From: Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Jul 17 1997 - 02:58:50 MDT
On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Anton Sherwood wrote:
> Dad tells me that somebody did a simulation of planetary motion over
> the eons, and found that a planet's axis varies chaotically UNLESS
> the planet has a large moon!
Yes, I have seen this too (including on some astrophysics website). I
think it is true, since the "random" forces from the other planets
ought to induce (very slow) precession and change in the rotation
axis, while having a large moon would create a system where angular
momentum changes could be shared between the planet, moon and the
entire system (and since the system has a very large angular momentum
compared to the planet, the changes would be much smaller). Is this a
reasonable explanation, or just a sign of "what the thinker thinks,
the prover proves"?
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Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
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