KJBDKBKJBJKSy weekly science article I write for my small town news paper.

Let me
know what you think!
-G
About two pounds. Unless it is on the moon, then it is about a third of a pound, and if it
is on a neutron star, it is about 28,000,000,000 pounds. You see weight and mass are
two different things to scientists. On Earth land, the two are essentially identical. But in
the water or even in the air weight can change, but mass stays the same. If you don’t
believe me, take a scale on an elevator and see that you are lighter on the trip down,
and heavier on the trip up.
The theory of gravity is very complex, and we still don’t know a lot about it. Yes gravity
is a theory, and testing it by taking a long walk off of a short pier will add immensely to
your personal knowledge; I hope you can swim. Gravity is what gives things weight.
Atoms give things mass. That’s why we scientists use a balance and not a scale to get
the proper amounts of our chemicals.
We understand quite a bit about the strong force of gravity; the force that pulls your car
keys down the gutter grate at two in the morning, but I digress. But the weak force of
gravity is still elusive. In fact we use the term one g (hey that’s me) to give gravity a
mathematical constant, but that g is still not completely measured. We don’t even
know what mass really is, but the LHC in CERN will be fired up this spring and look for
the Higgs-boson particle and hopefully solve that.
Newton gave us the theory of gravity, and we have worked on it and refined it to
include celestial mechanics. No not a guy to fix your George Jettson brief case car, but
the motion of things in space. This has given us the tide charts, the predictions of
when periodic comets will arrive and how to send a space probe to intercept any thing
in our solar system.
One bugaboo in all of this was the three body problem. You can predict how gravity
will affect two bodies, like the Earth and the moon. But add in a third body like the sun,
and you get a calculus headache. (I prescribe the WHS math department!) One
mathematician named Joseph Lagrange was working on this three body problem and
found an interesting anomaly in his calculations. If you have two massive bodies in
space, the Earth and Sun, and they are in a circular rotation with each other (one is
orbiting the other), then there will be five points where their gravities will cancel each
other out and there will be no gravity at these points. These points are named
Lagrangian points in his honor.
Imagine Earth rotating around Sol. Right next to our planet toward the sun is the first
Lagrangian point, or L1, about 1.5 million miles away. The second or L2 is opposite
our planet away from the sun 1.5 million miles way. Both of these hold several
satellites in a fixed position. Unlike free fall satellites, satellites that fall at the same rate
the Earth rotates away from them, these satellites will never experience orbital decay
and fall back to the Earth. They will eventually leave L1 and L2 because they are so
small and either will enter free fall or be nudged back into them.
But in a Lagrangian point, there is no gravity; no need to free fall and stuff stays there
 a long time. L3 is at the same orbit as the Earth, but is exactly on the opposite side of
the Sun from us. Due to certain factors it is unstable and can’t be used like L1 and L2.
But the really cool points are L4, located ahead of Earth’s orbit, and L5, located the
same distance behind our orbit. These are immense areas of our solar system with no
gravity. Anything in them has been trapped since our planet was formed 4.5 billion
years ago. We could have a window on how our planet came to be.
NASA has two STEREO orbiters looking at the sun that will fly through these dead
zones of space. Because of their speed they will escape them, but they can see if
these hold secrets. We know they contain clouds of dust, but what else do they hold?
Some fear a killer asteroid that is just waiting to be nudged out of them to collide with
Earth. If one is found, many scientists advocate nuking it ASAP!
Even cooler is that by solving the three body system problem, Lagrange showed that
all of the planets in our solar system have Lagrange points. Jupiter has huge areas
and harbor asteroids in gravity stasis named after Greek heroes.
Later Ya’ll
-g

Views: 246
Like
Share
 Next Post >

Comment
You need to be a member of Atheist Nexus to add comments!
Join Atheist Nexus

Comment by G on March 15, 2009 at 5:32pm

how do i post to the blog? I'm a bit blog challenged. It makes me smile if I added to your
knowledge, I write each week for our little town paper in the redest state in the country.

Comment by Dr. Terence Meaden on March 10, 2009 at 4:59am

I learnt something very interesting and scientifically useful here. I had not heard before of
gravity-free Langragian points. We shall now follow the NASA experiment with due
anticpation.

If you wish, why not put this article on to the "ORIGINS" forum under the heading "Origins
of gravity-free zones in nearby space ---and their importance", and see what our forum
astronomers have to say about it.

RSS