NASA Navigational Model Interprets Scripture

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Steve40

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Recently I have come to the conclusion that it is more likely that the Earth is not moving and the Sun and Moon move around the Earth while the planets move around the Sun. This is the Tyco-Brah model which is currently used by NASA for all their navigational calculations.

My interpretation of Scripture is based upon scientific information and not upon how most Catholics interpret Scripture. I believe that Scripture literally speaks of the Sun rising and setting and that it was the Sun that stopped moving when Joshua requested it to do so. Scientifically, the earth not moving is a better explanation of the Michealson/Morley experiment than Einstein’s Theory of relativity. There are too many holes in relativity theory and it assumes that there is no “ether” or medium for the traveling of light waves. However, physicists have found that sub-atomic particle act as an medium for light. I honestly believe that the majority of the Church is wrong for believing Scripture does not say the Earth is standing still. Is this scientific understanding or belief contrary to Church teaching?
 
Steve,

Thank you for your post. With all respect to you and your thought processes, I will beg to disagree with you. I speak of the sun rising and setting, even though anybody who asks me will receive the reply that the earth rotates and this “rising” and “setting” is merely a convenient shorthand.

I believe that if you look at NASA’s implementation of the Tycho Brahe model, you will find some additional terms for Coriolis and centripetal accelerations. These terms are necessary because the coordinate system in which one is doing one’s calculations is not stationary; it is rotating. There will most likely be additional terms for the acceleration of the earth. While I have not looked at NASA’s equations myself, I have studied in the field of dynamics some and am quite familiar with these terms. (I would add that the centripetal and Coriolis terms were even used in the calculation of bombing tables and artillery tables; without them the predictions of where the bombs and artillery shells would land are consistently wrong.)
Steve40 said:
There are too many holes in relativity theory and it assumes that there is no “ether” or medium for the traveling of light waves. However, physicists have found that sub-atomic particle act as an medium for light.
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If I may ask, what are some of these “holes in relativity theory”? The assumption that something does not exist is generally simpler and easier to believe than the assumption that something exists; thus I would say that a theory that omitted the luminiferous ether is more believable than one that needed it.

I think you have misinterpreted modern physics slightly regarding the nature of light. Light is composed of particles called photons; they are the light itself, though, and not a medium for transmitting light. They pass through empty space themselves and do not need a medium to carry them.
I honestly believe that the majority of the Church is wrong for believing Scripture does not say the Earth is standing still. Is this scientific understanding or belief contrary to Church teaching?
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To answer your final question, Mother Church has not pronounced authoritatively on whether or not the earth is moving. It is a scientific question and doesn’t have any serious theological repercussions (not that I know of, at least) and so we are free to examine the evidence for ourselves and make up our own minds as we see fit.
  • Liberian
 
Librian, thanks for the reply.

Mach postulated that the Carioles effects we see on earth could also be explained by the mass to the universe moving around the earth. Einstein agreed that this could be possible. NASA needs to account for the mass of the universe moving around the earth and the physical effects that this would have.

A major hole in this area of relativity theory, is precisely that you can not have a medium, i.e. what we use to believe was the ether. Light is particle, but it is also wave. Today they are seeing some of the wave effects on the subatomic level. Some scientists are calling it a modern day ether. Einstein’s theory is excellent mathematics, but today it does not accurately describe what we see i.e. the modern day ether. In order for the apparatus or time to compress in the Michealson/Morley experiment you could not have sub atomic particles acting like a medium for light. Einstein did not have this piece of information and today we do.

As to the relevance of the question, it speaks to the Magisterial authority of the Church to interpret Sacred Scripture. For years the Church said that Ceplar’s theory should only be thought as a theory and today we can see that they may have been correct. Galileo did not have enough information to push Ceplarism as fact. From a theological stand point, this new information makes a slight difference on how you view the earth and man’s place in the universe.
 
Steve,
What are your credentials?

Why should we take your word?

What professional journals have you been published in?
 
Steve40,

If believing these things makes you comfortable, that is fine. However, you assert as fact that which is demonstrably incorrect.

The Tycho model used by NASA is used onlyfor near-Earth orbit peojects because it is simpler. With some correction from Newtonian physics, it can be extended as far as the Moon. However, it is useless for planning interplanetary missions.

If we were to assume that all the planets orbited the Earth, then none of the probes that have gone there would have made it because both NASA and the Soviet/Russian space agency used Newtonian physics (with some confirmation ffrom Einsteinian oirbital mechanics) to calculate trajectories, fuel, orientation of burns, etc.

Additionally, if you claim the Earth is stationary, that presents a very real problem. You see, we know how big the Moon and how far away it is. We know how much it weighs and how fast it moves through space. We know all these things because we have been there, several times; both manned and unmanned craft. If the Earth did not rotate and the moon orbitted the Earth in one day, the Moon would be moving at more than 65,000 miles an hour!

Here is how I worked that out.
Lunar mean distance: 250,000 miles.
Orbital circumferance (2 x 250,000 x pi) 1,570,796 miles
Orbitabl speed: (1,570,796 / 24) 65,450 miles per hour.

At that speed, we would not have been able to land anything on the Moon. The moon, in fact would not remain in orbit around the Earth.

I must confess, I have not kept up with modern physics. Even so, I can say with some degree of certainty that if what you claim is true, nuclear weapons would not be able to detonate and radiation, like X-rays and Gamma rays, would not be harmful.

Not to mention we would all be blind. Photons, the light particle, when the strike the rods and cones in our eyes, generate a small electrical charge which is interpreted by our brain as sight. Rods are more sentive than cones and need less light, but cannot differentiate between different wavelength (colors). Cones need more light to excite the optic nerve, but can see color. Cone are concentrated near the center of our vision while rods are uses mainly for human peripheral vision. Many animal, notably horses and dogs, do not have cones at all and thus can only see in black and white.

Finally, there are no “holes” in relativistic physics. There are boundaries as it is not a theory of everything, but it has been rigourously proven and not found wanting. That is not to say Einstein got it 100% right, corrections have been made in nearly 100 years since Special and General Reletivity were first published.

Faith and Reason are not in conflict. To deny the Magisterial authority is a very serious matter.

Methinks a lot of education is good, but a little can be very dangerous.

By the way, I do know a bit about what I am talking about. I am a former astonomer. There was just no money in it so now I am a computer software programmer.
 
ByzCath said:
Steve,
What are your credentials?

Why should we take your word?

What professional journals have you been published in?
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My credentials are that I have a Bachelors of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering. That’s it. No more, no less, but you don’t need a science or engineering degree of any kind to understand or ask questions about the world we live in. No body want to think for them self any more. We shouldn’t need to be an expert to ask questions about things.

You don’t need to listen to me. It’s up to you to do the homework and figure out what I’m saying for yourself, if you want.
 
Steve40 said:
My credentials are that I have a Bachelors of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering. That’s it. No more, no less, but you don’t need a science or engineering degree of any kind to understand or ask questions about the world we live in. No body want to think for them self any more. We shouldn’t need to be an expert to ask questions about things.

You don’t need to listen to me. It’s up to you to do the homework and figure out what I’m saying for yourself, if you want.
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Thank you.

I have and I find that I trust the experts in their fields just as I trust the experts in other fields. There is no way we can learn it all or know everything. Many things are so complex it is best to leave it to the experts.

Especially in this matter.

Anyways, the Sacred Scriptures are not a manual of science and where never meant to be such. I have come to this conclusion though my studies and it seems to match that of many of the experts in that field too.
 
Steve40 said:
My credentials are that I have a Bachelors of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering. That’s it. No more, no less, but you don’t need a science or engineering degree of any kind to understand or ask questions about the world we live in. No body want to think for them self any more. We shouldn’t need to be an expert to ask questions about things.

You don’t need to listen to me. It’s up to you to do the homework and figure out what I’m saying for yourself, if you want.
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So basically, you are saying you do not need to be educated to understand particle physics, astronomy, and orbital mechanics.

Hmm… My college professors would probably disgree with you.

In addition, your response implies that if we disgree with you, we are lazy and do not waht to think for ourselves. That fact that some us are experts here does not matter you?

There is a reason why some people are experts. I do not know what you do for a living, but for the sake of argument, let us say you are a carpenter. Yoiu build houses. A good profession that requires much skill. Does that make you qualified to work heavy construction and high steel? How about planning an HVAC system for a 150,000 square foot office building. Can the average carpenter design or operate a nuclear reactor just by thinking about or reading a book or two.

Well, I actually know, like most people, the answer to those questions. The answer is No!

Of course we must rely on experts.

With all you wrote, the most disturbing thing you said is that the Church is wrong. That is a serious charge. That also creates a very serious barrier between you and the Church. You can reject modern technology and knowledge, but I fear for your soul when you reject the Church.
 
rpp said:
Steve40,

The Tycho model used by NASA is used onlyfor near-Earth orbit peojects because it is simpler. With some correction from Newtonian physics, it can be extended as far as the Moon. However, it is useless for planning interplanetary missions.
.
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All planets moving just around the earth would not show retrograde motion. The Tyco Brah model has the other planets going around the sun and the sun going around the earth. All of the motion is relative. If the earth is going around on an axis or if the universe goes round the earth, either way, while having no frame of reference, either view works. We would have to be out side the universe to see it, like God.

The Michealson/Morley experiment was trying to see the effects of the earth moving around the sun, by observing an interference fringe when a single source of light is reflected perpendicular to itself. The idea is that the light that is moving with the earth will get out of sync with the light wave that is perpendicular to it. It was pretty creative especially for the time. It’s kind of like solving a problem in the frequency domain when the time domain solution is too difficult. Anyway, they did not see the interference fringe and the understanding of physics at the time could not explain it. One explanation that they did not consider is that everything else is moving and the earth is not. All motion is relative to something. It was a few years later before Einstein attempted to explain the results with the theory of relativity. But as I said I don’t think relativity holds up when you consider the effects of light on sub atomic particles. Hence, the Church may very well have been right while the whole world still thinks she is wrong. It’s worth looking at for that reason alone. I have no credentials but this is neat stuff to look at.

Steve
 
rpp said:
With all you wrote, the most disturbing thing you said is that the Church is wrong. That is a serious charge. That also creates a very serious barrier between you and the Church. You can reject modern technology and knowledge, but I fear for your soul when you reject the Church.
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No, I’ m saying the Church was right. The Church condemned Ceplarism with a Papal Bull.

And yes some times you have to think outside the educational box. Schools of thought can be wrong.
 
Thanks for the link, but none of it is proof that the earth is moving. It is all conclusions based upon a certain point of view. The observations can be explained from an earth stationary perspective.

What fascinated me the most about looking into this is how much we really don’t know. In all things, it is important to have an understanding of what constitutes true empirical proof and what is only a glimpse, or a limited view.

Engineers tend to work more with empirical data and can be skeptical of theoretical assumptions. We have to be. Some times lives can depend upon being wrong about the amount of uncertainty or a poor assumption.

In this case, maybe the only risk is embarrassment when we meet God face to face along with the Magisterium who defended a stationary earth. Howvever, it could also cause us to have a distorted view of the universe in which we live.
 
Steve40 said:
Mach postulated that the Carioles effects we see on earth could also be explained by the mass to the universe moving around the earth. Einstein agreed that this could be possible. NASA needs to account for the mass of the universe moving around the earth and the physical effects that this would have.
Click to expand...
Steve,

What I hear you saying here is that there is some speculation that the Coriolis and centripetal effects can be “explained” by the mass of the universe moving around the earth. This cuts to the root of exactly what science is all about. Science is simply a description of how things work. If you use a coordinate system with the mass of the universe rotating, you are going to get these extra terms in your equations, and if you use a coordinate system with the mass of the universe not rotating, you will not get these terms. Neither view holds more reality than the other, but the equations from the nonrotating universe are a lot easier to work with.
A major hole in this area of relativity theory, is precisely that you can not have a medium, i.e. what we use to believe was the ether. Light is particle, but it is also wave. Today they are seeing some of the wave effects on the subatomic level. Some scientists are calling it a modern day ether. Einstein’s theory is excellent mathematics, but today it does not accurately describe what we see i.e. the modern day ether.
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Sorry, but you’re going to have to give me some references for this. I’m pretty current in the field and haven’t heard of this “modern day ether.” I also know that light is neither wave nor particle, but simply light. “Wave” and “particle” are useful terms to describe specific behaviors of light (and of other subatomic things as well), but scientists know that light itself is neither a wave or a particle. I have also heard the Einstein’s theory of general relativity has been verified to several significant figures, which for a theory is EXTREMELY good.
As to the relevance of the question, it speaks to the Magisterial authority of the Church to interpret Sacred Scripture. For years the Church said that Ceplar’s theory should only be thought as a theory and today we can see that they may have been correct. Galileo did not have enough information to push Ceplarism as fact.
Click to expand...
Well, for years Kepler’s theory was indeed just a theory and was not well-established. And you are right, Galileo did indeed theorize beyond what his data showed. But we have figured out a few things since then–for example, that Kepler’s theory is not exactly right, although it is an excellent approximation. When the Church said that Kepler’s theory was just a theory and no more, that was a true statement.
  • Liberian
 
Steve40 said:
Thanks for the link, but none of it is proof that the earth is moving. It is all conclusions based upon a certain point of view. The observations can be explained from an earth stationary perspective.

What fascinated me the most about looking into this is how much we really don’t know. In all things, it is important to have an understanding of what constitutes true empirical proof and what is only a glimpse, or a limited view.

Engineers tend to work more with empirical data and can be skeptical of theoretical assumptions. We have to be. Some times lives can depend upon being wrong about the amount of uncertainty or a poor assumption.

In this case, maybe the only risk is embarrassment when we meet God face to face along with the Magisterium who defended a stationary earth. Howvever, it could also cause us to have a distorted view of the universe in which we live.
Click to expand...
Steve,
Do you drive a car, (automobile)?
All the arguments you have thrown up could be used by you to state that when you drive to work, it is not your car that moves, but rather, your car remains stationary, and the rest of the universe moves under the wheels of the car. Likewise, you might claim that when you, standing on the spot, turn about, it is not you that rotates through 180 degrees, but the rest of the universe.
The counter to both of these arguments can be examined by considering what would happen if a small explosive charge was placed between a penny and a ton weight. when the charge is detonated, the two objects will fly apart. Your logic claims that the penny will be static, and the ton weight will disappear in a puff of smoke, but the common obsever will see things otherwise.
Yes, there is difficulty in aligning Maxwellian electrodynamics and special relativity. That is what general relativity tries, with limited success to explain. The truth is, the model, even now, is not complete.
A photon does not move.
A photon is the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter.
According to special relativity, to the light-wave, it does not move, for to the light-wave, time is static, and the dimension of space in the direction of travel is collapsed to a singularity.
When you can understand this, you will understand how c+c=c!
 
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