As below, so above.
March 1, 2013 8:23 AM   Subscribe

"Forget the old heliocentric model – our solar system is a vortex!" Part 1, Part 2. [via]

Poster neither endorses nor opposes the scientific views presented in these very pretty videos.
posted by griphus (51 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm gonna say it.

Coooooooooool.
posted by The Whelk at 8:29 AM on March 1, 2013


Cool animation, and a nice big dollop of woo to go with it.

Can I put in a request for another one done with the actual orbits of the planets? And one that shows the sun going around the galaxy and the galaxy around the Great Attractor?
posted by carsonb at 8:30 AM on March 1, 2013


Cool animation, and a nice big dollop of woo to go with it.


Agree on both points. But what is it that woo I want to believe in that makes me so much less angry than woo I don't? Because this just makes me feel all warm and good inside.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:34 AM on March 1, 2013


(I guess theologians have figured this out, literally, centuries ago, never mind.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:34 AM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


Clearly we have all been educated stupid.
posted by yoink at 8:38 AM on March 1, 2013 [6 favorites]


No university physicist will dare to support the 4-simultaneous Days in Nature's Harmonic Time Cube Creation Principle, for fear of attack by the religious zealots who staff and control the academic institutions. Time Cube is banned 'Forbidden Truth'.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 8:39 AM on March 1, 2013 [12 favorites]


From the point of view of a spaceship traveling around the universe in a giant smiley face shape, the sun actually traces the path of a giant smiley face through the universe as it drags the planets along with it. But in the opposite direction.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 8:40 AM on March 1, 2013 [2 favorites]


I'm disappointed it took six whole comments to get a Timecube reference.
posted by localroger at 8:43 AM on March 1, 2013 [4 favorites]


Five!
posted by griphus at 8:47 AM on March 1, 2013 [2 favorites]


I'm watching the video, thinking, ok, this is kind of neat, but where's the woooooohhhhh, ok there it is. Pow, right in the kisser.
posted by adamdschneider at 8:54 AM on March 1, 2013


Ok, so he figured out that the "old, boring" heliocentric model is a fixed-frame-of-reference model, taking the sun as a stationary object. Yes, so? When I'm modeling the motion of my car down the street, I don't take the wobble from the missing driveshaft weight into account.

(Or more aptly, when I'm modeling the vibration of the driveshaft, I don't take the forward motion of the car into account.)
posted by notsnot at 8:59 AM on March 1, 2013


Yes, but you don't understand, it means that the solar system is life, dude.

I mean, have you ever really looked at the sun, man?

I hope not, because if you have you're probably blind.
posted by adamdschneider at 9:04 AM on March 1, 2013 [2 favorites]


Trip-hop does not mean that the sun is a comet.
posted by swift at 9:04 AM on March 1, 2013 [5 favorites]


(Or more aptly, when I'm modeling the vibration of the driveshaft, I don't take the forward motion of the car into account.)

You should, though, take into account the car's motion around the galactic center.
posted by chasing at 9:06 AM on March 1, 2013 [2 favorites]


This kind of blew my mind. And it's not even to scale!

We are really.. very.. incredibly tiny aren't we?
posted by royalsong at 9:08 AM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


chasing: "
You should, though, take into account the car's motion around the galactic center.
"

Oh, damn, I forgot to take into account the camber of the road as I rotate about the center of the curve of the offramp of my mind, man!
posted by notsnot at 9:09 AM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


Also, this is why whenever I'm pulled over for speeding I say something like: "Yeah, well we're all moving 52,000mph around the galaxy, what's an extra 15?" Always works. And by always, I mean sometimes. By which I mean never.
posted by chasing at 9:09 AM on March 1, 2013 [4 favorites]


I don't like how Saturn's year was the same length as Jupiters instead of over twice as long.

I really dislike that a lot, actually. It made me feel that side from neat music DjSadhu has got no business making videos about this stuff.
posted by aubilenon at 9:11 AM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


Coooool!

And WEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! Weeee!! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!
posted by arkham_inmate_0801 at 9:14 AM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


We are really.. very.. incredibly tiny aren't we?

'Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.'
posted by edgeways at 9:18 AM on March 1, 2013 [9 favorites]


Ok, so he figured out that the "old, boring" heliocentric model is a fixed-frame-of-reference model, taking the sun as a stationary object. Yes, so?

One hopes that this kind of thing will help people realize that all science is modelling, presenting only a partial, limited and relative perspective on its subject matter.
posted by No Robots at 9:20 AM on March 1, 2013 [4 favorites]


And the world's got me dizzy again
You'd think after twenty-two years I'd be used to the spin
(Actually 51, but I didn't write it)
posted by The Deej at 9:20 AM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


From the point of view of a spaceship traveling around the universe in a giant smiley face shape, the sun actually traces the path of a giant smiley face through the universe as it drags the planets along with it. But in the opposite direction.

Do not share the secret of Frowny-Face Space with the uninitiated!
posted by yoink at 9:28 AM on March 1, 2013


The Great Curve would have been a better soundtrack.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:29 AM on March 1, 2013


All of reality is a vortex.

We are all lost in a fractal.
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 9:33 AM on March 1, 2013


In the first video link, there are additional videos below the main linked video.
This one answered my questions, and is pretty cool in itself.
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:44 AM on March 1, 2013


All of reality is a vortex.

Shut up, Leibniz!
posted by yoink at 9:49 AM on March 1, 2013 [2 favorites]


oh, and by answered I mean, raised a bunch more....Haramein is a bit of a controversial figure it seems
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:50 AM on March 1, 2013


It's only one step away from this wackadoo shit (in fact, before I watched I thought it was going to be this... thankfully the post is less crazy than my link...)
posted by symbioid at 10:08 AM on March 1, 2013


This model is off. They aren't using the correct gravitational spin and orbital distances, for one. Second, none of the planets orbit in perfect spherical orbits, they are all oblong ovoid orbits (though this does raise the question of are all the shorter sides of the orbits on the same "side" of the sun). The sun is spinning, faster than the orbits of any of the planets, too, so there's that to take into account. While the "tail" is pretty to look at, it's kind of stupid. You would think that if there was a "comet tail" streaming "behind" (or in the path of where the sun had been) we would have, I don't know, looked for it? Or would be not be able to detect it?

It's pretty, though. I'll give them that. Needs a lot of work. They should contact Wolfram-Alpha and see if they can't get the right data to use for everything.

Also, I wonder if the orbits are canted at an angle oblique to the direction that the sun is traveling , or if they are truly parallel to that plane. For some reason, I would swear they couldn't be due to the spin of the sun itself and other gravitational effects, like the masses of the planets themselves.
posted by daq at 10:31 AM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


When the Earth is also traveling to the left (for half a year) it must go faster than the Sun. Then in the second half of the year, it travels in a “relative opposite direction” so it must go slower than the Sun. Then, after completing one orbit, it must increase speed to overtake the Sun in half a year. And this would go for all the planets. Just like any point you draw on a frisbee will not have a constant speed, neither will any planet.

I has a bean. Cool animation, though.
posted by disconnect at 10:48 AM on March 1, 2013


Okay, I read a bunch more about this.

Regarding the first video: The solar plane isn't perpendicular to the sun's movement around the galactic core, as depicted, but nor is it parallel as I expected. It's about 60°, which is closer to his animations than I would have guessed.

The second video is just wrong. The solar system doesn't corkscrew around in its orbit. The sun does have a little up and down motion across the solar plane, but only 2.7 times in it's path around the galaxy. That's like every 30 million years, not every 26,000 years. The 26000 year precession cycle he talks about is not the sun corkscrewing around (this would not be a stable orbit!), it's just the earth's rotational axis shifting.

That precession cycle means that the time between equinoxes is a little bit shorter than the earth's actual orbital period. Wikipedia says they differ by ~20 minutes. Which, it turns out, is about 1/26000 of a year. So yeah, he got that part completely wrong.
posted by aubilenon at 10:52 AM on March 1, 2013 [4 favorites]


You know, way more than "cool animation". Whatever disagreement I may have with that characterization of rotation, this is awesome (in the literal sense of the word). Lots to think about. Thanks!
posted by disconnect at 11:06 AM on March 1, 2013


Dammit. I really wanted to put a model of the solar system on my kid's nursery ceiling. This makes things......harder. Mental note: I'll need lots of blue wool to make vortex trails.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 11:28 AM on March 1, 2013 [2 favorites]


Sure, that's a kind of cool animation, but this guy really does not understand frames of reference (among other things).

In fact, since the plane of the earth's rotation around the sun is not perpendicular to the motion of the sun (as depicted), the earth does speed up and slow down in the frame of reference of the center of the galaxy.

The sun does towards and away from the centre of the galaxy, but that's because its orbit is elliptical. I think he may have confused the period of this motion (but then it isn't clear why the sun would corkscrew like that - what force would cause such motion?).
posted by ssg at 11:37 AM on March 1, 2013


No worries. If it's anything like this vortex, it's probably just a camera angle thing.
posted by kinnakeet at 11:44 AM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


So what you're saying is we're going around like a circle in a spiral, like a dream within a dream, never ending or beginning, in an ever spinning scene?
posted by The Whelk at 11:55 AM on March 1, 2013


Am I an asshole for looking at his name, reading "dj-" anything and immediately discounting this as woo to the wooth degree?

It falls squarely into that "I'm trying to *prove* something very important" which, even if you accept the premiss, just gets you nowhere. Like arguing over how long the unicorn's horn really was.

So the universe is a vortex? Sure, from some frame of reference, fine. It's part of life? Seems tautological. So... water is the universe? Every vortex is its own universe? We're all one overbeing fractured into an infinity of moving subvortices?

Reason doesn't work that way chief. And my reason-brain actually enjoys the pretty less when it's pretending to prove... something.
posted by abulafa at 12:08 PM on March 1, 2013


Another reminder that outer space isn't somewhere far away... we're in it.
posted by hypersloth at 12:30 PM on March 1, 2013


From the second video description: "The image used for texturing the Milky Way is NOT a picture of the Milky Way. There are no pictures of the outside of the Milky Way."

...well, yes. And not yet! And...yes. Again.

Very cool animation/music.
posted by RainyJay at 12:37 PM on March 1, 2013


We are really.. very.. incredibly tiny aren't we?

It's a great big universe, and we're all really puny, we're just tiny little specs, about the size of Mickey Rooney...

So what you're saying is we're going around like a circle in a spiral, like a dream within a dream, never ending or beginning, in an ever spinning scene?

Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind, yes, Whelk.
posted by mephron at 12:46 PM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]




Metafilter: immediately discounting this as woo to the wooth degree.
posted by Minus215Cee at 1:13 PM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


So the universe is a vortex? Sure, from some frame of reference, fine.

Well, during its formation the solar system was literally and uncontroversially a vortex. Now that's it's coagulated up into planets and stuff I'm not sure it still quite fits the term vortex (which is really a fluid dynamics term) though a ton of similarities remain.

No idea how the galaxy formed. Maybe that's similar too.
posted by aubilenon at 2:13 PM on March 1, 2013


Apart from bones, almost all known human history has taken place in about half of one precession of Earth's axis.

In one solar orbit of the Milky Way (~226M years) the Earth's axis precesses about 8700 times (once per ~26000 years).

Ancient

posted by Twang at 3:26 PM on March 1, 2013


almost all known human history has taken place in about half of one precession of Earth's axis

Yeah, and you can kind of squint and see an interesting correlation between the ages of Taurus (consolidation of the first states), Aries (rise of Rome), Pisces (Christianity) and Aquarius (duh) and the overall character of, at least, the society that named those constellations. But wtf is the age of Scorpio gonna be like? Much less Libra? Given that Aquarius started out by giving us Nazis and atomic weapons?*

*I know Aquarius didn't officially start until later in the 20th century but these things bleed over, as any astrologer will coolly explain. And I don't really believe this stuff but it's fun to entertain and a bit weird if you suspend a little disbelief in a haze of, um, smoke.
posted by localroger at 4:18 PM on March 1, 2013


The Age of Libra is nothing but getting drunk and telling catty gossip.

Granted, you look great doing it.
posted by The Whelk at 4:47 PM on March 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


Neat on the surface, but I had a traumatic experience with the fibonacci sequence and was cringing from anxious anticipation until...oh fuck, there's fucking fibonacci and all that goddamn new age fucktardery. Where's my trigger warning, people?

Fibonacci is bullshit, straight up.

It starts out all innocent with the fibonacci sequence, and then you're forced to build a theremin against your better judgment, stuck cleaning up clown feces thanks to Patch Adams, and wearing soaking wet biker leathers inside a giant pink poodle with a broken bottom bracket, though not necessarily in that order.
posted by sonascope at 5:29 PM on March 1, 2013 [3 favorites]


sonascope: Yeah, I almost added to my initial complaint that he had linked to this obvious nonsense but decided that it's probably better to focus on the actual claims he was making rather than the wingnuttery he also finds interesting.

Also the second half of your comment reminds me: I gotta figure out what I'm doing for Burning Man this year!
posted by aubilenon at 6:59 PM on March 1, 2013


I was wondering why all of a sudden the sun started spiraling with no explanation. I do like the visualization in that it gives an idea of how the movement of our solar system (not entirely accurately) looks from points outside it.

I'm kind of surprised no one mentioned that the Heliospheric Current Sheet takes the shape of a "Parker Spiral", which is not widely disputed and also AWESOME.
posted by nTeleKy at 2:20 PM on March 4, 2013


A summary of many things wrong in these videos (including many points aubilenon explained above): Bad Astronomy: No, Our Solar System is NOT a "Vortex"
posted by ook at 10:59 AM on March 5, 2013 [2 favorites]


« Older Wokka wokka wokka   |   Mexico City gets the hero we all deserve Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments