The science of astronomy states that the speed of planet Mars has been decreasing in its course toward the eastern direction in the few past weeks to the level we notice the "waver" between the east and the west and on Wednesday the 30th of July 2003 the planet movement stopped going toward the eastern direction. Then in the months of August and September Mars changed its course in the opposite direction to the West- and that until the end of September which means the sun rise from the west on Mars!!
And this weird phenomena of the opposite movement called "Retrograde Motion" Most scientist state that all the planets will go through the same once at least and our planet Earth is one of them. Planet Earth will move in the opposite direction some day and the sun will rise from the west!!
This might occur soon and we are unaware!
Our beloved messenger Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) said: "One of the signs of the hour. The sun will rise from the west, where no longer tauba (forgiveness) will be granted" !!
And the strange thing, most of our Shariah scholars mentioned that the rise of the sun from the west occurs only once on that day and the sun will rise from the west then again from the east and continues until Allah wishes and this is similar to what is happening to Mars it stops, then it changes its course of direction for a short period of time, then returns to way once it was.
Close Encounters of a Red Kind: Retrograde Motion of Mars
There's something very strange going on in our night skies now, something which seems to defy the very order of all cosmic things. We have talked about the August 2003 perihelion opposition and how Mars will be closer to us than in about 73,000 years, but there is something else strange going on. Mars seems to have shed the very foundation of cosmic clockwork order and reversed its course across the heavens! This strange reversal of direction is called retrograde motion, and though we know what it is now, it has in the past caused some real problems for astronomers.
We see the stars and planets rise in the east, drift across the sky and set in the west. It appears this way because the of the Earth's daily rotation. The actual motion of the planets is from west to east, or it is most of the time. You can easily detect that eastward motion by watching a planet like Mars over a few months, as it moves from one constellation to the constellation east of it (planets appear to move faster than stars.)
All of the outer planets display retrograde motion at one time or another, but Mars has the best show. Mars is closer and so it is easier to detect it's changing motion against the background stars more easily than with a more distant planet.
During June and July Mars was gliding swiftly eastward through the stars of the constellation Aquarius. Towards the end of July, Mars began to slow its movements until on July 29th, Mars showed no eastward motion at all. Then, strange as it may seem Mars began moving westward through Aquarius and it will continue to do so until about September 27th, when Mars will once again slow down, halt and then begin moving eastward.
Now your common senses would tell you that planets just don't decide they want to go round the Sun the other way and you would of course be right. What you're seeing is a sort of celestial illusion of sorts. What's really happening is that Earth is catching up to Mars (as it must for an opposition) and then passing the red planet. An analogy to understand this is when you are driving down the freeway and pass a slower car. From the faster car's perspective the other car appears to be moving the opposite direction, but of course that's not what really happens.
Earth is moving faster than Mars and so we overtake Mars and pass it. Mars appears to be moving the opposite direction, a motion called retrograde motion. When Mars displays retrograde motion, it appears to etch out a looped path. The loop is because Earth and Mars' orbits are not in exactly the same plane.
This retrograde loop of Mars is a terrific display of celestial geometry. The loops vary from opposition to opposition. This year, the smallest of the decade, is a tight five degree wide oval. In 2005, the retrograde motion produces a strange zigzag loop. The 2010 retrograde loop is about twice the size of this one in 2003. The pattern of the loop changes depending on where Mars happens to be in its' orbit when Earth passes it.
If you have a tough time understanding all this about planetary motions, don't feel bad! It drove the early astronomers nuts trying to understand the motions of the heavens. They didn't understand the planets were moving around the Sun, and they concocted all sorts of elaborate models to try and explain this backwards motion! It was only after Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Gallileo, and others discovered the various laws relating to motion and gravity that the mystery was solved. We understand the motions of the planets now, and so we can just sit back and watch Mars do this celestial loop-the-loop!
Mars Retrograde:
If you were to look up in the southeastern sky at the same time each night and note where Mars appears to be compared to the constellations of stars, you would find the planet a little further east with each viewing. That is, Mars appears to move from west to east from one night to the next.
But every two years or so, there are a couple of months when Mars' position from night to night seems to change direction and move east to west. This strange behavior was very puzzling to early skywatchers. Did the planet really stop, back up, change its mind, and then continue to move forward? Did it have some weird, mystical meaning?
Today we know what's going on. It's an illusion, caused by the ways that Earth and Mars orbit the sun.
The two planets are like race cars on an oval track. Earth has the inside lane and moves faster than Mars -- so much faster, in fact, that it makes two laps around the course in about as much time as it takes Mars to go around once.
About every 26 months, Earth comes up from behind and overtakes Mars. While we're passing by the red planet, it looks to us as though Mars is moving backwards. Then, as we move farther along our curved orbit and see the planet from a different angle, the illusion disappears and we once again see Mars move forward. This apparent backwards movement is called "retrograde motion." The illusion also happens with Jupiter and the other planets that orbit farther from the sun.
Just to make things a little odder, the orbits that Earth and Mars follow don't quite lie in the same plane. It's as if the two planets were on separate tracks that are a little tilted with respect to each other. This causes another strange illusion.
Suppose you were to draw a dot on a sky map each night to show where Mars appears as it moves forward, goes through retrograde, and then resumes its forward motion. Connect the dots, and you'll draw either a loop or an open zigzag. The pattern depends on where Earth and Mars happen to be in their tilted racetrack orbits.
This year's Martian retrograde runs from July 30 to September 29, and forms a loop.
One or more giant impacts by huge rocks as large as Mars caused Earth's rapid spin, says a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center. Without the large impacts, says Dr. Luke Dones, the Earth would only rotate every 200 hours, instead of the 24 hours it takes today.
"Earth, along with Mercury, Venus and Mars, was formed about four and a half billion years ago when solid objects collided and merged to make larger objects," Dones said. "When these objects strike a forming planet, they can make it spin, just you can make a globe spin by pushing it with your finger," said Dones.
Dones and his research partner studied the history of impacts on early Earth to see what the "spin speed" would be. "We found that if Earth had been formed from only small objects, like the asteroids we see today, it would spin very slowly," Dones said.
"When objects strike the Earth, most of the spin comes from one or more giant impacts," he said. "They don't cancel each other out like the smaller impacts and the net spin is much more rapid.
"On the average, the larger the bodies that hit the Earth, the faster it will spin. From the rate at which the Earth does spin, we believe something about the size of Mars struck Earth during the late stages of its formation," Dones said. Mars is one tenth the size of Earth.
According to this theory, the fact that the Earth turns on its axis in roughly the same direction that the planet orbits the sun is a matter of chance.
"We think it's equally likely that a planet can form with the opposite spin direction, so that the sun would rise in the west and set in the east," Dones said.
And, in fact, Venus does spin "backward," and Uranus spins on its side. "The spins of both planets could also be results of giant impacts," Dones said.
He said the existence of the moon may also be a result of a very large impact on early Earth. The origin of the moon has been a puzzle for a long time, Dones said.
"A popular theory holds that the collision of a Mars-sized planetary body with the Earth threw considerable debris into orbit, which then came together to form the moon," Dones said. "Thus, the same impact which gave Earth its spin also could have formed the moon."
And this weird phenomena of the opposite movement called "Retrograde Motion" Most scientist state that all the planets will go through the same once at least and our planet Earth is one of them. Planet Earth will move in the opposite direction some day and the sun will rise from the west!!
This might occur soon and we are unaware!
Our beloved messenger Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) said: "One of the signs of the hour. The sun will rise from the west, where no longer tauba (forgiveness) will be granted" !!
And the strange thing, most of our Shariah scholars mentioned that the rise of the sun from the west occurs only once on that day and the sun will rise from the west then again from the east and continues until Allah wishes and this is similar to what is happening to Mars it stops, then it changes its course of direction for a short period of time, then returns to way once it was.
Close Encounters of a Red Kind: Retrograde Motion of Mars
There's something very strange going on in our night skies now, something which seems to defy the very order of all cosmic things. We have talked about the August 2003 perihelion opposition and how Mars will be closer to us than in about 73,000 years, but there is something else strange going on. Mars seems to have shed the very foundation of cosmic clockwork order and reversed its course across the heavens! This strange reversal of direction is called retrograde motion, and though we know what it is now, it has in the past caused some real problems for astronomers.
We see the stars and planets rise in the east, drift across the sky and set in the west. It appears this way because the of the Earth's daily rotation. The actual motion of the planets is from west to east, or it is most of the time. You can easily detect that eastward motion by watching a planet like Mars over a few months, as it moves from one constellation to the constellation east of it (planets appear to move faster than stars.)
All of the outer planets display retrograde motion at one time or another, but Mars has the best show. Mars is closer and so it is easier to detect it's changing motion against the background stars more easily than with a more distant planet.
Now your common senses would tell you that planets just don't decide they want to go round the Sun the other way and you would of course be right. What you're seeing is a sort of celestial illusion of sorts. What's really happening is that Earth is catching up to Mars (as it must for an opposition) and then passing the red planet. An analogy to understand this is when you are driving down the freeway and pass a slower car. From the faster car's perspective the other car appears to be moving the opposite direction, but of course that's not what really happens.
Earth is moving faster than Mars and so we overtake Mars and pass it. Mars appears to be moving the opposite direction, a motion called retrograde motion. When Mars displays retrograde motion, it appears to etch out a looped path. The loop is because Earth and Mars' orbits are not in exactly the same plane.
This retrograde loop of Mars is a terrific display of celestial geometry. The loops vary from opposition to opposition. This year, the smallest of the decade, is a tight five degree wide oval. In 2005, the retrograde motion produces a strange zigzag loop. The 2010 retrograde loop is about twice the size of this one in 2003. The pattern of the loop changes depending on where Mars happens to be in its' orbit when Earth passes it.
If you have a tough time understanding all this about planetary motions, don't feel bad! It drove the early astronomers nuts trying to understand the motions of the heavens. They didn't understand the planets were moving around the Sun, and they concocted all sorts of elaborate models to try and explain this backwards motion! It was only after Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Gallileo, and others discovered the various laws relating to motion and gravity that the mystery was solved. We understand the motions of the planets now, and so we can just sit back and watch Mars do this celestial loop-the-loop!
Mars Retrograde:
If you were to look up in the southeastern sky at the same time each night and note where Mars appears to be compared to the constellations of stars, you would find the planet a little further east with each viewing. That is, Mars appears to move from west to east from one night to the next.
But every two years or so, there are a couple of months when Mars' position from night to night seems to change direction and move east to west. This strange behavior was very puzzling to early skywatchers. Did the planet really stop, back up, change its mind, and then continue to move forward? Did it have some weird, mystical meaning?
Today we know what's going on. It's an illusion, caused by the ways that Earth and Mars orbit the sun.
The two planets are like race cars on an oval track. Earth has the inside lane and moves faster than Mars -- so much faster, in fact, that it makes two laps around the course in about as much time as it takes Mars to go around once.
About every 26 months, Earth comes up from behind and overtakes Mars. While we're passing by the red planet, it looks to us as though Mars is moving backwards. Then, as we move farther along our curved orbit and see the planet from a different angle, the illusion disappears and we once again see Mars move forward. This apparent backwards movement is called "retrograde motion." The illusion also happens with Jupiter and the other planets that orbit farther from the sun.
Just to make things a little odder, the orbits that Earth and Mars follow don't quite lie in the same plane. It's as if the two planets were on separate tracks that are a little tilted with respect to each other. This causes another strange illusion.
Suppose you were to draw a dot on a sky map each night to show where Mars appears as it moves forward, goes through retrograde, and then resumes its forward motion. Connect the dots, and you'll draw either a loop or an open zigzag. The pattern depends on where Earth and Mars happen to be in their tilted racetrack orbits.
This year's Martian retrograde runs from July 30 to September 29, and forms a loop.
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HUGE MARS-SIZE ROCKS MAY HAVE CAUSED EARTH’S RAPID SPINOne or more giant impacts by huge rocks as large as Mars caused Earth's rapid spin, says a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center. Without the large impacts, says Dr. Luke Dones, the Earth would only rotate every 200 hours, instead of the 24 hours it takes today.
"Earth, along with Mercury, Venus and Mars, was formed about four and a half billion years ago when solid objects collided and merged to make larger objects," Dones said. "When these objects strike a forming planet, they can make it spin, just you can make a globe spin by pushing it with your finger," said Dones.
"When objects strike the Earth, most of the spin comes from one or more giant impacts," he said. "They don't cancel each other out like the smaller impacts and the net spin is much more rapid.
"On the average, the larger the bodies that hit the Earth, the faster it will spin. From the rate at which the Earth does spin, we believe something about the size of Mars struck Earth during the late stages of its formation," Dones said. Mars is one tenth the size of Earth.
According to this theory, the fact that the Earth turns on its axis in roughly the same direction that the planet orbits the sun is a matter of chance.
"We think it's equally likely that a planet can form with the opposite spin direction, so that the sun would rise in the west and set in the east," Dones said.
He said the existence of the moon may also be a result of a very large impact on early Earth. The origin of the moon has been a puzzle for a long time, Dones said.
"A popular theory holds that the collision of a Mars-sized planetary body with the Earth threw considerable debris into orbit, which then came together to form the moon," Dones said. "Thus, the same impact which gave Earth its spin also could have formed the moon."
