Impressive gravitational dance performed by planets with aligned orbits

Planets orbit their parent stars at vast distances. In our solar system, the planets are: grains of sand An area the size of a soccer field. The times it takes planets to orbit the sun have no special relationship to each other.

But sometimes those trajectories show a remarkable pattern. For example, astronomers who study 6 planets orbiting a star They have just discovered that 100 light-years away they orbit a star in perfect synchrony with an almost rhythmic beat. Each pair of planets completes an orbit in a time corresponding to an integer ratio, allowing the planets to align their orbits and exert a gravitational push or pull on the other during their orbit.

This type of gravity arrangement is called orbital resonanceand it’s like a harmony between distant planets.

I Astronomer a person who researches and writes about cosmology.researchers discovered Over 5,600 exoplanets Over the past 30 years, its incredible diversity has continued to amaze astronomers.

harmony of the spheres

greek mathematician Pythagoras By analyzing the sounds of a blacksmith’s hammer and plucked strings 2,500 years ago, he discovered the principles of musical harmony.

He believed that mathematics was central to the natural world, and proposed that the sun, moon, and planets each emit unique noises based on their orbital properties. He thought that this “music of the spheres” would be imperceptible to the human ear.

Four hundred years ago, Johannes Kepler We adopted this idea. He proposed that the pitches and harmonies of the music expressed the movements of his six planets as they were known at the time.

For Kepler, the solar system had two bases: Jupiter and Saturn. tenor mars. Two altos, Venus and Earth. and soprano singer Mercury. These roles reflected how long it took each planet to orbit the sun, with the outer planets having slower speeds and the inner planets having faster speeds.

He wrote a book about these mathematical relationships called “world harmonyThese ideas have some similarities to the concept of orbital resonance, but planets don’t actually make sound because sound cannot travel through the vacuum of space.

orbital resonance

Resonance occurs because The orbital period of planets and satellites integer ratio. The orbital period is the time it takes for a planet to orbit the star once. So, for example, two planets orbiting a star will be in 2:1 resonance if one planet takes twice as long to orbit the star as the other planet does.Resonance is seen only in 5% of planetary systems.

In our solar system, Neptune and Pluto are in a 3:2 resonance.There is also triple resonance, 4:2:1, of Jupiter’s three moons, Ganymede, Europa, and Io. While Ganymede orbits Jupiter, Europa orbits twice and Io orbits her four times. Resonance occurs naturally when a planet’s orbital period happens to be a ratio of whole numbers.

Interval describes the relationship between two notes. Comparing it to music, the important thing is that pitch Based on the frequency ratio, the fourth is 4:3, the fifth is 3:2, and the octave is 2:1. Anyone who plays guitar or piano You may recognize these intervals.

Orbital resonance changes the effect of gravity on two objects, causing them to speed up, slow down, stabilize, or even perturb their orbits.

Consider pressing child on a swing. Both the planet and the swing have natural frequencies. If you push your child along with the movement of the swing, he or she will gain more force. Also, when in that position she can press every second or third time to get a boost. But pressing at random times, sometimes in conjunction with the swing movement, sometimes against the swing movement, will not give you a boost.

For a planet, the boost can keep it in orbit, but it is far more likely to disrupt its orbit.