You find that pocket calculator yet, Snappy? Gonna let us know (1) the size of the total gravitational effect of all the other planets, compared to that from the moon and sun, and (2) the gravitational differential across one earth-radius from same?
bantmof:
Aww…I dun wanna do more schoolwork. I spent 6 and a half hours yesterday doing school work!..stupid grrr math…ehehe. I did no math or anything to figger out…anything. I just took what effects the book was talkin’ about, and like…simplified them. So I’m prolly really wrong. Just what my brain turned out for me, so I put it down.
Sorry to lead you anywhere. I wouldn’t trust my brain if I were me.
Here, I’ll do it for you; it only takes a few moments. Here are the relative gravitational effect on us from the other planets, assuming the moon is 1 by definition:
So all told, assuming I haven’t made too many typos in the process, all the other planets taken together make considerably less than 1 percent of the difference the moon alone does, as far as making you feel heavier or lighter (do you feel lighter when the moon is overhead? How about the sun?). And most of the effects the doomsayers are talking about would only come about via gravitational differential, which is much smaller effect indeed; truely unimaginably small.
Now I’ll leave the same-side-of-the-sun case and the gravitational differential computation up to you as a learning experience.
Ok, not to pick on Snappy in particular, who for all I know is just goofing around… but there are people who believe in stuff like this, and people make money writing books about it. What’s up with that? If people really think there are going to be all these terrible effects, why don’t they just spend 2 or 3 minutes and work it out for themselves? Anyone who graduated from high school and owns a pencil should be able to manage.
Well, according to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the world came to an end in 1914. The problem is that nobody but them noticed. (This paragraph is not a joke post; they seriously believe this!)
You are all aware that your zippers will stop working at midnight on 12/31/1999, right? It’s the YKK bug.