(urth) grumble at wolfe comment made attached to guardianarticle

[David Stockhoff]

Stunning.

So in the case of the asteroid and Earth, it's not that the asteroid 
turns around, but that it falls behind until Earth catches it. Damn.

105,000 miles is still dangerously close, but this scheme gets the 
planets closer than a 6/7 orbital distance would.

On 2/9/2011 12:33 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
> On 2/8/2011 9:36 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>> I forgot about that.
>> But one or both could have an elliptical orbit.
>> Again, I don't know whether precession would make this unrealistic or
>> not. And 35000 leagues is incredibly, dangerously close for two
>> Earth-sized planets.
>> But in terms of basic mechanics, a series of conjunctions should be
>> possible (for story purposes, I think it would probably be sufficient if
>> the series lasted a few centuries).
>
> They could be paired in a horseshoe orbit:
>
> http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=210
>


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