Transit of Venus - Why it comes in pairs every 100ish years
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- Опубликовано: 4 июн 2012
- Venus passes in front of the Sun from the Earth's point of view very rarely. It occurs in eight-year pairs, but then with gaps of over 100 years between those pairs.
CORRECTIONS:
Ok, so I mistaked a few words. There's an early "2017" that should have been "2117" and at least one "day"/"year" swap. I really was recording that right before the transit and only had time for one take.
More importantly, I said that 105.5 years before the next transit meant it would be mid-way through 2117. Actually, 105.5 years from now is the end (December) of 2117.
Finally, I made a lot of simplifications, including setting my spreadsheet to use this 2012 transit as the zero-point for the sweet-spots. All improvements welcome!
![Matt Explains: The Lottery [featuring: Choose Function, Infinite Geometric Series]](/img/1.gif)
6:32 - "I'm about to go outside and watch the transit."
*video continues for three and a half minutes*
And that's how Matt missed the 2012 transit of Venus.
wow, he sounds so young.
Excellent explanation, thank you for making things simple yet thorough at the same time. I haven't seen the 2004 transit (I was 2 at the time) but I read about the 2012 transit in the June copy of my science magazine which included a solar filter to enable people to watch the transit. I remember waking up my father at 6:00 am on the 6th of June 2012 and asking him to drive us around to watch the transit with the solar filter. When we started watching there was a black spot (Venus) near the left of the Sun then it gradually moved right over time and it was still visible at around 8:30 before it disappeared. (the time zone was UTC +2:00) Probably I won't get another shot at this event, I'm happy that I got to see it. I'm hoping to see Halley's comet in 2062.
5:13
Matt Parker uses spreadsheets recreationally like the rest of sane people.
There are people who don't?
Tardigrades I thought I was alone, doing world-building and paper-less paper spaceships
He's really Excel-ed himself!
Clear explanation, for the first 5 min. Once the spreadsheet came up, my eyes glazed over.
0:30 I'm pretty sure he meant 2117. That confused me. Also I'm pretty sure that nobody is going to read this. Refrigerator
+Ebumbay a Quite Refrigerator indeed! :D
Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator
You obviously didn't understand the entire video.
Just to mix things up I’ll chuck in a blender.
lol
I loved how u showed how u worked it out
The problem with getting used to the newer videos with the music and all the glitz and showmanship and whatnot is that the older videos suddenly have the vibe of finding a unlabeled cassette tape of a serial killer calmly talking about how he kidnaps and murders his victims ;)
anyway, cool video
This is such a beautifully clear video! you're a great educator
Very interesting analysis! :)
2117.51... is an excellent prediction of when the transit will occur. Remember you are starting at roughly 2012.46
Given he’s assuming circular orbits, he should end up with the average number of years between pairs, which is 121.5 years. It’s more accident than design (or dare I say, fudge) that he hit on exactly 105.5 years placing the next transit correctly at 2117.
If you look further down his y-coordinate values, there’s “0.011”, which is much smaller in magnitude than the -0.07 and -0.03 that he reads out.
That corresponds to 44377.97 days, which is 121.502 years, which is exactly what he should get.
Final note: Occasionally there are single transits, which happened most recently in 1396. Matt starts with a y-coordinate of zero which actually models this situation, and we’d expect the next transit likewise not to be in a clear pairing.
I was really amazing. Me and my girlfriend went to the beach near our house, set up our telescope along side everyone else, and watched. Amazingly some guy had a beautiful set up with a frickin monitor attached. Good times.
Interesting stuff!
I'm still mad I didn't get to see the 2012 Venus transit. Though I prepared for it, my dad brought me to some random business lunch when it happened (I was 12). Guess I have 95 years left to wait for the next one, or die trying.
Thank-you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God, I finally understood this!
Great stuff, more spreadsheets please! :-)
I'm from 2021, there going to be some gorgeous spreadsheets, hold on to your pants
Wishing there WAS a Venus transit in 2017!
Very interesting. Do you have a schedule for your comedy events? I wouldn't mind catching you when you're next in London.
I saw the 2012 transit. I was really dumb about it too. I literally made a hand-telescope and stared at the sun while leaving day camp at a space center next to all the people using the telescope. I remember seeing that one dark speck. I sincerely hope that was Venus.
From the wikipedia: the ecliptic from the earth, (the inclination relative to the orbit plane of the earth) is 3.39458 degrees. I find it amazing that they can measure that angle with this order of precision!
sanferrera my only question is: What is the inclination relative to?
If you draw the plane from the earth's orbit around the sun, and then draw the plane from venus orbit's around the sun, there will be a 3.39458 degree difference between both. Is it clearer now?
sanferrera wait, it's relative to Venus? That makes a ton more sense. I thought you meant relative to flat, like saying the earth has a tilt of 23.5 degrees (relative to its orbital plane). Can they measure how offset the orbital plane is relative to it being absolutely flat?
Yup, they can meassure a lot of things. Just look for Venus on the wikipedia, and on the reight side there are a lot of interesting data. By the way, the 23.5 degrees you are refering to, is called the polar axis. The ecliptic is called that way exactly for the reasons that are important to this video. (also read the ecliptic page on the wikipedia, it will make things clearer for you)
I can't express my joy seeing only scientifically literate people in the comments section discuss these consepts with a constructive attitude. Nowadays, you can't look through a comments section in any scientific video without encountering at least one flat earther or one person who keeps spam posting the same verse from a holy book. I'm happy to see that there's still hope... (even this was four years ago)
Given he’s assuming circular orbits, Matt should end up with the average number of years between pairs, which is 121.5 years. It’s more accident than design (or dare I say, fudge) that he hit on exactly 105.5 years placing the next transit correctly at 2117.
If you look further down his y-coordinate column, there’s “0.011”, which is much smaller in magnitude than the -0.07 and -0.03 that he reads out.
That corresponds to 44377.97 days, which equates to 121.502 years, which is exactly what he should get.
Final note: Occasionally there are single unpaired transits - most recently in 1396. Matt’s initial y-coordinate of zero actually models this situation, and we’d expect the next transit likewise not to be in a clear pairing.
It's June 2117 and I've been waiting for the transit of Venus but it hasn't come. So I decided to dust off this youtube channel stored on the archieves. It's ~105.5 years but that's not 1/2 way, that's with the + June of the ancient 2012 transit.
Which Matt you did mention in the corrections below you're video, but I didn't read that. So now I need to wait another 6 months for the transit. Thanks for nothing Matt. Next time use annotations.
:-)
4:50
0:30 - He said 2017. (oops)
Dang, I just barely missed it!
This is why in your lifetime there are only 5 different evening and 5 different morning apparitions of Venus, and every 8 years they repeat. The 2004 / 2012 / 2020 one has Venus set amazingly late during April, far later than any of the others. Remember the quote in Harry Potter where he is observing Venus at midnight? Not as stupid as it sounded, as it was happening in 1996 and he was far North in Scotland. It actually works out. Apparently the wizards follow muggle clock rules.
Had things you didn't take into consideration and approximations, as you pointed out yourself. Can we call this a Parker Translation or something?
But how did you make the solar system animation we saw at the beginning?
Approximately, 5 inferior conjunctions (line ups) for 8 Earth solar orbits and 13 Venus solar orbits.
5, 8, 13, part of the Fibonacci sequence. 13 / 8 = 1.625, close to the golden ratio of, ( (1 + sqrt(5)) / 2 ) = 1.618034..
Venus and Earth line up nearly every 1.625 Earth years, (or 1 and 5/8ths Earth orbits).
Golden angle?
Whoops, I first read the title as "Paris" instead of "Pairs" which would be a far more impossible anomaly.
I saw the 2004 transit from Paris! Weather was perfect. And 2012 from Copenhagen, and again weather was perfect. I got lucky!
So it's a grand cycle of 243 years, with 2 pairs of transits each.
Starting from the first of a pair of December events, the intervals (in years) are:
8, 121½, 8, 105½
1631 Dec 07
1639 Dec 04
1761 Jun 06
1769 Jun 03
1874 Dec 09
1882 Dec 06
2004 Jun 08
2012 Jun 05
2117 Dec 10
2125 Dec 08
and because that long cycle drifts a bit each time around, the 8-year pairing only lasts for half a dozen or so long cycles.
So, how big is the 'sweet spot'?
If it's less than 16 years (5 degrees), you'll usually get 2, but sometimes only get 1. (A near miss just before & after.)
If it's more than 16 years, you'll usually get 2, but sometimes get 3.
Drift of 2.5 degrees gives us 2 crossings, meaning the sweet spot MUST be between 2.5 and 7.5 degrees.
I would expect both sweet spots to be roughly the same, since the orbital speeds are roughly constant.
The "sweet spot" must be less than 16 years, because there are periods in which there's only 1 transit per century+. The last of those "singles" was in 1396, November 23 (2 * 243 yr before the 1882 transit).
There was no transit 8 years earlier, in 1388. And the next two transits were paired, in 1518 (May 25), and 1526 (May 23).
The Wikipedia page has a table running from several centuries ago, to several centuries from now.
Cool. We could narrow the range even more (given 8 centuries of doubles, and 2 with singles)....but I have a short attention span. "Close to 14 years" is good enough for me. (12 years is 1/2 way between 8 & 16 would result in a roughly equal chance of 1 or 2, so a bit more than that. Heh...slightly better than a wild guess.)
Yeah, it 's got to be somewhere between 8 and 16 years, and not too close to either one.
For one thing, I don't know how many "singles" there are, before the next round of "doubles."
The ratio of the # of double in a row, to the # of singles in a row, would be a strong indicator of the length of the sweet spot. If those numbers are about equal, the SS would be close to 12 years, e.g.
Yup. Based on the limited data, I offered up the (very) rough estimate of 14 years. Beyond that, the task is becoming more work, and less fun, so I quit. lol
I watched this at quarter to midnight. lol :D
Is this the first canonical "I made a spreadsheet"?
3:29 I feel like that white line should be crossing where the rings cross.
Like almost vertical. Am I wrong?
Looks alright to me. It probably would have been clearer if the image was closer to a side shot and the line was going front to back but near as I can tell from the perspective view that is where they cross.
And now for extra points:
Can you use your spreadsheet to tell us when *secondary* transits will occur (i.e. when Venus will pass directly behind the sun as viewed from Earth)?
-Colin 'see you in Svalbard' Wilson.
TIL 1874 and 1888 are only 8 years apart.
The transit of Venus in 2117 is happening in December, not in the middle of the year.
it's a Parker transit
@@TigruArdavi Huh?
I saw 2004 transit..I was 11..Did anyone saw 2004 transit?
Wait, so does this count as an eclipse?
1874 to 1888 is 14 years, but all the others are indeed 8 years. Typo?
you also said it'd be 8 years apart but 1874 is not 8 years from 1888
4:36 1874 and 1888 were not 8 years apart.....
9:25 Why did he add a number of days to the year? Isn't this wrong?
He said days there but he meant years. You can see column B is measuring days, he divides by 365.2425 resulting in years, then he adds 2012 to get the next transit.
Should be MOD(B8*$E$2, 1) at 6:53
You didn't say: "unfortunately, it's not that simple." You missed an opportunity here to start the joke from your recent video on the solar eclipse. ;)
its not 2017... it's 2117
Bloody hell can everyone stop saying “it’s not to scale”
I wonder what percent of your viewers actually understand what you're saying?
Lsgwiz ~3
@@detectivejonesw Nol point nought nought nought nought nought one percent
0:41 wow didn't know Matt Parker was a model before coming to fame
And you felt the need to announce that because......?