a. the outer planets b. comets.

Last edited Sat Dec 26, 2015, 05:55 PM - Edit history (1)

likely revolving more slowly.

"Scary", only if all of the laws of the universe suddenly fail. It's important to keep in mind, that all motion is relative.

That's what I keep telling my wife when she tells me to get off my fat ass

Thanks!

It makes more sense than the concept of the solar system being stationary in the "vastness of space".

How fast it moves around the sun and travels through the universe. Their eyes just glaze over.

...is going to collide with Andromeda in a billion years or so. Should make for interesting skies Earthside.

It's going to be a bounty of data and beauty

Final outcome is expected to be a single elliptical galaxy but there will be several passes thru in the course of its formation.

Once it's begun, if we're still here and not somewhere out there. The data recorded over the long term should be epic.

...it is expected to take another couple of billion years for the two galaxies to stabilize into a single elliptical galaxy. Oddly, collisions between the stars are not expected to be much of a problem because there's so much space between them. The two galaxies will essentially pass right through one another, but because of interaction with the gas clouds they will slow a bit and reconverge. I've seen an animation of it that I can't find right now which is quite dramatic.

Rotate the image 90 degrees , if you wish. The horizontal and vertical is all relative to what (?) in space when you think about it.

the core of our galaxy.

Makes me wonder how fast the sun is travelling in our galaxy.

Probably a good thing too...all the different directions and velocity would be like being constantly car sick imo.

Otherwise we'd all have vertigo like nobody's business.

like that? I will take our tiny local relativity to the vast galatic one any day of the week. Wait...I can feel the ginormous black hole (allegedly) pulling at my shoes! It wants my shoes...argghh!!!

from my time at sea. Nausea always got worse when I couldn't see the ocean waves but still felt their movement.

It would be a promise to barfing somewhere down the road.

Last edited Sat Dec 26, 2015, 10:33 PM - Edit history (1)

perhaps the sanest, most lucid, most eloquent voice of our time. We are far poorer for his passing, but far, far richer for his having lived--and sharing our world with us.

money money money money money money money money money money money...

I love learning about the universe (and know very little). The solar system is in motion like this? I seriously didn't know this.

Very cool!

Though the video is a considerable over-simplification.

This is a flawed model by a long shot.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/04/vortex_motion_viral_video_showing_sun_s_motion_through_galaxy_is_wrong.html

If it were so we'd all be nauseous.

Than an image of the sun just hanging in space with the planets carefully spinning around it. That moving image looks like the planets are being dragged along by the sun. Which really makes more sense than everything just sitting in stillness.

Good thing too, because being left behind would be bad news.

That would be a terrific screen saver.

It's pretty, but it is far-far-far from appearing anything like this.

Love your handle.
You rang my bell with that post as it seems to be contrary to the general vibes under this post.
Will you describe why it is not ?

Are you a star traveler with evidence?

Personally, I have beliefs that this rock we live on has been visited many times.
Discovering the existence of clay tablets thousands of years old accurately depicting the cosmos
was very - how could they have known that ? - thought provoking.

Consider the innermost planet, Mercury. It is 41.6 solar diameters away from the sun. In the gif image we are considering, the Sun is approximately 1/4 of an inch in diameter. This means the innermost planet would be about ten inches away from the Sun, well outside the entire screen showing all the planets.

The diameter of the planet Mercury is 1/285th that of the Sun, so at the scale we are considering, Mercury would be smaller than a a third of a pixel.

The largest planet, Jupiter would be 1/10 of the diameter of the Sun (so less than a millimeter in diameter compared to the image of the Sun in the gif. and it would be about four meters (13 feet) away from the Sun.

The zoominess of the image is also misleading, as the background stars would not move that quickly.

Finally the motion of the Solar System as it moves around the Milky Way isn't like the Sun is driving around with a bunch of streamers following behind it. The primary motion of the solar system in relation to the center of the galaxy is not along a path through the perpendicular axis of the system, but actually at a marked angle in a different direction. More like a bolo or a frisbee (but even that is misleading given the huge relative distances and teensy-weensie sizes of the objects that make up the system.)

Anyway, I've seen this graphic before, and at best it shows that the system does not move like a flat orrery sliding across the astronomy professors desk.
?resize=640%2C556
But the OP is far more misleading than it is educational.

The gif looks cool but really gives a false impression.

My point earlier, poorly made, was that if you take away the streamers and turn the whole image 90 degrees, it looks like every solar model I've ever seen.

And it makes total sense now that I see it. Thanks for posting it!

Always interesting to see it pop up again.

Don't tell me it ain't so.

Probably the best recent article on it is from 2013 at Bad Astronomy:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/04/vortex_motion_viral_video_showing_sun_s_motion_through_galaxy_is_wrong.html

Even without the link from upthread, give it some thought and you'll realize it is at best misleading.

It seems logical, what with our current knowledge regarding red shift measuring of solar bodies movements toward, or away from our position in its vastness.
I can't believe our Sol is stationary in space without some informed sources.
Our known planets seem to have been there, in their measure-able orbits, for millenia. (or longer for all we know)

As I just posted to the other response, the best place to stay is with Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy fame:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/04/vortex_motion_viral_video_showing_sun_s_motion_through_galaxy_is_wrong.html

No, the sun is not stationary in space, and yes, the entire solar system moves around the galaxy (which likewise moves, etc) but that is not what is intrinsically wrong with this video.

Thanks for the thread, packman.

But people sure love the pretty colors.