I would be interested to see what would happen just before the disk stopped and suddenly there was no gravity. Even though it sounds like it's spinning faster I'm sure it's just because the edge of the disk is just closer to the mirror.

Suddenly without gravity would the energy cause the disk to rotate making it look like a ball floating in space or would it wobble and take off in one direction?

Could this even be done in space?

Are there any mathematicians in the audience tonight?

Are four questions in a row too much?

It looks like it's wobbling back and forth, not rotating.

A Michael-Jackson-esque dancing routine ON A BARSTOOL, TO a Guns N' roses song?

Hell yeah, he deserved to eat it hard...

Loved the wobbly-lip though...

"Speed Wobble"

@ChaosEngine @Buck

My dad was in the Air Force. He was chosen for a particular program -- to be a Range Safety Officer on launches.

Once he got his Masters in Engineering at MIT on the government's dime, he was stationed at Cape Canaveral.

His job was to have his hand on the key that would blow up a missile when it went off course. The course was set so that if it went bad, the pieces would fall safely into the ocean. If it started to veer off course, you had to blow it up quick.

He was stationed at Cape Canaveral from something like 1958 to 1966. About that time frame. Early days, when they didn't know quite how to do a successful launch -- and he blew up a lot.

More than any other person -- and no one will catch up with his record, because it is no longer early days.

He got a Saturn. He blew up a Titan. He blew up a lot of Missilemen missiles.

He mostly worked on the unmanned launches. Only one launch (that I know of) was manned -- and he almost had to blow it up. He was sweating that one -- because of the stakes of blowing early or blowing late and no good result if you make the wrong choice. There was a wobble ... and he waited ... and it corrected.

But yeah. A Saturn.

After Cape Canaveral, he was stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base, NW of Santa Barbara. The west coast equivalent of the Cape.

PM me your email, and I'll send you a SERIOUSLY cool cartoon that was a gift when he left the Cape. Sitting astride a rocket that has obviously been launched from Florida, with silhouettes of all the missiles he blew up -- with HASHMARKS for how many of each.

It is seriously cool.

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Speed Wobbles... aka Tank Slapper. Usually caused by having the steering stem too loose, resulting in no dampening. Then all you need is the right speed and a gust of wind or a shift in your weight to trigger it.

This guy was stupid to continue riding at speed after having experienced the wobbles.

I touched wheels once on the newly built 402 hwy going 120 with another motorcycle going around a curve in the wee hrs of the morning (no traffic but not proud of the racing).

That clip brought back the memories of the adrenaline rush to try to stop the wobble or die if I failed.

Well they're right in that the results will be unpredictable, so their predictions are probably off I dunno about losing the seasons and the earth wobbling more; if the moon just vanished that seems unlikely. If it blew up, then that could cause wobble, but we'd have bigger problems in that case.

I've been enjoying SevenEves, Neal Stephenson's take on this scenario.

Wasn't easy being a planet hunter back in the day *promote

I'm looking for
1 tug
The pull of a planet
1 tell
A wobbling sun
I've searched for years
Haven't found a one
But they're out there

1 jump
In radial redshift
1 slip
Of spectral lines
They'll see if I can show them the sines

Pish tosh
Green men
Take five
Take ten

Just a little cash guys

Budget's tight
Don't fund this trash guys

I can take a hint
Better face the facts
Second-hand'll have to do

Eww
All you planet hunters at the bottom
You've got fact & fantasy entwined
Finding planets except they haven't got one

Well they gotta be forming readily
When you think about it given we've got nine

1 jump
A blip in the spectrum
1 shift of meters per second
1 graph of period power
They laugh but I'm not sour

Here goes
18 months of data
Cross & correlate it
All I gotta do is run

Pish tosh
Green men
Ah don't mind them
If only they'd look closer
Would they see a pure void
No sirree
They'd find out
There's worlds galore
To see

Make way for Pegasi
51 Pegasi

First was a world
Round an old pulsar
That's true
But the news
Is a sun-like star
With wobble
Too quick & precise
To be designed
No fluke not a spot
If you like it hot
You're gonna love this find

Pegasi 51b
Planet discovered
Orbit traced
Every 4 days
Hot as can be
Its order-Jupiter size
Was something of a surprise
Especially given its star's proximity

Pegasi 51b
It's a new era
To detect
Exoplanets
Soon there'll be three
As planet pulls on its Sun
It shifts the stellar spectrum
That's how we found 51b Pegasi

How'd a planet get so close in orbit
Cause I thought you needed ice to form it
Did it later undergo some strange migration
Star too small to be so long-pulsating
And too old to be so quick rotating
Is there any other good interpretation

This will certainly help with our funding

We got your funding
We got your funding

Got a surface of 1200 C

It's treacherous
So treacherous

If in time this new breakthrough feels mundane
Planets are common

That's proof
Of the truth
I've been telling you
This is no mean anomaly

Pegasi 51b
Planet uncovered
Round a far
Main sequence star
Spectral type G
We know its mass to be high
Half Jupiter by sine i

It's 15.61 pc from home
And it shakes our faith in how planets are formed
And its star is in Pegasus
Give it an A and thus
Label the planet as b
51 Pegasi

Plotting Doppler shifts is glacial-pace
And that astrometry never prevails
But baby you're in luck cause
Up in space
You got a planet-finder never fails

You got the power of statistics now
You got a view without an atmosphere
So no more nights spent locked up in your tower
All you gotta do is wait right here
And I say

Kepler the planet-searcher
Got a dip, no 2, no 3
We just measure brightness
Plot it out & that's transiting photometry

When your stars do this
And your curves displace
Then your star's got this
Transiting its face

Then you hit compute
And lookie here

You get good diameter data
From that dip
And orbit distance from the length of year

Well now we need this tale supported by
A ground observer with a good Échelle
We got 2000 planets certified
2000 more that only time will tell

But let's take em all, plot em out
And find out if we're really all alone
Is there a rocky world we've found no doubt
That orbits in the habitable zone
Like home?

Kepler the planet searcher
Got an Earth 452b
Part of a throng
40 billion strong

There ain't never been a field
Clever as the field
There ain't never been a field
Better than the field they call
Exoplanetology

I can show you a world
A shining shimmering planet
Found concealed in the band-shifts
Of the closest star in sight

I've found hope in the skies
And facing wonder I wonder
Could the sine wave discovered be
A planet fit for life

A whole new world
A new fantastic point of blue
Placed in that narrow zone
Where water flows
Midway tween cold & steaming

A whole new world
Its sun a faint, reddish hue
Could there be waiting here
A biosphere
Evolving in this whole new world to view

Fathoming a whole new world to view

Unbelievable find
Indescribable feeling
Earthlings someday revealing
Through directly captured light
A whole new world

Don't just stare from a far

Though nigh impossible to see

Wouldn't close up be bolder

Next to its parent's flair
If life is there
We'll know through atmosphere spectroscopy

A whole new world

Block the glare of the star

A laser starshot to pursue

With a star-shaped occulter

Chasing that crazy dream
That's always been
Of walking in a whole new world with you

a whole new world
That's where we'll be
A thrilling chase
A home in space
For you and me

Did anybody else see the ear wobble and then go flying off????

?
If it's balanced, with the center of gravity below the balance point, why would it become unstable at any rpm? The lower the CG, the more stable it would be...even when stationary.

What I'm describing would 'hang' from the contact point, like the difference between a gyroscope on the table and one hanging by a string, the one hanging would never 'fall over' because gravity works to keep it upright.

Built the same as they built them here, but with the outer ring much lower, there should be no contact until it wobbles, which in my mind it never should.

Yes, I didn't think it would spin more, or faster, just be more stable, because lowering the CG ALWAYS makes things more stable, no? My design should self right if it gets off balance, gravity should pull it back into balance, rather than off balance like a normal top.

I just wondered if, somehow, centrifugal force coupled with some other forces might make it try to flip over....or maybe if the CG isn't above the contact point, it's not a 'top'?

It sorta follows the circular time travel idea (wibbly wobbly timey wimey) used in Doctor Who. You know something in the future because you went to the past and told someone to do something because you knew it from the past because... yeah.

He would have a better demonstration if he used a cordless drill in place of the crank handle. It would lose the wobbly-ness of the action

That's what I came here to say. This is cool and all, but seems vastly impractical.

That chair wobbled all over as he held it and turned it around.