Jun. 22nd, 2005

Fomalhaut

Jun. 22nd, 2005 11:49 pm
mmcirvin: (Default)
The Hubble telescope takes a picture of a ring around Philip K. Dick's favorite star (he called it "Albemuth", a name that, as far as I can tell, seems to have originated in one of his dreams, though he justified it with a bizarre etymology involving "Behemoth" and whales). The ring is possibly something like our solar system's Kuiper Belt, and suggests the existence of a planet playing a role equivalent to Neptune's. The press release contains your Mangled Geometry Statement of the Week:
Kepler's laws of planetary motion state that objects in elliptical orbits around one another are centered on the focus of the ellipse, which is always offset from the geometric center of the ellipse.
The construction of an ellipse centered around the focus of the ellipse which is offset from the geometric center of the ellipse is left as an exercise for the reader.

(I know, I'm just being picky.)

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