Minutephysics, I have one small critique. This was a very interesting video, and the little notes yoy kept putting up on screen made it more so, but if you are going to do that, can you leave the note up slightly longer? With each note only being up for about a second, on mobile I was struggling to pause the video fast enough to actually read the note. Each time one appeared I had to back up the video and try again 2 or 3 times. Its a small thing, but I hope you consider it.
first time viewer, and I came here to say the same thing. Plus the position of the notes means that they're hidden by the video progress bar when paused.
@@trevinbeattie4888 Changing playback speed or rewinding frame-by-frame is a lot harder on mobile. I'm a PC and still have to pause, hit back, then frame-step to find and read the notes. I love the notes, but have *always* wanted them to be just slightly easier to read.
Jupiter's moons Io and Europa (and minor moons closer to Jupiter - Metis, Amalthea, Adrastea, and Thebe) form loops. So do Saturn's moons Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys and Dione. So do Uranus's inner moons Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Cupid, Perdita, Belinda, Puck, and Mab; and Neptune's inner moons Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Larissa, Hippocamp, and Proteus, although most of them are tiny moons under 100km. Moral of the story: there are a ton of moons in this solar system.
Haha I think this is the first video where I ALREADY knew the answer. My science teacher in school told us that the Moon's orbit from the perspective of the Sun would look like an Imarti (it's a sweet dish that looks spirally, google it ). But I wasn't sure so I tried to create an entire animation in After Effects and tried to be as close to 'scale' and correct orbital periods as possible. Eventually I found that the Moon barely curves at all and for all intents and purposes, the orbit is quite circular
This is why time travel movies should also factor in orbital drift. Even if you can tether the time machine to heliocentrism, where you're standing on Earth isn't the same as where that spot was 5 minutes ago.
Also, the Sun is moving through the galaxy at tremendous speed. And the galaxy is moving through space at some huge speed, and so on. There is no fixed grid to any of this, so your hypothetical time machine would have a hard time figuring out where to put you.
But there's in fact no absolute reference frame at all; it makes just as much sense to travel back in time in the reference frame of, well, yourself, as it does to choose the reference frame of the sun or Earth.
The only time travel show or movie that ever addressed this was the old show Seven Days. A lower budget UPN show but it had an interesting concept with a few really good episodes….. but they said they needed a pilot because when they’d leave, the Earth wouldn’t be in the same place when they’d arrive 7 days ago
The Phosphorus atom that is in the right 17th phosphodiester bond of the MC1R gene on the 3rd neuron of my hypothalamus orbits the Sun independently of me ☺️
@@CaseyHancocki3luefire Oh yeah. The Gluon between the two up quarks of the proton #7 of that exact phosphorus atom is orbiting the Sun independently of me
No, because Sagittarius A* does not dominate the galaxy in the way that the Sun dominates the solar system. The Sun alone has enough gravity to capture allmost all of the bodies in the solar system, but Sagittarius A* only has enough gravity to capture a fairly small section of the galaxy, and the rest is held in by the gravity of all the stars and dust in the galaxy. That black hole is the largest contributor, and it is at the shared center, but it is still only a small part of the whole.
My limited understanding is that we cannot account for 95% of the gravity holding galaxies together. We call that 95% "dark matter", but it is really something we cannot understand yet. It could be a new type of particle, a crucial error in our models, some kind of spacetime curvature or even influence from another universe.
@2:00 I love that to demonstrate a change in the moons orbit you seem to show it colliding with some kind of object, with a little explosion. Very neat detail.
Given the bit later in the video about how even a point on Earth's surface isn't going around fast enough to loop, I would venture to guess that the Moon has never been close enough to make loops. The Earth is just traveling too quickly around the Sun for that to happen. If Earth's speed moving through space around the Sun were slower, then it could make loops (though we might, at that point, not be traveling fast enough to sustain orbit).
That was my first intuition, but then the orbital speed when you get close enough is much faster than Earth's diurnal period (the ISS orbits in 90 minutes or so--does the ISS make spirals?)
@@apollomartin6572For it to make a spiral, it would have to be traveling faster than the earth's motion when it's going opposite to it. Looking at the speeds, the iss travels 30,000km/h relative to the earth, but the earth's orbital velocity is over 100,000km/h. So it seems even the iss is not fast enough to create spirals.
You crammed an insane amount of knowledge, terminology, wit, graphics, math, physics and animations into one gem. Terrible for me and my type of people, who either will need rewatching this video 50 times at 0.25x or need an hour long documentary to even comprehend. Still loved the video
The situation is similar! The moon never does any loops relative to the center of the galaxy. It is moving 230km/s around the center of the galaxy, 29 km/s around the sun, and 1 km/s around the earth. So during a full moon in January, it is moving 260 km/s relative to Sagittarius A*, and during a full moon in July it only slows down to 200 km/s, never going backwards. However, it does have outwards curvature (the acceleration towards the sun is 10^-6 km/s^2 compared to 10^-13 km/s^2 toward the center of the galaxy), so it falls into the "wobbles" section of the graph, shaped kinda like a flower with 2 billion petals rather than a polygon with 2 billion sides.
@@Reptilia12 I had a sci fi comic in which people would use time travel to get from China to the USA since, upon time traveling, the location coordinates of the user would stay in the same in the reference frame of the Milky Way
After 3 years of actual physics classes in uni, it’s really interesting to be able to fully grasp what you’re saying beyond the surface level What’s also interesting is that nowadays, the speed at which you explain things really makes it seem like “Minute Physics” when comparing to a normal class
I had a professor tell me the physics program should be 5 years, not 4, due to all the stuff we need to cover. Among the topics they chose to cut, this was one of them. It makes sense, since this appears to be more about geometry than core physics. It's one of those things that seems obvious in hindsight.
At @1:31 we see that there is a sort of phase transition in loops, wobbles and convex orbits. Can this be studied using known techniques in stat mech? We could introduce orbital distance of the center of force as something that has a Boltzmann distribution to be peaked around the actual trajectory and a temperature parameter that fluctuations?
Doesn't the centrifugal force exactly cancel out the force of gravity for any body in orbit? Because in the rotating reference frame they aren't accelerating towards or away from the sun (assuming a circular orbit). Wouldn't the Earth's gravity be greater than sun minus centrifugal (zero) no matter where the moon is?
ive heard that Moon's gravitational attraction to Earth is indeed greater than any effective centrifugal force acting on it due to Earth's rotation around the Sun. But still not very sure
to me, what cemented it for me that it's futile is when the 3 body problem is brought up there as it shows that very nature of the 3 body problem being a chaotic system is why it's non-deterministic
Interesting. That explanation has implications for the definition of a planet by the IAU since under that definition the Earth would arguably be a dwarf planet like Pluto rather than an actual planet
I think that our definition of the word "planet" is almost certainly flawed, but in order to properly clean it up we probably need to do a lot of studies of exoplanets, just to get more points of data and more edge-cases
I get your question I think. You think that if the sun pulls harder than the earth, the moon would be leaving the earth and spiral towards the sun, right? The thing is, the sun pulls at the earth as well. This means the moon as well as the earth keep their orbit as they both also have a forward motion. I guess the moon will be a bit closer to the earth when passing behind it, and a bit further from earth when it's between the earth and the sun.
Let me rephrase, In inertial frame, Sun's force on moon is more than earth's force on moon. So the net force on moon towards sun In video he said in rotating frame, (somehow) earth's force is dominant. How come?
@@soyanshumohapatra yeah and that centripetal force is net resultant of sun's and earth's gravitational force, which comes out to be in the direction of sun
I believe it is also the case for the Sun and Jupiter, which showcases that even if one body is much more dominant than the other (unlike Plutocharon which is a much closer match), distance increases more quickly than mass can. I wonder how far away from the sun you'd need to put an apple for the barycentre of that system to be outside the sun.
@@MarkusAldawn SO DO I NOW! So I asked Copilot lol Using the d = r*Mapple / Msun formula "So the apple would need to be more than 6.928×10^36 km away from the Sun. And, for reference, the observable universe is estimated to be about 8.8×10^26 km in diameter."
Is this the reason why the moon is slowly moving away from earth, because the moon can be described mathematically as orbiting the sun, just in a close proximity to the earth? Or is that purely explained by the interaction between the earth and moon and its loss of angular momentum?
That is pretty complicated, depending on lots of factors and the drifting has a complicated history. The Moon will stop drifting away from the Earth and will eventually end up about 50,000km further out than it is today at about 450,000km.
Eh loss of angular momentum would cause the moon to spiral inward, no? iirc it's because of the leftover energy from the Earth-Thea collision which formed the moon.
@@feynstein1004 The Earth is losing angular momentum by giving it to the Moon, so the moon is moving outwards. It's because the Earth is rotating faster than the Moon is orbiting, so the continents crash into the tidal bulge of the oceans every day and feel a little drag force every time, slowing the Earth down. In turn, the continents push the tidal bulge of the oceans a little ahead of where it should be, and the gravity of the oceans pulls the moon a little ahead in its orbit making it orbit faster.
@@feynstein1004 It's a great example of conservation of angular momentum. The Earth's spin slows down due to the tides, but the angular momentum has to be conserved, so it is transferred to the moon as an increase in orbital angular momentum. The Moon speeds up and orbits at a higher altitude.
@@patrickskelly8517 It's worth noting that a higher energy orbit is actually slower, given that it's higher up. Astronauts actually ran into this problem during the earliest attempt at a rendezvous - trying to burn towards an object you're behind results in falling further behind as your orbit rises.
3:18 Sorry, but having such long notes in the video only for a very short amount is nothing but a bad idea. If you don't understand what I'm talking about try to pause on the note with a mobile player. Then you will understand. (So either make the note stay longer, or make it short enough to be read while on display, or talk about it, or just leave it out).
Now we are opening another can of worms: Should the Earth's Moon be considered a dwarf planet just like Pluto? Or maybe Earth should also be a dwarf planet since it technically hasn't cleared its orbit of another massive object as it is technically co-orbiting with the Moon?
No. 3:35 This defines whether we are 2 dwarf planets or a Planet and a Moon. If the center of mass was outside, we would be. Keep in mind, the Earth's Moon is very large compared to it's planet relative to every single planet in our solar system.
Dwarf planet is a term used to suggest that it would not be capable of clearing its neighbourhood of rival bodies. Pluto is much smaller than the overall cloud of things like it, and could not act to clear it all by ejecting them, drawing it into itself, making it a satellite, or have an orbital resonance. The Moon is big enough that if the Earth didn't exist, it would be capable of doing the same thing that the Earth does for the things between Venus and Mars, which the Moon is just as far from as Earth is. The Earth would be a planet regardless of what the Moon is classified as. The Moon is still always going along with the Earth in an obvious pair, always moving with it at basically the same speed and location around the Sun.
I love me some minute physics! The fact this video involves astronomy is even better! Thank you for still being around after all of these years and still educating!
Earth's orbit around the Sun is also not a circle... because the Sun is moving, and very quickly (for human terms) around the galaxy, so Earth's orbit traces out what looks like a distorted sinusoidal wave. As do all the other bits of our solar system that are not really close to the Sun. So yes, *reference frames matter when discussing motion.*
We should be thinking in terms of energy (either specific orbital energy or C3). The Moon has negative energy relative to both the Earth and the Sun, therefore it is gravitationally bound to and orbiting both at the same time. From there, deciding which one it "orbits more" than the other is just a matter of interpretation.
From what I saw they would be possible as long as the earth and moon were not in the same place at the same time. They’d probably have some pretty close calls though.
So the moon orbits the earth when the earth orbits the Sun and the Sun pulls harder on the moon but according to the hill radius THE EARTH pulls harder on the moon. What I'm trying to conclude here is the moon orbits the Earth and the moon also doesn't orbit the Earth because it orbits the Sun. It's that simple.
To clarify for anyone thinking this changed their understanding of the moon orbiting the Earth: "Pulling each other" - the Earth pulls the moon a lot more than the moon pulls the Earth, thus when the moon goes behind the Earth from a heliocentric perspective, its not the Earth coming forwards but the Earth pulling the moon back. Yes there's a barycentre but that doesn't mean the moon is not orbiting the Earth. This is a classic 'reference frame' problem, and you can see this happening even with spacecraft launched to the moon (Artemis 1 DRO) where it appears to orbit the Earth and only nudged by the moon but from a lunar reference frame it perfectly orbits the moon. That's why these 3 body problems are more effectively solved in a rotating coordinate system. The moon is validly orbiting the Earth. Think about the moon's orbital plane shifted to polar, where it goes above and below the Earth and ahead and behind. That would then appear as if the moon is just slowing and speeding up when sideways to the sun and when facing the sun it would make a sinusoidal pattern. So, don't be confused by trajectories looking different in different reference frames, because whether the moon makes a spiral or square or hexagon it is always orbiting both the Earth and the Sun.
I just want to point out the inaccuracies in this video. I'm rather annoyed that this video negated one massive detail which changes the complexity of this system as a whole, that is to say: how do you account for the huge gravitational pull from yo momma?
I feel like the question is presented in a way where orbiting one object means you are orbiting exclusively that object. Whereas looking at just the pictures without any emotional flavor, we can clearly see that it is simply doing both at the same time. The moon orbits the Earth and it also orbits the Sun. Partially because Earth orbits the Sun, partially because everything within the Sun's gravity well orbits the Sun. There is nothing weird or somehow vague and uncertain.
4:18 take the lines you added away and we are back to looking the the moon orbits the earth. So yes it's a three body problem but only just. Hence in our day to day life we can ignore it and just go with the moon orbiting the earth.
Correct me if I'm wrong. While this does make a certain amount of sense, it also assumes that the earth and moon were always orbiting on the exact same plane. So yes, this is one way of looking at orbits, but like so many things is only true "from a certain point of view."
@@glennac As I said, this assumes they are on the same plane, which I don't believe to be the case. Looking at this and assuming that all the planets, etc are on the same plane in the top-down view is a good way to make very incorrect assumptions similar to people looking at a map and deciding the Earth must be flat.
2:50 I think that you might be meaning to refer to the edge of the Hill sphere (or Roche sphere if you’re pedantic like me). To my knowledge the Chevotarev sphere has no application in this example.
It was exaggerated to drive home the fact that it revolves slower than assumed by most. None of these animations are actually drawn to perfect scale…you couldn’t even animate the actual distance between the moon and the sun on a youtube video frame since it is so large of a distance (the moon would be invisible). It’s all for imagery in relation to the script. The script is key. You’re literally nit-picking the tiniest of “errors” that are not even errors.
So did you even have to consider that the barycenter (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter_(astronomy) ) is outside of the sun? depending on which "elements" could be combined?
@@maxthexpfarmer3957 theyre suggesting the moon belonged to some random planet despite the composition of the moon being identical to earth i.e it was made from earth itself.
Aside from you using the term "centrifugal effects", this is pretty interesting. There are no centrifugal forces, so these "effects" have to be clarified a bit. Maybe I'm being pedantic, but being a physicist I just hate the term "centrifugal force", and lay people may think there's a centrifugal force when you say centrifugal effects.
@@cybermonkeys I am a physicist; I implied that in my comment. I know about non-inertial frames, and the apparent forces that appear because of being in a non-inertial frame of reference. I was simply wondering what "centrifugal effects" the video is referring to, since it is a bit vague on that, and it I think it could be misleading to some people without that further clarification. But, oh well, three body problems are so darn complex, and very interesting. I guess I would have liked a slightly longer video.
@@cybermonkeys no argument there. Unfortunately there are very few channels that explain science to the layman adequately. At least these guys don't say completely wrong things, but they are a tad superficial in their exposition. It was nice discussing the subject with you, brief as it is. You take care too.
@@cybermonkeys Oh, that's old stuff I did at the start of COVID for the classes I was teaching at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. They are in Spanish because I teach in at a Mexican university. Later on I didn't post more videos because the university started using MS software for meetings where the students took classes online, and the lectures could be recorded there. I still intend on doing a complete version of the courses I usually teach here on YouTUbe, but I have not had time to do so. I am better prepared for doing that, but it would still require a lot of work. And likewise, nice to meet you too.
Thanks for the information, your students were very lucky to have a teacher, who was able to adapt quickly to the situation, so they could continue there studies. My own adventure into the deeper realms of Physics understanding began at around the same time. When I unfortunately encountered a supposed teacher, who didn't possess the same humility or integrity, as you've obviously shown to your students. He has become convinced that inertia or the centrifugal force is not a thing, and plays no role in the orbital motion of objects in space. On one occasion he even told me that Sir Issac Newton was a failed scientist. You can read about the rest of the saga, on a short presentation my friend made, called "What school gets wrong about tides, inertia and spacetime." You'd be very welcome to participate in the discussion if you find the time. Keep up the good work. Thank you.
For this school year I have a project of representing the orbit of the moon around the sun, I used complexe numbers in an equation on geogebra and I'm relieved to see that I got the same looking orbit as you. Thanks for your video !
Didn’t expect to have my entire conception of the Moon decompiled today, but here we are.
Thank you for making me feel young again.
The sun is HUGE
If you don't remember Spirograph you can't be that old!
ua-cam.com/video/LbvmKzf_wr4/v-deo.html
As well as feeling a little silly to be honest.
So Ducktales was right.
Welcome to the planet Moon.
now that they explain it, it makes complete sense... how about that.
The three body annoyance
Technically not a 3 body problem 😅
Because the sun is so massive. Everything is a 3 body problem or nothing is lol
the triple corporeal inconvenience
@@Irondragon1945 the tri-object dilemma
@@travisderthick9361 It absolutely is a three body problem. The fact the sun is much bigger really doesn't matter.
Jupiter would like to have a word
0:49 The ancients amongst us were just reminded of the Spirograph...
Oh yeah !
Yup!
amon.. amo... amongu... a... amo..
Oh, thanks for that. First thing I thought of.
My thought exactly. I'm older than the original Kenner Spirograph, the toy introduced in 1965 (though invented earlier, and based on earlier toys).
2:12 absolutely mental movement right there
What it looks like when you add a number in Universe Sandbox(if it doesn't instantly cause a collision)
@@BierBart12 honestly yeah
😂😂
Deja vu
GEDDAN
1:32 is a poster just begging to be sold. I was fully captivated by it for at least 10 minutes. Bravo for all you've achieved on this channel Henry!
Minutephysics, I have one small critique. This was a very interesting video, and the little notes yoy kept putting up on screen made it more so, but if you are going to do that, can you leave the note up slightly longer? With each note only being up for about a second, on mobile I was struggling to pause the video fast enough to actually read the note. Each time one appeared I had to back up the video and try again 2 or 3 times. Its a small thing, but I hope you consider it.
first time viewer, and I came here to say the same thing. Plus the position of the notes means that they're hidden by the video progress bar when paused.
@@JDPurvisand also hidden by the captions
Could you play back the video at a slower speed?
@@trevinbeattie4888 Changing playback speed or rewinding frame-by-frame is a lot harder on mobile.
I'm a PC and still have to pause, hit back, then frame-step to find and read the notes. I love the notes, but have *always* wanted them to be just slightly easier to read.
The notes stayed on the screen fairly long compared to the standard
IIRC, Jupiter's moon Io is one of the few moons that does trace out loops.
IIRC = In case I remember correctly
@@cube2foxif I remember correctly
If I remember correctly in case I remember incorrectly in which case my memory was incorrect
Jupiter's moons Io and Europa (and minor moons closer to Jupiter - Metis, Amalthea, Adrastea, and Thebe) form loops. So do Saturn's moons Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys and Dione. So do Uranus's inner moons Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Cupid, Perdita, Belinda, Puck, and Mab; and Neptune's inner moons Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Larissa, Hippocamp, and Proteus, although most of them are tiny moons under 100km. Moral of the story: there are a ton of moons in this solar system.
@@patrickskelly8517 _A_ ton? There are about 700 quintillion tons of moons in this solar system.
The visuals for this one are really impressive. Incredible work, this must've taken ages
Haha I think this is the first video where I ALREADY knew the answer. My science teacher in school told us that the Moon's orbit from the perspective of the Sun would look like an Imarti (it's a sweet dish that looks spirally, google it ).
But I wasn't sure so I tried to create an entire animation in After Effects and tried to be as close to 'scale' and correct orbital periods as possible. Eventually I found that the Moon barely curves at all and for all intents and purposes, the orbit is quite circular
Off topic but imarti is sooo goooood
@nakulsprakash1640 the Imarti is clearly there, so it is not off topic smh /j
do you have the animation?
It warms my heart to know that there are still people out there that "do their own research" the right way. Well done :)
Did you eventually become a physicist?
2:12 Was the worst possible time for me to take a sip of chocolate milk
The Moon: *Drddrrrd4d4drdtdr*
2:03 lol did the Moon/Earth run something over?
No they ran into each other
I also felt that one ...
@@harjutapathé earth hits something, and one fragment hits the moon.
Hit and run
Nope, that 130 year old pin in the spirograph set finally snapped 😹
1:31 thanks for spending the extra time completing the graph! It was very much satisfying
Seeing the tools you use to create your animations is so cool, I'd love to learn more! Maybe a behind the scenes...?
This is why time travel movies should also factor in orbital drift. Even if you can tether the time machine to heliocentrism, where you're standing on Earth isn't the same as where that spot was 5 minutes ago.
Also, the Sun is moving through the galaxy at tremendous speed. And the galaxy is moving through space at some huge speed, and so on. There is no fixed grid to any of this, so your hypothetical time machine would have a hard time figuring out where to put you.
But there's in fact no absolute reference frame at all; it makes just as much sense to travel back in time in the reference frame of, well, yourself, as it does to choose the reference frame of the sun or Earth.
appear in the middle of the space? sounds fun
@@jaykiknavenaga2121
Or in the middle of a star! Or black hole.
The only time travel show or movie that ever addressed this was the old show Seven Days. A lower budget UPN show but it had an interesting concept with a few really good episodes….. but they said they needed a pilot because when they’d leave, the Earth wouldn’t be in the same place when they’d arrive 7 days ago
Following the moon while it orbits, having it change too while it’s still moving, was pretty impressive compositing
"Should we then say that each part of the Earth independently orbits the sun?"
Yes. Yes, we should. I will absolutely be saying that from now on.
The Phosphorus atom that is in the right 17th phosphodiester bond of the MC1R gene on the 3rd neuron of my hypothalamus orbits the Sun independently of me ☺️
agree, 100%
@@genio2509 what about the electrons of that phosphorus atom though?
@@CaseyHancocki3luefire Oh yeah.
The Gluon between the two up quarks of the proton #7 of that exact phosphorus atom is orbiting the Sun independently of me
@@genio2509
Hell yeah Minute physics back
It has been a single (1) month.
Or in this case 5 minute and 29 seconds physics 😉
Thanks!
Could the moon be orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the milky way if we're gonna think like this?
No, because Sagittarius A* does not dominate the galaxy in the way that the Sun dominates the solar system. The Sun alone has enough gravity to capture allmost all of the bodies in the solar system, but Sagittarius A* only has enough gravity to capture a fairly small section of the galaxy, and the rest is held in by the gravity of all the stars and dust in the galaxy. That black hole is the largest contributor, and it is at the shared center, but it is still only a small part of the whole.
@@TheExalaber interesting
@@TheExalaber great answer
Nice
My limited understanding is that we cannot account for 95% of the gravity holding galaxies together. We call that 95% "dark matter", but it is really something we cannot understand yet. It could be a new type of particle, a crucial error in our models, some kind of spacetime curvature or even influence from another universe.
@2:00 I love that to demonstrate a change in the moons orbit you seem to show it colliding with some kind of object, with a little explosion. Very neat detail.
We're so back!
Sam? Ben? Adam? Is that you?
We are just orbiting
What?
No
WERE SO BACK
I am eagerly awaiting a video delineating the Roche radius, Cebotarev radius, Hill sphere and Lagrange Points 😀🙏🏾
"Delineating", I saw what you did there!
Yeah there are many concentric spheres in orbital mechanics
The Moon did used to be closer to the Earth! So was there *ever* a time that the Moon made cusps or spirals around the Sun?
Given the bit later in the video about how even a point on Earth's surface isn't going around fast enough to loop, I would venture to guess that the Moon has never been close enough to make loops. The Earth is just traveling too quickly around the Sun for that to happen. If Earth's speed moving through space around the Sun were slower, then it could make loops (though we might, at that point, not be traveling fast enough to sustain orbit).
That was my first intuition, but then the orbital speed when you get close enough is much faster than Earth's diurnal period (the ISS orbits in 90 minutes or so--does the ISS make spirals?)
@@apollomartin6572For it to make a spiral, it would have to be traveling faster than the earth's motion when it's going opposite to it. Looking at the speeds, the iss travels 30,000km/h relative to the earth, but the earth's orbital velocity is over 100,000km/h. So it seems even the iss is not fast enough to create spirals.
@@panner11 That leads me to ask the question if there even is a non-gaseous moon that achieves spirals
@@Dragonmastur24 There's another thread that talks about a large number of moons of the outer planets making spirograph-like loops
> "...possibly futile endeavour."
I love that you called yourself out, but this was interesting all the same.
I was more interested in his procunciation of futile, TBH. :)
@@PeteVanFleet I as a German only ever heard this word in Star Trek :)
Like any long-term relationship: it's complicated
Like any Brilliant-sponsored vid: it's discounted
You crammed an insane amount of knowledge, terminology, wit, graphics, math, physics and animations into one gem. Terrible for me and my type of people, who either will need rewatching this video 50 times at 0.25x or need an hour long documentary to even comprehend.
Still loved the video
Watch other videos in between, then rewatch it. One needs different viewpoints.
Wait till they find out that the Sun itself is moving around in the Milky Way at 450000 miles per hour
which maybe orbits around something even bigger maybe :)
The situation is similar! The moon never does any loops relative to the center of the galaxy. It is moving 230km/s around the center of the galaxy, 29 km/s around the sun, and 1 km/s around the earth. So during a full moon in January, it is moving 260 km/s relative to Sagittarius A*, and during a full moon in July it only slows down to 200 km/s, never going backwards. However, it does have outwards curvature (the acceleration towards the sun is 10^-6 km/s^2 compared to 10^-13 km/s^2 toward the center of the galaxy), so it falls into the "wobbles" section of the graph, shaped kinda like a flower with 2 billion petals rather than a polygon with 2 billion sides.
@@patrickskelly8517 woah, thanks! I was just doing the math too
This is exactly why I don't believe time machines would ever be possible, even if time travel was possible.
@@Reptilia12 I had a sci fi comic in which people would use time travel to get from China to the USA since, upon time traveling, the location coordinates of the user would stay in the same in the reference frame of the Milky Way
0:20 That is still consistent with the fact that the moon orbits the earth.
The point is that it doesn't have a wobbly orbit like other bodies
From the perspective of a clam, the moon doesn't exist
4:45 but...but its a correct statement- even if its unnecessarily precise
No.
It is not correct, since objects on Earth's surface are attached to it.
Amazing visualization transitions between possible configurations!! So cool!!
4:43 unless.....
The best explanation I've seen showing the Earth-Moon orbit. Particularly the illustration of the common centroid rotation starting at 3:38.
⚠️ 1:23 squircle alert ⚠️
After 3 years of actual physics classes in uni, it’s really interesting to be able to fully grasp what you’re saying beyond the surface level
What’s also interesting is that nowadays, the speed at which you explain things really makes it seem like “Minute Physics” when comparing to a normal class
4:12 Tell that to the Trisolarans!
You probably shouldn’t.
Best to remain quiet. 🤫
That was really fascinating. Perspective is amazing.
I had a professor tell me the physics program should be 5 years, not 4, due to all the stuff we need to cover. Among the topics they chose to cut, this was one of them. It makes sense, since this appears to be more about geometry than core physics. It's one of those things that seems obvious in hindsight.
Could you please share the maths of it? Those graphs at 4:52 are lovely
1:47 They looked like two travelers where the younger one hops around the other as they go
At @1:31 we see that there is a sort of phase transition in loops, wobbles and convex orbits. Can this be studied using known techniques in stat mech? We could introduce orbital distance of the center of force as something that has a Boltzmann distribution to be peaked around the actual trajectory and a temperature parameter that fluctuations?
1:27 is it just me or the second one from the top / second from the left looks very much like the Mandelbrot set? 😮
It's actually is, it's a shape called a cardioid that can also be found in your morning coffee
That table of trajectories reminds of Spirographs. Loved those things.
Doesn't the centrifugal force exactly cancel out the force of gravity for any body in orbit? Because in the rotating reference frame they aren't accelerating towards or away from the sun (assuming a circular orbit). Wouldn't the Earth's gravity be greater than sun minus centrifugal (zero) no matter where the moon is?
but the orbit isnt EXACTLY circular
ive heard that Moon's gravitational attraction to Earth is indeed greater than any effective centrifugal force acting on it due to Earth's rotation around the Sun. But still not very sure
The part of the video that shocked me the most was that you can put a code to produce a part of video inside your video editing software....
You put it best at 4:07 when you said "futile endeavour" which really sums up this video.
But fun to watch someone trying :)))
Nobody made you watch it
to me, what cemented it for me that it's futile is when the 3 body problem is brought up there as it shows that very nature of the 3 body problem being a chaotic system is why it's non-deterministic
Interesting. That explanation has implications for the definition of a planet by the IAU since under that definition the Earth would arguably be a dwarf planet like Pluto rather than an actual planet
I think that our definition of the word "planet" is almost certainly flawed, but in order to properly clean it up we probably need to do a lot of studies of exoplanets, just to get more points of data and more edge-cases
So moon cheated on earth
Hey, don't blame the sleeping satellite!
Luna belongs to the streets!
Right in it's face
I mean the sun is pretty hot 😏
These satellites ain't loyal😢
Easily one of the best minutephysics video. Everything very clearly explained and demonstrated.
Pls can anyone explain centrifugal part, how can earth be dominant when sun's pull is greater 3:17
I get your question I think. You think that if the sun pulls harder than the earth, the moon would be leaving the earth and spiral towards the sun, right?
The thing is, the sun pulls at the earth as well. This means the moon as well as the earth keep their orbit as they both also have a forward motion.
I guess the moon will be a bit closer to the earth when passing behind it, and a bit further from earth when it's between the earth and the sun.
When the moon is orbiting a centripetal force is required or you can say a centrifugal force is acted on the opposite direction
Let me rephrase,
In inertial frame, Sun's force on moon is more than earth's force on moon. So the net force on moon towards sun
In video he said in rotating frame, (somehow) earth's force is dominant. How come?
@@deveshgarg7974 Because it is orbiting bro and an extra centripetal force is required to keep it in orbit
@@soyanshumohapatra yeah and that centripetal force is net resultant of sun's and earth's gravitational force, which comes out to be in the direction of sun
Thanks for the clarification. Once again we find that language oversimplifies the represented universe, losing resolution and confusing understanding.
The orbiting point being outside the planet is the case with Pluto and Charon, isn't it?
Yes it is. Pluto and Charon are a binary dwarf planet system.
I believe it is also the case for the Sun and Jupiter, which showcases that even if one body is much more dominant than the other (unlike Plutocharon which is a much closer match), distance increases more quickly than mass can.
I wonder how far away from the sun you'd need to put an apple for the barycentre of that system to be outside the sun.
@@MarkusAldawn SO DO I NOW! So I asked Copilot lol
Using the d = r*Mapple / Msun formula "So the apple would need to be more than 6.928×10^36 km away from the Sun. And, for reference, the observable universe is estimated to be about 8.8×10^26 km in diameter."
@@pufthemajicdragon now i wonder how long that orbit would take
@@MarkusAldawn So, Jupiter and the Sun are in fact a binary star.
(Well, no, cus Jupiter is no star ...)
This is brilliant (the video, not the sponsor). One of the best videos you've done.
Is this the reason why the moon is slowly moving away from earth, because the moon can be described mathematically as orbiting the sun, just in a close proximity to the earth? Or is that purely explained by the interaction between the earth and moon and its loss of angular momentum?
That is pretty complicated, depending on lots of factors and the drifting has a complicated history. The Moon will stop drifting away from the Earth and will eventually end up about 50,000km further out than it is today at about 450,000km.
Eh loss of angular momentum would cause the moon to spiral inward, no? iirc it's because of the leftover energy from the Earth-Thea collision which formed the moon.
@@feynstein1004 The Earth is losing angular momentum by giving it to the Moon, so the moon is moving outwards. It's because the Earth is rotating faster than the Moon is orbiting, so the continents crash into the tidal bulge of the oceans every day and feel a little drag force every time, slowing the Earth down. In turn, the continents push the tidal bulge of the oceans a little ahead of where it should be, and the gravity of the oceans pulls the moon a little ahead in its orbit making it orbit faster.
@@feynstein1004 It's a great example of conservation of angular momentum. The Earth's spin slows down due to the tides, but the angular momentum has to be conserved, so it is transferred to the moon as an increase in orbital angular momentum. The Moon speeds up and orbits at a higher altitude.
@@patrickskelly8517 It's worth noting that a higher energy orbit is actually slower, given that it's higher up. Astronauts actually ran into this problem during the earliest attempt at a rendezvous - trying to burn towards an object you're behind results in falling further behind as your orbit rises.
3:18 Sorry, but having such long notes in the video only for a very short amount is nothing but a bad idea.
If you don't understand what I'm talking about try to pause on the note with a mobile player. Then you will understand. (So either make the note stay longer, or make it short enough to be read while on display, or talk about it, or just leave it out).
Brilliant animation!
"Wheel within wheels in a spiral array; a pattern so grand and complex
Time after time, we lose sight of the way our causes can't see their effects"
Now we need the follow-up video that talks about the other planets in the solar system and how their moons orbit.
A lot of other moons make spirals
excellent video with all the relevant equations and still not too long duration! Beautiful and Informative both !!
So its Just Orbiting Earth With Extra Steps
"Well, yes. But actually, no."
It’s just orbiting the sun with extra steps 😉
More like 'it depends on how you define orbit'
Loved this video! The change in perspective was quite educational, to say the least.
Now we are opening another can of worms:
Should the Earth's Moon be considered a dwarf planet just like Pluto? Or maybe Earth should also be a dwarf planet since it technically hasn't cleared its orbit of another massive object as it is technically co-orbiting with the Moon?
How do you define "technically co-orbiting" in a way that doesn't include all moons by definition?
Nah, we should consider Pluto a full planet.
No. 3:35 This defines whether we are 2 dwarf planets or a Planet and a Moon. If the center of mass was outside, we would be. Keep in mind, the Earth's Moon is very large compared to it's planet relative to every single planet in our solar system.
so jupiter would be a dwarf planet if it had a twin ?
Dwarf planet is a term used to suggest that it would not be capable of clearing its neighbourhood of rival bodies. Pluto is much smaller than the overall cloud of things like it, and could not act to clear it all by ejecting them, drawing it into itself, making it a satellite, or have an orbital resonance. The Moon is big enough that if the Earth didn't exist, it would be capable of doing the same thing that the Earth does for the things between Venus and Mars, which the Moon is just as far from as Earth is.
The Earth would be a planet regardless of what the Moon is classified as. The Moon is still always going along with the Earth in an obvious pair, always moving with it at basically the same speed and location around the Sun.
I love me some minute physics! The fact this video involves astronomy is even better!
Thank you for still being around after all of these years and still educating!
Earth's orbit around the Sun is also not a circle... because the Sun is moving, and very quickly (for human terms) around the galaxy, so Earth's orbit traces out what looks like a distorted sinusoidal wave. As do all the other bits of our solar system that are not really close to the Sun. So yes, *reference frames matter when discussing motion.*
Depends upon how you measure movement. In terms of angular movement, the sun rotates around the center of the galaxy incredibly slowly.
We should be thinking in terms of energy (either specific orbital energy or C3). The Moon has negative energy relative to both the Earth and the Sun, therefore it is gravitationally bound to and orbiting both at the same time. From there, deciding which one it "orbits more" than the other is just a matter of interpretation.
I got confused half way through so now I'm just going to assume the earth orbits the moon and be done with it.
I just assume everything orbits me - though it does make the math tricky.
The amount of work you all put into these short videos is beyond impressive! I just want to let you know that I deeply appreciate it and admire it!
Small correction at 1:25 The top row of trajectories is impossible since the satellite would impact planet.
From what I saw they would be possible as long as the earth and moon were not in the same place at the same time. They’d probably have some pretty close calls though.
@@davidroddini1512 A binary system would work, like you say, where both objects move around the gravitational center. But not a satellite.
This is excellent. Delivery is excellent. Graphics are excellent. I feel grateful for your efforts.
Babe wake up
So refreshing having an old school MinutePhysics video.
So the moon orbits the earth when the earth orbits the Sun and the Sun pulls harder on the moon but according to the hill radius THE EARTH pulls harder on the moon. What I'm trying to conclude here is the moon orbits the Earth and the moon also doesn't orbit the Earth because it orbits the Sun. It's that simple.
Best Minute Physics for a long time. This is amazing!
my entire life was a lie
Finalllyyyyyyyy!!!!!! Missed this channel sooo much
So, umm, given recent developments, I gotta ask, which one of Earth's moons are we talking about? 2024 PT5, or the other one?
The Moon
@@patadamcekYeah, but which one?
@@argentphoenix11 the Moon with capital M
3:32 The Pluto-Charon system has the the barycenter outside of both bodies.
To clarify for anyone thinking this changed their understanding of the moon orbiting the Earth:
"Pulling each other" - the Earth pulls the moon a lot more than the moon pulls the Earth, thus when the moon goes behind the Earth from a heliocentric perspective, its not the Earth coming forwards but the Earth pulling the moon back. Yes there's a barycentre but that doesn't mean the moon is not orbiting the Earth. This is a classic 'reference frame' problem, and you can see this happening even with spacecraft launched to the moon (Artemis 1 DRO) where it appears to orbit the Earth and only nudged by the moon but from a lunar reference frame it perfectly orbits the moon.
That's why these 3 body problems are more effectively solved in a rotating coordinate system. The moon is validly orbiting the Earth. Think about the moon's orbital plane shifted to polar, where it goes above and below the Earth and ahead and behind. That would then appear as if the moon is just slowing and speeding up when sideways to the sun and when facing the sun it would make a sinusoidal pattern. So, don't be confused by trajectories looking different in different reference frames, because whether the moon makes a spiral or square or hexagon it is always orbiting both the Earth and the Sun.
Beautifully done!!
I just want to point out the inaccuracies in this video. I'm rather annoyed that this video negated one massive detail which changes the complexity of this system as a whole, that is to say: how do you account for the huge gravitational pull from yo momma?
3:11 Is the Earth-Moon moving in a circle around the Sun, or more like elliptical?
I feel like the question is presented in a way where orbiting one object means you are orbiting exclusively that object.
Whereas looking at just the pictures without any emotional flavor, we can clearly see that it is simply doing both at the same time.
The moon orbits the Earth and it also orbits the Sun. Partially because Earth orbits the Sun, partially because everything within the Sun's gravity well orbits the Sun.
There is nothing weird or somehow vague and uncertain.
This explains why the moon is ever so slowly drifting away from Earth
4:18 take the lines you added away and we are back to looking the the moon orbits the earth. So yes it's a three body problem but only just. Hence in our day to day life we can ignore it and just go with the moon orbiting the earth.
favorite youtuber in science mainly
4:23 nice Star Wars reference there
I nearly spit out my drink when the orbit speed abruptly ramped up 30x and they went haywire
Correct me if I'm wrong. While this does make a certain amount of sense, it also assumes that the earth and moon were always orbiting on the exact same plane. So yes, this is one way of looking at orbits, but like so many things is only true "from a certain point of view."
What’s the “point of view” you had in mind as an alternative?
@@glennac As I said, this assumes they are on the same plane, which I don't believe to be the case. Looking at this and assuming that all the planets, etc are on the same plane in the top-down view is a good way to make very incorrect assumptions similar to people looking at a map and deciding the Earth must be flat.
they are in the same plane
@@Blox117moons orbit's plane is 5 degrees off.
@@Blox117If they were in the same plane there would be a solar eclipse every 4 weeks
Wow, this is an awesome video - I've never seen any animation or diagram before which demonstrated the orbits like this. Truly fantastic.
2:50 I think that you might be meaning to refer to the edge of the Hill sphere (or Roche sphere if you’re pedantic like me). To my knowledge the Chevotarev sphere has no application in this example.
If he meant Hill sphere, that also isn't correct as that is roughly 1.5 million km, and the moon is much closer than that, so not sure I believe this
@@coldfusion247either way it’s wrong, thanks for the help though!
I would love a follow up video of how this compares to other moons for other planets!
0:25 this animation is misleading. The moon orbits the earth ~13 times per year not ~4 times as shown here
It was exaggerated to drive home the fact that it revolves slower than assumed by most. None of these animations are actually drawn to perfect scale…you couldn’t even animate the actual distance between the moon and the sun on a youtube video frame since it is so large of a distance (the moon would be invisible). It’s all for imagery in relation to the script. The script is key. You’re literally nit-picking the tiniest of “errors” that are not even errors.
So did you even have to consider that the barycenter (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter_(astronomy) ) is outside of the sun? depending on which "elements" could be combined?
I think the moon orbits the sun because it used to be a part of an old planet, Theia, which, of course, orbited around the sun.
????
@@maxthexpfarmer3957 theyre suggesting the moon belonged to some random planet despite the composition of the moon being identical to earth i.e it was made from earth itself.
@@Zentoven99 okay but what does that have to do with it orbiting the sun now
Fantastic video. The comparisons (30x further or 30x more massive) are brilliant for developing an intuitive understanding.
1 minute after video gang:
very satisfying visualization! thank you for reminding us that it is a 3-body phenomenon.
Aside from you using the term "centrifugal effects", this is pretty interesting. There are no centrifugal forces, so these "effects" have to be clarified a bit. Maybe I'm being pedantic, but being a physicist I just hate the term "centrifugal force", and lay people may think there's a centrifugal force when you say centrifugal effects.
@@cybermonkeys I am a physicist; I implied that in my comment. I know about non-inertial frames, and the apparent forces that appear because of being in a non-inertial frame of reference. I was simply wondering what "centrifugal effects" the video is referring to, since it is a bit vague on that, and it I think it could be misleading to some people without that further clarification. But, oh well, three body problems are so darn complex, and very interesting. I guess I would have liked a slightly longer video.
@@cybermonkeys no argument there. Unfortunately there are very few channels that explain science to the layman adequately. At least these guys don't say completely wrong things, but they are a tad superficial in their exposition.
It was nice discussing the subject with you, brief as it is. You take care too.
@@cybermonkeys Oh, that's old stuff I did at the start of COVID for the classes I was teaching at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. They are in Spanish because I teach in at a Mexican university. Later on I didn't post more videos because the university started using MS software for meetings where the students took classes online, and the lectures could be recorded there. I still intend on doing a complete version of the courses I usually teach here on YouTUbe, but I have not had time to do so. I am better prepared for doing that, but it would still require a lot of work.
And likewise, nice to meet you too.
Thanks for the information, your students were very lucky to have a teacher, who was able to adapt quickly to the situation, so they could continue there studies.
My own adventure into the deeper realms of Physics understanding began at around the same time. When I unfortunately encountered a supposed teacher, who didn't possess the same humility or integrity, as you've obviously shown to your students.
He has become convinced that inertia or the centrifugal force is not a thing, and plays no role in the orbital motion of objects in space. On one occasion he even told me that Sir Issac Newton was a failed scientist. You can read about the rest of the saga, on a short presentation my friend made, called "What school gets wrong about tides, inertia and spacetime." You'd be very welcome to participate in the discussion if you find the time. Keep up the good work. Thank you.
All I can say is thank you taking the time to reply.
63 years & this never once occurred to me.
All of Saturn’s moons: are we adopted?
For this school year I have a project of representing the orbit of the moon around the sun, I used complexe numbers in an equation on geogebra and I'm relieved to see that I got the same looking orbit as you. Thanks for your video !