Any alignments (if there ever were any in the first place) got “brownianed” out a long time ago.

The plane of a solar system is not related to the spin of the galaxy, but to the angular momentum of the specific nebula where it formed, and these are constantly being churned up by nearby supernovae, solar winds, pressure, shock, acoustic and gravity waves moving through the interstellar medium, spiral arms, even collisions with other galaxies and tidal effects from passing galaxies and internal tides from large objects like molecular clouds and clusters.

At our time scale, the galaxy appears sedate and well behaved, but it is actually a churning, boiling, rippling cauldron of forces. Astronomers call it the Grand Design, and it is only now starting to take shape in our understanding.

I cannot tell you how happy I am to have lived in a time where we have just started learning these things, and that I have a little understanding of it myself. The Milky Way isn’t just alive, its evolving.

Next time you’re at Stanford Bookstore, or at the Library, look through “Galactic Astronomy” by Binney and Merrifield. It’s a good recent survey of the field, with strong emphasis on what we know, don’t know, and how we know what we know.

The planets of our solar system inherited much of their angular momentum from the sun as they condensed. I was wondering if stars had a similar relation to the galaxy as a whole. Kepler is looking at a spot on the galactic plane, so that variable is at least removed.

Our solar system does not, and it seems there’s no way to tally up other ones until we figure out a more comprehensive method of detecting planets.

It’s likely that the galaxy as a whole has a lot of chaos that has intervened with stellar orientations, much like some of our outer planets have been tweaked a bit since their formation.

Yeah, it gave me fits too, when I was a student

However, if we get Doppler AND Astrometric data, (say for an intermediately tilted orbital plane) we get numbers in both the normal and transverse components, and with the aid of Newton’s Laws, we can derive the true shape, independent of orientation, of the ellipse.

This technique has been worked out to high precision with binary stars. Also, we can always measure the orbital period, and in the special case of planets (which are always much, less massive than their primaries), the masses, also from Newton’s Laws.

Somebody posts about politicalcompass.org or one of the other diagnose-your-political-illness sites periodically, pretty regularly. Not a criticism, VRB, because obviously it’s a fascinating subject if it keeps coming back. I think it was TB who first introduced us to them, and they’re insightful, IMHO.

Belongs on CE, though, and to put my words where my mouth is, I just posted my personal chart there. Sounds like a good way to officially kick off the election season.

On further thought, given the methods ER outlined to detect planets, it may be that there is no effective way of telling what the orientation of the orbit is.

All three depend on measurements that wouldn’t vary significantly if the planet were crossing the star from “top” to “bottom” as opposed to “left” to “right.”

An orbital plane perpendicular to us could still be going “up and down” and not “back and forth.” Is that orientation random, or not?