This post reminds me of a fellow I took some programming classes in college with. He was interning for Huges Aircraft, doing a project to calculate liquid fuel sloshing effects on satellite trajectories -- gives me a math headache just thinking about it! --- On Mon, 6/16/08, Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Relativistic orbital effects To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Monday, June 16, 2008, 11:53 AM Mercury experiences an element of orbital precession that cannot be predicted using Newton's laws. The General Theory of Relativity does, however, seem to explain the discrepency.
Now read about the proximity of a newly-found extra-solar planet to it's star:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080616/sc_nm/space_planets_dc
I'm wondering, without actually doing the math, about the relativistic effects on an orbital period of *4 days! * ** And we say that a year "passes like nothing" here on earth. Ha! _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://gallery.utahastronomy.com Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com