• Question: whats a Lagrangian point?

    Asked by benans1234 to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 14 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 14 Jun 2013:

      Stand back! Aa biologist is going to try and and explain physics!

      So a lagrangian points are to do with gravity and centripetal forces in the development of orbits. Imagine the Earth orbiting the sun, if you throw another planet or large body into the mix this will mess with the gravity and the orbits will all go a bit wrong and we enter disaster movie territory where we’re all flying into the sun or out into space. Not a good time, unless Bruce Willis or someone can save us.

      Anyway, I was talking about science not Bruce Willis.There are 5 lagrangian points where you can put a much much smaller object where there will be no effect on the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. We already have one lagrangian point filled by the Moon, but we could have a second moon if it was in the right place and 3 other bodies orbiting the sun with us in the Earth’s orbit provided they were in the right place.

      That was a really interesting question and I actually learned something too so thanks. I hope it made sense. Also how hard is it to spell lagrangian!?! So many typos.

    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 15 Jun 2013:

      It’s a point in space where different gravitational forces cancel each other out.

      NASA like to put certain types of satellites in Lagrangian points (L points) because the orbits are stable and free from gravitational interference, mostly deep-space telescopes like the Planck telescope.

    • Photo: Susana Teixeira

      Susana Teixeira answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      I did not know, just learned it from Sam and David’s answers!

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