Geocentrism and Relativity

SpyridonOCA · Dec 28, 2007

While The Institute for Creation Research doesn't take a position in favor of geocentrism, they do have this to say regarding the science involved:

What does modern science say about geocentricity?

The theory of special relativity holds as a basic assumption that the speed of light will always be the same everywhere in the universe irrespective of the relative motion of the source of the light and the observer. The ability of special relativity to successfully explain many non-intuitive physical phenomena which are manifested by atomic particles when moving at speeds greater than about one-tenth the speed of light seems to corroborate this assumption. Thus, the failure of the Michelson-Morley experiment (and all other experiments of similar intent) to detect any motion of the earth through space is understood by modern science in terms of relativity rather than geocentricity.

Einstein's theory of general relativity adds further to the debate. It asserts that it is impossible for a human observer to determine whether any material body is in a state of absolute rest (i.e., immobile in space). It claims that only motion of two material bodies relative to one another can be physically detected. According to this theory the geocentric and heliocentric viewpoints are equally valid representations of reality, and it makes no sense whatsoever scientifically to speak of one as being true and the other false. This shift in emphasis from an either-or argument to a synthesis and acceptance of both viewpoints is summed up by the well-known astronomer, Fred Hoyle, as follows:

The relation of the two pictures [geocentricity and heliocentricity] is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view.... Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is 'right' and the Ptolemaic theory 'wrong' in any meaningful physical sense.[1]
http://www.icr.org/article/382/

Is anyone able to disprove the claim that geocrentrism is possibly true, due to Einstein’s theory of relativity? I don't believe it is important either way, but it's worth thinking about.

Maxwell511 · Dec 28, 2007

SpyridonOCA said:
Is anyone able to disprove the claim that geocrentrism is possibly true, due to Einsteins theory of relativity? I don't believe it is important either way, but it's worth thinking about.

Geocentrism is "true" and heliocentrism is also "true". According to Einstein's theory it is all relative. Possibly just depends on your ego on which you will say is "truth".

You know that Einstein's theories say there is no absolute motion and your question is redundant?

SpyridonOCA · Dec 28, 2007

What I'd like to know is whether the earth's rotation around the sun has been directly observed. Have space telescopes observed the earth's revolution around the sun?

Maxwell511 · Dec 28, 2007

SpyridonOCA said:
What I'd like to know is whether the earth's rotation around the sun has been directly observed. Have space telescopes observed the earth's revolution around the sun?

I don't know but what I do know is that the fixed stars having been flying around us at unimaginable speeds if we are standing still.

SpyridonOCA · Dec 28, 2007

This book makes the case that Johannes Kepler murdered Tycho Brahe to pass off Brahe's research as his own, and use it for the heliocentric model that Brahe opposed:
http://www.amazon.com/Heavenly-Intr...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198834345&sr=1-1

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) believed in Copernicus' picture. Having been raised in the Greek geometric tradition, he believed God must have had some geometric reason for placing the six planets at the particular distances from the sun that they occupied. He thought of their orbits as being on spheres, one inside the other. One day, he suddenly remembered that there were just five perfect Platonic solids, and this gave a reason for there being six planets - the orbit spheres were maybe just such that between two successive ones a perfect solid would just fit. He convinced himself that, given the uncertainties of observation at the time, this picture might be the right one. However, that was before Tycho's results were used. Kepler realized that Tycho's work could settle the question one way or the other, so he went to work with Tycho in 1600. Tycho died the next year, Kepler stole the data, and worked with it for nine years.
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/tycho.htm

In the summer of 1996, the University of Lund carried out a PIXE analysis of
hair from Tycho Brahe (PIXE = Particle Induced X-ray Emission). With the
PIXE method it has been possible to see not only what substances are present
in the hair but also their precise location. If the mercury came from the
embalming process, the mercury would be found on the outside of the hairs.
If Tycho Brahe had been slowly poisoned by chemical experiments or the
gold-plating process the mercury would be inside long sections of the hairs.
What the analysis actually has shown is that only one of the hairs contained
mercury. This hair was the only one with the hair follicle still attached,
and the mercury was present close to the hair follicle. It was inside the
hair, which means that it came through the body via the blood. It is
calculated that the mercury concentration rose very quickly, in just 5-10
minutes, and that it sank just as fast. This and the mercury concentration's
distance from the hair-root, show that Tycho Brahe must have ingested a
large dose of mercury about 20 hours before his death. Unfortunately, the
analysis is unable to explain the presence of mercury in Tycho Brahe's body.
He might have taken it himself as a medicine for his illness. He might have
been deliberately poisoned. It is impossible to know for sure. It can only
be concluded that he mercury poisoning might have caused his death. The PIXE analysis have been questioned by other scientists.
http://www.tychobrahe.com/eng_tychobrahe/myt.html

TemperateSeaIsland · Dec 28, 2007

If the Earth was stationary then everything passed Mars would need to be traveling faster than the speed of light. Sending probes to Jupiter would be impossible.

Tonks · Dec 28, 2007

TemperateSeaIsland said:
If the Earth was stationary then everything passed Mars would need to be traveling faster than the speed of light. Sending probes to Jupiter would be impossible.

FTW

SpyridonOCA · Dec 28, 2007

TemperateSeaIsland said:
If the Earth was stationary then everything passed Mars would need to be traveling faster than the speed of light. Sending probes to Jupiter would be impossible.

With regards to the stars and the planetary movement, two assumptions are made by the heliocentrist: firstly, that the speed of light is constant in all of space; and secondly that the planets and stars have to move in excess of the accepted speed of light. Based on work by Michelson and Gale, Sagnac, and Anderson, the constancy of the speed of light can be questioned, if not rejected, and the existence of an aether-like substance in the universe can be posited. One geocentric theory states that the stars and planets are embedded in such a medium which rotates once a day, which is backed up by some findings by Thirring. Since the stars themselves are not moving, but the medium in which they are embedded, and they are not moving with respect to that aether, there is no problem with the speed of light.
http://creationwiki.org/Pro-geocentricity

I don't understand why the popular understanding of our universe is preferrable to the Tychonic model.

Tonks · Dec 28, 2007

Cough up the research on this "ether-like" substance, please.

Elduran · Dec 28, 2007

As I recall, ether theory was quite popular in the 19th century but was eventually thrown out for shear lack of evidence. The fact that nothing has resurfaced about this failed theory in recent years apart from a page written by a pseudo-scientific body with no history of actual research makes me somewhat skeptical that this is in any way legitimate!

SpyridonOCA · Dec 28, 2007

Tonks said:
Cough up the research on this "ether-like" substance, please.

There are several studies referenced by geocentrists, but I've never heard of them.

Geocentrism based on a rigid aether

A different approach to accounting for the forces required to explain the observations is kinematic constraints. If all heavenly bodies (sun, planets, comets, stars) are rotating daily around the Earth, it is natural to suppose that they are embedded in a transparent but rigid material. Geocentrists generally believe in such a substance and refer to it as aether. This aether is not the same as the late 19th century concept of luminiferous aether that was supposed to be the material through which light propagates. If a luminiferous medium does exist, then the null result from the Michelson-Morley experiment would imply a stationary Earth with respect to such an aether. Bouw stated in 2000 that he prefers the term firmament as being "the God-chosen name for the created aether".[14]

The aether hypothesis coupled with a huge rotating shell of matter at the outer position of the universe provides for forces needed to explain the daily orbits of the stars and Sun as well as a way to synchronize the monthly and yearly motions. These periodic variations are claimed to result from gyroscopic precession, although the details of the model are not specified. When the finite speed of light is taken into consideration, the picture is more complex (at least assuming the enormous estimate of the size of the universe believed today- a point which many geocentrists disagree with). If we see all the stars moving at the same time, then the stars farther away must have moved earlier in order to allow their light time to reach Earth. This implies not a rigid aether but an aether supporting torsional waves that propagate with the speed of light and converge on the Earth. To explain the irregular or sudden changes in the length of the day in this way requires a reversal of the presumptive cause and effect, that is, the aether waves must cause the earthquake or weather pattern that is associated with that change in the length of the day. It is also difficult to reconcile the rigidity of the aether required to contain and synchronize the motions of the stars with the tenuousness implied by the fact that the proper motions appear to be uninhibited.

If simple aether theories might be able to explain some of the properties of the motions of the stars and Sun, more complex theories are necessary to explain orbits in the Solar System and experiments on the Earth. This is partly because the rigidity/tenuousness dilemma brought up for stellar motion is even more visible there, but primarily because a single centripetal force is no longer adequate. The observations can only be explained by separate centrifugal and Coriolis forces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_geocentrism#Geocentrism_based_on_a_rigid_aether

SpyridonOCA · Dec 28, 2007

Elduran said:
As I recall, ether theory was quite popular in the 19th century but was eventually thrown out for shear lack of evidence. The fact that nothing has resurfaced about this failed theory in recent years apart from a page written by a pseudo-scientific body with no history of actual research makes me somewhat skeptical that this is in any way legitimate!

"We know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance." - Sir Fred Hoyle

Has anyone directly observed the earth's rotation around the sun?

Frumious Bandersnatch · Dec 28, 2007

SpyridonOCA said:
This book makes the case that Johannes Kepler murdered Tycho Brahe to pass off Brahe's research as his own, and use it for the heliocentric model that Brahe opposed:
http://www.amazon.com/Heavenly-Intr...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198834345&sr=1-1

The main reason Kepler was not able to convince Brahe to accept the heliocentric model was that stellar parallax could not be observed at that time because the stars are so far away. I doubt Brahe would have espoused the geocentric model if telescopes of the day had been able to detect parallax.

BrainHertz · Dec 28, 2007

SpyridonOCA said:
This book makes the case that Johannes Kepler murdered Tycho Brahe to pass off Brahe's research as his own, and use it for the heliocentric model that Brahe opposed:
http://www.amazon.com/Heavenly-Intr...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198834345&sr=1-1

The problem is, the physical evidence doesn't actually tell us very much. Brahe was a noted alchemist as well as astronomer, and came close to poisoning/blowing himself up on many occasions. If he did in fact die from mercury and/or arsenic poisoning, there's no reason to suspect foul play.

BrainHertz · Dec 28, 2007

SpyridonOCA said:
"We know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance." - Sir Fred Hoyle

Has anyone directly observed the earth's rotation around the sun?

Interesting choice of quote. When I went looking for it, I found it on a page entitled "Dumb Remarks by Scientists that Pseudoscientists Love".

Here's the complete entry for Fred Hoyle:

Fred Hoyle is a famous British astronomer, popularizer of science, and science fiction author, celebrated in science for some brilliantly astute guesses about nuclear reactions in stars. Against that record are some abysmally bad guesses, notably the Steady State Theory (Hoyle coined the term "Big Bang" in derision of the idea that the Universe expanded from a small source), panspermia, the idea that life arrived on earth from outer space, and the claim that the fossil Archaeopteryx was a fake. The latter two ideas were cheerfully adopted by creationists. Creationists have no particular love for panspermia but they found it expedient to argue that a leading astronomer agreed that abiotic evolution could not have happened on earth. In any museum of bad quotes that play straight into the hands of cranks, he also merits an entire wing.
We know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance (Hoyle, F., 1975. Astronomy and Cosmology - A Modern Course. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.)

Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is "right" and the Ptolemaic theory "wrong" in any meaningful physical sense. (Hoyle, F., 1973, Nicolaus Copernicus, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., London.)
Modern-day geocentrists delight in these quotes. And from a physical standpoint, they're rubbish. For example, in a geocentric model, we have to explain how the sun, which is vastly larger than the earth, circles the earth. In the heliocentric model, there's a point about a million miles from earth where an object can remain fixed with respect to both bodies. It's not a theoretical abstraction - spacecraft have been placed there. They need a little fuel to maintain a stable orbit because of the gravitational effects of the moon and other planets, but beyond that, they remain in place. In a geocentric model the spacecraft just hang there, neither falling toward earth nor into the sun. Why is that? The difference does have physical significance, and the Ptolemaic theory is wrong in a "meaningful physical sense."

SpyridonOCA · Dec 28, 2007

Frumious Bandersnatch said:
The main reason Kepler was not able to convince Brahe to accept the heliocentric model was that stellar parallax could not be observed at that time because the stars are so far away. I doubt Brahe would have espoused the geocentric model if telescopes of the day had been able to detect parallax.

Parallax is also possible in a modified Tychonian system where the movement/rotation of the universe is hinged on the sun, which is hinged on the non-moving earth. Others who say that the rotation of the whole universe is hinged on the earth put parallax down to a form of aberration.
http://www.creationwiki.org/Pro-geocentricity

I don't believe that the sun revolves around the earth, yet I would like to see some proof that the earth revolves around the sun. Shouldn't it be possible to capture it all on camera?

BrainHertz · Dec 28, 2007

SpyridonOCA said:
I don't believe that the sun revolves around the earth, yet I would like to see some proof that the earth revolves around the sun. Shouldn't it be possible to capture it all on camera?

Not sure how capturing the movement on camera would do for you; you could get any answer you wanted by putting the camera in various frames of reference.

Stellar parallax is rather more convincing; there's an apparent movement which can only be explained by either the Earth going round the Sun or all of the stars making strange movements. For the latter to be true requires the existence of a set of very large periodic rotating forces across the whole universe.

Washington · Dec 28, 2007

Here is an animation of our solar system as geocentric. The small stationary blue dot is Earth and the large yellow dot is the Sun. Jupiter is the large red dot and the small yellow dot next to it is Saturn. Mars is the smaller red dot. (I don't know why this didn't load at its normal size)

Here is another example of geocentricism. And one of heliocentricism

Which appears more likely? If nothing else, consider Occam's razor.

SpyridonOCA · Dec 28, 2007

I don't know why we aren't able to directly observe the earth's movement around the sun. Haven't space telescopes captured it? Why are we spending billions of dollars on space technology if we can't even capture something so simple?

This is an image of the Tychonic system:

All I want is proof that it's wrong.

Lucretius · Dec 28, 2007

Here's an example of why Geocentrism is wrong.

Newton's Law of Gravitation is universal. Thus, it applies everywhere in the cosmos. Using it we can calculate the barycenter (the common point of orbit) of a two-mass system. The system we will choose is the Sun-Earth system. In calculating the barycenter, we find that it lies within the sun itself. This means, the Sun will wobble slightly as it rotates, because the barycenter is not totally at it's center — but this wobble is imperceptible. Earth, which has a much smaller mass, will orbit around the Sun essentially, as the center of mass around which these objects both orbit, lies within the Sun.

We can neglect other objects influencing this system because the Sun contains almost all of the mass in the entire Solar System. No object is near enough to Earth to influence this barycenter by anymore than the breadth of a hair.

Thus, using Newton's Law of Gravitation, we can essentially show that it is the Earth that orbits the Sun and not vice versa.

(The calculations can be provided if you wish to see them.)

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