun, and all the planets) must revolve. Our earth must be a practically flat world and the underside of our Earth must face this fiery, central point at all times, otherwise we would fall off.
This created a contradiction within the Pythagorean school of thought. Since planets, in their understanding, were composed of a fiery or ethereal matter having little or no density, they could quite easily rotate eccentric to the Earth without becoming off balance. However, the Earth was obviously made of the dense elements of Earth and Water. If there were a single Earth revolving at some distance from the center of space, the universe's center of balance would not coincide with its spatial center. Since this is the point towards which things fall, the earth must have a counter-balance of the same mass or the universe would be flung apart. This problem led Philolaus to develop idea of a Counter-Earth, a second, flat Earth, identical but opposite to ours in every way. This conception of the solar system is outlined in the diagram at the right, with Counter-Earth referred to as Antichthon. The upper illustration depicts Earth at night while the lower one depicts Earth in the day. (In order to prevent confusion it should be noted that the diagram fails to show that Earth and Counter-Earth are flat and point away from the Central Fire). It is likely that Philolaus believed that the whole orbit of Earth was composed of an ethereal sphere, with the Earth and Counter-Earth being local dense points on the surface.
This theory is a very creditable attempt to incorporate all known cosmological data at the time, and indicates the sophistication of Classical Greek thinking. The ideas of a flat earth, Counter-Earth, and Central Fire were all eventually superseded by the theory of Gravitation which is currently held by the scientific community, that describes a spherical earth rotating around both its own axis and the sun. The Counter-Earth is still a popular motif in science fiction and fantasy writing today, usually serving as an allegory for the real Earth.
In the 1st century A.D., after the idea of a spherical Earth superseded the original Counter-Earth theory, Pomponius Mela, a Latin cosmographer, developed an updated version of the idea, wherein a spherical Earth must have a more or less balanced distribution of land and water. Mela drew the first map on which the mysterious continent of Earth appears in the unknown half of Earth - our antipodes. This continent he inscribed with the name Antichthones.
Scientific analysis
If such a planet actually existed in our current scientific cosmology, as a spherical world that revolved around the sun, it would be permanently hidden behind the sun but nevertheless detectable from Earth, because of its gravitational influence upon the other planets of the Solar System. No such influence has been detected, and indeed space probes sent to Venus, Mars and other places could not have successfully flown by or landed on their targets if a Counter-Earth existed, as it was not accounted for in navigational calculation.
The Sun-Jupiter Trojan asteroid system is an example of a stable Lagrange orbit. However, these linear orbits are not as stable as, for example, the equilateral Lagrange orbits L4 and L5. Hilda asteroids do not visit L3 of Jupiter-Sun system, though they do come close to it in their curious orbits.
Greek Mythology
According to some Greek Mythology, Antichthon was placed between Earth and the center of the universe, the throne of Zeus, to stop man from looking at God directly.>>
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Doppelgänger (1969 film)
<<Doppelgänger was a 1969 British science fiction film directed by Robert Parrish. The film was released in the US as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. The crew of a spacecraft journey to a previously unknown planet far side of the Sun, only to seemingly find themselves returning back to the Earth. The storyline is extremely similar to an hour-long episode of the Twilight Zone entitled, The Parallel.
The film begins with the discovery of an unknown planet orbiting exactly the opposite side of the Sun from Earth (an idea reminiscent of the Antichthon or Counter-Earth proposed by Philolaus in the fifth century B.C). The European Space Exploration Council (EUROSEC) and NASA send British astrophysicist John Kane (Ian Hendry) and American astronaut Col. Glenn Ross (Roy Thinnes) to the new planet in a rocket which resembles a Saturn 5 rocket.
During their long voyage, they are put into hibernation, and are maintained by a pair of on board Heart/Lung/Kidney machines, meaning that they will have no recollection of the journey. When they awaken, they enter orbit of the planet and do an initial survey. They find the planet's atmosphere to be breathable but they see no signs of life. They decide to go forward with a landing. They suit up, and go through an access tunnel to reach their lifting body lander which slides out the rear of the mother ship.
As they enter the atmosphere, the ship's controls begin to short out and malfunction. They lose all control of the craft, which clips a mountaintop before crashing into rocky terrain. After the crew is clear of the burning wreckage, a suited figure picks them up into a hovering unfamiliar ship.
They find they have been taken aboard an air-sea rescue craft. It appears that the crew have somehow returned to Earth instead of going to the planet. They are discreetly returned to the space center, with Kane in critical condition. He later dies of his injuries.
Ross is grilled by EUROSEC officials who accuse him of aborting the mission. Ross denies turning back, saying he and Kane actually arrived at the new planet, and could not explain why he is now on Earth.
Soon, Ross puts together the shocking fact that he is not on Earth at all - but on the planet, which is an identical Earth where everything is a mirror image of our own. At first, his own wife Sharon (Lynn Loring) and others at the space agency think he is insane for claiming signs and even the layout of his apartment on the spaceport's base are backwards, but he convinces the director of EUROSEC, Jason Webb (Patrick Wymark) that it is true by easily reading documents and written directions shown as a reflection in a mirror. Ross theorizes that everything that is done on his Earth is done on the planet at the same time, but opposite to it. If he tries to go back, he will return as if nothing happened.
Concern over whether the duplicate shuttle craft he and Kane used to come to Earth from the spaceship share the same electrical charge is raised, but Ross decides to try. He takes off in a shuttle he has named "DOPPELGANGER," meaning "double," (written in our manner of left to right) to dock with the Earth ship he came in to retrieve its flight recorder. But as he docks, the electrical systems short out -- they were wrong, the polarity of electricity is the same on both worlds. He loses contact with the ground base, and his shuttle craft undocks from the ship, hurtling towards the ground with the automatic approach system locked on. This locks out his controls resulting him having no flight control as he decends into the atmosphere. When ground control realizes his situation, they disengage the system, but too late, resulting in the shuttle crashing into a second mission rocket. He is killed instantly and the crash causes a chain reaction of explosions destroying the space center in a style typical of Gerry Anderson production.
The final scene shows an elderly Webb, long ago dismissed as head of the space agency, institutionalized and telling the staff there about what had happened (the disaster had destroyed all evidence). In his dementia, he sees his reflection in a mirror mounted in front of a window, and in an attempt to touch his mirror self, crashes through the mirror and window to fall to his death.>>
[quote="ta152h0"]How do you know if there is only one planet ? and how do you know they are not evenly spread, if so ? pass the beer :shock:[/quote]
----------------------------
Counter-Earth From Wikipedia
<<The Counter-Earth is a hypothetical body of the Solar system first hypothesized by the presocratic philosopher Philolaus to support his non-geocentric cosmology, in which all objects in the universe revolve around a Central Fire. The Greek word "Antichthon" means "Counter-Earth."
By 500 BC most contemporary philosophers considered the Earth to be spherical - there was obvious evidence for this from the behaviour of objects near the horizon. This meant that all objects on the surface of the Earth had to be attracted to its centre in some way, otherwise they would fall off. It also required other objects, such as the stars and planets, to float above the earth in relation to its centre, otherwise they would presumably move rapidly away. This argument - reasonable in view of the data available at the time - resulted in a geocentric world view.
When the movements of celestial objects convinced Philolaus that the world must be not only turning on its own axis but revolving around a fixed point elsewhere in space, he was faced with the problem of explaining how a spherical world could move in this way without spilling everything on the surface into space. He came to the conclusion that the directions of up and down do not exist in space, except in that all things must fall towards the center of the universe, around which all things (including the Earth, Sun, and all the planets) must revolve. Our earth must be a practically flat world and the underside of our Earth must face this fiery, central point at all times, otherwise we would fall off.
This created a contradiction within the Pythagorean school of thought. Since planets, in their understanding, were composed of a fiery or ethereal matter having little or no density, they could quite easily rotate eccentric to the Earth without becoming off balance. However, the Earth was obviously made of the dense elements of Earth and Water. If there were a single Earth revolving at some distance from the center of space, the universe's center of balance would not coincide with its spatial center. Since this is the point towards which things fall, the earth must have a counter-balance of the same mass or the universe would be flung apart. This problem led Philolaus to develop idea of a Counter-Earth, a second, flat Earth, identical but opposite to ours in every way. This conception of the solar system is outlined in the diagram at the right, with Counter-Earth referred to as Antichthon. The upper illustration depicts Earth at night while the lower one depicts Earth in the day. (In order to prevent confusion it should be noted that the diagram fails to show that Earth and Counter-Earth are flat and point away from the Central Fire). It is likely that Philolaus believed that the whole orbit of Earth was composed of an ethereal sphere, with the Earth and Counter-Earth being local dense points on the surface.
This theory is a very creditable attempt to incorporate all known cosmological data at the time, and indicates the sophistication of Classical Greek thinking. The ideas of a flat earth, Counter-Earth, and Central Fire were all eventually superseded by the theory of Gravitation which is currently held by the scientific community, that describes a spherical earth rotating around both its own axis and the sun. The Counter-Earth is still a popular motif in science fiction and fantasy writing today, usually serving as an allegory for the real Earth.
In the 1st century A.D., after the idea of a spherical Earth superseded the original Counter-Earth theory, Pomponius Mela, a Latin cosmographer, developed an updated version of the idea, wherein a spherical Earth must have a more or less balanced distribution of land and water. Mela drew the first map on which the mysterious continent of Earth appears in the unknown half of Earth - our antipodes. This continent he inscribed with the name Antichthones.
Scientific analysis
If such a planet actually existed in our current scientific cosmology, as a spherical world that revolved around the sun, it would be permanently hidden behind the sun but nevertheless detectable from Earth, because of its gravitational influence upon the other planets of the Solar System. No such influence has been detected, and indeed space probes sent to Venus, Mars and other places could not have successfully flown by or landed on their targets if a Counter-Earth existed, as it was not accounted for in navigational calculation.
The Sun-Jupiter Trojan asteroid system is an example of a stable Lagrange orbit. However, these linear orbits are not as stable as, for example, the equilateral Lagrange orbits L4 and L5. Hilda asteroids do not visit L3 of Jupiter-Sun system, though they do come close to it in their curious orbits.
Greek Mythology
According to some Greek Mythology, Antichthon was placed between Earth and the center of the universe, the throne of Zeus, to stop man from looking at God directly.>>
------------------------------
Doppelgänger (1969 film)
<<Doppelgänger was a 1969 British science fiction film directed by Robert Parrish. The film was released in the US as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. The crew of a spacecraft journey to a previously unknown planet far side of the Sun, only to seemingly find themselves returning back to the Earth. The storyline is extremely similar to an hour-long episode of the Twilight Zone entitled, The Parallel.
The film begins with the discovery of an unknown planet orbiting exactly the opposite side of the Sun from Earth (an idea reminiscent of the Antichthon or Counter-Earth proposed by Philolaus in the fifth century B.C). The European Space Exploration Council (EUROSEC) and NASA send British astrophysicist John Kane (Ian Hendry) and American astronaut Col. Glenn Ross (Roy Thinnes) to the new planet in a rocket which resembles a Saturn 5 rocket.
During their long voyage, they are put into hibernation, and are maintained by a pair of on board Heart/Lung/Kidney machines, meaning that they will have no recollection of the journey. When they awaken, they enter orbit of the planet and do an initial survey. They find the planet's atmosphere to be breathable but they see no signs of life. They decide to go forward with a landing. They suit up, and go through an access tunnel to reach their lifting body lander which slides out the rear of the mother ship.
As they enter the atmosphere, the ship's controls begin to short out and malfunction. They lose all control of the craft, which clips a mountaintop before crashing into rocky terrain. After the crew is clear of the burning wreckage, a suited figure picks them up into a hovering unfamiliar ship.
They find they have been taken aboard an air-sea rescue craft. It appears that the crew have somehow returned to Earth instead of going to the planet. They are discreetly returned to the space center, with Kane in critical condition. He later dies of his injuries.
Ross is grilled by EUROSEC officials who accuse him of aborting the mission. Ross denies turning back, saying he and Kane actually arrived at the new planet, and could not explain why he is now on Earth.
Soon, Ross puts together the shocking fact that he is not on Earth at all - but on the planet, which is an identical Earth where everything is a mirror image of our own. At first, his own wife Sharon (Lynn Loring) and others at the space agency think he is insane for claiming signs and even the layout of his apartment on the spaceport's base are backwards, but he convinces the director of EUROSEC, Jason Webb (Patrick Wymark) that it is true by easily reading documents and written directions shown as a reflection in a mirror. Ross theorizes that everything that is done on his Earth is done on the planet at the same time, but opposite to it. If he tries to go back, he will return as if nothing happened.
Concern over whether the duplicate shuttle craft he and Kane used to come to Earth from the spaceship share the same electrical charge is raised, but Ross decides to try. He takes off in a shuttle he has named "DOPPELGANGER," meaning "double," (written in our manner of left to right) to dock with the Earth ship he came in to retrieve its flight recorder. But as he docks, the electrical systems short out -- they were wrong, the polarity of electricity is the same on both worlds. He loses contact with the ground base, and his shuttle craft undocks from the ship, hurtling towards the ground with the automatic approach system locked on. This locks out his controls resulting him having no flight control as he decends into the atmosphere. When ground control realizes his situation, they disengage the system, but too late, resulting in the shuttle crashing into a second mission rocket. He is killed instantly and the crash causes a chain reaction of explosions destroying the space center in a style typical of Gerry Anderson production.
The final scene shows an elderly Webb, long ago dismissed as head of the space agency, institutionalized and telling the staff there about what had happened (the disaster had destroyed all evidence). In his dementia, he sees his reflection in a mirror mounted in front of a window, and in an attempt to touch his mirror self, crashes through the mirror and window to fall to his death.>>