Timeline for Why are these periods the same: a low earth orbit and oscillations through the center of the earth?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 13, 2014 at 13:01 | history | edited | Thomas Pornin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 13, 2014 at 11:36 | comment | added | Phil Frost | Most of what I know about orbital mechanics I learned from Kerbal Space Program, but I think it's true that the "flattened ellipse" path is not Keplerian. There is a Keplerian orbit for a flattened ellipse: a radial elliptic trajectory, but it's a quite different thing. | |
| Jul 12, 2014 at 0:01 | comment | added | Tristan | There's one very small fault with this explanation. Kepler's laws assume the mass of the larger body to be concentrated at its center. When you go through the hole, the effective mass of the earth decreases as you approach the center, so your orbit through the center of the earth is not a Keplerian ellipse. | |
| Jul 11, 2014 at 23:57 | comment | added | David Z | Don't Kepler's laws assume that the center of the potential is at one focus of the ellipse though? (I honestly don't remember.) The foci of a degenerate ellipse are at the ends. | |
| Jul 11, 2014 at 20:30 | history | answered | Thomas Pornin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |