When plants align

[Smaug]

This is just an absurd question, but I kind of thought it was funny, so I'm just gonna pop it.

I was thinking that in a world with infinite posibilities, there would be a chance that one religion actually was right. I kind of thought the odds of that would be about the same as having all the plants in the solar system line up in one straight line on one side of the sun.

The question is, will that ever happen, or have happened in the past? And if it is possible, how would that affect the physics of the sun and the solar system?

When two or more orbiting bodies align in line on the same side of a central body it's called conjunction. When two orbiting bodies are in conjunction their mutual gravitational attraction is the strongest of all other orbital configurations. Conjunctions play a major role in so-called orbital resonances. A resonance occurs when the periods of two or more orbiting bodies relate as small natural numbers. Resonant configurations lead to regular variations of gravitational interaction between the orbiting bodies which in turn leads to periodic and/or secular variations of the bodies' orbits. The variations are ralatively small but on a long run they may result in either stabilzation of orbits or in ejections or collisions of celestial bodies.

Speaking of aligned plants... it's a good point for the astrologists that eight plants aligned in line and placed not far from them affect them stronger (via gravitational pull) that eight planets aligned in a conjunction.

A conjunction of all the planets is possible though by definition it's an extremely rare ocasion. I don't know by heart whether such a thing has ever taken place or what is the period and don't bother to look it up right now. Speaking of it's effect on the Solar system, the effect is extremely minor even on a relatively long run due to the rarity of such conjunctions .

[jesus_wept]

Are we talking about plants or planets?

If plants, don't plants tend to lean towards the sun anyway? To get the most sunlight. I'm not sure if this counts as aligning or not though, or what aligning really means in this scenario.

If its planets, this can happen, there are computer simulations about showing you the orbits of the planets and you can fast forward them until they're in line. If I recall correctly, this will take trillions of years and it isn't thought to have happened yet, but the odds of this happening are still much better than any of the god claims, if the solar system carries on as it is one could say it's inevitable.

[robvalue]

They are always aligned when viewed in a higher dimension than you pleblings can fathom. I use my spiritual "fourth eye".

[Void]

Are we talking about plants or planets?

If plants, don't plants tend to lean towards the sun anyway? To get the most sunlight. I'm not sure if this counts as aligning or not though, or what aligning really means in this scenario.

If its planets, this can happen, there are computer simulations about showing you the orbits of the planets and you can fast forward them until they're in line. If I recall correctly, this will take trillions of years and it isn't thought to have happened yet, but the odds of this happening are still much better than any of the god claims, if the solar system carries on as it is one could say it's inevitable.

OK, I saw the spelling error in the headline right now. I thought you were making fun of me because I had to be smoking weed to come up with something that crazy. Which I didn't do btw. Atleast not this decade.

I remember I had a computer animation just like that once on my Commodore 64. I never thought it being accurate in that sense, tho.

[jesus_wept]

The spelling mistake is in the headline and repeated in the first post, hence my confusion.

And I don't think it takes much computational power to approximate the orbits of the planets so your c64 probably wasn't too far out. In astronomical terms at least.

[Void]

The spelling mistake is in the headline and repeated in the first post, hence my confusion.

And I don't think it takes much computational power to approximate the orbits of the planets so your c64 probably wasn't too far out. In astronomical terms at least.

Aiaiai! It has to be my cell that is correcting me. I am at work now, but I can't stop laughing. Someone please put me out of my misery.

[Smaug]

And I don't think it takes much computational power to approximate the orbits of the planets so your c64 probably wasn't too far out. In astronomical terms at least.

In fact it does depending on how precise you want the result to be. If simple Kepler laws based model is enaugh any computer will do fine. If you want a highly precise model you'd have to have a very powerful machine. Since there's no general solution for the N-body problem and no way to obtain analytical solution for a corresponding Cauchy problem (i.e. analytically solve the system's differential equations with set initial conditions) the only way to obtain the solution is through numerical computatuon. Longer timespans lead to larger computational errors. In order to eliminate computational errors one has to increase computational power.

[SteelCurtain]

And I don't think it takes much computational power to approximate the orbits of the planets so your c64 probably wasn't too far out. In astronomical terms at least.

In fact it does depending on how precise you want the result to be. If simple Kepler laws based model is enaugh any computer will do fine. If you want a highly precise model you'd have to have a very powerful machine. Since there's no general solution for the N-body problem and no way to obtain analytical solution for a corresponding Cauchy problem (i.e. analytically solve the system's differential equations with set initial conditions) the only way to obtain the solution is through numerical computatuon. Longer timespans lead to larger computational errors. In order to eliminate computational errors one has to increase computational power.

This. Specifically the n-Body Problem.
Depending on how accurate you want the solution to be, you have to introduce how the planets interact with each other as well how the planets interact with dwarf planets/asteroids/comets/satellites.

A Commodore 64 would be fine mapping how the planets interact with the sun. But introduce all that extra stuff, and you'll be looking at:

[jesus_wept]

And I don't think it takes much computational power to approximate the orbits of the planets so your c64 probably wasn't too far out. In astronomical terms at least.

In fact it does depending on how precise you want the result to be. If simple Kepler laws based model is enaugh any computer will do fine. If you want a highly precise model you'd have to have a very powerful machine. Since there's no general solution for the N-body problem and no way to obtain analytical solution for a corresponding Cauchy problem (i.e. analytically solve the system's differential equations with set initial conditions) the only way to obtain the solution is through numerical computatuon. Longer timespans lead to larger computational errors. In order to eliminate computational errors one has to increase computational power.

I'm aware of this. IIRC it was only about 10 years ago that the orbit of the earth was mapped properly with a supercomputer, but to just approximate the orbits, a c64 should be able to do it. Either way you can get much more accurate models and powerful computers these days and I'm not advising anyone to study cosmology with a c64.

[Smaug]

This. Specifically the n-Body Problem.
Depending on how accurate you want the solution to be, you have to introduce how the planets interact with each other as well how the planets interact with dwarf planets/asteroids/comets/satellites.

A Commodore 64 would be fine mapping how the planets interact with the sun. But introduce all that extra stuff, and you'll be looking at:

If we consider a set of sun-planet systems only we can basically have several separate two-body problems which behave accordingly to Kepler's laws. There's no need to introduce small stuff to instantly make the problem much, much harder. Introducing Jupiter's perturbations is just enaugh.

By the way, what form of equations of motion did you use in your simulation on a C64?