Here’s a big one:
What were those problems? A big one was the size of stars in the Copernican universe. Copernicus proposed that certain oddities observed in the movements of planets through the constellations were due to the fact that Earth itself was moving. Stars show no such oddities, so Copernicus had to theorise that, rather than being just beyond the planets as astronomers had traditionally supposed, stars were so incredibly distant that Earth’s motion was insignificant by comparison. But seen from Earth, stars appear as dots of certain sizes or magnitudes. The only way stars could be so incredibly distant and have such sizes was if they were all incredibly huge, every last one dwarfing the Sun. Tycho Brahe, the most prominent astronomer of the era and a favourite of the Establishment, thought this was absurd, while Peter Crüger, a leading Polish mathematician, wondered how the Copernican system could ever survive in the face of the star-size problem.
Christopher Graney, “Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious” at Aeon
And more. We know so much more about the universe now that this doesn’t seem like a problem. But in those days, it had to be.
Pop science writing typically misleads us by portraying the conflict as if the rightness of the Copernican universe were self-evident. For sure not at the time.
Everyone, including the vast majority of Christians, believe that it is an established fact that the earth moves around the sun. In fact, people are SO certain that the earth moves around the sun that it is often used as a comparison of certainty for other theories in science. For instance, Venema recently compared his certainty that humans evolved to the certainty that the earth moves around the sun.
Yet, besides the fact that Venema has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his claim that humans evolved,,,
,,, besides that fact, Venema, nor anyone else, has any evidence that the earth moves around the sun. As Stephen Hawking himself, an atheist, explained, “it is not true that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong,,, 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.”
There simply is no real time empirical evidence that can be appealed to to prove that the earth is in motion. As George Ellis stated, “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…”
As Einstein himself noted, there simply is no experimental test that can ever be performed that can prove that the earth is not the center of the universe:
In regards to General Relativity overturning the Copernican Principle, Fred Hoyle stated,
In fact, in the 4-Dimensional space-time of Einstein’s General Relativity, it is left completely open for whomever is making a model of the universe to decide for themselves what is to be considered central in the universe:
Even individual people can be considered central in the universe in the four-dimensional space-time of General Relativity,,,
Moreover, besides the fact that general relativity itself has overturned the Copernican model, there are now found to be anomalies in the CMBR that ‘strangely’ line up with the earth and solar system:
In other words, the “tiny temperature variations” in the CMBR reveal teleology, (i.e. a goal directed purpose, a plan, a reason), that specifically included the earth from the start. ,,, The earth, from what our best science can now tell us, is not some random cosmic fluke as atheists had presupposed.
Moreover, besides general relativity and the CMBR overturning the Copernican principle, quantum mechanics itself also now overturns the Copernican principle. For instance, this recent experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established, “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
Because of such evidence as this in quantum mechanics, Richard Conn Henry, who is Professor of Physics at John Hopkins University, stated this “It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe.”
Moreover, on top of the overturning of the Copernican principle by the CMBR anomalies, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, in the following video physicist Neil Turok states that ““So we can go from 10 to the plus 25 to 10 to the minus 35. Now where are we? Well the size of a living cell is about 10 to the minus 5. Which is halfway between the two. In mathematical terms, we say it is the geometric mean. We live in the middle between the largest scale in physics,,, and the tiniest scale [in physics].”
The following interactive graph, gives very similar ‘rough ballpark’ figures, of 10 ^27 and 10-35, to Dr. Turok’s figures.
Whereas Dr. William Demski, in the following graph, gives a more precise figure of 8.8 x 10^26 M for the observable universe’s diameter, and 1.6 x 10^-35 for the Planck length which is the smallest length possible.
Dr. Dembski’s preceding interactive graph points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as the size of a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center, and/or geometric mean, of all possible sizes of our physical reality. As far as the exponential graph itself is concerned’ 10^-4 is, exponentially, right in the middle of 10^-35 meters, which is the smallest possible unit of length, which is Planck length, and 10^27 meters, which is the largest possible unit of ‘observable’ length since space-time was created in the Big Bang, which is the diameter of the universe. This is very interesting for the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions than directly in the exponential middle and/or the geometric mean.
Thus, far from being an established fact of science, the Copernican principle has been falsified by numerous lines of evidence. Evidence from our best theories in science no less!
Moreover, in regards to establishing ‘true centrality’ in the universe, when we rightly allow the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), by rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics then that provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.
Verse: