Time is a spiral vortex

[Talon RA]

Time is a spiral. The elliptical plot, we do not see in Celestia, is where the earth doesn?€™t actually arrive at the same point it started. This is because the sun, which we orbit, has been clocked at 155 miles per second. So yes, we orbit the sun in an ellipse, but if you created a breadcrumb trail, it would look like a spiral over time.

Planet Earth, May, 8th 2005 (point A) is no the same point that will be Planet Earth, May 8th 2006 (point B). We are on the move (same for all planets).

In some ways, with isolated factors, you could say after one year, earth would hover above point A, after a spiral orbit of an elliptical plane, at some distance of 48,746,888,000 miles (Sun speed of 155 miles per second X 60 seconds X 60 minutes X 24 hours X 7 days, X 52 Weeks)

I believe Celestia needs to have these orbital pathways shown as one of its functions. Why? Cause this is what is really going on. I want the facts mam. I want to get my science on. And most of all it will look beautiful. If we could see each planets elliptical plane with a different color, charted over time (like a trail or ghosting effect both for the future and the past) showing their relative spiral orbits. It would be amazing!

The map for all this is probably right here on earth in the geometry of pinecone. As above ?€“ so below.

What I would also like to see mapped out in Celsitia is the course or elliptical plane that the sun makes. It makes sense that our sun orbits another grater mass (greater sun, black hole,) that determines its course in the space time fabric or flows with the churning of our local spiral arm.

The problem with us is that we have no outside observance of where we live. It is based upon observation of phenomena of other bodies and galaxies.

Do we have precise coordinates of where we exist in the spiral arm of our galaxy? Have we really been able to determine how many arms our galaxy has? Or is this only possible by super light ship that can take us to an observation point so that we can take an over head shot of the whole milky way.

Good luck if you choose to take on this request - but I tell you this is what is happening and we need to observe it. Spiral geometries of elliptical planes through time.

Thanks, talon

[t00fri]

Please Note:

time is neither a spiral nor a spiral vortex . Time is an independent variable in the universe that flows steadily, but certainly, it has no direction and thus does not trace any geometrical patterns! It is a /scalar/ quantity, as pro's would say.

You also mean something else than what you actually wrote it seems.: it's the orbit's curve traced out /as function/ of time...

Next: that speed of the sun entirely depends on the frame of reference where you do your measurements. You can certainly place yourself into the sun's rest system. In some other system you would notice the sun's /proper motion/, of course.

Reminder: Let me remind you of an instructive historical parallel: Before Kepler's elliptical planetary orbits were known (with the sun located in one of it's foci), celestial mechanics appeared extremely complicated: The earth was believed to be the center of the universe (i.e. at rest). In this reference frame the planets indeed trace /most complicated spiral-type movements on the celestial sphere. Before a mere change of reference frame (the sun's rest system) brought revolutionary simplicity, the most incredible baroque models where constructed to describe the planets' apparent complex behaviour (as seen from earth).

Next: "elliptical planes" do not exist. What you mean are the planes in which the (approximately) elliptical planetary orbits lie...

Finally: You may be assured that the developers of Celestia understand celestial mechanics very well and would have implemented displays as you proposed, if there was a good reason.

Bye Fridger

[MKruer]

Earth is not the center of the universe? NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! :lol:

Anyway just my two cents, I think that it would bee cool to have, what would you call it, stellar drift, so you could see the sun osculate in its orbit around the center of the galaxy. However this is far, far, far in the future, and more data would need to be collected before is would even be considered. So maybe sometime in say 2010, this might be considered but right now that is a hell of a lot of processing power.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I think he's just referring to the precession of planetary orbits around the sun - which I think Celestia already handles anyway, doesn't it?

[Slalomsk8er]

I think he's just referring to the movement of the solar system in space and how cool it would look if the the planets would not just show there orbits but additional there trace in space drawn like the orbits.

[selden]

Being able to see the sun's path through the galaxy among the local stars would be very interesting I think. The time scale over which you could see anything happening would be quite long, though, longer than the period over which the planets' orbits can be known to high precision, but still...

[Talon RA]

Time is not set. Time is relative, mutable and most definitely subjective.

What we create to clock that relativity is consistent. But things like heat and moisture tend to play with "clock speed" even on the micro chip level. Nothing is independent.

To view the bodies in our solar systems as tiny race cars going around in their slots is not an accurate portrayal of "all" that is occurring. Yes it happens AND we go where the sun goes.

Therefore, concordantly, ergo, visa vie, our world, and the gang, travels a spiral vortex over time.

I think it would be both "cool" and scientific to see this true phenomenon in Celstia. As I stated before, I could imagine it as a "ghosting" or "trail" effect with the ability to see months or years at a time plotted through space ?€“ both past and future.

I started this topic to see if there any developers out there who would like to pick up this challenge.

[t00fri]

Time is not set. Time is relative, mutable and most definitely subjective.

What we create to clock that relativity is consistent. But things like heat and moisture tend to play with "clock speed" even on the micro chip level. Nothing is independent.

To view the bodies in our solar systems as tiny race cars going around in their slots is not an accurate portrayal of "all" that is occurring. Yes it happens AND we go where the sun goes.



Therefore, concordantly, ergo, visa vie, our world, and the gang, travels a spiral vortex over time.

I think it would be both "cool" and scientific to see this true phenomenon in Celstia. As I stated before, I could imagine it as a "ghosting" or "trail" effect with the ability to see months or years at a time plotted through space ?€“ both past and future.

I started this topic to see if there any developers out there who would like to pick up this challenge.

Wuff,...

you better go on talking to people who understand your "language"

I hope you were not alluding to Rado's "Aethrokinematics" in your incomprehensible post above. We don't really need that sort of stuff (Aether) again, do we??

I should also mention that there are of course totally conventional deviations of planetary orbits from the elliptical ones due to the cumulative gravitational effects of all the other massive bodies in the solar system. These effects are well understood and taken care of in Celestia through the so-called VSOP87 theory, involving hundreds of perturbation terms! The orbits of all inner planets in celestia should have sub-arc-sec accuracy...

I think it would be both "cool" and scientific to see this true phenomenon in Celstia

While you may well be competent to judge what would be "cool", I assure you that I am pretty much competent to judge what is "scientific"

Bye Fridger

[Cham]

Time is not set. Time is relative, mutable and most definitely subjective.

What we create to clock that relativity is consistent. But things like heat and moisture tend to play with "clock speed" even on the micro chip level. Nothing is independent.

To view the bodies in our solar systems as tiny race cars going around in their slots is not an accurate portrayal of "all" that is occurring. Yes it happens AND we go where the sun goes.

Therefore, concordantly, ergo, visa vie, our world, and the gang, travels a spiral vortex over time.

I think it would be both "cool" and scientific to see this true phenomenon in Celstia. As I stated before, I could imagine it as a "ghosting" or "trail" effect with the ability to see months or years at a time plotted through space ?€“ both past and future.

I started this topic to see if there any developers out there who would like to pick up this challenge.

Ahem !

Sorry, I couldn't resist. This post was funny to read, in some sense.

[new2lw]

that speed of the sun entirely depends on the frame of reference where you do your measurements. You can certainly place yourself into the sun's rest system. In some other system you would notice the sun's /proper motion/, of course.

Well, t00fri. First part of that is right. Second part. I belive I heard/read that Einstein said something similiar to... We can't measure the speed of a celestial body with out an absolute point of reference. If we look at our galaxy from anothers point of view how can we say what our suns galaxy's speed is or the direction it's going in. All we can do is measure relativly to our point of view.

In other words we can't say how fast and what direction that galaxy is going over there cause we don't know how fast we are going. We also can't say we'd know how fast/what direction we are going in if we were in another galaxy.

It also wouldn't be possible to compare our speed and direction to other systems in our galaxy. We can only tell that we are going generally the same direction at the same speed for a galaxy as a whole. If we estimate our speed and direction compared to other systems in our galaxy we are only getting a relative result, which really means we don't really know. Lol

[edit]I could be way off but it makes sense, I think.

[selden]

You've forgotten about the cosmic microwave background. It provides a basis for measuring "absolute" velocities.

[t00fri]

that speed of the sun entirely depends on the frame of reference where you do your measurements. You can certainly place yourself into the sun's rest system. In some other system you would notice the sun's /proper motion/, of course.

Well, t00fri. First part of that is right.

How nice to know . It's of course /all/ right what I wrote, since in your second part you are mixing in cosmic scales and notably /large/ masses, where general relativity certainly becomes relevant!

In contrast, I referred above exlusively to our solar system (~ 1 AU), where such effects are negligible in practice.

Second part. I belive I heard/read that Einstein said something similiar to... We can't measure the speed of a celestial body with out an absolute point of reference. If we look at our galaxy from anothers point of view how can we say what our suns galaxy's speed is or the direction it's going in. All we can do is measure relativly to our point of view.

You should carefully distinguish first of all accelerated and non-accelerated movements when quoting Einstein. Moreover, that's why astronomers exploit spectral Doppler shifts and comoving coordinates on cosmic scales ( to take into account the expansion of the universe).

In other words we can't say how fast and what direction that galaxy is going over there cause we don't know how fast we are going. We also can't say we'd know how fast/what direction we are going in if we were in another galaxy.

See above.

I also don't know what you want to teach me? General relativity and cosmology belong to my daily working tools as a theoretical physicist. These issues you are addressing
are well understood and beyond controversy...Textbook level so to speak.

It also wouldn't be possible to compare our speed and direction to other systems in our galaxy. We can only tell that we are going generally the same direction at the same speed for a galaxy as a whole. If we estimate our speed and direction compared to other systems in our galaxy we are only getting a relative result, which really means we don't really know. Lol

The essence of "relativity" is that such information must be /relative/. I would be a bad theoretical physicist, if I had claimed differently.

But certainly e.g. through measuring carefully the parallaxes of multiple star components as function of time, the movement of the system's barycenter /relative/ to us is reconstructed with standard procedures. This applies typically to rather nearby systems, since otherwise parallax measuremets could not be used...That was actually what I referred to in the second part of my post above. If I place myself into the alpha Centauri system, I would certainly notice from parallax measurements of our sun during an appropriate time interval, that it is not at rest /relative/ to myself. The respective quantitative information is tabulated in the "proper motion" column of accurate star catalogs (like TYCHO,...) ...

Double-star astronomers may as well (and usually do) perform their binary star observations in a reference system where one component is always located in the /center/ of the eyepiece, while the other star is moving around it.
That would be the (binary-star) analog of my statement concerning the sun's /rest system/ above. Given the knowledge of the system's barycenter movement (relative to the observer) in addition, one may easily transform forth and back between the different reference systems.

In these examples (like in my statements above), effects of the expansion of the Universe due to Einstein's equations of /general/ relativity are practically irrelevant.

Bye Fridger

[Le Chacal]

you're all wrong !

That's our real universe !



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[new2lw]

Actually, there is no star movement in Celestia at all right now, that I can see. Unless there's maybe a couple stars orbiting around eachother. So, I guess none of these arguments make any difference at all.

[mstshtml]

YEs, I really think that more science should be implemented into CElestia. I do not believe there is any star movement or galaxy movement or galaxy "spin". I am really into the science aspect of astronomy and I really like Celestia. Right now I think Celestia is a good start but I think that More should be done to imply science. I like the program so much I will even offer to help some implying more advanced and specific scientific data into the program.
-Steve

[t00fri]

YEs, I really think that more science should be implemented into CElestia. I do not believe there is any star movement or galaxy movement or galaxy "spin". I am really into the science aspect of astronomy and I really like Celestia. Right now I think Celestia is a good start but I think that More should be done to imply science. I like the program so much I will even offer to help some implying more advanced and specific scientific data into the program.
-Steve

I bet you have very little actual idea of how much "science" Celestia incorporates in its code already!

Just to remind you of a few issues:

Celestia is so accurate that its planetary orbits reflect the gravitational perturbations from all other bodies in the solar system (via the VSOP87 theory with hundreds of perturbations), all known mutual eclipse events e.g. among Jupiter's /moons/ are reproduced with ~1 second accuracy in time and Cassini's orbit is surprisingly accurate throughout the whole mission. Titan's surface features include the latest flyby imaging data and there is a very sophisticated add-on with the entire Huygens take-off and landing. Saturn's ring transparency was reconstructed from earthbound precision measurement of the absorption light curve of stars transiting the ring, Pluto's surface features (and color) reflect the professional state of the art from very sophisticated recent measurements (2004).

There is a complete and accurate framework for multiple star orbit display, and I have extracted and converted 1000's of binary orbit data from the best professional catalogs that are available. They may be downloaded here in the forum. Hence Celestia implements the complete orbit movements of /all/ those multiple stars in great 3d graphics, for which sufficient data are available!

Star precession will certainly be implemented in the near-future (since Celestia uses the HIPPARCOS data that include proper motion anyhow).

However the features you proposed, like galaxy movements and spin are certainly low in the priority list. They take place on such long time scales that we would easily run out of Celestia's basic design philosophy: implemented features should be based on actual data or well-understood theory rather than phantasy!

I am working right now with others to implement and render semi-realistically all known galaxies from Steinicke's precision NGC catalog with 14000 deepsky objects!

Perhaps you could tell me how you would implement for these 10000+ galaxies that Celestia will soon display, movement and rotation!?? The required data simply don't exist. That's why they will not be implemented. I bet you also did not make a quantitative estimate of the performance slowdown from incorporating proper motion for 2 million stars /before/ making your suggestions...

It is always easy to write "patronizing" few-line posts about Celestia being "a good start" already, but that much more "science" needs to be implemented .

Think about it...

Bye Fridger

[mstshtml]

You know what...I did not mean it to be like that. But you are acting like I said Celestia was horrible. I did not say that in any way shape or form.
Oh and Galaxy Rotation is NOT phantasy! It is based on scientific data with many sources. http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education ... curve.html

[t00fri]

You know what...I did not mean it to be like that. But you are acting like I said Celestia was horrible. I did not say that in any way shape or form.
Oh and Galaxy Rotation is NOT phantasy! It is based on scientific data with many sources. http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education ... curve.html

I am aware of all relevant existing data on galaxy rotation, since in my field of research the discrepancies are to be accounted for by dark matter...a very topical issue, indeed...

Of course, I know that there are extensive measurements of angular velocities across galaxies, yet among the 10000+ galaxies to be displayed in Celestia, the fraction with rotation info is barely negligible!

That's what I meant.

Bye Fridger

[mstshtml]

Now when you mean, "to be displayed" do you mean in the future or an add-on you can download?
-sTeve

[t00fri]

Now when you mean, "to be displayed" do you mean in the future or an add-on you can download?
-sTeve

As I said above a number of us are working intensively to get a new level of galaxy rendering done. The issue is to deal with 10000+ galaxies from the best available catalog in one go.

If the development work is done, the result will be made available for download for people to test and play...

You are welcome to participate in the work if you have some respective knowledge...

Bye Fridger