I've joked on facebook that nasa will cover this event before network
news will, and depending on respondent, that could become true literally.
$ gfortran -Wall -Wextra brook1.f90 -o out
$ ./out
pi is 0.78539819
rotation of earth at radius in mph is 1020.0054
w.r.t. center of planet, speed of any point in brooklyn is
179.85957
$ gfortran -Wall -Wextra brook1.f90 -o out
$ ./out
pi is 3.1415927
rotation of earth at radius in mph is 1020.0054
w.r.t. center of planet, speed of any point in brooklyn is
774.17438
$ cat brook1.f90
implicit none
real :: laditude, speed1, speed2, pi
pi = 4.0 * atan(1.0)
print *, "pi is ", pi
speed1 = 456.1 !m/s
speed1 = speed1 * 3600 !m/hr
speed1 = speed1 * 3.28 / 5280 !mi/hr
print *, "rotation of earth at radius in mph is ", speed1
laditude = 40.624722 ! north latitude for brooklyn in degrees
laditude = laditude * pi /180.0 !radians
speed2 = speed1 * cos(laditude)
print *, "w.r.t. center of planet, speed of any point in brooklyn is ",
speed2
end program
! gfortran -Wall -Wextra brook1.f90 -o out
$
What I realized is that it makes a huge difference in this type of
hyperbole which way your "street" is pointing. A north-south street is
unaffected, while an east-west one feels its full brunt. Are intenrnet
map capabilities sufficiently advanced that we can know what angle the
brooklyn bridge goes at. By my eye, it could be 20% w.r.t. east west.
q1) Can you determine the inclination of the brooklyn bridge?
q2) does fortran have a += operator like perl or c?
Where were you for the revolution? The winners are going to ask the
loser a lot of questions: they'll be a captive audience.
--
Uno
Yes, by "point" I mean "situation".
> and would conjecture that we're talking about ordinary temperatures,
> ordinary substances, without a supernova happening nearby.
AFAICT what I said is true for any substance. Some substances will
require more mass for gravity to overcome stiffness, but for any
substance there will come a point where the object becomes round by self
gravity.
Supernovae do not destroy planets... Their radiation might kill all life
in a planet, but they do not "push" the planet. If the nearest star to
the Sun exploded as a supernova, Earth wouldn't notice (except for
animals dying from radiation).
> I'm impressed by how many objects look like they've been pummeled
> forever, but let me ask you about helene, classified as a moon. Is
> Helene in hydrostatic equilibrium? Is our moon?
> Helene is not in hydrostatic equilibrium, but our moon most definitely
> is. You can see that Helene looks potato-shaped and our moon is round.
She has the face only an astrophysicist can love:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leading_hemisphere_of_Helene_-_20110618.jpg
So, now, daniel, I wonder how big would we have to enlarge helene in
order for her to fall apart. As I look at it, that unseemly protrusion
that might be a snout or the leaning tower of pisa would be the first
thing to crumble.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/saturniansatfact.html
It makes life tolerable as a handyman to have such resources available
for amusement. I'm so impressed with the parts of my government that
don't live fat and happy from lobbyist money, especially those from
foreign warporations.
>
> As chance would have it, we did an exercise about this last week (I'm
> doing a masters in astrophysics). For ordinary materials things become
> round when they are a ~400 - 700 km wide. Our moon is ~3480 km wide
> while Helene is 43 km along its longest dimension.
>
What would that mass be? I guessed 1.0e21 kg:
$ gfortran -Wall -Wextra brook3.f90 -o out
$ ./out
3.00000008E+16 1.00000002E+21 helene to M nought 33333.332
7.36000003E+22 1.00000002E+21 M moon to M nought 73.599998
$ cat brook3.f90
implicit none
real:: helene, ratio, M_nought, M_moon
M_moon = 7.36e22 !kg
helene = .0003e20 ! kg
M_nought = 1.0e21 ! minimum mass to imply hydrostatic equilibrium
ratio = M_nought / helene
print *, helene, M_nought, "helene to M nought", ratio
ratio = M_moon / M_nought
print *, M_moon, M_nought, "M moon to M nought", ratio
end program
! gfortran -Wall -Wextra brook3.f90 -o out
$
--
Uno
"It all started with Wisconsin."
You forgot the velocity of the Milky Way toward another galaxy
in the local group of galaxies.
Robert Miles
A masters in astrophysics? Then you're likely to be interested
in the two BOINC projects I found that are related to
astrophysics:
Einstein@Home
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/
Milkyway@Home
http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/
Robert Miles
How much difference will it make in how many pieces of the moon would
then impact the earth?
Robert Miles
>> So, now, daniel, I wonder how big would we have to enlarge helene in
>> order for her to fall apart.
>
> About 250 - 350 km in radius, depending on whether it is mostly ice or
> mostly rock.
$ gfortran -Wall -Wextra brook6.f90 -o out
$ ./out
V_nought = 5.23598810E+17 m**3.
M_nought = 1.04719760E+21 kg.
surface gravity of minimal necessarily-round object is 0.27951801
m/s**2.
ratio of g_earth to g_nought is 35.096130
ratio of g_moon to g_nought is 5.7956910
at g_nought acceleration an objects covers 45.840954 feet in 10
seconds.
$ cat brook6.f90
implicit none
real :: pi, G, G_earth, G_moon, ratio, d_comp
real:: rho, R_nought, V_nought, M_nought, G_nought
pi = 4.0 * atan(1.0)
R_nought = 500.0 !km (400 - 700) source: Daniel in c.l.f.
R_nought = R_nought * 1000.0 !meters
V_nought = 4.0/3.0 * pi * R_nought**3 ! m**3
print *,"V_nought = ", V_nought, "m**3."
rho = 2.0 !g/cm**3 typical asteroid density
rho = rho * 1000.0 ! kg/m**3 (/1000 *100 * 100 *100)
M_nought = V_nought * rho ! kg
print *,"M_nought = ", M_nought, "kg."
!g = [G*M(earth)]/d^2.
! gravitational constant = 6.67300 � 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2
G = 6.67300e-11
G_nought = G * M_nought/ (R_nought**2)
print *, "surface gravity of minimal necessarily-round object is ",
G_nought, "m/s**2."
G_earth = 9.81
G_moon = 1.62
ratio = G_earth / G_nought
print *, "ratio of g_earth to g_nought is ", ratio
ratio = G_moon / G_nought
print *, "ratio of g_moon to g_nought is ", ratio
! how much g is this?
d_comp = .5 * G_nought * 10**2 * 3.28 ! feet in ten seconds
print *, "at g_nought acceleration an objects covers ", d_comp, "feet in
10 seconds."
end program
! gfortran -Wall -Wextra brook6.f90 -o out
$
Dude, your work is fascinating. I'm not quite sure how you got that
estimate for a helenian object, but I think that others think it might
be made completely of ice, given that it has a density of 1000 kg/m**3
at the official site, and I'm not the guy who says, "oh, because it's
official it must really be that way, so your estimate would be off by a
binary order magnitude, making my guess off by a garden-variety order of
magnitude, which my instructor for stellar evolution, Roger Ptak, use to
call "pretty good."
>>> As chance would have it, we did an exercise about this last week (I'm
>>> doing a masters in astrophysics). For ordinary materials things become
>>> round when they are a ~400 - 700 km wide. Our moon is ~3480 km wide
>>> while Helene is 43 km along its longest dimension.
>>>
>>
>> What would that mass be? I guessed 1.0e21 kg:
>
> Let's see... a typical asteroid has a density of about 2 g / cm^3. If
> Helene is made of the same material and it needs to have a 300 km radius
> that makes a volume of:
>
> V = 4/3 pi (300,000 m)^3 = 1.13e17
>
> Density = 2 g/cm^3 = 2000 kg/m^3
>
> So that gives a mass of 2.26e20 kg. So your guess was pretty good. Just
> off by one digit.
How do you figure out what the pressure at the core is of this minimal
object?
--
Uno
For this calculation I don't need the central pressure. Solids and
liquids are not very compressible at the pressures you find in planets.
So I can just take the densities that I know from Earth and use them. If
you say that Helene is all ice, I know that its density is 1 g/cm^3.
That said, we *can* estimate the central pressure of a planet (or a moon
in hydrostatic equilibrium) if we can estimate (or guess) what the
interior is made of. The planet is a sphere. Think of it as a series of
thin spherical shells. Pick one shell at radius R:
Radius of the shell == R
Mass contained inside the shell == M(R)
Gravitational field at this point == G M(R) / R^2
Thickness of this shell == dR
Area of this shell == A(R)
Volume of this shell == A(R) dR
Density of the planet at distance R == rho(R)
Mass of the shell == rho(R) A(R) dR
Total weight of this shell == G M(R) rho(R) A(R) dR / R^2
Total weight per unit area == G M(R) rho(R) dR / R^2
Now, remember that pressure is force per unit area. If the planet (or
large moon) is in hydrostatic equilibrium, that means that pressure
exactly balances gravity. Let "dP" be the difference in pressure between
the top and the bottom of the shell. That "dP" must be equal to the
weight per unit area of the shell (i.e. hydrostatic equilibrium):
dP = - G M(R) rho(R) dR / R^2
The "-" sign is because when radius increases (positive dR) pressure
decreases (negative dP). This leads to the differential equation:
dP / dR = - G M(R) rho(R) / R^2
Now, if you have a way of estimating the density profile of the planet -
rho(R) - you can obtain M(R) too, and you can solve the differential
equation to obtain the pressure. You just need a couple of boundary
conditions:
Mass at the very centre (R = 0) is 0.
Pressure at the surface of the planet (R = R_max) is 0.
To get the density profile you have to either use some theoretical model
of how planets work, or send a space probe to take gravity measurements
(or in Earth's case, you can use earthquakes too).
As a simple example, we can pretend that the planet has uniform density,
so the ODE becomes very easy.
rho(R) = rho = constant
M(R) = 4/3 * pi R^3 * rho
dP / dR = - G 4/3 * pi R * rho^2
P(R) = - G * 2/3 * pi * rho^2 * R^2 + Const
Naturally, the constant is the central pressure P(0):
P(R) = - G * 2/3 * pi * rho^2 * R^2 + P(0)
Now use the boundary condition: P(R_max) = 0
P(R_max) = 0 = - G * 2/3 * pi * rho^2 * R_max^2 + P(0)
Therefore, we obtain the central pressure:
P(0) = G * 2/3 * pi * rho^2 * R_max^2
So now we have an estimate of the central pressure of the planet based
on the simplifying assumption that the density is constant. If you use
the average planet density for "rho", the above value will give you an
overestimate, but it will be in the right ball park.
Cheers,
Daniel.