Growing up, you were probably told a simple story: the Moon orbits the Earth. It paints a clean picture, right? A big blue-and-white marble with a smaller gray one circling it forever. And for the most part, that picture works. But reality, as it often does, is a little messier and a whole lot more interesting. The Earth and Moon are locked in a cosmic dance, and they aren’t dancing around the center of the Earth. Not even close. Instead, they both revolve around a shared, invisible point in space. This is the barycenter of Earth and Moon, the real…
Author: Šinko Jurica
Picture this: you’re standing in an open field. You wind up and throw a ball as hard as you can, watching it carve a perfect arc against the sky. For a split second, you’ve just created a tiny orbit. Gravity always wins that particular game, pulling the ball back down. But what if it didn’t? Imagine throwing that ball with such incredible force that it just kept going, falling all the way around the Earth. You’ve just achieved orbit. When we think of orbits, most of us picture a perfect circle. We see a planet waltzing around its star in…