Rotational Brownian motion (astronomy) Rotational Brownian motion (astronomy) In astronomy, rotational Brownian motion is the random walk in orientation of a binary star's orbital plane, induced by gravitational perturbations from passing stars. Consider a binary that consists of two massive objects (stars, black holes etc.) and that is embedded in a stellar system containing a large number of stars. Let formula_1 and formula_2 be the masses of the two components of the binary whose total mass is formula_3. A field star that approaches the binary with impact parameter formula_4 and velocity formula_5 passes a distance formula_6 from the binary, where formula_7 the latter expression
Brownian motion stars by where formula_36 is the mass of the background stars. The gravitational force from the massive object causes nearby stars to move faster than they otherwise would, increasing both formula_34 and "V". The Brownian velocity of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, is predicted from this formula to be less than 1 km "s". In mathematics, Brownian motion is described by the Wiener process; a continuous-time stochastic process named in honor of Norbert Wiener. It is one of the best known Lévy processes (càdlàg stochastic processes with stationary independent increments) and