What Makes Lagrange Points Special Locations In Space 

Good point

was euler really that much of a genius? a wonder he's not spoken of with the same reverence as newton.

🤣

@@oldfrend Euler was the greatest Mathematician to ever live

That tells us just how bitchy and envious these people were. He figured that shit out, so he deserves the honor.

I came here to say the same thing. THESE pictures are worth a thousand words.

I agree...👍👍

Ditto. Without reservation, Lagrange points have never been better described by graphics.

Right, Scott is the man. Amazing video

Was going to post the same.

Same here 😊 Webb is on its way (3rd day) to L2 so better understand it a bit better 😀 Hope Webb will last longer than the estimated 5 years...! Happy New Year from Denmark --- Per

You are not a non-science person if you're trying to understand it.

@Michael Jordan Rosalind Franklin

@Michael Jordan Fishing I see

Does "non-science" mean low IQ?

Exactly. I've had trouble understanding how the JWST could basically orbit "nothing" so far, but this video at least gave me a bit of an idea of how it works. Still can't fully wrap my head around it, but at least it doesn't just sound like math magic to me anymore. xD

I’m a pixel student and have done the animating but those maths were really next level.

@@randbarrett8706 The mathematics behind it are really fun! you should try them out.

He lost me at Hi I'm Scott Manley.

I completed an undergraduate degree in Physics and we never covered Lagrange points or the three body problem. What level of classical mechanics did you do it in, or did you just do it for fun?

And judging by your nickname I’d guess you’re studying physics at UFSC and lives at Lagoa da Conceição. Did I guess it right? 😄

Even more wild, is that they discovered a rule of thumb that requires no math at all. L4 and L5 are located on two equilateral triangles with the long side centered on a line between both bodies. That's easy! (Though NASA points out that the distances involved are large enough that you have to take into account additional gravitational sources, such as the sun and nearby planets.

Ole Romer was a boss. Calculating the speed of light in tar 17th century.

​@@r3dp9 Equilaterial triangles with a long side? They each form an equilateral triangle with the two bodies: E.g. Star-planet-L4 and Star-planet-L5 will form 2 equilateral triangles, and these triangles lie within the orbital plane. That perfectly defines the position of L4 and L5 for any system.

With you

They didn't have our tech, so they *had* to work it out on paper. ...practice makes perfect.

Reading that reminded me of Jean-Jacques Perrey's silly little piece _Barnyard in Orbit._

I hear they got a lotta nice girls.

The most mundane things sound so fancy in French.

Actually mean "The" barn.. for our english friends.. . But i get the point :-)

Are there "Sharp dressed man" and "Gimme all your lovin'"points?

Fantasy.

I totally agree - the Webb telescope has sent me searching for Lagrange explanations, and this is great.

Ben Stein: Euler? Euler?

Genius got more ideas between breakfast and dinner that aweraje joe in his lifetime

@@juhajuntunen7866 Lmao ikr!

gangsta of the mathematical world

Being a genius is not enough. Imagine being born a genius in the 17th century - to peasant parents. You would be sentenced to a life of drudgery, your genius lost forever. The same applies today, come to think of it.

And add to that, EVERYTHING in the universe is attracted to everything else.

Yeah and let me tell you, even if it was her idea in the first place, the third body still causes chaos

@@apotheosis27 a friend of mine has a wife who is not very nice, and at one point was properly massive. I guess gravity is what kept them together during that time.

@@david94549 haha yeah man that story pretty much always ends the same way

well, if your going all the way to "that whore mound called LaGrange " you may as well pay for a 3rd body!

I wonder if it'd have any use in an end-of-life eccentric Earth orbit or Heliocentric orbit...

@@grantexploit5903 Yes when it finishes the 12 year mission, if it can, it's supposed to stay in a heliocentric orbit and keeping reporting on any fly-bys.

"We accidentally added a second fuel tank so we figured we might as well fill it."

Let's hope Starship to make refueling easier.

The fuel is planned for 11 years but the gossip is that they think they can get quite a few more years than than. The most significant factor is the Mid Course Correction (MCC) planned for 12.5 hours after launch. If it occurs on time it won't have to dip into the L2 station keeping fuel. If the MCC gets delayed for any reason it will eat into the fuel budgeted for the science mission causing the mission to be shorter.

So hilarious 😂

Haw haw haw haw...

From Atlanta here , very nicely done . a tip of the hat to you sir oh, nice to meet another fan of Scott Manley the way I look at it a LaGrange point is like watching two small soap bubbles circling 1/3 from a gravitational standpoint

Fun fact: Lagrange, GA is an almost perfect model of the L1 point in the Atlanta - Columbus Suckitude System.

So you are one of the 'party gals', or maybe the son of one. Hyuk hyuk *slaps knee*

I learnt that L4 and L5 were wells- we didn’t get told about the Coriolis force.

@@idjles It makes so much more sense. I could never understand why those points didn't just slowly accumulate dust and debris until it made a big enough object to mess up the lagrange effect. An incorrect theory I'd had myself was maybe 'large' objects can form in lagrange points and then drift away but we'd just never seen it happen. I thought it could possibly be an important factor in planet formation or whatever. Now I know the better explanation: I had been misinformed in a sort of accurate way with the best of intentions. I love when you get to understand something in a new/better way. Anti-science people never understand that science is a self correcting method of understanding things, not a list of facts. Finding out I'm wrong is so damn exciting sometimes :)

Same.

What an amazing videogame.

@@Schyz Yep. Space sims without that really stupid "space friction" can be counted on one hand, and two of them are I-War 1 & 2.

@@AldorEricsson If you are looking for another space game with no space friction, you may be interested in Space Engineers. It is a building game though, rather than a sim. Think of it as mincraft in space with physics

The L1 point tends to crop up a lot in sci-fi because of a subtle misconception. Writers assume it's the point where the gravitational fields cancel out. It's not, but it is very close, astronomically speaking.

I think I first heard about lagrange points in Gundam, I was kinda surprised when I found out that the lagrange points were real and that the colonies design were inspired by a concept called O'Neill cylinders made by the physicist Gerard O'Neill.

spiffing brit

I understood that reference.

Just like my...

Gravity is a perfectly balanced system with no exploits whatsoever

Too.

I think Scott, Destin, Physics Girl, and Amy Teitel should collaborate to make one of a kind of a video!

Methinks Scott and Destin track each other’s orbits!

Same here. It all makes sense now.

They're not entirely stable. I read somewhere, years ago, that they should be OK to park something at for about 200 000 years.

@@ozzymandius666 yeah though it is a matter of timescale even Jupiter's L4 & L5 aren't truly stable just stable enough to still have a bunch of captured bodies from the formation of the solar system over 4.5 billion years later. Though really given enough time no orbit is stable in our large complex universe where n approaches infinity and that is without considering gravitational waves which over vast amounts of time cause orbits to gradually radiate away energy

Side3, if I’m not mistaken.

FWIK L1 = Side 4 L2 = Side 3 + A Baoa Qu L3 = Side 7 + Luna two L4 = Side 2 + Side 5 L5 = Side 1 + Side 6 + Solomon

There are dozens of spacecraft at SEL2, JWST will certainly be the most famous one. My personal favorite there is Gaia!

And SOHO is at L1. I thought Kepler was too, but could not find the reference. I must have misremembered it.

@@olmostgudinaf8100 Kepler telescope wasn't on L point, but on "trailing heliocentric" orbit. That is, it is a bit farther from the Sun than Earth, with orbital period of ~373 days.

And Aditya L1 of ISRO

Interesting note: James Webb is going to orbit the Sun - Earth Lagrange point, not just park in the centre of it, because it needs to peek out of the Earth's shadow once in a while to get some Sun to power its stuff.

If you really want nitty gritty down to calculus and all that you should check out this series: ru-vid.com/group/PLbfY1f0QFa4OI2_zsNuuwI3YCsZluLFZ6

Jupiter Trojaner are on T4 and T5. Stable position.

@@bnightm okay, so now why is L2 chosen then for this? as L4 and L5 are much stabler wouldn't that mean a much longer period of operation? Or is it just than L4 and L5 are more difficult to reach making the additional fuel spent to stay stable in L2 not worth it?

@@georgelionon9050 L2 was chosen so that the JWST can occlude both the sun AND earth (and moon?) with one heat shield. The infrared wavelengths that JWST will observe will be affected by the heat from the Sun of course, and even the earth (and moon for all I know). So having the JWST in an orbit such that a single heat shield can ALWAYS occlude the sun and earth is a great help

@@markshumate78 I see makes sense, thank you

Not nothingness is avoiding chaos.

Possibly because the reason objects fall down the gravity wells is because of gravity. These "rubber sheet" explanations are effectively saying gravity works because of gravity.

There isn't a Earth-Moon LeGrange along the path Apollo 13 would have taken to get there. (Remember, the Apollo craft doesn't fly to the moon in a straight line, but rather a parabolic arc) The Sun-Earth L2 is several times further out from the moon's orbit. What you're referring to is the Apollo craft slowing down as it leaves the earth's sphere of influence and speeding up as it enters the Moon's and starts "falling" back down.

Play Kerbal Space Program and these things just fall into place :-)

@@RockChalk263 fair enough. I just assumed it was the halfway gravity point between two objects

Or any perturbation for that matter. Like in aircraft. Which I learn from Scott Manleys ksp videos. So probably not helping

As opposed to stable aircraft

if you look at what's happening, they actually set them up to orbit around the point - essentially setting them a bit uphill and letting it roll up and down the sides of the saddle while using rcs to keep it from falling off the front or back; that's what the entire back third of the video is about.

He mentioned further on that it’s not ideal as Euler hypothesised but can still be useful for some sense of stability

Damnit, I should go to bed, but now I *have* to listen to some ZZ Top! 😂

beat me to it.

RIP Dusty Hill, gone to the great Lagrange point in the sky...

I asked myself "how, how, how, how?" Now I know. Thanks Scott ☺️

They got a lot of nice girls out there.