Latest revision as of 07:27, 26 October 2023

Unorganized Notes Page

This section contains unorganized notes, links for further reference, and works in progress.

Guide to Universal Acceleration

[img earth moving up, Earth moving up] The Flat Earth Society proposes a unique theory termed Universal Acceleration which postulates that gravity is caused by the Earth accelerating upwards. We are not pulled down to the ground by an undetectable invisible phenomenon. The ground is continuously accelerating up against us and we are pinned to the ground as a mechanical function of this acceleration.

Equivalence Principle

[img EP elevator moving up] The foundation of Universal Acceleration is a principle in physics known as the Equivalence Principle, which states that the effects of gravity are indistinguishable from an environment that is accelerating upwards. In the early 20th century increasing advancement in technology allowed science to verify with several different methodologies that gravity physically behaves as if the Earth is accelerating upwards.

[img bodies of different masses falling together]

[img light moving up]

[img time dilation]

[img curved space] Gravity physically behaves as if the Earth is accelerating upwards. This is the origin of the concept of curved space.

Mechanisms

[img smaller earth with clouds or gradients around it] The overall scheme might not be a disk flying through corporeal space, but a universe accelerating through a larger meta-universe, through which we feel the translated inertial effects.

[img bucket on string] Alternatively, other schemes for Universal Acceleration may be possible, such as circular centripetal motion. Ie. The earth could exist as a pond inside of a giant porous spinning asteroid.

Sun Projection

Clouds behind Moon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdojiTkJi_4

Clouds behind Sun - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T9QFTIdtw0

Appearance of Stars Not Physical

Waves - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R897t8GSYQ&t=84s&ab_channel=JRESHOW

Waves - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0yf9gV89f0&ab_channel=JRESHOW

Stars through telescope - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgyH-9-qdJ0&ab_channel=flatearthscience

Stars through telescope - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdigmkmEjUo&ab_channel=Marino

Zooming in on Sirus - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1o94097ptE&ab_channel=BrianK

Limits to Human Resolution

References to Rowbotham's point that the limits to human resolution is 1/60'th or one-minute of a degree:

https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/682422/1/536896.pdf

"Visual acuity refers to the limit of resolution or the resolving power of the eye i. e. the smallest angle of separation between two points which allows discernible images by an optical system. The normal limit of resolution (minimum angle of resolution) for the eye is one minute of a degree. Visual acuity provides a single measurement of visual performance at the limit of resolution for the combined effects of the ocular media and retina/brain at high contrast."

https://www.pointsinfocus.com/tools/minimum-resolution-calculator/

"The fundamental assumption is that the disc of confusion for a person with 20/20 vision is equal to 1 arc-minute (1/60th of a degree) in diameter."

https://ia800204.us.archive.org/5/items/practicalastrono00dickuoft/practicalastrono00dickuoft.pdf

"It is generally estimated that no terrestrial object can be distinctly perceived, if the visual angle it subtends be less than one minute of a degree ; and that most objects become indistinct, when the angle they subtend at the pupil of the eye is less than six minutes."

Relativity Counterintuitive

https://www.wondriumdaily.com/explaining-einsteins-theory-of-special-relativity/#:~:text=Relativity%3A%20A%20Counterintuitive%20Concept&text=Distances%20in%20space%20and%20lengths,when%20the%20measurement%20is%20made.

“ Relativity: A Counterintuitive Concept

The word “relativity” is apt because, according to special relativity, certain quantities—like the distance between points space, and the durations of time between events—are different to different observers. Distances in space and lengths of time don’t have objectively correct values.

If the question is how far apart from one another are two points in space, then the correct answer depends on the frame of reference when the measurement is made.

And the same thing is true for measurements that involve lengths of time. Quantities such as these are indeed relative to one’s frame of reference. If you’re hearing about this for the first time, it almost certainly seems very strange, and very counterintuitive. ”

Rowbotham Diet

Densmore "Patriarchal Longevity," by "Parallax,"

https://chestofbooks.com/health/nutrition/Natural-Food/A-Dreadful-Blow-To-Vegetarianism-III.html

Book:

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/library/pamphlets/Zetetic%20Philosophy%20(Parallax).pdf

Leo Ferarri

L. C. Ferrari, “Augustine’s Cosmography,” Augustinian Studies 27 (1996): 129–177, 129.

https://www.pdcnet.org/augstudies/content/augstudies_1996_0027_0002_0129_0180

“This study breaks new ground in abstracting from Augustine's spiritual symbology and in attempting to assemble his picture of the physical world as he saw it. Surprisingly, he believed that the two greatest bodies in the universe were the sky and the earth, with the former dome-shaped and covering the latter. The earth was essentially flat and surrounded by the mighty oceanus. The sun and moon were the two greatest bodies in the sky, but each was much smaller than the earth.”

London Survey Grid

The London Survey Grid is a projection format which is said to account for the curvature of the earth. This often comes up as

http://www.engineeringsurveyor.com/software/1-026%20-%20Topographical%20Surveys%20and%20Mapping.pdf

Victorian Era

The Victorian era was 63-year period from 1837-1901 that marked the reign of England's Queen Victoria. The era was popularly characterized by a growing state and economy, class-based society, and Britain’s status as the most powerful empire in the world. During this period Britain was a powerful sea faring nation with a rich culture. It had a large empire, a stable government, a growing state, and an expanding commercial franchise. It was wealthy due to its degree of industrialization and its imperial holdings, in spite of the fact that three-fourths or more of its population was working-class.

The period was marked by rapid technological progress and social upheaval. The Industrial Revolution, rise of the modern pharmaceutical industry, improvements in travel, invention of Morse code and the telegraph, Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone, first mechanical computer, woman's suffrage movement, Britain's abolishment of slavery, and the publishing and popularization of the Origin of the Species all contributed to profound changes to the previous way of life.

Religion

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-victorians-religion-and-science

“ If there was any single belief that characterized the Victorian era it was Christian belief. Religion pervaded social and political life to an extent almost unimaginable today. ”

In the 1800's the theme was science vs. religion, even more-so than the 1700's. Darwin-evolution controversy, Shroud of Taurin photographed, religion in schools, separation of church and state debates, etc.

Considering that Aristotle used his science to reject religion, Galileo used scripture to argue for heliocentrism, Newton used divine influence to shore up problems with his model, religious tie-ins are par the course here.

Another article:

https://victorianweb.org/science/science&religion.html

“ During the nineteenth century, the entities we refer to as 'science' and 'religion' both underwent dramatic changes. It would consequently be naïve to expect to be able to find one simple and unchanging relationship between the two. The relationship has varied across time and geography, and from one individual to another. In addition to the historical interest of the nineteenth century debates between science and religion, there is a great historiographical significance. The way in which science and religion have been perceived in the twentieth century was heavily influenced by the writings of late nineteenth-century historians of science and religion, whose influence we have only recently begun to move beyond. ”

“ At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain, religious faith and the sciences were generally seen to be in beautiful accordance. The study of God's Word, in the Bible, and His Works, in nature, were assumed to be twin facets of the same truth. ”

“ This harmony between science and faith, mediated by some form of theology of nature, continued to be the mainstream position for most men of science, and most interested individuals, right up to the 1860s, at least. But it did come under threat. In the 1820s and 1830s, some working-class radicals saw a chance of using certain versions of the sciences for political ends. ”

The Victorian FE movement was active around that time of debate.

Rowbotham and Lady Blount were concerned about religion, the most controversial and talked about thing of the era.

Astronomy

Spectroscopy, Discovery of Neptune

Mechanical Gyroscope

A mechanical gyroscope is a device consisting of a wheel or disc mounted so that it can spin rapidly about an axis, which is itself free to alter in direction. The orientation of the axis is not affected by the rotation of the platform it rests upon. The surface beneath it can rotate while the gyroscope remains static in space.

In these discussions the mechanical gyroscope is used as evidence that the Earth is not rotating, since the gyroscope will maintain the same position in space for long periods of time. The typical response to these experiments is to dismissively suggest that the gyroscope must not be sensitive enough, or to claim that too much weight is being put on the bearings as to prevent free rotation. However, the same gyroscopes are seen to rotate when placed on a slowly rotating platform with a 24 hour period, contradicting the assertions of faulty equipment.

John Savage

John Savage of Savage Plane has conducted a number of different types of gyroscope tests, showing that the gyroscope is stationary when sitting on the Earth's surface, and also appears unaffected by the underlying rotation when sitting on a platform rotating with a 24 hour period.

Lattitude Nut

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNYW8JWMVOY&ab_channel=fromjesse

04:22 over here on the other side this is your latitude nut right there that can induce you can move that in or out and you can induce some a drift clockwise or counter clockwise on the you know east or west on the whatever you want to call it the scale here

“This is your latitude nut. You can move it in or out and induce some drift clockwise or counter-clockwise, east or west”

Galaxy Size

“ Of course Earth’s atmosphere does blur the images of astronomical bodies, but an interesting cosmic coincidence reduces its negative impact on our observations of distant galaxies. The angular sizes of distant galaxies do not just decrease linearly with increasing distance, as nearby objects do. Paradoxically, angular size declines until a redshift of about one and then increases for larger redshifts. The minimum angular size of a Milky Way-like galaxy is just about the same size as the blurring effect of our atmosphere.³⁸ Our atmosphere is not nearly the impediment for viewing the most distant galaxies that one might expect. ”
—Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Wesley Richards, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery (2004), p.191 (Source)

Problems of the Sun

Temperature of the Sun

Article: Science Daily - Solving the Mystery of the Sun's Hot Atmosphere (Archive):

“ The Sun's surface, the photosphere, has a temperature of around 6000 degrees, but the outer atmosphere, the corona -- best seen from Earth during total solar eclipses -- is several hundred times hotter. How the corona is heated to millions of degrees is one of the most significant unsolved problems in astrophysics. ”
—Science Daily

“ Why the Sun's corona is so hot is a long-standing puzzle. It's as if a flame were coming out of an ice cube. It doesn't make any sense! ”
—Dr. David H. Brooks, George Mason University

Solar Neutrinos

From Super-Kamiokande: Super-Proof for Neutrino Non-existence (Archive) by Physcist Ricardo L. Carezani (bio):

“ The summary shows that Super-Kamiokande Neutrino detector proves overwhelming, definitely and without any doubt that no Neutrino event are coming from the Sun. ”
—Dr. Ricardo L. Carezani

Additional commentary and criticism by Ricardo L. Carezani on Neutrino issues may be found in his Storm in Physics: Autodynamics (2005), Chapter 4: The Neutrino.

Comets Cause Solar Explosion

https://www.space.com/13198-sundiving-comets-solar-storms-coincidence.html

https://phys.org/news/2011-10-comet-explosion-sun.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4zl2tDhMLs&ab_channel=NASAGoddard

https://www.thelivingmoon.com/forum/index.php?topic=116.0

https://www.facebook.com/northernlightsnow/videos/sun-diving-comet-and-cme-in-lasco/540759002796530/

1998 - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/06/980605080254.htm

MAY 30, 2008 - https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/pickoftheweek/old/30may2008/

"Even though a coronal mass ejection (CME) does occur just as the comet approaches the Sun, this has to be a coincidence. There is no known mechanism for an extremely tiny object like a comet (compared the huge mass of the Sun) to trigger a magnetic explosion on the Sun, especially across a distance like an estimated million km."

October 06, 2011 - https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/10/03/141012897/video-comet-hits-sun-is-brilliant-explosion-related

According to SpaceWeather:

"Earlier this year ... the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) watched another sungrazer disintegrate in the sun's atmosphere. On July 5, 2011, the unnamed comet appeared to interact with plasma and magnetic fields in its surroundings as it fell apart. Could a puny comet cause a magnetic instability that might propagate and blossom into a impressive CME? The question is not so crazy as it once seemed to be."

3 comets hitting the sun - http://www.grandunification.com/hypertext/OneCometSolarImpact.html

Tilt of the Sun

Huffington Post - The Sun’s Mysterious Tilt Gets A Surprising Explanation

“ In a new study slated for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, three planetary scientists at Caltech in Pasadena, California, contend that the tilt was caused by Planet Nine. That’s the massive and as-yet-unseen planet whose existence at the outer edges of the solar system was predicted in research published earlier this year.

Planet Nine is thought to be about 10 times bigger than Earth and about 500 times farther from the sun, according to Space.com. Its orbit is believed to be inclined at an angle of about 30 degrees from the other planets’ orbital plane. This cockeyed orbit means that Planet Nine’s gravitational forces have been tugging on the other planets in a way that has gradually caused their orbital plane to shift.

“Because Planet Nine is so massive and has an orbit tilted compared to the other planets, the solar system has no choice but to slowly twist out of alignment,” Elizabeth Bailey, a graduate student at Caltech and the study’s lead author, said in a press statement.

The sun’s spin axis has a tilt of about 6 degrees off the orbital plane of the major planets. And when the scientists calculated how much of a tilt Planet Nine would have caused, they came up with the same number. Mystery solved!

Of course, technically speaking, the sun only appears tilted from our perspective.

“What’s actually going on is that the sun is staying put in its fixed reference frame and it’s the planetary orbits that are being tilted by Planet Nine,” study co-author Konstantin Batygin, an assistant professor of planetary science at Caltech, told Astronomy magazine. “So Planet Nine has tilted the entire disk of the solar system by 6 degrees and because we live on that disk...to us it looks like the sun is tilted, but it’s actually the other way around.”

But if that’s the explanation for the sun’s apparent tilt, what explains Planet Nine’s bizarre orbit?

There are several possible explanations, Batygin told The Huffington Post. The likeliest, he said, is that early in the solar system’s history, gravitational forces from a star not far from the sun pulled Planet Nine from the orbital plane that until then it had shared with the other planets.

Of course, that’s not proven. Nor has it been proven that Planet Nine actually exists.

“It’s not firmly established that Planet Nine is there, because we’ve never seen it,” Batygin said. “Am I certain that it’s there? Absolutely.” ”

Dist to the sun

https://books.google.com/books?id=UZosAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA13-PA9&dq=%22sun%22+%22parallax%22+%22mystery%22+%22distance+to+the+sun%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwigopC8s5DvAhVtFlkFHR_QCQoQ6AEwAHoECAAQAg#v=onepage&q=%22sun%22%20%22parallax%22%20%22mystery%22%20%22distance%20to%20the%20sun%22&f=false

Galileo

Did Galileo get in trouble for being right, or for being a jerk about it? - https://io9.gizmodo.com/did-galileo-get-in-trouble-for-being-right-or-for-bein-30805585

Mapping

Highway Planning Map Manual, Volume 37; Volume 53 By United States. Bureau of Public Roads

https://books.google.com/books?id=PDSRW-sNF8UC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=geodetic%20triangulation%20networks%20%22plane%22&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q=geodetic%20triangulation%20networks%20%22plane%22&f=false

Plane surveying used on less than about 95 sq. miles - http://www.vermessungsseiten.de/englisch/vermtech/plane.htm

https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/geodesy

spherical projection on a flat earth
surprisingly accurate for distances under a few hundred kilometers
and requires only one cosine and five multiplications.
(no divisions if divide by 2 == a right shift in fixed point :-)
The ellipsoidal FCC flat earth projection requires 5 cosines
and nine multiplications
for details on this algorithm see FCC 47 CFR 73.208
it's an ellipsoidal (Clarke 1866) projection onto a flat earth
the FCC says not to use this for distances over 475km
probably isn't as good in Australia as in N. Amer

Govt Quotes

“ Because the Government must pursue those vital purposes in a dangerous world--even more volatile and uncertain than ever in this "Age of Chaos"--the Government must be able to keep secrets. Failure to do so, even out of a well-intentioned desire to open up the processes and archives of government, may cause irreparable harm to the nation, and may cause loss of life. ”
—Larry Combest, Former American Congressman (Source)

Maps

“ Science is the art of the appropriate approximation. While the flat earth model is usually spoken of with derision it is still widely used. Flat maps, either in atlases or road maps, use the flat earth model as an approximation to the more complicated shape. ”
—Byron K. Jennings, 'On the Nature of Science', Physics in Canada (Jan/Feb 2007), 63, No. 1, 13.

Navigation in the South

MARINE NAVIGATION

“ On the water, as in the air,dead reckoning was the principal method of navigation used, but equally difficult to maintain. Pit logs were not used advantageously in ice because of slow speeds and long periods of lying to, and in some cases they became inoperative due to freezing or mechanical damage by ice, making it necessary to determine speed by some other method. In clear water engine room revolutions proved effective, but this was of little value in the pack ice. The best method of determining speed here was developed by the icebreaker Burton Island after it was determined that estimates were consistently low. The method consisted of tracking a large iceberg by radar and determining the speed by plotting. Speed through the water was thus quite accurately determined, and icebergs were usually available when needed! ”

Air Movement

https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/jet

east and west - http://hudsonvalleygeologist.blogspot.com/2012/01/odd-winter-weather-2.html

Most flights to the East:

Sydney, Australia – Johannesburg, South Africa Sydney, Australia – Santiago, Chile Perth, Australia – Johannesburg, South Africa Auckland, New Zealand – Santiago, Chile Auckland, New Zealand – Buenos Aires, Argentina Melbourne, Australia – Santiago, Chile Sydney, Australia – Buenos Aires, Argentina (route no longer operational) Johannesburg, South Africa – São Paulo, Brazil

avg wind speeds near surface - https://acee.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/AndlingerDistillate_Article3.pdf

https://meteor.geol.iastate.edu/~ncarlett/portfolio/Mteor_454_Final_Waves_Paper.pdf

The overall average of U(500 hPa) in the Northern hemisphere is 16.7 degrees per day. The average wave speed was 7.8 degrees per day. This is less than the U(500 hPa) and does not agree with Rossby wave theory. In the Southern Hemisphere, the average of U(500 hPa) was 31.1 degrees per day. This was greater than the average wave speed in the southern hemisphere which was 11.9 degrees per day. This reinforces that our data did not agree with Rossby wave theory. (Fig 2)

Zetetic

Philosophy scholar and professor Daniel Tanguay, at the University of Ottawa seems to think that the Zetetic Philosophy is a valid philosophy:

https://books.google.com/books?id=HcR3bVP7qvUC&pg=PA201&dq=%22zetetic+philosophy%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyu6eejNTnAhUFCM0KHcmjDu0Q6AEIOzAD#v=onepage&q=%22zetetic%20philosophy%22&f=false

“ Many mistandings concerning Strauss’ return to the ancients are dispelled when one understands the type of ancient philosophy to which he wishes to return. We have shown that his model is zetetic philosophy, or genuine Platonism, that is, a skeptical philosophy in the ancient meaning of the term. This philosophy consists in an unceasing quest for the truth rather than the expression of a completed science. It constitutes not so much a body of doctrines as the manifestation of a philosophic attitude. It places greater stress on the movement from opinions to knowledge than on any definite or absolute form of knowledge. According to zetetic philosophy, the Platonic ideas are not separate substances, but rather the eternal problems of philosophy. Zetetic philosophy is therefore a meditation on the alternatives proposed for resolving these eternal problems. The very possibility of reflecting on these alternatives places philosophy outside of history: “In grasping these problems as problems, the human mind liberates itself from its historical limitations. No more is needed to legitimize philosophy in its original, Socratic sense: philosophy is knowledge that one does not know; that is to say, it is knowledge of what one does not know, or awareness of the fundamental problems and, therewith, of the fundamental alternatives regarding their solution that are coeval with human thought.”⁴ To employ Strauss’ terms, philosophy is a human possibility that is “trans-historical, trans-social, trans-moral, and trans-religious.”⁵ This possibility, always actualizable, constitutes the weak justification for philosophy. For the defense of philosophy by zetetic philosophy does not require a strong metaphysics, a particular cosmology, or even the recognition of an eternal order. Zetetic philosophy contents itself with supposing that the human soul is open to a Whole that goes beyond it, and that the awareness of this Whole is sufficient to justify philosophy as a transhistorical possibility. The other name for this openness to the Whole is philosophic eros. Eros is of course connected to pleasure, and the philosophic life is considered the pursuit of the highest pleasures. The greatest pleasure is the philosopher’s contemplation of his soul in its progress toward wisdom. ”

The search term "zetetic philosophy" seems to bring up much other interesting commentary in other works as well.

Pyrrhonian skepticism, that is the very first known zeteticism.

Marcellot Truzzi Zetetic Scholar: https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1981.tb34482.x

In the past we have referred to the work of Parallax, of Eng- land, as direé’ced against the popular idea that the surface upon which we live is convex. From some experiments . which he conducted. he concluded that the surface of water is flaf. and therefore, that the general form of the earth is a comparatively flat Surface—a circular plane. He instituted what he termed Zetetic Philosophy. The word Zetetic is from zeiz'o. which means to investigate or to search out. The name, therefore. is in- dicative of the fact that he did not pretend to he the founder of a system of integralism, or the discoverer of the laws of the form and function of the universe—simply that he was a searcher for truth, and an experimenter. His followers are called, Zetetfcs; and the}: can best follow him in the progress of truth but some of, them have deemed it wise to stop 1with his conclu- sions. and to stubbornly defend them against all progress and all demonstrations contrary to the opinions which they hold.

https://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/ebooks/PlaneTruth/pages/Chapter_01.html

Zetetic Philosophy admits of no theories, no assumptions, no suppositions, no speculations, and no anticipations; and it, therefore, has no absurdities, no contradictions, no delusions, no sophistications, and no things but facts!

William Carpenter, Theoretical Astronomy, p. 124.

Theoretical Astronomy Examined and Exposed

“ Rowbotham first published Earth Not a Globe in 1865. [note 1.9] The foundation work of zetetic astronomy, this 221-page book presumably contains the substance of his lectures and perhaps some additional arguments. The first major flat-earth work since Cosmas Indicopleustes, it opens with these words:

The term “zetetic” is derived from the Greek verb zeteo; which means to search or examine—to proceed only by inquiry. [ref. 1.22]

Presumably, he opened his lectures the same way. Rowbotham argued that the Copernican system is without a proven foundation. It is based on premises that are unproven and cannot be proved. Rather than grounding their system in facts, astronomers speculate and advance metaphysical theories. The zetetic method, as used in courts of law, is the only legitimate method of scientific inquiry:

Let the practice of theorising be cast aside as one fatal to the full development of truth; oppressive to the reasoning power; and in every sense inimical to the progress and permanent improvement of the human race. [ref. 1.23]

Throughout the book, Rowbotham disparages theories and theorists at every opportunity:

Whosoever creates or upholds a theory, adopts a monster which will sooner or later betray and enslave him, or make him ridiculous in the eyes of practical observers. [ref. 1.24]

And furthermore:

The very construction of a theory at all, and especially such as the Copernican, is a complete violation of that natural and legitimate mode of investigation to which the term zetetic has been applied. [ref. 1.25] ”

Variations in Gravity

The Variations in Gravity are the supposed variations to gravity due to either the variations in strength of the gravitational field of the earth or due to the presence of masses such as hills or celestial bodies. It is often stated that the strength of gravity decreases with altitude or that the gravity of the Sun and Moon pulls upon the earth's surface.

The FE model of Celestial Gravitation postulates that the celestial bodies have a slight gravitational pull, which accounts for tidal effects and the lessening of g with altitude. Other FE models question whether variations in gravity actually exist at all. If the effect of gravity is caused by Universal Acceleration then it is questionable whether the effects of gravity exist as alleged. The few effects suggesting variations are questionable, contradicted, and can be seen to be attributed to other causes.

Gravity generally appears to behave as if the earth is accelerating upwards, that the strength of gravity is uniform, and there are no other gravitating sources around us.

Equivalence Principle Tests

It has been found in experiments on various ranges that "gravity" does not deviate from the Universality of Free Fall or the Equivalence Principle. The Equivalence Principle is a principle of nature which says that 'gravity' behaves as if the experiment were conducted on an Earth or in a container which was accelerating upwards. Supposedly only a 'local' concept, experimenters have tested this concept at various scales without violation of this principle.

Equivalence Principle Tests - References showing that the Equivalence Principle maintains a uniform gravitational field and that it has not been violated with experiment

Gravitational Time Dilation - Time dilates in accordance with the uniform prediction of the Equivalence Principal to various heights

Celestial Tests

It is alleged that the Sun and Moon exerts a gravitational pull upon the earth. Very sensitive torsion balance experiments have been conducted over a period of 24 hours, showing that experiments are not affected by external sources as to cause a violation of the equivalence principle. External gravity sources, such as from the Sun, are unable be felt.

Torsion Balance Tests - Celestial Variations in G

Latitude Tests

It is alleged that gravity varies by latitude due to the effects of the rotation of the earth and the bulging at the equator. Experiments performed with scales exposed to the atmosphere have shown that weight increases by a fraction of one percent near the polar areas, as compared to areas near the warmer equator. However, weight is also affected by factors outside of 'gravity'. It is also related to a buoyancy related to pressure, humidity, air viscosity, temperature, etc, which exist differently in different locations, and which may contribute in complex ways to the readings of the scale.

In contradiction to this, experiments conducted with sensitive clocks at different latitudes shows that the expected time dilation due to velocity does not occur in response to the different latitudinal velocities of the earth.

Weight Variation by Latitude - An uncontrolled weight change experiment which is not performed in a vaccum chamber

Time Dilation by Latitude - The predicted time dilation caused by Earth's rotation does not occur

Landmass Tests

The theory of the universal gravitation of mass leads to the expectation that the mountain ranges should produce a larger gravitational pull than the plains, owing to the greater bulk mass in the area. However, gravity as exhibited in a gravimeter shows that the mountains are associated with negative gravity anomalies.

Isostasy - The mass attraction of mountains and continents does not behave in accordance with 'gravity'

Gravimetry - Gravimeters are described to be seismometers by mainstream sources

Torsion balance experiments have been conducted near hills and mountains, in an attempt to detect differences in gravity.

Torsion Balance Tests

The Equivalence Principle assumes a constant 1g acceleration.

https://freejournal.org/857235/1/equivalence-principle.html - "Another clarification needed is that the equivalence principle assumes a constant acceleration of 1g without considering the mechanics of generating 1g."

https://ia803202.us.archive.org/17/items/buonomano1975/buonomano1975.pdf

Physicists also often assume a uniform gravitational field. Professor Vincent Buonomano at the State University of Campinas tells us:

“ We always assume a uniform gravitational intensity unless stated otherwise. ”

https://books.google.com/books?id=W_qAjE8cdagC&pg=PA81&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZprn2s7PrAhVNhXIEHcEvDLYQ6AEwAHoECAMQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

The diminution of g with height is pretty negligible for any kind of earthly experiment - "For Z < 63.6 km the difference is only one percent, and a 10% difference requires an altitude of 636 km."

It is unlikely that those experiments which act as confirmation of the Equivalence Principle are talking about a diminution of g. We would need to see that stated in the description of the experiment, rather than an argument of what someone thinks is meant by a term.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.00176/full

Specifically, we will assume that for each branch of a spatial superposition, sharp at location x, the Equivalence Principle holds in one of its currently accepted forms: the state of motion of a point particle at rest in a uniform gravitational field g is empirically indistinguishable, by local operations at x, from the state of motion of a point particle that undergoes an acceleration −g in a gravity-free region.

https://books.google.com/books?id=w4Gigq3tY1kC&lpg=PA189&ots=C-3FHDpzeF&pg=PA189#v=onepage&q&f=false

“ Einstein (1908, 1911) elevated the idea of the universality of gravitational interactions to the status of a fundamental principle of equivalence, that all effects of a uniform gravitational field are identical to the effects of a uniform acceleration of the coordinate system. This principle generalized a result of Newtonian gravitation theory, in which a uniform acceleration of the coordinate system in equation (7.1) gives rises to a supplementary uniform gravitational field. However, the Newtonian theory only gives this result for particle mechanics. Einstein’s principle of equivalence asserts that a similar correspondence will hold for all the laws of physics, including Maxwell's equations for the electromagnetic field. ”

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/14647/1/Gravitational%20redshift%20and%20the%20role%20of%20charge.pdf

“ Einstein’s equivalence principle (also called the weak equivalence principle) assumes that any experiment in a uniform gravitational field yields the same results as the analogous experiment performed in a frame removed from any source of gravitational field but moving in uniform accelerated motion with respect to an inertial frame [Norton, 1985].³ ”

Verifications of Equivalence Principle

Celestial Variations of Gravity

Constant Gravitational Force

Some Instructors teach gravity is constant - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1105165

Equivalence Principle

Why does an apple fall from a tree? Why do all objects accelerate towards earth at 9.8 m/s^2? The 'out-of-the-box answer' is that the objects themselves don't move. It's the ground that rushes up! Regardless whether attached to the tree or not, Newton's apple is suspended motionless: it's earth's surface that accelerates up and meets the apple. This simple insight immediately explains why all objects regardless their mass accelerate at the same pace of 9.8 m/s^2.

"“being on the surface of the Earth is equivalent to being inside a spaceship (far from any sources of gravity) that is being accelerated by its engines”

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1003.3022.pdf - Equivalence Principle is global, not local

Abstract: “ The relationship between uniformly accelerated reference frames in flat spacetime and the uniform gravitational field is examined in a relativistic context. It is shown that, contrary to previous statements in the pages of this journal, equivalence does not break down in this context. No restrictions to Newtonian approximations or small enclosures are necessary. ”

ISL

https://books.google.com/books?id=MInmSDQXo8sC&pg=SA5-PA29&dq=physics+gravity+%22inverse+square+law%22+%22a+uniform+field%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFoNHbx-ruAhUyOn0KHctkBQUQ6AEwAXoECAkQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

Figure 5.29 Over a sufficiently small region an inverse square law field can be treated as a uniform field.

Torsion Balance Horizontal Equivalence Princple Test

Test of The Equivalence Principle

Test of the equivalence principle

Most theoretical attempts to unify general relativity with the standard model predict violation of the equivalence principle. In particular, string or M theory predicts hundreds of massless scalar particles with composition dependent gravitational strength couplings. Thus, the equivalence principle, which states that all objects, independent of composition, fall at the same rate in a uniform gravitational field is an ideal test of such forces.

Our equivalence principle torsion balance looked for a horizontal differential acceleration between test bodies composed of different materials. A differential acceleration would violate the equivalence principle. This torsion balance was continuously rotated by an airbearing turntable with a period of ∼ 20 min (See Fig. 1). The twist angle of the torsion pendulum was observed using a corotating autocollimator. The pendulum itself consisted of eight test bodies in a composition dipole orientation (See Fig. 2). In the most recent published experiment [2], the test bodies were made of titanium and beryllium. The interior volume of the less dense body is machined so that both the mass and the exterior geometry of each test body are well matched. The shape and location of each body on the pendulum were chosen to minimize the coupling of the pendulum to residual gravity gradients. Table 1 lists our most recent measurements of the differential acceleration of the titanium and beryllium test bodies towards both terrestrial and astronomical sources.

Perturbations

Some applications are conveniently treated by perturbation theory, in which the system is considered as a two-body problem plus additional forces causing deviations from a hypothetical unperturbed two-body trajectory.

Pole to Pole Flight Canceled

http://archive.vn/qlG6d

https://web.archive.org/web/20180512054019/https://www.overthepoles2018.com/

Multiple Pole Model History

The concept of multiple poles in the Flat Earth Theory predates Rowbotham's introduction of the Monopole model, and appears to have persisted since then.

Anti-Newtonian

New York Journal

In 1897 the New York Journal published an illustration of the Flat Earth Monopole model (Archive), with the following comment, telling that there was disagreement in the Flat Earth circles around this time:

“ In a picture of the earth as these unique theorists believe it to be—or some of them, for they do not all agree the “South Pole" is seen as a wall of ice surrounding the circular earth. This conception [of Rowbotham's Monopole model] certainly fits well with the idea of the vastness of the Southern wastes of ice which have turned back all explorers. ”

Universal Zetetic Society

In the early 1900's Samuel Rowbohtam's Zetetic Society transitioned to the Universal Zetetic Society under the leadership of Lady Blount. Until the Universal Zetetic Society's demise at the onset of WWI, the UZS embraced the Bi-Polar model (but not any specific map) as its preferred model of the world.

Zetetic Astronomy: The Sun's Motions North and South; With the Moon's Motions; Fancied and Real. Showing the Uselessness of the Gravitation Theory, Etc.

The Sea Earth Globe and Its Monstrous Hypothetical Motions

Inverse Square Law

Small

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/gravitys-inverse-square-law-tested-at-scale-of-a-human-hair-and-passes/?comments=1 (Archive)

Experiment finds that gravity still works down to 50 micrometers be

“ ...This and many other experimental refinements have allowed them to measure gravitational attraction down to a distance of just 52µm. Once they add additional stabilization against vibration, they will be able to measure at even smaller separations. In the meantime, they have verified that the inverse-square law holds for distances shorter than 50µm, and therefore we have no New Physics™. ”

Disappearing Stars

https://www.cnet.com/news/missing-stars-could-point-to-alien-civilizations-scientists-say/ (Archive)

Missing stars could point to alien civilizations, scientists say

Astronomers compare old views of the sky with what we see today and find that at least 100 stars appear to have vanished, or were perhaps covered up.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2095785-impossible-vanishing-stars-could-be-signs-of-advanced-alien-life/

Exoplanets

https://curiosity.com/topics/saturn-on-steroids-has-massive-and-seemingly-impossible-rings-curiosity/

"Saturn on Steroids" Has Massive and Seemingly Impossible Rings

Size of Universe

https://web.archive.org/web/20200426175220/https://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Size-of-the-Universe-May-Be-Inaccurate-181163.shtml

https://web.archive.org/web/20200611005832/https://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/12/science/sizing-up-the-cosmos-an-astronomer-s-quest.html

But astronomers are unable to calibrate absolute distances. Exactly how far is it, in light-years, to the relatively nearby Virgo cluster, an important first milestone in cosmic distance measurements? They may know, for example, that, according to Hubble law, the second milestone galaxy is twice as far away as the first, but they don't know what that distance is.

Astronomers are especially handicapped because they cannot tell if the objects that are faint are really distant, or intrinsically faint; or if bright objects are as near as they seem. Until they can tell, astronomers cannot be sure that the longer red shifts are reliable distance markers. Only then will they establish a firm yardstick -- the Hubble constant, showing the ratio between red shift velocity and distance -- for measuring the expansion.

For the time being, some astronomers place the value of the Hubble constant at the number 100, a relatively fast rate of expansion, such that the age of the universe must be about 10 billion years. Some years ago, Dr. Sandage, working with Dr. Gustav Tammann of Switzerland, came up with the slower rate, at the number 50, making the universe twice as old. Many astronomers, for convenience, split the difference and assume an estimate of 15 billion years.

Dr. P. J. E. Peebles, an astrophysicist at Princeton University, said that among younger cosmologists examining the issue a value of 80 or 90 for the Hubble constant is more popular than Dr. Sandage's 50. "Intepreting these observations," he said, "is a very difficult art, with judgment calls at every turn, and these calls are debated by others." The Universe Could Collapse

Astronomers rely on certain "standard candles," or objects whose intrinsic luminosity is reasonably well known, in trying to measure cosmic distances. In his work, Dr. Sandage relies on exploding stars known as supernovas and cepheid stars of known magnitude. Others use one or both of those plus distinct star formations, known as globular clusters.

Sun Anomaly

Brightness Fluctuations

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/sun-vs-sun-like-stars/

Galaxies

https://www.livescience.com/milky-way-has-geographic-features.html

Star Size Illusion

Illusion Overview - https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j32_1/j32_1_45-47.pdf

Galileo splitting stars - https://www.vofoundation.org/blog/strange-tales-galileo-proving-splitting-stars/

Rotation of Moon

Q's

https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/6156/the-face-of-the-moon-at-moonset/6160

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1308549

Mooncalc

https://www.mooncalc.org/#/44.8362,-116.2134,3/2020.02.14/11:17/1/2

Celestial Sphere Notes

A Text-Book of General Astronomy for Colleges and Scientific Schools
Charles A.Young, Ph.D.,
Professor of Astronomy,
College of New Jersey (Princeton).

Full Text Link

“ Spherical Astronomy—This, discarding all consideration of absolute dimensions and distances, treats the heavenly bodies simply as objects moving on the “surface of the celestial sphere”: it has to do only with angles and directions, and, strictly regarded, is in fact merely Spherical Trigonometry applied to Astronomy. ”

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35261/35261-pdf.pdf - p.38

“ Light moves in Straight Lines.—All astronomy is based on the truth of the proposition that, in a homogeneous medium like the ether, a weightless substance filling space, light moves in straight lines. The physicist demonstrates this from the wave theory of the motion of light. ”

Meteors

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Elements_of_Electricity_Magnetism_and_El/hIMtAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22on+the+celestial+dome%22+projection&pg=PA282&printsec=frontcover

Sun Path Warped

According to the conventional model the sun's path is a plane which intersects the observer's sky.

Seasonal Sun Path - Weber University
Sun Path diagram from NASA.gov
Plane of the Sun from Kutztown University

A Weber State University astronomy course by Dr. Daniel V. Schroeder (bio) shows the Sun's path is warped upon the celestial dome:

https://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/ua/sunandseasons.html (Archive)

Caption: “ This simulated multiple-exposure image shows the path of the rising sun through the eastern sky on the morning of the 21st of each month, from December at the right through June at the left. The latitude was set to 41° north. (The spreading of the trails as they go upward is a distortion caused by stretching the domed sky onto a flat semicircle.) ”

The above website explains the distortion as caused by 'stretching the domed sky onto a flat semicircle' -- as if there is a domed sky around us which modifies the position of the Sun. The diagram comes from the linked Sky Motion Applet.

Dr. Schroeder also provides the following multiple-exposure photo:

“ Multiple-exposure photo of the setting sun, showing that it follows the same diagonal path that a star would, as seen from a mid-northern latitude. This photo was made on June 21, when the sun set considerably north of due west. ”

Sky Dome and Projections

Over the course of the year the path of the Sun is seen to curve upon a dome, which can be seen in sun charts. Penn State University provides an overview of 'sky domes', projections, and polar sun charts:

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme810/node/534 (Archive)

2.13 Sky Dome and Projections
Sun Charts: Projections of Solar Events and Shadowing from the Sky Dome

“ The emphasis of this lesson is the Sun Chart tool (or Sun Path). These flat diagrams are found in many solar design tools, but may look completely foreign to the new student in solar energy. How do we interpret the arcs and points plotted on a sun chart? Why do we have two different types of plots (one looks like a rectangle, and one looks like a circle)? Why do some plots go from 0-360°, while others go from -180° to +180°?

If we want to visually convert our observations of the sky-dome onto a two-dimensional medium, we can either use an orthographic projection or a spherical projection on a polar chart. These projections are useful for calculating established times of solar availability or shadowing for a given point of solar collection. ...The Sky Dome refers to the sum of the components for the entire sky from horizon to zenith, and in all azimuthal directions.

~

Projections

The sky dome can be projected onto flat surfaces for analysis of shading and sky component behavior.

Figure 2.15: The sky dome as projected to the right in orthographic form, and as projected upward in polar form.

~

Polar Projection: takes the sky dome and projects altitude and azimuth values down onto a circular plane. However, in the polar projection, the arc for December 21 is at the top while the arc for June 21 is at the bottom. This happens because we are effectively lying on the ground with our heads facing south, and holding that large piece of paper straight up to the sky. ”

Figure 2.17: Polar Projection

The above is a polar sun chart from the Penn State website, showing how the sun would move as if we were laying on the ground with our head towards the south. If one were to hold a large piece of paper straight up into the air, over the course of the year the sun would shine through the paper and trace arcs across the sky.

At the bottom of the page we read that the polar projection sun chart was generated with the University of Oregon's Polar Sun Chart Program. Using this tool to create a polar sun chart for the opposite Southern Hemisphere version of the above polar sun chart, for Latitude -40.79, we see the following:

Notice that the day of December 21st is convex in the Northern Hemisphere and concave in the Southern Hemisphere. The shape of the curve for the same day is seen to be convex or concave for different observers simultaneously, truly as if each observer had his or her own personal planitarium-like "dome" of vision.

Sun Path Sicily

From a Earth Science Picture of the Day at usra.edu we see a first person view of the Sun's path from Sicily, Italy, showing that the Sun always makes convex arcs towards the North throughout the year, like the Norther Hemisphere version of the top-down polar sun chart above. The Sun reaches an apex of 30 degrees at Winter Solstice and 77 degrees at Summer Solstice.

Explanation

Consider the globe earth model on December Solstice (~Dec 21). The axis is tilted with the South end towards the Sun:

Like the rotating Earth tilted on its axis above, consider if your body was strapped along the axis of tilted rotating pole:

As the pole rotates on its axis and your body turns around it you should see the light source move on a convex arc across your vision as it passes you, with the hump towards the North:

If you were alternatively strapped to that rotating pole upside down, with your head towards the South, you would also see an arc with a hump towards the North. Orientation should not matter. Each observing point moving on a titled axis like above should see similar arcs with humps towards the North.

In the below animation we can see that when looking at an object to the left of the scene, both Northern and Southern observers should both see arcs with humps towards the North:

The extended lines are parallel to Earth's East-West latitude lines and at a right angle to the Earth's tilted axis. It is seen that all observers would make the same arc towards the Sun.

Yet, according to the Sun charts seen previously, on December Solstice (Dec 21), each observer will see both convex and concave arcs in relation to the North.

Solar Today

Solar Today states that the conventional concept of a rotating earth with a distant sun is not used in modeling the mechanics of the Sun's motion, but instead a 'sky dome' model is used.

Solar Today - Volumes 5-6 - 1991 - Page 23

“ Although a long intellectual battle was fought to establish the heliocentric model as the correct view of sun mechanics, it is more useful to assume the geocentric model for the purpose of building and site design.

...Geocentric 3D models are usually based on the concept of a sky dome or sky vault which is a giant imaginary transparent dome over the building site. By marking the points where the sun penetrates the dome during the day, the sun path for the day can be generated. Since the sun only comes from one part of the sky dome, often called the solar window, only that portion of the sky dome needs to be modeled. The two new tools mentioned above are based on this solar window in the sky dome. A planetarium could be effectively used... ”

https://www.slideshare.net/Mrkrlos24/solar-geometry-libro-base

Directions of Stars

Consider first the meaning of the word "point" as here used of stars. The popular explanation would probably be—

Popular Explanation. — “Two stars are said to 'point' at a third when an apparently straight line joining them passes through the third, if produced.”

Now this definition is only tolerably good for very small portions of the celestial Sphere: apparently straight lines cannot be drawn at all over any considerable portion of the Sphere. The only real analogue to straight lines in plane is that of GREAT CIRCLES on the sphere, which are really the shortest lines which can be drawn between two points: small portions of Great Circles do really seem apparently straight: no other lines on the sphere can possibly be apparently straight, but are both actually and apparently curved, and in general twisted. The proper definition of “pointing” as applied to stars is therefore—

Definition.— “Two stars are said to 'point' at a third, when a Great Circle through them passes through the third it produced.”

Comets

https://books.google.com/books?id=OgdBAQAAIAAJ&q=astronomy+%22great+circles%22+%22arcs%22+%22curved%22&dq=astronomy+%22great+circles%22+%22arcs%22+%22curved%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFutyG17jpAhXTvJ4KHQKYCr8Q6AEwDXoECBIQAg

Journal for the History of Astronomy, Volumes 1-2 Science History PUblications, 1970 - Archaeoastronomy

"Tycho established the principle that the apparent motions of the comets follow the arcs of great circles on the celestial sphere"

Comets on Great circles - https://books.google.com/books?id=hMgXh8jMSGgC&pg=PA203&dq=Tycho+comet+%22great+circle%22+arc&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiw2LzO2LjpAhXNup4KHX9UALMQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q=Tycho%20comet%20%22great%20circle%22%20arc&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=_3sqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA470&dq=Tycho+comet+%22great+circle%22+%22arc%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiT5bWT2rjpAhVJs54KHZfCBIYQ6AEwA3oECAIQAg#v=onepage&q=Tycho%20comet%20%22great%20circle%22%20%22arc%22&f=false

Tycho Brahe' maintained that the earth was the centre of the celestial moions, and supposed every comet to move in an arc of a great circle of the sphere:

Works in Progress

Below are works in progress, and an area for miscellaneous notes. The content may change significantly or be rearranged.

Lighthouses of the World
Water Level Devices
Curvature Compression Test
Standard Refraction
Electromagnetic Acceleration
Evidence for Electromagnetic Acceleration
Bishop Experiment
Airy's Failure
Phases of the Moon
Sinking Ship Effect Caused by Refraction
Sinking Ship Effect Caused by Limits to Optical Resolution
Lunar Eclipse Criticisms
Scale Experiments
Perspective
Sunrise and Sunset
Cosmology Has Some Big Problems
Mechanical Gyroscopes
Distances in the South
Opinions of the Press
Air Navigation
Aviation
Red Shift of Galaxies
Cosmological Principle
Rotation and Revolution
Aether
Planets
Stellar Parallax
Moon Tilt Illusion
Star Rotation
Star Size Illusion
Isostasy
Celestial Sphere
High Altitude Horizon Dip
Lunar Eclipse due to Electromagnetic Acceleration
Lunar Eclipse due to Shadow Object
Issues in Flight Analysis
International Shipping

Bridges
Railroads
Distant Islands
Sunken Oil Platform
Moon Tilt Illusion Supplement

Feynman - https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/richard_p_feynman_160383

Naval Shipping

Professionals and Military Personnel -- Flat Earth

Expert Series: Flat Earth

Lunar Eclipse

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2005HiA....13.1055F

The way in which pre-Hispanic people predicted the eclipses by carefully observing the Sun's and Moon's trajectories can be explained to students by telling them that since the paths of the sun and moon form a 5 degree angle, and their apparent motion is different, the moon moves slower, one can incer when the trajectories will cross.

EA

The Elecromagnetic Accelerator predicts that the Lunar Eclipse will occur when the Full Moon occurs about 180 Latitude Degrees from the Sun's position. Presuming that the Sun and the Moon travel on essentially the same paths, albeit at different rates, and that the Full Moon represents the time when the Moon is furthest from the Sun. At this time a Lunar Eclipse will occur. It is shown graphically that 180 degrees marks the spot where the Moon is furthest from the Sun. Other Full Moon may occur at about 172 - 178 and 182 to 188 degrees latitude from the Sun, and will not cause an Eclipse.

The Lunar Eclipses according to the Elecromagnetic Accelerator predicts that over the course of a Lunar Month, the Full Moon will be the South-Most position of the Moon. This may be confirmed in applications such as Stellarium.

Scale Experiment Notes

"A body's weight or mass doesn't change in the presence of air or not. The problem is that scales actually don't measure weight (or mass). What they measures is the difference between the body's weight and its upward Archimedes' push made by air on it."

claim

temperature map

Wikipedia Altitude: All other things being equal, an increase in altitude from sea level to 9,000 metres (30,000 ft) causes a weight decrease of about 0.29%.

Wikipedia Latitude: "In combination, the equatorial bulge and the effects of the surface centrifugal force due to rotation mean that sea-level gravity increases from about 9.780 m/s2 at the Equator to about 9.832 m/s2 at the poles, so an object will weigh approximately 0.5% more at the poles than at the Equator"

temperature affect on scale notes:

"The only thing that matters is that you calibrate it in the same environment and on the same place on your bench as when you are using it. Don't cal the scale at 40* and then use it when it's 80*. Let everything stablize and calibrate; you'll be just fine. It doesn't hurt to double check things after every 100 rounds. Also, anytime I get interupted or have to take a break, I will re-check the cal on the scale."

https://www.vacumed.com/318.html

Deception of the Douglas Bag Validation Method - What is the Gold Standard of Incompetence?

"Would you take a medication knowing that a pharmacy used an uncalibrated scale to weigh its ingredients? Would you board a plane knowing that the fuel or altitude gauges are not calibrated at frequent intervals?

In these and thousands of other applications scientific bases and rules of metrology must be obeyed to assure chaos-free operation of modern societies. To scrutinize performance of measuring devices a process of calibration must be carried out by means of applying a known standard and getting back a correct reading."

Things that affect scales:

https://www.jaking.com/resources/articles/accuracy-and-repeatability-of-your-balance/

https://bitesizebio.com/33245/drift-measurements-analytical-balances/

"Pharmaceutical laboratories and bioscience research institutes make extensive use of analytical balances that are highly sensitive. These analytical balances are greatly affected by their environment and also by the way they are installed and handled."

Uncalibrated bathroom scales inaccurate - https://thewirecutter.com/blog/can-i-trust-my-bathroom-scale/

Barometer

A scale that measures the weight of the atmosphere is called the "barometer".

Air pressure does not affect the scale trivially. See the following illustration and text:

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/fair-or-foul-how-to-use-a-barometer/

“ Air pressure decreases as altitude increases.

Atmospheric pressure — or barometric pressure — is simply the weight of the air at ground level. It’s a little easier to understand when you think about the concept of water pressure first. As you get deeper in water, the pressure increases. This is because as you descend, the built up weight of the water on top of you increases. In 1 foot of water, you have the weight of that foot of water pressing down on you. In 2 feet of water, you have the weight of an extra foot of water pressing on you. It’s quite logical, really. ”

Seismic

Ring Laser Gyroscope
Ring Laser Gyroscope - Seismology

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.02789.pdf

Bi-Polar Model

Mainstream Astronomy

Topics Related to Relativity

Other

Gravimetry -- fix misc

Flat Earth Star Trails

To review - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkDqdoINhYI

Astronomical Nutation

Nutation is Unexplained

Project Longstop - Consider simplifying with references

Notes

Ballistic Missiles

Papers showing that missiles were designed to assume a Flat Earth:

Internal Guidance of Ballistic Missiles (1971)
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/722291.pdf

Videos:

NAVY Missile Instructor says that no earth curvature or rotation is assumed

Epicycles

History

https://books.google.com/books?id=lbPN34fg760C&lpg=SA5-PA69&ots=o7Dx-iQUw1&dq=Mathematical%20Thought%20from%20Ancient%20to%20Modern%20Times%20%22epicycle%22&pg=SA5-PA68#v=onepage&q&f=false

Neptune: https://books.google.com/books?id=IgnNCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA8&dq=perturbations%20%22epicycles%22&pg=PA8#v=onepage&q=perturbations%20%22epicycles%22&f=false

University of Toronto Quarterly

At the end of the 19th century, long after Kepler and Newton's contributions to astronomy, we read about the state of astronomy in

The University of Toronto Quarterly (1895) ([https://web.archive.org/web/20190922234836/https://books.google.com/books?id=vzQ5AAAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA48 Archive)

Gravitational Redshift

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.09253.pdf

“ The second possible misconception relates to the notion that gravitational redshift experiments provide evidence for spacetime curvature. They do, but contrary to what is claimed in a couple of important modern textbooks on GR, a single gravitational redshift experiment does not require an explanation in terms of curvature. Rather, it is only multiple such experiments, performed at appropriately different locations in spacetime, that suggest curvature, via the notion that inertial frames are only defined locally. In the process of elaborating on this in section (3), we also take a swipe at the nomenclature associated with the “clock hypothesis”. ”

Navigation

Rescheduled flights: http://ifers.123.st/t69p25-flight-routes-shipping-routes-under-sea-cables

Flat Earth - Flights from Sydney to Houston fly NORTH of Hawaii - Earth Not a Globe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=NuaP78vk440

bi-polar maps - http://www.e-perimetron.org/vol_3_4/gaspar.pdf

Jet Streams

https://books.google.com/books?id=vsodESrwdm4C&lpg=PA183&dq=%22jet%20streams%22%20%22southern%20hemisphere%22%20%22miles%20per%20hour%22&pg=PA183#v=onepage&q=50%20miles%20per%20hour&f=false

“ Jet streams are ever-present, relatively narrow, streams of high-speed winds undulating around the Northern and Southern Hemispheres ”

https://books.google.com/books?id=vsodESrwdm4C&lpg=PA183&dq=%22jet%20streams%22%20%22southern%20hemisphere%22%20%22miles%20per%20hour%22&pg=PA183#v=onepage&q=50%20miles%20per%20hour&f=false

“ Within these streams, winds travel at different rates of speed, from some 50 miles per hour at the outer edges of the stream, to some 250 miles per hour at the center. Speeds as high as 300 miles an hour have been reported. ”

https://i.imgur.com/d0NUCyD.png

Jet Streams Enable Faster Than Sound Flight

https://www.wired.com/story/norwegian-air-transatlantic-speed-record/

“ OK, about that "subsonic" bit. You might know that the speed of sound at an altitude of 30,000 to 40,000 feet is roughly 670 mph. But Norwegian’s planes didn't break the sound barrier. Those near-800-mph figures represent ground speed—how fast the aircraft is moving over land. Their air speed, which factors out the 200-mph wind boost, was closer to the 787's standard Mach 0.85. (The older Boeing 747 can cruise at Mach 0.86, but is less efficient than its younger stablemate.) When talking supersonic, and breaking sound barriers, it's all about the speed of the air passing over the wings, which in this case was more like 570 mph. ”

Jeran Video - Jet Streams SH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaDw-6sslrc

Trade Winds and South Pacific Gyre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_winds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_winds#/media/File:Map_prevailing_winds_on_earth.png

South Pacific Gyre

http://thejunkwave.com/what-is-a-gyre/

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/South_Pacific_Gyre.png

Another illustration: https://books.google.com/books?id=bOg0EqqrDRgC&lpg=PA133&dq=%22jet%20streams%22%20%22southern%20hemisphere%22&pg=PA153#v=onepage&q=%22jet%20streams%22%20%22southern%20hemisphere%22&f=false

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151009-where-is-the-windiest-place-on-earth

GPC and Lat-Lon distances

The coordinate system a GPS uses assumes that the coordinate points rest upon a sphere. The location of one coordinate point may be "accurate", but the distance between multiple coordinate points relies upon the Round Earth model, as Latitude and Longitude is a spherical coordinate system, and is therefore in dispute in these conversations.

Listed Flight Times Skewed

http://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-tips/airlines-airports/why-flights-take-longer (Archive)

“ Did you know that a flight from New York City to Houston, Texas is over an hour longer today than if you took the same flight in 1973? Now it takes about three hours and 50 minutes, but 43 years ago it would have taken 2 hours and 37 minutes. What gives?

~

Surprisingly, flight time is calculated from when the aircraft releases the parking brake (on push back) to when it sets the brake on arrival to the gate,” commercial pilot Chris Cooke told Travel + Leisure. “All that waiting in line during taxi and takeoff counts toward flight time.

Not surprisingly, saving money is another reason flights take longer today. “Airlines are able to save millions per year by flying slower," reveals a video from Business Insider. ”

A study which says they are skewing flight times:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travel-truths/Are-airlines-exaggerating-flight-times-so-theyre-never-late/ (Archive)

“ Are you being told the truth about flight times?

Passenger jets have never been more advanced. With Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, introduced in 2011, leading the charge, and new models like the 737 MAX and the Airbus A320neo following in its wake, the aircraft on which we travel are safer, smoother, quieter and more fuel efficient than ever.

They also appear perfectly capable of flying faster than their predecessors. Just last month the low-cost carrier Norwegian issued a celebratory press release after one of its 787 Dreamliners whizzed from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to London Gatwick in five hours and 13 minutes, setting a new transatlantic record for a subsonic plane. That’s three minutes quicker than the previous best time set by British Airways in January 2015.

So why, record-breaking feats notwithstanding, are airlines claiming it takes longer and longer to fly from A to B?

That’s according to research by OAG, the aviation analyst, carried out for Telegraph Travel. It found that over the last couple of decades, despite new technology, scheduled flight times - ie. how long an airline estimates it will take to complete a journey - have actually increased by as much as 50 per cent.

Looking at Europe’s busiest international route, for example - Heathrow to Dublin - it found that in 1996 the vast majority of airlines published a scheduled flight time of between 60 and 74 minutes. Fast forward 22 years and almost all claim the journey takes between 75 and 89 minutes, while a handful bank on 90 minutes or more. ”

Non-Stop Flights

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/airline-fuel-stops-divert-1.4495744 (Archive)

Annoyed by a fuel stop on your direct flight? Why airlines can't always plan ahead

“ Travel delays. We've all been there.

But there's something about fuel stops that particularly irritates travellers. Why didn't the airline plan ahead? How could it not know the aircraft would need more fuel?

In November Chad Hinchey was on a direct WestJet flight from Edmonton to Yellowknife when he says the pilot announced they were going to have to divert to Fort McMurray, Alta., because of bad weather.

Passengers were told that the plane didn't have enough fuel to attempt a landing in Yellowknife and fly to an alternate airport if it had to. ”

---

Flights Stop for Fuel

By SUSAN CAREY And ANDY PASZTOR

January 11, 2012

“ Dozens of Continental Airlines flights to the East Coast from Europe have been forced to make unexpected stops in Canada and elsewhere to take on fuel after running into unusually strong headwinds over the Atlantic Ocean

The stops, which have caused delays and inconvenience for thousands of passengers in recent weeks, are partly the result of a decision by United Continental Holdings Inc., the world's largest airline, to use smaller jets on a growing number of long, trans-Atlantic routes.

United's strategy works when the winds are calm, and it allows the airline to operate less expensive aircraft with fewer cabin-crew members to an array of European cities that wouldn't generate enough traffic to justify larger planes.

But by pushing its international Boeing Co. 757s to nearly the limit of their roughly 4,000-nautical-mile range, United is leaving little room for error when stiff winds increase the amount of fuel the planes' twin engines burn.

Last month, United said, its 169-seat 757s had to stop 43 times to refuel out of nearly 1,100 flights headed to the U.S. A year earlier, there were only 12 unscheduled stops on roughly the same volume of 757 flights.

Such stops are safer than eating into the minimum amount of reserve fuel pilots are required to keep on board, which guarantees that a plane can fly 45 minutes past its destination or alternate landing spot. ”

--

Air travel: So-called nonstop flights now stop for fuel

“ In winter, to lower the odds of getting snowed in by an ice storm, a good idea is to choose warm weather for your connection, even if it seems a slightly longer trip. In summer, fogs and thunderstorms can also wreak havoc with airline schedules. Obviously, buying your tickets far in advance, there is no way to avoid these situations. But if you’re buying your ticket at the last minute, check a source like the Weather Channel before nailing down your final arrangements.

If the jet-setters of the 1960s had climbed aboard a plane designed 40 years before, they would have been getting into something with wooden wings. In some ways the world changed more rapidly and dramatically in your grandfather’s day than your own.

Accept the reality that most of the stress in travel by plane is out of your control. As you will quickly see, you have much less control of things in general than you might like to believe.

Be aware that so-called nonstop flights now stop for fuel. Flights to the East Coast from Europe are being forced to make dozens of totally unexpected stops in Canada and elsewhere to take on fuel after running into unusually strong head winds over the Atlantic Ocean. According to The Wall Street Journal and other sources, these stops, which have caused dramatic delays and inconvenience for thousands of passengers in recent weeks, are the results of a decision by United Continental, the world’s largest airline, to utilize a smaller jet on a growing number of long transatlantic routes.

The strategy works when the winds are calm. It allows the airline to operate less expensive aircraft. And with fewer cabin-crew members to an array of European cities that would not generate enough traffic to justify larger planes. But according to Susan Carey and Andy Pasztor, by pushing its 757s to nearly the limit of their roughly 4,000-nautical-mile range, United is leaving little room for error, especially when stiff winds increase the amount of fuel the planes’ twin engines burn. ”

Argentina to Newzealand - 5 Day Flight

It took this person 5 days to get from Argentina to New Zealand: https://www.roamingaroundtheworld.com/surviving-5-day-flight/

If one were to spend $1500 a seat on the "direct route" that was offered to that person, what makes you think that the airline wouldn't go ahead and make an unscheduled fuel stop in California anyway, like the articles say that they make such stops at the drop of a hat?

Delays

https://www.quora.com/What-things-do-airlines-most-routinely-lie-about-to-their-customers http://archive.vn/KjsxK

I used to be employed in the airline industry and had access to some of their systems. I was able to look at data about the schedule of flights and, if there was a delay the users at the departure point (for instance) were supposed to enter a reason. And, just like the railway, it was sometimes the case that all it said was "delayed". If you were lucky you got "delayed due weather" or some such. If the flight hadn't yet taken off you might get a departure time estimate but then again you might not. So the poor person at the arrival point might get practically no information to give you and if they told you that my guess is you'd give them hassle "what do you mean you don't know; all these computers .....".

https://onemileatatime.com/american-airlines-lying-cancelation/

AA Employee Going for GreAAt! says: April 15, 2019 at 6:31 pm The only people American hates more than their employees are their customers. Working on the inside and seeing this nonsense every day is embarrassing. And yes, we do lie about cancellation reasons on a daily basis to avoid taking care of our customers.

WGS 1984

https://www.gpsworld.com/data-collection-of-wgs-84-information-or-is-it/

“ In the meantime, here are a few of the main differences between WGS 84 and NAD83:

-The coordinate system for WGS 84 is geographic, and the NAD83 system is projected.

-WGS 84 values are points in space, while NAD83 coordinates are physical locations on the Earth. ”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Plane_Coordinate_System

Background to NAD83

https://gisgeography.com/geodetic-datums-nad27-nad83-wgs84/

Datum definition:

https://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~frazier/RSpatialGuides/OverviewCoordinateReferenceSystems.pdf

Truth Tokens -Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) conformal projection

https://web.archive.org/web/20181115035011/http://truthtokens.com/map/?upm_export=print

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/civil-3d-forum/coordinates-system/td-p/3179510

Hi All,

I think my question is for people who are living in WA, or someone know much about US coordinate systems:

What is World Geodetic System of 1984 and how's difference between it and NAD83 Washtington state planes?

Thank you,

Re: Coordinates System WGS-84 is a coordinate system designed for world-wide navigation. It takes into account the spherical nature of the planet. The coordinates are given in deg-min-sec format, common with polar coordinates, for latitude and longitude.

The Washington state plane system is a square coordinate system specific for the state of Washington. It supposes a flat plane across the face of the state. Northing and Easting are given in feet, based on straight line-of-sight distance.

Transformations Between NAD83 and WGS84

https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS/Articles/WGS84NAD83.pdf

Uses

Military flights

https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/pcr.2018.50.issue-1/pcr-2018-0002/pcr-2018-0002.pdf

“ Military aeronautical charts (both operational and special) are developed using the WGS—84 reference system, where the WGS-84 ellipsoid of rotation is the reference surface. ”

Relativity

https://books.google.com/books?id=kEjeQwNSIpoC&lpg=PA14&dq=gravity%20experiment%20paradox&pg=PA14#v=onepage&q&f=false

“ To solve the paradox of the Michelson-Morley experiment we have to abandon Newton's axioms of absolute space and absolute time. Einstein solved the problem by making the ingenious assumption that observers moving with different velocities with respect to each other have their own space and time. The second postulate of the theory of relativity is that light propagates in every direction with the same constant velocity, in every legitimate (uniformly moving) reference system. It is actually the theoretical formulation of the negative result of Michelson and Morley's experiment. The theory performed the unification of space and time.

However, the Newtonian action-at-a-distance still awaited explanation. This was accomplished again by Einstein with his general theory of relativity. By speculative reasoning exclusively, Einstein concluded that a uniformly accelerated reference system imitates completely the behavior of a uniform gravitational field. All masses fall in a field of gravity with exactly the same acceleration. i.e., the ponderable (gravitational) mass of a body is strictly proportional to its inertial mass. This is the so-called "equivalence hypothesis" confirmed by Roland Eötvös. The principle has important consequences. First, the force of gravity comes into existence solely through the (accelerated) motion of the reference system, like centrifugal force, for example. The second consequence is that the principle is universal: is holds for all physical phenomena. In an accelerated box an observer will see a beam of light following a curved path; consequently an equivalent gravitational field must also bend the path of a light beam. The velocity of light is no longer an absolute constant of nature. ”

American Association for the Advancement of Science is publishing content which states that SR has been disproved through its EurekaAlert website:

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/ngpi-tst030116.php

“ The special theory of relativity has been disproved theoretically

At present, mainstream physicists seem to have fully accepted Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (STR) and to take it as the foundation of modern physics because the theory appears perfectly logical and its predictions seem to be supported by numerous experiments and observations. However, if one re-examines these experiments carefully and with an open mind, serious problems may emerge. The paper has examined many experiments that are considered as the evidences of relativistic effects, but found they either have null effects or are wrongly interpreted or calculated. For example, the behaviours of clocks in Hefele-Keating experiment interpreted as the results of relativistic time dilation caused by the relative speed of an inertial reference frame are actually absolute and do not change with the change of inertial reference frames; the corrected calculation of Fizeau experiment based on Newton's velocity addition formula is much closer to the experimental measurement than the result calculated based on the relativistic velocity addition formula. In fact, Hefele-Keating experiment indicates the existence of a medium in the space that can slow down the frequencies of atomic clocks when they have velocities relative to the medium, and Fizeau experiment reveals the existence of a medium called aether relative to which the speed of light is constant, though it is possible that the medium to slow down atomic clocks may be different from aether as multiple media may coexist in the space.

The existence of aether means that the two postulates of STR are wrong for light and electromagnetic waves because the speed of light and the electromagnetic wave equations should be valid only in the inertial reference frame moving with the local aether, just like the acoustic wave equation valid only in the inertial reference frame moving with the local air.

The paper has cleared the definition of the physical time and proved that the time of a physical clock is an invariant of Lorentz Transformation i.e. an invariant of inertial reference frames same as Galilean time. The Lorentz invariance of the clock time makes it possible to synchronize clocks in all inertial reference frames to produce the absolute and universal physical time as demonstrated in the universal synchronization of all the satellite clocks and ground clocks of the global positioning system. Therefore, the time of the STR is no longer the physical time measured with physical clocks.

Moreover, the paper has further proved that Lorentz Transformation is the same as to redefine time and space as functions of Galilean time and space to produce an artificially constant speed of light in all inertial reference frames. The relationship between the STR space-time and Galilean space-time has revealed that the time dilation and length contraction of the STR in a moving inertial reference frame observed on the stationary inertial reference frame are just illusions. Using the relationship can also prove that the real speed of light measured with clocks still follows Newton's velocity addition formula, which directly falsifies the postulate that the speed of light is constant in all inertial reference frames.

All these findings lead us to conclude that the STR as a theory of physics is wrong. Thus, all relativistic spacetime model based physics theories (electromagnetic theory, quantum field theory, general theory of relativity, big bang theory, string theories, etc) become questionable. Disproving the STR and other related theories of physics will not lead to any crisis but instead open a new room for scientists to develop new theories for all the known and unknown physical phenomena. The paper has proposed a new experimental setup with which scientists will be able to measure the velocity of aether wind anywhere in the reachable universe and determine the velocity field of aether in the space for studying the dynamics of aether. The dynamics of aether may lead to the discovery of new methods to propel our space ships to speeds close to or even faster than the speed of light as the speed limit imposed by the STR is no longer valid, though there should exist an extremely difficult barrier for us to surpass the speed of light in the aether just as to surpass the sound barrier in the air. ”

On Sagnac:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a0bc/0dfe3a7809b3adeff723aeea6363f3272850.pdf

“ It is believed that the Sagnac effect does not contradict Special Relativity theory because it is manifest in non-inertial rotational motion; therefore, it should be treated in the framework of General Relativity theory. However, several well-designed studies have convincingly shown that a Sagnac Effect identical to the one manifest in rotational uniform motion is also manifest in transverse uniform motion. This result should have been sufficient to falsify Special Relativity theory. In the present article, we offer theoretical support to the experimental results by elucidating the notion that the dynamics of transverse and rotational types of motion are completely equivalent. Since the transverse Sagnac effect contradicts Special Relativity theory, it follows that the rotational Sagnac effect contradicts Special Relativity theory as well. ”

Relativity and Accelerating Upwards:

https://books.google.com/books?id=FFQjDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT34&lpg=PT34&dq=%22earth+pushing+you%22&source=bl&ots=MV9ROmx5Eu&sig=ACfU3U17gR2YnIJbxFhEuRhKz2cR-mVBgQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjaoLf6xMHiAhUPpFkKHTqqAMwQ6AEwDXoECB0QAQ#v=onepage&q=%22earth%20pushing%20you%22&f=false

“ Consider a skydiver jumping out of an airplane. The skydiver falls freely, up to the effects of air resistance. According to Einstein, the skydiver's path is the straightest line possible through the curved space-time around the Earth. From the skydiver's perspective this seems quite natural. Except for the air rushing past her, the skydiver feels no perturbing forces at all. In fact, if it weren't for the air resistance, she would experience weightlessness in the same way that an astronaut does in orbit. The only reason we think the skydiver is accelerating is because we are used to using the surface of the Earth as our frame of reference. If we free ourselves from this convention, then we have no reason to think the skydiver is accelerating at all.

Now consider yourself on the ground, looking up at the falling daredevil. Normally, your intuitive description of your own motion would be that you are stationary. But again this is only because of our slavish regard to the Earth as the arbiter of what is at rest and what is moving. Free yourself from this prison, and you realize that you are, in fact, accelerating. You feel a force on the soles of your feet that pushes you upwards, in the same way that you would if you were in a lift that accelerated upwards very quickly. In Einstein's picture there is no difference between your experience sanding on Earth and your experience in the lift. In both situations you are accelerating upwards. In the latter situation it is the lift that is responsible for your acceleration. In the former, it is the fact that the Earth is solid that pushes you upwards through space-time, knocking you off your free-fall trajectory. That the surface of the Earth can accelerate upwards at every point on its surface, and remain as a solid object, is because it exists in a curved space-time and not in a flat space.

With this change in perspective the true nature of gravity becomes apparent. The free falling skydiver is brought to Earth because the space-time through which she falls is curved. It is not an external force that tugs her downwards, but her own natural motion through a curved space. On the other hand, as a person standing on the ground, the pressure you feel on the soles of your feet is due to the rigidity of the Earth pushing you upwards. Again, there is no external force pulling you to Earth. It is only the electrostatic forces in the rocks below your feet that keep the ground rigid, and that prevents you from taking what would be your natural motion (which would also be free fall).

So, if we free ourselves from defining our motion with respect to the surface of the Earth we realize that the skydiver is not accelerating, while the person who stands on the surface of the Earth is accelerating. Just the opposite of what we usually thing. Going back to Galileo's experiment on the leaning tower of Pisa, we can now see why he observed all of his cannonballs to fall at the same rate. It wasn't really the cannonballs that were accelerating away from Galileo at all, it was Galileo that was accelerating away from the cannonballs! ”

Sagnac:

https://books.google.com/books?id=XVLmihZnsvUC&lpg=PA44&ots=Xy3Lnlpnag&dq=1942%20Dufour-Prunier&pg=PA55#v=onepage&q&f=false

“ A recent ingenious test by Wang et al. (2003) shows that the Sagnac result is also achieved by sending out and back again light in a straight-line portion of the light path. This is what this author claimed above, but it is so much more convincing when an actual experiment has shown the same thing. I wonder what excuse will be trotted out now! Wang et all. achieved the seemingly impossible by reversing a light beam sent out on a straight line on a moving platform and measuring the difference in time for it to return. This author had the pleasure of meeting Wang in 1997 and corresponded with him during the rests he performed and since then.

In another paper (2005), Wang gives further details of the experiment; appended to this paper are comments on the experiment by Hatch and Van Flandern, confirming that Wang had succeeded in proving that the Sagnac effect applies to straight-line motion.

...Any claims that the Sagnac experiment upsets [Special Relativity] were heretofore brushed aside by a statement that Sagnac is a rotational experiment and that SR does not apply to rotational experiments. That defense is now shown to be groundless. ”

From Unified Field Mechanics II by Richard L. Amoroso, Louis H. Kauffman, Peter Rowlands, and Gianni Albertini we see:

https://books.google.com/books?id=W4RIDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA307&pg=PA307#v=onepage&q&f=false

“ This controversy, whether Sagnac experiment is against or in accordance with relativity, was settled recently by R. Wang et a. [30] with a very interesting experimental setup they called linear Sagac interferometer.

...From the experimental regults obtained with the linear Sagnac interferometer one is lead to conclude that in this particular case the linear additive rule applies. Consequently we may have velocities greater than c, which clearly shows that realitivity is not adequate do describe this specific physical process. ”

Reasons SR is wrong: http://www.harkess.org.uk/reasons_einstein_wrong/reasons_einstein_wrong.html

Moon

http://www.umass.edu/sunwheel/pages/moonteaching.html

“ THE U.MASS. SUNWHEEL is an 8 year old stone circle -- a solar and lunar calendar and observatory located on the campus of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The stone circle contains 14 stones 8'-10' tall, marking the cardinal directions, the directions along the horizon to the rising and setting Sun at the solstices and equinoxes, and the directions to the rising and setting Moon at major lunar standstill. ”

From Cornell University for the Northern Hemisphere:

Season	Postion of Moonrise/set
	New	1st	Full	3rd
Winter	Southeast/Southwest	East/West	Northeast/Northwest	East/West
Spring	East/West	Northeast/Northwest	East/West	Southeast/Southwest
Summer	Northeast/Northwest	East/West	Southeast/Southwest	East/West
Autmn	East/West	Southeast/Southwest	East/West	Northeast/Northwest

The direction of Moonrise changes quite drastically over 14 days, moving over quite extreme ranges South to North.

Earth-Moon System

From University of Arizona:

Right Angle Triangle

Triangle Calculator:

Input:

Angle A: 5.01
Adjacent Side: 238900
Angle B: 90

Output:

Opposite Side: 21,321.257

Angular Diameter Calculator

Take the above value of 21321.257 and 238900 and put it into an angular diameter calculator. This will tell us the number of degrees in the sky the space of 21321.257 miles will make if it were at the distance to the Round Earth moon.

https://rechneronline.de/sehwinkel/angular-diameter.php

Input:
g = 21321.257
r = 238900

Output:
a = 5.11 degrees

The above suggests that the moon must travel a path that is within 5.11 degrees from the ecliptic at all times.

Shift of the Ecliptic

To calculate the maximum amount the ecliptic of the sun can shift in the sky to perspective depending on where you stand on earth above (or below) the plane of the ecliptic which bisects the earth, we may do the following:

Opposite Side: 3,963 (radius of the earth in miles)
Angle A: 90 Degrees
Adjacent Side: 238,900 (distance to the moon in miles)

Angle B: 0.95 Degrees

Measuring the Sky

Timeanddate.com has provided a handy guide to measuring the sky. When holding one's hand at arms length 5 degrees will take up about three fingers of space.

https://wiki.tfes.org/images/7/73/Measuring-sky-with-hand.png

EAT

https://news.softpedia.com/news/Light-Can-Bend-While-Moving-265679.shtml

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/04/light-bends-itself

https://physicsworld.com/a/light-bends-itself-round-corners/

Criticisms of Special Relativity
Criticisms of Relativity Theory

Quote: "The most visible point I've seen is that the seasonal star constellations you know well (Orion in my case) will be seen as inverted if you change the hemisphere. The moon and sun position also change greatly. I'm not aware of any ideas that incorporate this."

Water tank mixed with sugar, light bending - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-9120/27/5/007/pdf

Bending

http://www.tedpavlic.com/post_phil101_uncertainty.php

https://web.archive.org/web/20200811195324/http://www.tedpavlic.com/post_phil101_uncertainty.php

Dr. Theodore (Ted) P. Pavlic - http://www.tedpavlic.com/facjobsearch/docs/tpavlic_cv.pdf

Now, the more modern view of quantum mechanics treats photons as particles which carry a probability with them which has both a magnitude and a phase. When photons with equivalent magnitudes and opposite phases "intersect," their probabilities subtract to zero and no photon is detected. Keeping this in mind, understand that light does not travel in straight lines from one point to another. Light travels in all directions through all possible curves and paths from one place to another. In the end, our observations are of where the probabilities "add up," which typically is along a path of a straight line. When light is forced through inhomogeneous space its probabilities cancel in such a way where the curved paths add up or perhaps multiple paths show up.

http://www.wlym.com/archive/pedagogicals/light.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20200811195321/http://www.wlym.com/archive/pedagogicals/light.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20200811195758/http://lymcanada.org/author/jonathan

https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=43126

“ Let's try to take on a Newtonian with this:

"So you see, light does {not} travel in straight lines!"

"Yes it does, if you do not disturb it. But by interposing matter, an inhomogenous medium, you deflected the rays from their natural, straight-line paths."

"How do you know that straight-line paths are `natural'?"

"If a light ray were allowed to propagate unhindered, in a pure vacuum or perfectly homogeneous medium, then it would propagate precisely along a straight line. It is just like the motion of material bodies in space according to Newton's first law: `a material body remains in its state of rest or uniform motion along a straight line, unless compelled by forces acting upon it to change its state.' No one could deny that."

"Does a `pure vacuum' exist anywhere in nature? Does a `perfectly homogenous medium' exist in nature?"

"Well no, of course. There is always a bit of dirt around, or inhomogeneities that disturb the perfectly straight pathways."

"So the presence of what you call `dirt' is natural, right?"

"Yes."

"So then it is natural that light never travels in straight-line paths."

"Wait a minute. You are mixing everything up. I am talking about the natural propagation of light, quite apart from matter."

"What do you mean, `quite apart from matter'? Do you assume that the existence of light is something that can be separated from the existence of matter?"

"Yes, certainly. The natural state of light is that of light propagating in a Universe that is completely empty of matter."

"And a completely empty Universe is a natural thing? Do you claim such a think could ever exist?"

"I could imagine one. Sometimes I get that feeling inside my head."

"Maybe that is because you are not thinking in the real world."

"Don't blame me for that. I am a professional physicist."

"Well then, fill the vacuum in your mind with the following thought: Light and matter do not exist as separate entities, nor does matter act to bend rays of light from what you imagine in your fantasy-universe to be perfectly straight-line rays." ”

Bending Airy packets:

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v5/44

ether - https://books.google.com/books?id=PGjdBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=Light+velocity+is+a+constant+in+the+ether+Light+bends+to+where+the+ether+density+is+higher&source=bl&ots=kvU3hMHnlJ&sig=ACfU3U1Ap7DsvlKV8-QiKjN-SJy2b0kKJQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjplavs8ZPrAhWVZDUKHQr8DgUQ6AEwAHoECB4QAQ#v=onepage&q=Light%20velocity%20is%20a%20constant%20in%20the%20ether%20Light%20bends%20to%20where%20the%20ether%20density%20is%20higher&f=false

Moon Tilt

Prof. Alan Myers - http://www.upenn.edu/emeritus/essays/MyersMoon.html

moon phases illustration p.19 - https://starlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/D.-25.-Moon-Cylinder-v616.pdf

stack exchange - https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/14809/sun-and-moon-anomally

Moon Terminator Illusion

Supplements

For moon parallax analysis:

Orange Ball Example

As an example, if your eye is at an altitude of 5 feet, 6 inches, and there is an object, say an orange ball on a post, 30 feet away from you, which is also at altitude of 5 feet, 6 inches, then the position of that ball to you will be parallel on the horizontal. The path to that object will be at your eye level.

Instead, lets say that you step on a boulder that is 5 foot, 6 inches in height. The new altitude of your eye is 11 feet in height. We know that the orange ball on a post is 5 ft 6 in below that 11 foot elevation where it would need to be to be parallel to the eye.

In order to find the position of the orange ball in degrees below eye level, we can use an angular diameter calculator to calculate that missing space above the orange ball. The height of 5 ft 6 in (5.5 ft) at a distance of 15 feet is approximately 10.475 degrees. Therefore the orange orange ball is 10.475 degrees below eye level.

From the calculator:

g: 5.5 r: 30 a: 10.475

Sun-Moon-Observer Example

Using the above example, we may compute the parallax displacement of the Sun as seen by an observer on Earth and an observer on the Moon.

To an observer the Sun is parallel on the horizontal at eye level, setting into the horizon. The Moon is directly over the observer. In order to calculate the displacement of the Sun in the sky between an observer on Earth and an observer on the Moon we may use the angular diameter calculator with the distances involved.

g: 238900 r: 93000000 a: 0.147

Moon rotate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ox_QQbnojs

Conspiracy

Mars - Devon Island

Clouds Lit from Below

Alt Explanation: https://epod.usra.edu/blog/2017/02/clouds-lit-from-below.html

Quotes

"Have you ever directly experienced anything in your entire life that would lead you to believe you were living on a sphere hurtling through space? If you hadn't been repeatedly told it was true, would you ever suspect that it was?

There's your proof: your own eyes."

Newton Divine

P. Kelly, LL. D. in his Metrology; Or, an Exposition of Weights and Measures (1816) comments on p.10:

“ Some philosophers have doubted the perfect equability of the earth's diurnal rotation on its axis; but from the best observations that have been made for 2000 years, in fixed observatories, it is concluded that there is no variation whatever. It is perhaps the only uniform motion of which astronomers are certain. And here it may be worthy of remark, that no natural cause has yet been assigned for the diurnal rotation of the planets. Sir Issac Newton observes, in one of his letters to Dr. Bently, (reviewed in Dr. Johnson's Works, Vol. II. p.332, Murphy's edition) that "the diurnal rotations of the planets cannot be derived from gravity, but must require a divine arm to impress them."

The above question respecting the natural cause of plentary rotation was submitted to the principle Astronomers of France in the summer of 1814, at a Metting of the Board of Longitude. It was introduced by a visitor from England, who wished to learn if any new light had been thrown on the subject, by the great advances made in analytical science and physical astronomy, by some of the members present. They all agreed that no satisfactory solution had yet been given of the phenomenon; and they listened with much attention to the opinion quoted from Sir Issac Newton's Letters, which they had not previously known, and on which the Count Laplace modestly observed -- "Si Netwon n'a pas pu l'exfliquer ce n'est pas a nous d'y pretendre." [Translated: If Netwon could not explain it, it is not up to us to claim it.] ”

Southern Hemisphere

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84024350/1897-01-31/ed-1/?sp=22&r=0.484,0.427,0.91,0.358,0

“ In a picture of the earth as these unique theorists believe it to be--of some of them, for they do not all agree that the "South Pole" is seen as a wall of ice surrounding the circular earth. This conception certainly fits well with the idea of the vastness of the Southern wastes of ice which have turned back all explorers.

The hardy searchers for glory have come much nearer to the North Pole, and have made the region around it seem small and familiar compared to that at the South, which is the true "terra incognita." In the flat earth picture, the North polar region is seen to be be a small region of eternal cold in the centre of the circular world.

Alexander Gleason, the sage of Niagara street, Buffalo, gave long and hard study to this great problem of the earth's surface, and spent much time publishing books and collecting information. At one time he advertised in a New York paper for sea captains who had made the trip from the West African coast around the Cap Horn, his desire being to prove that the distance was much greater than it would be if the earth were a sphere. The information which he obtained seemed to be satisfactory to himself, though it did not convince many scientists and geographers. ”

Electromagnetic Accelerator

Questions and Answers

Q: Does this model of the phases predict anything that RET does not?

A: According to the above rule-of-thumb table from Cornell University during the phases between New Moon and 1st Quarter (Half Moon) the Moon will not set in the sky until a time between Sunset (New) and Local Midnight (1st Quarter), meaning that the range of Crescent Moon phases will be seen during the night. In the Flat Earth Moon Phase diagrams above we can see how this can be possible -- of the nine phase examples arranged in a circle, it takes about two 'sections' for the celestial bodies to set from an overhead position. The Crescent Moon will overlap into the night time.

However, according to the geometric model of the phases in RET, a Crescent Moon appearing in the sky into late hours of the night is difficult to explain with the Round Earth model.

John Savage at Savage Plane explains the matter in an article and a video here:

Impossible Heliocentric Moon Phases Explained - Savage Plane (Archive)

The authors of the article even identify some dates in 2019 for when the Crescent Moon is seen past midnight for locations in the Northern Hemisphere -- which may be possible in the above Flat Earth model since locations in the Northern Hemisphere are closer to the center, but hard to explain with the Round Earth schema where those locations are geometrically pointing away from the daylight side. A gibbous moon seen during the day is another issue, essentially the reverse of the above, and is also discussed.

Flattened at the Poles

From Encyclopedia Brittanica's article on Jean Richer:

“ Richer’s observations also led to a discovery about Earth’s shape. Through experimentation, Richer discovered that the beat of a pendulum is slower at Cayenne than at Paris, which is at a different latitude. This meant that gravity must be weaker at Cayenne than at Paris. Sir Isaac Newton and Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens used this discovery to prove that the Earth is not a sphere but is actually flattened at the poles (an oblate spheroid). Thus, Cayenne is farther than Paris from Earth’s centre. ”

Mountain-Gravity

http://www.michaelbeeson.com/interests/GreatMoments/Chimborazo.pdf

http://milesmathis.com/schie.pdf

Mine-Gravity

https://web.archive.org/web/20180208095856/https://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/hollow/mcnair.htm

Moonbounce

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qw30x/can_an_amateur_astronomer_test_the_lunar_laser/

Q: Can an amateur astronomer test the Lunar Laser Ranging RetroReflector?

A: I was a grad student on the APOLLO (Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser Ranging Operation) project that was shown on Mythbusters. The short answer is no way. You need laser that can shoot enough photons in a short pulse that you'll get some back in the return pulse (shoot 1017 green 532 nm photons per pulse). You need sensitive detectors because, even if you shoot 1017 photons up, you're only going to get about 1 photon back (we used avalanche photodiodes). You need fancy filters and timing electronics, because, when you are only getting 1 photon back, you need to turn the detectors on in as little a time as possible to minimize false detections from background light. You need a big telescope to maximize the number of photons you get (we used the 3.5 meter telescope at Apache Point). And you need to set this all up in a place with minimal background light and minimal atmospheric distortion (seeing). http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/apollo/apparatus.html I guess you could do all these things on your own, but you would need about $1 million and a couple years of time to set it up.

Water Convexity

Other experiments to review, comments section of https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/flat-earthers-are-the-most-dedicated-trolls-ever/

Lunar Laser Ranging

http://cds.cern.ch/record/518975/files/0109063.pdf

“ The Lunar Laser Ranging experiment [5] has also veri ed that the Moon and the Earth fall with the same acceleration toward the Sun to better than one part in 10¹² ”

Or, in other words, a null result.

After 40 years' reflection, laser moon mirror project is axed

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jun/21/mcdonald-observatory-space-laser-funding (Archive)

Government funded:

“ The National Science Foundation (NSF) last week wrote to scientists working at the McDonald Laser ranging station at Fort Davis in Texas to tell them the annual $125,000 funding for their research project was going be terminated following a review of its scientific merits. ”

Used by NASA as evidence for Apollo:

“ The mirror's existence, and the fact that astronomers can bounce lasers off it and detect the returning beam, has also provided Nasa and other scientists with compelling evidence to refute the claims of moon-landing deniers who claim the Apollo lunar mission were hoaxes filmed in an Earth-based studio. ”

https://cddis.nasa.gov/lw19/docs/2014/Presentations/Degnan_Colloquium_presentation.pdf

Two new LLR stations were developed to compete with MLRS: CERGA LLR at Grasse in Southern France and a NASA funded site on Mt. Haleakala operated by the University of Hawaii.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/06may_lunarranging/

"Lunar laser ranging is one of the most important tools we have for searching for flaws in Einstein's general theory of relativity," says Slava Turyshev, a research scientist at JPL who works with Jim Williams and others on the project.

All of the phases were influenced by NASA. NASA is the customer and can easily say "we want the software to be developed by our external team" or "we want so and so to head this program".

When the government funds projects they don't just say "here's several million dollars, go wild", they go into it with clear rules and structure.

Some of the people on this project even freely identify themselves as working for NASA. From the press releases on the APOLLO website (second one down in the list of press releases):

http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/apollo/

Jim Williams is also a JPL employee --

"Jim Williams, a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)"

According to this press release, James Williams, the aforementioned JPL eployee, is directing the research ---

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/14/science/moon-s-dust-hides-a-throbbing-heart.html?src=pm

Finding out what's inside the Moon isn't simple, said Dr. James G. Williams, who directs the research.

Seems that NASA is not only providing the software, they're directing the research as well.

The lunar ranging equipment at the Apache Point Observatory seen in the show is supported and funded by NASA --

http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/apollo/

"Finally, we thank NASA for supporting APOLLO and enabling it to get "off the ground", and more recently, a joint effort by NASA and the National Science Foundation to fund APOLLO at a level that will allow project completion and production of the first science results."

NASA could have easily built or modified the equipment or software to show the results they wanted, which is what a fake space agency would do to "prove" themselves. You're asking us to trust NASA that NASA is honest.

Points:

- The project is funded by NASA - The project is controlled by NASA, by virtue of being funded by them - NASA scientists are working on the project - The software for the project is admitted to come from NASA

Australia

https://www.news.com.au/travel/australian-holidays/queensland/google-maps-agrees-to-sort-its-inflated-distances-in-the-queensland-outback/news-story/a38f729e4791d19d0d81fefe575250d6

Satellites

“ The satellite argument goes both ways, as desired at a given moment: I’ve heard: “don’t you see them moving across the night sky?” so. I’m supposed to see a washing machine in LEO but also “how would you be able to see washing machine at that distance?” Not very convincing, especially against the resolving power of modern cameras…… and your number is referring to active objects, which has no impact on visibility…..there are supposedly 20,000 objects out there which can move across your line of sight, a staggering number which makes the total invisibility of such objects an even greater mystery... ”

Misc. Quotes

Assorted Quotations

Science Quotes

“ Today's scientists have substituded mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. ”
—Nikola Tesla

“ When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly...he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science...Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries. ”
—Max Plank

“ Nobody that I know of in my field uses the so-called scientific method. In our field it is by the seat of your pants, leaps of logic. It is guesswork. ”
—Michio Kaku

(Source)

“ It has astounded the world of mathematics, and physics and now you can't move in the physics world without bumping into somebody who wants to talk about the tenth dimension, the eleventh dimension, the multi-verse, hyper space, time travel. All the things that were once considered science fiction are now centerpiece in our understanding of the nature of everything. ”
—Michio Kaku

“ Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry imagination. ”
—Max Planck, Nobel Prize, Physics

“ Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth. ”
—Albert Einstein

“ Advances are made by answering questions. Discoveries are made by questioning answers. ”
—Bernard Haisch, astrophysicist (c. 2000)

Our Cosmic Habitat: New Edition by Martin Rees

https://books.google.com/books?id=tg8mDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA83&ots=4JtNMMp0K7&pg=PA83#v=onepage&f=false

“ The Big Bang theory deserves to be taken at least as seriously as anything geologists or paleontologists tell us about the early history of our Earth: the inferences that Earth scientists make are just as indirect (and less quantitative). The theory’s survival gives me (and I suspect most cosmologists today) 99 percent confidence in extrapolating right back to the first few seconds of cosmic history.

I would prudently leave the other one percent for the possibility that our satisfaction is as illusory as that of a Ptolemaic astronomer who had successfully fitted some more epicycles. Cosmologists are sometimes chided for being often in error but never in doubt. ”

“ Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts ”
—Richard Feynman

“ We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress. ”
—Richard Feynman

“ When presented with two possibilities, scientists tend to choose the wrong one. ”
—Halton C. Arp, Ph.D.

A definition of science:

Something that is direct, observable, physical, natural, repeatable, unambiguous and comprehensive – in other words not hearsay, popular opinion, “expert” testimony, majority view, personal conviction, organisational ruling, conventional usage, superficial analogy, appeal to “simplicity”, or other indirect means of persuasion. (R.G. Elmendorf: The Foucault Pendulum, PA, USA, 1994.)

“ A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. ”
—Max Planck

The motto of the Royal Society is “Nullius in verba,” which roughly means: “Take nobody’s word for it.” On the Royal Society’s website they expand this meaning thus:

“ [The motto]…is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment. ”

The quote reinforces the concept of not accepting as “self-evident” that which authorities (or equations) suggest would be found where we have not yet actually looked.

"Science today is locked into paradigms. Every avenue is blocked by beliefs that are wrong, and if you try to get anything published in a journal today, you will run up against a paradigm, and the editors will turn you down."- Astronomer, Fred Hoyle

"It matters not whether we reckon it 28 or 54 million miles distant for either would do just as well."- Issac Newton

"Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'"- Max Planck

"I have read with much interest Messrs. Michelson and Morley’s wonderfully delicate experiment attempting to decide the important question as to how far the ether is carried along by the earth...I would suggest that almost the only hypothesis that can reconcile this opposition is that the length of material bodies changes..."- George FitzGerald

"I have to confess that I was bothered by the fact that the Axis of Evil seemed linked to a special direction in oursolar system... But now we have completely independent data... This is a hint of something really big."- Astrophysicist,Max Tegmark

"Why is the solar system cosmically aligned?"- Astrophysicist, Dragan Huterer

"The apparent alignment in the cosmic microwave background in one particular direction through space is called 'evil' because it undermines our ideas about the standard cosmological model... the Copernican Principle seems to be in jeopardy."- Astrophysicist, Ashok K. Singal

"One of the most surprising findings is that the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave radiation temperatures at large angular scales do not match those predicted by the standard [Big Bang] model."- The European Space Agency, Planck Probe, 2013

Geocentric Quotes Sources on Web

See

sagnac, morley, etc.

see

cosmological principle

Rotation and Revolution

“There is no planetary observation by which we on Earth can prove the Earth is moving in an orbit around the sun. Thus all Galileo’s discoveries…can be accommodated to the system [in which] the daily rotation of the heavens is communicated to the sun and planets, so that the Earth itself neither rotates nor revolves in an orbit.”

- I. Bernard Cohen, Birth of a New Physics, revised and updated, 1985, p. 78.

"We know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance."

- Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle

"People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations, For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations. You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that."

- George Ellis, a famous cosmologist, in Scientific American, "Thinking Globally, Acting Universally", October 1995

"The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, 'the sun is at rest and the earth moves,' or 'the sun moves and the earth is at rest,' would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS."

- Einstein and Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, p.212 (p.248 in original 1938 ed.) (Note: CS = coordinate system)

“Accordingly, since nothing prevents the earth from moving, I suggest that we should now consider also whether several motions suit it, so that it can be regarded as one of the planets. For, it is not the center of all the revolutions.”

-Nicolaus Copernicus

“I demonstrate by means of philosophy that the earth is round, and is inhabited on all sides; that it is insignificantly small, and is borne through the stars.”

- Johannes Kepler

“We might hope therefore that the Einstein theory, which is well suited to such problems, would throw more light on the matter. But instead of adding further support to the heliocentric picture of the planetary motions, the Einstein theory goes in the opposite direction, giving increased respectability to the geocentric picture”

- Sir Fred Hoyle, Nicolaus Copernicus: An Essay on His Life and Work, p. 87

"...all masses, all motion, indeed all forces are relative. There is no way to discern relative from absolute motion when we encounter them...Whenever modern writers infer an imaginary distinction between relative and absolute motion from a Newtonian framework, they do not stop to think that the Ptolemaic and Copernican are both equally true."

- Ernst Mach, Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung historisch-kritisch dargestellt, eighth ed, Leipzig, p. 222, 1921.

“There is no planetary observation by which we on Earth can prove the Earth is moving in an orbit around the sun. Thus all Galileo’s discoveries…can be accommodated to the system [in which] the daily rotation of the heavens is communicated to the sun and planets, so that the Earth itself neither rotates nor revolves in an orbit.”

- I. Bernard Cohen, Birth of a New Physics, revised and updated, 1985, p. 78.

"According to Einstein, the argument over whether the earth turns around or the heavens revolve around it, is seen to be no more than an argument over the choice of reference frames. There is no frame of reference from which an observer would not see the effects of the flattening of the poles. Thus in frame number 1 (the earth turns round while the sky is at rest), the centrifugal force is a consequence of the earth’s motion (uniform acceleration) relative to the heavens. This causes the flattening. In the latter frame, number 2 (the sky rotates and the earth stands still), the centrifugal force should be understood as being an effect of “the rotating heavens,” which is generating a gravitational field that causes the flattening of the poles. The two explanations are equivalent as there is equivalence between inertial and gravitational mass."

- “Einstein’s Ether: D. Rotational Motion of the Earth,” Galina Granek, Department of Philosophy, Haifa University, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel, Apeiron, Vol. 8, No. 2, April 2001, p. 61.

“So which is real, the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true. As in the case of our normal view versus that of the goldfish, one can use either picture as a model of the universe, for our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest. Despite its role in philosophical debates over the nature of our universe, the real advantage of the Copernican system is simply that the equations of motion are much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest.” — Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design, pages 41-42.

"I have two things to say that might surprise you: first, geocentrism is a valid frame of reference, and second, heliocentrism is not any more or less correct.” — Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer

"Before Copernicus, people thought that the earth stood still and that the heavens revolved about it once a day. Copernicus taught that "really" the earth revolves once a day, and the daily rotation of sun and stars is only "apparent"... But in the modern theory the question between Copernicus and his predecessors is merely one of convenience; all motion is relative, and there is no difference between the two... Astronomy is easier if we take the sun as fixed than if we take the earth... But to say more for Copernicus is to assume absolute motion, which is a fiction. It is a mere convention to take one body as at rest. All such conventions are equally legitimate, though not all are equally convenient."

- Bertrand Russell "The ABC of Relativity [ London: Allen & Unwin, 1958, p.13].

"Let it be understood at the outset that it makes no difference, from the point of view of describing planetary motion, whether we take the Earth or the Sun as the center of the solar system. Since the issue is one of relative motion only, there are infinitely many exactly equivalent descriptions referred to different centers - in principle any point will do, the Moon. Jupiter...So the passions loosed on the world by the publication of Copernicus' book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI were logically irrelevant..."

- Sir Fred Hoyle, Nicolaus Copernicus. An Essay on His Life and Work, p.1

"The ancient argument over Whether the Earth rotates or the heavens revolve around it (as Aristotle taught) is seen to be no more than an argument over the simplest choice of a frame of reference. Obviously. the most convenient choice is the universe.... Nothing except inconvenience prevents us from choosing the Earth as a fixed frame of reference...If We choose to make the Earth our ﬁxed frame of reference, we do not even do violence to everyday speech. We say that the sun rises in the morning, sets in the evening: the Big Dipper revolves around the North Star. Which point of view is “correct”? Do the heavens revolve or does the Earth rotate. The question is meaninglessness."

- The Relativity Explosion: Martin Gardner, 1976, pp 86-87

"The superior simplicity of the Copernican theory was just as much of a myth as its superior accuracy. The myth of superior simplicity was dispelled by the careful and professional work of modern historians. They reminded us that while Copernican theory solves certain problems in a simpler way than does the Ptolemaic one. the price of the simplification is unexpected complications in the solution of other problems. The Copernican system is certainly simpler since it dispenses with equants and some eccentrics: but each equant and eccentric removed has to be replaced by new epicycles and epicyclets. . .he also has to put the center of the universe not at the Sun. as he originally intended. but at an empty point fairly near to it.....I think it is fair to say that the ‘simplicity balance” between Ptolemy’s and Copernicus’ system is roughly even."

- The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, Imre Lakatos, pp 173-174

"We might hope therefore that the Einstein theory. which is well suited to such problems, would throw more light on the matter. But instead of adding further support to the heliocentric picture of the planetary motions. the Einstein theory goes in the opposite direction. giving increased respectability to the geocentric picture. The relation of the two pictures is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation. and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view"

- Sir Fred Hoyle, Nicolaus Copernicus. An Essay on His Life and Work, p.87

"One could just as legitimately assume the Earth to be fixed and the entire universe, with its great spherical cloud of black-body radiation, to be moving. The equations are the same. Indeed, from the standpoint of relativity the choice of reference frame is arbitrary. Naturally, it is simpler to assume the universe is fixed and the Earth moving than the other way around, but the two ways of talking about the Earth's relative motion are two ways of saying the same thing."

- 'The Relativity Explosion', Martin Gardner, pp. 184-185. On another page Gardner writes: "Do the heavens revolve or does the Earth rotate? The question is meaningless. A waitress may just as sensibly ask a customer if he wanted ice cream on top of his pie or the pie placed under his ice cream" (ibid., p. 87).

“In order for the Earth to be at rest in the center of the system of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, there is required both universal gravity and another force in addition that acts on all bodies equally according to the quantity of matter in each of them and is equal and opposite to the accelerative gravity with which the Earth tends to the Sun…Since this force is equal and opposite to its gravity toward the Sun, the Earth can truly remain in equilibrium between these two forces and be at rest. And thus celestial bodies can move around the Earth at rest, as in the Tychonic system.”

- Isaac Newton, Proposition 43.

"We can talk with precision of a body as spinning around relative to something or another, but there is no such thing as absolute spin: the Earth is not spinning to those of us who live on its surface and our point of view is as good as anyone else’s – but no better."

- F. Hoyle: Frontiers of Astronomy, New York, Harper & Row, 1966, p344

"Examined more closely, this simple idea acquires capital importance; there is no way of settling the question, no experiment can disprove the principle that there is no absolute space, all displacements we can observe are relative displacements. I have often had occasion to express these considerations so familiar to philosophers. They have even given me a publicity I would gladly have avoided. All the reactionary French journals have made me prove that the sun turns around the earth. In the famous case between the Inquisition and Galileo, Galileo should be all wrong."

- “The New Mechanics,” Henri Poincaré, 1913, The Monist, Vol. 23, pp. 385-395

I have had your newspaper on my desk for weeks, hoping to find time to write you. You say in your headline (Fall), “Six Physicists Say it is Possible” that the earth stands still. I don’t know who your physicists are, but the situation is much simpler than they seem to think. It is not just possible, it is a fact.

It is also a fact that earth does not stand still. The fact that makes facts of those two apparently conflicting statements is that, as Einstein said, there are no milestones in the Universe, and thus no absolute standard of rest or motion that makes such categorical statements mutually exclusive.

Whether one says the earth stands still depends on the use to which the statement is put. To a navigator, the sun and stars rise and set, and it would merely be a bother to him to consider himself on a rolling earth. To you, there are philosophical reasons that make you wish to take this point of view. Very well, take it. It is not in conflict with anything we know, and is unlikely ever to be.

Of course, there is a reason why physicists and astronomers take the other view. It is this. These people wish, unlike yourselves, to understand the Universe by mathematical laws. The laws are different depending on whether you take the earth as a standard of rest or whether you consider it in motion. It is not a question of right or wrong, they are just different; and those used by astronomers and physicists are very much shorter and easier to deal with than those you would have to use if you were interested in doing mathematical astronomy, which I gather you are not.[2] You cannot blame people for using compact, neat and accurate mathematical formulizations when they are available; and of course it is hard not to have the opinion that the Universe is better understood in this way. But you don’t have to. If it is important to you to consider the earth to be at rest, then the laws of nature can be formulated in an appropriate way.

The kind of thing that’s involved is this: you have probably seen in museums of elsewhere a long pendulum set swinging at the beginning of the day, whose direction of swing continually changes as the day goes on. This is usually, and simply, explained as an effect of the earth’s rotation. [The pendulum is called a Foucault Pendulum. –Ed.] You don’t have to explain it that way. The laws of nature that you would use if you were interested in doing mathematical physics while assuming the earth to be at rest would contain a velocity-dependent force that would act upon the pendulum in such a way as to produce the observed rotation. The whole question is one of philosophic view point, or attitude towards the world. It is not a question of fact, as the word fact is ordinarily understood. You will do fine, and perhaps even educate some of the confused people whose letters you publish, if you make this clear enough, often enough.

Peace,

David Park Professor of Physics Thompsonville Physical Laboratory Williams College Williamstown, Massachusetts 01267

The funny thing is, is that star distances are often used as a circular argument for heliocentrism / against geocentrism. For instance, when someone says the Earth isn't moving because we don't see any significant change in Polaris position from the North Pole, the heliocentrist will say "we don't see Polaris move because the stars are trillions of miles away" ... yet that counter-argument is based on the assumption that heliocentrism is true in the first place!

Navigation

Martin Gwynne completes our education:

‘Not the least interesting thing in the passage just quoted is the officer’s use of the term “confused dogma” when speaking of modern astronomy. For the sake of completeness I shall now fill in any gaps he left that might interest readers by giving the following summary of the principles of celestial navigation. (1) Celestial navigation is based on the premise of two concentric spheres – one (celestial) larger than the other – sharing a common pole, with the smaller and inner sphere remaining stationary while the outer revolves about it. (2) Calculations are based on the laws of spherical trigonometry. The measurements used to translate the computations into a position or “fix” on the earth are done in nautical miles (even in these days of almost universal metrication). Each of these 360 degrees of the circle is divided into 60 minutes. The nautical mile is defined as the length of one minute of longitude on the equator, or 6,080 feet. (3) The tables used to reduce or compute the resultant observations are based on 360 degrees. (4) All the navigators of the world use the same basic system, their calculations and charts being based on a fixed earth and the basic unit of the nautical mile.’ ---N. M. Gwynne, Galileo Versus the Geocentric Theory of the Universe, Britons Library, 1985, p.70.

Yes, most of the time they use the old geocentric system of navigation and it works for them. If any doubt this, go to the Encyclopedia Britannica and you will find the following:

‘For this purpose it is convenient first to consider the earth as fixed and to suppose the observer looking out from its centre…’ --- (Eclipse, p.869)

Earth Motion

"The failure of the many attempts to measure terrestrially any effects of the earth's motion..."- Physicist, Wolfgang Pauli

"We do not have and cannot have any means of discovering whether or not we are carried along in a uniform motion of translation."- Physicist, Henri Poincaré

"A great deal of research has been carried out concerning the influence of the Earth's movement. The results were always negative."- Physicist, Henri Poincaré

Copernican Revolution

"The Copernican revolution outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom. Since it changed the character of men's habitual mental operations even in the conduct of the non-material sciences, while transforming the whole diagram of the physical universe and the very texture of human life itself, it looms so large as the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern mentality, that our customary periodisation of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance."- Historian Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science: 1300-1800, New York, The Free Press, 1957, pp. 7-8.

“If the people of Europe had known as much of astronomy and geology when the bible was introduced among them, as they do now, there never could have been one believer in the doctrine of inspiration. If the writers of the various parts of the bible had known as much about the sciences as is now known by every intelligent man, the book never could have been written. It was produced by ignorance, and has been believed and defended by its author. It has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge. A few years ago, this book was appealed to in the settlement of all scientific questions; but now, even the clergy confess that in such matters, it has ceased to speak with the voice of authority. For the establishment of facts, the word of man is now considered far better than the word of God. In the world of science, Jehovah was superseded by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. All that God told Moses, admitting the entire account to be true, is dust and ashes compared to the discoveries of Descartes, Laplace, and Humboldt. In matters of fact, the bible has ceased to be regarded as a standard. Science has succeeded in breaking the chains of theology. A few years ago, Science endeavored to show that it was not inconsistent with the bible. The tables have been turned, and now, Religion is endeavoring to prove that the bible is not inconsistent with Science. The standard has been changed.” ― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

"Christianity is dead and rotting since Galileo cut its throat."- Slote, The Winds of War

"Copernicus studied in Bologna under the Platonist Novara; and Copernicus’ idea of placing the sun rather than the earth in the center of the universe was not the result of new observations but of a new interpretation of old and well-known facts in the light of semi-religious Platonic and Neo-Platonic ideas. The crucial idea can be traced back to the sixth book of Plato’s Republic, where we can read that the sun plays the same role in the realm of visible things as does the idea of the good in the realm of ideas. Now the idea of the good is the highest in the hierarchy of Platonic ideas. Accordingly the sun, which endows visible things with their visibility, vitality, growth and progress, is the highest in the hierarchy of the visible things in nature…Now if the sun was to be given pride of place, if the sun merited a divine status…then it was hardly possible for it to revolve about the earth. The only fitting place for so exalted a star was the center of the universe. So the earth was bound to revolve about the sun. This Platonic idea, then, forms the historical background of the Copernican revolution. It does not start with observations, but with a religious or mythological idea." - Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, p. 187

"But among all the discoveries and corrections probably none has resulted in a deeper influence on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus...Possibly mankind has never been demanded to do more, for considering all that went up in smoke as a result of realizing this change: a second Paradise, a world of innocence, poetry and piety: the witness of the senses, the conviction of a poetical and religious faith. No wonder his contemporaries did not wish to let all this go and offered every possible resistance to a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown indeed not even dreamed of."- Poet, Johann von Goethe

“Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler did not solve an old problem, they asked a new question, and in doing so they changed the whole basis on which the old questions had been framed.” ― Ken Robinson

“It has often been noted that three major revolutions in thought have threatened the idea of human centrality. First, Copernicus demonstrated that Earth was not the center about which all celestial bodies revolved. Next, Darwin showed us that we were not central in the chain of life but, like all other creatures, had evolved from other life-forms. Third, Freud demonstrated that we are not masters in our own house-that much of our behavior is governed by forced outside of our consciousness. There is no doubt that Freud’s unacknowledged co-revolutionary was Arthur Schopenhauer, who, long before Freud’s birth, had posited that we are governed by deep biological forced and then delude ourselves into thinking that we consciously choose our activities.” ― Irvin D. Yalom, The Schopenhauer Cure

“ Kepler knew that in Tycho’s possession were the raw observations that he, as “architect,” longed to assemble into a coherent picture of planetary motion. And Tycho knew that the gifted Kepler had the mathematical wherewithal to prove the validity of the Tychonic [geocentric] system of the heavens. But Kepler was a confirmed Copernican; Tycho’s model had no appeal to him, and he had no intention of polishing this flawed edifice to the great man’s ego. ”
—Alan W. Hirshfeld, Parallax: The Race to Measure the Universe, New York: W. H. Freeman and Co, 2001, pp. 92-93).

“ Let all keep silence and hark to Tycho who has devoted thirty-five years to his observations… For Tycho alone do I wait; he shall explain to me the order and arrangement of the orbits… Then I hope I shall one day, if God keeps me alive, erect a wonderful edifice.....

Brahe may discourage me from Copernicus (or even from the five perfect solids) but rather I think about striking Tycho himself with a sword…I think thus about Tycho: he abounds in riches, which like most rich people he does not rightly use. Therefore great effort has to be given that we may wrest his riches away from him. We will have to go begging, of course, so that he may sincerely spread his observations around ”
—Kepler, Letter to Michael Maestlin, February 16 1599, Gesammelte Werke, vol. xiii, p. 289

See Also: Joshua Gilder and Anne-Lee Gilder, "Heavenly Intrigue: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind one of History’s Greatest Scientific Discoveries", New York: Doubleday, 2004

“ I confess that when Tycho died, I quickly took advantage of the absence, or lack of circumspection, of the heirs, by taking the observations under my care, or perhaps usurping them… ”
—Kepler as quoted by Stephen Hawking (2004). The Illustrated On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy. Philadelphia: Running Press. p. 108

“ The personality of Galileo, as it emerges from works of popular science, has even less relation to historic fact than Canon Koppernigk’s…[H]e appears…in rationalist mythography as the Maid of Orleans of Science, the St. George who slew the dragon of the Inquisition. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that the fame of this outstanding genius rests mostly on discoveries he never made, and on feats he never performed. Contrary to statements in even recent outlines of science, Galileo did not invent the telescope; nor the microscope; nor the thermometer; nor the pendulum clock. He did not discover the law of inertia; nor the parallelogram of forces or motions; not the sun spots. He made no contribution to theoretical astronomy; he did not throw down weights from the leaning tower of Pisa and did not prove the truth of the Copernican system. He was not tortured by the Inquisition, did not languish in its dungeons, did not say ‘eppur si muove’; and he was not a martyr of science ”
—Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 358.

“ …in the Renaissance movement championed by Marsiglio Ficino, the doctrine came alive again, but in a somewhat altered form; one might say that what Ficino instituted was indeed a religion, a kind of neo-paganism. Copernicus himself was profoundly influenced by this movement, as can be clearly seen from numerous passages in the De Revolutionibus. ”
—Wolfgang Smith, The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology, p. 174).

“ In the middle of all sits Sun enthroned. In this most beautiful temple could we place this luminary in any better position from which he can illuminate the whole at once? He is rightly called the Lamp, the Mind, the Ruler of the Universe: Hermes Trismegistus names him the Visible God, Sophocles’ Electra calls him the All-seeing. So the Sun sits as upon a royal throne ruling his children the planets which circle round him. The Earth has the Moon at her service. As Aristotle says, in his On Animals, the Moon has the closest relationship with the Earth. Meanwhile the Earth conceives by the Sun, and becomes pregnant with an annual rebirth. ”
—Nicolaus Copernicus , De Revolutionibus, Of the Order of the Heavenly Bodies 10.

“ [Copernicus’] reasons for his revolutionary change were essentially philosophic and aesthetic,” and in a later edition he is more convinced that the “reasons were mystical rather than scientific ”
—J. D. Bernal, Science in History, 1st edition, London, Watts, 1954; 2nd edition, 1965).

“ ‘Actually neither this Galileo, nor his mentor Copernicus, had a shred of truly tangible and unequivocal evidence for their heliocentric belief – and well do historians, astronomers, and philosophers of science know it! As I recently found it succinctly expressed in a research paper “Since Galileo science has shed logical proofs in favour of plausibility.” [Chris Biebricher: ‘Evolutionary Research,’ in Vincent Brummer, Interpreting the Universe as Creation. Kampen Kok Pharos, 1991, p.93.] Indeed, by this “scientific method” of adding plausible explanations to plausible explanations astronomy has arrived at the present view of the cosmos. However, those who forget that “plausible” and “proven” are not synonyms inevitably will see their chickens come home to roost.’ ”
—Walter van der Kamp: The Cosmos Einstein and Truth (1993), p.28.

The German poet, Johann von Goethe (1749-1832), said of it: Among all the discoveries and convictions, probably not a single fact has had a deeper influence on the human spirit than the teaching of Copernicus ... Humanity has probably never been asked to do more; for consider all that went up in smoke as a result of realising this change: a second paradise, a world of innocence, poetry and piety, the witness of the senses, the conviction of a poetic and religious faith; small wonder that one did not want to give this up, that people in every possible way resisted such a doctrine, which those who accepted it justified and summoned to a so far unknown, yet unthought of freedom of thinking and greatness of vision. (J. von Goethe: Geschichte der Farbenlehre, Chicago, University Press, p.67.)

More recently, Arthur Koestler describes the transition like so: Their cosmic quest destroyed the medieval vision of an immutable social order in a walled-in Universe, with its fixed hierarchy of moral values, and transformed the European landscape, society, culture, habits and general outlook as thoroughly as if a new species had arisen on this planet. (Arthur Koestler: The Sleepwalkers, Grosset & Dunlop, New York, 1963, p.13.)

Newton

“A careful examination of Newton’s writings have revealed that some of the errors in the Principia were a deliberate and dishonest attempt to mislead. In the Principia, Newton proposed that the exact quantitative agreement between theory and observation was the ultimate criterion of scientific truth. As he said in the preface, ‘He that works with less accuracy is an imperfect mechanic, and if any could work with perfect accuracy, he would be the most perfect mechanic of all.’ And to convince his audience he would be the ‘most perfect mechanic,’ he proceeded to fabricate the required agreement between theory and observation, by fair means or foul. Newton faked some theoretical calculations and he engaged in flagrant cherry-picking of observational data, discarding those data that did not quite fit his calculations. Richard Westfall, one of Newton’s most incisive biographers, called this ‘nothing short of deliberate fraud,’ and he labeled Newton a master of the . . . ‘fudge factor’ . . . examples of . . . fakery are found in Newton’s theoretical calculations of the precession of the equinoxes, the magnitude of the force of gravity acting on the moon, THE HEIGHT OF THE TIDES . . . In all of these cases he has a good qualitative understanding of the underlying physics, but inadequate mathematical tools and/or inadequate observational data for an adequate quantitative analysis…

These instances of fraud by Newton are somewhat reminiscent of . . . that Galileo perpetrated with his theory of tides. But whereas we might give Galileo the benefit of the doubt and charity regarding his mistaken theory of tides as an isolated case of self-delusion, no such excuse will serve for Newton. His acts of fraud occurred repeatedly, much too often to admit of self-delusion as a plausible explanation. In the perpetration of fraud, Newton was a recidivist, deserving of no charity. Besides, we have documentary evidence from letters between Newton and Roger Cotes, the editor of the second edition of the Principia, that they engaged in collusion to ‘mend’ the numbers. Cotes would propose some fraudulent adjustment of observational data ‘to make that Scholium appear to best advantage as to the numbers’ and Newton would do Cotes one better by contriving some fudge factor that suited the occasion.”6

6 Hans C. Ohanian, Einstein’s Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius (NY 2008), pp. 71-72. (Capitalization added)

“Notice how theorists who claim to believe in General Relativity always revert to Newton when it comes time to explain [tidal] forces in gravitational fields. In . . . General Relativity we are told that an orbiting body is feeling no forces. It is simply following curved space, the ‘line’ of least resistance . . . the ball-bearing [orbiting] on the piece of rubber and the tiny marble orbiting it . . . [feel] no centripetal [center pulling] force. All quite ingenious, except that it does not explain the genesis of the forces at a distance used in tidal theory. How can an orbiter that is feeling no force achieve tides? Even more to the point, how can another orbiter [the moon] that is traveling in the curved space of its primary [the Earth] recurve that space in order to transmit a tidal force to the primary . . . It cannot be curving both ways at once.”26

Miles Mathis, The Un-Unified Field and Other Problems (Bloomington IN 2010) pp. 160-161.

Copernican Belief

"I have already known a long time that we do not yet have proof for the system of Copernicus, but I shall not take the risk to be the first one attacking it" - Alexander von Humboldt, Quoted in F.K. Schultze's synopsis and translation of F.E. Pasche's "Christliche Weltanschauuing".

Cosmically Special

Humanity is cosmically special. Here’s how we know.
Howard A. Smith

Howard A. Smith is a lecturer in the Harvard University Department of Astronomy and a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

“ There was a time, back when astronomy put Earth at the center of the universe, that we thought we were special. But after Copernicus kicked Earth off its pedestal, we decided we were cosmically inconsequential, partly because the universe is vast and about the same everywhere. Astronomer Carl Sagan put it this way: “We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star.” Stephen Hawking was even blunter: “The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet.”

An objective look, however, at just two of the most dramatic discoveries of astronomy — big bang cosmology and planets around other stars (exoplanets) — suggests the opposite. We seem to be cosmically special, perhaps even unique — at least as far as we are likely to know for eons.

The first result — the anthropic principle — has been accepted by physicists for 43 years. The universe, far from being a collection of random accidents, appears to be stupendously perfect and fine-tuned for life. The strengths of the four forces that operate in the universe — gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear interactions (the latter two dominate only at the level of atoms) — for example, have values critically suited for life, and were they even a few percent different, we would not be here. The most extreme example is the big bang creation: Even an infinitesimal change to its explosive expansion value would preclude life. The frequent response from physicists offers a speculative solution: an infinite number of universes — we are just living in the one with the right value. But modern philosophers such as Thomas Nagel and pioneering quantum physicists such as John Wheeler have argued instead that intelligent beings must somehow be the directed goal of such a curiously fine-tuned cosmos.

It seems likely that exoplanets could host extraterrestrial intelligence. But intelligence is not so easy to produce. Paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer Donald Brownlee summarize the many constraints in their book “Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe ” and show why it takes vastly more than liquid water and a pleasant environment to give birth even to simple (much less complex) life. At a minimum, it takes an environment stable for billions of years of evolution, plus all the right ingredients. Biologists from Jacques Monod to Stephen Jay Gould have emphasized the extraordinary circumstances that led to intelligence on Earth, while geneticists have found that DNA probably resulted from many accidents. So although the same processes operate everywhere, some sequences could be unlikely, even astronomically unlikely. The evolution of intelligence could certainly be such a sequence.

There is, moreover, a well-known constraint: the finite speed of light, which ensures that even over thousands of years we will only be able to communicate with the comparatively few stars (tens of millions) in our cosmic neighborhood. If the combined astronomical, biological and evolutionary chances for life to form and evolve to intelligence are only 1 in 10 million, then we probably have no one to talk to.

The discovery of exoplanets was dramatic but not unexpected: Since the Greeks, we have imagined planets were common. Textbooks even taught that our solar system was typical. But the exotic diversity of exoplanets came as a surprise. Many have highly elliptical orbits around unstable stars, making evolution over billions of years difficult if not impossible; other systems contain giant planets that may have drifted inward, disrupting orbits; and there are many other unanticipated properties. These unexpected discoveries are helping scientists unravel Earth’s complex history.

The bottom line for extraterrestrial intelligence is that it is probably rarer than previously imagined, a conclusion called the misanthropic principle. For all intents and purposes, we could be alone in our cosmic neighborhood, and if we expand the volume of our search we will have to wait even longer to find out. Life might be common in the very distant universe — or it might not be — and we are unlikely to know. We are probably rare — and it seems likely we will be alone for eons. This is the second piece of new evidence that we are not ordinary.

Some of my colleagues strongly reject this notion. They would echo Hawking: “I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.” Yes, we all have beliefs — but beliefs are not proof. Hawking’s belief presumes that we are nothing but ordinary, a “chemical scum.” All the observations so far, however, are consistent with the idea that humanity is not mediocre at all and that we won’t know otherwise for a long time. It seems we might even serve some cosmic role. So this season let us be grateful for the amazing gifts of life and awareness, and acknowledge the compelling evidence to date that humanity and our home planet, Earth, are rare and cosmically precious. And may we act accordingly. ”

Misc Quotes

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

" Plato is my friend - Aristotle is my friend - but my greatest friend is truth."……."Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things."

-Sir Isaac Newton (“describer” of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion)

" ...the scientist, reverenced for their beards and the fur on their gowns, who teach that they alone are wise while the rest of mortal men flit about as shadows. How pleasantly they dote, indeed, while they construct their numberless worlds, and measure the sun, moon, stars, and spheres as with thumb and line. They assign causes for lightening, winds, eclipses, and other inexplicable things, never hesitating a whit, as if they were privy to the secrets of nature, artificer of things, or as if they visited us fresh from the council of the gods. Yet all the while nature is laughing grandly at them and their conjectures. For to prove that they have good intelligence of nothing, this is a sufficient argument: they can never explain why they disagree with each other on every subject. Thus knowing nothing in general, they profess to know all things in particular; though they are ignorant even of themselves, and on occasion do not see the ditch or the stone lying across their path, because many of them are blear-eyed or absent-minded; yet they proclaim that they perceive ideas, universals, forms without matter" --The Praise of Folly by Erasmus (1511)

Copernican Principle

“A fundamental presupposition of modern cosmology is the Copernican Principle, that we are not in a central, or otherwise special region of the Universe. Studies of Type Ia supernovae, together with the Copernican principle, have led to the inference that the Universe is accelerating in its expansion. The usual explanation for this is that there must exist a ‘Dark Energy,’ to drive the acceleration. Alternatively, it could be the case that the Copernican Principle is invalid, and that the data has been interpreted within an inappropriate theoretical framework. If we were to live in a special place in the Universe, near the centre of a void where the local matter density is low, then the supernovae observations would be accounted for without the addition of dark energy.”

- Timothy Clifton, Oxford Astrophysics Member, BSc, PhD.

(T. Clifton, et al, “Living in a Void: Testing the Copernican Principle with Distant Supernovae,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 101 (13): 1302 (Sep 2008).

“…the universe might look the same in every direction as seen from any other galaxy, too. This, as we have seen, was Friedmann’s second assumption. We have no scientific evidence for, or against, this assumption. We believe it only on grounds of modesty.”

- Steven Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 42 (Bantam, 1988).

His co-author in another book, George F. R. Ellis admits much the same:

“This assumption is made because it is believed to be unreasonable that we should be near the center of the Universe.”

- George F. R. Ellis, “Is the Universe Expanding?” General Relativity and Gravitation 9 (2): 92 (1978).

“...all this evidence that the universe looks the same whichever direction we look in might seem to suggest there is something special about our place in the universe. In particular, it might seem that if we observe all other galaxies to be moving away from us, then we must be at the center of the universe.”

- Steven Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“In the Friedman universe, one possible interpretation of the coordinates is that the whole space is on the surface of an expanding balloon and has no center… [But] in such a universe, there is no cosmic microwave background (CMB) dipole, even in the presence of a peculiar velocity. In other words, the observation of a CMB dipole excludes such an interpretation of the coordinates for the Friedman universe.”

- Y. Tomozawa, “The CMB Dipole and Existence of a Center for Expansion of the Universe,” Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Michigan, p. 2 (2 Feb 2008).

“Additionally, we must take seriously the idea that the acceleration apparently indicated by supernova data could be due to large scale inhomogeneity with no dark energy. Observational tests of the latter possibility are as important as pursuing the dark energy (exotic physics) option in a homogeneous universe.

Theoretical prejudices as to the universe’s geometry, and our place in it, must bow to such observational tests. Precisely because of the foundational nature of the Copernican Principle for standard cosmology, we need to fully check this foundation. And one must emphasize here that standard CMB anisotropy studies do not prove the Copernican principle: they assume it at the start.”

- George Ellis, “Inhomogeneity Effects in Cosmology,” arXiv:1103.2335v1 (Mar 2011).

“Studies of the cosmic background radiation have confirmed the isotropy of the radiation, or its complete uniformity in all directions. If the universe possesses a center, we must be very close to it…otherwise, excessive observable anisotropy in the radiation intensity would be produced, and we would detect more radiation from one direction than from the opposite direction.”

- Joseph Silk of the University of California, "The Big Bang: The Creation and Evolution of the Universe", p. 53 (W. H. Freeman, 1980).

"Although dark energy may seem a bit contrived to some, the Oxford theorists are proposing an even more outrageous alternative. They point out that it's possible that we simply live in a very special place in the universe - specifically, we're in a huge void where the density of matter is particularly low. The suggestion flies in the face of the Copernican Principle, which is one of the most useful and widely held tenets in physics.

Copernicus was among the first scientists to argue that we're not in a special place in the universe, and that any theory that suggests that we're special is most likely wrong. The principle led directly to the replacement of the Earth-centered concept of the solar system with the more elegant sun-centered model.

Dark energy may seem like a stretch, but it's consistent with the venerable Copernican Principle. The proposal that we live in a special place in the universe, on the other hand, is likely to shock many scientists."

- Dark Energy: Is It Merely An Illusion? ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2008)

SOURCE: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080926184749.htm

“A widespread idea in cosmology is that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic above a certain scale. This hypothesis, usually called the cosmological principle, is thought to be a generalization of the Copernican principle that “the Earth is not in a central, specially favored position”. The assumption is that any observer at any place at the same epoch would see essentially the same picture of the large scale distribution of galaxies in the universe.

However, according to a Fourier analysis by Hartnett & Hirano, the galaxy number count N from redshift z data (N–z relation) indicates that galaxies have preferred periodic redshift spacings.........A natural interpretation is that concentric spherical shells of higher galaxy number densities surround us, with their individual centers situated at our location.”

- Professor Shigeo Hirano, "Observational tests for oscillating expansion rate of the Universe" Physical Review D, 2010.

“The departures from uniformity are positive; the numbers of nebulae increase faster than the volume of space through which they are scattered. Thus the density of the nebulae distribution increases outwards, symmetrically in all directions, leaving the observer in a unique position. Such a favoured position, of course, is intolerable; moreover, it represents a discrepancy with the theory, because the theory postulates homogeneity. Therefore, in order to restore homogeneity, and to escape the horror of a unique position, the departures from uniformity, which are introduced by the recession factors, must be compensated by the second term representing effects of spatial curvature.”

-E. Hubble The Observational Approach to Cosmology, 1937, p.58

"Astronomers will find it hard to settle that troubling sensation in the pit of their stomachs. The truth is that when it comes to swallowing uncomfortable ideas, dark energy may turn out to be a sugar-coated doughnut compared to a rejection of the Copernican principle.”

- “Dark Energy and the Bitterest Pill,” July 14, 2008 at the Physics arXiv blog.

"The Copernican principle states that humans are not privileged observers of the universe and provides our philosophical basis for assuming that on the largest scales the universe is spatially homogeneous. While it is one of the foundational aspects of modern cosmology, this assumption remains untested outside of the standard paradigm. Though it may seem pedantic to test something so obvious, the standard paradigm itself is built on shaky foundations, relying on an unexplained, gravitationally repulsive, dark-energy component for observations to fit the model. The implications of this cannot be overstated. Assuming that the laws of physics do apply equally everywhere in the universe, the only non- copernican configuration possible is one in which we live in a place that originates from special initial conditions."

- 'Testing the Copernican principle by constraining spatial homogeneity' : Wessel Valkenburg,1, 2 Valerio Marra,2 and Chris Clarkson3 1Instituut-Lorentz for Theoretical Physics, Universiteit Leiden Postbus 9506, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands.

LINK: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1209.4078v1.pdf

Cosmological Principle

"Dark Energy is problematic. No one really knows what it is. We can make an educated guess, and use quantum theory to estimate how much of it there might be, but then we overshoot by an astounding factor of 10120. That is grounds enough, says George Ellis…to take a hard look at our assumptions about the universe and our place in it. “If we analyse the supernova data by assuming the Copernican principle is correct and get out something unphysical, I think we should start questioning the Copernican principle…. Whatever our theoretical predilections, they will in the end have to give way to the observational evidence.”

So what would it mean if…the outcome were that the Copernican principle is wrong? It would certainly require a seismic reassessment of what we know about the universe….If the Copernican Principle fails, all that goes [with] that goes out the window too….Cosmology would be back at the drawing board. If we are in a void, answering how we came to be in such a privileged spot in the universe would be even trickier."

- Marcus Chown, “Is the Earth at the Heart of a Giant Cosmic Void? New Scientist, Nov. 12, 2008, pp. 32‐35.

“…the universe might look the same in every direction as seen from any other galaxy, too. This, as we have seen, was Friedmann’s second assumption. We have no scientific evidence for, or against, this assumption. We believe it only on grounds of modesty.”

- Steven Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 42 (Bantam, 1988).

His co-author in another book, George F. R. Ellis admits much the same:

“This assumption is made because it is believed to be unreasonable that we should be near the center of the Universe.”

- George F. R. Ellis, “Is the Universe Expanding?” General Relativity and Gravitation 9 (2): 92 (1978).

“...all this evidence that the universe looks the same whichever direction we look in might seem to suggest there is something special about our place in the universe. In particular, it might seem that if we observe all other galaxies to be moving away from us, then we must be at the center of the universe.”

- Steven Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“In the Friedman universe, one possible interpretation of the coordinates is that the whole space is on the surface of an expanding balloon and has no center… [But] in such a universe, there is no cosmic microwave background (CMB) dipole, even in the presence of a peculiar velocity. In other words, the observation of a CMB dipole excludes such an interpretation of the coordinates for the Friedman universe.”

- Y. Tomozawa, “The CMB Dipole and Existence of a Center for Expansion of the Universe,” Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Michigan, p. 2 (2 Feb 2008).

“Additionally, we must take seriously the idea that the acceleration apparently indicated by supernova data could be due to large scale inhomogeneity with no dark energy. Observational tests of the latter possibility are as important as pursuing the dark energy (exotic physics) option in a homogeneous universe.

Theoretical prejudices as to the universe’s geometry, and our place in it, must bow to such observational tests. Precisely because of the foundational nature of the Copernican Principle for standard cosmology, we need to fully check this foundation. And one must emphasize here that standard CMB anisotropy studies do not prove the Copernican principle: they assume it at the start.”

- George Ellis, “Inhomogeneity Effects in Cosmology,” arXiv:1103.2335v1 (Mar 2011).

“Often the simplest of observations will have the most profound consequences. It has long been a cornerstone of modern science, to say nothing of man’s cosmic outlook, that the Earth attends a modest star that shines in an undistinguished part of a run-of-the-mill galaxy. Life arose spontaneously and man evolved on this miscellaneous clump of matter and now directs his own destiny without outside help. This cosmic model is supported by the Big-Bang and Expanding Universe concepts, which in turn are buttressed by the simple observation that astronomers see redshifts wherever they look. These redshifts are due, of course, to matter flying away from us under the impetus of the Big Bang. But redshifts can also arise from the gravitational attraction of mass. If the Earth were at the center of the universe, the attraction of the surrounding mass of stars would also produce redshifts wherever we looked! The argument advanced by George Ellis in this article is more complex than this, but his basic thrust is to put man back into a favored position in the cosmos. His new theory seems quite consistent with our astronomical observations, even though it clashes with the thought that we are godless and making it on our own.”

- Editor of Nature Magazine, Paul C. W. Davies.

Map reveals strange cosmos

By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor

The best map yet of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation - the so-called echo of the Big Bang - shows the Universe may not be the same in all directions.

The image has been produced from data collected by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (Map), which was launched in 2001.

"It is a photo of the most distant thing we can see; our best photo yet," said Dr Max Tegmark, of the University of Pennsylvania, US, who processed the image.

Dr Tegmark and colleagues present the CMB as a sphere: "The entire observable Universe is inside this sphere, with us at the centre of it."

~

Having produced the cleanest map of the CMB yet, Dr Tegmark displayed it in an unusual manner. Instead of a flat projection on a computer screen, he showed the data as ripples on a sphere - "after all the CMB comes from a sphere", he says.

"Space continues outside the sphere but this opaque glowing wall of hydrogen plasma hides it from our view. If we could only see another 380,000 light-years we would be able to see the beginning of the Universe," he told BBC News Online.

Looking for evidence

And he added: "We found something very bizarre; there is some extra, so far unexplained structure in the CMB.

"We had expected that the microwave background would be truly isotropic, with no preferred direction in space but that may not be the case."

Looking at the symmetry of the CMB - measures technically called its octopole and quadrupole components - the researchers uncovered a curious pattern.

They had expected to see no pattern at all but what they saw was anything but random.

"The octopole and quadrupole components are arranged in a straight line across the sky, along a kind of cosmic equator. That's weird.

"We don't think this is due to foreground contamination," Dr Tegmark said. "It could be telling us something about the shape of space on the largest scales. We did not expect this and we cannot yet explain it."

SOURCE: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2814947.stm

The uniform distribution of burst arrival directions tells us that the distribution of gamma-ray-burst sources in space is a sphere or spherical shell, with us at the center (some other extremely contrived and implausible distributions are also possible). But Copernicus taught us that we are not in a special preferred position in the universe; Earth is not at the center of the solar system, the Sun is not at the center of the galaxy, and so forth. There is no reason to believe we are at the center of the distribution of gamma-ray bursts. If our instruments are sensitive enough to detect bursts at the edge of the spatial distribution, then they should not be isotropic on the sky, contrary to observation; if our instruments are less sensitive, then the N ∝ S-3/2 law should hold, also contrary to observation. That is the Copernican dilemma. To this day, after the detection of several thousand bursts, and despite earnest efforts to show the contrary, no deviation from a uniform random distribution (isotropy) in the directions of gamma-ray bursts on the sky has ever been convincingly demonstrated.”

- Jonathan I. Katz, The Biggest Bangs: The Mystery of Gamma-Ray Bursts, The Most Violent Explosions in the Universe, pp. 84, 90-91 (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Astronomers Find Evidence of a Special Direction in Space

Could the cosmos have a point?

LINK: Sciencific American

Snippett~

"The universe has no center and no edge, no special regions tucked in among the galaxies and light. No matter where you look, it’s the same—or so physicists thought. This cosmological principle—one of the foundations of the modern understanding of the universe—has come into question recently as astronomers find evidence, subtle but growing, of a special direction in space."

Snippett~

"For now, the data remain preliminary—subtle signs that something may be wrong with our standard understanding of the universe. Scientists are eagerly anticipating the data from the Planck satellite, which is currently measuring the CMB from a quiet spot 930,000 miles up. It will either confirm earlier measurements of the axis of evil or show them to be ephemera. Until then, the universe could be pointing us anywhere."

Spin

Galactic ‘axis of asymmetry’ threatens cosmic order

Baffling rows of spiral galaxies that prefer to spin in one direction could have profound implications for our understanding of the cosmos

Snippett~

"If the universe does contain such an axis, it would contradict our current view of the cosmos, which assumes that matter and energy are uniformly distributed throughout, and that the universe looks pretty much the same in all directions."

"A similar bias among structures of cosmic proportions would have deep implications. For example, if more galaxies are spinning one way than the other, this implies that the universe has a net spin, or angular momentum, in a particular direction. Since angular momentum can neither be created or destroyed, the universe must have come into existence in a spin. What set it spinning, though, and what is it spinning relative to?"

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528794-700-galactic-axis-of-asymmetry-threatens-cosmic-order/

Is the Universe Spinning? New Research Says "Yes"

If the universe was born rotating, like a spinning basketball, Longo said, it would have a preferred axis, and galaxies would have retained that initial motion.

"It could be," Longo said. "I think this result suggests that it is."

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/07/-is-the-universe-spinning-new-research-says-yes.html

Galaxies spin, stars spin, and planets spin. So, why not the whole universe? The consequences of a spinning universe would be profound. The cornerstone of modern cosmology is that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic — it has no preferred orientation and looks the same in all directions.

On the face of it, the claim of a spin axis would seem anti-Copernican. In other words, the universe has a preferred axis, which means there is indeed a special direction in space.

A left-handed and right-handed imprint on the sky as reportedly revealed by galaxy rotation would imply the universe was rotating from the very beginning and retained an overwhelmingly strong angular momentum.

http://www.seeker.com/is-the-universe-spinning-1765290694.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1

Redshift

"It is shown that the cosmological interpretation of the red shift in the spectra of quasars leads to yet another paradoxical result: namely, that the Earth is the center of the Universe."

“The Earth is indeed the center of the Universe. The arrangement of quasars on certain spherical shells is only with respect to the Earth. These shells would disappear if viewed from another galaxy or quasar. This means that the cosmological principle will have to go. Also it implies that a coordinate system fixed to the Earth will be a preferred frame of reference in the Universe. Consequently, both the Special and General Theory of Relativity must be abandoned for cosmological purposes.”

- Y. P. Varshni, “The Red Shift Hypothesis for Quasars: Is the Earth the Center of the Universe?” Astrophysics and Space Science 43 (1): 3 (1976).

"If the redshifts are a Doppler shift...the observations as they stand lead to the anomaly of a closed universe, curiously small and dense, and, it may be added, suspiciously young."

- Edwin Hubble, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 17, 506, 1937.

Ultra-compact radio sources and the isotropy and homogeneity of the Universe J. C. Jackson

A 2.29 GHz VLBI all-sky survey of ultra-compact radio sources has formed the basis of a number of cosmological investigations, which examine the relationship between angular-size and redshift. Here I use a sample of 468 such sources with 0.5This is interpreted as meaning that the Universe is not spatially homogeneous on the largest scales, and is better represented at late times by a spherically symmetric model with a density enhancement at its centre.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.0697

Scientific American Article

The Case Against Copernicus p.72

"Copernicus’s revolutionary theory that Earth travels around the sun upended more than a millennium’s worth of scientific and religious wisdom. Most scientists refused to accept this theory for many decades—even after Galileo made his epochal observations with his telescope. Their objections were not only theological. Observational evidence supported a competing cosmology—the “geoheliocentrism” of Tycho Brahe. Copernicus famously said that Earth revolves around the sun. But opposition to this revolutionary idea didn’t come just from the religious authorities. Evidence favored a different cosmology."

"Rather than give up their theory in the face of seemingly incontrovertible evidence, Copernicans were forced to appeal to divine omnipotence."

On the giant stars dilemma: http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/the-popular-creation-story-of-astronomy-is-wrong

CMB

From the paper - "Why is the Solar System Cosmically Aligned?"

LINK: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~huterer/PRESS/CMB_Huterer.pdf

“Developing the multi- pole vectors allowed us to examine how the CMB’s large-scale features align with each other and the ecliptic — the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun.”

Inflationary paradigm in trouble after Planck 2013

The recent Planck satellite combined with earlier results eliminate a wide spectrum of more complex inflationary models and favor models with a single scalar field, as reported in the analysis of the collaboration. More important, though, is that all the simplest inflation models are disfavored by the data while the surviving models -- namely, those with plateau-like potentials -- are problematic. We discuss how the restriction to plateau-like models leads to three independent problems: it exacerbates both the initial conditions problem and the multiverse-unpredictability problem and it creates a new difficulty which we call the inflationary "unlikeliness problem." Finally, we comment on problems reconciling inflation with a standard model Higgs, as suggested by recent LHC results. In sum, we find that recent experimental data disfavors all the best-motivated inflationary scenarios and introduces new, serious difficulties that cut to the core of the inflationary paradigm. Forthcoming searches for B-modes, non-Gaussianity and new particles should be decisive.

Cornell University Library - https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.2785

"One is therefore placed between a rock and a hard place. If the WMAP ILC is a reliable reconstruction of the full-sky CMB, then there is overwhelming evidence (de Oliveira-Costa et al. (2004); Eriksen et al. (2004); Copi et al. (2004); Schwarz et al. (2004); Copi et al. (2006); Copi et al. (2007); Land & Magueijo (2005a,b,c,d); Raki ́c & Schwarz (2007); for a review see Huterer (2006)) of extremely unlikely phase alignments between (at least) the quadrupole and octopole and between these multipoles and the geometry of the Solar System — a violation of statistical isotropy that happens by random chance in far less than 0.025 per cent of random realizations of the standard cosmology. If, on the other hand, the part of the ILC (and band maps) inside the Galaxy are unreliable as measurements of the true CMB, then the alignment of low-l multipoles can- not be readily tested, but the magnitude of the two-point angular correlation function on large angular scales outside the Galaxy is smaller than would be seen in all but a few of every 10,000 realizations.

We can only conclude that (i) we don’t live in a standard ΛCDM Universe with a standard inflationary early history; (ii) we live in an extremely anomalous realization of that cosmology; (iii) there is a major error in the observations of both COBE and WMAP; or (iv) there is a major error in the reduction to maps performed by both COBE and WMAP. Whichever of these is correct, inferences from the large-angle data about precise values of the parameters of the standard cosmological model should be regarded with particular skepticism."

- No large-angle correlations on the non-Galactic microwave sky, Craig J. Copi, Dragan Huterer, Dominik J. Schwarz and Glenn D. Starkman. 26th Aug, 2013 (revision of 2008 paper)

"There currently exists considerable evidence in favor of a large scale anisotropy in the Universe with the preferred axis pointing roughly in the direction of Virgo, close to the CMBR dipole. This includes, radio (Jain & Ralston 1999) and optical polarizations (Hutsem ́ekers 1998; Hutsem ́ekers & Lamy 2001; Jain et al. 2004), CMBR quadrupole and octopole (de Oliveira-Costa et al. 2004) as well as the radio source distribution and brightness (Blake & Wall 2002; Singal 2011; Gibelyou & Huterer 2012; Rubart & Schwarz 2013; Kothari et al. 2013). The physical reason for these observations is not clear and points towards a violation of the cosmological principle."

- 'Dipole Anisotropy in Integrated Linearly Polarized Flux Density in NVSS Data', Prabhakar Tiwari and Pankaj Jain Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kan pur - 208016, India, 20 August 2013.

LINK: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.3970.pdf

"Particularly puzzling are the alignments with solar system features. CMB anisotropy should clearly not be correlated with our local habitat. While the observed correlations seem to hint that there is contamination by a foreground or perhaps by the scanning strategy of the telescope, closer inspection reveals that there is no obvious way to explain the observed correlations. Moreover, if their explanation is that they are a foreground, then that will likely exacerbate other anomalies that we will discuss in section IV B below.

Our studies indicate that the observed alignments are with the ecliptic plane, with the equinox or with the CMB dipole, and not with the Galactic plane: the alignments of the quadrupole and octopole planes with the equinox/ecliptic/dipole directions are much more significant than those for the Galactic plane. Moreover, it is remarkably curious that it is precisely the ecliptic alignment that has been found on somewhat smaller scales using the power spectrum analyses of statistical isotropy"

- 'Large-angle anomalies in the CMB', Craig J. Copi, Dragan Huterer, Dominik J. Schwarz and Glenn D. Starkman, 2010, p8.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.5602.pdf

General Relativity

“General Relativity has passed every solar-system test with flying colors. Yet so have alternative theories”

- Physicist Clifford Will - “The Confrontation Between Gravitation Theory and Experiment,” General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey, ed., Stephen W. Hawking, 1979, p. 62

"In my scientific activity, I am always hampered by the same mathematical difficulties, which make it impossible for me to confirm or refute my general relativist field theory."

- Einstein, Letter to Maurice Solovine, November 25, 1948).

"I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept, i.e., continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics"

- Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein, 1982, 2005, p. 467

Special Relativity

"The Theory of Relativity confers an absolute meaning on a magnitude which in classical theory has only a relative significance: the velocity of light. The velocity of light is to the Theory of Relativity as the elementary quantum of action is to the Quantum Theory: it is its absolute core" --Max Planck

"...galaxies farther than 4300 megaparsecs from us are currently moving away from us at speeds greater than that of light. Cosmological innocents sometimes exclaim, “Gosh! Doesn’t this violate the law that massive objects can’t travel faster than the speed of light?” Actually, it doesn’t. The speed limit that states that massive objects must travel with v < c relative to each other is one of the results of special relativity, and refers to the relative motion of objects within a static space. In the context of general relativity, there is no objection to having two points moving away from each other at superluminal speed due to the expansion of space."

- "Introduction to Cosmology", Barbara Ryden, page 39.

"The high-velocity experiments on mesons, such as those at CERN, are definite evidence of the meson lifetime's functional relationship to their velocity with respect to the Earth, but have nothing whatsoever to do with the 'time-dilation' of Special Relativity. The experiments also are yet another 'ether-drift' investigation, with the usual answer: the velocity of the Earth with respect to a fundamental frame is zero."

- 'The "Time Dilation" of Mesons Re-Examined', Donald T. MacRoberts, Galilean Electrodynamics, Volume 3, No. 5, pp. 83-84.

"According to the second postulate of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity the speed of light is independent of the uniform motion of its source. Direct experimental evidence by W. Kantor of the US Navy Electronics Laboratory, San Diego, leads him to the surprising conclusion that it may be untenable (Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 52, No. 8, p. 978)...[...]..If Einstein's postulate is correct there should be no displacement between the two sets of interference fringes on spinning the disc, because the light from the approaching and receding windows, respectively, should all have the same velocity. In fact, an unambiguous, easily noted shift of the fringes was apparent when the mirrors were in motion (maximum linear velocity: 4,690 cm per sec) and Kantor deduces that Einstein's second postulate is incorrect. The fringe shift, moreover, appeared to depend on the speed of the disc. If the present work turns out, on more rigorous research, to be flawless and free from experimental artefacts, and if there is no obvious alternative explanation for the observed effects, there may be a need to reconsider some basic ideas in physics."

- 'Light Velocity Dependant on Speed of Source?', New Scientist 1 Nov 1962 p276.

Aether

Dirac in 1951 published a Letter to Nature titled Is There an Aether?(2) in which he showed that the objections to an aether posed by Relativity were removed by Quantum Mechanics, and that in his reformulation of electrodynamics the vector potential was a velocity.(3) He concludes the Letter with 'We have now the velocity(2) at all points of space-time, playing a fundamental part in electrodynamics. It is natural to regard it as the velocity of some real physical thing. Thus with the new theory of electrodynamics we are rather forced to have an aether'.

An Aether Model of the Universe

http://www.epola.co.uk/rothwarf/aethermodel.pdf

It is ironic that Einstein’s most creative work, the general theory of relativity, should boil down to conceptualizing space as a medium when his original premise was that no such medium existed…. Einstein… utterly rejected the idea of ether and inferred from its nonexistence that the equations of electromagnetism had to be relative. But this same thought process led in the end to the very ether he had first rejected, albeit one with some special properties that ordinary elastic matter does not have. The word “ether” has extremely negative connotations in theoretical physics because of its past association with opposition to relativity. This is unfortunate because, stripped of these connotations, it rather nicely captures the way most physicists actually think about the vacuum.

In the early days of relativity the conviction that light must be waves of something ran so strong that Einstein was widely dismissed. Even when Michelson and Morley demonstrated that the earth’s orbital motion through the ether could not be detected, opponents argued that the earth must be dragging an envelope of ether along with it because relativity was lunacy and could not possibly be right…. Relativity actually says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of matter pervading the universe, only that such matter must have relativistic symmetry.

It turns out that such matter exists. About the time relativity was becoming accepted, studies of radioactivity began showing that the empty vacuum of space had spectroscopic structure similar to that of ordinary quantum solids and fluids. Subsequent studies with large particle accelerators have now led us to understand that space is more like a piece of window glass than ideal Newtonian emptiness. It is filled with “stuff” that is normally transparent but can be made visible by hitting it sufficiently hard to knock out a part. The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo."

- Robert B. Laughlin (1993 Nobel laureate in physics), "A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down", 2005, pp. 120-121).

“According to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there would not only be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense”

- Albert Einstein, “Geometry and Experience,” in Sidelights on Relativity, 1983, p. 30

"Everything becomes clear if the idea that particles always have a position in space through time is brought back…. According to my current thinking, the particle is always located within a physical wave….The movement of the particle is assumed to be the superposition of a regular movement… and of a Brownian movement due to random energy exchanges which take place between the wave and a hidden medium, which acts as a subquantum thermostat. The point of prime importance in this model is that at each moment the particle occupies a well-defined position in space, and this re-establishes the clear meaning which the configuration space had in classical mechanics.”

- Louis de Broglie, “Waves and Particles,” Physics Bulletin, 22, February 1971

"…in 1905 I was of the opinion that it was no longer allowed to speak about the ether in physics. This opinion, however, was too radical, as we will see later when we discuss the general theory of relativity. It does remain allowed, as always, to introduce a medium filling all space and to assume that the electromagnetic fields (and matter as well) are its states…once again “empty” space appears as endowed with physical properties, i.e., no longer as physically empty, as seemed to be the case according to special relativity. One can thus say that the ether is resurrected in the general theory of relativity….Since in the new theory, metric facts can no longer be separated from “true” physical facts, the concepts of “space” and “ether” merge together."

- Albert Einstein, “Grundgedanken und Methoden der Relativitätstheorie in ihrer Entwicklung dargestellt,” Morgan Manuscript, EA 2070, as cited in Ludwik Kostro, Einstein and the Ether, 2000, p. 2.

"Modern science has its roots in ancient Greek philosophy. This philosophy, as we know, used the word “ether” to designate the particular kind of matter that filled the universe. This term was used throughout the history of philosophy and science, and it was also current at the beginning of this century. A resumption of its use at the dawn of this new century is now a fact. Since, according to the General Theory of Relativity and other modern branches of physics, the space and time of the universe do not constitute a vacuum, but a structured material plenum characterized by different physical quantities, the historical and traditional word “ether” is the most appropriate to express these features of the universe."

- Ludwik Kostro, Einstein and the Ether, 2000, pp. 186-187.

"A few words about the gravitational ether, and the ether concept in general may be in place here. The ether hypothesis was thought to be buried by the Michelson-Morley experiment, but today it is more alive than ever, in the form of the CBR [Cosmic Background Radiation]: experiments capable of finding the ether were not possible in the 1880s, but were possible in the 1960s. In a sense, the electromagnetic ether has always been observed – as the heat of the Sun (since as pointed out, CBR is reprocessed photons)…. All the main cosmological, astrophysical and physical facts: the gravity and Olbers paradoxes, redshift effects and CBR, gravitation and radiation, and the existence of particles can be conceived in the framework of this ether concept."

- “Action-at-a-Distance and Local Action in Gravitation,” in Pushing Gravity, ed., Matthew Edwards, pp. 157-159.

LINK: redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/Pre2001/V03NO3PDF/V03N3JAA.PDF

"Today the vacuum is recognized as a rich physical medium….A general theory of the vacuum is thus a theory of everything, a universal theory. It would be appropriate to call the vacuum “ether” once again."

- S. Saunders and H. R. Brown, editors, The Philosophy of Vacuum, 1991, p. 251.

"Later in our treatise we will find that the very ether Louis de Broglie desired offers a solution to the wave/particle conundrum that has hampered modern science since de Broglie first discovered that electrons produce waves. Any particle that moves through a medium will, indeed, create waves. In fact, a return to ether will help solve one of the most mysterious and perplexing problems in Quantum Mechanics today, the phenomenon of “entanglement” – the spooky connection between pairs of photons, electrons or atoms even though they are separated by great distances. Perhaps this was why John Stewart Bell, the inventor of Bell’s Theorem to answer the phenomenon of entanglement, stated in a BBC radio interview: “Yes, the idea that there is an ether…that is a perfectly coherent point of view.”

- Ludwik Kostro, Einstein and the Ether, p. 154, citing M. Jammer’s, “John Stewart Bell and the Debate on Significance of his Contributions to the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics,” in Bell’s Theorem and the Foundations of Modern Physics, eds. A. Van der Merwe, F. Felleri, G. Tarozzi, Singapore, 1992, p. 5; also cited in P. C. W. Davies and J. R. Brown, eds., The Ghost in the Atom, 1986, pp. 49-50.

"Prior to the twentieth century, physics tried to explain how Nature works. Over the twentieth century, and especially in the last half, we got much more ambitious - now we’re uncovering what Nature is. The foundation is an entity I call the Grid. The Grid fills space, and is full of spontaneous activity. In some ways it resembles the old idea of “ether”. But the Grid is highly evolved ether, ether on steroids if you like, with many new features. We have some wonderful ideas waiting to be tested. There are good reasons to think that the Universe is a multilayered multicolored superconductor; that all four known forces can be brought together in a unified theory; that seemingly hopelessly different kinds of matter are just different aspects of one all-embracing stuff. I anticipate that the next few years will be a new Golden Age in fundamental physics."

- Frank Wilczek, Professor of Physics at MIT, Nobel Prize winner of 2004, author of the book "THE LIGHTNESS OF BEING: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces" (Basic Books; September 2, 2008) in a Q&A regarding his book.

LINK: http://www.frankwilczek.com/Wilczek_Q_and_A.pdf

"Certainly, from the standpoint of the special theory of relativity, the ether hypothesis appears at first to be an empty hypothesis. 1n the equations of the electromagnetic field there occur, in addition to the densities of the electric charge, only the intensities of the field. The career of electromagnetic processes in vacuo appears to be completely determined by tliese equations, uninfluenced by other physical quantities. The electromagnetic fields appear as ultimate, irreducible realities, and at first it seems superfluous to postulate a homogeneous, isotropic ether-medium, and to envisage electromagnetic fields as states of this medium.

But on the other hand there is a weighty argument to be adduced in favour of the ether hypothesis. To deny the ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever. The fundamental facts of mechanics do not harmonize with this view. For the mechanical behaviour of a corporeal system hovering freely in empty space depends not only on relative positions (distances) and relative velocities, but also on its state of rotation, which physically may be taken as a characteristic not appertaining to the system in itself. In order to be able to look upon the rotation of the system, at least formally, as something real, Newton objectivises space. Since he classes his absolute space together with real things, for him rotation relative to an absolute space is also something real. Newton might no less well have called his absolute space ``Ether; what is essential is merely that besides observable objects, another thing, which is not perceptible, inust be looked upon as real, to enable acceleration or rotation to be looked upon as something real."

"It is true that Mach tried to avoid having to accept as real something which is not observable by endeavouring to substitute in mechanics a mean acceleration with reference to the totality of the masses in the universe in place of an acceleration with reference to absolute space. But inertial resistance opposed to relative acceleration of distant masses presupposes action at a distance; and as the modern physicist does not believe that he may accept this action at a distance, he comes back once more, if he follows Mach, to the ether, which has to serve as medium for the effects of inertia. But this conception of the ether to which we are led by Mach's way of thinking differs essentially from the ether as conceived by Newton, by Fresnel, and by Lorentz. Mach's ether not only conditions the behaviour of inert masses, but is also conditioned in its state by them.

Mach's idea finds its full development in the ether of the general theory of relativity."

- Albert Einstein, an address delivered on May 5th, 1920, in the University of Leyden.

"Modern science has its roots in ancient Greek philosophy. This philosophy, as we know, used the word "ether" to designate the particular kind of matter that filled the universe. This term was used throughout the history of philosophy and science, and it was also current at the beginning of this century. A resumption of its use at the dawn of this new century is now a fact. Since, according to the General Theory of Relativity and other modem branches of physics, the space and time of the universe do not constitute a vacuum, but a structured material plenum characterized by different physical quantities, the historical and traditional word "ether" is the most appropriate to express these features of the universe."

- 'Einstein and the Ether', Ludwik Kostro, 2000, pp 186-187,

"Einstein's new kind of ether was the metrical tensor field. He thus started to adhere to this new ether. He named it "Mach's ether" or simply "ether," and supplied the same reasons that Poincare had provided in his writings as to why we should adhere to the ether (we need the ether in order to remove absolute rotation and action-at-a-distance: see my papers "Poincare's ether"). Einstein thus returned to the 19th century concept of the ether, but stripped of it its most important characteristic: a medium being in absolute rest. One could still pose the perplexing question: Was Einstein's ether endowed with any properties independent of the masses in it? For if it did possess such properties then there was actually no difference between Einstein and Poincares ether. Einstein did not give a defmitive answer to the above question in his (1920) lecture."

- "Einstein's Ether: D. Rotational Motion of the Earth," Galina Granek, Department of Philosophy, Haifa University, Mount Cannel, Haifa 31905, Israel, Apeiron, Vol. 8, No. 2, April 2001, p. 64.

"A few words about the gravitational æther, and the æther concept in general may be in place here. The æther hypothesis was thought to be buried by the Michelson-Morley experiment, but today it is more alive than ever, in the form of the CBR: experiments capable of finding the æther were not possible in the 1880s, but were possible in 1960s. In a sense, the electromagnetic æther has always been observed..."

- Toivo Jaakkola Tuorla Observatory University of Turku "Action-at-a-Distance and Local Action in Gravitation", APEIRON Vol. 3 Nr. 3-4 July-Oct. 1996, p 70.

"Today the vacuum is recognized as a rich physical medium....A general theory of the vacuum is thus a theory of everything, a universal theory. It would be appropriate to call the vacuum "ether" once again."

- 'The Philosophy of Vacuum' , 1991, Simon W. Saunders, Harvey R. Jr. Brown, p 251.

"According to accepted theory, free space is a vacuum. If this is so, how can it exhibit impedance? But it does. The answer, of course, is that there is no such thing as a vacuum, and what we call free space has structure. The impedance equals 376+ ohms."

- "Space Must Be Quantizied,", Robert Moon, professor emeritus in physics at University of Chicago, 21st Century, 1988, p. 26ff.

Rotundity

"Newtonian laws operate in a world-model that is very different from everyday intuition. Because Newtonian space is infinite and homogeneous, Earth and its surface are not special places. The directions "up," "down," and "sideways" are fundamentally similar. Nor is rest privileged over uniform motion. None of these concepts matches everyday experience. They troubled Newton's contemporaries, and even Newton himself."

- Frank Wilczek, Professor of Physics at MIT, Nobel Prize winner of 2004, in his book "THE LIGHTNESS OF BEING: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces" page 1. (Basic Books; September 2, 2008).

Parallax

"It is often said that Tycho’s model implies the absence of parallax, and that Copernicus’ requires parallax. However, it would not be a major conceptual change to have the stars orbit the sun (like the planets) for Tycho, which would give the same yearly shifts in their apparent positions as parallax gives. Thus if parallax were observed, a flexible Tychonean could adjust the theory to account for it, without undue complexity. What if parallax were not observed? For Copernicus, one only requires that the stars be far enough away for the parallax to be unmeasurable. Therefore the presence or absence of parallax doesn’t force the choice of one type of model over the other. If different stars were to show different amounts of parallax, that would rule out the possibility of them all being on one sphere, but still not really decide between Tycho and Copernicus.

In fact, if we don’t worry about the distant stars, these two models describe identical relative motions of all the objects in the solar system. So the role of observation is not as direct as you might have guessed. There is no bare observation that can distinguish whether Tycho (taken broadly) or Copernicus (taken broadly) is right."

- University of Illinois, Physics 319, Spring 2004, Lecture 03, p. 8

Cosmology

“Less than 50 years after the birth of what we are pleased to call ‘modern cosmology,’ when so few empirical facts are passably well established, when so many different over-simplified models of the universe are still competing for attention, is it, may we ask, really credible to claim, or even reasonable to hope, that we are presently close to a definitive solution of the cosmological problem?…Unfortunately, a study of the history of cosmology reveals disturbing parallelisms between modern cosmology and medieval scholasticism; often the borderline between sophistication and sophistry, between numeration and numerology, seems very precarious indeed. Above all I am concerned by an apparent loss of contact withempirical evidence and observational facts, and, worse, by a deliberate refusal on the part of some theorists to accept such results when they appear to be in conflict with some of the present oversimplified and therefore intellectually appealing theories of the universe…doctrines that frequently seem to be more concerned with the fictitious properties of ideal (and therefore nonexistent) universes than with the actual world revealed by observations.”

- Gerard de Vaucouleurs, University of Texas, formulater of de Vaucouleurs modified Hubble sequence, awarded the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship by the American Astronomical Society in 1988. He was awarded the Prix Jules Janssen of the French Astronomical Society in the same year.

"I don't think there is one person in many, many thousands--regardless of education--who knows that the Copernican Model had to turn the Moon's observable direction around and give it a new speed to accommodate the phases and eclipses." Marshall Hall

"But among all the discoveries and corrections probably none has resulted in a deeper influence on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus…. Possibly mankind has never been demanded to do more, for considering all that went up in smoke as a result of realizing this change: a second Paradise, a world of innocence, poetry and piety: the witness of the senses, the conviction of a poetical and religious faith. No wonder his contemporaries did not wish to let all this go and offered every possible resistance to a doctrine which in its converts authorized and demanded a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown indeed not even dreamed of.”

- Johann von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, Materialien zur Geschichte der Farbenlehre, Frankfurt am Main, 1991, Seite 666.

[The Copernican Revolution] "..outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom. Since it changed the character of men’s habitual mental operations even in the conduct of the nonmaterial sciences, while transforming the whole diagram of the physical universe and the very texture of human life itself, it looms so large as the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern mentality, that our customary periodisation of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance."

- Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science: 1300-1800, 1957, pp. 7-8.

"Copernicus studied in Bologna under the Platonist Novara; and Copernicus’ idea of placing the sun rather than the earth in the center of the universe was not the result of new observations but of a new interpretation of old and well-known facts in the light of semi-religious Platonic and Neo-Platonic ideas. The crucial idea can be traced back to the sixth book of Plato’s Republic, where we can read that the sun plays the same role in the realm of visible things as does the idea of the good in the realm of ideas. Now the idea of the good is the highest in the hierarchy of Platonic ideas. Accordingly the sun, which endows visible things with their visibility, vitality, growth and progress, is the highest in the hierarchy of the visible things in nature…Now if the sun was to be given pride of place, if the sun merited a divine status…then it was hardly possible for it to revolve about the earth. The only fitting place for so exalted a star was the center of the universe. So the earth was bound to revolve about the sun. This Platonic idea, then, forms the historical background of the Copernican revolution. It does not start with observations, but with a religious or mythological idea."

- Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, p. 187

"…in the Renaissance movement championed by Marsiglio Ficino, the doctrine came alive again, but in a somewhat altered form; one might say that what Ficino instituted was indeed a religion, a kind of neo-paganism. Copernicus himself was profoundly influenced by this movement, as can be clearly seen from numerous passages in the De Revolutionibus."

- Wolfgang Smith, The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology, p. 174).

"In the middle of all sits Sun enthroned. In this most beautiful temple could we place this luminary in any better position from which he can illuminate the whole at once? He is rightly called the Lamp, the Mind, the Ruler of the Universe: Hermes Trismegistus names him the Visible God, Sophocles’ Electra calls him the All-seeing. So the Sun sits as upon a royal throne ruling his children the planets which circle round him. The Earth has the Moon at her service. As Aristotle says, in his On Animals, the Moon has the closest relationship with the Earth. Meanwhile the Earth conceives by the Sun, and becomes pregnant with an annual rebirth."

- Nicolaus Copernicus , De Revolutionibus, Of the Order of the Heavenly Bodies 10.

“[Copernicus’] reasons for his revolutionary change were essentially philosophic and aesthetic,” and in a later edition he is more convinced that the “reasons were mystical rather than scientific”

- J. D. Bernal, Science in History, 1st edition, London, Watts, 1954; 2nd edition, 1965).

“Who [the sun] alone appears, by virtue of his dignity and power, suited…and worthy to become the home of God himself, not to say the first mover”

- Johannes Kepler, On the Motion of Mars, Prague, 1609, Chapter 4).

"Kepler knew that in Tycho’s possession were the raw observations that he, as “architect,” longed to assemble into a coherent picture of planetary motion. And Tycho knew that the gifted Kepler had the mathematical wherewithal to prove the validity of the Tychonic [geocentric] system of the heavens. But Kepler was a confirmed Copernican; Tycho’s model had no appeal to him, and he had no intention of polishing this flawed edifice to the great man’s ego."

- Alan W. Hirshfeld, Parallax: The Race to Measure the Universe, New York: W. H. Freeman and Co, 2001, pp. 92-93).

"Let all keep silence and hark to Tycho who has devoted thirty-five years to his observations… For Tycho alone do I wait; he shall explain to me the order and arrangement of the orbits… Then I hope I shall one day, if God keeps me alive, erect a wonderful edifice.....

Brahe may discourage me from Copernicus (or even from the five perfect solids) but rather I think about striking Tycho himself with a sword…I think thus about Tycho: he abounds in riches, which like most rich people he does not rightly use. Therefore great effort has to be given that we may wrest his riches away from him. We will have to go begging, of course, so that he may sincerely spread his observations around”

- Kepler, Letter to Michael Maestlin, February 16 1599, Gesammelte Werke, vol. xiii, p. 289

“I confess that when Tycho died, I quickly took advantage of the absence, or lack of circumspection, of the heirs, by taking the observations under my care, or perhaps usurping them…”

- Kepler as quoted by Stephen Hawking (2004). The Illustrated On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy. Philadelphia: Running Press. p. 108

"The personality of Galileo, as it emerges from works of popular science, has even less relation to historic fact than Canon Koppernigk’s…[H]e appears…in rationalist mythography as the Maid of Orleans of Science, the St. George who slew the dragon of the Inquisition. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that the fame of this outstanding genius rests mostly on discoveries he never made, and on feats he never performed. Contrary to statements in even recent outlines of science, Galileo did not invent the telescope; nor the microscope; nor the thermometer; nor the pendulum clock. He did not discover the law of inertia; nor the parallelogram of forces or motions; not the sun spots. He made no contribution to theoretical astronomy; he did not throw down weights from the leaning tower of Pisa and did not prove the truth of the Copernican system. He was not tortured by the Inquisition, did not languish in its dungeons, did not say ‘eppur si muove’; and he was not a martyr of science "

- Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 358.

‘They defend the old theories by complicating things to the point of incomprehensibility.’ - Fred Hoyle

"The work, published in 1543, was called On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres. It stated that the center of the universe was a spot somewhere near the sun...The scheme met the requirements of philosophical and theological belief in circular motion. In every other respect, however, Copernicus struck at the heart of Aristotelian and Christian belief. He removed the Earth from the center of the universe and so from the focus of God’s purpose. In the new scheme man was no longer the creature for whose use and elucidation the cosmos had been created. His system also placed the Earth in the heavens, and in doing so removed the barrier separating the incorruptible from the corruptible."

- James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed, p. 135

"The popular belief that Copernicus' heliocentric system constitutes a significant simplification of the Ptolemaic system is obviously wrong. The choice of the reference system has no effect on the structure of the model, and the Copernican models themselves require about twice as many circles as the Ptolemaic models and are far less elegant and adaptable!"

Modern historians, making ample use of the advantage of hindsight, stress the revolutionary significance of the heliocentric system and the simplification it had introduced. In fact, the actual computation of planetary positions follows exactly the ancient patterns and the results are the same. The Copernican solar theory is definitely a step in the wrong direction for the actual computation as well as for the underlying kinematic concepts"

- 'On Three Planetary Theory of Copernicus' - Otto Neugebauer 1968, p 103,

"Cosmology is not even astrophysics: all the principal assumptions in this field are unverified (or unverifiable) in the laboratory, and researchers are quite comfortable with inventing unknowns to explain the unknown. How then could, after fifty years of failed attempt in finding dark matter, the fields of dark matter..dark energy have become such lofty priorities in astronomy funding, to the detriment of all other branches of astronomy? I demonstrate in this article that while some of is based upon truth, at least just as much of ΛCDM cosmology has been propped by a paralyzing amount of propaganda which suppress counter evidence and subdue competing models. [...] I believe astronomy is no longer heading towards a healthy future, unless funding agencies re-think their master plans by backing away from such high a emphasis on groping in the dark."

- Richard Lieu, 'ΛCDM cosmology: how much suppression of credible evidence, and does the model really lead its competitors, using all evidence?', 2007, abstract.

https://arxiv.org/abs/0705.2462

"Dark energy appears to be the dominant component of the physical Universe, yet there is no persuasive theoretical explanation for its existence or magnitude. The acceleration of the Universe is, along with dark matter, the observed phenomenon that most directly demonstrates that our theories of fundamental particles and gravity are either incorrect or incomplete. Most experts believe that nothing short of a revolution in our understanding of fundamental physics will be required to achieve a full understanding of the cosmic acceleration. For these reasons, the nature of dark energy ranks among the very most compelling of all outstanding problems in physical science. These circumstances demand an ambitious observational program to determine the dark energy properties as well as possible."

- Report of the Dark Energy Task Force, 2006

https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609591

Galileo's recantation:

"The falsity of the Copernican system should not in any way be called into question, above all, not by Catholics, since we have the unshakeable authority of the Sacred Scripture, interpreted by the most erudite theologians, whose consensus gives us certainty regarding the stability of the Earth, situated in the center, and the motion of the sun around the Earth. The conjectures employed by Copernicus and his followers in maintaining the contrary thesis are all sufficiently rebutted by that most solid argument deriving from the omnipotence of God. He is able to bring about in different ways, indeed, in an infinite number of ways, things that, according to our opinion and observation, appear to happen in one particular way. We should not seek to shorten the hand of God and boldly insist on something beyond the limits of our competence.”

- Le Opere Di Galileo Galilei, p. 316, footnote #2.

Michelson-Morley

“This would mean that the Earth’s diameter in the direction of its motion is shortened by 2½ inches."

~

“The Michelson-Morley experiment has thus failed to detect our motion through the aether, because the effect looked for – the delay of one of the light waves – is exactly compensated by an automatic contraction of the matter forming the apparatus.”

- Sir Arthur Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation, p. 20

"The explanation which had the most appeal in accounting for the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment was one that was literally dreamed up for the purpose. It is the so-called Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction. In 1893 Fitzgerald suggested that all objects contracted in the direction of their motion through the ether. He reasoned that if ordinary objects flattened out upon impact with other objects – a rubber ball hitting a wall or a ripe tomato dropped on the floor, for example – then why would it not be possible for objects that move through the ether to have the force of the ether push them in, or contract them? This would adequately explain the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. The arm of the interferometer moving against the ether would be shortened so that, even though the light wave travelling in that particular arm might be slowed down by the ether wind, this would be compensated for by having its path shortened.....

~

Objections to the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction hypothesis were rampant, as was to be expected, not only because there was no evidence to prove that such an effect took place, but particularly because Fitzgerald could not explain why objects would contract due to motion through the ether. The contraction hypothesis was originally advanced only as a possible explanation for Michelson and Morley’s results, providing such an effect existed. Then, too, the theory said that all materials travelling with the same velocity with respect to the ether would contract the same fractional amount. Since iron is much heavier and stronger than wood, for example, one would expect a greater contraction for wood than for iron, but this, too, went unanswered."

- James A. Coleman, Professor of Physics and Chairman of the Department of Physics at the American International College, Spring-field, Massachusetts, "Relativity for the Layman".

"...this unexpected result kept the scientific world long in perplexity....." wrote Hans Reichenbach in his insightful book “From Copernicus To Einstein.” He further noted: "This result, announced in 1887, dumfounded scientists...."

"Considering the motion of the Earth in its orbit only, this displacement should be 2D v2/V2 = 2D × 10‐8. The distance D was about eleven meters, or 2 × 107 wavelengths of yellow light; hence, the displacement to be expected was 0.4 fringe. The actual displacement was certainly less than the twentieth part of this, and probably less than the fortieth part.5 But since the displacement is proportional to the square of the velocity, the relative velocity of the Earth and the ether is probably less than one‐sixth the Earth’s orbital velocity, and certainly less than one‐fourth."

- A. A. Michelson and E. W. Morley, “On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether,” Art. xxxvi, The American Journal of Science, eds. James D and Edward S. Dana, No. 203, vol. xxxiv, November 1887, p. 341

"As for walking on the moon, sometimes I wonder if that really happened. I can honestly say—and it's a great surprise to me that I have never had a dream about being on the moon. It's a great disappointment to me." - Neil Armstrong (Wagener, One Giant Leap, p. 303).

Sagnac

"The Sagnac effect also occurs if an atomic clock is moved slowly from one reference station on the ground to another...Observers at rest on the ground, seeing these same asymmetric effects, attribute them instead to gravitomagnetic effects – that is to say, the warping of space-time due to spacetime terms in the general-relativistic metric tensor..."

- Physics Today, May 2002 p. 42

PDF LINK: http://www.ipgp.fr/~tarantola/Files/Professional/GPS/Neil_Ashby_Relativity_G

"In clear conception, it ought to be regarded as a direct manifestation of the luminiferous ether. In a system moving as a whole with respect to the ether, the elapsed time of propagation between any two points of the system should be altered as though the system were immobile and subject to the action of an ether wind which would blow away the light waves in the manner of atmospheric wind blowing away sound waves. The observation of the optical effect of such a relative wind of ether would constitute evidence for the ether, just as the observation of the influence of the relative wind of the atmosphere on the speed of sound in a system in motion would (in the absence of a better explanation) constitute evidence of the existence of the atmosphere around the system in movement."

- Georges Sagnac, “The Luminiferous Ether Demonstrated by the Effect of the Relative Motion of the Ether in an Interferometer in Uniform Rotation", Comptes Rendus de l’Academie des Sciences 95, pp. 708-710, (1913).

Multiverse

Interesting quotes on Multiverse:

But the main reason for believing in an ensemble of universes is that it could explain why the laws governing our Universe appear to be so finely tuned for our existence. [...]This fine-tuning has two possible explanations. Either the Universe was designed specifically for us by a creator or there is a multitude of universes--a "multiverse".

- Marcus Chown, New Scientist, 06 June 1998.

"Cosmologists deserve credit for making the choice so clear. In that spirit, Discover Magazine offers the multiverse as “Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent Creator” (2008)."

"The Copernican Principle is similarly flexible: When conjuring habitable planets, it assumes ours is one among countless winners. Yet when conjuring a multiverse, it assumes that our universe is a lonely winner among countless flops. The choice seems to depend on which assumption is required as a defense against design. That feature, as we shall see, can once again transform speculation into orthodoxy."

- Denyse O'Leary, Evolution News and Views

Source: https://evolutionnews.org/2013/12/copernicus_not/

“ Call it a fluke, a mystery, a miracle. Or call it the biggest problem in physics. Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life.

The idea is controversial. Critics say it doesn’t even qualify as a scientific theory because the existence of other universes cannot be proved or disproved. ”
—Tim Folger, November 10, 2008, Discover Magazine Online (Archive)

"We have shown that most of the global time cutoff measures of the multiverse suffer from severe inconsistencies and developed a new framework which allows us to study the measure problem from a completely different perspective. In the emerging picture an infinite multiverse is replaced with a finite geocentric region..."

- 'Geocentric cosmology: a new look at the measure problem', Mahdiyar Noorbala and Vitaly Vanchurin, Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, 2011.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1006.4148.pdf

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/05/looking-for-god-in-the-cosmic-details.html

Should the fine-tuning turn out to be real, what are we to make of it? There are two widely-discussed possibilities: either God fine-tuned the universe for us to be here, or there are (as string theory implies) a large number of universes, each with different laws of physics, and we happen to find ourselves in a universe where the laws happen to be just right for us to live. After all, how could we not?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026852.500-why-its-not-as-simple-as-god-vs-the-multiverse/

WHAT would you rather believe in, God or the multiverse? It sounds like an instance of cosmic apples and oranges, but increasingly we are being told it’s a choice we must make. Take the dialogue earlier this year between Richard Dawkins and physicist Steven Weinberg in Austin, Texas. Discussing the fact that the universe appears fine-tuned for our existence, Weinberg told Dawkins: “If you discovered a really impressive fine-tuning… I think you’d really be left with only two explanations: a benevolent designer or a multiverse.”

“ However the very nature of the scientific enterprise is at stake in the multiverse debate: the multiverse proponents are proposing weakening the nature of scientific proof in order to claim that multiverses provide a scientific explanation. This is a dangerous tactic (note that we are concerned with really existing multiverses, not potential or hypothetical).

Two central scientific virtues are testability and explanatory power. In the cosmological context, these are often in conflict with each other (Ellis [12]). The extreme case is multiverse proposals, where no direct observational tests of the hypothesis are possible, as the supposed other universes cannot be seen by any observations whatever, and the assumed underlying physics is also untested and indeed probably untestable.

In this context one must re-evaluate what the core of science is: can one maintain one has a genuine scientific theory when direct and indeed indirect tests of the theory are impossible? If one claims this, one is altering what one means by science. One should be very careful before so doing. ”
—George F R Ellis, "Dark matter and dark energy proposals:maintaining cosmology as a true science?" November 21, 2008. (Archive)

“ The multiverse idea is not provable either by observation, or as an implication of well established physics (cf. Gardner [13]). It may be true, but cannot be shown to be true by observation or experiment. However it does have great explanatory power: it does provide an empirically based rationalization for fine tuning, developing from known physical principles.

Here one must distinguish between explanation and prediction. Successful scientific theories make predictions, which can then be tested. The multiverse theory can’t make any predictions because it can explain anything at all. Any theory that is so flexible is not testable because almost any observation can be accommodated. I conclude that multiverse proposals are good empirically-based philosophical proposals for the nature of what exists, but are not strictly within the domain of science because they are not testable. I emphasize that there is nothing wrong with empirically-based philosophical explanation, indeed it is of great value, provided it is labeled for what it is.

I suggest that cosmologists should be very careful not to make methodological proposals that erode the essential nature of science in their enthusiasm to support such theories as being scientific (cf. Tegmark [27, 28]), for if they do so, there will very likely be unintended consequences in other areas where the boundaries of science are in dispute. It is dangerous to weaken the grounds of scientific proof in order to include multiverses under the mantle of ‘tested science’ for there are many other theories standing in the wings that would also like to claim that mantle. ”
—George F R Ellis, "Dark matter and dark energy proposals:maintaining cosmology as a true science?", November 21, 2008. (Archive)

“ Here's the dilemma: if the universe began with a quantum particle blipping into existence, inflating godlessly into space-time and a whole zoo of materials, then why is it so well suited for life?

For medieval philosophers, the purported perfection of the universe was the key to proving the existence of God. The universe is so fit for intelligent life that it must be the product of a powerful, benevolent external deity. Or, as popular theology might put it today: all this can’t be an accident.

Modern physics has also wrestled with this “fine-tuning problem”, and supplies its own answer. If only one universe exists, then it is strange to find it so hospitable to life, when nearly any other value for the gravitational or cosmological constants would have produced nothing at all. But if there is a “multiverse” of many universes, all with different constants, the problem vanishes: we’re here because we happen to be in one of the universes that works.

No miracles, no plan, no creator. As the cosmologist Bernard Carr puts it: “If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse. ” -- New Scientist, God vs the multiverse: The 2500-year war

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmology-theology/

“ The theory of the multiverse has seductively great explanatory power (while it has almost no predictive power), which is a major reason why many physicists and cosmologists find it attractive. On the other hand, other physicists dismiss it as pseudoscience because it is practically untestable.

It is common among supporters of the multiverse to conceive it as an alternative to a divinely created world and ideas of natural theology. Because it represents our universe as a chance universe, special only by the fact that we live in it, the multiverse has been likened to another and more famous anti-design theory, neo-Darwinianism. Weinberg puts it as follows: “Just as Darwin and Wallace explained how the wonderful adaption of living forms could arise without supernatural intervention, so the string landscape may explain how the constants of nature that we observe can take values suitable for life without being fine-tuned by a benevolent creator” (Weinberg 2007, 39). ”

---

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/multiverse-theories-are-bad-for-science/

Newtonian Gravity

Mach (1872-1911) on action-at-a-distance:

“The Newtonian theory of gravitation, on its appearance, disturbed almost all investigators of nature because it was founded on an uncommon unintelligibility. People tried to reduce gravitation to pressure and impact. At the present day gravitation no longer disturbs anybody: it has become common unintelligibility.”

NASA

“ Today we have with us a group of students, among America's best. To you we say we have only completed a beginning. We leave you much that is undone. There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of the truth's protective layers. There are places to go beyond belief... ”
—Neil Armstrong

“ A beautiful story. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we went to the Moon because we’re pioneers or explorers or selfless discovers. We went to the Moon because Cold War politics made it the militarily expedient thing to do. ”
—Neil deGrasse Tyson, Space chronicles: facing the ultimate frontier (2012), p.200

p.219:

“ Notwithstanding the sanitized memories so many of us have of the Apollo era, Americans were not first on the Moon because we're explorers by nature or because our country is committed to the pursuit of knowledge. We get to the Moon first because the United States was out to beat the Soviet Union, to win the Cold War any way we could. Kennedy made that clear when he complained to top NASA officials in November 1962:

I’m not that interested in space. I think it’s good, I think we ought to know about it, we’re ready to spend reasonable amounts of money. But we’re talking about these fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs and the only justification for it in my opinion to do it in this time or fashion is because we hope to beat [the Soviet Union] and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.

Like it or not, war (cold or hot) is the most powerful funding driver in the public arsenal. Lofty goals such as curiosity, discovery, exploration, and science can get you money for modest-size projects, provided they resonate with the political and cultural views of the moment. But big, expensive activities are inherently long term, and require sustained investment that must survive economic fluctuations and changes in the political winds.

In all eras, across time and culture, only war, greed, and the celebration of royal or religious power have fulfilled that funding requirement. Today, the power of kings is supplanted by elected governments, and the power of religion is often expressed in nonarchitectural undertakings, leaving war and greed to run the show. ”
—Neil deGrasse Tyson, Space chronicles: facing the ultimate frontier (2012), p.219

“ For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covet means for expanding its sphere of influence on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a “tightly knit”, highly ef‌ficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientif‌ic and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. ”
—John F. Kennedy, April 27, 1961

“ "In the late 1960s our simulation technology ' had progressed to the point where it became virtually impossible to separate the training from actual missions. The simulations became full dress rehearsals tor the missions down to the smallest detail. The simulation tested out the crew's and controller's responses to normal and emergency conditions. It checked out the exact flight plan, mission rules, and procedures that the crew and controllers would use tor a later flight."

"The simulations were so real that no controller could discern the difference between the training and the real mission." ”
—Apollo Flight Director Gene Kranz, Failure Is Not an Option

“ My great grandma went from covered wagons to moon landings. It's cool to see how far we go. ”
—Anonymous

After the Challenger Disaster investigative reporter Joseph Trento interviewed George Keyworth:

“ So when George “Jay” Keyworth, a forty-three-year-old weapons designer from Los Alamos, became Ronald Reagan’s science adviser, NASA faced a crisis of survival. He did not trust the space agency. “Of all the organizations that I have dealt with, some so wrapped up in their bureaucratic interests that they were certainly counter to the directions . . . the country was going in. Some of them filled with incompetent people. Some of them outstanding. I have only seen one that lied. It was NASA. From the top to the bottom they lie. . . . The reason they lie, of course, is because they are wrapped up in a higher calling. In their eyes they are white lies. They tell lies in order to do what has to be done. Because in the end the result will be for the betterment of the public. So they are not lying from evil. But, nevertheless, they are lying,” Keyworth asserts.¹³ He believed that the entire basis of the shuttle was a lie. ”
—Joseph J. Trento, Perscription for disaster, p.184

“ As NASA dazzled the american public by pulling off one spectacular event after another, another equally massive space program was taking place out of the public’s view. What is known as the “black” space program became equal to NASA in dollars and by the late 19705 surpassed the civil program in spending. David Williamson, who had the job of NASA and DOD liaison, estimates that more than half of space activity is secret. “You simply cannot write about it because they will put you in jail.” ” - p.122

“ As the team and the money began to grow, Webb got a message from Bernard A. Schriever, who was responsible for all Air Force ICBMS including the troubled Atlas. Then Seamans’ aide David Williamson recalls what happened. “There is a famous secret telegram dealing with all of it and it was sent to James Webb saying don’t make it [NASA’s Atlas tests] public, because if you fly a big public mission on my Atlas and my Atlas breaks, I won’t be able to lie to Congress and to the people of America about how far ahead of the Russians we are. That’s not what he said but that’s what he meant. What he said was that it will hurt national security because it will give the Soviets a feeling that our deterrent isn’t credible. Okay, well that’s a legitimate argument. In fact it [the Atlas] wasn’t credible and wasn’t going to be credible for about three years. What he was saying in a premature way, we [NASA] will tell everybody in the world that we’re not as good as we think. And that is one of the big differences between the old NASA and DOD [Department of Defense] throughout. We never thought to use secrecy for embarrassment reasons of that kind.” ” - p.40

Misc Quotes From Scientists on Space Travel

"To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances." -- Electrionics and Radio Pioneer Lee De Forest, Ph.D., Yale University, 1957

"We did not ask ourselves whether space exploration was possible. We simply assumed that it was, and that it could brought about in our time" --Astronautics & Aeronautics - Volume 19 - Page 37, 1981

Goddard --https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2018/07/19/the-correction-heard-round-the-world-when-the-new-york-times-apologized-to-robert-goddard/#282e698f4543

Writers

“ The science and technology did not exist in 1961 to make the moon shot at that time. And many scientists thought that it was impossible to create this technology by the end of the decade. But enough scientists existed who did not reject the idea as totally impossible, and they set to work to invent everything necessary to make it happen. And, of course, on July 20, 1969, the United States reached the moon and returned the Apollo crew safely home a few days later. An almost impossible stretch was accomplished. ” -- Robert M. Sheehan, Jr., Mission Impact: Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits

“ When I was a child, I read the popular comic strip Buck Rogers. Rogers wore a funny-lookin g outfit and traveled around in space in a shiny rocket. I liked reading Buck Rogers because it was like magic—the world of make— believe for young people. But later, the U.S. actually did it: we landed men on the moon and we got them back to Earth. In the 1958 two Harvard scientists conclusively proved that space travel was impossible (because of the weight of the fuel). Today we take Space travel for granted.

These achievements were all perceived to be impossible, but they were accomplished. If these things were possible, what else is possible? ”--Don Soderquist, The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company

“ Unlike the problem of hunger, in which solutions already exist, there were no solutions to the problem of getting a man to the moon in 1961. President Kennedy created a context called "A man on the moon in 10 years," and out of that context, in which the question of feasibility was merely one of many positions within the context, came the workable solution: the Congressional approval, appropriations of money, technological breakthroughs, NASA, and, ultimately, men on the moon. Before then, space travel was not possible because the attempts to make it real existed in a condition of unworkability. ”--Werner Erhard, 1977, The Hunger Project Source Document

“ In 1963, when most scientists doubted the possibility of interstellar space travel, Carl Sagan embraced the notion enthusiastically. He advocated direct physical contact among galactic communities by means of relativistic interstellar f‌light. ”--George Basalla, Civilized Life in the Universe

“ The rocket engineers and promoters were often science-fiction fans and writers themselves. Tsiolkovsky, Oberth and Von Braun all wrote space fiction at one time or another. Oberth and the VfR were technical advisers for Fritz Lang's movie Frau im Mond, receiving enough money to build an actual rocket they intended to launch in connection with the film's premiere. The plan went awry, but at least one prominent rocket engineer, Krafft Ehricke, designer of the Atlas booster which sent the first Americans into orbit, was "converted to space travel" by the movie.11 G. Edwards Pendray and Nathan Schachner, both presidents of the American Rocket Society, wrote for science-fiction magazines under pseudonyms, as did Ley himself. Arthur Clarke was an officer of the British Interplanetary Society before he became a successful science-fiction writer. Among a long string of technical articles predating his debut as a professional fiction writer was Clarke's proposal for a communications satellite, written in October, 1945.12

Against this background, the divergence between the various developments in space flight "predicted" by science-fiction writers and those actually taken in the "real world" seem puzzling. Hardly an area of science fiction produces less evidence that science fiction has a firm grasp on scientific reality than the stories about space flight written in the first ten years of the space age. Yet a closer examination reveals not only that science-fiction writers were distrustful of the actualities of organized science, but that they were sufficiently distrustful of it to examine its social roots at a time when social criticism was extremely dangerous in the United States and when it had almost entirely disappeared from even "serious," as well as "popular" literature. ”--Science Fiction Studies, Volume 5, Part 2, July 1978 - https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/15/berger15art.htm

“ If respectable science could not open the road to the stars, there was only one alternative, "to go to the crackpots." ”--Science Fiction Studies, Volume 5, Part 2, July 1978 - https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/15/berger15art.htm

“ History is created, manipulated and written by those who are predominantly on the Victorious side of the nation which has supreme political, and especially military, dominance. Any ‘truth’ which has the slightest potential of weakening their total hold over the masses is not tolerated. Any truth which can impact their power is squelched or cunningly hidden by them, usually in a manufactured media release to the unsuspecting public, often in a jovial manner to render the information a laughing matter and display it as harmless. ”--Former NASA astronaut, Clark C McClelland

“ History is a lie, commonly agreed upon. ”--Voltaire, French philosopher

https://web.archive.org/web/20190807184106/https://sputniknews.com/science/201807271066736384-russians-polled-on-moon-landings/

Poll: Over Half of Russians Don't Believe America Landed on the MoonCC0 TECH 15:04 27.07.2018(updated 15:34 27.07.2018) Get short URL11373 NASA's six manned lunar missions, known as the Apollo program, which was conducted from July 1969 to December 1972, have attracted a great deal of interest among conspiracy theorists who hold that the entire program was a hoax aimed at pulling one over on the Soviets during the Cold War.

Some 57 percent of Russians believe that there has never been a manned lunar landing and are convinced that the US government falsified videos, photos and other material evidence regarding the 1969 expedition, a new poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (Russian acronym VCIOM) has revealed.

https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/329840-russians-refuse-apollo-11

Why do 76% of Russians refuse to believe that the Americans were on the Moon?

Three Body

https://www.wired.com/story/when-exactly-will-the-eclipse-happen/
Stephen Wolfram

“ But computing eclipses is not exactly a new business. In fact, the Antikythera device from 2000 years ago even tried to do it—using 37 metal gears to approximate the motion of the Sun and Moon...

Of course the results are a lot more accurate today. Though, strangely, despite all the theoretical science that’s been done, the way we actually compute the position of the Sun and Moon is conceptually very much like the gears—and effectively epicycles—of the Antikythera device. It’s just that now we have the digital equivalent of hundreds of thousands of gears. ”

Overview of Larange Points: https://gereshes.com/2018/12/03/an-introduction-to-lagrange-points-the-3-body-problem/

INTRODUCTION TO THE 3-BODY PROBLEM: https://gereshes.com/2018/10/22/introduction-to-the-3-body-problem/

Three Body Problem Review

Statistical Approach:

https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/mathematicians-crack-newtons-three-body-problem/

Neutrino problems

http://t2k-experiment.org/neutrinos/beyond-the-standard-model/

http://hosting.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/sun_neutrino.htm

"The observed flux of neutrinos detected at Earth from the solar core is considerably less than that predicted by current models of solar nuclear fusion and our understanding of neutrinos themselves."

"Because neutrinos interact only weakly with ordinary matter, their detection is very difficult, and current neutrino "telescopes" are quite crude."

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12917543-300-science-solar-neutrino-problem-solved-at-last/

"There is also no correlation with sunspot activity, contrary to one claim."

EP

https://books.google.com/books?id=vV9gDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA93&dq=%22equivalence%20principle%22%20%22sun%22&pg=PA115#v=onepage&q=%22equivalence%20principle%22%20%22sun%22&f=false

A test of the equivalence between active and passive gravitational mass is the Kreuzer (1968)132 experiment. It measured the gravitational field generated by substances of different composition. The experiment was performed with a Cavendish balance, using two substances, one mainly composed of fluorine and one mainly of bromine. The two substances had the same passive gravitational mass, as measured in the Earth gravity field, that is, the same weight. However, since they are of different compositions, they could potentially have different active gravitational masses. The result of this null experiment, in agreement with general relativity, was...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0039368185900020

Whilst prepating a review article on his new special theory of relativity, he became convinced that the key to the extension of the principle of relativity to accelerated motion lay in the remarkable and unexplained empirical coincidence of the equality of inertial and gravitational masses.

Quotes

“ Mercury runs on seven circles in all, Venus on five, the earth on three with the moon around it on four, and finally Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn on five each. Thus 34 circles are enough to explain the whole structure of the universe and the entire ballet of the planets. ” -- Nicolaus Copernicus

Compton Tube

https://books.google.com/books?id=-JQx_t3yGB4C&pg=PA271&lpg=PA271&dq=Compton+generator+replicated&source=bl&ots=rmGE1QXW8r&sig=ACfU3U22hZUaYeQHwuTNBykzMbuUAALQng&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiVu9uvs7nnAhWpmXIEHYN6A_0Q6AEwA3oECB4QAQ#v=onepage&q=Compton%20generator%20replicated&f=false

Retrograde Motion

Geocentricity

http://www.ldolphin.org/geocentricity/Aspects.pdf

Flat Earth Topics

Stellar Rotation
South Celestial Rotation

Stellar Illusions

The stars are a very interesting subject in modern astronomy. According to heliocentric astronomers whenever we look at the stars we are actually looking at a plethora of illusions which might make reality seem one way, but in truth are tricks of nature which hide the correct nature of modern astronomy.

Close Stars Illusion - The Close Star Illusion makes the stars appear close to us when they are really far away.
Star Size Illusion - The Star Size Illusion makes the stars to be too enormous for their interstellar distances, causing them to all dwarf the sun, some appearing one tenth the diameter of the visible disk of the moon, when really they are much smaller.
Central Earth Illusions - The Central Earth Illusions are illusions involving the redshift, brightness, and cosmic microwave background data distributed in such a way that the Earth appears to be the center of the universe.

Galaxies

The galaxies are a topic of interest. The theories of gravity seem unable to explain their movements. The stellar systems of our universe rotate as if they were solid disks, and at a pace so great that they should fly apart. This is explained substances called 'Dark Matter' and 'Dark Energy', which are hidden from all forms of observation.

Problems of the Galaxies

Cosmology

The subject of Cosmology is another very interesting topic. Our laws for the natural world do not appear to work in the universe. The theories of Cosmology have been described as a 'folk tale'.

Cosmology Has Some Big Problems

Airy's Failure

Airy's Failure refers to an experiment which attempted to test the movement of the Earth. By use of a water-filled telescope George Airy was unable to detect the movement of the Earth. Starlight behaves as if the earth is physically motionless. This was later explained by the second postulate of Special Relativity, which saved the heliocentric model from difficulty by providing an illusion to explain the results of the Michelson-Morley and Airy's Failure motionless earth experiments.

Airy's Failure

Close Stars Illusion

https://books.google.com/books?id=bxIuDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT206&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjcrNyXu-zjAhUEmeAKHWG1AuEQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

RESOLVING THE STARS’ APPARENT CLOSENESS PLUS THE SIZE AND AGE OF THE UNIVERSE

Creating the apparently close stars’ illusion:

It’s a clear night, you are gazing up at the stars that seem so close, “You can almost touch them" I believe someone once wrote. As you stand there, you are arriving at the same conclusion regarding the distance to the stars as the ancients who believed that the stars appear to be close, a f‌ixed distance from the earth and attached to a celestial or crystal sphere.

As introduced previously, if you continue to observe the stars for a while, you will notice that they seem to “drift” toward the west. Closer observation will disclose that the stars appear to be rotating about a star in the Northern sky, a star now termed the pole star.

The star closeness illusion is not caused by the same reference problem that causes the apparently same size and closeness of the sun and moon illusion. We can actually “see" the sun and moon, but we cannot “see” any of the stars in the conventional sense. Because of the extreme distance to the stars, the human eye and even the most powerful telescope lacks the power to resolve a star. We can “see" a star since it is a source of light, but we cannot see any details of stars, what we "see” is an optical phenomenon, known as an Airy disk named for its discover, British mathematician and astronomer Sir George Biddell Airy (1801-1892)M.

The Airy disk is a series of concentric rings of varying intensity that only show where a star is but cannot be used to determine a star’s characteristics. Accordingly, we cannot determine the actual distance to a star: all stars appear to be the same distance from us and lacking a reference, appear to be relatively close for reasons discussed above.

https://books.google.com/books?id=GPl3UeLDEF8C&lpg=PA99&pg=PA97#v=onepage&q&f=false

CHAPTER 8: RESOLVING THE APPARENTLY CLOSE STARS AROUND EARTH ILLUSION

CREATING THE ILLUSION.

It’s a clear night and you are gazing up at the Stars. They seem so close, “you can almost touch them,” I believe someone once wrote. As you stand there, you arrive at the same conclusion regarding the distance to the stars as the ancients, who believed the stars appear to be a close, f‌ixed distance from the earth and attached to a celestial or crystal sphere. You continue to observe the stats for a while, and you norice that they seem to “drift” toward the weSt. Closer observatiOn will disclose that the stars appear to be rotating around a star in the nOrthern sky, a star now termed the “pole star.”

The closeness illusion is caused by the same reference problem that causes the apparently same size and closeness of the sun and moon illusion, but there are other causes. While we can see the sun and moon, we cannOt “see” any of the srars in the conventional sense. Because of the extreme distance to the stars, the human eye and even the man powerful telescope lacks the power to resolve a Star. We can “see” a star because it is a source of light, but what we “see” is an optical phenomenon known as an Airy disc [1], named for its discoverer, British mathematician and astronomer Sir George Biddell Airy (1801—1892). Along with Airy’s Other accomplishments, he played a leading role in establishing Greenwich, England as the prime or zero meridian. Because we only see a star’s Airy disc and because of the earth’s atmosphere, all stars appear to be about the same distance from Earth.

~

EMPIRICAL DEVELOPMENT OF A PROPER EXPLANATION OF THE CLOSE STARS ILLUSION.

Resolving the problem of the “extra bright Stars” and the close stars illusion ultimately revealed that the universe is extremely large and very old. However, as with the resolution process of other illusions, this resolution required contributions from many persons. It began with the measurement of the distance to the nearest stars, which built upon our knowledge of the size of the solar system.

Knowing the Earth—sun distance, we can in principle measure the distance to any star using the triangulation method discussed in the previous chapter and illustrated in figure 8-1.

Star side2 side1 Earth. I‘ . Earth, June '? anglei sun angle2 F ‘. December 186 million miles

Figure 8—]. Measurement ol’distancc to a Star via triangulation We merely measure angles 1 and 2 in a triangle formed by the Earth— sun—Earth line and the star. 'lhe difference between the two angles is known as the parallax of a star".

Retrograde Motion

Another explanation for retrograde motion may be found with common analogy of the apparent retrograde motion is that of turning on a circle. If two cars are travelling at the same constant speed from the same point on concentric circles "next to each other" such that one car is on the "outside" and the other on the "inside", then the car on the inside will complete its circle before the car on the outside, because it has a shorter distance to travel. Thus, it will seem to the driver of the car on the inside, that, although the speed of the cars is the same, the car on the outside is slower. The outside car will appear to "fall behind" the inside car. The same concept is the basis of retrograde motion.

Astronomy Pseudoscience

Astronomy on Trial

https://books.google.com/books?id=i60wznK5ACQC&pg=PA134&dq=%22astronomy%22+%22scientific+method%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiLiq3E0P7jAhXLMd8KHRDMAyQ4FBDoATACegQIABAC#v=onepage&q=%22astronomy%22%20%22scientific%20method%22&f=false

“ On Logic:

All theories and concepts have a shelf-life. Back when the Greeks f‌irst started thinking of these things, the universe was thought to be only a few thousand years old. Now the estimate is between 7 and 20 billion. It seems that as science matures, estimated universe ages get older. Why doesn’t it follow, logically, that we’ll be a lot more sophisticated when we estimate that the universe is inf‌initely old?

Scientists do not readily admit to the use of logic, because the term implies judgment, and true science is not supposed to be judgmental as much as it is experimental and causal. But logic is not the same as “common sense.” Logic: the solving of syllogisms, is indeed mathematical; but scientists realize that the best logic can be faulty if one or more premises of the syllogism are faulty. Be that as it may, logic is not all that foreign to science: logic — even common sense — is applied to observation and test results in spite of best efforts to avoid it, because the rawest data must be put in perspective if it is to be communicated and applied. This, then, is why those 40 scholars, scientists, and other experts felt that they had to defend the scientif‌ic method. and urge a return to reason and logic.

The poor cosmologists have almost no choice but to try to apply logic, judgment, and unavoidably, common sense, to their observations; because they have little else. Almost all their data is questionable, and there are almost no tests that produce concrete results. It is inevitable then, that even though they share the same data, cosmologists suffer many different conclusions. Equally highly trained scientists frequently differ in their interpretation of observation, and the future offers precious little hope that we will ever f‌ind out which, if any, is correct. Logic might have it then, that if scientif‌ic experience is not a determinant for applying logic, or common sense, or reason to what we observe in the sky; you and I might as well try our hand at it. ”

https://books.google.com/books?id=RQNXDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT86&dq=%22scientific%20method%22%20%22without%20experiment%22&pg=PT86#v=onepage&q=%22scientific%20method%22%20%22without%20experiment%22&f=false

Knowledge Unto Relationship

Roger Bacon argued:

"Without experiment, nothing can be adequately known. An argument proves theoretically, but does not give the certitude necessary to remove all doubt; nor will the mind repose in the clear View of truth, unless it f‌inds it by way of experiment."

Likewise, he cautioned that, “[T]he strongest arguments prove nothing, so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience.” Albeit laboratory experimentation is less disconcerting than medical experimentation, the genius of the scientific method was that it provided traction: hypothesis, experimentation, and validation emerged as a means to persistently if not tenaciously advance the state of the art. Early science was tainted with bias and prejudice by comparison. It was the scientific method that helped it tease out valid evidence, affording a more candid assessment of nature’s ways, and thereby f‌irming up its knowledge.

No Sacred Cows: Investigating Myths, Cults, and the Supernatural

https://books.google.com/books?id=RQNXDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT86&dq=%22scientific%20method%22%20%22without%20experiment%22&pg=PT86#v=onepage&q=%22scientific%20method%22%20%22without%20experiment%22&f=false

Hundreds of years later, the traditional importance of experimentation in science lives on and thrives throughout the scientif‌ic community. In fact, physicist Richard P. Feynman echoed this simple yet important detail when he said, “If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”

“In that simple statement is the key to science,” Feynman explained. “It does not make any dif‌ierence how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any dif‌lerence how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is—if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it”67

Cosmology on the wrong track

Cosmological Principle

https://books.google.com/books?id=02HRBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA331&pg=PA331#v=onepage&q&f=false

All cosmological models are constructed by augmenting the results of observations by a philosophical principle. Two examples from modern scientif‌ic cosmology are the principle of mediocrity and the so—called anthropic, or biophilic, principle. The principle of mediocrity, sometimes known as the Copernican principle, states that the portion of the Universe we observe is not special or privileged, but is representative of the whole. Ever since Copernicus demonstrated that the Earth does not lie at the center of the Universe, the principle of mediocrity has been the default assumption; indeed, it is normally referred to as simply “the cosmological principle.”

Gravity Probe A