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xkcd #2898: Orbital Argument (imgs.xkcd.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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https://xkcd.com/2898

Alt text:

"Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (7 children)

It's called a barycenter, kids, a common center that both objects circle around. That common center happens to be inside the sun, but that's a topic for next week's class in this semester's AP Astrophysics program.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I don't think the barycentre is inside the sun? Wikipedia says on the barycentre article:

When the less massive object is far away, the barycenter can be located outside the more massive object. This is the case for Jupiter and the Sun; despite the Sun being a thousandfold more massive than Jupiter, their barycenter is slightly outside the Sun due to the relatively large distance between them.[2]

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago

I don't think the barycentre is inside the sun?

The Jupiter-Sun barycentre in outside the sun.

The Earth-Sun barycentre is inside the sun.

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