Who Won The Trojan War

South Jersey Skies: A strange new companion for the Earth

The Earth has a new companion, but it's not exactly a moon.

It’s 2010 TK7, an asteroid, AKA minor planet. It's only about 1,000 feet across, and was discovered only last October using special instruments on NASA's WISE (Wide-angle Infrared Survey Explorer) satellite, during a year-long survey of the entire sky.

TK7 is not orbiting the Earth. In fact, its orbit is decidedly strange. The small body is not revolving around any actual celestial body. Instead, it's traipsing about an important, but empty, point millions of miles from the Earth.

This Lagrangian point, called L4, is in the Earth's orbit, but 60 degrees ahead of our planet. The Sun, the Earth, and L4 form an equilateral triangle. There is a similar imaginary point, called L5, following along behind the Earth.

Gravitational theory tells us that such points are good places for small bodies to reside. If an asteroid is sitting in this location, and anything nudges it away from L4, it slowly drifts back into this location.

Named after the French mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange, who first analyzed the idea in the 18th century, these Lagrangian locations exist for every planet. Several asteroids occupy each of the Jovian points L4 and L5, ahead of and behind Jupiter. They're called “Trojan asteroids,” and the individual bodies are named after characters from the Trojan War. Neptune and Mars also have Trojans.

We've looked for Trojan companions of the Earth, but have never located any … until now. But when you look at the orbit of TK7, it's no wonder we haven't noticed it before.

A Trojan asteroid doesn't have to sit exactly at a Lagrangian point. It can be some distance from the point, in which case it will slowly follow a tadpole-shaped orbit around it. There is, therefore, room for several Trojans in L4 and L5, for at least the major planets. But they generally don't get very far from the points.

TK7 does. Its orbit around the Earth's L4 point is surprisingly large, taking it quite a bit farther ahead and behind. It does not get so far behind that it runs into the Earth: it won't get any closer to us than 12 million miles.

The asteroid also doesn't stay in the Earth's orbital plane: it gets quite far above and below. Its orbit is tilted by more than 20 degrees to the plane defined by the planets. This is a sizable tilt for an asteroid.

It's hard to describe what this would look like from space. To see the path in three dimensions, you should look at an animation by Paul Wiegert of the Western University of Ontario at tinyurl.com/3g4qf23 . A larger version can be seen at tinyurl.com/3d9ah4d .

Ancient Greek – Troades by Euripedes | Migrants in Greece Share ...

Konstantinos Katsouranis reads The Trojan Women in Ancient Greek. (in Greek: Τρῳάδες, Trōiades) is a tragedy by the Greek playwright Euripides. Produced during the Peloponnesian War, it is often considered a commentary on the capture of the Aegean island of Melos and the subsequent slaughter and subjugation of its populace by the Athenians earlier in 415 BC (see History of Milos), the same year the play premiered. 415 BC was also the year of the scandalous desecration of the hermai and the Athenians’ second expedition to Sicily, events which may also have influenced the author.

The Trojan Women was the third tragedy of a trilogy of dealing with the Trojan War. The first tragedy, Alexandros, was about the recognition of the Trojan prince Paris who had been abandoned in infancy by his parents and rediscovered in adulthood. The second tragedy, Palamedes, dealt with Greek mistreatment of their fellow Greek Palamedes. This trilogy was presented at the Dionysia along with the comedic satyr play Sisyphos. The plots of this trilogy were not connected in the way that Aeschylus’ Oresteia was connected. Euripides did not favor such connected trilogies.

Euripides won second prize at the City Dionysia for his effort, losing to the obscure tragedian Xenocles.

The four Trojan women of the play are the same that appear in the final chapter of the Iliad lamenting over the corpse of Hector. Taking place near the same time is Hecuba, another play by Euripides.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trojan_Women

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