Starship Asterisk*

Damn RJN he's just changed the way I speak. I was reading this and pronounced Uranus You RAN us. I was old school before and liked the giggle, I'm a changed man :(. As for the suns equator and whatsit, I have no idea, I'll keep up and see if I learn something. Paul Human beings are rather big and c...

I am not sure how a flipped star in a binary system causes retrograde orbits of neighboring planets. Flipping would cause retrograde spin of the star, but how are the orbits affected by this process? The rotational direction of the star is what defines "prograde" and "retrograde"...

If these two young planets had had a near miss instead then the smaller one of them could easily have gone retrograde. I don't see that as likely. I think the energy required to reverse the orbital direction of a planet (as opposed to its rotational direction) would probably destroy the planet. I g...

What is the most current explanation for the Sun's equator being inclined 7 degrees to the ecliptic plane ? And Jupiter, the biggest constituent of angular momentum in the solar system is inclined about 6 degrees to the Sun's equator. Saturn is inclined about 4.5 degrees to the Sun's equator. Is not...

1) The main angular momentum constituent of the solar system: Jupiter has an inclination of over 6° vis-a-vis the solar equator. 1) Earth, itself, has an inclination of over 7° vis-a-vis the solar equator. 2) Our solar system used to have a planet with an inclination of almost 35° to the invariant ...

Would Solar rotational dynamics allow for a stable rotation and still allow the star to slowly tumble (rotate along 2 axis') Maybe. More likely than tumbling, however, would be some kind of interaction that just tipped the star's axis. It happens to planets (like Venus). It seems to me a simpler ex...

I realize there are no models, but could not the hypothetical source be as well the formation and condensation of recent dense intermolecular clouds (DMCs) in interstellar space? I think if that were the case you'd expect rocky material as well as icy material. Out of tens of thousands of specimens...

Do all the Exosolar Planets observed to date (assuming the necessary information is observed) have prograde orbits with respect to their binary star orbits ? I would think that for binaries and their planets to be created angular momentum would have to be conserved making prograde orbits a necessary...

How do we know the Oort Cloud does exist other than postulate its existence because a source for comets is needed? It is hypothetical. But the need for a cometary source, the observed orbits of some comets, the observed orbits of a handful of KBOs, and some well regarded models provide enough evide...

I stand corrected; the majority of observed stars to date are single stars per Wikipedia. There exists a reference, "Binary Star Formation from Rotational Fragmentation". Can anybody summarize in a few sentences how this fragmentation occurs especially for close binaries? Doug Ettinger Pit...

Very cold objects are rather black in the infrared.* Likely the material is of a type that has to be very cold in order to remain collected by the objects that hold it. That almost also assures one that they would have to be very far from a star. I really don't see the point you are trying to make....

Thanks, Art. I was not sure whether anti-parallel meant something other than about 180 degrees difference in spin. Do you find the similarities of small particles and the large bodies in our solar system and in other star systems as mind boggling ? Are we actually witnessing dimensionless physics an...

Neufer, did you actually have that story memorized? It is an interesting analogy. We are witnessing the wrecks of galaxies; can we apply our minds to the situation like George did ? I presume you also know the stories about the relationships between Tesla, Edison, Westinghouse and JP Morgan. If you ...

Almost all the individual stars for each binary star system formed at the same time (which I recently learned). The majority of stars are binaries; single stars and other multiple systems represent the remainder of star systems. How does the nebula hypothesis or any other hypothesis address the form...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCYApJtsyd0 [list]If you ever plan to motor west, Travel my way, take the highway that is best. Get your kicks on M66. It winds from chicago to l.a., More than two thousand miles all the way. Get your kicks on M66. Now you go through saint looey Joplin, missouri, And ...

If you have a close look at what an astronomer would call "streams of brown gas" in the arms, you would see that they are filamentary in structure, In some places you can see that these filaments are twisted. Gravity does not do this. Neither does wind off nearby stars or the theoretical ...

Bart, have you ever tried to model two elliptical galaxies coming close together to form a spiral galaxy? Do you experiment with different masses for the center of the galaxy?

Doug Ettinger
Pittsburgh, PA

Gravitation obeys the inverse square law . The force of gravity varies inversely with the square of the distance between objects. The vast distances between galactic clusters would imply a very weak gravitational force. Actually, this gravitational force does act over a distance proportional to the...

Art or Neufer, I like your equation. I will remember you when I need to find or derive an appropriate equation. In fact, I could use an equation. Assume one smaller spherical body, m1, strikes another spherical body, m2, toward its center of gravity but at a certain angle, A, between the two veloci...

Sirius B is now a white dwarf that was postulated to be about 5 solar masses before it exploded. So then the age of the system is determined by the temp-lum. relationship of Sirius A. And Sirius B's age, about 123 million years, is estimated by how long the postulated life span of a 5 solar mass is....

Chris, thanks for your patience. I now know where dark matter is located in the minds of the theorists.

Let's assume a vacuum and similar lateral motions for three particles (keeping it simple) and a curvilinear trajectory that is imperceptible at orbital ranges at AU distances. If these particle's changing distances develop so that they attract and cling to each other, the sum of the momentum vectors...

I am getting closer to the truth. Gravity explains the distribution of "luminous" mass in our solar system and other star systems. Gravity can explain the distribution of "luminous" masss in galaxies and in galaxy clusters by adding dark matter to the "luminous" mass in...

I make an interesting point which I am sure you will amend. The orbiting dust that supposely accretes to make planets moves faster at smaller radii than at larger radii. This scenario should actually create spins in the opposite direction of the orbits for accreting bodies. It is like one rotating ...

So astronomers believe that they can detect most of the galaxial material via electromagnetic radiation. I believe that's the case. Early after dark matter was hypothesized, people looked at the possibility that it was simply ordinary matter too cool to detect. But that idea has been largely discar...