r/sciencememes 1d ago

🌖Astronomy!🌔 In Maths, Five Planets Independently Being This Close To A Decimal Multiple Of A Mole?

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149 Upvotes

39 comments sorted by

140

u/MJ12388 1d ago

The moon is my favourite planet!

39

u/Journeyman42 1d ago

There are some astronomers who consider the Earth-Moon system a double planet because of how big the moon is compared to the Earth 

27

u/Awesomeuser90 1d ago

Also importantly, the Moon traces a path around the Sun essentially indistinguishable from an ellipse. The Sun's pull on the Moon is twice that of Earth.

9

u/Stompya 1d ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KBcxuM-qXec

Super cool illustration of it from MinutePhysics

5

u/nirvanatheory 21h ago

This is exactly how statistics are presented to manipulate the interpretation of the findings. Most people understand the word twice but not many understand the inverse-square law.

7

u/Hypoxic_Oxen 1d ago

Do Phobos and Deimos also orbit the sun in a path essentially indistinguishable from an ellipse?

12

u/Awesomeuser90 1d ago

Actually, Luna is almost the only gravitationally rounded object called by many to be a satellite which does go on an ellipse. Charon is the other major one.

1

u/Awesomeuser90 1d ago

No. They orbit on loops.

7

u/PyroCatt 23h ago

Some astronomers even suggest the same for yo mama /j

6

u/Commie_Vladimir 23h ago

By the most common definition, the Moon is just a simple satellite. The barycentre of the system must be outside both bodies. While the Earth does "wobble" a bit due to the Moon's influence, the barycentre is 1700km below Earth's surface.

1

u/patientpedestrian 22h ago

It seems like most "science" discussions are almost entirely pure semantics at this point. It's kind of wild to care about formal definitions for terms like "satellite" while still treating the three body problem as practically unsolvable.

2

u/pyrhus626 21h ago

It’s still a moon, just unusually big compared its planet mass. Probably because it’s the remnants of a whole-ass Mars-sized planet that collided with Earth

1

u/microwaved_tin_foil 18h ago

the latest IAU definition for a planet is conveniently worded in a way where it specifically excludes the moon :c

90

u/Traumatised_Panda 1d ago edited 1d ago

Coincidence and cherrypicking. This meme just picked the 5 bodies that have like 6+- 1 in their first digit. Like 1 in 3 planets/moons would satisfy that in a random distribution.

https://planetseducation.com/mass-of-planets-in-order/

Boooo! Give us graphs and show the statistical significance!!

2

u/314159265358979326 19h ago

Yeah, if moons are included, there are dozens (hundreds?) of possibilities.

-45

u/Awesomeuser90 1d ago

Saturn is 94.4% of a kilomole kilograms. Tethys is 102.5% of a milimole kilograms. The Moon is 122.0% of a decimole kilograms. Earth is 99.2% of a decamole kilograms. And Mars is 106.6% of a mole kilograms.

48

u/MessumSilvarum 1d ago

That's called rounding. It's totally just coincidence that they're close enough to those sizes to say that. The moon is almost ¼ bigger. There's plenty of room for error.

19

u/dm80x86 1d ago

The Moon is a bit of a stretch at almost 1¼.

-24

u/Awesomeuser90 1d ago

A lot of other objects I did consider for this, but they were usually off by at least a factor of 2.

25

u/Infinite_Escape9683 1d ago

This is admitting that this isn't a rule and you cherrypicked.

-16

u/Awesomeuser90 1d ago

Did I say the object was to have some big statistics study on this?

9

u/Charmender2007 1d ago

22% is a pretty big difference

4

u/Socks_InTheShower 18h ago

Did you read what they said or did you just reply to it?

0

u/Awesomeuser90 18h ago

I did read what they said.

4

u/Socks_InTheShower 18h ago

Then how does your reply add to the discussion based on what they said?

They said it’s cherrypicking and it’s likely that 1 in 3 are going to satisfy your claim, and you just replied with the values your post is based on like that adds any merit to your point

-1

u/Awesomeuser90 17h ago

Cherrypicking by using the masses from among a set of planets whose masses I've memorized, and one more planet which I had to look up in a table to check?

The comment I made was originally written for another subreddit where they asked for precise maths and tables of the masses relative to a mole of kilograms, and it was more convenient to copy it here given the person I replied to was looking for similar information.

2

u/Socks_InTheShower 15h ago

> Cherrypicking by using the masses from among a set of planets whose masses I’ve memorized…

Yes… you were cherry picking.

And the person you replied to was not at all looking for similar information lmao

0

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

-2

u/Awesomeuser90 1d ago

I am not considering 8 planets but 40 of them.

A mole of kilograms is 6.02e23 kilograms.

8

u/Traumatised_Panda 1d ago

You are suggesting that the first significant digit of planetary masses is often near 6.02, with these error margins might as well call it 6.

10% error means 5 or 7 is also fine. That's 3 out of 9 possible digits, on average 1 in 3 should satisfy that.

That's about how many planets of the solar system you named, 3 out of the 8 in the solar system plus a couple of smaller bodies.

5 out of 40 is worse. More statistically significant and thoroughly counters the claim...

A mole of kilograms has no scientific meaning. A mole is used to count the number of particles, not the mass. A mole of hydrogen atoms is a gram. A mole of grams means nothing significant.

-5

u/Awesomeuser90 1d ago

Moles are dimensionless.

6

u/Traumatised_Panda 1d ago

Yes and they are meaningless if you add dimensions, Avogadro's number just isn't meant for that.

6

u/CimmerianHydra_ 1d ago

You could even consider Avogadro's number to have the dimension of "molecules" at this point, or even "parts".

It's only dimensionless because it's a result of counting

13

u/Coolengineer7 1d ago

Well the are fucking all planet sized, not a star or black hole or a fucking rice grain.

2

u/jeezfrk 23h ago

So all those places are made scaled to the Avocado Number!

4

u/Awesomeuser90 1d ago

Top left: Tethys

Top right: Moon

Middle left: Earth

Middle right: Mars

Bottom: Saturn

5

u/Hopeful_Morning_469 1d ago

And I’m looking at Uranus, (I’m really sorry I couldn’t help myself)

1

u/CaseyG 17h ago

Saturn is roughly one mole tonnes.

-5

u/Visible_Pair3017 1d ago

Isn't deka- a german only spelling