The sea is blue, so is the sky and there's a beautifull F4-5 trade wind blowing. Even with global warming I can't bring myself to believe it's Birmingham. Unless it's Alabama.
If you apply a laser level to the horizon in the pic, you see that the ends slope upwards. There's only one place on earth that this happens and its on the equator as you look east or west.
Congrats to Jimi for capturing this little known, but significant, oceanomorphological feature.
You have put your finger on it. Clearly you are more familiar than I with the two- body problem corresponding to a gravitational force with anisotropic G being treated by means of perturbation theory. The integration of Newton-Euler equations shows that the perturbed orbit is of elliptic type, lies in a fixed plane, and its semimajor axis, eccentricity, and the argument of pericentre, obtained as functions of the argument of latitude, undergo 2_ periodic variations. The nodal period, determined with an accuracy of first order in a small parameter___ and third order in eccentricity, results to be shorter than the corresponding very general two-body problem with changing equivalent gravitational parameter.
I don't know how I lived without your pictorial elucidation. A pic is indeed worth a thousand words.
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The two- body problem corresponding to a gravitational force with anisotropic G being treated by means of perturbation theory. The integration of Newton-Euler equations shows that the perturbed orbit is of elliptic type, lies in a fixed plane, and its semimajor axis, eccentricity, and the argument of pericentre, obtained as functions of the argument of latitude, undergo 2_ periodic variations. The nodal period, determined with an accuracy of first order in a small parameter___ and third order in eccentricity, results to be shorter than the corresponding very general two-body problem with changing equivalent gravitational parameter.
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Could this explain falling over when drunk? If so, I shall explain it to SWMBO in these terms in said situation - or, maybe, hand her a print-out.
One night whilst sitting in the cockpit under a clear sky Stingo explained the theory of the "Polar Flip" If my memory serves me well his rendition was just like yours, almost word verbatim. Mind you we had been drinking some concoction made from berries he found in the jungle.