Re: Challenge to Jim Scotti

Article: <[email protected]> 
Subject: Re: Challenge to Jim Scotti
Date: 3 May 1998 17:15:29 GMT

In article <[email protected]> Jim Scotti writes:
> We don't need special logic to describe comets differently from 
> planets.  The same laws of gravity that describe the orbits of 
> planets around stars also describes the motion of comets around
> stars, stars around stars, stars around galaxies, satellites around
> planets, man-made spacecraft to the planets and galaxies around
> galaxies, all equally well.

(Begin ZetaTalk[TM])
This is contrary to what you experience, this statement.  In managing
orbiting objects, which are ENTIRELY in your control, and where you
compute the lift-off requirements, the amount of fuel to adjust orbits,
and the angle and speed of drop when such objects crash to Earth, you
handle heavy objects differently than light!  If the motion was all
that was required, this would not be the case!  You pick and choose
which formulas you will apply, based on the situation.  You exclude
mass entirely from your ephemerides, for instance.  So you ARE treating
comets differently!
(End ZetaTalk[TM])

In article <[email protected]> Jim Scotti writes:
> So, Nancy, where are all the bodies that are supposedly at 
> the "second foci" of all the known planets, asteroids, and 
> comets that we see in the solar system?  For each body in orbit
> around the sun, by your logic, there must be a massive second
> body at the "second focus" of each of these elliptical orbits.  
> Let me know when you find them.

(Begin ZetaTalk[TM])
Did we say that a second or third or fourth focus should be a clone of
your Solar System?  Is this what you are implying?  A second attractant
can be involved without requiring the orbiting object to circle that
attractant.  What happens when an object comes BETWEEN two
gravitational giants?  A choice is made at some point.  This is not a
dither, as the orbiting object moves away from one, toward the other,
all the while slowing in its motion away from the first.  When its path
away from the first gravitational giant is such that motion is no
longer a factor in the decision of which gravitational voice is
strongest, it moves in that direction.  The elliptical orbits you
observe are those cases where the second voice is slight enough to only
influence the orbit out of a perfect circle.  What you term hyperbolic
orbits are those where the second voice is strong enough to capture the
orbiting object.  You presume that it never returns, in your ignorance.
(End ZetaTalk[TM])