Sun Is Moving?
We were taught that the Earth is the one moving around the sun and not the other way around but a lavandera or anyone who does the laundry and hangs the clothes under the sun may not believe that fact (without any formal background on astronomy).
In the past, I noted that you cannot hang your clothes on the same time of day at the same place like before. The sun's rays move from one place to another every few weeks or months. The sun doesn't always sets at the exact same direction. The only thing you can rely on is at noon time when the rays will truly shine right above you (or your laundered clothes).
But maybe there are changes in the Solar System that we don't know about. The sun could be truly moving. That's a scary thought. It could be moving away or moving towards us. Jeepers!
Actually, the idea of a universe is a scary thought. Thoughts about the Earth just floating there without anything visible holding it in place and any asteroid or "falling" stars passing by could hit it anytime scare me.
It is something we cannot have any control of. And anything I cannot control scares me. It is arrogant of me to think that I have actual control of anything. I don't even have any control over my own life. Anything can happen.
I far from being a control freak, but sometimes it scares me as well how random and uncontrolled life can be. But that's life for you. It's the unexpected that gives it spice and zing, not the boring ebb and flow of routinary activities.
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ReplyDeleteallow me to shed light on this matter:
ReplyDelete1) sun's rays moving - actually, sun will only have a ray unless obstructed by a solid object at an oblique angle, with some light passing through. if you meant a sun's ray to be a stream of photons, no it doesn't move from one geodesic point to the other, rather it just travels from its source(sun) to the earth only.
2) sun is moving away from us - no, we are gravitationally bound with our star system. any planet is. the only object close to us that is moving away from us is our moon. it is in fact moving at an accelerated rate of 1.5inches per year at 10 raised to the 20joules of energy thrust.
3) sun is moving towards us - sun will not move towards us. however, once the sun consumes most of its energy, it will go into a stellar phase called red giant. due to gravitational pressure inside, it will expand, and its coronal atmosphere will engulf all the inner planets, including possibly the earth and mars. it may appear that it is moving towards us, but no, it is simply just expanding, like an inflated balloon. that expansion time will happen 5billion years from now.
3) universe floating without any support system - dark matter is what we, astrophysicists, called as a scaffolding in space. it is the only thing that hold us together. the scary, as well as exciting thought, is that we don't know mostly about its nature and properties. we just know that a dark matter exist, in fact we calculated that they are about as 23% of the entire cosmic components. ordinary matter(everything we see) is just 4%.
4) asteroid hit - we are so thankful we have Jupiter. it plays a maternal role in our solar system by protecting us from the strays of unwanted trajectories of rocks(asteroids) and ice(comets) coming from asteroid belts(region between mars and jupiter) and kuiper belt(region from neptune to pluto and beyond). because jupiter is so massive, it is essentially 300 earth masses, it absorbs most of these space boulders.
the only object we have calculated to be classified as a near earth object(NEO) is the asteroid apophis, about the size of two football fields and will come by the earth's path by 2029-2036. just wish that it won't tip off the earth's gravitational keyhole, or else, this will challenge our survival as a planetary civilization.
wow! Thanks for shedding light on this one :D
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