L
lk_radhika
Guest
Planets revolve around the sun in elliptical paths. Why?
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M
MeRkiLy
Guest
okay all about inertia... in a sence. the planets are "falling"
the gravity of hte sun pulls
the inertia of hte planet pulls in the opposite way.
in a way all the planets are falling tword the sun. but the inertia keeps them going..
if you had a metal ball on a rope, and spun around. the rope woudl reprosent hte gravity, you woudl represtent the sun, and the ball woudl represent the planet.
as you spin., the planet goes further out intill the maximum length of the rope has been met.
when you let go (the equivelent of the sun loosing gravity like immediatly) then the ball woudl keep going.
the gravity of hte sun pulls
the inertia of hte planet pulls in the opposite way.
in a way all the planets are falling tword the sun. but the inertia keeps them going..
if you had a metal ball on a rope, and spun around. the rope woudl reprosent hte gravity, you woudl represtent the sun, and the ball woudl represent the planet.
as you spin., the planet goes further out intill the maximum length of the rope has been met.
when you let go (the equivelent of the sun loosing gravity like immediatly) then the ball woudl keep going.
S
Self B
Guest
In a gravitational two-body problem with the eccentricity in this range both bodies follow similar elliptic orbits with the same orbital period around their common barycenter. Also the relative position of one body with respect to the other follows an elliptic orbit.
Any classical system of two particles is, by definition, a two-body problem. In many cases, however, one particle is significantly heavier than the other, e.g., the Earth and the Sun. In such cases, the heavier particle is approximately the center of mass, and the reduced mass is approximately the lighter mass. Hence, the heavier mass may be treated roughly as a fixed center of force, and the motion of the lighter mass may be solved for directly by one-body methods.
Any classical system of two particles is, by definition, a two-body problem. In many cases, however, one particle is significantly heavier than the other, e.g., the Earth and the Sun. In such cases, the heavier particle is approximately the center of mass, and the reduced mass is approximately the lighter mass. Hence, the heavier mass may be treated roughly as a fixed center of force, and the motion of the lighter mass may be solved for directly by one-body methods.
E
eelfins
Guest
You could start by saying that all planets follow curved paths because they just follow the space-time curvature created by the sun's gravity. A perfect orbit will be a circular one, because a circle is just an ellipse with no eccentricity. A perfect orbit would exactly match angular velocity with gravity, producing a circle. Consider something with a highly eccentric orbit, however: a comet. A comet falls almost directly towards the sun, but still has enough angular velocity to miss it. As it falls towards the sun it uses its gravitational potential to gain further speed until it swings around and begins falling away this time, losing its momentum again but gaining back its gravitation potential. So the speed of the comet varies depending on its distance from the sun in an endless cycle. A planet, therefore, would be somewhere between a perfectly circular orbit and a highly eccentric or elliptical one.