I keep learning from Quora scientists. So glad I subscribe.
Question: “How come the sun’s rotation around earth is something scientifically not possible?”
Answer: […] it’s not impossible for the Sun to orbit the Earth – it would just require the Earth to be a lot more massive than it is now. If the Earth were magically turned into a neutron star or a black hole, the Sun would orbit it quite nicely, but we’d all be dead.
Wikipedia:
“In astronomy, the barycenter (from Ancient Greek βαρύς (barús) ‘heavy’, and κέντρον (kéntron) ‘center’) is the center of mass of two or more bodies that orbit one another and is the point about which the bodies orbit. A barycenter is a dynamical point, not a physical object.”
The barycenter of the Earth-Sun system is about 450km away from the center of the sun. That’s completely negligible (we’re talking less than a 10th of a percent of the sun’s radius). Seems entirely accurate to me to say the earth orbits the sun.
Indeed, the barycenter of the Sun-Saturn system is about halfway between the center and surface of the sun.
Thank you, Wes Sneider and Brian Rost.
Question: “How come the sun’s rotation around earth is something scientifically not possible?”
Answer: […] it’s not impossible for the Sun to orbit the Earth – it would just require the Earth to be a lot more massive than it is now. If the Earth were magically turned into a neutron star or a black hole, the Sun would orbit it quite nicely, but we’d all be dead.
Wikipedia:
“In astronomy, the barycenter (from Ancient Greek βαρύς (barús) ‘heavy’, and κέντρον (kéntron) ‘center’) is the center of mass of two or more bodies that orbit one another and is the point about which the bodies orbit. A barycenter is a dynamical point, not a physical object.”
The barycenter of the Earth-Sun system is about 450km away from the center of the sun. That’s completely negligible (we’re talking less than a 10th of a percent of the sun’s radius). Seems entirely accurate to me to say the earth orbits the sun.
Indeed, the barycenter of the Sun-Saturn system is about halfway between the center and surface of the sun.
Thank you, Wes Sneider and Brian Rost.
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