[Physics] The rotating movement of an asteroid

rotational-dynamics

I almost all movies where you could see an animation about an asteroid, they move in a very distinct way.

I don't know how to explain better, but I think what we can see in the movies is that the asteroid is rotating around the x axis with constant speed, around the y axis with constant speed and around the z axis with constant speed, where x, y and z axes are of a reference frame.

What is this kind of motion? Is it correct?

According to the Euler's rotation theorem any 3D rotation that has a fixed point also has a fixed axis. So if they are rotating around more then one axis, does it mean that they don't have any fixed point? But then what is the motion what their center of mass is doing?

I would suppose, that the correct movement would be when asteroids are rotating like planets, around one fixed axis. But to me the rotation commonly used is not like that. What is the correct way?

Best Answer

Any motion of a rigid object can be decomposed into translation (straight-line motion) of the center of mass, and rotation around the center of mass. In a movie scene, an asteroid would probably be both rotating and translating with respect to the camera, because it makes the motion look more complicated that way. But if you imagine a different camera moving along with the asteroid, it would see the motion as only rotation.

Now, any rotation can always be expressed as a rotation around a fixed axis with a fixed speed. Even if it appears that the asteroid is rotating around several different axes simultaneously, there really is just one axis, according to Euler's theorem. In movie scenes, they tend to orient that axis at an odd angle to the camera, again to make it look more complicated, but given enough information about the characteristics of the motion, you can always find the one axis of rotation and identify the speed of the rotation around it.

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