Editing 2709: Solar System Model

{{comic
| number    = 2709
| date      = December 9, 2022
| title     = Solar System Model
| image     = solar_system_model_2x.png
| imagesize = 270x370px
| noexpand  = true
| titletext = The Earth is, on average, located in the habitable zone, but at any given time it has a certain probability of being outside it, which is why life exists on Earth but is mortal.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic parodies the analogy of {{w|Bohr model|early-20th century models of atomic structure}} to the structure of the solar system. Electrons were thought to be orbiting the nucleus "like planets around a sun" until it was discovered that their locations are probabilistic. The comic flips this on its head: instead of the atomic structure model lacking a known causal relationship, it is now the planetary system that is quantum mechanical in nature, split into probabilistic {{w|Atomic orbital|orbitals}}. 

[[Miss Lenhart]] is shown here to be teaching an astronomy class, and claims that it was thought that the planets moved around the sun like electrons around the nucleus before this model was superseded by the probabilistic quantum mechanical view of orbital locations for ''planetary'' movement.

This is another one of the comics where Lenhart tries to fool her class, as in for instance [[1519: Venus]]. Most likely it is not to be taken to be true that her world is like this, or that she believes in it. She just likes to mess with her students.

If what she said was to be taken literally it would suggests that in this reality not only do electrons have distinct bodies that orbit a nucleus, but also that atomic structure was known before the correct planetary one.

In reality, the description of probabilistic orbitals is applied to the electrons in an atom; quantum uncertainty effects are not large enough to notice at the planetary scale{{Citation needed}}. However, such a concept has been prominently featured in the video game ''{{w|Outer Wilds}}'', with its Quantum Moon. {{w|Immanuel Velikovsky}} proposed that our solar system's planets could jump between orbits suddenly, quantum-mechanically, in the same way that electrons do around atomic nuclei. This proposal was not well received in academia.  Real astronomers do talk about probability distributions of orbiting bodies, especially in the context of collision calculations, but it's not because the position of a satellite or asteroid is in a quantum superposition of states; rather, it is our less than infinite accuracy of measurement and knowledge of those orbits, plus their evolution under the influence of less-predictable effects like space weather or other still unidentified additional factors, that makes long-term estimates progressively more uncertain.

The title text is Miss Lenhart trying to use the first joke to set up another that builds on the first. She says that the consequence of planets having probabilistic locations would mean that they would spend some time in the lower-probability locations closer to or further from the Sun. The Earth's real orbit is in a so called {{w|Circumstellar habitable zone|habitable zone}} where the temperature allows liquid water and thus allows  life as we know it to exist. A probabilistic Earth would spend most of its time in the habitable zone, which is why life exists, but then, in short periods when it is outside the zone, some life would die. The title text claims this is why life on Earth is mortal, thus indirectly implying that life only dies in the periods where Earth leaves the habitable zone, and that life staying in the habitable zone would be immortal.

There was already an orbital model parody made in [[2100: Models of the Atom]], which featured the planetary one, but at that time it was solely for the humorous insertion of 'facts' into the subject of atomic theory.

==Transcript==
:[Miss Lenhart is teaching a class. In front of her sits a student with curly hair at his desk pen ready on the paper to write notes. The front of the next table behind him can be seen. Behind Lenhart is a white board with two drawings and a large underlined header at the top. The drawing beneath the header shows a solar system with a radiating sun and two planets orbiting with the orbits shown and the planets marked with small circles, one on either side of the sun, both above the sun. Beneath this is another sun in the middle of orbits, but these orbits are now no longer circles. The central orbit is very flat, and three others goes above and below this in what would form eight-like shapes, if they where not hidden partially behind the central part. Lenhart points at the board with a pointing stick while looking out over the class.]
:Miss Lenhart: Early 20<sup>th</sup> century models of the solar system imagined that planets circled the Sun like electrons in an atom.
:Miss Lenhart: We now know planets have no precise location, but instead occupy probabilistic ''orbitals''...
:Header: <u>Astronomy</u>

{{comic discussion}}

<!--[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]] This is a child in class and thus not Hairy-->
[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]