Planets Do Not Orbit Stars
its parent star.
Given that each exerts a gravitational pull on the other,
how could we expect the star to remain absolutely fixed
while the planet orbits around it?
In fact both orbit; and they orbit around a common point
called the Center of Mass (CM)
Wikipedia defines the Center of Mass (CM) as,
a specific point at which, for many purposes, the
system's mass behaves as if it were concentrated
Physicists have used the concept of "balance" to define CM,
The center of mass is familiar to anyone who has
ever played on a see-saw. The fulcrum point at
which the see-saw will exactly balance two people
sitting on either end is the center of mass for the
two persons sitting on the see-saw.
The figure below depicts a two-body system;
X marks its center of mass.
image credit
If X were the fulcrum of a see-saw, the two bodies
would balance.
For a two body system, the center of mass can be
determined through these equations: where m denotes
mass; d, distance; and R, the total separation between
the two bodies.
image credit
When the a planet and star orbit their center of mass,
CM will almost certainly be located within the star itself,
but not at its center, as shown in the video below.
When Did Love Begin?
Love might end; less has been written about when
it began
the video below addresses the issue of Love's
first appearance and its history
it features "Evolution", a poem by Langdon Smith
it is narrated by humorist and author Jean Shepherd
and it begins with the line,
When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
A Box to Hide In
"the greatest American humorist since Mark Twain"
he is best known for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1939),
a short story about a timid, henpecked man who often escapes
into heroic fantasies
Thurber's writing and cartoons are edgy and absurdist:
he places odd people in strange situations; highlighting
the stresses and frustrations of modern life -
as in the video below, based on Thurber's A Box To Hide In
The defense mechanism of “Undoing”
Defense Mechanisms are psychological processes
that protect the conscious mind from threatening
impulses, thoughts and feelings
they do so by denying or distorting reality, and
they are largely unconscious
defense mechanisms are normal and, if used in
moderation, they can be helpful -
helpful in that they can give us time to recognize
our discomfort, identify its source and find ways
to consciously deal with it
however, the extensive and prolonged use of
defense mechanisms can be problematic in that
underlying difficulties remain, energy is wasted
and stress builds
Sigmund Freud first used “defense” as a psycho-
analytic term in 1894; and it was his daughter,
Anna Freud, who refined and expanded his theories
in the 1930s
the defense mechanism referred to as undoing
is an unconscious attempt to take back, nullify or
“un-do” a thought or action that had resulted in
guilt or anxiety
for example,
A physician may become over-solicitous or may
over-medicate a patient in whose treatment he
had made an error.
- Leigh & Reiser (1992)
a husband who showers his wife with roses and
chocolates on Valentine’s Day may be unconsciously
seeking to undo a year of neglect
Awfulizing
to refer to a distortion of thinking
when we awfulize, an event or situation is thought
of in overly negative terms
it's a kind of negative exaggeration where, for exam-
ple, a minor setback is seen as a major catastrophe
awfulizing can set into motion a chain of self-fulfilling
thoughts, feelings and actions;
the mere expectation that things will get worse
will cause them to get worse
take a look below at the fabled, Henny Penny
one day while peacefully eating lunch in the shade
of a large oak, Henny Penny was struck on the head
by a falling acorn;
her conclusion -
Henny is awfulizing, misinterpreting a situation in
terms so negative that her view bears little resem-
blance to reality
she needs a friend, a Goosey Loosey or a Turkey
Lurkey, to tell her to chill out, look around (and up)
and consider another view of her situation