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Thanks for the link. "Strange space object 2020 SO was discovered on September 17, 2020, on approach to Earth. On November 8, it slowly drifted into Earth’s sp
by eternalban 4y ago
Thanks for the link.
"Strange space object 2020 SO was discovered on September 17, 2020, on approach to Earth. On November 8, it slowly drifted into Earth’s sphere of gravitational dominance, to become a new mini-moon. It’ll escape back into a new orbit around the sun in March 2021. During that time, it’ll make 2 large loops around our planet."
Why would it leave orbit if it already does 2 circles?
- xbar 4y agoThink of them as increasingly elongated elipses and you can imagine the instability building...
- roywiggins 4y agoThey're orbits, but not stable ones. Not even really ellipses. By the time it's made one orbit-ish motion around the planet, the moon has moved relative to it. The second go around it gets affected by the new position of the moon. Eventually the combined effects of the moon and the sun's changing relative positions will nudge it out of orbit.
- VLM 4y agoYou all in the comments are rediscovering Lagrange points the hard way. L4 and L5 are stable, BTW, and we have a relatively famous space telescope at L2 which requires active stability control to stay there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point
- eternalban 4y agoThanks. I wonder if something similar is responsible for the gaps in atomic orbitals. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Lagrangian_points_equipotential.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Lagrangi...