Scale Balance?

Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld
March 10, 2023 •  18 Adar 5783 • Parshas Ki Sisa (Ex 30-35)
The purpose of this email is to create some balance at the Shabbat table. Please share.
Happy Birthday shout-out to Brandon W - somewhere in Maryland....
In memory of my friend and colleague Rabbi David Geffen z'l who passed away suddenly this week.

A new scientific discovery was announced this week. I'll share it below. But let's get there via a question for the table:

Do you consider Planet Earth to be big or small? That is, how do you relate to it?

Personally, with news and cameras all over the world, I tend to think of it as pretty small. I can picture it in my mind. I own a globe that gives me the feeling of holding the whole world in my hands. 

Moreover, when we look into space, the Earth looks even smaller. 

Ask: How many Earths would fit inside Jupiter?

Answer: 1,000.

How many Earths would fit inside the Sun?

Answer: 1,000,000.

How many suns are in our galaxy?

Answer: 500,000,000,000.

Are they packed together or separated by vast regions of empty space?

Answer: that was a rhetorical question.

OK, we're getting beyond imagination now. So let's bring it back to a scale we can comprehend. 

Ask: If we made a scale model of our Solar System, with a basketball for the sun, how far away should we place our Earth and how far away should we place our Jupiter?

Answer: Earth would be the size of a pumpkin seed, about a foot away, and Jupiter maybe a ping pong ball about five feet away. And Saturn and the other gas giants would be many times farther than that.

Jupiter is so far away that when you see it, you're looking a light from the sun that bounced off it forty minutes ago.

OK, that's the review for this week's science lesson. 

University of California Riverside astrophysicist Stephen Kane ran computer simulations of an hypothetical planet in that vast gap between Mars and Jupiter with a range of different masses, and then observed the effects on the orbits of all other planets.

We knew that Jupiter is so massively massive that despite its distance its gravitational influence keeps the whole Solar System in balance. What we didn't know is how delicate that balance is.

An additional planet in that gap could - depending on its size - either destabilize Earth's orbit (and that of Mercury, Venus, and even Uranus and Neptune), ejecting it from the Solar System, or change the shape of our orbit, making it less habitable if not inhabitable.

Question for your table: How does this info impact you and me?

Two thoughts:

1. In all of the other solar systems that have been discovered, the possibility of life may be much lower than many people have believed.

2. We should appreciate our own perfect Solar System even more. In Kane's words, "Our solar system is more finely tuned than I appreciated before. It all works like intricate clock gears. Throw more gears into the mix and it all breaks."

Shabbat Shalom

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