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Happy New Years!


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I'm sorry but I stick at celebrating a centenary or a millenium. They're rare events you'll see once, if ever, in your lifetime.

Years are totally common things, I've only been around for 34 of them, and I've already seen..erm...34.

Big deal.

What next - celebrate every new month? Every new week?

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Hahahha - I can't believe you fell for that.

THat's what you get for trying to be a smartass, there's always someone who knows more than you...

THe Earth does not orbit around the sun, the Earth orbits around a common center of gravity it shares with the sun (which granted,is quite close to the center of the sun, becasue of the huge differential in mass, but Jupiter's comon center of gravity is right outside the Sun)

Anyway, if you're going to celebrate that orbit, then there's equal reason to celebrate the Moon's orbit around the common center of gravity it shares with the Earth every (almost) month, because technically speaking, the Earth also orbits that center of gravity once as well.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Hahahha - I can't believe you fell for that.

THat's what you get for trying to be a smartass, there's always someone who knows more than you...

 

Don't assume that because I didn't mention it, I wasn't aware of it.

 

THe Earth does not orbit around the sun, the Earth orbits around a common center of gravity it shares with the sun (which granted,is quite close to the center of the sun, becasue of the huge differential in mass, but Jupiter's comon center of gravity is right out side the Sun)

 

Indeed. Although if you want to be picky, the Earth still does orbit "around the Sun", just not around the Sun's centre of mass.

 

Anyway, if you're going to celebrate that orbit, then there's equal reason to celebrate the Moon's orbit around the common center of gravity it shares with the Earth every month, becasue technically speaking, the Earth also orbits that center of gravity as well.

 

Which is why I don't celebrate any such event. I don't see the point in celebrating something which happens regularly and affects everyone, the only things worth celebrating in my view are significant one-off achievements (getting promoted, graduation, releasing the Dark Mod, whatever is of value to the individual concerned).

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Don't assume that because I didn't mention it, I wasn't aware of it.

Indeed. Although if you want to be picky, the Earth still does orbit "around the Sun", just not around the Sun's centre of mass.

It isn't orbiting around the sun's center of mass at all, it's orbiting around the common center of mass it shares with the sun - that's not the same thing at all

For example, the common center of mass the sun shares with Jupiter is right outside the sun, so both the sun and jupiter are orbiting around that point.

If there were two stars witht he same mass, the orbital center woulld be right in the middle.

With the Earth being so much less massive than the sun, the common center of mass is near the sun's center of mass, but not quite, so the sun does actually have to orbit around that common center of mass as well.

It's one of the techniques they use to detect planets around other stars, since the star's small orbits around these common centers, give tiny red and blue shifts.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Years are also important symbols because they mark a complete growing season from beginning to end. I dont believe anyone was ever interested in celebrating the length of time it takes one body to orbit another per say but rather the fact that one period of sowing, harvesting, and wintering over was about to repeat itself. Its probably not the only thing people celebrate it for but it would be a natural framework to view the seasons through and a global one too.

 

Centuries were extremely long periods of time within the viewpoint of pre-moderns from whom celebrating the new year arose, consider the fact that today the lifespan of a human can extend to around 80 percent of a century while only 200 years ago a century would have probably encompassed three and a half generations.

 

Millenia are such huge units of time that they figure mostly in myth and prophecy. Although they refer to a thousand year period specifically, amongst the Romans to say a "thousand" was often a popular convention similar to the term "zillion", essentially too many to count. I know that Romans understood what a thousand really was, Im referring to a popular usage of the term. I would bet millenia played a similar role, a span of time in which the Gods operated, not man.

 

I didnt know that the center of orbit was off center from the sun but it makes sense when you say it.

 

 

Happy New Annual Orbit Period fellow Terrestrials!

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Happy new year !

:D

 

The earth goes around the sun, I think we can all agree on that.

 

 

The moon, BTW, does not really 'circle' the earth, it's more a case of zig-zag's back and forth as the earth goes around the sun, which from our point of view makes it look like the moon is circling the earth.

 

Mind you, the sun will not be standing still either, so I guess the same is true for the earth.

 

 

 

 

Good point about the seasonal cycles, Maximus.

 

 

If you want to go really wild, you could celebrate the sun's orbit around the milky way:

http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/s.../ds/990602.html

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Happy new year !

:D

 

The earth goes around the sun, I think we can all agree on that.

Yes, but equally, it 'goes around' anything that's always fully inside it's orbit. So you can say it goes around Venus.

Orbit is used to describe specifically it's movement around a central point, and since the central point of Earth's orbit is not the center of the sun, it is not orbiting the sun.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Well oDDity if you want to be super pedantic, I'm sure you are aware that orbits are elliptical, and so the word 'centre' is misleading anyway.

 

And yes, the mass of other planets forms part of the equasion which determines our path around the sun.

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WHatever word you use to describe the focal point of the orbit, it sin't the sun's cener of mass.

BTW, did you know there are only 8 planets?

Pluto is actually just part of the Kuiper belt, and there are probably hundreds of similar sized objects out there, several almost as big as pluto have been dectected already. The fact it has a smaller body in orbit makes no difference, since many of the asteriods have smaller asteroids orbit.

It will probably be demoted at some point in the future to just another Kuiper belt object.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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The moon, BTW, does not really 'circle' the earth, it's more a case of zig-zag's back and forth as the earth goes around the sun, which from our point of view makes it look like the moon is circling the earth.

 

All motion is relative, there is no such thing as absolute motion. Therefore the "path" taken by any object will be different depending on your frame of reference.

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Exactly.

 

WHatever word you use to describe the focal point of the orbit, it sin't the sun's cener of mass.

You are of course correct in saying that.

 

BTW, did you know there are only 8 planets?

Pluto is actually just part of the Kuiper belt, and there are probably hundreds of similar sized objects out there, several almost as big as pluto have been dectected already. The fact it has a smaller body in orbit makes no difference, since many of the asteriods have smaller asteroids orbit.

It will probably be demoted at some point in the future to just another Kuiper belt object.

Yes, Pluto is not considered an equal of Mercury, last I heard they were alternatively talking about having different 'grades' of planets.

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It's only the speed that's relative.

Thats' why sci-fi shows like star wars and star trek are nonsense.

IT shows people going off in a space ship at the speed of light, traveling to another system 50 million light years away, staying for a few days and then coming back home.

When they get back home, everything is the same as when they left it.

What actually would happen if you travelled 50 million light years away at the speed of light and came back again, is that you would find yourself 100 million years into the future of your home planet.

THis is because as you near C, time slows down realative to you, until if you could actually reach the C itself (which you couldn't) time would stop altogeter, meaning that you could instantly travel anywhere in the universe.

Think of it like this - photons don't age, time doesn't pass for them. To us, it's takes a photon 50 million years to traverse the distance from a star that's 50 million light years away, but to the photon, the journey is instantaneous.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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