Oolite Bulletins

wonderful demonstration of what physics can do - we know its there casue newtons laws says it must be, and hay presto it is

Nice on EV!

Why they're so excited about all this in Northern Ireland, I can't imagine ...

<chuckles>

tonycro wrote:

wonderful demonstration of what physics can do - we know its there casue newtons laws says it must be, and hay presto it is

The corollary being that they used exactly the same physics to predict the location of Pluto based on observed perturbations in Neptune's orbit, found Pluto, found it was too small to cause the perturbations, re-did the observations and found no perturbations.

Cheers,

Drew.

drew wrote:

tonycro wrote:

wonderful demonstration of what physics can do - we know its there casue newtons laws says it must be, and hay presto it is

The corollary being that they used exactly the same physics to predict the location of Pluto based on observed perturbations in Neptune's orbit, found Pluto, found it was too small to cause the perturbations, re-did the observations and found no perturbations.

Cheers,

Drew.

How can you find a planet using evidence that doesn't exist? With the exception that "god told you" and trying to hide that event I smell a fish.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

How can you find a planet using evidence that doesn't exist? With the exception that "god told you" and trying to hide that event I smell a fish.

They did their sums wrong, which told them there must be another planet out there. They looked around in the area and found Pluto. If they'd looked really hard in another part of the sky, chances are they'd have found another dwarf planet eventually.

It's the same sort of thing as Columbus discovering the New World. He did his sums wrong, which led him to believe that China wasn't as far away to the West from Spain as other people thought, so he sailed off and bumped into the Caribbean more or less where he was expecting to find the isles of Xipangu (a.k.a. Japan) and – despite making another three trips west – died convinced that he'd opened up a transatlantic route to the eastern shores of Asia.

Disembodied wrote:

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

How can you find a planet using evidence that doesn't exist? With the exception that "god told you" and trying to hide that event I smell a fish.

They did their sums wrong, which told them there must be another planet out there. They looked around in the area and found Pluto. If they'd looked really hard in another part of the sky, chances are they'd have found another dwarf planet eventually.

It's the same sort of thing as Columbus discovering the New World. He did his sums wrong, which led him to believe that China wasn't as far away to the West from Spain as other people thought, so he sailed off and bumped into the Caribbean more or less where he was expecting to find the isles of Xipangu (a.k.a. Japan) and – despite making another three trips west – died convinced that he'd opened up a transatlantic route to the eastern shores of Asia.

I was told (at GCSE level I'll admit) that the West Indies are called the West Indies because Columbus thought he'd stumbled over a group of islands west of India...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I was told (at GCSE level I'll admit) that the West Indies are called the West Indies because Columbus thought he'd stumbled over a group of islands west of India...

I think "India" and "the Indies" in the 15th century were fairly vague designations for "really far away to the east" or "Asia beyond the Ottoman Empire". The West Indies did get their name from the fact that they were supposed, originally, to be western isles of India (by Columbus anyway – plenty of other people, with superior mathematical skills, thought otherwise). Native Americans got called "Indians" for the same reason, I suppose, even though everyone knew it wasn't India by then. Columbus knew about Japan – or rather, he knew that there were supposed to be these islands to the east of China, called "Xipangu" or "Cipangu", that were mentioned by Marco Polo. The fact that native peoples on the Caribbean islands knew about "a great empire to the west, with lots of gold, oh yes" (Aztecs, probably) didn't help with the confusion.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I was told (at GCSE level I'll admit) that the West Indies are called the West Indies because Columbus thought he'd stumbled over a group of islands west of India...

That’s rather confused. Colombus referred to the area simply as the Indies, meaning “any part of Asia east of Persia”. When it became clear that it wasn’t Asia, the terms East Indies and West Indies (referring to the direction you travelled to get there from Europe) were used to avoid ambiguity.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

How can you find a planet using evidence that doesn't exist? With the exception that "god told you" and trying to hide that event I smell a fish.

They did their sums wrong, which told them there must be another planet out there. They looked around in the area and found Pluto. If they'd looked really hard in another part of the sky, chances are they'd have found another dwarf planet eventually.

It's the same sort of thing as Columbus discovering the New World. He did his sums wrong, which led him to believe that China wasn't as far away to the West from Spain as other people thought, so he sailed off and bumped into the Caribbean more or less where he was expecting to find the isles of Xipangu (a.k.a. Japan) and – despite making another three trips west – died convinced that he'd opened up a transatlantic route to the eastern shores of Asia.

I was told (at GCSE level I'll admit) that the West Indies are called the West Indies because Columbus thought he'd stumbled over a group of islands west of India...

Find another dwarf planet eventually? You know what the odds are on that? Even serendipity would blush. The eventually you speak of is just the last recent few years as a result of advances in electronics and bigger,better telescopes.

And quite the history lesson you two, continue.

Pretty cool!