i was wondering if you all could help me out with some affirmatives that i found. i couldn't find this info elsewhere, so i was wondering if anyone here know if they are true. 1. a brown dwarf is more in the gravitational category of a planet than a star. 2. mars exhibits an erratic orbit, deviating significantly in its distance from the sun ovr time. 3. there are a greater degree of eccentricity in the orbits of the other systems' planets, making the more spherical orbits of our system appear to be the exception rather than the rule. 4. the gravity of a brown dwarf between mars and jupiter would send the antartic ice-cap crashing into the ocean, causing a momentuous tsumani. also, does anyone know the actual problems a brown dwarf would make if it crossed the solar system? i thought it would cause a lot of problems, but the author in this article said solar system is full of "empty" space, so it would not cause a lot (and for "a lot" i mean planet collapses, etc.). thanks!
Brown Dwarfs, Planet-X? 1. A brown dwarf by definition is between a gas giant and C(arbon) class star. That is, it's larger than Jupiter and smaller than about 1/10 solar mass. 2. Mars's orbit is eccentric, not erratic. No planets orbit is truly circular, they are all ellipses with the Sun at one semi-major axis. Eccentricity is a measure of the shape of the ellipse, is all. 3. See 2. There are no circular orbits. See Keplers Laws for an explanation. 4. Huh? If its gravitational affect was so large it would do more than just move an ice cap. The imagery here is the Ice Cap suddenly moving, catastrophically, into the water and displacing 10^18, 10^21 cubic meters of water causing a wave. A killer wave. Why should gravity do this? To finish off the point so you can see where pt. 4 comes from. The force gravity exerts is expressed as, F= GMm / r^2 It falls as the inverse sqaure of distance. As the Sun is 99% the mass of the Solar System it is why everything goes around it. The real problem with gravity is tidal forces, the ones responsible for the tides. They fall as an inverse cube 1/r^3 but exert a distorting affect on the body, possibly why are core is still molten and why Io has volcanoes. That means a small object very close has a much larger affect than a large mass very far away. Hence the Earth is subject to large tidal forces from the Moon and few from the Sun. Io has major problems with Jupiter. For a putative Brown Dwarf crossing between Mars and Jupiter it will be farther away than the Sun and a fraction of the Mass. It may affect our orbit a little but the Sun has a larger affect. Tidal forces of the Moon would be larger as well. If point 4. where possible either the Sun, Moon or possibly Jupiter would have made it happen by now. It would be more of a problem if a large Brown Dwarf came much closer to us. Say at about 20 Million miles (~1/5 of an AU). The affects will be much larger and more dangerous. Its tidal forces would cause serious stress on the tectonic plates triggering major earthquake/volcanic episodes and posibly even capture us gravitationally. I do know of a few web sites claiming this is going to happen in 2003, Troubled Times, Zetatalk and some catastrophist sites. They claim the killer planet is inbound at present and the US government is hiding the fact. They, the nuts that is, also claim this putative killer planet is visible at Magnitude 11 in Orion, Dec and RA are given. They then wildly ignore the fact that thousands of amature Astronomers can easily see Mag 11 in any scope with an aperture over 4 or 5 inches. If it really existed thousands of amateur astronomers would have seen it by know. Of course, the Gummint is suppressing Asronomers in Europe and E. Asia who can verify the claims.
I just find it so damn sexy the way the celestial bodies all whirl about, their gravity fields slightly pulling on each other in their ellipses, keeping their strange orbits in shape..... So I'm a geek.
