Obviously it matters little if we think of the Earth as turning about on its axis, or if we
view it at rest while the fixed stars revolve around it. Geometrically these are exactly
the same case of a relative rotation of the Earth and the fixed stars with respect to one
another.29 All masses, all velocities, thus all forces are relative. There is no basis for us
to decide between relative and absolute motion….If there are still modern authors who,
through the Newtonian water bucket arguments, allow themselves to be misled into
differentiating between relative and absolute motion, they fail to take into account that
the world system has been given to us only once, but the Ptolemaic and Copernican
views are only our interpretations, but both equally true.30
…
Since the Bible says it’s good to have two or three witness, let me throw in another two
Ph.D.s in Physics to back up what Fred is saying:
As we have seen, Leibniz and Mach emphasized that the Ptolemaic geocentric system
and the Copernican heliocentric system are equally valid and correct….the Copernican
world view, which is usually seen as being proved to be true by Galileo and
Newton….the gravitational attraction between the sun and the planets, the earth and
other planets do not fall into the sun because they have an acceleration relative to the
fixed stars. The distant matter in the universe exerts a force, –mgamf, on accelerated
planets, keeping them in their annual orbits….In the Ptolemaic system, the earth is
considered to be at rest and without rotation in the center of the universe, while the sun,
other planets and fixed stars rotate around the earth….Now the gravitational attraction
of the sun is balanced by a real gravitational centrifugal force due to the annual rotation
of distant masses around the earth (with a component having a period of one year). In
this way the earth can remain at rest and at an essentially constant distance from the
sun. The diurnal rotation of distant masses around the earth (with a period of one day)
yields a real gravitational centrifugal force flattening the earth at the poles. Foucault’s
pendulum is explained by a real Coriolis force acting on moving masses over the earth’s
surface in the form –2mgvme × ωUe, where vme is the velocity of the test body relative to
the earth and ωUe is the angular rotation of the distant masses around the earth. The
effect of this force will be to keep the plane of oscillation of the pendulum rotating
together with the fixed stars.34
Or how about this simple statement from Arthur Eddington, the very scientist
responsible for promoting Einstein’s theory of Relativity with dubious solar eclipse
photographs in 1919:
The bulge of the Earth’s equator may be attributed indifferently to
the Earth’s rotation or to the outward pull of the centrifugal force
introduced when the Earth is regarded as non-rotating.35
So there you have it, plain as the nose on your face. To put it
simply, Hoyle, Assis, and Eddington are saying that when an
astronomer takes into consideration the trillions upon trillions of stars
surrounding us in the universe, their combined force must be
calculated in order to find the center of mass for the universe. Properly
placed, those trillions of stars will allow an object as small as the Earth to be situated precisely in
that center of mass, and, according to Newton’s own laws in his famous Principia, the center of
mass will remain motionless. In fact, Newton himself suggested the Earth could fill that
position.36 But have you ever seen such evidence admitted by Catholic apologists who are
feverishly working on the Galileo affair to come up with some other reason why the Church
made a “mistake” in condemning heliocentrism? I even had one Catholic tell me that he wasn’t
going to pay any attention to what Hoyle and other scientists have said on this matter. As far as
he was concerned, Galileo was right and the case is closed. Any further investigation into the
matter is, in his words, “only going to embarrass the Church.” What’s really “embarrassing” is to
see close-minded Catholics refuse to examine the scientific evidence, but at the same time claim
that science trumps the Church. As Feyerabend puts it: “It is a pity that the Church of today,
frightened by the universal noise made by the scientific wolves, prefers to howl with them
instead of trying to teach them some manners.”37
, then they should at least read what their opponents are saying, instead of relying on like-minded sources, who never seem to address the points made. From the article: