this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] LarsIsCool@lemmy.world 177 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] mEEGal@lemmy.world 31 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Jokes aside : being right for the wrong reasons is being wrong

[–] Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 91 points 4 days ago (3 children)

The way this is phrased makes it sound like there's a certain threshold where this starts happening. That's not right. Even a grain of dust wouldn't orbit the sun, they still orbit their common barycenter. A less misleading way of phrasing would be that Jupiter is massive enough that the barycenter of it and the sun actually lies outside the sun, which is still a cool fun fact.

[–] BillBurBaggins@lemmy.world 35 points 4 days ago (6 children)

I mean that's literally the point the image is trying to make. The last sentence says the point is outside the sun for Jupiter.

I don't think nitpicking the title achieves anything and it's not even misleading unless it's only taken in isolation.

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[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 19 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Orbiting a point within the sun is still orbiting the sun.

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[–] essell@lemmy.world 148 points 4 days ago (8 children)

I believe that's the same for every planet. And every moon. For every orbit.

Its just that the barycenter is inside the more massive object when one is much more massive than the other. Not that this makes much of a difference to anything.

[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 64 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (10 children)

Correct.

I also believe that one of the criteria for a binary planet is that the barycenter is outside either body. Like Pluto/Charon.

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[–] Eranziel@lemmy.world 127 points 4 days ago (3 children)

The barycenter is sometimes outside the diameter of the sun. Not always, and I believe not even usually.

Yes, today I'm being that guy. Still a cool factoid.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 37 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I'm kinda stunned that it's EVER outside the sun.

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[–] setInner234@lemmy.ml 16 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Well, while we are being 'that guy', factoid is one of those words which has changed its meaning by being used wrongly for so long that the original meaning has all but vanished.

A factoid is technically supposed to be something resembling fact, but not actual fact. (The Greek suffix '-oid' normally being used for that purpose, like in paranoid, "like knowledge" or asteroid, "like a star").

The best thing about factoid, is that factoid is now a factoid. Because it resembles what it is not lol...

Anyway, nowadays, you are allowed to use it the way you did, at least in the descriptivist world view. The prescriptivists may disagree, however. And those people are often 'that guy' ;)

[–] TipsyMcGee@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Since definitions are not facts, the word factoid itself being a factoid is a factoid

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[–] WraithGear@lemmy.world 47 points 4 days ago (4 children)

i mean, with that logic, nothing orbits anything

[–] pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 56 points 3 days ago

For most bodies the barycenter, while not the same as the center of mass, is still inside the sun. This one isn't, making it notable

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 28 points 3 days ago (3 children)

No, this is actually really relevant. This is part of the logic applied to labeling Pluto a dwarf planet. Pluto and it's moon do this, Earth and our moon do not. Yes, obviously the center of mass of the two isn't the exact center of the earth but it's still within the earth.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Asking a physicist about the center of an object is like asking a Tumblr user about thr color of the sky. The only response will be "which one?" And a sigh of exhaustion

Center of volume ≠ center of mass ≠ center of systemic gravity ≠ center of lift…

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[–] Boddhisatva@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago

You're not wrong. Everything orbits the center of mass of the system, meaning the mass of the star and the body in orbit. And that is handy for astronomers, many exoplanets have been found using the Doppler spectroscopy method. Doppler spectroscopy measures the Doppler shift in the star's light as it is pulled towards and away from us by planets in orbit. The newest spectrographs are sensitive enough to detect a star's wobble caused by an Earth sized body in orbit. The barycenter is still within the star, but not at the center of the star's mass.

[–] fedditter@feddit.org 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Fun fact: You actually pull the Earth up with the same force it pulls you down.. Newton’s Third Law.

[–] vic_rattlehead@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I've been told that certain peoples mothers happen to pull the earth with a bit more force than others.

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[–] Thorry@feddit.org 53 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Your mom's so fat, she pushes the barycenter of the solar system outside of the diameter of the Sun

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[–] nuko147@lemmy.world 62 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (9 children)

[Solarsystembarycenter]

So the Sun is wobbling arround, because of the 3 giants. Fascinating.

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 44 points 4 days ago (1 children)
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[–] ItemWrongStory@midwest.social 36 points 4 days ago

Well, mostly Jupiter and a little bit of Saturn.

[–] yogurtwrong@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago

Like a brick in a washing machine

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[–] bennypr0fane@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Do all the planets also orbit around that same barycenter, or does each planet have a different one?

[–] untorquer@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

All the solar system matter contributes to an object's orbital center but that's constantly moving as the system moves.

I think (?) most planets have their barycenter inside the sun's surface

The gravitational pull of system matter pales in comparison to the sun so you don't need to consider it for amateur purposes.

You can try KSP (Vanilla) versus Kopernicus mod if you want to feel the difference.

Also called n-body

[–] CompassRed@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Technically speaking, no celestial body in our solar system orbits around a single point. The barycenter thing only works with two bodies. When there are more than two bodies, such as in our solar system, the orbits become chaotic. Granted, the influence between planets is small, so they all appear to orbit their barycenters with the sun, but there are small perturbations to the orbits caused by the locations and masses of all the other bodies in the solar system.

[–] saimen@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago

Isn't that the 3-body-problem? That already with 3 bodies affecting each other a system is chaotic.

[–] badcommandorfilename@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I guess they all orbit around the solar system's center of mass (negligibly affected by the universal CoM), but that CoM probably moves around as the planets themselves move.

Relative to what, you might ask? That depends who you're asking 😉

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[–] deltapi@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The barycenter is different for each planet-sun (or any two object) pairing.

The earth and moon have a barycenter which is beneath the surface of earth. Likewise, the barycenter of the sun-earth pair is below the surface of the sun

Edit:

The barycenter of our solar system orbits the center of our galaxy (again in a barycentric manner)

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 23 points 4 days ago (6 children)

In a field of study where it’s not just acceptable, but prudent to round pi to “1” because the numbers are that big….

I gotta say, it’s close enough to say Jupiter orbits Sol. Just saying.

[–] dmention7@midwest.social 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Nah, there is no way any astronomer studying orbital mechanics in our solar system is rounding pi to 1. There is virtually no practical calculation you could do on the mechanics of the sun or planets where rounding a known constant by a factor of 3 would yield any useful result whatsoever.

Rounding pi to 1 only makes sense when the uncertainty in the numbers is large, not the magnitude of the numbers, and we know the masses and distances of the objects in our solar system to an amazing level of precision!

Plus, the fact that Jupiter is massive enough to actually exert an influence that large on the sun is pretty fucking cool!

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 25 points 4 days ago (8 children)

The reason being, that once you go large enough, a multiplier of three is irrelevant, and they only really care about orders of magnitude. You might be tempted to argue that that doesn't happen inside the solar system, and you'd be right. Mostly.

Except that astronomy doesn't concern itself with just our system. So yes. Astronomers do frequently round to 1 because it really doesn't matter that much in the scheme of things. (particularly talking about distances.) it's even more so for cosmology.

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[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Jeeezzz...Gravity is relentless.

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