In that case, it'd be equally pointless for you to subscribe to refereed, respected journals like Physical Review D, or Gravitation and General Relativity, where precisely such questions are dealt with (in a way favorable to my thesis, and equally fatal to your apparent denial of such possibilities).
Since you didn't make it clear precisely WHY you think the thesis is pointless, I'll cover all possibilities: (1) You object in general to cosmic rotation as if the topic was absent from the secular refereed literature on the topic, (2) You object to my discussion of the lunar-based observer seeing zero relative motion between Earth and Moon and having to incorporate the contribution of the rotating cosmic mass he observes in solving Einstein's field equations to see where the force resides to prevent the two bodies from moving toward one another, or (3) You believe any such rotation violates the law that physical objects can't travel faster than the speed of light, and a diurnal rotation would compel such superluminal rotation out around the orbit of Saturn. Everything farther out would be moving even faster than c. So, we'll handle these possible objections seriatim.
Regarding (1) -- Consult the work done by secular scientist Yuri Obukhov since 1989. His was one of the major contributions to the Colloquium on Cosmic Rotation, the proceedings of which were published in Berlin in 2000. If you consult the Citebase reference for just ONE of his articles, you'll find (in this instance) 440 references, the vast majority of which deal with the issue of a rotating cosmos:
http://www.citebase.org/cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:arXiv.org:astro-ph/0008106Note that a Goedel-type universe is a rotating cosmos. Note also that not a single geocentrist is lurking in these citations. Claims
that modern science turns its back on a rotating cosmos are simply wrong -- the literature is rife with scientific activity directed to this issue. Scratch the surface a bit more, and you'll find an embarrassment of riches in this area of secular scholarship. But
wave a dismissive hand and say there's not a shred of scientific evidence in regard to the matter, and it will surely be true that SOMEBODY is turning their back on the evidence.
Is the evidence properly correlated? That's a different issue. Obukhov has pointed out (in refereed journals, no less) that "cosmic rotation can, in principle, be quite large"; he spends most of his time debunking faulty objections to cosmic rotation, and doing an
excellent job of it. Most intriguingly, he has pointed out that the Birch anisotropy is not a consequence of cosmic rotation -- and then proceeded to illustrate what effects DO arise from cosmic rotation. (The Birch papers appear in the reference list in the URL provided above.)
Obukhov's article in the February 1991 issue of General Relativity & Gravitation won the third award from the Gravity Research Foundation in 1991. Titled "Rotation in cosmology," the essay deals a death blow to objections to a rotating universe. As the abstract says, "it is shown that pure cosmic rotation does not produce either causality violations, nor parallax effects, nor anistropy of the microwave background radiation." (It falls on pages 121-128 of that secular refereed journal.)
Regarding (2) and the Earth-Moon system I discussed earlier, consult the journal General Relativity and Gravitation, Volume 21, No. 2, 1989, pgs. 105-124. Professors Ø. Grøn and E. Eriksen, in the article Translational Inertial Dragging, take up the issue of what forces arise within a spherical shell of matter.
Grøn & Eriksen inform us that "The rotational inertial dragging effect, which was discovered by Lense and Thirring, was later investigated by Cohen and Brill and by Orwig. It was found that in the limit of a spherical shell with a radius equal to its Schwarzchild radius, the interior inertial frames are dragged around rigidly with the same angular velocity as that of the shell. In this case of "perfect dragging" the motion of the inertial frames is completely determined by the shell." (pg. 109-110).
G&E point out that "with reference to Newtonian mechanics we talk of inertial force fields in accelerated reference frames. However, according to the general principle of relativity, we may consider the laboratory as at rest. We then talk of gravitational dragging (acceleration) fields. The concept of 'inertial forces,' which may be regarded as a sort of trick in Newtonian mechanics, is thereby made superfluous."
On page 113, G&E cite C. Møller "in his standard [1952] textbook on general relativity", from chapter 8: "Einstein advocated a new interpretation of the fictitious forces in accelerated systems of reference. The 'fictitious' forces were treated as real forces on the same footing as any other force of nature. The reason for the occurrence in accelerated systems of reference of such peculiar forces should, according to this new idea, be sought in the circumstance that the distant masses of the fixed stars are accelerated relative to these systems of reference. The 'fictitious forces' are thus treated as a kind of gravitational force, the acceleration of the distant masses causing a 'field of gravitation' in the system of reference considered. Only when we work in special systems of reference, viz. systems of inertia, it is not necessary to include the distant masses in our considerations, and this is the only point which distinguishes the systems of inertia from other systems of reference. It can, however, be assumed that all systems of reference are equivalent with respect to the formulation of the fundamental laws of physics. This is the so-called general principle of relativity."
Møller tells us that the only reference frame in which we can exclude consideration of the distant masses of the galaxies is in "systems of inertia," which G&E more carefully define as "frames of reference in which the cosmic mass has no observed rotation or translation acceleration." By this definition, the earth does not fulfill the requirement for being a system of inertia, since the heavens are observed to rotate around it. Therefore, Møller alerts us that we may NOT omit the rest of the universe in deriving the forces acting locally on the earth.
Grøn & Eriksen develop the consequences of Einstein's position to the hilt on pages 117-118 with an ironclad example: "As an illustration of the role of inertial dragging for the validity of the strong principle of relativity, we consider the Moon orbiting the Earth. As seen by an observer on the Moon both the Moon and the Earth are at rest. If the observer solves Einstein's field equations for the vacuum space-time outside the Earth, he might come up with the Schwarzchild solution and conclude that the Moon should fall toward the Earth, which it does not. So it seems impossible to consider the Moon as at rest, which would imply that the strong principle of relativity is not valid. ... This problem has the following solution. As observed from the Moon the cosmic mass rotates. The rotating cosmic mass has to be included when the Moon observer solves Einstein's field equations. Doing this he finds that the rotating cosmic mass induces the rotational nontidal gravitational field which is interpreted as the centrifugal field in Newtonian theory. This field explains to him why the Moon does not fall toward the Earth."
As to (3) and the supposed impossibility of objects traveling faster than the speed of light, we first point out that the authors above have ALREADY asserted such superluminal speeds to be possible -- and necessary -- in the framework of general relativity. Fred Hoyle agreed. Let's drill down into some other corroborating circumstances.
Insofar as the high rotational speeds required by a geocentric system are concerned, these are dealt with at length in the late Sir Hermann Bondi's article, "The angular momentum of cylindrical systems in general relativity," published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Physical and Mathematical Sciencies, (1994), 446, pp. 57-66. As he says, "The main point to note is that whereas in the newtonian discussion, non-rotation of the reference system at infinity is taken for granted, in the relativistic treatment such rotation is permitted but irrelevant to the measure of angular momentum, which is an intrinsic characteristic of the material system." (p. 64) “What is the nature of this limit? For such a cylinder the required angular velocity makes the tangential velocity at r = r2 equal to the speed of light….Both the space drag on the core and A [angular momentum] will be unaffected by such outside layers….The conservation of A occurs even if gravitational waves are emitted by the cylinder. This is perhaps not surprising, since the cylindrical symmetry of the waves precludes their carrying angular momentum…. Therefore the intrinsic nature of the angular momentum of the inner becomes patent as it is wholly unaffected by anything that goes on outside. Thus there is no transfer of angular momentum between outer and inner” (ibid., pp. 63-64). Bondi telegraphs this derivation at p. 61 thus: "It is a remarkable fact, discussed later, and of some relevance to machian considerations that this unique conserved measure of angular momentum appropriate to the symmetry imposed is independent of any superposed state of rotation." As stated in his absract, "It emerges that angular momentum and space drag behave very differently as thicker and thicker spinning cylinders are studied." The "thicker and thicker spinning cylinders" are the ones with tangential speed exceeding the speed of light, as he makes clear. As he states elsewhere (p. 59), "Note that with the coordinate changes permitted in general relativity, a uniform rotation can always be abolished." In context, it means you can pick a reference frame (the Earth) and set its rotation to zero -- which is permitted in general relativity. In fact, this paper explains how this fixed center/rotating cosmos implication of GR affects the principle of angular momentum. Bondi specifically defends superluminal rotation of the cosmos in this paper. Lots of folks think taking the Earth as stationary and the universe as rotating would have undesirable angular momentum implications, because they're thinking in Newtonian terms and don't grasp what the actually conserved quantity is that we term "angular momentum." Bondi has done the derivation, and his Figure 1 (p. 65) shows the interrelationship of space drag against systemic angular momentum and angular velocity -- not linear at all, but with intersecting curves. THIS is the reality that general relativity codifies. This agrees with all that's been written on this topic in the refereed journals that focus on GR. Bondi makes no mention of Mach throughout the derivation: it is straightforward physics.
"Only theory!" you protest? "Show me a physical measurement of something traveling faster than light!" you challenge? No problem. You can consult, with profit, the February 1992 issue of the American Journal of Physics. The issue contains an article entitled, “Can galaxies exist within our particle horizon with Hubble recessional velocities greater than c?”, written by W.M. Stuckey. Two pertinent quotes from this journal article: “It is widely accepted among astronomers that general relativistic cosmology allows for Hubble recessional velocities greater than the speed of c.” Elsewhere, in providing an empirical example of this, Stuckey writes: “The example employed here is that of a recently discovered quasar with redshift of 4.73. The current recessional velocity of the quasar is 1.2c from Equation 13. ... the recessional velocity ... at emission time is 2.8c.” We note that the reason these objects move faster than c is attributed to a property of the space they're in: space is held to be stretching. The geocentric model also attributes superluminal velocities to a property of space, but it proposes that space rotates. In each model, it's a property of space that is credited with the faster-than-light motion. But who's going to argue that space can stretch but not rotate? If it can do one, why is it barred from the other? If it doesn't stretch, how do you explain the reported published speed of these quasars? And since THESE objects are traveling faster than light, what right does anyone have to say that the cosmos can't rotate diurnally because objects can't go that fast? That entire objection has just been experimentally falsified (and has been known to be thus falsified for several decades).
So, yes, continuing this thread will be entirely pointless unless you familiarize yourself with what science ACTUALLY teaches about the matters in hand. If you're simply going to spit out long-discredited "stock objections" you'll end up with lots of egg on your face. If you're going to be smug in doing so, that will also come back to roost. You need to know the current literature to make a case, NOT simply dismiss it as nonsense in the interest of some kind of argumentum ad ignorantiam you're propounding.
So, let's hear back from you as to why continuing the thread is actually pointless:
והארץ תלויה באמצע (Rambam)
Topic: Earth at the Center of the Universe (Read 41183 times)