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Originally Posted by TheBigDog
This is a hypothetical. It may be moved to strange claims, but I will give it a go here first.
Imagine that there were another planet in our solar system. That panet is nearly identical in dimensions to the earth. It is in the exact same orbit as the earth. But it is exactly 180 degrees opposite the earth in its orbit. It is forever hidden from observation from the earth by the sun. Now, I am accepting the fact that this notion is increadibly far fetched. The odds against it are astronomical in the extreme. But have we bothered to look? I dare say that we have discovered stanger things in the universe.
Any ideas on how we would handle such a discovery?
Bill
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It is more than far fetched, it is impossible. The problem is that such a twin Earth would not stay 180 degrees opposite the Earth. All the planets perturb each other by their gravitational pull. Since the two Earth's would not get perturbed in the same way at the same time, they will get pulled out of their 180° relative positions, and once they even slighty drift out of position, the tendancy will be to drift even further from postion. Soon they will be nowhere near being 180° apart and would be easily visible to the other.
Also, even if for some reason the twin Earth was able to hold its relative position to the Earth, we would know that it was there withoput even having to see it, since it would perturb the orbits of the other planets, and we would have noticed that long ago.
