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Scientific Publications

Ghostisfort said:
What seems to be unknown by most, is that Newton's law of universal gravitation was never completed. Both he and the astronomers of his day failed to plot the position of the Moon using it and the astronomers are recorded as reverting to the old tables.
Incidentally, the old tables were probably compiled by astrologers.(I'll check)
We are still lumbered with the self same law.
You do come out with some old cobblers, concocted from your faulty remembrance of something you only understood imperfectly in the first place.

Here's Newton's Law of gravitation: F = G.m1.m2/r^2
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_uni ... ravitation )

That's it, complete, finished, done and dusted! Secondary school kids can understand it.

"It is a part of classical mechanics and was formulated in Newton's work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("the Principia"), first published on 5 July 1687."

But Newton went much further with his Principia: he showed that the inverse-squared law led to orbits under gravity that are Conic Sections (usually ellipses), and he showed how this led to Kepler's laws of planetary motion; that extended (spherical) bodies act as if all their mass was concentrated at their centres; and he showed how tides are raised by the Gravity of Sun and Moon. Furthermore, he showed how gravity acting on the bulging equator of the Earth caused the Precession of the Equinoxes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi ... athematica

Pretty damn good for an 'incomplete law'! ;)
 
Spookdaddy said:
Ghostisfort said:
...This is how the old and famous names of science did their best work.

Old? Surely you mean, most travelled. ;)

Actually, that doesn't really work - but you can't have, 'subject to movement earlier than those who are moving now', because you can't really have an 'earlier'...or can you??
Yes, the ones who have traversed the highest number of degrees?
I'm not to blame for a language built on a temporal obsession.
Loved it, I had to read it several (times) in the multiple sense of course. :)
 
rynner2 said:
You do come out with some old cobblers, concocted from your faulty remembrance of something you only understood imperfectly in the first place.
The Newton law is incomplete according to Einsteinians.

More old cobblers.
The whole sorry mess about the Moons position and Newton's calculations can be read here: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1995QJRAS..36..357K
Tycho Brahe, as I suspected, was an astrologer and was involved in the formulation of lunar equations.
We have the makings of an example of astronomical myth-making at its best.

I have a web page that outlines some of the gravity problems experienced during the first Moon shots.
Additionally, we have dark matter theory that was cobbled together to hide the anomalies connected with galaxies and gravity.
Dark matter
TAKE our best understanding of gravity, apply it to the way galaxies spin, and you'll quickly see the problem: the galaxies should be falling apart. Galactic matter orbits around a central point because its mutual gravitational attraction creates centripetal forces. But there is not enough mass in the galaxies to produce the observed spin.

Vera Rubin, an astronomer working at the Carnegie Institution's department of terrestrial magnetism in Washington DC, spotted this anomaly in the late 1970s. The best response from physicists was to suggest there is more stuff out there than we can see. The trouble was, nobody could explain what this "dark matter" was.

And they still can't. Although researchers have made many suggestions about what kind of particles might make up dark matter, there is no consensus. It's an embarrassing hole in our understanding. Astronomical observations suggest that dark matter must make up about 90 per cent of the mass in the universe, yet we are astonishingly ignorant what that 90 per cent is.

Maybe we can't work out what dark matter is because it doesn't actually exist. That's certainly the way Rubin would like it to turn out. "If I could have my pick, I would like to learn that Newton's laws must be modified in order to correctly describe gravitational interactions at large distances," she says. "That's more appealing than a universe filled with a new kind of sub-nuclear particle."

Update: Some scientists are trying to create the stuff themselves. See our free feature, Let there be dark matter.
If the results turn out to be real, the implications are profound. We may have to rewrite physics and chemistry
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600
 
Ghostisfort said:
The Newton law is incomplete according to Einsteinians.
Gosh, what a scoundrel Newton was, not discovering Relativity in the 17th century!! :shock:

But using Einstein's work to criticise Newton is a bit rich coming from you, since you don't believe in Einstein's work either! You don't have a consistent, coherent theory of anything; you just pick on minor details of others' works to snipe at and then smugly assume you've dismantled the whole understanding of modern science.

Sure, Newton had trouble accurately computing the moon's position. But so did everyone else at that time - it was then cutting edge science. But this does not invalidate his work on gravity, as this formed the basis for much more research for years to come, and is still in use today when relativistic effects can be ignored. (The difficulties with the moon arose because Sun-Moon-Earth forms a three-body problem, which cannot be solved precisely, only approximated. Nowadays, however, we have computers that can do the approximations to any required level.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem

As for Dark Matter, that is something at the cutting edge of today's science, but as yet it hasn't invalidated the work of Newton or Einstein. In years to come we'll look back and see better which ideas were fruitful and which were distractions.
 
I would have thought the problem with modern science is that it is very difficult to get support for what we might call 'green field' or 'blue sky' - depending on taste - research. Most funding is aimed towards a specific - often product related - end.

Certainly this seems to be so in my own field where I sometimes find myself competing against 'free' products developed by research students in universities. Free because their development is being paid for with my taxes.
 
Maybe someone can explain the distance of the Neutral Point and why it changes?
In 1960, before the Apollo missions, Encyclopedia Britannica reported the neutral point to be 20,520 miles from the Moon.

A Moon with 1/6 Earth's gravity should have a Neutral Point between 22,078 - 25,193 miles from the Moons surface.

Yet after the Apollo missions, Wernher von Braun,Time magazine July 25, 1969 said "At a point of 43,495 miles from the moon, lunar gravity exerted a force equal to the gravity of the Earth, then some 200,000 miles distant"

In 1973 Encyclopedia Britannica, gave a new neutral point distance of 39,000 miles.

The problem with all of this is, a neutral point of 43,495 miles would make the moon with not 1/6th (16%) the Earth's gravity, but 64%. A moon with 64% of Earth's gravity would require way more fuel and power than was supposedly available in the Apollo missions. http://www.xenophilia.com/zb0003u.htm

Knowing that the ratio of the masses of the Earth and Moon is approximately 81:1 and the gravitational forces vary inversely with the square of the distance, the approximate neutral point can be calculated. It turns out the neutral point is about nine times further from the Earth than the Moon or approximately 340,000 km (211,266 miles)from the Earth. An accelerometer on the Apollo Command Module should have discerned the exact point where each spacecraft went through the neutral point on their journey to the Moon, but no explicit reference could be found to confirm this.
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/47john_lea ... Point.html
340,000 km/(211,266 miles) above?

The distance between the moon and the Earth varies from around 356,400 km (221456miles) to 406,700 km (252711miles) at the extreme perigees (closest) and apogees (farthest).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon
 
Ghostisfort said:
Maybe someone can explain the distance of the Neutral Point and why it changes?
FFS!
You've raised this before, on this thread and another, and you're still none the wiser!

I refer you to my previous reponses:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 36#1139536
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 93#1139593

Please stop wasting our time, and, even worse, insulting us, by totally ignoring previous replies.

Repeatedly throwing up the same old rubbish is akin to the internet behaviour of those named after "large, dull, particularly ugly creatures that live in caves or other subterranean dwellings" in Scandinavian mythology!
 
The third billy goat then gets on the bridge, and is stopped by the hungry troll. When the troll gets up on the bridge however, the third billy goat is so big, that he easily throws the troll into the stream with his horns and crosses the bridge. From then on the bridge is safe, and all three goats are able to go to the rich fields around the summer farm in the hills. They all live happily ever after. The troll however was never seen again. :)
 
rynner2 said:
Please stop wasting our time, and, even worse, insulting us, by totally ignoring previous replies.

Repeatedly throwing up the same old rubbish is akin to the internet behaviour of those named after "large, dull, particularly ugly creatures that live in caves or other subterranean dwellings" in Scandinavian mythology!

This is perfectly germane to a thread about gravity and I can tell by the obfuscation generated that you don't like it. I'm "throwing up the same rubbish" because you refuse to answer. In the links, as usual, you fail to answer the question, blustering. Everyone reading this thread will see you ducking and diving yet again.
Wernher von Braun did not know where the neutral point was, although you tell us it's a simple calculation? Really!:
rynner quote
I suggest you take that up with the forum concerned, and Encyclopedia Britannica!! I can't be responsible for all the misunderstandings and general fuckwittery that pass for 'facts' on the internet.

But the simplest case of a neutral point on the Earth-Moon line is even easier to calculate than Lagrange Points - just use Newton's equation for gravitational force of Earth and Moon. No need to consider radial or angular velocities.
Very scientific. Britannical fuckwittery?
It's not about calculation, it's about the failure of calculations. I'm not sure that you understand that? The math' has been wrong since Newton and no cutting edge dark matter is going to change that.

A question springs to mind: Why, when we have a superior theory by Einstein, do we still use Newton's five hundred year old formula?
I think I know: more early space craft would have crashed into the Moon? Or maybe you have a more scientific answer that includes answering the original question?
Newton's law has since been superseded by Einstein's theory of general relativity, but it continues to be used as an excellent approximation of the effects of gravity. Relativity is required only when there is a need for extreme precision, or when dealing with gravitation for extremely massive and dense objects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s ... ravitation
Nothing, absolutely nothing about gravity, is known by science, or even Einstein, . :D :oops:
 
The only Neutral Points of any relevence to space-flight are the Lagrange Points. Several important satellites are parked at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points.

The so-called neutral point where the Earth's pull is equal and opposite to the Moon's, although easily calculated, is of absolutely no importance in space flight (or anything else). A satellite placed there would not remain there unless it applied power, which would be a pointless waste of fuel.
 
I'm wondering why you don't address these questions to some real physicists. They'll know the answers.

There are plenty of physics boards around, with hoards of physicists just bursting to educate the curious public. They LOVE being asked things.
 
escargot1 said:
I'm wondering why you don't address these questions to some real physicists. They'll know the answers...

But 'real' phycisists are in league with the dark side - on this we cannot look. ;)
 
escargot1 said:
I'm wondering why you don't address these questions to some real physicists. They'll know the answers.
Oi! I did my degree in maths and physics - aren't I real enough?! :(
(And since then I've had a particular interest in orbital dynamics. But I fear it's 'pearls before swine' in the current case... Perhaps I'm too 'academic'!)
 
rynner2 said:
...Oi! I did my degree in maths and physics - aren't I real enough?! :( ...

JEZEBEL!! Rynner is with the dark ones. Do not look upon his scribblings. AH!! My eyes!! They burn! They burn!
 
Well, Ryn has a physics degree, and some of us can count a bit, so we're every bit as well-informed and up-to-date as any mere MIT or SLAC messageboard.
No need to look elsewhere for the answers to life, the universe and everything. Carry on.
 
escargot1 said:
Well, Ryn has a physics degree, and some of us can count a bit, so we're every bit as well-informed and up-to-date as any mere MIT or SLAC messageboard.
No need to be up-to-date on this particular aspect of orbital dynamics - Lagrange (and others) had it all worked out before the end of the 18th century! ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point
 
drbastard said:
It would also be good not to just limit yourself to physics. I'd love to join in. :twisted:
I'm only responding to what Gif posts - if he lobs the ball in my court, naturally I'm going to whack it back!

And this particular topic is one he's raised before anyway (and ignored the answers)... :roll:
 
Surely Ghostisfort's guide can take him to the particular place so that he can figure it out and we can know once and for all (ditto for the various Venus questions)...?
 
rynner2 said:
drbastard said:
It would also be good not to just limit yourself to physics. I'd love to join in. :twisted:
I'm only responding to what Gif posts - if he lobs the ball in my court, naturally I'm going to whack it back!

And this particular topic is one he's raised before anyway (and ignored the answers)... :roll:

Sorry Rynner I was aiming that at Ghostisfort.
 
drbastard said:
rynner2 said:
drbastard said:
It would also be good not to just limit yourself to physics. I'd love to join in. :twisted:
I'm only responding to what Gif posts - if he lobs the ball in my court, naturally I'm going to whack it back!

And this particular topic is one he's raised before anyway (and ignored the answers)... :roll:

Sorry Rynner I was aiming that at Ghostisfort.
The richest mines of anomalies lie in the strata of geology and so I'd be happy to go there.
Evolution is also a froth made pseudo-solid by intellectualisation, but tends to attract fanatics. I'll go there if the thread is interesting.
Physics was the place I least wanted to go, but I go where the threads lead.
I welcome your input dear doctor, with an impatient keyboard. :D
 
Ghostisfort said:
Maybe someone can explain the distance of the Neutral Point and why it changes?
Knowing that the ratio of the masses of the Earth and Moon is approximately 81:1 and the gravitational forces vary inversely with the square of the distance, the approximate neutral point can be calculated. It turns out the neutral point is about nine times further from the Earth than the Moon or approximately 340,000 km (211,266 miles)from the Earth. An accelerometer on the Apollo Command Module should have discerned the exact point where each spacecraft went through the neutral point on their journey to the Moon, but no explicit reference could be found to confirm this.
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/47john_lea ... Point.html
That quotation has got it wrong: as the Apollo Command Module was in free fall most of the time, the accelerometers would record nothing unless the engine and/or some of the attitude thrusters were firing.

And the only neutral point between Moon and Earth is the Lagrange Point L1. Even if Apollo went through this (which I doubt) it would not have been detected by accelerometers.

A few minutes ago, Wolfram Alpha gave these figures for the Earth-Moon L1 point:
In Miles: 36,963 from Moon, 206,412 from Earth.
 
Have a look at the rest of that site and then perhaps that may explain the errors... ;)
 
Update: now
36,685 and 20,367 Miles respectively (showing Earth and Moon getting closer!)

(Using query "Earth Moon Lagrange Points": Alpha takes a few minutes to compute the answers, however, but it does give the data for L2 - L5 as well.)
 
Ghostisfort said:
The richest mines of anomalies lie in the strata of geology and so I'd be happy to go there.
Evolution is also a froth made pseudo-solid by intellectualisation, but tends to attract fanatics. I'll go there if the thread is interesting.
Physics was the place I least wanted to go, but I go where the threads lead.
I welcome your input dear doctor, with an impatient keyboard. :D


I wasn’t really throwing down the gauntlet, I just think it would be good to talk more broadly about science, and as the title says, scientific publications. There’s plenty about the academic peer review process that stinks, I can testify to that.

Anyway, after having given it some thought I’m not sure I want to divulge my area of research because I have a feeling it’ll just be a monumental time-wasting exercise. I’m already a borderline alcoholic as it is, I’m not letting you push me completely over the edge.

Meanwhile if the discussion strays into my territory I’ll pipe up soon enough, sir Ghosty.
:D
 
rynner2 said:
Ghostisfort said:
Maybe someone can explain the distance of the Neutral Point and why it changes?
Knowing that the ratio of the masses of the Earth and Moon is approximately 81:1 and the gravitational forces vary inversely with the square of the distance, the approximate neutral point can be calculated. It turns out the neutral point is about nine times further from the Earth than the Moon or approximately 340,000 km (211,266 miles)from the Earth. An accelerometer on the Apollo Command Module should have discerned the exact point where each spacecraft went through the neutral point on their journey to the Moon, but no explicit reference could be found to confirm this.
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/47john_lea ... Point.html
That quotation has got it wrong: as the Apollo Command Module was in free fall most of the time, the accelerometers would record nothing unless the engine and/or some of the attitude thrusters were firing.

And the only neutral point between Moon and Earth is the Lagrange Point L1. Even if Apollo went through this (which I doubt) it would not have been detected by accelerometers.

A few minutes ago, Wolfram Alpha gave these figures for the Earth-Moon L1 point:
In Miles: 36,963 from Moon, 206,412 from Earth.

The term 'neutral point' refers to the point on a journey to the Moon, where the gravity of the Earth gives way to the gravity of the Moon.
Put simply, the space craft stops going up-hill and starts to go down-hill.
As far as I can see, this is not L1.
 
Ghostisfort said:
The term 'neutral point' refers to the point on a journey to the Moon, where the gravity of the Earth gives way to the gravity of the Moon.
Put simply, the space craft stops going up-hill and starts to go down-hill.
As far as I can see, this is not L1.
I've answered that before too!

No time to elaborate, the footie's on! :D
 
The spacecraft is always going uphill from Earth and downhill to the moon. (Gravitational fields are taken to be infinite in extent, so the spacecraft is always under the influence of both Earth and Moon, from lift-off to touch-down.)

The 'neutral point' where the field strengths are equal (and opposite) is of no real physical significance. It's just numerology; nothing happens there, and any spacecraft placed there would need power to remain there. This is because the point co-rotates with the Earth and Moon about their barycentre (their common centre of gravity).

Lagrange points, however, take this rotation into account by factoring in centrifugal forces, which is why bodies placed there will remain there. That's why they are the only physically meaningful neutral points.
 
rynner2 said:
The spacecraft is always going uphill from Earth and downhill to the moon. (Gravitational fields are taken to be infinite in extent, so the spacecraft is always under the influence of both Earth and Moon, from lift-off to touch-down.)

The 'neutral point' where the field strengths are equal (and opposite) is of no real physical significance. It's just numerology; nothing happens there, and any spacecraft placed there would need power to remain there. This is because the point co-rotates with the Earth and Moon about their barycentre (their common centre of gravity).

Lagrange points, however, take this rotation into account by factoring in centrifugal forces, which is why bodies placed there will remain there. That's why they are the only physically meaningful neutral points.
That's fine, but this is what these links are about and nothing to do with L1. L1 I'm told, is an Earth/Sun position whereas the neutral point is within the orbit of the Moon and is effective in any position of the Moon's orbit regardless of the Sun's relative position.

"Lagrange points are the only physically meaningful neutral points".

The neutral point is meaningful in the context of this thread in that it appears to be anomalous which by default makes gravity theory appear anomalous.
It has been reported that the astronauts experienced a jolt. Wernher von Braun saw fit to report the phenomenon to the press.

This is the science of anomalistics, a bona fide part of Forteana.
 
escargot1 said:
I'm wondering why you don't address these questions to some real physicists. They'll know the answers.

There are plenty of physics boards around, with hoards of physicists just bursting to educate the curious public. They LOVE being asked things.
Hi mollusc
I have already tried to engage several physicists in conversation, but all they seem to want to talk about is their qualifications and how good they are at math's.
I'm so glad that this never happens on FT's forum. :rofl:
 
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