Response to Keating Critique of Geocentrism

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R. Sungenis: Apparently Alec hasn’t heard of the calculations produced by physicists Misner, Thorne and Wheeler who, also attributing their work to the foundation laid by Hans Thirring and Joseph Lense, have shown that the same “distant rotating masses” [stars] act to form a gyroscopic effect on the center of mass [all within the realm of Newtonian physics]. With an isotropically dispersed universe (which we know is the case to within 1 to 100,000 based on the cosmic microwave background radiation), this would make the center object the center of mass, namely, Earth in the geocentric model. That being the case, the Earth is held in place, based on Newtonian physics, by the stars in rotation.

If Alec needs to brush up on this principle, I suggest he first read Max Born’s book cited above; the book “Gravitation” by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, pages 547ff and 1117-1119; as well as the two papers written by Lense and Thirring (Thirring, Hans. Über die Wirkung rotierender ferner Massen in der Einsteinschen Gravitationstheorie. Physikalische Zeitschrift 19, 33 (1918), trans. “On the effect of Rotating Distant Masses in Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation.” Three years later Thirring made a correction and wrote: Thirring, Hans. Berichtigung zu meiner Arbeit: “Über die Wirkung rotierender ferner Massen in der Einsteinschen Gravitationstheorie.” Physikalische Zeitschrift 22, 29 (1921), trans. "Correction to my paper ‘On the effect of Rotating Distant Masses in Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation.’)

Alec: In looking at the star field we see parallax shifts and doppler shifts as the earth orbits the sun. If the earth were to be still, we would have to have the entire star field, 14 billion light years across, not only orbiting the earth once per day, but doing so with an annual wobble with exactly the same diameter as the diameter of the earth’s orbit around the sun (or the sun’s orbit around the earth as Sungenis would have it), where the plane of the wobble is angled to the plane of rotation by 23.5 degrees. That’s simply bizarre.

R. Sungenis: Bizzare? Not according to Mach, Einstein, Lense and Thirring and all honest physicists who know the true meaning of Relativity. And it certainly wasn’t “bizzare” to the Church Fathers and the Medievals, many of whom were astute cosmologists just like the Greeks they opposed. And it certainly wasn’t “bizarre” to Robert Bellarmine and the three popes who approved his condemnation of Copernicanism. The only thing “bizzare,” as I see it, is that in the face of all this evidence, the terms “crank” and “buffoonery” and other derogatory names are levied against people who point it out.

Alec: Oh - and then there’s the proper motion of the sun and planets within the galaxy - the rotation of the solar system about galactic centre - or should we believe that the earth is still and that all these proper motions are superimposed on the star field and the planets. What on earth is the origin of all the bizarre forces we would need if we claim the earth’s surface is an inertial frame? Retrograde planetary motion is explained with overwheling power by the Copernican system and is quite intractable to a cosmology with a stationary earth. Sungenis is monumentally wrong.

R. Sungenis: Already answered above. Alec simply hasn’t availed himself of the literature on this very subject, or he simply doesn’t understand the implications of what he is reading.

Alec: But wait - it doesn’t get better when we turn from classical mechanics to general relativity. There is, for example, an anomaly in the precession of Mercury’s perihelion that cannot be explained by Newtonian mechanics - 532 arc seconds of precession per century is explained by Newtonian mechanics but 43 arcseconds per century can only explained (and is predicted) by GR. GR will not predict this observation if we take earth as the fixed frame and have Mercury behaving lke a classical Greek planetai - a wanderer about the sky.
 
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R. Sungenis: Again, it appears that Alec hasn’t availed himself of all the literature on this subject. He is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Galileo Was Wrong, that gives a more accurate picture than what Alec is providing:

In Einstein’s attempt to account for the residual perihelion, there has been some suspicion that, knowing the accepted value in advance (43 arc seconds), he juggled his figures to meet those expectations. That Einstein was already aware of the needed figure was made plain in his book on Relativity.

The original Einstein-Grossmann theory accounted for only 18’’ of the residual 43’’ of Mercury’s perihelion, which is documented in the original Einstein-Besso manuscripts made public in 1914 by Dutch physicist Johannes Droste. Einstein subsequently retracted the paper, changed his Relativistic field equations no less than three times, and resubmitted them three times, respectively, to the Berlin Academy before the final result of 43’’ was achieved. Still, Charles Lane Poor adds that in arriving at the 43’’ Einstein did not use the unit of time from his Relativity theory, but used the commonly accepted Newtonian unit of time.

Physicist Tom Van Flandern studied Einstein’s calculations and found there were “three separate contributions to the perihelion; two of which add, and one of which cancels part of the other two; and you wind up with the right multiplier.” The same article reports that Van Flandern approached a University of Maryland colleague who had known Einstein in their respective work at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study regarding how, in his opinion, Einstein had arrived at the accepted figure of 43 arc seconds. The colleague replied that it was his impression that “knowing the answer, he jiggered the arguments until they came out with the right value.” The caveat for Einstein is that, once 43’’ is chosen as the final figure, it cannot be changed in the future, due to the equations he formulated based upon the General Relativity theory. Thus, if the figure turns out to be anything more or less than 43’’, Relativity is automatically disqualified. As Relativist Clifford Will admits: “…the prediction of general relativity is fixed at 43 arcseconds; it can’t be fiddled with.” Being caught in such a corner, Relativists will cause quite a fuss over anyone who has claims to an alternate figure, as we shall see below.

Subsequent calculations of Mercury’s perihelion were made after Einstein supported the 43’’ figure. In 1930, the figure was raised to 50.9. Just prior to the 1960s, it was set back at 32.0. These wide-ranging values are due to the procedural difficulties stemming from having to account for all the mass and movements in the solar system. In reality, depending on how one views or juggles the figures, one can make the residual perihelion vary quite extensively.

In the face of these difficulties, some have suggested using the perihelia of Venus, Earth or Mars to help prove Relativity theory. But this presents an even worse dilemma for Relativity considering the anomalous results of Einstein’s predictions for the perihelia of the other planets. Indeed, it is puzzling why Relativists would want to open this Pandora’s Box at all. Perhaps they are hoping that no one will investigate the original records of Relativity’s predictions, but the investigation has already been done. A person close to the scene and one who obtained General Relativity’s original perihelia predictions was astronomer Charles Lane Poor of Columbia University. He indicates in his book Gravity versus Relativity that Relativity predicted a –7.3’’ precession for Venus, but the actual precession is +8.6’’. In other words, Relativity predicted a perihelion for Venus that was going in the opposite direction. As Poor describes it:

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continued from previous…

The perihelion of this planet is rotating more slowly than the computations indicate it should, the difference being –7.3’’ per century. The Einstein formulas would increase the theoretical speed of rotation by an additional 8.6’’, thus making the total discrepancy between observation and theory 15.9 or 37% of the entire observed motion. The Einstein formulas, in this case, make a bad matter worse; they give the orbit a rotation in the direction opposite to that which is required to fit the observations. Thus the Relativity theory is not sufficient to explain the discordances in the planetary motions. It accounts approximately for only one among the numerous discrepancies that of the perihelion of Mercury. It fails completely to explain any position of several well-tested irregularities and it doubles the observed discrepancy in the motion of Venus.

Some advocates of Relativity attempt to cover up these inconsistencies, as seen, for example, in Hugh Ross’ assertion that General Relativity found a precession for Venus of “8.6,” a figure, according to his endnotes, that he obtained from Steven Weinberg’s Gravitation and Cosmology. Neither of the two authors mention the –7.3 figure. Poor also reports that Einstein’s Relativity predicted a precession for Mars of +8.1’’, but the actual precession is +1.3’’, a difference of 623%. Not surprisingly, Weinberg and Ross leave out General Relativity’s anomalous prediction, replacing it with the precession of the asteroid Icarus. Last but not least, Einstein also made an erroneous prediction of earth’s perihelion, assigning a figure of 3.8’’ when, according to heliocentric mechanics, it is actually 5.9’’.

Alec: But GR makes yet another prediction - that rotating masses distort space-time in their vicinity (this is called frame-dragging). So we should be able to detect the distortion of the curvature of space-time by the rotation of the earth. The practical problem is that it is a tiny effect. Nevertheless two months ago the frame dragging effect of the earth’s rotation was detected:

Ciufolini & Pavlis ‘A confirmation of the general relativistic prediction of the Lense–Thirring effect’ Nature 431, 958–960 (2004), with this abstract:

‘An important early prediction of Einstein’s general relativity was the advance of the perihelion of Mercury’s orbit, whose measurement provided one of the classical tests of Einstein’s theory. The advance of the orbital point-of-closest-approach also applies to a binary pulsar system and to an Earth-orbiting satellite. General relativity also predicts that the rotation of a body like Earth will drag the local inertial frames of reference around it, which will affect the orbit of a satellite. This Lense–Thirring effect has hitherto not been detected with high accuracy, but its detection with an error of about 1 per cent is the main goal of Gravity Probe B—an ongoing space mission using orbiting gyroscopes. Here we report a measurement of the Lense–Thirring effect on two Earth satellites: it is 99+/-5 per cent of the value predicted by general relativity’

In conclusion, Sungenis is ignored by the scientific estblishment, not because there is a conspiracy to silence him, but because his claims are laughable - they are simply silly, unsupported by theoretical or empirical science. Anyone who cares for the Church should distance themselves from his buffoonery.

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R. Sungenis: I’m happy I’ve gotten to the point in my Christian life where I can let epithets such as “crank” “baffoon” “laughable” and “silly” roll off my back, and I’m especially grateful to the Lord that I have learned not to return any of those insults against my opponent. Be that as it may, again, Alec is either purposely deceiving this forum, or Alec simply can’t see the implications of what he is reading.

Notice that Alec makes reference to the very names I spoke about earlier, Lense and Thirring. Yet what Alec fails to tell the public is that the Lense-Thirring effect was produced when Lense and Thirring originally hypothesized a rotating universe around a fixed Earth! What Alec and our friendly Relativists have done with the Ciufolini & Pavlis evidence is make it look as if it can only support a rotating Earth in a fixed universe, the exact opposite of what Lense and Thirring said! Frame-dragging is no big deal. They’ve known about it for years. The question is: what is doing the dragging? Rotation always causes frame-dragging. But is it the universe in rotation or is it the Earth in rotation that is causing the dragging? The plain fact is that Relativity can’t tell us the answer, because to them everything is relative! This is precisely why Max Born, whom I quoted above, said that, according to Einstein’s Relativity, Ptolemy and Copernicus are both right. The least Alec should do, if indeed he really knows the science, is tell you both sides of the story, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be his agenda.
 
Vincent,
You wrote: At the end of “Looping and Zig-Zagging Satellites,” Hoge writes that “[a]t this point, Mr. Sugenis [sic] broke off the discussion, citing the need to answer other people who had ‘more pertinent material’ to offer.’” Do you know if they began another discussion on it?>>

In his response to Alec, Mr. Sungenis wrote: “(Incidentally, the following information was also forwarded to Mr. Gary Hoge over a similar discussion we were having concerning the origin of centrifugal and Coriolis forces. Mr. Hoge has yet to respond to me concerning it).”

That’s all I know.

God bless,
Michael Forrest
 
Tim writes:

“Are you representing Sungenis? If not, why should anyone send anything to him.”

Did you read this entire thread? I think I’ve explained who I am and my motives pretty clearly, Tim. I’ve spent an awful lot of time trying to faciliate a discussion (although hopefully in another venue eventually, this one is painfully inadequate…taking me forever to respond to everyone…) with nothing but honest, decent motives, and I’m quickly tiring of the accusations, negative implications and general nastiness.

Tim: You started the thread, you are the one that Alec replied to. If Sungenis wants to get involved, great. Otherwise, you should try to answer the substance of Alec’s post and not lecture him on his delivery. As Alec noted, the dispute is about science, not how to deliver the message.>>

I don’t agree, Tim. You don’t seem to have any idea why I started this thread, and I have to believe it’s because you haven’t bothered to read carefully. As such, I don’t know why I’m really bothering to respond to you. My time is more valuable than that. Go back a reread. And as for “delivery”, since when is insult and invective irrelevant for a Catholic? I’m not Alec’s pin-cushion, and neither am I yours. I am merely trying to bring the heat down, so more light can be seen. If you think his tone has been just fine, that’s your opinion. I’m letting him know that if he intends to continue the conversation, I have limits and I will hold to them. That is MY prerogative.

Tim: As far as Alec refering to Sungenis as a crank, well, quite frankly, anyone who genuinely holds to geocentrism will be considered a crank because the idea is scientifically preposterous.>>

Well, hopefully we’ll all get more opportunity to make our own minds up about that, thank you.

Listen, for now, it seems that “Alec” is the point man for your position. Robert Sungenis seems to be giving a little time to the geocentrist position right now, so I’ll pass a couple back and forth if that helps the discussion. But I don’t have time for every little thing that is said…and I still think this forum is inadequate. Okay? So don’t take it personally if I don’t respond to you anymore. You know where you can reach Mr. Sungenis if you want to discuss with him personally or in another, better-suited venue.

God bless,
Michael Forrest
 
Dear Neophyte:

As you candidly admit that you’ve already made up your mind that Mr. Sungenis is not worth discussing the issue with, then you are of no use to my intention here. Nothing personal. My interest was twofold: a) to see if Mr. Keating was willing and/or able to respond in greater detail about the issue that he began with another individual on another thread (they critiqued Mr. Sungenis and geocentrism), and b) to see if anyone else was both interested in and capable of carrying on a civilized discussion/debate…but preferably in a more suitable venue (my hands are killing me…and I’ve spent hours typing this stuff in in 5,000 character chunks, trying to fit it in, etc! Can you say “carpal tunnel”?)…for the benefit of anyone who thinks the topic is interesting, worth looking at (me being one of them).
As such, of course, I won’t be responding to any more of your posts (again, nothing personal…just a time/intention thing).
May God bless you in your journey.

In Christ,
Michael Forrest
 
You write:
I am not going to search his site for articles that refute what I stated above. The burden is upon you to do that and to provide a specific link to any such refutation, or to post the refutation here. I will gadly read and consider it, but I’m not going to research your position for you.>>

Okay, I’m really exhausted, but let me try this one more time: go back a reread all of my posts and find out what my actual intentions were in starting this thread and who I am.

You write: “You won’t be able to do your position justice by labeling such facts as opinions.”

Hint: I am trying to DECIDE what my “position” IS. Does that clarify? I believe many others are trying to decide, too, and would benefit from a good discussion. I have only said that I see certain things that strike me…that the case against geocentrism is not so simple as some make out, imo…which is NOT the same at all as saying, “yes, I’m an avowed geocentrist”. I brought out a few things that struck me, to hopefully elicit some interest in the topic, start discussion. Again, reread my first posts. I was hoping to encourage more debate/discussion, and not primarily on this forum…it’s just too cumbersome.

You write: “These are not merely my opinions. You have evaded posting any counter argument by trying to label these facts as opinions. You have not advanced your argument by this tactic.”

Now you accuse me of “evading” and using “tactics” to prove a position that I haven’t even taken? Evading implies intention by definition, and unless you can read hearts, All4Lifetoo, you’re out of line. I don’t need an advanced degree in physics (or even theology) to understand that. Are you this quick and inaccurate in your scientific judgments, too?

In Christ,
Michael Forrest
 
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hecd2:
Continuation

But wait - it doesn’t get better when we turn from classical mechanics to general relativity. There is, for example, an anomaly in the precession of Mercury’s perihelion that cannot be explained by Newtonian mechanics - 532 arc seconds of precession per century is explained by Newtonian mechanics but 43 arcseconds per century can only explained (and is predicted) by GR. GR will not predict this observation if we take earth as the fixed frame and have Mercury behaving lke a classical Greek planetai - a wanderer about the sky.

Alec
evolutionpages.com
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Poor Albert !,his 1920 view was even worse than Newton’s -

" If we ponder over the question as to how the universe, considered as a whole, is to be regarded, the first answer that suggests itself to us is surely this: As regards space (and time) the universe is infinite. There are stars everywhere, so that the density of matter, although very variable in detail, is nevertheless on the average everywhere the same. In other words: However far we might travel through space, we should find everywhere an attenuated swarm of fixed stars of approximately the same kind and density.* 1* This view is not in harmony with the theory of Newton. The latter theory rather requires that the universe should have a kind of centre in which the density of the stars is a maximum, and that as we proceed outwards from this centre the group-density of the stars should diminish, until finally, at great distances, it is succeeded by an infinite region of emptiness. The stellar universe ought to be a finite island in the infinite ocean of space. 1* 2* This conception is in itself not very satisfactory. It is still less satisfactory because it leads to the result that the light emitted by the stars and also individual stars of the stellar system are perpetually passing out into infinite space, never to return, and without ever again coming into interaction with other objects of nature. Such a finite material universe would be destined to become gradually but systematically impoverished."

bartleby.com/173/30.html

I’m sure Albert’s words sounded great in 1920 but then again the idea of “stars everywhere” went out the window barely 3 years later in 1923 when these things showed up.

physik.uni-goettingen.de/schule/Werbung/Stern/M100.jpg

The most precious thing in all Christianity is the association between temporal time and Eternal Time and how one encompasses the other.Relativity otoh, is more of a wordplay than a concept but at least it is a good way for mathematicians to make work for themselves .

If anyone cares to go through the Real history behind the emergence of relativity as a concept,be prepared to be shocked that it has been allowed to snowball for a century into the empirical monster that it is.
 
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All4lifetoo:
For the first 10 of my 21 years in the Air Force I was a member of a Titan II ICBM Combat Crew. . . .
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In my USAF days I was stationed at Vandenberg AFB in CA. We conducted missile tests by firing them westward down the Western Test Range to Kwajalein. But spy satellites were launched south, from South Vandenberg, thereby going into polar orbit, and allowing nearly full coverage of the earth as it rotated beneath them. If the earth did not rotate, they would simply be photographing the same slice of real estate day after day!
 
Michael Forrest:
Now you accuse me of “evading” and using “tactics” to prove a position that I haven’t even taken? Evading implies intention by definition, and unless you can read hearts, All4Lifetoo, you’re out of line. I don’t need an advanced degree in physics (or even theology) to understand that. Are you this quick and inaccurate in your scientific judgments, too?

In Christ,
Michael Forrest
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Michael Forrest,

I don’t think that my comments are out of line, but since the direction of this discussion is non-productive allow me to attempt to change it.

I believe that there may be a way to directly measure the period of revolution of the Moon around the Earth independent of any theoretical rotation of the Universe around a stationary Earth.

The accepted sidereal period of the Moon around the Earth is 27.32 days and the accepted period of the Moon’s rotation is 27.32 days, thus causing the Moon to always present the same face or view toward the Earth. Under your theory the sedereal period and the rotation of the Moon would be one day to maintain the same appearance.

Imagine for a moment a satellite in a circular orbit. The satellite has no rotation. An observer on the satellite looking at the center focus of the orbit would be required to rotate on the satellite at a rate equal to the satellites orbital period in order to always face the focus of the orbit. If the satellite orbited the focus once in 24 hours the observer would be required to make one rotation on the satellite in 24 hours in order to always face the orbit’s focus. This rate of rotation of the observer could be measured.

NASA could put a satellite into the same orbit as that of the Moon. The satellite would trail the Moon by a sufficent distance that the Moon’s gravity would not pull it into the Moon or accelerate it. The satellite would have no rotation of it’s own. It would maintain a plane of reference in space that would be gryoscopically controlled. It would not be allowed to maintain it’s plane by reference to the stars because this would transfer your theorical rotation of the universe to the satellite. Mounted on the satellite is an instrument that locks itself onto the Moon and tracks the Moon. As the satellite orbits the Earth it is necessary for the tracking device to rotate on the satellite to track the Moon in the same manner as the observer on the non-rotating satellite had to rotate to face the focus of the orbit. The rate of this rotation would be measured. If it takes one day to rotate 360 degrees then you are correct. The Moon orbits the Earth in 24 hours. If it takes 27.32 days then you are incorrect. The Moon orbits the Earth in one month and a rotating Earth is neccessary to produce the 24 hour period of the Moon. Such instrumentation capable of this experiment already exist because it is used on the M1 tank to lock targets while the body of the tank moves around under the gun turret.

Your duty or Sungenis’ duty would be to convince NASA that your theory of a stationary Earth and rotating universe is plausable enough to merit a space mission to test it.

If there is a flaw in my theory of how the period of the Moon’s orbit might be directly measured in this manner, I trust someone will point it out to me. Perhaps hecd2 could comment on my purposed method.
 
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JimG:
In my USAF days I was stationed at Vandenberg AFB in CA. We conducted missile tests by firing them westward down the Western Test Range to Kwajalein. But spy satellites were launched south, from South Vandenberg, thereby going into polar orbit, and allowing nearly full coverage of the earth as it rotated beneath them. If the earth did not rotate, they would simply be photographing the same slice of real estate day after day!
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I remember my Operational Readiness Training at Vandenberg AFB in early 1972. I saw a couple of launches while I was there. I also remember the bumpy plane ride along the mountain ridges from LA to Lompoc.

The argument you present does not refute Sungenis’ position because he maintains that the coverage of the Earth in such a situation is caused, not by the Earth’s rotation, but by the satellite being rotated around the Earth. He contends that the satellite is dragged around the Earth as the Universe rotates around the Earth.

Some method of measurement must be found that would allow for any theorectical Universe rotation to be neutralized.
 
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All4lifetoo:
…The success of the calculations used to launch satellites, based on the knowledge of the Earth’s rotation demonstrate the correctness of this knowledge. The consistency and agreement of the physical measurements of the forces on the launch vehicle and of the satellite itself, with the known speed of Earth rotation demonstrate the correctness of this knowledge…
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This is the correct line of arguement to use against this nonsense. Our proven ability to navigate satellites into orbit around the various planets of the solar system (and their moons) demonstrates we know what we’re doing (e.g., orbits around Jupiter are not geocentric, they’re Jupiter-centric. If anyone is interested in brushing up on the basic physics, check out this site:

www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf-toc.htm
 
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CatholicMatthew:
The one thing you have to remember about geocentrism is that all motion is measured relative to the point of measurement. I have seen mathematically worked out the translation of a sun centered solar system and the accompanying formulas for predicting the paths of the planets and I have seen it translated into an earth centered as well as mars centered formulas…
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IOW, mathematically, you can arbitrarily choose the origin of your coordinate system to be anywhere. But the coordinate system is usually chosen to keep the math workable (i.e., as simple as possible). But don’t confuse the origin of the coordinate system with the center of mass of the central body of gravitational attraction. It might be in the same place. But a planet’s mass is not gravitationally attracted to a coordinate system. It’s attracted to the center of mass of the central body (i.e., the sun).
 
Michael Forrest:
…It seems to me that at least the geocentrist has in his favor the fact that the fathers and saints of Church were very clear on this, as well as the popes. To a geocentrist, this can be viewed as a matter of faith. For the non-geocentrist, it is de facto NOT a matter of faith…
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Doesn’t infallibility only apply to religious and moral truth, not scientific truth? So what does it matter if the fathers and saints and popes were geocentrists? Their teaching isn’t protected from error in matters of scientific truth.
 
Michael,
Code: 
   Where’s Bob? 

   Almost all of your reply to me consists in content-free complaints about my characterisation of Bob as a scientific crank, which, if we mean someone who holds tenaciously to an extremely unconventional scientific position through ignorance or error, he is.  Other than displaying religiously motivated prejudices against areas of medicine and science outside the topics of gravity and inertia, it seems you have nothing to offer.  Your strongest argument consists in citing the Fathers of the Church and Popes on the position of the earth in the cosmos.  This is an argument that requires no refutation since these people have no scientific authority.  The validity of their views on scientific matters is no better than the scientifically uneducated man in the street, and in many cases it is worse, as it motivated not by scientific considerations but ideological ones.  Ideological considerations are the worst possible in developing theories about the natural world.  Since you claim to think it interesting to discuss these matters, can I expect an answer from you, or do we wait for Bob?

   Bob at least has something of substance to say, however muddled up it might be. I am reluctant to spend my time educating him if he continues to speak through the mouth of an intermediary, so I will simply make these comments about the arguments that he presented through you.  Then, unless he turns up himself, that will be all I have to say on the matter.

   The fact is that Bob’s arguments are riddled with logical inconsistencies and scientific misunderstanding.  Let us start with the fact that his entire position rests on his interpretation of General Relativity.  If we remove GR or similar metric theories from consideration, then he cannot begin to answer, using Newtonian considerations, most of the arguments I put forward. If we accept GR, we also accept, tentatively, the very strong equivalence principle, which means that whatever arguments we accept with regard to the origin of fictitious forces on earth, equally well apply to the rim of a gyroscope orbiting the earth or a quasar 11 billion light years away.  In other words, under those circumstances, there are no preferred reference frames and then it is utterly meaningless to talk about the earth or anywhere else being at rest or being at the centre of the universe. However, there are some rather strong conditions that we have to consider with regard to the spacetime manifold in which we develop the solutions to the Einstein field equations, in order to get this result. We’ll look at this in a little more detail below.

   If Bob is to have any kind of argument at all, he needs gravitomagetics – a consequence of GR – to be correct.  But Bob proceeds to attempt a demolition of GR, which is rather like sawing off the branch on which you are sitting. He does so by calling into question the fit of experimental values of anomalous perihelion precession of Mercury and Venus. But he does so with ancient data – Poor worked in the 1930s, was adamantly anti-GR and his views have since disappeared into the dustbin of history.  Since Bob clearly needs an update on the current theoretical (according to GR) and measured perihelion precessions of some planetary bodies, let me assist him:

   Even if we go as far back as 1972, we find this in Weinberg’s ‘Gravitation and Cosmology:

            Mercury  Theoretical: 42.98  Measured: 43.1 +/- 0.5
Venus Theoretical: 8.6 Measured: 8.4+/-0.8
Earth Theoretical: 3.8 Measured: 5.0+/- 1.2
Icarus Theoretical 10.3 Measured: 9.8+/- 0.8
Code: 
   Ohanian and  Ruffini’s ‘Gravitation and Spacetime’ published in 1994 gives results for more recent observations:

     Mercury: 43.1 +/- 0.1
Venus: 8.62
Earth: 3.84
Code: 
   There is very little more that needs to be said about Bob’s attempted demolition of the main plank of his own argument other than it displays a rather pathetic lack of logical consistency and that it is utterly impotent.
*** To be continued***
 
***Continuation

*** Let’s turn now to Bob’s claim that the Lense-Thirring effect is old news and that it explains the Coriolis and centrifugal forces on a stationary Earth around which the universe rotates once per day (he also claims that Lense and Thirring ‘produced’ – I think he means ‘quantified’, as Einstein had already predicted it – this effect by hypothesising a stationary earth around which the universe rotates). In fact Lense and Thirring were quite clear from the outset that they were treating the dragging of inertial frames by rotating masses generally – see for example Lense and Thirring – Uber den Einfluss der Eigenrotation der Zentralkoerper auf die Bewegung der Planeten und Monde nach der Einsteinschen Gravitationstheorie’ 1918.
Code: 
  Note that Bob doesn’t tell us exactly what the Lense-Thirring effect is. The theory predicts that for a rotating mass in the slow rotation and weak field condition, the inertial frames of reference are dragged in the plane of the rotating body at an angular velocity equal to 2J/R^3 where J is the angular momentum and R is the distance from the centre of mass of the body. Within a thin massive shell, the inertial frames are dragged with an angular velocity = 4M.omegadot/3R in geometric units where c=G=1, M is the mass of the shell in centimetres, R is its radius in centimetres, and omegadot is the angular rotational velocity of the shell. We can show that there is the flat Minskowski metric within such a rotating shell.  We can derive the accelerations on a moving test particle – these accelerations can be shown to be of the same form as Coriolis and centrifugal accelerations, but not necessarily of the same magnitude.  In fact the M/R term comes into the expression for the second derivative of all three space-like dimensions – the magnitude of the Coriolis and centrifugal accelerations. In other words, and this is intuitively obvious, the magnitude of the effect depends on the mass and radius of the shell.  We can model the universe as a thin massive shell rotating around the earth, but the magnitude of the Coriolis and centrifugal accelerations puts tight constraints on the total mass and mean distance of matter-energy in the universe. From what we observe, the conditions in the universe would have to be such that the rotational velocity of the local inertial frames would have to match the matter-energy current exactly and this happens only under very tight constraints – constraints that it is by no means certain that the universe meets.

  In order to develop his theory to satisfy the very strong equivalence principle, Einstein assumed an isotropic and homogeneous manifold – this is based on the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric, with a static universe which is Einstein’s universe model on which he based the equivalence of all reference frames (he had to introduce the cosmological constant to achieve this condition).  In the FRW metric, space is invariant under the transformations defined by Killing vectors that represent the spatial homogeneity and, in Minkowski space, Killing vectors that represent four dimensional rotations in three planes. In other words, all points in spacetime are invariant, at least infinitesimally, to translations and rotations: there are no special ‘static’ reference frames.

  There are universe models in which universe rotation is intrinsic.  In particular, there is Goedel’s model universe, and Bianchi IX rotating cosmological models. Unfortunately for Bob, these are unphysical.  Goedel’s model is homogeneous both in space and time, all four simple translations are represented by independent Killing vectors.  Goedel’s model has the cosmological fluid in rotation, stationary, closed time-like curves (so that if one travels round the curve one returns to the spacetime point), and singularity free.  Bianchi IX models also have the cosmological fluid in rotation and shear. Both cases of universe are theoretically possible but unphysical in that the compass of inertia does not align with the star field as it does in ours (furthermore, Goedel’s model allows the possibility of returning to the same spacetime point which is considered unphysical).

  It’s easy to create mathematical models of the universe that are unphysical.  The fact that gravitomagnetics predicts Coriolis and centrifugal like forces in the interior of a rotating massive shell is a geometric equivalence. It does not mean that the universe physically rotates about the earth, or any other body, and the idea is dynamically flawed. 

 ***To be continued***
 
***Continuation

*** Bob mentions the cosmic microwave background. Well there are two points of significance to that taht I wish to raise now:
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  First the measured dipole in the CMB anisotropy (see the papers published by the WMAP team, references available) equates to a peculiar motion of the earth against the primordial universe radiation of 600km/s which is very closely matched by analyses of the mean of peculiar velocities measured against many distant galaxies.  It’s an odd centre that rushes through the universe at 600km/s or even that the universe rushes past at 600km/s

  Second, observation of the CMB has put an extremely close correlation between the compass of inertia and the observable star field – see for example Collins and Hawking, ‘The rotation and distortion of the universe’, Mon Nat Roy Astron Soc 162: 307 – 320 (1973) – in this case the limit is less than 3x10^-11 arcsec per century.  Other more recent observations have increased the limit to 8x10^-5 arcsec per century.  In other words the compass of inertia is locked extremely closely to the primordial radiation and the star field.

  Although the Machian principle states that the compass of inertia (ie the orientation of the local inertial frame) is determined only by the distribution and flux of mass-energy, there is a range of increasingly strong interpretations:
1.The boundary conditions at infinity might be mostly responsible for determining local inertial frames
  1. The universe is spatially compact (an increasingly untenable assumption), without the need for specifying boundary conditions and the local inertial frames are determined largely by the distribution of mass-energy
  2. The universe is spatially compact and closed in time and the local compass of inertia is at rest with respect to the flux of mass-energy
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    In any case, empirical observations confirm that the local compass of inertia is closely locked to the star-field.  (‘Mass there’ determines ‘inertia here’). If being at rest, rotationally, in an FRW metric GR universe means anything, it means being at rest in a local inertial frame.  The surface of the earth is very plainly not an inertial frame so it cannot have any special privilege to be at a centre or at rest.  Either all reference frames whether inertial or non-inertial are equivalent and all is relative, or local inertial frames have a greater claim for not being in rotation with respect to the compass of inertia.  In either case there is no basis for claiming the earth is unmoving at the centre of the universe.
    If of course, Bob rejects GR, then he is left with Newtonian mechanics considerations, several of which I and others posted and are unanswerable. The earth cannot possibly be at rest in absolute Newtonian space.

    In either case, a GR or GR-like metric universe or a Newtonian universe, there is no physical basis on which to claim that the earth is ‘at rest’ and the ‘centre’ of the universe.
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    Alec
evolutionpages.com
 
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hecd2:
…You have mentioned the fact that rocket launch sites are better placed near the equator where you get that 1,036 mph speed boost due to the earth’s rotation (only the European Space Agency site in French Guiana comes very close to this - think about why the ESA would put its launch site in this out-of-the-way place rather than in continental Europe). The USA site at Cape Canaveral is about as far south on the contiguous USA as NASA could get. They get a 915 mph boost there. Most satellites are launched to the east to get the boost of the earth’s rotational speed…
Click to expand...
BTW, Boeing’s Sea Launch program sails a launch platform and command ship (based in Long Beach, CA) down to the equator to launch Russian-made Zenit rockets. Equatorial launches also avoid the extra propellant needed to change the orbit inclination from the launch plane to the equatorial (geosynchronous) plane.
 
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