Originally posted by pepesilvia
reply to post by ngchunter
As the article states, a planet rotating in the opposite direction of the star or off the elliptical plane was previously thought to be impossible and against the laws of physics as well.
There's nothing in orbital mechanics that says that can't happen. I dare you to show me how that's "impossible." Unlikely, sure, but impossible? Any number of things could cause that; a star capturing a planet from another solar system, planetoid-planetoid interactions causing one to be violently thrown retrograde, etc. Its orbit follows the laws of orbital mechanics though.
It is more likely to occur than elf-ninjas in your lawn, universe is bigger sample size -- and there are still many things out there we can't explain. Have you seen any ninja stars sticking out of trees or something?
Neither your proposal nor mine have supporting evidence, that's the point. Where is the evidence that a planet can violate orbital mechanics? It doesn't exist.
Most of physics is based on the 'laws' we observe in our own solar system. That is why there are anomalies, which our laws of physics can't be explained.
The laws of orbital mechanics we observe in our solar system hold true in every solar system we've observed. I don't know what you think counts as an "anomaly" but your example does not violate those laws.
To rule out orbits that are not shaped as an ellipse given the current information would imply that humans know everything about how the universe operates. Far from it.
You don't need to know everything about how the universe works to know the laws that govern orbital mechanics. That's nonsense. As I said, other shapes are possible given those laws, but only with very exotic configurations that do not resemble our solar system nor any other yet observed. Even if we were to find such a system it would only further validate those laws and its exotic motion would not imply such a thing was possible in our system.
Remember when orbits were supposed to be perfect circles? Keplar was considered crazy when he told them it goes in an ellipse.
Guess what though, the perfect circle idea didn't fit with observation, they had to use fudge factors called epicycles to make it work. No such fudge factors are necessary to predict the positions of the planets and even land probes on the other planets.
[edit on 7-6-2010 by ngchunter]
