Planetary alignment will cause gravitational fluctuation on January 4th

[rednose1]

This is fake. Think about it, the sun is large enough to fit every planet inside it several times over, and it's gravity isn't enough to not even SLIGHTLY reduce your weight.

 

[Queen Michael]

Run for your lives! The titans are coming! The titans are coming!

 

[Tayh]

This just in: we are currently in alignment with the moon.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

We'll either all get random superpowers, Cthulhu will rise from R'lyeh or the floor will become lava. Never know, maybe all three.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Lol, are people really stupid enough to buy this?

There's always some. Dunno if "stupid" is the right word, seems more gullible, and having no understanding of the science involved.

Though, this one is comparatively harmless, the 2012 stuff, for example, led to people making some very bad decisions.

 

[Zipa]

So apparently there will be a short 5 minutes on January 4th at around 9:50 AM, timezone PST, which will be around 6 PM, timezone GMT if my math is correct (I took 8 hours from PST to GMT?)

So, will you be jumping around hoping for a 6 meter leap or are you sleeping at the moment and hoping not to wake up floating around above your bed?

First newsplace to write about it was apparently this place, which I've never heard of before
http://dailybuzzlive.com/planetary-alignment-jan-4-2015-will-decrease-gravity-5-minutes-partial-weightlessness/

Really... planetary alignment? This is the dumbest thing...

I understand the gravity thing is stupid.
But why is the alignment stupid? I mean 8 big balls (I know they're not balls, but y'knoow) circulating in space, why couldn't they align?

I still want the Titans to appear though

Space is not two dimensional is why, all of the planets and pretty much everything in space else for that matter occupy different points on the Y axis.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Space is not two dimensional is why, all of the planets and pretty much everything in space else for that matter occupy different points on the Y axis.

Though, the planets are more or less in the same plane. Sure, they won't be in an exact straight line, but occasionally they'd be more or less in a line. Not specified how exact the positioning has to be for the magic to work.

Of course, if all the planets were in a line, you'd have Mercury and Venus sunwards, with the out planets on the other side.

 

[Dalisclock]

Also, the world is gonna end in 2012....oh wait.

Yeah, I'm disappointed too. I had the popcorn ready and everything waiting for the world to end.

Then my boss called and told me to get my ass to work.

 

[Dalisclock]

Space is not two dimensional is why, all of the planets and pretty much everything in space else for that matter occupy different points on the Y axis.

Though, the planets are more or less in the same plane. Sure, they won't be in an exact straight line, but occasionally they'd be more or less in a line. Not specified how exact the positioning has to be for the magic to work.

Of course, if all the planets were in a line, you'd have Mercury and Venus sunwards, with the out planets on the other side.

Well, eventually, they'll cause Cthulhu to wake up. When alignment is right.

Wait for it....wait for it....

 

[Atmos Duality]

Are there still people who believe this?

Yes, there are still idiots that believe this. Even if the planets could align (they can't) the Sun has a far stronger influence on our Gravity than any of the planets due to its far greater mass and closer distance. (save for Mercury and Venus; both of which are closer, but have several magnitudes less mass than the Sun)

 

[VanQ]

Well you know what this means? We better gather all 25 Crystals to power the new and improved Cortex Vortex and prevent the alignment from destroying the Earth.

[sub] Let's see who gets that reference. [/sub]

 

[renegade7]

NASA and a handful of popular science groups publish stuff like this every single year as a joke.

Without getting too technical, the force of gravity has an inverse square behavior, that is, it decreases by the square of the distance between two bodies. As a result, gravity is an incredibly weak force, especially at great distances.

To put things in perspective. F = Gm1m2/r^2 where G is the universal gravitational constant, m1 and m2 are the masses in kilograms of you and Jupiter respectively, r is the distance between you and Jupiter in meters, and F is the force of gravity in Newtons.

The gravitational constant has a value 6.67*10^-11. I will let the mass of the average human be 80kg. The mass of Jupiter is roughly 1.9*10^27 kg. The distance in meters between earth and Jupiter is 588,000,000,000 meters.

This works out to a force of about 0.00003 Newtons, and I've done a fair bit of generous rounding up here. The other gas giants will add 0.00001 each, with Mars and Pluto being effectively negligible, for 0.00006 Newtons. And remember that the Sun, Venus, and Mercury will be pulling in opposite directions. And the sun's gravity as felt by a person on Earth is 0.0006 (looks similar but only coincidentally to the above figure) times the force of Earth's gravity, or just shy of half a Newton of force. And jumping 1 foot into the air requires several thousand Newtons of force.

Of course, it's not actually possible to predict perfectly what the motion of an object the size of a human being will be due to the gravitational attraction of all of the objects in the solar system. The reason is the n-body problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem, there does not exist any explicit or implicit solution describing the motion of that many orbiting bodies that would allow such a calculation.

If there were some truly freaky alignment where the Sun and all of the planets were on one side of the Earth lined up perfectly (not actually possible in the first place because the planets do not all share the same orbital plane), you would experience at most half a Newton of force. Compare this to the 784 Newton force an average 80kg person experiences due to the Earth's gravity at the surface.

You're not floating anywhere.

Now for the fun part: how much would you need to eat to become fat enough for your mass to experience enough gravitational attraction such that the gravitational force on you due to the Sun was strong enough to overcome the gravitational attraction of the Earth, answer in units of McDonald's Big Macs. I leave this as an exercise to the reader (no, seriously, I'm genuinely curious and I tried to solve it but I'm getting really tired).

 

[Maze1125]

Of course, it's not actually possible to predict perfectly what the motion of an object the size of a human being will be due to the gravitational attraction of all of the objects in the solar system. The reason is the n-body problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem, there does not exist any explicit or implicit solution describing the motion of that many orbiting bodies that would allow such a calculation.

You don't need an exact solution to have a solution.
It's quite possible to find an absolute maximum possible effect and calculate that (by assuming perfect alignment and minimum distances possible). Once that is calculated any actual effect must be less than it and so if the maximum is insignificant then any actual effect must be insignificant too.

Edit:

Now for the fun part: how much would you need to eat to become fat enough for your mass to experience enough gravitational attraction such that the gravitational force on you due to the Sun was strong enough to overcome the gravitational attraction of the Earth, answer in units of McDonald's Big Macs. I leave this as an exercise to the reader (no, seriously, I'm genuinely curious and I tried to solve it but I'm getting really tired).

It never would.
Let m[sub]s[/sub] be the mass of the Sun, m[sub]e[/sub] be the mass of the Earth, m[sub]y[/sub] be the mass of the you and F[sub]s[/sub], F[sub]e[/sub], r[sub]s[/sub] and r[sub]e[/sub] be the respective forces and distances then:
F[sub]s[/sub] = Gm[sub]s[/sub]m[sub]y[/sub]/r[sub]s[/sub][sup]2[/sup]
F[sub]e[/sub] = Gm[sub]e[/sub]m[sub]y[/sub]/r[sub]e[/sub][sup]2[/sup]
The only variable is m[sub]y[/sub] and so we can say Gm[sub]s[/sub]/r[sub]s[/sub][sup]2[/sup] = c[sub]s[/sub] and Gm[sub]e[/sub]/r[sub]e[/sub][sup]2[/sup] = c[sub]e[/sub] where c[sub]s[/sub] and c[sub]e[/sub] are constants.
Hence:
F[sub]s[/sub] = c[sub]s[/sub]m[sub]y[/sub]
F[sub]e[/sub] = c[sub]e[/sub]m[sub]y[/sub]
And so F[sub]s[/sub] = (c[sub]s[/sub]/c[sub]e[/sub])F[sub]e[/sub]

Therefore the relative proportions of F[sub]s[/sub] and F[sub]e[/sub] are independent of m[sub]y[/sub].

 

[renegade7]

Of course, it's not actually possible to predict perfectly what the motion of an object the size of a human being will be due to the gravitational attraction of all of the objects in the solar system. The reason is the n-body problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem, there does not exist any explicit or implicit solution describing the motion of that many orbiting bodies that would allow such a calculation.

You don't need an exact solution to have a solution.
It's quite possible to find an absolute maximum possible effect and calculate that (by assuming perfect alignment and minimum distances possible). Once that is calculated any actual effect must be less than it and so if the maximum is insignificant then any actual effect must be insignificant too.

Yea, that's sort of where I was going in my post. But qualitative analysis isn't an explicit solution. My point in bringing that up is really that no astrophysicist would claim to have predicted some kind of "gravitational resonance" or whatever that would cause the Sun and the other planets to pull you harder than Earth's gravity, not only because it's wrong on so many levels but because even attempting to make the prediction would be impossible.

 

[Maze1125]

But qualitative analysis isn't an explicit solution.

That not relevant, a solution is a solution.

Lets say that I need to show that x is less than c.
If I can show that x is less than or equal to s (where s is the maximum possible value of x) and that s is less than c then I have solved the problem without ever even needing to find the exact value of x.

The question of whether or not it's an "explicit" solution is meaningless, the problem has been solved.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

It's fake? Awww. I was all set to call my mother and tell her that I'd finally lost weight.

 

[renegade7]

But qualitative analysis isn't an explicit solution.

That not relevant, a solution is a solution.

Lets say that I need to show that x is less than c.
If I can show that x is less than or equal to s (where s is the maximum possible value of x) and that s is less than c then I have solved the problem without ever even needing to find the exact value of x.

The question of whether or not it's an "explicit" solution is meaningless, the problem has been solved.

When you're talking about explicitly solving a system of differential equations, that means more than just extracting the needed information for a particular application. Certainly not knocking on that approach: with most equations that's all you'll ever have to go on. Equations that can be fully solved are the exception, not the rule. Solving the problem of determining whether an object can levitate due to the combined gravitational forces of all objects in the solar system is possible by qualitative analysis, but it's not a solution to the system of equations.

An "explicit" solution to a differential equation, or a system of equations, is one that results in the equation no longer being differential, ie, you've eliminated all of the derivatives and integrals and have a function that directly relates the dependent variable to the independent variable(s). So the solution to the system of differential equations where the position x of an object at any time t is given directly by some function of the position of the Sun and planets is what an "explicit solution" would mean here, and it is such a solution that is impossible with n-body problems.

 

[Karadalis]

I just hope that the people who thought that a certain software update turned their certain brand phones water resistant are not reading this certain tweet... or well have alot of flat dead people that day

 

[BoogieManFL]

Yeah that sounds like a load of crap. Not only do I believe such a thing is probably impossible, if it did happen it would be disastrous even if it was very brief.