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Earth at the Center of the Universe

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Muck DeFuslims:
Yes, I've been on a merry-go-round.
And to answer your question, my family that was watching me was correct in observing that it was the merry-go-round moving and not them.
Even when I'm on the merry-go-round I realize that I am moving.

I've also ridden in a car. And while I'm in the car and it appears the landscape is whizzing past me and I am stationary, I realize that I am in motion and the landscape is still.

So if you're arguing that the merry-go-round isn't actually moving but it just appears that way because the earth around it is moving, or that the car I'm traveling in isn't in motion, but standing still, and the Earth is whizzing past it, you're WRONG.

Earlier in this thread someone (it might have been you) used the example of putting a pool ball in motion around another stationary pool ball and then stipulated that it couldn't be proven mathematically which pool ball was in motion and which was stationary. Similarly, the example was given that someone swings a bucket around his head, is the bucket stationary and the swinger actually moving around the bucket ?

Einstein's theory of relativity infers that the moving pool ball or the swinging bucket (if these in-animate objects could think and speak) would say, "Hey, wait a minute, I'm standing still and you're moving." But an observer of either event would be able to see that in fact the bucket is being swung and is moving or that in fact it is only one pool ball that is moving.

Now, we humans on planet Earth would surely from our perspective say "Hey, wait a minute, we're standing still and the Sun is moving around us". We all see the sun rise in the east and set in the west, it has to be moving, right ? (even though this is due to the Earth rotating on it's axis, which i'm not sure if u believe or not. If you don't believe this, I'd like to know how you explain why we have day and night. Do you think the Sun orbits the Earth once a day? Because if the earth isn't rotating and it is the Sun in motion that would require the sun to complete an orbit around the Earth every 24 hours to account for day and night). So the appearance of the Sun moving around the Earth is our reality, but it is not the greater reality, despite your claims that either case is the scientific or mathematical truth. And the fact that it is the Earth orbiting the Sun can be and has been proven by objective observation, and the observation of such doesn't have to be from another universe to be valid and correct. 

That's the way relativity works regarding space.
Interestingly, relativity also applies to time, with similar, although different, ramifications.
But that's a discussion for another thread involving the age of the universe and the apparent discrepancy of modern science and the Torah on that matter.

jdl4ever:
Muck DeFuslims, your explanation is spot on.  Mathematically you can prove that a merry go round is moving in many ways even though it may appear to you that it is not moving if you are in it.  Mathematically you can prove which tennis ball is moving in a game of Tennis.  Mathematics and the sciences can prove anything regardless of how things might appear to laymen.  To some people, the planets looked like they were alive, so are you going to tell me that their opinion is valid since it is theoretically possible that when laymen look at the stars they look alive to them? Appearance means nothing without mathematical and scientific proof.  That's what these people don't get, that the number of theoretical possibilities based on a single observation has nothing to do with anything.  The one possibility that is proven mathematically and scientifically to be correct is valid and the ones that are disproven are not valid.  Similarly, relativity simply gives us possibilities based on simple observation of the sun at one point in time.  Maybe it is moving around us or we are moving around it or both are moving around each other. Mathematically we proved that we are going around the sun and disproved the other possibilities.

As for Lubav's Questions:

1.  Science itself says nothing about G-d and not one scientific paper dealt with this.  And the discoveries of Science is not biased one way or the other because of this in most cases.  Scientists simply record what happened based on mathematics and hard evidence.  It is not part of science to write why something happened.  For example, science has proven that there was a big bang that started creation.  Science does not talk about who caused it.  G-d believing scientists think that this was creation and G -d did it while the agnostic ones think that it somehow happened by itself (which to you and me doesn't make sense how they could think such a way).  If all the scientists were G-d fearing people, their discoveries would not have changed since science is based on hard evidence.  They would have still discovered that the Earth is billions of years old, that an evolutionary process has taken place, that water is a liquid that boils at 100 celcious, etc.  They would just think that G-d did all this.  They would say that evolution only proves that there is a G-d since it is mathematically impossible for evolution to happen randomly so they would call it intelligent design, and they would say that they are uncovering how G-d created the world.

2.  Science does make mistakes, but it is a self correcting process so these mistakes are almost always corrected.  If Lubab thinks that the earth is indeed only 6,000 years old, you are free to find hard mathematical evidence for your theory and write a well written scientific paper to prove this, and publish this paper in a scientific journal.  The Rebbe didn't do this since he did not have any evidence or good argument to offer.  The only time you will find mistakes in science is in recently discovered stuff since there is not a lot of evidence to support this recently discovered stuff.  Only when other scientists confirm the findings with experiments of their own does the theory become concrete.   Global warming is an example since it is a recent discovery.  And all Scientists don't agree with global warming, there is a significant minority that think it is bogus.  As for the Earth going around the Sun, it is a concrete theory that has been proven thousands of times over.  And are there are no (I repeat NO) respected scientists at all who think that the Earth does not go around the Sun. 

Mifletzet:
Scientists like Birkhoff, Burniston-Brown, Moon and Spencer, Mach, Nightingale, Rosser, Lense and Thirring, Bondi, Einstein, Barbour and Bertotti, Bouw etc etc showed how the outer reaches of the universe could not only be moving at many, many times the speed of light, but also how the universe would not fall apart even if it were rotating at trillions of times per second cf an electron circling an atomic nucleus! Relativity says that nothing can go faster than light, in a straight line. But rotational superluminal velocties are permitted. And nowhere does Relativity assign a value to c.

All of these physicists concluded that there is no detectable, experimental difference between having the Earth spin diurnally on an axis as well as orbiting the sun once a year, or having the universe rotate about the Earth once a day and possessing a wobble centered on the sun which carries the planets and stars about the Earth once a year www.geocentricity.com

In none of these models would the universe fly apart, nor would a stationary satellite fall to Earth. In every one of these models the astronauts on the moon would still see all sides of the Earth in the course of 24 hours, the Foucault Pendulum would still swing exactly the same way as we see it in museums, and the Earth's equator would still bulge. In other words, each of these effects is due to either the centrifugal force, the Coriolis force, or some combination of the two and can be totally explained in any geocentric model.

There is a vast body of solid scientific evidence supporting the Torah's 6000 year universe:

evidence such as the rate of decrease of the earth and sun's magnetic fields, the rate of decrease in the size of the solar disc, the high residual warmth of the moon and mere half-inch of dust on its surface (which amazed the Apollo astronauts who had been told to expect being swamped!), the decrease in the speed of light, the paucity of helium and micro-meteoric dust in the atmosphere, the rate of mineral deposition into the oceans, the fallacious premises of radiometric dating, the still "unwrapped" state of the arms of the great spiral galaxies, the thickness of Saturn's rings, the continued existence of short-term comets, human population statistics, the complete dearth of any human record or artifact older than 6000 years, polystrate fossils, the non-organic theory for the origin of oil, dendochronolgy, pleochroic haloes etc etc., all indicative of an astounding recency of creation.

Lubab:

--- Quote from: Muck DeFuslims on June 11, 2007, 11:10:58 PM ---Yes, I've been on a merry-go-round.
And to answer your question, my family that was watching me was correct in observing that it was the merry-go-round moving and not them.
Even when I'm on the merry-go-round I realize that I am moving.

--- End quote ---

Muck let's just stop right there. If you think you can prove that your were moving and your family was not then there is no point in going on to other more complicated issues. This is the crux of what you need to understand.

Take this very comment you just wrote to me about the merry-go-round. Go to a physics professor or anyone who thoroughly understands the theory of relativity. Ask him the following: "Under the the theory of relativity is it possible to prove if you or your famliy was the one in motion".

Do this and get back to me with the response.  ;) Good Luck!

P.S. I really don't want to hear any more debate on this topic until someone has the intellecutal honesty to do this. Otherwise we are just wasting our time here.

P.P.S Also notice Muck how you got yourself into a bit of a pickle. On one hand you're insisting that in truth your family is still. In the same breath you're claiming the earth is revolving around the sun at super-speed. So under your frame of reference your family is not still at all. So think about that and reconsider if what you consider "still" and "moving" are absolute truths are do they just mean they appear to be "moving" or "still" relative to the other things in your view. But most importantly, go talk it over with an expert in relativity.  If you don't have one, I can help you get one.

Mifletzet:

--- Quote from: Muck DeFuslims on June 11, 2007, 06:50:32 PM ---"Most importantly: Can you explain to us please how the scientists go about proving whether the helio-centric or geocentric model is correct? Obviously they start measuring from a partcular focul point, right? How can they prove that their focul point is not also in motion?"

Whether the focal point is static or not has no bearing on the validity of the observation of the relative motion of two other independent bodies.

For example, it doesn't matter if a space probe is moving away from the Earth and Sun and observing the motion of those two celestial bodies relative to each other.

The probe will see the same thing regardless of whether it is stationary, getting closer to the Earth or moving farther away.

The probe would witness the same motion as it journeyed past Mars.

The probe would still be witnessing the same motion as it traversed past Jupiter.

The probe would still observe the same motion as it left the Solar System.

And what it would see and has seen is the Earth orbiting the Sun.

The denial on this issue is incredible.



--- End quote ---


Of course, everything but the last sentence is precisely correct. The last sentence is precisely wrong because we start this sequence of thoughts talking about the observation of RELATIVE motion of two independent bodies, but end up with an asserted observation of absolute motion. This result arrives because the receding probe's ultimate reference frame provided in the middle sentence (probe goes past mars, past Jupiter, leaves Solar System entirely) is a frame tied to the Sun, presupposing that point of reference. Even the term "solar system" belies a sun-centered reference frame being imposed implicitly -- and sometimes explicitly -- on the analysis.

The trajectory the probe takes determines what will appear on its video camera. If the probe leaves the Earth in a straight line from the surface outward, pointing its camera back at the 2-body system, it will record images of the Sun orbiting the Earth. If it leaves the Earth using conventional (and more energy efficient) insertion into space, the Sun will be generally localized as the point from which outward radial motion is determined by the probe.

Consider an observer on the Moon, which keeps one face toward the Earth in orbital phase lock. From the Moon, it appears that the Earth and Moon are not moving at all with respect to each other: the Earth hangs suspended in the lunar sky.  Any reference frame tied to the Moon will conclude that there IS no relative motion in the two-body case. The mystery then is why the two bodies don't gravitationally attract toward each other, given this perception. The lunar observer sees the rest of the cosmos in rotation around the Earth-Moon system, and the Einstein field equations have to be solved to determine the cosmic nontidal rotational gravitational field set up by the cosmos seen in rotation around this 2-body system. The terms in the equation correspond to the Newtonian centrifugal force, keeping the two bodies apart. But my point here is not to discuss the dynamics of that system but the observed kinematics: if you depart from this system on a probe leaving the Moon from a fixed point on its surface, traveling in a straight line outward from the Moon, the probe will record that the two bodies (Earth and Moon) have NO relative motion with respect to one another.  If the probe leaves from a fixed point on the EARTH in a straight line outward, it will see the moon in nearly diurnal rotation around the Earth.  If the probe starts at the SUN and records video images, it sees the Moon revolving around the earth approximately every four weeks.


Technically, no matter where the probe starts or what trajectory it takes, it gives a picture of relative motion, so long as the person interpreting the video recognizes the strong but subtle influence of his mental adoption of a preferred reference frame. As has been long known by mathematicians and physicists, any uniform two-body revolution, or single-body rotation, can be made to disappear by adopting a suitably chosen frame of reference. (E.g., the lunar observer seeing NO relative motion between the Moon and Earth.) What someone SHOULD say in reviewing video from the probe you describe is NOT that the Earth revolves around the Sun (which is an artifact arising out of the choice of trajectory) but rather that the Earth and Sun are in relative motion with respect to each other. The decision as to which body is actually moving cannot be made if we're to make good on the assertion of true relativity of motion (i.e., that we accept the covariance of Einstein's field equations in all particulars).  If someone WERE to have launched a probe in a straight line away from a fixed point on the Earth's surface and returned video feeds (which would all show the Earth dead-center in the field of view at all times), you'd object that the trajectory has been chosen in such a way that it conspires to hide the Earth's motion, since the probe now shares in that alleged motion.  But, of course, you've merely assumed what you set out to prove. You want to lull the reader into a dull sense of inattentiveness to hidden presuppositions and precontemplative commitments concerning a background reference frame into which the entire system is to be set, and against which motion is to be determined. Neither probe, technically, returns neutral information -- a probe is always in its own reference frame, which has relationships to other frames (the Earth's, the Sun's, etc.).  Those relationships determine what is recorded by its video camera, since those relationships determine the positions of the objects being photographed.


The whole point of Einstein's model was to provide a physical rationale for taking all motion to be relative. Under his model, the Earth can be taken as stationary, and the rest of the universe can describe a diurnal rotation around it. Einstein showed how the laws of physics make such a scenario indistinguishable from the Copernican system. They're on an equal footing when Einstein's in the house. Your assumption that the frame of the probe's camera is normative reflects the bald importation of positional bias by, effectively, sleight of hand. The reader has been subtly maneuvered, in the course of your brief analysis, from relative to absolute motion.  Like frogs who don't recognize increasingly hotter water, the conclusion ends up in a place unjustified by the starting axioms.  In short, the analysis is inconsistent, both with itself, and with reality.

There is always a temptation to invite the reader to "stand outside the system and look at it," but the standpoint from which this evaluation is made is ITSELF a reference frame with specific relationships to the frames being examined. There is NO way to filter this circumstance out -- but it is routinely neglected, which falsifies the assessments based thereon.  Your analysis is a textbook case of playing "hide the implied reference frame."

You can come out now -- the game's over.

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