In his book "Dark matter, missing planets and new comets," the late Dr. Tom Van Flandern postulated, based on his Exploded Planet Hypothesis (EPH), that virtually all asteroids would be found to have orbiting satellites. This was based on his initial observation that chunks of debris from tests of Russian anti-satellite weapons had a tendency to orbit each other, smaller chunks assuming orbit around larger ones. This observation has now been confirmed numerous times, with the latest being asteroid 1994 cc. Radar observations at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico have confirmed that 1994 cc is indeed 3 objects, not one, as is assumed by the conventional models.
This is simply more evidence in support of Van Flandern's theory, which looks stronger by the day. Since very few Near Earth Objects or other asteroids have been observed, and a sizable percentage have now been found to have satellites, it follows that a very high percentage of asteroids have satellites or moons, and that strongly implies that his EPH is correct.
See the Space.com story here.
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25 comments:
"This was based on his initial observation that chunks of debris from tests of Russian anti-satellite weapons had a tendency to orbit each other, smaller chunks assuming orbit around larger ones. "
I knew and liked Tom, since the 1970s, but he could misread a news story and run over the horizon with it before anybody could catch and correct him. This idea that some satellites in Earth orbit are in orbit around each other is preposterous. There mutual gravitational attraction is so much smaller than external perturbing forces that it's physically impossible -- it's dismaying that Tom couldn't even do that math. As an idea man, he was a gem. Otherwise... Sigh.
"This is simply more evidence in support of Van Flandern's theory, which looks stronger by the day. Since very few Near Earth Objects or other asteroids have been observed, and a sizable percentage have now been found to have satellites, it follows that a very high percentage of asteroids have satellites or moons, and that strongly implies that his EPH is correct."
Baloney. An observation only supports one theory out of several options if its predictions differ in a way confirmed by reality. Asteroids having satellites -- something first noticed through occultation observations by amateurs in the 1970s -- is a cool feature of the solar system and is consistent with many different origin theories. It provides no evidentiary support for Tom's theories, however. The most you can say -- if you understood scientific proof -- is the observation is consistent with his theory (and with others).
Jim,
I think your misinterpreting my statement. What Tom observed was the debris chunks from exploded target sats. And given that he was the head of the celestial mechanics branch of the US Naval Obervatory, and you... weren't, I'll take his math over yours any day of the week.
Maybe you should read his book. I'll be glad to send it to you for Christmas, unless you've got a birthday coming up before then.
So aside from your own say-so, where's the evidence -- any evidence -- that pieces of satellites were discovered to be in orbit around other pieces. Aside from your own claim, I mean -- where's the real evidence?
R E A D T H E B O O K.
You don't really expect me to do your homework for you, do you?
JimO write: "if you understood scientific proof"
Lolol... Now that's funny.
The whole world will soon know who and what you really are... www.maxtheknife.com
If I were you, I'd start looking for some really good CROW recipes or some really deep sand to stick your head into, cuz...
You are... TOAST.
Off topic!
Mike Bara on utube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MehI2-BJYnw&feature=channel_page
U rock dude!
Whoa, that was about 50 pounds ago...
I'm just posting for the hell of it.
Stuff orbits other stuff all the time. Cool.
So what's new?
:-)
Hathor -- Playing the coquette
;-)
The Moon orbits the Earth. Phobos and Deimos orbit Mars. Why wouldn't smaller objects behave the same way?
Jim certainly didn't provide any proof that this doesn't happen.
Why isn't this just assumed until evidence suggests otherwise?
Stuff orbits other stuff when it's inside the sphere of influence of that original stuff and not the sphere of influence of some much larger body that's farther away. That's why a satellite can orbit the Moon when it's 1000 miles from the Moon, but not when it's 100,000 miles from the Moon -- it then falls into orbit around Earth. A spacecraft can orbit Earth when it's 100,000 miles from Earth but not when it's two million miles from Earth -- it then falls into orbit around the Sun. The sphere of influence concept, well known to astronomers for centuries, is based on a comparison of one object's purturbing force on the attraction of another object, and vice versa -- whichever is greater, is the sphere of influence dominating the motion of that object, and so it is the body that the second object orbits around.
It's easy enough to apply the same argument to a piece of space debris orbiting Earth at a given range. The ratio of the two masses can be calculated. The 'sphere of influence' of the piece of debris, that region in which even smaller objects can orbit around it stably, depends on assumptions, but it's going to be measured in microns, which is smaller than the physical diameter of the debris. The only stable orbit around a piece of space junk would be one INSIDE the junk.
Do the math. Let's all get educated.
You CAN do math, Mike? Show us.
Time to Face it, Jimo...
If we're right about Cydonia... and we ARE... then you're in serious trouble.
You CAN do geometry, Jim? Show us.
Again Jim, you're the one making the claim. If you think you're smarter than the Yale educated Phd, have at it.
Mike, I don't think you are smart enough to accurately report what van Flandern wrote. Go check on it -- did he talk about space debris from a satellite disintegration orbiting EACH OTHER or that space debris orbiting in STREAMS (parallel but related orbits around Earth) the same way that asteroids do around the Sun. My guess is that you never understood Tom and misreported his view.
Apparently, JimO... YOU aren't smart enough to see the connection between Van Flandern's EPH and Cydonia.
Scientific proof (since you obviously don't know, I'll explain briefly for you) is supposed to consist of ALL the data. Not just the pieces that fit into your tiny little box.
As usual, your notions and ideas are disconnected and out of context.
Better go read my website... You and your ilk are in for a world of hurt.
For newcomers at the board, Mike's cryptic comment needs translation. What it means is, "I've found out you were right but I'm never going to admit it." Happens a lot.
No, Jim what it actually means is, you're the one making the claim, you prove your statement. I have far better tings to do than waste my time, as you'd like me to do, on "proving" things I already know are true, because I already did the research.
Uh, I got the impression that since it's YOUR blog and your post at the top, YOU were the one making the original claim -- and the one declining to present any checkable documentation for that claim. But the point's already been made, we can move on now to your next imaginary evidence.
Nope. You're the one who argued with my assertion, which is supported by the information in Van Flandern's book and on his website. What you want me to do is disprove your assertion, for which you have provided no evidence, other than you opinion. and we all know what opinion's are like, don't we Jim?
Hey jim, how come in the first comment you say that Van Flandern didn't know what he was talking about and then later you switch and say Mike Bara didn't understand Tom Van Flandern?
Contradicting yourself doesn't help your argument. You should at least stick to one position if you want to win any of us over.
FJP: "Hey jim, how come in the first comment you say that Van Flandern didn't know what he was talking about and then later you switch and say Mike Bara didn't understand Tom Van Flandern?"
When I first wrote, "This idea that some satellites in Earth orbit are in orbit around each other is preposterous," I carelessly (I admit it) assumed that Mike had accurately conveyed Tom's original meaning. That was a mistake to which I humbly confess.
Mikr wrote: "This was based on his initial observation that chunks of debris from tests of Russian anti-satellite weapons had a tendency to orbit each other, smaller chunks assuming orbit around larger ones."
A search of Tom's website reveals no claim that satellites in Earth orbit are 'in orbit' around other satellites. In trying to untangle the garble in Mike's posting (admittedly, a herculean task)it's possible that the original reference was to disruption streams of debris from a common source -- a phenomenon which does indeed occur both for asteroids and for satellite debris.
But since Mike won't provide the original quotations he based his version on, I guess we'll never know.
JimO writes: "In trying to untangle the garble in Mike's posting (admittedly, a herculean task)
Herculean is a relative term so it's understandable that someone with your limited mental capacity would feel compelled to use such a term to describe how it feels trying to keep up with what boils down to a simple layman's post (layman as it pertains to TVF's complicated research & EPH).
I didn't find it difficult at all to comprehend Mike's post. Then again, I'm well informed and I've done LOTS of homework on ALL the subject matter... from EPH up to and including CYDONIA.
Got CONTEXT JimO? =)
To bring some documentary evidence to this dispute [what an IDEA!!], I took down my copy of Tom's book "Dark Matter.." and searched for the alleged claim that earth satellites had been observed to have objects revolving around them in orbit [with the examples of Soviet killer satellites], and couldn't find it. It could be there -- I didn't re-read the whole book, just all the citations indexed under 'sphere of influence'. Mike, can you complete this task, where I failed, and locate the page it's mentioned on, please?
On page 140 I did find Tom's claim that "astronauts on their way to the Moon found that materials dumped outside the spacecraft followed them all the way to the Moon, literally slowly orbiting the spacecraft as captive moons."
He explained the physics of this by describing a 'rule of thumb' that with regard to the Sun, "bodies [of any diameter] will have a sphere of influence of 100 times their distance from the Sun measured in astronomical units”. This works out, for example, as 8000 mile diameter Earth times 100 times 1, gives a sphere of influence of 800,000 miles, which is approximately true.
He then applies it to a spacecraft, several meters across, that should have a sphere of influence several hundred meters in radius. Hence his explanation of the Apollo ‘space junk’. He may also have applied it to other satellites, as Mike described – I just couldn’t find it.
I may owe an apology to Mike, because it seems it was Tom, not Mike, who wasn’t smart enough to understand his own ‘rule of thumb’. He applied it beyond its range of validity, forgetting the assumptions he based it on.
First, stuff outside the moon-bound Apollo spacecraft never orbited the spacecraft. They drifted along in parallel trajectories, where they were seen by crewmen from time to time. There is no evidence, documentation or photographic or anecdotal, that any such objects “literally orbited” the spacecraft. Never happened, Tom was misremembering something else.
What he might have misremembered was the incident in ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ where the crew dumped the dead body of their dog outside, and then observed it orbiting around their vehicle. But that was written by Jules Verne about 150 years ago.
Tom’s bigger problem was that he misapplied his own rule of thumb, which worked quite well for normal-density objects in the inner solar system, regarding their spheres of influence relative to the Sun. An Apollo spacecraft, orbiting the Sun in interplanetary space, would indeed have had a gravitational sphere of influence several hundred meters in radius.
But the invalidating factor overlooked by Tom’s assumption is that he puts his Apollo spacecraft (or other space vehicles, if he mentioned them elsewhere in the book) inside another object’s sphere of influence, the Earth. It’s not the pull of the distant Sun that his spacecraft ‘sphere of influence’ has to dominate – it’s the pull of the much closer Earth. That pull dominates small bodies close to Earth and shrinks their spheres of influence to insignificance.
Here’s proof. If Tom applied his ‘rule of thumb’ to the Moon, which is 2000 miles in diameter, by the rule, the Moon would have a 200,000 mile radius ‘sphere of influence’. It would be snatching away satellites in high Earth orbits. But it doesn’t have such a sphere, and does not affect such satellites, because Earth’s gravity dominates to within a few tens of thousands of miles of the Moon (its true ‘sphere of influence’). This shows that Tom’s ‘rule of thumb’, valid for an object orbiting solo around the Sun, collapses when applied to an object orbiting a larger object.
You can understand this, right?
I had hoped this would lead to an evidence-based discussion of the issue mike raised.
Where do I file for a default judgment in my favor re this discussion?
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