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Published 8 years ago by Improbability with 4 Comments

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  • bogdan
    +6

    To balance the books, Jupiter lost as much kinetic energy as New Horizons gained, causing its orbit around the sun to slow by a small amount. A year on Jupiter today is slightly longer than it was before—all because humans wanted to a good look at Pluto.

    I'm going to assume this is a negligent amount, although they make it sound as if a few more spaceships and Jupiter is gonna stand still

    • jmcs (edited 8 years ago)
      +5

      You just have to compare the mass of new horizons with the mass of Jupiter to get the order of magnitude of the effect. We do the same thing with the Earth and the Moon all the time.

      EDIT: On an unrelated note, who and why the hell would someone downvote this snap?

  • double2
    +4

    This article is precisely the kind of article I would never have found on reddit. Thanks for posting :)

  • Snazzy
    +2

    This was a great read. Thanks for sharing :)

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