Ellipses and their foci have a lot of useful properties. It so happens that an orbiting object traces out an ellipse, with the thing it orbits around at one of the focuses. Coincidence? Yes. I can’t find a good intuitive reason why orbits are elliptical. In fact, I...
The second of Newton's laws that apply to understanding gravity in physics resulted from Newton puzzling through another physicist's findings. He was trying to explain why the solar system's planets have elliptical orbits rather than circular orbits, as observed and mathematically described by Johann...
as larger objects act against smaller objects, eventually drawing them in closer over time. Alternately, not all planetary or stellar bodies have a rotation, though all known planets in our solar system do. It is this rotation which provides ...
How do the orbits of comets differ from planetary orbits? How are comets, asteroids, and meteors different? How are supernovae involved in new planet formation? Why does an elliptical galaxy look like one giant star? Why are there comets in the Oort cloud? Why is it important to study as...
Rocket Trajectory: Why Do Rockets Curve Instead Of Going Straight Up? Earth’s Orbital Velocity Is Huge! First off, it’s important to note that Earth is moving in the ecliptic (i.e., plane of the solar system) at around 30 kilometers per second! This means that any ...
How Is The Moon Formed? To understand why Mercury and Venus do not have moons, we need to understand how moons are formed in the first place. There are basically three ways by which the planets get moon(s): co-formation, capture, and collision. ...
There are asteroids and comets1 roaming around all parts of the Solar System, ranging from the size of a pebble to the size of a dwarf planet, but most of them are in three places—1) the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter (which might have congealed into its own ...
Why do we see only one side of theMoon? You have probably heard references being made to the “dark side” of the Moon – there’s even aPink Floyd albumwith that name. But there’s no “dark side” of the moon because our satellite is not illuminated by the Earth, it is illuminat...
The Earth and Moon as they are now and the Earth and Moon as they were when the Moon formed. We live in a remarkably unlikely time, when the size of the Moon in the sky perfectly matches the size of the Sun. In fact, since the Moon’s orbit around Earth is a little elliptical...
Why do metal poor stars have the most elliptical orbits? From where do they obtain their metals? Why does the amplitude of light increase when light travels from a denser to a rarer medium? Why are there six flavors of leptons and quarks? Why it is difficult to detect neutrinos...