Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum How Massive are we?

A serious issue:

I will play the crank to see if there are some of you that can work around it. In another topic I said I would offer a simplistic view of the planet rotational factors for your thoughts but instead I changed the plan. I know the rotational factors work. I have another thought that I think might be worthy of this forum.

Newton?s universal law of gravitation formula includes the Mass of the orbited object and the Mass of the orbiting object. This combined value is then subjected to his constant and the value of the mean orbit radius.

Consider that the Mass of the orbiting object has naught to do with the position of the orbiting object for a moment. IF that prospect was true and mathematically provable what result are we getting when we run Newton?s formula? Are we possibly getting the means to identify the weight/Mass of the central object and possibly the weight/Mass of the orbiting object? I have been questioning this result in spite of my considerable long standing respect for Isaac Newton and his genius.

This issue came up for me when I sought another method of determining relative Mass for solar objects without using Newton?s formulas- which I was never very good at.
I make 2 preliminary conjectures:

1: The mean orbital radius of the planets and moons have zilch to do with their Mass.

2. Newton?s formula for determining the Mass of large objects results in the expression of the objects Mass including all other objects that are in orbit around the central object.

Before getting annoyed take a look at the accepted formula. I will reserve further comment until I get a feeling for the nature of your reactions.

JJW

1) You are a simple creature.
2) Mass vs. reduced mass.
3) Approximations are just that.
4) Newton was wrong.
5) http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609417

Google
"digital orrery" 15,400 hits

What part of that do you consider to be invalid?

Thank you Al for your comments and links.
You are correct - I am a simple creature.

Digital orrery is fun to watch going through the motions. I bought at least one of those mentioned in the Google listings and found it was inadaquate for my then purpose because it only went back to about 2,000 BC and my efforts required to at least 1,200 BC at the time, dealing with ancient Egyptian wall carvings.

Here is a free download site with an excellent program that does a lot of stuff. I used it for my efforts dealing with the Egyptian stuff.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/homeplanet

The above has nothing at all to do with my post, I just thought that while we were talking about planet orrery demo's some' might be interested.

As to my commnet on Newton's formula dealing with weighing planets with orbit data as a part of the formula I would like to wait a while to see if there are any other comments.
jjw