Do you prefer struggle over calm?
Does the recent discovery that our area of the galaxy is a bath of binary stars indicate anything about us? About me or you? Yes, we’re in a tub filled with twins, maybe an Olympic-size pool. A recent count of binary stars within 3,000 light-years sums to 1.3 million star-pairs. * Many of those are stars of equal size, and a surprising number, to me, at least, of those gravitationally bound twins are as close as Pluto is to our Sun. I wouldn’t want to be the astrophysicist who tries to solve the three-body problem for a planet between two stars, a problem for which there is no finite mathematical final solution. Three gravitationally bound moving bodies? I’d rather calculate the final decimal in Pi or the square root of 2. On a human level it’s a bit similar to a judge figuring out what a divorcing couple is supposed to do with the children, some of who are stepchildren. “Yes,” the lawyer for one spouse says, “your Honor, Mr. So-n-So wants their common children one full week each month of aphelion and every weekend during perihelion except when he is away on business, and he wants the stepchildren at the very least during the equinoxes and solstices and during neap tides.”
For comparison imagine Uranus, which sits midway between the Sun and Pluto’s average distance (at 19.2 astronomical units vs. Pluto’s 39.5 AU).** Now think of two gravity wells, that is, two Suns, Sun and Pluto-Sun at equal distance from Uranus. Disney would be hard-pressed to design a ride or waterpark with the physics of a similar paired pull, maybe a pull in large swimming pool with two fully-opened drains down which the water swirls and pulls little kids. “Margaret, I lost Junior down one of the drains at the waterpark.”
Well, that’s Uranus in such a binary system. Of course, one might think that the chance of going down either drain is equal, given equal stars, but then, our hypothetical Uranus could possibly be more closely tied gravitationally to one over the other star and tend to swim close to or get pulled into one drain preferentially over another, especially if there are other drains, that is other planets exerting a gravitational pull nearby. Additionally, I should note that in the local plethora of binary systems, not all stars are twins, some couple white dwarfs with main sequence stars like our Sun, and that might mean one gravitational drain is larger and more powerful than the other.
Two drains. Two gravitational wells. Ever feel you’re the Uranus (pun intended) caught between two flushing systems, between two drains? I don’t need you to answer. You have had such an experience, sucked into the whirlpool of one or the other parent, one or another relative or friend, one or another social group, or even one or another belief. And the belief doesn’t have to be religious.
When Kareem El-Badry and colleagues published their 3-D atlas of nearby binaries, they revealed that what I call “two-gravitational drain systems” are rather common within a radius of 3,000 light-years. Should it surprise us that we as humans are a microcosm of that local Cosmic structure? Two drains are common, and no doubt, here on little planet Earth, there are probably many three-drain systems that affect our behavior, perspectives, and attitudes. Even those of us who believe we are solitary entities like unbound or un-twinned stars, still have local drains that affect us, that influence our behavior. For planet Earth, those other planets play a role and act as gravitational drains. Even that little moon of ours affects the planet, so drains don’t have to be large. We get sucked into the smallest, the pettiest of conflicts and ideas.
Aren’t all of us born into a two-drain gravitational system of some kind, psychological, philosophical, or social? In every life there are drains that draw each toward positive and negative effects, drains that affect behavior: Good vs. bad habits, freedom from addiction vs. addiction, inner peace vs. inner rage. From binary solar systems to binary behaviors, that seems to be the nature of our universe and the nature of us. We spend much of our orbital energy going down or avoiding a drain of some kind. But what alternative universe would you want? Would you want a single Sun with a single planet in a perfectly stable orbit, a planet that unvaryingly swirls at the same distance from its nearby gravitational drain in perfect equilibrium?
Having multiple drains pulling on us means that life is a constant struggle. Should we attempt to achieve a permanent balance? Not so fast. Many, if not all of us, would probably suffer the ennui of such equilibrium. Swimming against the pull of one drain’s whirlpool only to find ourselves only momentarily balanced between drains simply puts us temporarily in dead water. Come on. Admit it. You like the struggle even when you complain about it. You know you were born into it just the way planets are born into the whirlpools of their suns. How long would you be pleased with dead water with no intellectual or emotional whirlpool? Sure, you might float a little, and the stability would be restful at first, very peaceful, even, but you would eventually ask yourself what you are doing, and you would not be satisfied. Could you be happy with unending equilibrium, calm water, or a teetertotter that neither teeters nor totters.
I’m glad astronomers discovered the multitude of binary systems. I’ve seen other such analogs of my life in nature or analogs of nature in my life that reveals how I am part of a complex Cosmos that demands struggle of its entities. Why should I think that the rules that apply to everything that surrounds me don’t apply to me? Go ahead, Universe; go ahead life: Unplug the drains and let me thrash about for control; let me choose the drain.
Think I’ll go for a swim in the pool of life. Don’t worry. I’ll watch out for the drains. I suggest you do the same.
Notes
*El-Badry, Kareem, et al. A million binaries from Gaia eDR3: sample selection and validation of Gaia parallax uncertainties. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2021) DOI: 101093/mnras/stab323. https://phys.org/news/2021-02-binary-stars-solar-neighborhood.html
Summary at University of California, Phys.org, 22 Feb 2021. Website accessed on February 21, 2021.
**One astronomical unit is 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles.
Does the recent discovery that our area of the galaxy is a bath of binary stars indicate anything about us? About me or you? Yes, we’re in a tub filled with twins, maybe an Olympic-size pool. A recent count of binary stars within 3,000 light-years sums to 1.3 million star-pairs. * Many of those are stars of equal size, and a surprising number, to me, at least, of those gravitationally bound twins are as close as Pluto is to our Sun. I wouldn’t want to be the astrophysicist who tries to solve the three-body problem for a planet between two stars, a problem for which there is no finite mathematical final solution. Three gravitationally bound moving bodies? I’d rather calculate the final decimal in Pi or the square root of 2. On a human level it’s a bit similar to a judge figuring out what a divorcing couple is supposed to do with the children, some of who are stepchildren. “Yes,” the lawyer for one spouse says, “your Honor, Mr. So-n-So wants their common children one full week each month of aphelion and every weekend during perihelion except when he is away on business, and he wants the stepchildren at the very least during the equinoxes and solstices and during neap tides.”
For comparison imagine Uranus, which sits midway between the Sun and Pluto’s average distance (at 19.2 astronomical units vs. Pluto’s 39.5 AU).** Now think of two gravity wells, that is, two Suns, Sun and Pluto-Sun at equal distance from Uranus. Disney would be hard-pressed to design a ride or waterpark with the physics of a similar paired pull, maybe a pull in large swimming pool with two fully-opened drains down which the water swirls and pulls little kids. “Margaret, I lost Junior down one of the drains at the waterpark.”
Well, that’s Uranus in such a binary system. Of course, one might think that the chance of going down either drain is equal, given equal stars, but then, our hypothetical Uranus could possibly be more closely tied gravitationally to one over the other star and tend to swim close to or get pulled into one drain preferentially over another, especially if there are other drains, that is other planets exerting a gravitational pull nearby. Additionally, I should note that in the local plethora of binary systems, not all stars are twins, some couple white dwarfs with main sequence stars like our Sun, and that might mean one gravitational drain is larger and more powerful than the other.
Two drains. Two gravitational wells. Ever feel you’re the Uranus (pun intended) caught between two flushing systems, between two drains? I don’t need you to answer. You have had such an experience, sucked into the whirlpool of one or the other parent, one or another relative or friend, one or another social group, or even one or another belief. And the belief doesn’t have to be religious.
When Kareem El-Badry and colleagues published their 3-D atlas of nearby binaries, they revealed that what I call “two-gravitational drain systems” are rather common within a radius of 3,000 light-years. Should it surprise us that we as humans are a microcosm of that local Cosmic structure? Two drains are common, and no doubt, here on little planet Earth, there are probably many three-drain systems that affect our behavior, perspectives, and attitudes. Even those of us who believe we are solitary entities like unbound or un-twinned stars, still have local drains that affect us, that influence our behavior. For planet Earth, those other planets play a role and act as gravitational drains. Even that little moon of ours affects the planet, so drains don’t have to be large. We get sucked into the smallest, the pettiest of conflicts and ideas.
Aren’t all of us born into a two-drain gravitational system of some kind, psychological, philosophical, or social? In every life there are drains that draw each toward positive and negative effects, drains that affect behavior: Good vs. bad habits, freedom from addiction vs. addiction, inner peace vs. inner rage. From binary solar systems to binary behaviors, that seems to be the nature of our universe and the nature of us. We spend much of our orbital energy going down or avoiding a drain of some kind. But what alternative universe would you want? Would you want a single Sun with a single planet in a perfectly stable orbit, a planet that unvaryingly swirls at the same distance from its nearby gravitational drain in perfect equilibrium?
Having multiple drains pulling on us means that life is a constant struggle. Should we attempt to achieve a permanent balance? Not so fast. Many, if not all of us, would probably suffer the ennui of such equilibrium. Swimming against the pull of one drain’s whirlpool only to find ourselves only momentarily balanced between drains simply puts us temporarily in dead water. Come on. Admit it. You like the struggle even when you complain about it. You know you were born into it just the way planets are born into the whirlpools of their suns. How long would you be pleased with dead water with no intellectual or emotional whirlpool? Sure, you might float a little, and the stability would be restful at first, very peaceful, even, but you would eventually ask yourself what you are doing, and you would not be satisfied. Could you be happy with unending equilibrium, calm water, or a teetertotter that neither teeters nor totters.
I’m glad astronomers discovered the multitude of binary systems. I’ve seen other such analogs of my life in nature or analogs of nature in my life that reveals how I am part of a complex Cosmos that demands struggle of its entities. Why should I think that the rules that apply to everything that surrounds me don’t apply to me? Go ahead, Universe; go ahead life: Unplug the drains and let me thrash about for control; let me choose the drain.
Think I’ll go for a swim in the pool of life. Don’t worry. I’ll watch out for the drains. I suggest you do the same.
Notes
*El-Badry, Kareem, et al. A million binaries from Gaia eDR3: sample selection and validation of Gaia parallax uncertainties. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2021) DOI: 101093/mnras/stab323. https://phys.org/news/2021-02-binary-stars-solar-neighborhood.html
Summary at University of California, Phys.org, 22 Feb 2021. Website accessed on February 21, 2021.
**One astronomical unit is 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles.
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