DeckerdSmeckerd

Is there any use in sharing more of these kinds of theories? They don't seem interesting to anyone here.

From what I was able to determine, even though the solar system's orbital plane is 60 degrees tilted from the galactic plane, the planetary bodies fall toward and rise away from the center of the galaxy. I think of a gravity well as a direction down (just for the sake of describing my thought) since that is how we think of it while on earth. Up is away from the gravity and down is towards it. If the center of the galaxy exerts even the slightest of gravity on our solar system then the direction towards it is down. (Just for the sake of describing my thought process). That means everything wants to fall toward it unless there is some force that counteracts it. Even though it might be too weak to move the ocean, I don't see why the planets would not fall toward that distant gravity well because no matter how weak it is, it is still the natural direction for things to fall. I have checked our solar system and they do fall around our Sun in this way. It might be just a coincidence. There might be reasons that other bodies in our system have not yet settled on the same plane as the major planets. Their orbits might be younger. I have to check some other systems. I am not an professional astronomer, or even a novice, so I am basically just starting from scratch thinking about this. I wouldn't even say was I was beginning. It is just something that I wondered about.

if you drew a plus sign on our orbital plane and one line is 60 degrees in respect to the galactic plane, I wonder where the other line in the plus points in respect to the center of the galaxy. I assume he means that the plane is at 60 degrees in the direction we are traveling. I could be wrong about what I think he means but he doesn't say it is at 60 degrees toward the center. Super interesting article. Thanks for that. edit: I also wouldn't want to disregard the 60 degree angle. I would want to look along that plane all the way in a circle and see if there are any other gravity wells. I also would like to draw a line through the perigee and aphelion of the planetary orbits and see if there is anything out there in either direction. Of course, I don't know if these things change over thousands or millions of years as we revolve around the galaxy center, so if they are attracted to gravity wells, they might shift between different wells during the revolution.

How would someone check if our solar system's plane intersects with the galaxy center. I looked at TheSkyLive.com and it appears to, but there is probably a better way. I suppose the gravitational force of the galaxy center could be extremely high because we don't know how much matter is in it. I assume it exerts on the whole galaxy. Even at our distance, it would pull on our Sun and its planets. So do you or does anyone know how to verify that?

I'd like to read that but I don't have a subscription. The New York Times comes up in my feed occasionally. You find it useful? I can see the top lines where it says it indicates a mysterious, undetected force. That's pretty much the sort of thing I am talking about, except they might mean something else besides a gravity well. A gravity well would affect them all, you would think. How fast it is an observable effect on each planet might depend on the characteristics of the planet and system. The last I heard that is the most widely accepted theory.

I don't know. I don't have any images of a binary star system with planets to look at. I don't know how that works. I had a fleeting thought that we might be in a binary system with a black hole, perhaps one way off, but I don't have any reason to believe that. It just popped in for a second. However, we might be going past a black hole but not be in a direct relationship with it. It doesn't have to be a black hole. Just a gravity well. In principle though, seems like planets would want to travel in the direction of a primary gravity well and the next strongest gravity well or between the primary and a combination of the forces of multiple secondary gravity wells.

Would it make sense that if a second or third gravity well were to affect the planets in our Solar System, the orbital planes would be oriented toward them? For example, they might align with the center of the galaxy, but if a new gravity well came closer it might affect Pluto earlier than the others? (or to a greater degree to begin with.) Smaller objects like comets might even be affected to a greater degree to begin with. However, how long they have been in the solar system would be a factor of their plane too.

Also, if a spaceship was in orbit around a planet, let's say Saturn, would the spaceship have to make corrections after orbit was achieved if the planet was falling toward the the sun along it's orbit and picking up speed? Thanks. I will look. I don't want to turn this thread into a full time job for you. 😄

Would you say that a spaceship flying toward a planet doesn't need to know it's mass to achieve orbit? Would say a spaceship that wants to slingshot around a planet doesn't need to know it's mass to slingshot into a particular direction? I appreciate your attention to my thread. You are helping me a lot.

I see. Then it might make more sense to say: Two objects gain momentum from a gravity well at the same rate. Mass doesn't make a difference. When two objects leave a gravity well, they lose momentum at the same rate but an object with greater mass has greater momentum. Are either of these statements factual? Edit: assuming they leave at the same speed on the same flight path.

Is the reason two objects of different mass fall at the same rate because they have no momentum? However, doesn't a more massive object conserve its momentum longer when moving away from a gravity well?

Scratch that. I used the wrong term to describe my thought. Instead: This is true for any object that has the same non-inertial frame as the sun. If Oumuamua has a different non-inertial frame then the difference between them (their acceleration) has to be a part of the mathematics to determine its route through the solar system, or for a object that will be captured by the solar system, it is a factor until the non-inertial frames are equalized. I look at this event with Oumuamua with an ordinary eye, untrained in physics or mathematics. That doesn't mean I don't have a sense of physics that is based on what I have learned. I think the corrected paragraph describes what my sense tells me. Likewise, I must correct this too. Well, if there was/is a difference in the non-inertia frames between Oumuamua and our Sun, perhaps it will inexplicably do one or more of the following, slow down, turn, and then come back. If it does all of those, well, everyone will think it's aliens. If there was/is a difference in non-inertia frames then it wasn't traveling that fast, relative to the Sun's rate of travel because of its mass alone. Then perhaps it is lighter than expected which means, maybe, it still won't travel as predicted. The dangers of trying to talk with people that are knowledgeable about physics with only the Wikipedia. I think the correction describes my thought better. Thank you both for helping give some shape to my impression about Oumuamua. Maybe, for reasons I don't understand, it doesn't make any sense to a trained physicist that the Sun would be a accelerating, or maybe this idea has been eliminated for other reasons, or perhaps they just have tunnel vision and as an ordinary person, maybe I can't see that tunnel. I really don't know. Talking about this kind of thing, with such incomplete knowledge, it isn't apparent to me if I make any provable sense at all or that I am actually stating gibberish while using physics terms.

Thanks for the information Beecee. Well, if there was/is a difference in the inertia frames between Oumuamua and our Sun, perhaps it will inexplicably do one or more of the following, slow down, turn, and then come back. If it does all of those, well, everyone will think it's aliens. If there was/is a difference in inertia frames then it wasn't traveling that fast, relative to the Sun's rate of travel because of its mass alone. Then perhaps it is lighter than expected which means,maybe, it still won't travel as predicted.

This is true for any object that has the same inertial frame as the sun. If Oumuamua has a different inertial frame then the difference between them has to be a part of the mathematics to determine its route through the solar system, or for a object that will be captured by the solar system, it is a factor until the inertial frames are equalized. Do you agree? edit: They must have thought about all of this already since this stuff seems like common knowledge in the field of physics. Of course they would have thought about whether the sun was accelerating! Inertial frames are on the Wikipedia and are well understood!

I don't personally have the math skills at hand, but if the flight path of Oumuamua can be projected around the Sun using Newton's laws of motion and Newtonian gravity, and what I want to do is calculate what changes are needed in the location of the Sun, to produce the flight path of Oumuamua, then I need a formula that has the location of both Sun and Oumuamua as variables.

I guess what I am getting at in this post is this. How can you have an expected flight path of an interstellar object? Unless you assume our solar system is stationary. If you assume our solar system is not stationary, then you wouldn't be able to predict the path of an interstellar object. Is this logic not sound? For example: I am not implying that this is what is actually happening, but if the solar system were swinging back and forth as if it were on a pendulum, and it was traveling the length of the arc each year, so that every 2 years the solar system would be back in the same location, if 2 objects were on the exact same flight path through the galaxy, except that they were a year apart, and they passed through the solar system when the solar system was at the midpoint of its flight path, then wouldn't the objects appear to pass through the solar system differently, with difference being more or less pronounced depending on the speed of the solar system's flight? (For the sake of argument, pretend the solar system is in an identical state and behaving identically when the objects pass through).

Thank you for that. I looked at it and I get the main idea. Mostly over my head. As a side thought, if I generate an electro-magnetic wave that travels at a certain speed and I put some antennas far enough, but at an equal distance away, to the east, west, south, north, etc. When I generate a single pulse, a single wave, they should all arrive at the antennas at the same time, if the generating device and antennas are all traveling on the same vehicle (planet, spaceship, etc). However, doing this on a vehicle that is accelerating, would that cause a discrepancy in the arrival time of the wave at some antennas? (assuming no other factors can affect the speed of the wave). edit: You don't really have to answer that.

Can you recall what that measurement is called? I have only an ordinary grasp of physics but I would like to read about it. If not, I can try google.

Thanks Swansont. Suppose I take two objects, the Sun and Oumuamua. If I stand on the Sun, it appears Oumuamua accelerates as it departs. If I stand on Oumuamua, it appears the Sun accelerates as it departs.

I am thinking most people here are familiar with this event. I think about it sometimes and I have wondered about alternate theories. Is it possible that Oumuamua was not necessarily accelerating away from us under it's own power but the Solar System is accelerating along its flight path due to some other force or early event? I don't offer any explanation as to why the solar system is accelerating in this scenario. I just wonder if it is mathematically possible. If the solar is system were accelerating at some rate, could the behavior of Oumuamua be explained?