The Strange Orbit of Earth's Second Moon (plus The Planets) - Numberphile

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NUMBERPHILE

Videos by Brady Haran
Original music for this video created by Alan Stewart

[AlsoDave]

video: "has been referred to earth's 'second moon' but that's just sensationalist kind of thing"
video title: The Strange Orbit of Earth's Second Moon :D

[ultimateman]

I was teaching about frame of reference in my physics classes recently. This video will be a perfect follow up showing how the description of a planet's motion changes depending on your frame of reference. Thanks!

[JAHinHK]

Proud to say I knew that 8+5=13 before this episode.

[nmikloiche]

I love when abstract maths and science is translated through an artistic lens. Whenever I teach maths I try to use the “A picture is worth a million words” philosophy and show the reason behind the maths. This was Beautiful. Bravo.

[lifeisawesome]

2:22 Matt: That’s just sensationalism
Numberphile: I found the title of the video

[emmanuelagudo]

that 0:33 moment when the mathematical model shifts perspective (as earth as the center of the universe), and how it was represented visually is so beautiful.

[fanrco]

Fun fact: Those patterns, created by orbiting bodies orbiting other orbiting bodies, are called epicycles.
Before astronomers knew that the sun was at the center of our solar system, many astronomers were baffled by those strange patterns that result from assuming the earth is at the center. In order to model the patterns, they would keep adding epicycles to create a system that followed those paths.
However, its been proved mathematically that you can keep adding epicycles over and over again to create a continuous path of any kind, so they could keep using them without ever noticing that a heliocentric model would be much simpler and accurate.
Because of this, "adding epicycles" has become a joke phrase to mean "adding more and more fixes and details to a bad design/theory instead of ditching it for a simpler more robust one"

[haroldearp]

This was actually cool. Never thought to look at the rotations from that perspective. Well done.

[hoagy_ytfc]

A minute in and I'm getting all nostalgic for Spirograph.

[MagnetOnlyMotors]

1: 00 hence, why there is precession.
Very interesting, never heard of this before.
Smart guy !

[faokie]

"They call it second moon but that's just sensationalist"
Video title: "Astronomers hate him! Local mathematician finds the secret of Earth's second moon"

[miwhcyvybaksjd]

Fascinating. Bring him back for more episodes ya.

[badukplayer]

I really enjoy what Matt Henderson is doing, makes me want to learn a programming language!

[PuzzledMonkey]

What would the epicycles of Earth look like with Mars viewed as stationary?

Similarly, what would the epicycles of Mercury look like with Venus viewed as stationary?

[mr.johnson]

Fun to see retrograde motion from an overhead perspective. It's amazing that ancient astronomers worked this out by tracing the lines of the planets across the sky on a night by night, week by week, month by month, year by year basis.

[simonshack]

My TYCHOS model (inspired by Tycho Brahe's geoheliocentric system) demonstrates that the Sun and Mars are binary companions - and that our planets truly orbit around Earth just like shown in this video.

[davidrfrench]

“That’s sensationalist” * uses it in the video title *

[Aangel]

Wow, 1st time here. So in fact our solar system is like a tube vortex with our planets chasing the sun creating these lovely geometric patterns behind them with energy through the galaxy of the Milky Way? Facinating
Didn’t know there was an asteroid that also rotates around earth. This would explain several ISS videos showing a very rocky looking small planet pass by them from time to time!

[TooMuchDad]

The Mars animation does a great job showing why there’s specific windows when we need to launch Mars missions, because it does get SO close (relatively) to earth for short times, and other times it is exceptionally far away. It can be very easy to imagine planets staying roughly the same distance away from each other at all times

[stevieg]

I find it fascinating how similar the patterns look like windings on electric motors. Even more fascinating was the fact I didn’t get to see the pattern the Earth makes in full? Now that would have been interesting