this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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xkcd

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https://xkcd.com/2898

Alt text:

"Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (9 children)

I mean, no, not really. The gravitational center of the sun-earth system is within the sun itself, so the earth definitely orbits the sun and the sun definitely does not orbit the earth. Let alone the fact that the sun’s movement is predominantly driven by Jupiter. (The gravitational center of the sun-Jupiter system is just above the sun’s surface.)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Pretty sure you can chose earth as fix point and have everything rotate around it on really strange orbits. Everything is kind of relative.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Wouldn't that break relativity tho if you treat the earth as a fixed point? Stuff really far out would have to be going absurdly faster than light to orbit the earth once every 24h. I feel like that's one of the ways to tell whether or not you're rotating, or stuff is orbiting you.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

If the earth is fixed (not just in position, but in rotation), you're using a non-inertial reference frame, and things get wonky. But you can make the math work.

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