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Astrology Science / Gravity Question

I, for one, try to read only my horoscope out of the onion. I find it not only gleefully innaccurate, but entertaingly, intentionally so.

I used to live with a MOJOR WOO who believed in astrology, hook, line and sinker. Being a role player, I had a small army of fake personalities to draw upon. I gave her (using the astrology program that she used for her "readings") three charts, one of which was mine. She couldn't tell, even after a year of living with me, which chart was mine. I repeated with three others in her Coven (did I mention that she was the leader of a Wiccan Coven?), and none of them could do it. Ok, small sample size, but a decent start for a single guy, eh?
 
eri said:
Are you asking if we 'run out' of gravity, as we would run out of mass eventually? Mass creates it's own gravity, which we are currently having trouble identifying as more than a force.

Or are you asking if a body with a measurable gravitational field (i.e., a star) would have gravitational effects all over the universe simply by existing? The force of gravity decreases as the square of the distance from the object you are - so if you were twice as far from a star, the effect of the star's gravity on you is 1/4, and so on. Usually by the time you get to the next star, the other star won't matter anymore.
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Current doctrine has it that quantum theory applies to gravity (if for no other reason then because it apears t oapply to everything else). The quantum particle for gravity is the graviton. Obviously, when a gravity field has spread sufficiently (due to the square rule) that is presents locally as individual gravitons, we may assume that it will no longer be uniformly distributed, and thus, in some places be non-existent.

And if QM is as it is wont to be, we will not be able to determine which those places are :rolleyes:.

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
Current doctrine has it that quantum theory applies to gravity (if for no other reason then because it apears t oapply to everything else). The quantum particle for gravity is the graviton. Obviously, when a gravity field has spread sufficiently (due to the square rule) that is presents locally as individual gravitons....
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But individual gravitons don't present as point particles, do they? Wave/particle and all that.... any quantum particle is "really" a smeared-out probability space.
 
The Bad Astronomer has a great page on this at http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html, but, in a nutshell:

Yes, every object in the universe has a gravitational affect on every other object in the universe, even if it is very slight. Where that fact departs from astrology, however, is that the mass of the object and the distance from the other object affect that force: gravity increases with size and decreases with distance.

If gravity were the driving force behind astrology, then the moon (due to its proximity) and the sun (due to its size) would have much greater affects on our destiny than any of the other planets. But astrology doesn't even consider either of them. At the same time, the effects of Pluto (really small and really far away) would be much smaller than the effects of Jupiter (really big and closer) but astrology doesn't take that into account either.

So, whatever the force is behind astrology, it ain't gravity.
 
At the BA board we've also seen pro-astrology posters claim that the force was magnetism instead of gravity, which was even funnier since posters pointed out that hospital machinery would give off more of a magnetic field than the planets, and some planets may not have magnetic fields at all. Of course it doesn't explain what your date of birth (as opposed to conceived) would have to do with it anyway.

Astrology is laughable. It is a shame that it still wastes peoples' time and money in this day and age.
 
CFLarsen said:
You might also want to look at this: Gravity it ain't...
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Since the claim is that astrology can be explained by tidal effects, I suggest you update your article. If the distance between the objects is much bigger than their sizes, the tidal effect is approximately proportional to the inverse of the cube of the distance. Put the car and the person at 100m from the subject, so that the distance is much greater than the dimensions.
A 100kg person will cause in another a tidal effect almost 1000 times as big as the Moon's. So, tides explain astrology even worse than gravity.
 
SGT said:
Since the claim is that astrology can be explained by tidal effects, I suggest you update your article. If the distance between the objects is much bigger than their sizes, the tidal effect is approximately proportional to the inverse of the cube of the distance. Put the car and the person at 100m from the subject, so that the distance is much greater than the dimensions.
A 100kg person will cause in another a tidal effect almost 1000 times as big as the Moon's. So, tides explain astrology even worse than gravity.
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I might do that.
 
MRC_Hans said:
Current doctrine has it that quantum theory applies to gravity (if for no other reason then because it apears t oapply to everything else). The quantum particle for gravity is the graviton. Obviously, when a gravity field has spread sufficiently (due to the square rule) that is presents locally as individual gravitons, we may assume that it will no longer be uniformly distributed, and thus, in some places be non-existent.

And if QM is as it is wont to be, we will not be able to determine which those places are :rolleyes:.

Hans
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Not quite. If gravity turns out to be quantum, then what would spread out would not be the particles themselves, but the amplitudes of the particles. The amplitude is a continuous, semi-classical field. So there will be some probability of a graviton everywhere.
 
Mosquito said:
Actually, I don't know enough about either to make that assertment, but Venus is the godess of love and Mars is the god of war and commerce. I have absolutely no idea as to other connections, but I would not be surprised if there are more.

I have this feeling, which may be rather unfounded, that the name given to these heavenly bodies are important to astrologists, i.e. they give the object the properties of the mythological figure they are named after. It makes sense, but may be wrong.


Mosquito - still no expert on astrology nor roman mythology
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Yes but they're not the actual gods. Mars was called "Mars" because it is red - thought to be a "warlike" color. No rational reason though. So why should the fourth planet influence "warlike" characteristics? There really is no rational reason. Which is why there is no actual connection: ie astrology doesn't work.
 
I'd like to point out that non only is the effect tiny, but it's only the DIFFERENCE between the effect on that neuron and your body that matters.

That means your taking ridiculously small number N, then subtracting ridiculously small number M which is ever so slightly smaller than N from it to get the even more ridiculously small number P.

For example... Venus weighs 4.869e+24 and is 108,200,000 000 m from the sun on average. The Earth is 149,476,000 000 m from the sun on average so on average the closest venus can be is 149,476,000 000 - 108,200,000 000 = 41 276 000 000.

Now, for the acceleration calculation. The acceleration on neuron X due to venus:

Gm/r^2 = 6.67300 × 10-11 * 4.869e+24 / 41 276 000 000^2 = 1.910 e -7 m/s^2

Now, that number is tiny, but it does seem sortof big, huh? I mean that's like a tenth of a millimeter per second per second! But wait, we need the difference!

Now, your feet are two feet lower than your head (and neurons) so they'll be pulled less. So... (assuming a tall person, 2m tall)
Gm/r^2 = 6.67300 × 10-11 * 4.869e+24 / (41 276 000 000+2)^2 = 1.910 e -7 m/s^2

Now, my calculator is a TI-89 and can hold a lot of digits. But even it says the difference is essentially 0 (the diference is SO SMALL it gets rounded away! I can show numbers with a 10^-999 factor!)

So, the difference has MORE THAN 999 zeroes after the decimal and before it's first significant digit!
 
RichardR said:
Yes but they're not the actual gods. Mars was called "Mars" because it is red - thought to be a "warlike" color. No rational reason though. So why should the fourth planet influence "warlike" characteristics? There really is no rational reason. Which is why there is no actual connection: ie astrology doesn't work.
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I thought the planets actually WERE the gods, but I'm likely misinformed.

The reason the forth planet then influences the warlike characteristics of the newborn is because it is called Mars, which just happens to be the name of the Roman god of War. See? Perfectly rational...

Anyway, just because there is no connection between theory and reality doesn't mean that the theory is wrong, does it? ;)

I like the "gravity-version" of astrology. In my chart I have Midwife in Saggitarius and a Nurse in Taurus, this means that I'm infallible :D

Mosquito - a bigger graviational well than you
 
Alkatran said:
Now, my calculator is a TI-89 and can hold a lot of digits. But even it says the difference is essentially 0 (the diference is SO SMALL it gets rounded away! I can show numbers with a 10^-999 factor!)

So, the difference has MORE THAN 999 zeroes after the decimal and before it's first significant digit!
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While you are right in stating that the difference is ridiculously small, you are wrong to state that the difference is smaller than 10^-999. The reason for this is that your calculator, while able to represent such small numbers, does not have that much precision. Most likely it has an internal representation with 12-20 significant digits, most of which it didn't present to you (thus your numbers are the same). This is a possible cause of errors in many computer calculations, but is normally of no real significance.

I think it is possible to get a feeling of the potential actual difference by looking at the number of significant digits in your calculations. Though I'm a little lost in how to explain it :boggled:

Mosquito
 
Mosquito said:
While you are right in stating that the difference is ridiculously small, you are wrong to state that the difference is smaller than 10^-999. The reason for this is that your calculator, while able to represent such small numbers, does not have that much precision. Most likely it has an internal representation with 12-20 significant digits, most of which it didn't present to you (thus your numbers are the same). This is a possible cause of errors in many computer calculations, but is normally of no real significance.

I think it is possible to get a feeling of the potential actual difference by looking at the number of significant digits in your calculations. Though I'm a little lost in how to explain it :boggled:

Mosquito
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Yes, it can only store so many significant digits. I'll simplify the calculation so it's more suitable for a calculator.

Gm/r^2 - Gm / (r+2)^2
= (Gm(r+2)^2 - Gmr^2) / (r^2(r+2)^2)
= Gm((r+2)^2 - r^2) / r^2(r+2)^2
= Gm(r^2 + 4r + 4 - r^2) / (r^2(r+2)^2)
= 4Gm(r + 1) / (r^2(r+2)^2)

4Gm(r+1) = 5.36437e25
r^2(r+2)^2 = 2.90262e42

When you divide you subtract the exponents so the end result will be 25-42 = -17 (ok, so it's a bit less than -999)

Result according to calc:
1.848 e -17

In any case, that's much smaller than the previous answer.
 
Let me put it this way: Oprah has both a bigger gravitational and behavioural effect on you than any star in any Zodiac constellation...

/and thus I became a new theologian of Oprahism.
 
I would say that gravity, and the direction that it's pulling, has some effect on my mood.

For example, when my wife is lying on her back, I'm often really happy.

:)
 
Alkatran said:
Now, your feet are two feet lower than your head (and neurons) so they'll be pulled less. So... (assuming a tall person, 2m tall)
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Didn't you already assume that I'm two feet tall? To get my two feet just two feet lower than my head I have to really scrunch down. I've been kicking this around a while and would like to nail it down. I'm tendon to feel like you are pulling my leg with some corny leap of logic, but I wouldn't want to make a heel of myself and become arch enemies. :boggled:
 
StaticEngine said:
I would say that gravity, and the direction that it's pulling, has some effect on my mood.

For example, when my wife is lying on her back, I'm often really happy.

:)
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Ahh but I am happy when my gal is on her back, her side, face down, above me.
Your theory is hereby debunked! ;)
 
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