@ 12:10 of Superman:The Movie Jor-El is told to take a chill pill and “I tell you Krypton is simply shifting it’s orbit”.
Waitaminute! Wouldn’t a planet shifting it’s orbit, especially drastically, be real bad for those living on it?
BTW, the movie I linked to is the extra full version, including scenes you did not see in the theater or when HBO reruns it. Enjoy.
Depends on what’s shifting. Of the 6 parameters that are used to define an orbit, only the semi-major axis and eccentricity changing would make a difference in the amount of sunlight the planet receives. The others changing would just shift various angles of the orbit or its position along the orbit.
Also note that orbits shift all the time, although so subtly that it takes careful measurement to discern the changes. Mostly the changes are the result of perturbations by other planets.
I’m not able to see the movie… keeps saying “buffering” but nothing really happens…
Anyway, poor internet connection kept aside, the answer to your question depends upon the following factors:
Now every star has this Goldilocks zone where the heat and light received is well balanced to sustain life. For our solar system, the earth in such a zone. Mars is just at the edge of it. If the temperature of Mars were to be made warmer, it would be able to sustain life.
For for Krypton, if it were to shift an orbit, but still continued to be in the Goldilocks zone, its inhabitants (depending on their ability to tolerate climate changes) may be able to survive.
Wasn’t the intention to show that the ruling Science Council had lost tough with reality, and only Jor-El recognized the enormity of the impending cataclysm?
Well, since we don’t really know a lot about this particular version of Krypton, it’s hard to say. In some versions of the story, Krypton’s Science Council controlled the planet’s weather by occasional shifting of its orbit. In those versions, it’s their red sun, Rao, that was the real culprit. If the movie writers were using this Silver Age version (as opposed to the Golden Age version, other Silver Age versions, or Bronze Age versions), then, nope, no reason to worry.
Of course it may be bad to switch orbits, but not as bad as the entire planet blowing to tiny glowing green bits…
It’s all a question of magnitude. Minor shifts could be unnoticeable except by sophisticated measuring tools. Major shifts would drastically change the climate. I should point out, though, that almost every change that could happen just from a shift in orbit is basically a change in climate. Shifting the orbit wouldn’t cause the planet to explode, basically ever. Even getting too close to their red sun probably wouldn’t cause the planet to break up.
In real life, any shift to a planet’s orbit would evolve over geologic time periods. It couldn’t be anything anybody would have to worry about in their lifetimes.
In comic books, shift happens. It happens overnight. You have to use a different and totally imaginary set of standards for whether they’re important.
But that’s my point. If that woman was right and Krypton was shifting it’s orbit, it apparently was doing it on an acutely large scale, thus also a huge danger to the populace. There wasn’t anything to be so casual about.
It’s unlikely that the amount of energy that can cause a planet to shift orbit is going to be applied in a gentle and controlled fashion evenly applied to the whole planet. But it’s not the Krypton Science Council that are the idiots, it’s the writers.
Honestly, don’t you think a member of the Kryptonian Science Council is going to know a* little* bit more about planetary orbital mechanics than a bunch of barely evolved apes on a message board?
And predicting the End of the World goes back to Jor-El’s ancestor, Chik-En Litt-El.
But…thats…they’re… the same…uh. Skip it.
How smart could they have been? They sat back and let themselves blow up.
:pLOL!
Checking my historical records (none dare call them comics), I find that the Kryptonian Science Council was on edge at this point, because General Zod was leading a group of rebels to seize power because the rebels claimed the Sun was going to explode. Well, can’t be having with rebels, can we–they’re too rebellious. So when Jor-El (Respected Scientist of a Noble House) comes along making the same claims, well, hmm, he must not be getting enough sleep or something. Zod & Co. were to be executed, but Jor-El had their sentence transmuted to imprisonment in the Phantom Zone. Cue Superman 2.
Thank you for that link! I wrote a computer program back in college to calculate satellite orbits and plot them over a map, but I just used parameters that made sense to me. (And yes, there were six.) I always kinda wondered what numbers the pros used to define such things.
It’s suicide! No, it’s worse, it’s genocide!
Robot Arm, there are always six of them, but which six a pro uses will depend on the situation. The conventional set has some coordinate singularities, which can be awkward at times (comparable to the question “what’s the longitude of the North Pole?”). There are other sets that avoid those singularities, but are less intuitive in the situations where you’re away from the problematic cases. And if nothing else, you can always just use the three coordinates of position and three coordinates of velocity of your object: Those will always work (though not necessarily conveniently).
Is there any treatise on the subject that you would recommend? I know it’s an utterly geeky thing to be interested in.
I can’t remember what coordinates I used; it was 25 years ago. I think I may have entered it as lat., long., altitude (for position) and east/west, north/south, altitude (for velocity, and the the program converted that to 3-D Cartesian coordinates to calculate the movement, then back to lat./long. to plot it on the map.
I do remember there was a bug when I forgot to put the minus sign in the exponent for the constant of gravitation. That’s an error of (at least) 22 orders of magnitude; a personal record that stands to this day.
The textbook I used back when I took orbital mechanics was Danby. It looks like it’s gone up in price-- When I got it, it was only something like $25 (which, yes, is absurdly low for a textbook).
[Moderator Note]
I have removed the link in the OP as probable copyright violation.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator