Why Starlight is like Rain - Sixty Symbols

Professor Mike Merrifield discusses the stellar aberration and the acceleration of the Sun.
More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓


This project features scientists from The University of Nottingham


Sixty Symbols videos by Brady Haran

[shaytal]

It is mind-blowing! The sun travels with 220 km/s and we can measure an acceleration of 1cm/s in a year!

[juanvaldez]

I've been watching this channel for years and had no idea that was THE Mike Merrifield from Astronomy textbook fame. I've been reading them for my studies for ages and now have a much greater appreciation for them! Thanks for such informative videos Brady and Professor Merrifield!

[oliverb]

Dr Merrifield is just what i needed on a rainy day like today ❤️

[QuantumNymph]

It's incredible how we take knowing the position or movement of stars for granted, seeing how many factors there are in calculating it. Really interesting video.

[rayzorrayzor]

WOAH 😳, I spent many hours in my younger days pondering this very thing, ie, if your moving then should the source of light appear to change position .
It turned out to be a question I never asked, I assumed that if I was thinking about it then many a greater mind than mine had already thought about and solved this ‘problem’ .
It’s so nice to hear you guys speaking about the thoughts I had when I was in my youth, and of course I was right, a far greater mind than mine had pondered this and proved it to be true .

[AmaruWatches]

The rain graphic was excellent and instantly made the concept click (at least a little) thanks Dr Brady and Professor Merrifield!

[fatitigilo]

GAIA is so underrated in popular science.

[JaapvanderVelde]

The anxiety of watching Prof. Merrifield swinging his precious head towards that beam... Careful - we need you to keep using that!

[noeckel]

Regarding the question where the _energy_ for the measured acceleration comes from: NOWHERE. No energy needs to be transferred to keep an object in circular motion. You need the gravitational _force_, but that force doesn't need to do any work because it's perpendicular to the velocity of the solar system. That also means that the acceleration in this video doesn't correspond to a change in speed, just in direction.

[gonwest]

The equalizer graph at the bottom of the screen is very distracting and hard to watch. Otherwise a great video!

[DavidPumpernickel]

Very exciting to have the 3rd data release from Gaia; this will help with photometry a lot, especially with the Milky Way's satellites.

[duroxkilo]

this was the first channel i subscribed to and it was the only one for a looong time. :}

thank you again for the great content, everyone involved

[edgeeffect]

Lovely bit of production work as James Bradly and John Herschel "comes into focus". :)

[patrickmuller]

This i really great stuff. And I agree with my former commentators in two thing: Gaia is a heavily underrated mission and the sound spectrum steals way too much attention for no reason :)

[MADSK_LLZ]

Interesting interview, always a fan of Prof. Mike Merrifield. Not a fan of the bar waveform effect at the bottom of the screen when the both of you are on screen lol

[francoislacombe]

Just for fun, I calculated how much mass is contained within the Sun's orbit around the Milky Way, based on those numbers. That comes up to approximately 102.8 billion solar masses, assuming a perfect, or near perfect circular orbit.

[steven-jellemeijer]

measuring 0.2 nano meter per second acceleration on a speed of 220 000 meter per second. thats some sensitivity of several order of magnitude

[maxmusterman]

holy moly I just learned about this luminar paralax stuff and its amazing!
Like whaat we see sth in a different place when we move perpendicular to the light it produces?? this sounds crazy!

[Nolanthegardener]

Incredible story of understanding our place in the galaxy.

[mininukesever]

dear lord that flashing voice spectrum along the bottom really shouldn't be there. This isn't a podcast, I'm trying to watch it!