Cosmologist Sean Carroll asks, Is anything constant?

bornagain,

you claim “The frame dragging explanation for the pendulum is new to me.” and then claim “I did—the pendulum and geostationary satellites.” you can’t have it both ways

Anyone who does not buy the hypothesis that earthquakes have strong and predestined cosmic effects still believes that the pendulum and satellite evidence easily overturns geocentrism. However, there is literally no empirical evidence that I could present that some crackpot couldn't explain away.

The why do you keep pestering me? That is all I need from 4-D space time for my own argument against the Copernican principle to succeed.

Best of luck with that, sincerely. If you haven't read it, I would suggest Spacetime Physics by Taylor and Wheeler as a reference. The first edition is best.

Since having a rotating earth model, even though the earth can considered central, is so important for you, I suggest you do the proper experiments and show exactly where Einstein and Company were wrong in their interpretation of General Relativity.

I guess I do have to say it every post. MacAndrew is attempting to ascertain whether GR itself actually predicts perfect dragging in our universe. GR is not being put to any test here. daveS

you claim "The frame dragging explanation for the pendulum is new to me." and then claim "I did—the pendulum and geostationary satellites." you can't have it both ways! You then state "I think I should put a disclaimer on ever post to the effect that nothing I’m saying implies that something else must be more central than Earth." Then why do you keep pestering me? That is all I need from 4-D space time for my own argument against the Copernican principle to succeed. Once again, I remind you that you are arguing with Einstein and company not me. Since having a rotating earth model, even though the earth can be considered central in your model, is so important for you, I suggest you do the proper experiments and show exactly where Einstein and Company were wrong in their interpretation of General Relativity of allowing a fixed earth. And then wait for your Nobel! Or better yet, go to another blog where somebody cares to more rigorously defend the stationary earth model. To repeat, it's not my dog, and even if it were my dog, you have not even convinced me, a non-expert, that your case is compelling as far as empirical science is concerned. Seeing as I have a life besides feeding a troll on an issue that I don't even care about, I will let you have the last comment all to yourself. I am out of here. bornagain

bornagain,

But does it not strike you in the least bit odd that you cannot appeal directly to any experimental evidence to refute the geocentric model as you had originally imagined you could easily do?

I did---the pendulum and geostationary satellites. But then the geocentrists could respond by saying that, if we assume earthquakes on Earth are correlated with violent acceleration of distant objects in a complicated way, their theory will survive. As long as you are willing to tolerate the addition of outrageously implausible ad hoc hypotheses, you can probably keep geocentrism "alive" indefinitely.

If a non-geocentric universe is such an obvious and easy point to grasp, surely experimental evidence must be abundant to make the point clear. But alas, you ended up scrapping the bottom of the empirical barrel looking for what appears to be a fairly technical glitch in General Relativity in order to try to support your case with actual empirical evidence.

What do you mean be "fairly technical glitch"? I gather that perfect dragging is by far the exception rather than the rule. I haven't had time to read through the paper yet, but the author does refer to data collected from one of the Pioneer probes which presumably will present Sungenis with a serious challenge. I'll keep you posted.

And since there is no definitive experimental evidence that you can point to to easily refute the geocentric model as was highlighted by Einstein and company, (which, to repeat, is not my dog anyway), then Ellis’s comment comes back full force to haunt you. i.e. You are using philosophical grounds, not empirical grounds, to choose your model.

Is Occam's Razor one of these philosophical grounds? If so, then I plead guilty. It's part of what we (including IDists) call "inference to the best explanation".

As to your race car/earthquake example, and your appeal to ‘absurdity’, i.e. personal incredulity, (and not actual empirical evidence), to try to make your case that the earth must move and something else must be considered more central than earth.

I think I should put a disclaimer on ever post to the effect that nothing I'm saying implies that something else must be more central than Earth. But to address your point, do you think the assumption that earthquakes/racecars here cause distant matter to accelerate (in the past, no less) merits serious consideration? Edit: If so, how would you falsify this empirically?

Once again I ask you, why do you not find it even more absurd that the universe itself did not exist 10^-43 seconds ago until you consciously observed it?

I don't want to start on a whole new topic here, but yeah, I find both assertions about equally absurd.

In fact, in thinking this matter over a little bit last night, I now hold that since Einstein’s theory of General Relativity is ‘built upon’ 4-D space-time, instead of 4-D space-time being derivative from General Relativity, and since 4-D space-time itself dictates the each 3-D point may be considered central in the universe, then I now hold that any experiment trying to give any position in the universe ‘more centrality’ than any other position in the universe will fail since it will go against the foundational precept of 4-D space-time itself.

Great. I don't even know what that means, but please do write it up and publish it. You might want to replace the words in the scare quotes with more precise terms. daveS

daveS in spite of the fact that you agree the geocentric model is much harder to shoot down experimentally than you first imagined it would be, you, none-the-less, state

I do think any reasonable person would agree that the notion of earthquakes here (or a racecar driver turning his steering wheel) causing distant galaxies to violently accelerate is absurd, and I’m sure there are many more implausible implications of a non-rotating Earth (or racecar). Have you met any geocentric astronomers lately? There’s probably a reason for that.

But does it not strike you in the least bit odd that you cannot appeal directly to any experimental evidence to refute the geocentric model as you had originally imagined you could easily do? If a non-geocentric universe is such an obvious and easy point to grasp, surely experimental evidence must be abundant to make the point clear. But alas, you ended up scrapping the bottom of the empirical barrel looking for what appears to be a fairly technical glitch in General Relativity in order to try to support your case with actual empirical evidence. That embarrassing development in your argument should tell you something very important as to the real strength of your argument as far as empirical science itself is concerned! Ego, personal incredulity, and/or consensus does not determine truth in science. Only experimental evidence does! And since there is no definitive experimental evidence that you can point to to easily refute the geocentric model as was highlighted by Einstein and company, (which, to repeat, is not my dog anyway), then Ellis's comment comes back full force to haunt you. i.e. You are using philosophical grounds, not empirical grounds, to choose your model.

“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… 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 – W. Wayt Gibbs, “Profile: George F. R. Ellis,” Scientific American, October 1995, Vol. 273, No.4, p. 55

In fact, in thinking this matter over a little bit last night, I now hold that since Einstein's theory of General Relativity is 'built upon' 4-D space-time, instead of 4-D space-time being derivative from General Relativity, and since 4-D space-time itself dictates the each 3-D point may be considered central in the universe, then I now hold that any experiment trying to give any position in the universe 'more centrality' than any other position in the universe will fail since it will go against the foundational precept of 4-D space-time itself. As to your race car/earthquake example, and your appeal to 'absurdity', i.e. personal incredulity, (and not actual empirical evidence), to try to make your case that the earth must move and something else must be considered more central than earth. Once again I ask you, why do you not find it even more absurd that the universe itself did not exist 10^-43 seconds ago until you consciously observed it? I guess absurdity is in the eye of the beholder, and can be employed at your own personal discretion when trying to support your preferred theory? :) You can have that supposed 'scientific method' if you want, myself, I will appeal to experiment!

Wheeler's Classic Delayed Choice Experiment: Excerpt: Now, for many billions of years the photon is in transit in region 3. Yet we can choose (many billions of years later) which experimental set up to employ – the single wide-focus, or the two narrowly focused instruments. We have chosen whether to know which side of the galaxy the photon passed by (by choosing whether to use the two-telescope set up or not, which are the instruments that would give us the information about which side of the galaxy the photon passed). We have delayed this choice until a time long after the particles "have passed by one side of the galaxy, or the other side of the galaxy, or both sides of the galaxy," so to speak. Yet, it seems paradoxically that our later choice of whether to obtain this information determines which side of the galaxy the light passed, so to speak, billions of years ago. So it seems that time has nothing to do with effects of quantum mechanics. And, indeed, the original thought experiment was not based on any analysis of how particles evolve and behave over time – it was based on the mathematics. This is what the mathematics predicted for a result, and this is exactly the result obtained in the laboratory. http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/basic_delayed_choice.htm "That's the enigma. That our choice of what experiment to do determines the prior state of the electron. Somehow or other we had an influence on it which appears to travel backwards in time." Fred Kuttner - Univ. Of California "It begins to look as we ourselves, by our last minute decision, have an influence on what a photon will do when it has already accomplished most of its doing... we have to say that we ourselves have an undeniable part in what we have always called the past. The past is not really the past until is has been registered. Or to put it another way, the past has no meaning or existence unless it exists as a record in the present." - John Wheeler - The Ghost In The Atom - Page 66-68 "What we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure, which is a very, very deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers." – Anton Zeilinger, Quantum Physicist Reality doesn’t exist until we measure it, (Delayed Choice) quantum experiment confirms - Mind = blown. - FIONA MACDONALD - 1 JUN 2015 Excerpt: "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," lead researcher and physicist Andrew Truscott said in a press release. http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It - June 3, 2015 Excerpt: The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html "As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." Max Planck - The main originator of Quantum Theory - Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], speech at Florence, Italy (1944) (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797) Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables - Scott Aaronson - MIT associate Professor Excerpt: "Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!" http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec11.html

bornagain

bornagain,

well daveS, so it all boils down to a fairly technical experiment that may or may not fail?

The author isn't running any experiments, but he does consider empirical data which has already been collected. It could "fail", if by that you mean that he arrives at the wrong answer.

Not quite so easy to shoot down the Ptolemaic theory as you had originally thought huh? :)

In some ways, no. The frame dragging explanation for the pendulum is new to me. On the other hand, how do you shoot down the Earnhardt-centric theory? I do think any reasonable person would agree that the notion of earthquakes here (or a racecar driver turning his steering wheel) causing distant galaxies to violently accelerate is absurd, and I'm sure there are many more implausible implications of a non-rotating Earth (or racecar). Have you met any geocentric astronomers lately? There's probably a reason for that. daveS

well daveS, so it all boils down to a fairly technical experiment that may or may not fail? Not quite so easy to shoot down the Ptolemaic theory as you had originally thought huh? :) LOL,

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. - Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio Imagine Heaven - Evidence for the Afterlife (with interview of Dr. Mary Neal towards the end of the video) https://vimeo.com/140585737

bornagain

I don't think this would violate the equivalence principle. Perfect dragging has been shown to exist only in a few models, so it's definitely not a priori obvious that it fully explains the pendulum's precession. daveS

Then there would be a physical difference and it would challenge GR's cornerstone equivalence principle? If so, I hold that the test to show the earth's rotation, if it is ever performed, will fail. And again, even if it does not fail, it still does not effect my argument, since my argument relies on 4-D space time itself within general relativity. i.e. every 3-D point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe. i.e. I don't have a dog in the fight as far as earth's rotation is concerned! Only 'centrality' not fixity. bornagain

sorry daveS, as this is not my fight, I’m not familiar with the Lense-Thirring question. You have to go to another blog for that fight.

The Lense-Thirring effect is aka frame dragging. The author is investigating whether all of the precession of a Foucault pendulum is explained by this effect. If not, then the pendulum would still be evidence of the Earth's rotation. Which is relevant to your quote above from MTW. daveS

sorry daveS, as this is not my fight, I'm not familiar with the Lense-Thirring question. You have to go to another blog for that fight. All I know is that if you hold that there is a physical difference within GR between two different CS, then you are, as far as I can gather, challenging GR.

“If one rotates the shell *relative to the fixed stars* about an axis going through its center, a Coriolis force arises in the interior of the shell, *that is, the plane of a Foucault pendulum is dragged around*” –Albert Einstein, cited in “Gravitation”, Misner Thorne and Wheeler pp. 544-545. “One need not view the existence of such centrifugal forces as originating from the motion of K’ [the Earth]; one could just as well account for them as resulting from the average rotational effect of distant, detectable masses as evidenced in the vicinity of K’ [the Earth], whereby K’ [the Earth] is treated as being at rest.” –Albert Einstein, quoted in Hans Thirring, “On the Effect of Distant Rotating Masses in Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation”, Physikalische Zeitschrift 22, 29, 1921 “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.” Sir Fred Hoyle, Astronomy and Cosmology – A Modern Course, (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co.), p. 416,1975. Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.” Hoyle - discoverer of stellar nucleosynthesis

If you are saying there really is no physical difference between two different CS, and are not challenging GR, then I really have no clue what you keep going on about with the non-rotating earth model in GR, and why you keep pestering me about something that does not even effect my main argument overturning the Copernican Principle in the first place.

It is a straightforward argument really. 1. Show that General Relativity does not contradict an earth centered model 2. Show that the latest Planck data supports a earth/solar system centered model 3. Show that Quantum Mechanics gives conscious observation a ‘central’ position in the universe Easy as 1, 2, 3 & a, b, c https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/jason-rosenhouse-gets-it-half-right-on-galileo/#comment-588880 https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/jason-rosenhouse-gets-it-half-right-on-galileo/#comment-588642

bornagain

Bizarre. How am I challenging GR? The answer to the Lense-Thirring question I referred to could be either "yes" or "no", with either one being consistent with GR, depending on conditions. It's probably not possible to get a definitive answer because we lack the required information. daveS

then good luck on your (or his) Nobel and don't claim you are not challenging GR! bornagain

bornagain,

Okie Dokie, then you have no problem with these following comments and you will not challenge them anymore?

Why would I sign away my right to challenge anything in the future, whoever the author? No. I'm interested in the issue of whether the Lense-Thirring effect actually can account for the observed precession of the pendulum and the behavior of geostationary satellites. I found an accessible article by a physics PhD which addresses just that question here. The phenomenon in question is called "perfect dragging", and he discusses whether this could actually occur in our universe. daveS

Mapou: This spacetime nonsense gets tiring after a while. I'm curious how you deal with the empirically verified fact that clocks farther away from the earth's gravity run faster than those close to the earth, which is predicted by General Relativity. (Due to acceleration and gravitation having equivalent effects upon mass and its local timeframe.) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-dilation/ So far, every empirically verified test confirms GR's predictions. Currently, a device is being developed that will be launched into space to look for gravity waves coming from binary pulsars. If gravity waves are detected, how will you fold this into your current views? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Laser_Interferometer_Space_Antenna mike1962

I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… Right. In spacetime everywhere is center and nowhere is center. A good two-dimensional analogy is equally spaced dots on the surface of a balloon. (Adding air to the balloon further illustrates the spacetime expansion where, in general, everything is receding away from everything else.) mike1962

"You are the only one here who imagines anyone is trying to refute GR." Okie Dokie, then you have no problem with these following comments and you will not challenge them anymore?

To reiterate Einstein weighs in here “Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not only those moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? […] 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, A. and Infeld, L. (1938) The Evolution of Physics, p.212 (p.248 in original 1938 ed.); Fred Hoyle, discoverer of stellar nucleosynthesis, weighs in here: “The relation of the two pictures [geocentrism and geokineticism] 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…. Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.” Hoyle, Fred. Nicolaus Copernicus. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1973. George Ellis, who, along with Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking, helped extend General Relativity to show that not only energy and matter had a definite beginning in the Big Bang but that space and time also had a definite beginning in the Big Bang, weighs in here: “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… 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 – W. Wayt Gibbs, “Profile: George F. R. Ellis,” Scientific American, October 1995, Vol. 273, No.4, p. 55 In addition, Max Born wrote: “…Thus we may return to Ptolemy’s point of view of a ‘motionless earth’… One has to show that the transformed metric can be regarded as produced according to Einstein’s field equations, by distant rotating masses. This has been done by Thirring. He calculated a field due to a rotating, hollow, thick-walled sphere and proved that inside the cavity it behaved as though there were centrifugal and other inertial forces usually attributed to absolute space. Thus from Einstein’s point of view, Ptolemy and Copernicus are equally right.” Born, Max. “Einstein’s Theory of Relativity”,Dover Publications,1962, pgs 344 & 345:

If you do have a problem, do the research, publish, and get your Nobel. And/or go to another blog to argue with someone with a dog in the fight. Myself, the position, while interesting, is not crucial for my argument. It is a straightforward argument really.

1. Show that General Relativity does not contradict an earth centered model 2. Show that the latest Planck data supports a earth/solar system centered model 3. Show that Quantum Mechanics gives conscious observation a ‘central’ position in the universe Easy as 1, 2, 3 & a, b, c https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/jason-rosenhouse-gets-it-half-right-on-galileo/#comment-588880

bornagain

Since you have no real argument with General Relativity, then why do you keep pestering me as if you could refute GR?

You are the only one here who imagines anyone is trying to refute GR. Unless you have any more evidence for a non-rotating Earth, I'll leave it there. daveS

daveS, "I don’t have any way of refuting the proposition that the Earth truly is non-rotating, using only GR. It might not be possible to do so". Since you have no real argument with General Relativity, then why do you keep pestering me as if you could refute GR? I'm certainly not going to toss Einstein and company to the side based on your personal incredulity. As far as Dale Earnhardt, Jr being the 'center of the universe', quantum mechanics, not GR, is what establishes that each and every conscious observer is the 'center of the universe'.

Due to advances in Quantum Mechanics, the argument for God from consciousness can now be framed like this: 1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality. 2. If consciousness is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality. 3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even a central, position within material reality. 4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality. (Wigner’s Quantum Symmetries; Wheeler’s Delayed Choice; Leggett’s Inequalities; Quantum Zeno Effect) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uLcJUgLm1vwFyjwcbwuYP0bK6k8mXy-of990HudzduI/edit

bornagain

bornagain,

daveS, once again, your argument is General Relativity, not with me.

No disagreement with GR here. In fact, without even an order-of-magnitude estimate of the strength of the Lense-Thirring effect, I don't have any way of refuting the proposition that the Earth truly is non-rotating, using only GR. It might not be possible to do so. If so, I don't believe you can refute, using only GR, my hypothesis that Dale Earnhardt, Jr can control the motion of distant galaxies. Edit: That blog is great. A comment by the author:

The difficulty is that there is empirical evidence that shows that the earth is at the center of the universe. In particular the fact that the measured velocity of the galaxies all show them moving radially away from the earth. that clearly puts the earth at the center of the universe.

daveS

daveS, once again, your argument is General Relativity, not with me. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/physics/cosmologist-sean-carroll-asks-is-anything-constant/#comment-590271 As far as I'm concerned, my argument succeeds regardless of what position I take on a geocentric universe or on a Dale Earnhardt, Jr centric universe, in regards to General Relativity, because, aside from needing the 4-D space-time of GR, I rely on the CMBR data and Quantum Mechanics to do the majority of my heavy lifting of overturning the Copernican principle. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/physics/cosmologist-sean-carroll-asks-is-anything-constant/#comment-590427 I simply have no real dog in the fight as you seem to think I do, regardless of the fact that I have told you over and over that you are disagreeing with Einstein and company not with me. Since it is so important to you, I suggest you write up a paper with the proper math and empirical support, showing where you have overturned General Relativity and submit it to the proper journal and await the fame and fortune to come your way. Barring that, I suggest you go to a blog where a fixed earth position is near and dear to them. As you yourself said, "The Principle" has sure generated a lot of controversy, and I am sure you can find a fight somewhere on the internet since it is so important to you. Like perhaps this blog

The Principle, in the manner of a science documentary film, addresses a current problem in the science of cosmology, popularly known as the “Axis Of Evil”, but it is really an exploration and critical “cross-examination” of the intellectual integrity of modern science. That is what makes this film extraordinary and exceptional. It cross-examines the testimony of cosmologists who claim to be telling the truth about the science of the universe. When compared with the recently produced cosmological documentary series Cosmos, that appeared in 2014 on US televisions FOX Network The Principle is superior in every aspect.,,, http://www.naturalphilosophy.org/site/harryricker/2015/06/08/the-principle-challenging-the-intellectual-integrity-of-cosmology/

bornagain

Although, I do not find it as implausible as you insinuated I did, and certainly don’t think your earthquake example (which I note you have now switched to in place of the other experiments) will ever come close to overturning GR, I simply find quantum mechanics and the CMBR data to be far more devastating to the Copernican Principle than GR by itself is.

Hopefully you don't find it too plausible. You could apply exactly the same argument to show that when Dale Earnhardt, Jr heads into a turn, galaxies and quasars billions of light years away accelerate (billions of years ago, naturally). daveS

daveS, once again you are arguing with general relativity and not with me. Although, I do not find it as implausible as you insinuated I did, and certainly don't think your earthquake example (which I note you have now switched to in place of the other experiments) will ever come close to overturning GR, I simply find quantum mechanics and the CMBR data to be far more devastating to the Copernican Principle than GR by itself is. Perhaps you should go to another blog where people are more committed to the fixed earth position and have more experience defending it than I do. Again, all I require is centrality from GR, not a fixed earth, in order for my argument to work overturning the Copernican Principle. Which is something you agree is a given in GR. The fixed earth position simply is not central to my argument as I have repeatedly pointed out to you and is not nearly as important for me personally to defend as overturning seems to be for you. I have no real dog in the fight. Now if you try to say that 4-D space-time does not give centrality to every 3-D point in the universe, then I will have a dog in the fight.

In what I consider an absolutely fascinating discovery, Einstein’s General Relativity has shown that 4-dimensional (4D) space-time, along with all energy and matter, was created in the ‘Big Bang’ and, via the finely tuned 1 in 10^120 cosmological constant. continues to ‘expand equally in all places’: "There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a "Big Bang" about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. The Big Bang should not be visualized as an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a centre into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and it is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell." Philip Gibbs http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/centre.html Thus from a 3-dimensional (3D) perspective, any particular 3D spot in the universe is to be considered just as ‘center of the universe’ as any other particular spot in the universe is to be considered ‘center of the universe’. This centrality found for any 3D place in the universe is because the universe is a 4D expanding hypersphere, analogous in 3D to the surface of an expanding balloon. All points on the surface are moving away from each other, and every point is central, no matter where you live in the universe.

bornagain

bornagain,

Seeing as you have not even come close to refuting general relativity that I can see, then I am free to hold the fixed earth position of General Relativity if I so choose.

Yes, just like I'm free to hold that I am the King of Tonga. It looks like we agree that both statements are massively implausible, however. daveS

daveS, again to refute Einstein and company's contention that,,,

“the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” could be used with equal justification

,,you need to refute General Relativity itself, not me. Seeing as you have not even come close to refuting general relativity that I can see, then I am free to hold the fixed earth position of General Relativity if I so choose. But again, as pointed out the other thread, where I also repeatedly pointed out to you that you were arguing with General Relativity and not with me, the fixed earth position is not central to my argument. The 'centrality' position from General Relativity is the only concession I require from GR for my argument. The actual empirical work of overturning the Copernican principle in my argument relies on the CMBR data and on quantum mechanics, not on General Relativity.

I find all of your flip flopping on Einstein to be rather humorous since I have many more lines of evidence from Quantum Mechanics and the CBMR data that do the actual empirical work of overturning the Copernican Principle. Which was the ONLY point I was trying to make anyway of my original post. (i.e. post 10 and 11 that you originally took exception to!) The only thing I ever really required from General Relativity to make the argument airtight was the concession from Einstein for a earth centered model. A concession that you conceded, when pressed, is correct. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/jason-rosenhouse-gets-it-half-right-on-galileo/#comment-588981 posts 10 and 11 https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/jason-rosenhouse-gets-it-half-right-on-galileo/#comment-588642 the earth being allowed to be central in the universe according to Einstein, is pretty much the only thing I was trying to establish in my original post before I laid out some of the other evidence, from CMBR and QM, that completely overturns the Copernican principle. It is a straightforward argument really. 1. Show that General Relativity does not contradict an earth centered model 2. Show that the latest Planck data supports a earth/solar system centered model 3. Show that Quantum Mechanics gives conscious observation a ‘central’ position in the universe Easy as 1, 2, 3 & a, b, c https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/jason-rosenhouse-gets-it-half-right-on-galileo/#comment-588880

bornagain

bornagain:

I’ve said all along that your argument is with GR not me!

Then, since all I need in my argument is centrality from GR, and not fixity, and since you readily concede this ‘centrality’ point, we have nothing further to discuss.

Hogwash:

Since gravity is useless for determining true centrality in the universe, then I am free to say that the Earth (or any other point in the universe I may choose to pick) stays still and everything in the universe revolves around it.

(Edit: Added quote) daveS

BA, yes it is. I watched the whole video, watched the "trailer" for the documentary, and did a bit of googling about it. The guy makes a good case that the scientists quoted were fairly warned about what they were getting into. He implies that the trailer exaggerates the position being taken. However, getting an accurate picture of what is being claimed is impossible without buying the documentary. One thing is clear, the scientists involved seem very disappointed -- they feel misrepresented, but aren't interested in properly correcting the record. Frustrating. bFast

bFast, Is this video what you are talking about? At the 13:55 minute mark of the following video, Max Tegmark, an atheist, finally admits, post Planck 2013, that the CMBR data does indeed line up with the earth and solar system

“Thoughtcrime: The Conspiracy to Stop The Principle” – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0eVUSDy_rO0#t=832 What Is Evil About The Axis Of Evil? – February 17, 2015 The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation contains small temperature fluctuations. When these temperature fluctuations are analyzed using image processing techniques (specifically spherical harmonics), they indicate a special direction in space, or, in a sense, an axis through the universe. This axis is correlated back to us, and causes many difficulties for the current big bang and standard cosmology theories. What has been discovered is shocking. Two scientists, Kate Land and João Magueijo, in a paper in 2005 describing the axis, dubbed it the “Axis of Evil” because of the damage it does to current theories, and (tongue in cheek) as a response to George Bush’ Axis of Evil speech regarding Iraq, Iran and, North Korea. (Youtube clip on site) In the above video, Max Tegmark describes in a simplified way how spherical harmonics analysis decomposes the small temperature fluctuations into more averaged and spatially arranged temperature components, known as multipoles. The “Axis of Evil” correlates to the earth’s ecliptic and equinoxes, and this represents a very unusual and unexpected special direction in space, a direct challenge to the Copernican Principle. http://www.theprinciplemovie.com/evil-axis-evil/

bornagain

I was taught that according to big bang theory, no matter where you locate yourself, you are at the center of the universe. To say that the Copernican principle is wrong, that there is a true center to the universe would require some clear evidence. A video link that BA provided recently, the one promoting a documentary movie, suggested that such evidence exists. I haven't gone and bought the film, but the protests by the scientists involved seems puzzling to me. If their perspective is that the evidence shows that we are at the center of the universe, why would they say so for the documentary film, but not for the rest of the world? As far as the footage with the cool zoom out from earth, the reason we are seen as being at the focal point is that this is our perspective. The universe spins around the earth? Well, all things are "relative", perspective is an interesting editor. However, the model that has the earth spinning is much more comfortable to work with. As a perspective it is much more functional. Further to the perspective that the earth goes around the sun, and not the other way 'round, and that the milky way spins round a central axis with the solar system near the outside of it. bFast

*pounds head on desk* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3qsu4QzRUU I've said all along that your argument is with GR not me! as to: "Yet again, I haven’t said that it is impossible to consider the Earth to be central in the universe. That part is not an issue in my view." Then, since all I need in my argument is centrality from GR, and not fixity, and since you readily concede this 'centrality' point, we have nothing further to discuss. bornagain

bornagain,

my main point is not to defend the absolute fixity of Earth in the universe or to defend that it cannot possibly rotate.

Wait, what??? *pounds head on desk* daveS

As well, in further defense of the notion that man is made in 'the image of God', it is found that both life and the universe are 'information theoretic' in their foundational basis:

John Lennox at Rice University: Christianity Gave Us Science - Sept. 28, 2015 53:00 minute mark - mass-energy is derivative from information (i.e. It from bit) and life is based on information. https://youtu.be/PSq4KLjMSlI?t=3182

And that we, of all creatures on earth, possess a unique ability to understand and create information:

Evolution of the Genus Homo – Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences – Ian Tattersall, Jeffrey H. Schwartz, May 2009 Excerpt: “Unusual though Homo sapiens may be morphologically, it is undoubtedly our remarkable cognitive qualities that most strikingly demarcate us from all other extant species. They are certainly what give us our strong subjective sense of being qualitatively different. And they are all ultimately traceable to our symbolic capacity. Human beings alone, it seems, mentally dissect the world into a multitude of discrete symbols, and combine and recombine those symbols in their minds to produce hypotheses of alternative possibilities. When exactly Homo sapiens acquired this unusual ability is the subject of debate.” http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100202

It is hard to imagine a more convincing proof that we are made 'in the image of God', than finding that both the universe and life itself are 'information theoretic' in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create information. Now daveS, this is a fairly impressive list of evidence that directly contradicts the atheistic contention that the earth and humans are completely unintended, purposeless, accidents, and gives very strong evidence that humans do indeed have some type of purpose for being here. Seeing as atheists cannot even demonstrate the origin of a single gene and/or protein by unguided material processes, then there really is no debate to be had from atheists on the matter anymore. So, seeing the poverty of evidence for atheism on the other side of the ledger, why do you believe and defend atheism daveS? Why miss the beauty of the theistic forest for some supposed minor flaws in some of the trees? I suspect some personal issue. IMHO, you are being very unfair, even dishonest, in your handling of the evidence. bornagain

daveS, miss many forests for the trees? Although Einstein and company say that geocentricity is a live option in General Relativity, and I don't see where you have refuted that live option in General Relativity, (again it would be a Nobel prize worthy accomplishment if you did rigorously refute Einstein's General Relativity in peer review), my main point is not to defend the absolute fixity of Earth in the universe or to defend that it cannot possibly rotate. After all I do hold that God alone is unchangeable. That is not my point at all. My main point is to overturn the atheistic belief that man and the earth are completely pointless, purposeless, accidents in the universe, and to more firmly establish that man and the earth are not nearly as insignificant as atheists have been saying all along for decades. (i.e. Sagan, Dawkins, etc.. etc..) In regards to man's complete insignificance and purposelessness, the scientific evidence clearly indicates that atheists are wrong in that belief. For instance, as pointed out previously, we can actually see the centrality of the earth in the universe (post 31). Moreover, also as pointed out previously, the CMBR data, very unexpectedly, and with no possible naturalistic explanation, lines up with the solar system and the earth. (post 4, Dragan Huterer). As well, the light coming from the CMBR is fine tuned for intelligent life like human life to discover it (post 5, Robin Collins). As well, the 'chemistry of the universe' is found to be of maximum benefit for life like human life.

Privileged Species - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoI2ms5UHWg The Place of Life and Man in Nature: Defending the Anthropocentric Thesis - Michael J. Denton - February 25, 2013 Summary (page 11) Many of the properties of the key members of Henderson’s vital ensemble —water, oxygen, CO2, HCO3 —are in several instances fit specifically for warm-blooded, air-breathing organisms such as ourselves. These include the thermal properties of water, its low viscosity, the gaseous nature of oxygen and CO2 at ambient temperatures, the inertness of oxygen at ambient temperatures, and the bicarbonate buffer, with its anomalous pKa value and the elegant means of acid-base regulation it provides for air-breathing organisms. Some of their properties are irrelevant to other classes of organisms or even maladaptive. It is very hard to believe there could be a similar suite of fitness for advanced carbon-based life forms. If carbon-based life is all there is, as seems likely, then the design of any active complex terrestrial being would have to closely resemble our own. Indeed the suite of properties of water, oxygen, and CO2 together impose such severe constraints on the design and functioning of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems that their design, even down to the details of capillary and alveolar structure can be inferred from first principles. For complex beings of high metabolic rate, the designs actualized in complex Terran forms are all that can be. There are no alternative physiological designs in the domain of carbon-based life that can achieve the high metabolic activity manifest in man and other higher organisms. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.1/BIO-C.2013.1

Moreover, there are many independent characteristics required to be fulfilled for any planet to host advanced carbon-based life (or to host any life for that matter).

Linked from Appendix C from Dr. Ross's book, 'Why the Universe Is the Way It Is'; Probability Estimates for the Features Required by Various Life Forms: Excerpt: Requirements to sustain bacteria for 90 days or less: Probability for occurrence of all 501 parameters approx. 10-614 dependency factors estimate approx. 10^-303 longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^22 Probability for occurrence of all 501 parameters approx. 10^-333 Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22 Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^311 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracles. Requirements to sustain unicellar life for three billion year: Probability for occurrence of all 676 parameters approx. 10^-859 dependency factors estimate approx. 10^-303 longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^22 Probability for occurrence of all 676 parameters approx. 10^-578 Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22 Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^556 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracle Requirements to sustain intelligent physical life: Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters approx. 10^-1333 dependency factors estimate approx. 10^-324 longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^45 Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters approx. 10^-1054 Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22 Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^1032 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracle http://www.reasons.org/files/compendium/compendium_part3.pdf Hugh Ross - Evidence For Intelligent Design Is Everywhere (10^-1054) – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4347236

As well, two popular books have been written, 'The Privileged Planet' by Guillermo Gonzalez and 'Rare Earth' by Donald Brownlee, indicating the earth is extremely unique in its ability to host advanced life in this universe. Privileged Planet, which holds that any life supporting planet in the universe will also be 'privileged' for observation of the universe, has now been made into a excellent video.

The Privileged Planet – video playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ohuG3Vj_48&list=PLbzQ4aXdqWD-9kjFsSm-cxNlzgrkJuko7 The very conditions that make Earth hospitable to intelligent life also make it well suited to viewing and analyzing the universe as a whole. - Jay Richards

Then there is the 'anthropic inequality' which undermines the atheistic contention that we are purposeless accidents

Why The Universe Is The Way It Is - Hugh Ross - Part 1 - video (23:00 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422327029&x-yt-cl=84838260&v=IGbq0fN_9Y0&feature=player_detailpage#t=1393 Anthropic Principle: A Precise Plan for Humanity By Hugh Ross Excerpt: Brandon Carter, the British mathematician who coined the term “anthropic principle” (1974), noted the strange inequity of a universe that spends about 15 billion years “preparing” for the existence of a creature that has the potential to survive no more than 10 million years (optimistically).,, Carter and (later) astrophysicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler demonstrated that the inequality exists for virtually any conceivable intelligent species under any conceivable life-support conditions. Roughly 15 billion years represents a minimum preparation time for advanced life: 11 billion toward formation of a stable planetary system, one with the right chemical and physical conditions for primitive life, and four billion more years toward preparation of a planet within that system, one richly layered with the biodeposits necessary for civilized intelligent life. Even this long time and convergence of “just right” conditions reflect miraculous efficiency. Moreover the physical and biological conditions necessary to support an intelligent civilized species do not last indefinitely. They are subject to continuous change: the Sun continues to brighten, Earth’s rotation period lengthens, Earth’s plate tectonic activity declines, and Earth’s atmospheric composition varies. In just 10 million years or less, Earth will lose its ability to sustain human life. In fact, this estimate of the human habitability time window may be grossly optimistic. In all likelihood, a nearby supernova eruption, a climatic perturbation, a social or environmental upheaval, or the genetic accumulation of negative mutations will doom the species to extinction sometime sooner than twenty thousand years from now. http://christiangodblog.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html Lucky Us: Turning the Copernican Principle on Its Head - Daniel Bakken - January 26, 2015 Excerpt: What if intelligence and technology hadn't arisen in Earth's habitability time window? Waltham in Lucky Planet asks "So, how do we explain the remarkable coincidence that the timescale for the emergence of intelligence is almost the same as the timescale for habitability?" Researchers Carter and Watson have dubbed this idea the anthropic inequality and it seems surprising, if it is not for some purpose.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/01/lucky_us_turnin093011.html

As well, the following site is also very interesting;

The Scale of The Universe - Part 2 - interactive graph http://htwins.net/scale2/scale2.swf?bordercolor=white

The preceding interactive graph and video points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which 'just so happens' to be directly in the exponential center 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, as far as I can tell, 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; bornagain

bornagain,

What is interesting in you contradicting what Einstein and company have said about General Relativity and geocentricity, and you saying that it is impossible for the earth to be considered central in the universe, is the fact that we can actually ‘roughly’ see the centrality of the earth in the universe.

Yet again, I haven't said that it is impossible to consider the Earth to be central in the universe. That part is not an issue in my view. When you start talking about distant objects orbiting the Earth once per day, then some rather implausible things start happening. Referring again to the earthquake of 2011, notice that every object in the universe began revolving more quickly around the Earth in a coordinated fashion so as to appear "simultaneous" to us. All the way from the Moon to distant galaxies and quasars. But that means they must have actually "sped up" their rates of revolution ranging from just over a second before the earthquake (the Moon) to billions of years before (distant galaxies). At some point you have to consider whether Occam's Razor applies, and whether the better explanation is that the Earth simply rotates. I do have to admit that these geocentrists are not stupid. They do claim to have answers to the questions I asked in post #16. But it's not clear to me that the Lense-Thirring effect is strong enough to solve their problem. I remember reading ~10 years ago about experiments relating to this, but apparently it's not clear that it has even been detected yet. In fact, one of the quotes you posted refers to the small magnitude of this effect. Well, the sentence right after your quote, which was left out for some reason. daveS

daveS, What is interesting in you contradicting what Einstein and company have said about General Relativity and geocentricity, and you saying that it is impossible for the earth to be considered central in the universe, is the fact that we can actually 'roughly' see the centrality of the earth in the universe.

The Known Universe by AMNH – video – (please note the ‘centrality’ of the Earth in the universe at the 3:36 minute mark in the video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U

Here is a still shot of the image at the 3:36 minute mark of the preceding video

Picture of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) http://new-universe.org/zenphoto/albums/Chapter4/Illustrations/Abrams47.jpg

The mapping of the CMBR by the Planck Satellite is also very good for getting this centrality in the universe point across.

Planck Cruise to L2 (mapping CMBR) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piYn0nbbJcs

Thus since we can actually see the centrality of the earth in the universe, it clearly must not be impossible for the earth to be considered central to the universe. In fact, due to the 4-Dimensional space-time of general relativity, it is possible to consider every 3-Dimensional spot central to the universe.

“There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a “Big Bang” about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. The Big Bang should not be visualized as an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a centre into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and it is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell.” Philip Gibbs

Now, if you would have asked me if it were possible for every place to be considered central in the universe before I knew about 'flatland' and 'higher dimensionality, I would have said that it is impossible for every place in the universe to be considered central to the universe. In regards to trying to understand this seemingly impossible counterintuitive finding of every place being able to be considered central in the universe, it is helpful to note that ‘higher dimensional’ mathematics was developed by Reimann, (who was a devout Christian), and that that development in higher dimensional mathematics was necessary before Einstein could elucidate the 4-D spacetime of General Relativity. (As well, higher dimensional mathematics also had to be developed before Quantum Mechanics could be elucidated);

The Mathematics Of Higher Dimensionality - Gauss & Riemann - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/6199520/t The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960 Excerpt: We now have, in physics, two theories of great power and interest: the theory of quantum phenomena and the theory of relativity.,,, The two theories operate with different mathematical concepts: the four dimensional Riemann space and the infinite dimensional Hilbert space, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html

It is also interesting to note that higher dimensions, such as these higher dimensions from which our universe is sustained in its continuous existence (Quantum Mechanics), and from which it expands equally everywhere (General Relativity), would be invisible to our 3-Dimensional sight. “Flatland” is an excellent for getting this invisible higher dimension point across.

Dr Quantum Flatland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6206QWGh3s

Verse:

2 Corinthians 4:18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

I find it extremely interesting, and strange, that infinite dimensional quantum mechanics tells us that instantaneous quantum wave collapse to its 'uncertain' 3D state is centered on each individual conscious observer in the universe, whereas the 4-Dimensional space-time of General Relativity tells us that each 3D point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe. Yet, these findings of modern science are pretty much exactly what we would expect to see if this universe were indeed created, and sustained, from a higher dimension by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal Being who knows everything that is happening everywhere in the universe at the same time. These findings certainly seem to go to the very heart of the age old question asked of many parents by their children, “How can God hear everybody’s prayers at the same time?”,,, i.e. Why should the expansion of the universe, or the quantum wave collapse of the entire universe, even care that you or I, or anyone else, should exist? Only Theism, Christian Theism in particular, offers a rational explanation as to why you or I, or anyone else, should have such undeserved significance in such a vast universe.

Psalm 33:13-15 The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works.

Moreover, from a slightly different angle, ‘Life’, with a capital L, is also found to be central to the universe in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides a very credible, empirically backed, reconciliation to the most profound enigma in modern science. Namely the unification of General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics/Special Relativity (Quantum Electrodynamics) into a ‘Theory of Everything’:

The Center Of The Universe Is Life (Jesus Christ) – General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Entropy and The Shroud Of Turin – video http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=9FCEMJNU

Verse:

Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

bornagain

borngain, I really don't care what you believe. As I wrote in my comment, I'm just saying. Mapou

And by "suddenly", I actually mean 2.5 million years ago, when the light we're seeing now left Andromeda. Incredible! daveS

Wow, this stuff is insane. I didn't realize how much discussion that "The Principle" movie had generated on the internet. And Foucault pendulums, geostationary satellites, Lense-Thirring, it's all been discussed before. Here's one interesting tidbit, assuming a stationary Earth with the universe orbiting it: The Tohoku earthquake in 2011 shortened Earth's day by about 1.8 microseconds. Because of that, the Andromeda galaxy, which normally traverses approximately 11 million light years in its daily orbit around the Earth's axis, suddenly increased its rate of revolution, covering some 21 extra light years per day. Amazing! Edit: Corrected some math daveS

Mapou, first off, as you well know, I hold you to be fairly eccentric in your beliefs. Moreover, contrary to your fairly eccentric beliefs, Einstein's special and general theories of relativity have held up to repeated attempts to falsify them. In fact, they are now both verified to stunning degrees of accuracy.

"When this paper was published (referring to the circa 1970 Hawking, Penrose paper) we could only prove General Relativity's reliability to 1% precision, today we can prove it to 15 places of decimal." Hugh Ross PhD. Astrophysics - quote taken from 8:40 mark of the following link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF1xSErF_f4 Dark energy alternatives to Einstein are running out of room – January 9, 2013 Excerpt: Last month, a group of European astronomers, using a massive radio telescope in Germany, made the most accurate measurement of the proton-to-electron mass ratio ever accomplished and found that there has been no change in the ratio to one part in 10 million at a time when the universe was about half its current age, around 7 billion years ago. When Thompson put this new measurement into his calculations, he found that it excluded almost all of the dark energy models using the commonly expected values or parameters. If the parameter space or range of values is equated to a football field, then almost the whole field is out of bounds except for a single 2-inch by 2-inch patch at one corner of the field. In fact, most of the allowed values are not even on the field. “In effect, the dark energy theories have been playing on the wrong field,” Thompson said. “The 2-inch square does contain the area that corresponds to no change in the fundamental constants, (a ‘true cosmological constant’), and that is exactly where Einstein stands.” http://phys.org/news/2013-01-dark-energy-alternatives-einstein-room.html Most precise test of Lorentz symmetry for the photon finds that the speed of light is indeed constant - by Lisa Zyga - September 15, 2015 Excerpt: "Lorentz symmetry",,, is a cornerstone of Einstein's special relativity theory. According to special relativity, there is no absolute space or absolute time.,,, The cavity test here involves two cavities containing sapphire crystals. The researchers excited an electromagnetic resonance in the crystals at a specific frequency, and supercooled them with liquid helium to stabilize the frequency and improve sensitivity. Like the mirrors of the interferometer, the cavities are carefully aligned orthogonal (at right angles) to each other to detect any tiny change in the speed of light along different axes. In the case of the cavities, a change in the speed of light would induce a change in the resonance frequency of the crystals. But after analysis of a full year of data, no such change was found. "This is the first direct test of polarization-independent effects for Lorentz invariance violations of the photon that has reached the level of the Planck-suppressed electroweak unification scale," Parker told Phys.org. "The energy scale of electroweak unification (about 100 GeV) suppressed by the Planck scale (about 1.2 x 10^19 GeV) gives the dimensionless ratio of about 8 x 10^-18, so perhaps naively one might expect to start seeing Lorentz symmetry of the photon being broken in this regime, yet we didn't see any evidence for this.",,, These improved bounds could prove very useful for experimentally testing (falsifying) theories that (try to) unify general relativity and the standard model while predicting Lorentz symmetry violations. Some of these theories, for example, include string theory-based models and quantum gravity theories, among others.,,, http://phys.org/news/2015-09-precise-lorentz-symmetry-photon-constant.html Confirming Einstein, scientists find 'spacetime foam' not slowing down photons from faraway gamma-ray burst (Update) - Mar 16, 2015 Excerpt: Albert Einstein formulated the general theory of relativity, one of the theory's basic assumptions: the idea that all light particles, or photons, propagate at exactly the same speed.,, The researchers analyzed data, obtained by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, of the arrival times of photons from a distant gamma-ray burst. The data showed that photons traveling for billions of years from the distant burst toward Earth all arrived within a fraction of a second of each other. This finding indicates that the photons all moved at the same speed, even though different photons had different energies. This is one of the best measurements ever of the independence of the speed of light from the energy of the light particles.,,, One of the attempts to reconcile the two theories (Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity) is the idea of "space-time foam." According to this concept, on a microscopic scale space is not continuous, and instead it has a foam-like structure. The size of these foam elements is so tiny that it is difficult to imagine and is at present impossible to measure directly. However light particles that are traveling within this foam will be affected by the foamy structure, and this will cause them to propagate at slightly different speeds depending on their energy. The fact that all the photons with different energies arrived with no time delay relative to each other indicates that such a foamy structure, if it exists at all, has a much smaller size than previously expected. "When we began our analysis, we didn't expect to obtain such a precise measurement," said Prof. Tsvi Piran, the Schwartzmann University Chair at the Hebrew University's Racah Institute of Physics and a leader of the research. "This new limit is at the level expected from quantum gravity theories. http://phys.org/news/2015-03-einstein-scientists-spacetime-foam.html Physical constant is constant even in strong gravitational fields - Sep 19, 2014 Excerpt: An international team of physicists has shown that the mass ratio between protons and electrons is the same in weak and in very strong gravitational fields.,,, The idea that the laws of physics and its fundamental constants do not depend on local circumstances is called the equivalence principle. This principle is a cornerstone to Einstein's theory of general relativity.,,, The researchers compared the proton-electron mass ratio near the surface of a white dwarf star to the mass ratio in a laboratory on Earth. White dwarfs stars, which are in a late stage of their life cycle, have collapsed to less than 1% of their original size. The gravitational field at the surface of these stars is therefore much larger than that on earth, by a factor of 10,000. The physicists concluded that even these strong gravitational conditions, the proton-electron mass ratio is the same within a margin of 0.005%. In both cases, the proton mass is 1836.152672 times as big as the electron mass.,,, http://phys.org/news/2014-09-physical-constant-strong-gravitational-fields.html "Recent experiments have confirmed, to within one part in one hundred million billion (10^17), that the speed of light does not change when an observer is in motion." Douglas Ell - "Counting To God" - pg. 41 - 2014

Thus , seeing as experiment, and not ego, rules science, I think I will stick with them and ignore your 'science by proclamation'. bornagain

Bornagain, the truth about Einstein will amaze. Einstein was wrong about almost everything, IMO. He was wrong about time, wrong about space, wrong about determinism, wrong about quantum mechanics, wrong about continuity, wrong about nonlocality, wrong about gravity waves, wrong about the speed of gravity, wrong about absolute motion and, last but not least, wrong about Newtonian physics. The man was a total disaster to science. His ideas retarded progress in physics and the rest of science by at least a century. Just saying. PS. Einstein claimed that the now could not be a part of physics and yet, strangely enough, the now is all that there is. Mapou

Of related note to:

“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.” Sir Fred Hoyle, Astronomy and Cosmology – A Modern Course, (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co.), p. 416,1975.

Even though Einstein and company said that as far as physical measurement was concerned in General Relativity there is no difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory, it is interesting to note a place where Einstein was shown to be wrong in regards to physical measurement. That place is, unsurprisingly, in quantum mechanics Einstein was once asked (by a philosopher):

"Can physics demonstrate the existence of 'the now' in order to make the notion of 'now' into a scientifically valid term?"

Einstein's answer was categorical, he said:

"The experience of 'the now' cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics."

Quote was taken from the last few minutes of this following video. The meaning of the question can be read in full context in the article following the video:

Stanley L. Jaki: "The Mind and Its Now" https://vimeo.com/10588094 The Mind and Its Now - Stanley L. Jaki, July 2008 Excerpts: There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, Three quarters of a century ago Charles Sherrington, the greatest modern student of the brain, spoke memorably on the mind's baffling independence of the brain. The mind lives in a self-continued now or rather in the now continued in the self. This life involves the entire brain, some parts of which overlap, others do not. ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind's ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows. ,,, the now is immensely richer an experience than any marvellous set of numbers, even if science could give an account of the set of numbers, in terms of energy levels. The now is not a number. It is rather a word, the most decisive of all words. It is through experiencing that word that the mind comes alive and registers all existence around and well beyond. ,,, All our moments, all our nows, flow into a personal continuum, of which the supreme form is the NOW which is uncreated, because it simply IS. http://www.saintcd.com/science-and-faith/277-the-mind-and-its-now.html?showall=1&limitstart=

Quantum Physicist Antoine Suarez puts the situation like this:

Have Krauss and Hawking misidentified what they are referring to as "nothing?" Nothing: God's new Name - Antoine Suarez - video (it is impossible for us to be 'persons' experiencing 'now' if we are nothing but particles flowing in space time. Moreover, for us to refer to ourselves as 'persons', we cannot refer to space-time as the ultimate substratum upon which everything exists, but must refer to a person who is not bound by space time. i.e. We must refer to God! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOr9QqyaLlA

The statement, 'the now' cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement’, was a very interesting statement for Einstein to make since 'the now of the mind' has, from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, undermined the space-time of Einstein's General Relativity as to being the absolute frame of reference for reality.

A Short Survey Of Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Excerpt: Putting all the lines of evidence together the argument for God from consciousness can now be framed like this: 1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality. 2. If consciousness is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality. 3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even central, position within material reality. 4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality. Four intersecting lines of experimental evidence from quantum mechanics that shows that consciousness precedes material reality (Wigner’s Quantum Symmetries, Wheeler’s Delayed Choice, Leggett’s Inequalities, Quantum Zeno effect) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uLcJUgLm1vwFyjwcbwuYP0bK6k8mXy-of990HudzduI/edit

i.e. 'the now of the mind', contrary to what Einstein thought possible for experimental physics, and according to advances in quantum mechanics, takes precedence over past events in time. Moreover, due to advances in quantum mechanics, it would now be much more appropriate to phrase Einstein's answer to the philosopher in this way:

"It is impossible for the experience of 'the now of the mind' to ever be divorced from physical measurement, it will always be a part of physics."

Here are a few notes backing up that claim

"It begins to look as we ourselves, by our last minute decision, have an influence on what a photon will do when it has already accomplished most of its doing... we have to say that we ourselves have an undeniable part in what we have always called the past. The past is not really the past until is has been registered. Or to put it another way, the past has no meaning or existence unless it exists as a record in the present." - John Wheeler - The Ghost In The Atom - Page 66-68 "If we attempt to attribute an objective meaning to the quantum state of a single system, curious paradoxes appear: quantum effects mimic not only instantaneous action-at-a-distance but also, as seen here, influence of future actions on past events, even after these events have been irrevocably recorded." Asher Peres, Delayed choice for entanglement swapping. J. Mod. Opt. 47, 139-143 (2000). New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It - June 3, 2015 (delayed choice experiment) Excerpt: The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness - May 27, 2015 Excerpt: The bizarre nature of reality as laid out by quantum theory has survived another test, with scientists performing a famous experiment and proving that reality does not exist until it is measured. Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have conducted John Wheeler's delayed-choice thought experiment, which involves a moving object that is given the choice to act like a particle or a wave. Wheeler's experiment then asks - at which point does the object decide? Common sense says the object is either wave-like or particle-like, independent of how we measure it. But quantum physics predicts that whether you observe wave like behavior (interference) or particle behavior (no interference) depends only on how it is actually measured at the end of its journey. This is exactly what the ANU team found. "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering. Despite the apparent weirdness, the results confirm the validity of quantum theory, which,, has enabled the development of many technologies such as LEDs, lasers and computer chips. The ANU team not only succeeded in building the experiment, which seemed nearly impossible when it was proposed in 1978, but reversed Wheeler's original concept of light beams being bounced by mirrors, and instead used atoms scattered by laser light. "Quantum physics' predictions about interference seem odd enough when applied to light, which seems more like a wave, but to have done the experiment with atoms, which are complicated things that have mass and interact with electric fields and so on, adds to the weirdness," said Roman Khakimov, PhD student at the Research School of Physics and Engineering. http://phys.org/news/2015-05-quantum-theory-weirdness.html "Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!" Scott Aaronson - Decoherence and Hidden Variables - MIT associate Professor

But I do have to give Einstein his due respect. Even though Einstein erroneously did not think 'the now of the mind' could ever be made into an object of physical measurement, and was shown to be wrong by advances in quantum mechanics, the great man did end up saying this a month before he passed away:

"..the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however tenacious this illusion may be." - Albert Einstein - March 1955 (he passed away in April of that year)

bornagain

daveS, once again, you are disagreeing with GR not me. So once again I suggest you take your gripe up with Einstein and company. And go publish your refutation in the appropriate journal. You opinion is not even bug juice on a windshield compared to them. Once again, It is they who are saying that the earth can be treated as being at rest in GR, not me. “In the Ptolemaic system, the earth is considered to be at rest and without rotation in the center of the universe, while the sun, other planets and fixed stars rotate around the earth. In relational mechanics this rotation of distant matter yields the force such that the equation of motion takes the form of equation (8.47). Now the gravitational attraction of the sun is balanced by a real gravitational centrifugal force due to the annual rotation of distant masses around the earth (with a component having a period of one year). In this way the earth can remain at rest and at an essentially constant distance from the sun. The diurnal rotation of distant masses around the earth (with a period of one day) yields a real gravitational centrifugal force flattening the earth at the poles. Foucault’s pendulum is explained by a real Coriolis force acting on moving masses over the earth’s surface in the form –2mgvme ´ ?Ue, where vme is the velocity of the test body relative to the earth and ?Ue is the angular rotation of the distant masses around the earth. The effect of this force will be to keep the plane of oscillation of the pendulum rotating together with the fixed stars.” (Andre K. T. Assis, Relational Mechanics, pp. 190-191). and I remind that the CMBR has 'anomalous' data that lines up with the earth: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/physics/cosmologist-sean-carroll-asks-is-anything-constant/#comment-590261 bornagain

Heh. More quotes. It looks like we're back to epicycles again. I have to get some work done, so I'll have to look at these tomorrow, but have you read this: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/09/13/geocentrism-was-galileo-wrong/ Can you explain the relation between the apparent size of Venus and its phase in your Ptolemaic model, where the Earth is at the orbital center of the universe? daveS

“…Thus we may return to Ptolemy’s point of view of a ‘motionless earth’… One has to show that the transformed metric can be regarded as produced according to Einstein’s field equations, by distant rotating masses. This has been done by Thirring. He calculated a field due to a rotating, hollow, thick-walled sphere and proved that inside the cavity it behaved as though there were centrifugal and other inertial forces usually attributed to absolute space. Thus from Einstein’s point of view, Ptolemy and Copernicus are equally right.” Born, Max. “Einstein’s Theory of Relativity”,Dover Publications,1962, pgs 344 & 345: “If one rotates the shell *relative to the fixed stars* about an axis going through its center, a Coriolis force arises in the interior of the shell, *that is, the plane of a Foucault pendulum is dragged around*” –Albert Einstein, cited in “Gravitation”, Misner Thorne and Wheeler pp. 544-545. “One need not view the existence of such centrifugal forces as originating from the motion of K’ [the Earth]; one could just as well account for them as resulting from the average rotational effect of distant, detectable masses as evidenced in the vicinity of K’ [the Earth], whereby K’ [the Earth] is treated as being at rest.” –Albert Einstein, quoted in Hans Thirring, “On the Effect of Distant Rotating Masses in Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation”, Physikalische Zeitschrift 22, 29, 1921 “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.” Sir Fred Hoyle, Astronomy and Cosmology - A Modern Course, (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co.), p. 416,1975. bornagain

daveS, if you won’t listen to Einstein and company, you certainly won’t listen to me.

Sure I would. We are talking about elementary physics here. If you could show some calculations supporting your answers to my two questions instead of simply posting quotes, there's no way I could ignore them.

I suggest you write an expert whose opinion you would respect instead of pestering me whom you clearly don’t.

Well, Newton's law of gravitation gives us enough information to deal with question 1. The answer given by classical mechanics would probably be indistinguishable from that given by GR, when dealing with an Earth-satellite system. And the Dartmouth physics professor explained very clearly what causes the precession of the pendulum: rotation and revolution of the Earth. I don't think there's any reason to call in another expert. I will leave it there. daveS

daveS, if you won't listen to Einstein and company, you certainly won't listen to me. I suggest you write an expert whose opinion you would respect instead of pestering me, a non-expert, whose opinion you clearly don't respect. bornagain

Well, if you ever come up with answers to the two questions I posed in post #16 (or an explanation of what you meant by "non-local"), I will be interested to read them. daveS

I've made my point clearly. Your argument is with GR not me. If you got a beef with earth being able to be at rest in GR, send your beef to the Nobel Committee and let me know their response. They probably have a form letter for cranks. To reiterate, The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” could be used with equal justification according to Einstein. According to Hoyle “Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.” According to Born “we may return to Ptolemy’s point of view of a ‘motionless earth”. and to add Ellis "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…" i.e. You are disagreeing with General Relativity not me. As far as I'm concerned you might as well, https://i.ytimg.com/vi/h8Fyf4R-nzI/hqdefault.jpg bornagain

Dr Sheldon, Thanks for explaining that. My apologies for reading something into it that wasn't there. daveS

bornagain,

daveS, rotation and revolution in regards to what frame of reference?

Any inertial frame, let's say C1 Note that if the Earth is stationary and non-rotating, any coordinate system in which the Earth is fixed is inertial. Let's pick one, C2. So we have two inertial frames of reference where the Earth is rotating in one and not rotating in the other, which is impossible.

That you would try to substitute the astronomer’s ‘non-local’ frame of reference for an observer on earth’s frame of reference is just plain dishonest or ignorant.

Huh? What do you mean by "non-local"? Remember, I can use any frame of reference I want, even that of a racecar. How am I being dishonest or ignorant? Please be specific. Anyway, you can resolve this whole issue by answering two questions. Under the assumption that the Earth is stationary and non-rotating, 1) Why don't geostationary satellites fall to Earth? 2) What causes Foucault pendulums to precess? daveS

Daves#4 THe quotes are because there are two, Darwinist scientists: Sean "the biologist" Carroll, and Sean "the cosmologist" Carroll. Seeing as the cosmologist is more Darwinist than the biologist, it is easy to get them mixed up. Robert Sheldon

daveS, rotation and revolution in regards to what frame of reference? The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” could be used with equal justification according to Einstein. According to Hoyle "Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.” According to Born "we may return to Ptolemy’s point of view of a ‘motionless earth". You are disagreeing with General Relativity not me. Send your astronaut example to the Nobel committee and let me know their response. I could use the laugh. That you would try to substitute the astronomer's 'non-local' frame of reference for an observer on earth's frame of reference is just plain dishonest or ignorant. Given your history of dishonesty towards the evidence, I opt for you being dishonest.

The equivalence principle does not deny the existence of measurable effects caused by a rotating gravitating mass (frame dragging), or bear on the measurements of light deflection and gravitational time delay made by non-local observers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle#The_weak_equivalence_principle

To repeat, you are disagreeing with General Relativity not me. Thus, I strongly suggest you take your grievance with GR to the Nobel committee and sign up for your prize. of related note: In General Relativity, you have no 'non-local', 'god's eye view', frame of reference to appeal to

Although the shape shiftiness of spacetime explains away the kind of nonlocality that Newton talked about, it produces a new variety. It comes out of relativity theory's core innovation: that there's no such thing as a place outside spacetime, no external or absolute standard to judge it by. This seemingly self-evident proposition has remarkable consequences. It means that spacetime not only warps but also loses many of the qualities we associate with it, including the ability to define locations. Disavowing a god's-eye perspective, Marolf says, “is very subtle, and, honestly, Einstein didn't understand it for a long time.” Previous conceptions of space, including Newton's and even Einstein's own earlier thinking, supposed that space had a fixed geometry, which would let you imagine rising above space and looking down on it. In fact, at one point, Einstein argued there had to be an absolute reference point or else the shape of space would become ambiguous. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-einstein-revealed-the-universe-s-strange-nonlocality/

bornagain

bornagain,

daveS, as pointed out before, and as you have ignored many times before, you would conflict with Einstein, Hoyle, Ellis, and Born, if you held, due to gravity, any other position in the universe to be ‘more central’ than the earth is.

Fortunately, I don't "hold" that. There is no distinguished "center" of the universe. What gets you in trouble is the easily detectable rotation and revolution of the Earth. Suppose an eccentric astronomer decided to use a coordinate system in which Dale Earnhardt, Jr's car is central, always at rest, and never rotating, even during races. Is this possible? Yes! Now suppose we ask the astronomer whether Dale Earnhardt, Jr's car actually _is_ at the center of the universe, is always at rest, and is never rotating. No! Any number of experiments will show that the car is undergoing all kinds of acceleration and rotation during races. Surely you must agree with that? daveS

a few notes: Contrary to what the atheist Sean Carroll would prefer to believe, to the best of our ability to test, the constants do not vary, and if they did vary, it would greatly undermine our ability to practice science in the first place. Moreover, since atheists postulate blind randomness/chaos as the ultimate creator of the universe, they have no clue why the constants don't vary. Moreover, the fact that the finely tuned constants don't vary has been said to be 'disturbing' to atheists

Exact values of constants said to drive physicists crazy - 2015 Excerpt: Although atheists may be driven ‘mad’ for why constants don’t vary, and may find the implications of constants ‘disturbing’, myself, I find the fact the constants do not vary to be a source of comfort. The implications for me as a Christian, far from being ‘disturbing’, are that I now know for a fact that when God says something He absolutely means it and that He will never go back on his word or break His promises to us. Ever! https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/physics/exact-values-of-constants-said-to-drive-physicists-crazy/#comment-581026 Psalm 119:89-91 Your eternal word, O Lord, stands firm in heaven. Your faithfulness extends to every generation, as enduring as the earth you created. Your regulations remain true to this day, for everything serves your plans.

bornagain

daveS, as pointed out before, and as you have ignored many times before, you would conflict with Einstein, Hoyle, Ellis, and Born, if you held, due to gravity, any other position in the universe to be 'more central' than the earth is. Your problem is not with me, or with the fact that I refuse to even debate this issue with you, your problem is with what those great men of science have said in regards to determining centrality in the universe as far as general relativity, i.e. gravity, is concerned. i.e. Your disagreement with me is a non-starter since what you say, (and what I say for that matter), is not even bug juice on a windshield compared to those great men. To reiterate Einstein weighs in here

“Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not only those moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? […] 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, A. and Infeld, L. (1938) The Evolution of Physics, p.212 (p.248 in original 1938 ed.);

Fred Hoyle, discoverer of stellar nucleosynthesis, weighs in here:

“The relation of the two pictures [geocentrism and geokineticism] 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…. Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.” Hoyle, Fred. Nicolaus Copernicus. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1973.

George Ellis, who, along with Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking, helped extend General Relativity to show that not only energy and matter had a definite beginning in the Big Bang but that space and time also had a definite beginning in the Big Bang, weighs in here:

“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… 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 – W. Wayt Gibbs, “Profile: George F. R. Ellis,” Scientific American, October 1995, Vol. 273, No.4, p. 55

In addition, Max Born wrote:

“…Thus we may return to Ptolemy’s point of view of a ‘motionless earth’… One has to show that the transformed metric can be regarded as produced according to Einstein’s field equations, by distant rotating masses. This has been done by Thirring. He calculated a field due to a rotating, hollow, thick-walled sphere and proved that inside the cavity it behaved as though there were centrifugal and other inertial forces usually attributed to absolute space. Thus from Einstein’s point of view, Ptolemy and Copernicus are equally right.” Born, Max. “Einstein’s Theory of Relativity”,Dover Publications,1962, pgs 344 & 345:

The following article states that General relativity forces us to search for an entirely new conception of place.

How Einstein Revealed the Universe’s Strange “Nonlocality” – George Musser | Oct 20, 2015 Excerpt: Under most circumstances, we can ignore this nonlocality. You can designate some available chunk of matter as a reference point and use it to anchor a coordinate grid. You can, to the chagrin of Santa Barbarans, take Los Angeles as the center of the universe and define every other place with respect to it. In this framework, you can go about your business in blissful ignorance of space’s fundamental inability to demarcate locations.,, In short, Einstein’s theory is nonlocal in a more subtle and insidious way than Newton’s theory of gravity was. Newtonian gravity acted at a distance, but at least it operated within a framework of absolute space. Einsteinian gravity has no such element of wizardry; its effects ripple through the universe at the speed of light. Yet it demolishes the framework, violating locality in what was, for Einstein, its most basic sense: the stipulation that all things have a location. General relativity confounds our intuitive picture of space as a kind of container in which material objects reside and forces us to search for an entirely new conception of place. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-einstein-revealed-the-universe-s-strange-nonlocality/

Since I fully expect you to continue to pester me and to say the earth cannot be considered central, in spite of what Einstein and company have said, (since it conflicts with your atheistic philosophy), then I suggest instead of irritating some unknown Christian on a blog with your unsupportable atheistic philosophy that you instead submit your math and empirical evidence to the Nobel committee telling them that you have now overturned the 'equivalence principle' of General Relativity. Your fame awaits. bornagain

Sheldon:

We’ve dissected Sean “the cosmologist” Carroll before, who is willing to sacrifice cosmology to the altar of Darwin, promoting “evolution” of “multiverses”. In this article he is equivocating on the word “change” to suggest that if Einstein showed that spacetime was changeable, then evolution must be true. I would argue that it merely demonstrates Cosmology to be in smaller denominations than the other bills of truth in circulation.

That's a laugh. Dr. Sean Carroll should ask his alma mater for his money and time back. The truth is much stranger and much more damning. Einstein could not possibly have shown that spacetime was changeable since any cosmologist worth his PhD knows that spacetime is a block universe in which nothing happens. Here are a couple of quotes from knowledgeable people.

"There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. [...] In particular, one does not think of particles as "moving through" space-time, or as "following along" their world-lines. Rather, particles are just "in" space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once the complete life history of the particle." Source: Relativity from A to B by Dr. Robert Geroch, U. of Chicago

"At the same time I realized that such myths may be developed, and become testable; that historically speaking all — or very nearly all — scientific theories originate from myths, and that a myth may contain important anticipations of scientific theories. Examples are Empedocles' theory of evolution by trial and error, or Parmenides' myth of the unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if we add another dimension, becomes Einstein's block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four-dimensionally speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning)." Source: Conjectures and Refutations by Karl Popper(pdf). Emphasis added.

There are many more quotes like the above. And yet the lie persists. Because why? Because Einstein. That's why. I can explain why spacetime is motionless if anybody cares. It's not rocket science, which makes it even more damning to the physics community. This spacetime nonsense gets tiring after a while. I don't know how many times I've had to correct this stupid lie. The truth: there is neither space nor time. They are figments of the imagination of a few famous people who are/were not nearly as bright or as honest as the world was lied into believing. Sean Carroll is just another in a long list of liars/brainwashers. Mapou

bornagain,

An atheist tried to say, in spite of what Einstein and these other giants of science said, that it was still improper for me to think the earth had any special significance in the universe.

Edit: Since you are not going to respond to my posts, I'll point out two things: I suspect I'm the atheist you're referring to. If so, the above statement is false. I do notice that you have apparently dropped this:

Since gravity is useless for determining true centrality in the universe, then I am free to say that the Earth (or any other point in the universe I may choose to pick) stays still and everything in the universe revolves around it.

as well as anything relating to the proposition that the Earth does not rotate. daveS

If nothing in the cosmos is constant then presumably that would include time, but if time is not constant what sense does it make to say that the universe is 13.5 billion years old? Dick

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-SRUXbgROADU/VGO_BjjRAyI/AAAAAAAAAco/VZwJpQ07YCg/w311-h197/t2.png bornagain

bornagain,

And this ‘notion that all physical laws should appear the same (that is, take the same basic form) to all inertial observers’, far from fortifying the Copernican principle, makes the earth or the sun, or any other point of observation in the universe, just as central as any other point of observation in the universe may be considered central in the universe.

Do you believe that there exist inertial frames of reference in which the Earth is stationary and non-rotating? daveS

Of note: The preceding article was written before the Planck data (with WMPA & COBE data), but the multipoles were actually verified by Planck. At the 13:55 minute mark of the following video, Max Tegmark, an atheist, finally admits, post Planck 2013, that the CMBR data does indeed line up with the earth and solar system

"Thoughtcrime: The Conspiracy to Stop The Principle" - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0eVUSDy_rO0#t=832 What Is Evil About The Axis Of Evil? - February 17, 2015 The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation contains small temperature fluctuations. When these temperature fluctuations are analyzed using image processing techniques (specifically spherical harmonics), they indicate a special direction in space, or, in a sense, an axis through the universe. This axis is correlated back to us, and causes many difficulties for the current big bang and standard cosmology theories. What has been discovered is shocking. Two scientists, Kate Land and João Magueijo, in a paper in 2005 describing the axis, dubbed it the “Axis of Evil” because of the damage it does to current theories, and (tongue in cheek) as a response to George Bush’ Axis of Evil speech regarding Iraq, Iran and, North Korea. (Youtube clip on site) In the above video, Max Tegmark describes in a simplified way how spherical harmonics analysis decomposes the small temperature fluctuations into more averaged and spatially arranged temperature components, known as multipoles. The “Axis of Evil” correlates to the earth’s ecliptic and equinoxes, and this represents a very unusual and unexpected special direction in space, a direct challenge to the Copernican Principle. http://www.theprinciplemovie.com/evil-axis-evil/

Moreover besides the earth lining up with the anomalies in the Cosmic Background Radiation, Radio Astronomy now reveals a surprising rotational coincidence for Earth in relation to the quasar and radio galaxy distributions in the universe:

Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky? - Ashok K. Singal - May 17, 2013 Abstract: Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) observations from the WMAP satellite have shown some unexpected anisotropies (directionally dependent observations), which surprisingly seem to be aligned with the ecliptic\cite {20,16,15}. The latest data from the Planck satellite have confirmed the presence of these anisotropies\cite {17}. Here we report even larger anisotropies in the sky distributions of powerful extended quasars and some other sub-classes of radio galaxies in the 3CRR catalogue, one of the oldest and most intensively studies sample of strong radio sources\cite{21,22,3}. The anisotropies lie about a plane passing through the two equinoxes and the north celestial pole (NCP). We can rule out at a 99.995% confidence level the hypothesis that these asymmetries are merely due to statistical fluctuations. Further, even the distribution of observed radio sizes of quasars and radio galaxies show large systematic differences between these two sky regions. The redshift distribution appear to be very similar in both regions of sky for all sources, which rules out any local effects to be the cause of these anomalies. Two pertinent questions then arise. First, why should there be such large anisotropies present in the sky distribution of some of the most distant discrete sources implying inhomogeneities in the universe at very large scales (covering a fraction of the universe)? What is intriguing even further is why such anisotropies should lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth's rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It looks as if these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based upon. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.4134.pdf

Moreover, the light coming from the CMBR is found to be fine tuned for intelligent life like human life to discover it:

The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability - Robin Collins - March 22, 2014 Excerpt: The most dramatic confirmation of the discoverability/livability optimality thesis (DLO) is the dependence of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) on the baryon to photon ratio.,,, ...the intensity of CMB depends on the photon to baryon ratio, (??b), which is the ratio of the average number of photons per unit volume of space to the average number of baryons (protons plus neutrons) per unit volume. At present this ratio is approximately a billion to one (10^9) , but it could be anywhere from one to infinity; it traces back to the degree of asymmetry in matter and anti - matter right after the beginning of the universe – for approximately every billion particles of antimatter, there was a billion and one particles of matter.,,, The only livability effect this ratio has is on whether or not galaxies can form that have near - optimally livability zones. As long as this condition is met, the value of this ratio has no further effects on livability. Hence, the DLO predicts that within this range, the value of this ratio will be such as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers. According to my calculations – which have been verified by three other physicists -- to within the margin of error of the experimentally determined parameters (~20%), the value of the photon to baryon ratio is such that it maximizes the CMB. This is shown in Figure 1 below. (pg. 13) It is easy to see that this prediction could have been disconfirmed. In fact, when I first made the calculations in the fall of 2011, I made a mistake and thought I had refuted this thesis since those calculations showed the intensity of the CMB maximizes at a value different than the photon - baryon ratio in our universe. So, not only does the DLO lead us to expect this ratio, but it provides an ultimate explanation for why it has this value,,, This is a case of a teleological thesis serving both a predictive and an ultimate explanatory role.,,, http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/Fine-tuning/Greer-Heard%20Forum%20paper%20draft%20for%20posting.pdf

Moreover, quantum mechanics goes one step further and gives the conscious observer centrality in the universe. Due to advances in Quantum Mechanics, the argument for God from consciousness can now be framed like this:

1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a 'epi-phenomena' of material reality. 2. If consciousness is a 'epi-phenomena' of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality. 3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even a central, position within material reality. [14] 4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality. (Wigner's Quantum Symmetries; Wheeler's Delayed Choice; Leggett's Inequalities; Quantum Zeno Effect) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uLcJUgLm1vwFyjwcbwuYP0bK6k8mXy-of990HudzduI/edit

Thus the atheistic contention that the earth, and the humans on the earth, are of no special significance is, in fact, in direct contradiction to what our best current science is telling us. bornagain

as to this first part from the article:

Excerpt: Nicolaus Copernicus is famous for having suggested that the Earth moves around the sun, rather than the other way around. That’s a big deal, as it displaces the Earth from its presumed position at the center of the universe. But it’s easy for us to forget something equally amazing: the idea that the Earth can actually move at all. If anything seems like a solid foundation, it’s the Earth itself. But in our post-Copernican world, we know better. Albert Einstein, with his general theory of relativity, took this conceptual revolution one step forward. Not only is the Earth not a fixed fulcrum around which the rest of the universe revolves, space and time themselves are not fixed and unchanging.

Actually Einstein would argue that the 'conceptual revolution' took one step backwards. In the Einsteinian worldview the one central assumption is 'the notion that all physical laws should appear the same (that is, take the same basic form) to all inertial observers.'

Introduction to special relativity Excerpt: Einstein's approach was based on thought experiments, calculations, and the principle of relativity, which is the notion that all physical laws should appear the same (that is, take the same basic form) to all inertial observers.,,, Each observer has a distinct "frame of reference" in which velocities are measured,,,, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_special_relativity Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity (privileged frame of reference for the observer) - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev9zrt__lec

And this 'notion that all physical laws should appear the same (that is, take the same basic form) to all inertial observers', far from fortifying the Copernican principle, makes the earth or the sun, or any other point of observation in the universe, just as central as any other point of observation in the universe may be considered central in the universe. Einstein weighs in here

“Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not only those moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? […] 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, A. and Infeld, L. (1938) The Evolution of Physics, p.212 (p.248 in original 1938 ed.);

Fred Hoyle, discoverer of stellar nucleosynthesis, weighs in here:

“The relation of the two pictures [geocentrism and geokineticism] 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…. Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.” Hoyle, Fred. Nicolaus Copernicus. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1973.

George Ellis, who, along with Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking, helped extend General Relativity to show that not only energy and matter had a definite beginning in the Big Bang but that space and time also had a definite beginning in the Big Bang, weighs in here:

“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… 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 – W. Wayt Gibbs, “Profile: George F. R. Ellis,” Scientific American, October 1995, Vol. 273, No.4, p. 55

In addition, Max Born wrote:

“…Thus we may return to Ptolemy’s point of view of a ‘motionless earth’… One has to show that the transformed metric can be regarded as produced according to Einstein’s field equations, by distant rotating masses. This has been done by Thirring. He calculated a field due to a rotating, hollow, thick-walled sphere and proved that inside the cavity it behaved as though there were centrifugal and other inertial forces usually attributed to absolute space. Thus from Einstein’s point of view, Ptolemy and Copernicus are equally right.” Born, Max. “Einstein’s Theory of Relativity”,Dover Publications,1962, pgs 344 & 345:

The following article states that General relativity forces us to search for an entirely new conception of place.

How Einstein Revealed the Universe’s Strange “Nonlocality” – George Musser | Oct 20, 2015 Excerpt: Under most circumstances, we can ignore this nonlocality. You can designate some available chunk of matter as a reference point and use it to anchor a coordinate grid. You can, to the chagrin of Santa Barbarans, take Los Angeles as the center of the universe and define every other place with respect to it. In this framework, you can go about your business in blissful ignorance of space’s fundamental inability to demarcate locations.,, In short, Einstein’s theory is nonlocal in a more subtle and insidious way than Newton’s theory of gravity was. Newtonian gravity acted at a distance, but at least it operated within a framework of absolute space. Einsteinian gravity has no such element of wizardry; its effects ripple through the universe at the speed of light. Yet it demolishes the framework, violating locality in what was, for Einstein, its most basic sense: the stipulation that all things have a location. General relativity confounds our intuitive picture of space as a kind of container in which material objects reside and forces us to search for an entirely new conception of place. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-einstein-revealed-the-universe-s-strange-nonlocality/

An atheist tried to say, in spite of what Einstein and these other giants of science said, that it was still improper for me to think the earth had any special significance in the universe. But as hard as it may be for him, and others, to believe that the earth could have any special significance in this vast universe, there is actually very strong evidence coming in from cosmology that indicates that the earth is not as forlorn as they, as atheists, might have hoped it to be. First off, In what I consider an absolutely fascinating discovery, Einstein’s General Relativity has shown that 4-dimensional (4D) space-time, along with all energy and matter, was created in the ‘Big Bang’ and, via the finely tuned 1 in 10^120 cosmological constant. continues to ‘expand equally in all places’:

"There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a "Big Bang" about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. The Big Bang should not be visualized as an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a centre into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and it is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell." Philip Gibbs

Thus from a 3-dimensional (3D) perspective, any particular 3D spot in the universe is to be considered just as ‘center of the universe’ as any other particular spot in the universe is to be considered ‘center of the universe’. This centrality found for any 3D place in the universe is because the universe is a 4D expanding hypersphere, analogous in 3D to the surface of an expanding balloon. All points on the surface are moving away from each other, and every point is central, no matter where you live in the universe. And as such, it may now be possible for the Earth to be, once again, considered ‘central in the universe’. That every 3-Dimensional place within the universe may be considered central in the universe may seem very counterintuitive to most people, but that is exactly what has now been shown. I find the best way to get this ‘centrality of the Earth in the universe” point across is to visualize it first hand. Thus I reference the following video to clearly get this ‘centrality in the universe’ point across:

The Known Universe by AMNH – video - (please note the 'centrality' of the Earth in the universe at the 3:36 minute mark in the video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U

Here is a still shot of the image at the 3:36 minute mark of the preceding video

Picture of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) http://new-universe.org/zenphoto/albums/Chapter4/Illustrations/Abrams47.jpg

Moreover, there are strange 'anomalies' in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation that line up with the earth:

Why is the solar system cosmically aligned? BY Dragan Huterer - 2007 The solar system seems to line up with the largest cosmic features. Is this mere coincidence or a signpost to deeper insights? Caption under figure on page 43: ODD ALIGNMENTS hide within the multipoles of the cosmic microwave background. In this combination of the quadrupole and octopole, a plane bisects the sphere between the largest warm and cool lobes. The ecliptic — the plane of Earth’s orbit projected onto the celestial sphere — is aligned parallel to the plane between the lobes. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~huterer/PRESS/CMB_Huterer.pdf Here is the actual graph of the alignment from the Huterer 2007 paper (worth a thousand words): http://i44.servimg.com/u/f44/16/14/18/96/axis_o10.jpg

bornagain

Dr Sheldon states:

We've dissected Sean "the cosmologist" Carroll before ...

I'm not sure why the quotes are necessary. Carroll literally is a cosmologist, after all.

... who is willing to sacrifice cosmology to the altar of Darwin, promoting “evolution” of “multiverses”. In this article he is equivocating on the word “change” to suggest that if Einstein showed that spacetime was changeable, then evolution must be true.

I looked at every instance of forms of the word "evolve" in the article, and every time Carroll uses them, he means "to develop" or "to change". The article doesn't say anything about Darwin or biological evolution. I know physicists (and particularly cosmologists) regularly use the term "evolve" in the same way as Carroll is, so I'm not sure why Dr Sheldon is making such a big deal out of this. daveS

This is silly. What changes in our universe are INSTANCES of constant Classes of things. So, for example, the Instance of rings around Saturn apparently appeared 100 million years ago or something. And astronomers have calculated that within another 60 million years or so those rings will disappear for a number of well understood reasons. (The thicker rings will spiral down into Saturn, etc.) But as long as Saturn's rings exist, they're simply instances of a known class. When European explorers first reported that the Locals had shown the explorers what we know call Niagara Falls, a European artist painted a picture of the Falls without ever seeing them. And since ALL of the large waterfalls in Europe occur in the mountains, the artist painted something like Angel Falls in South America. But as more Europeans saw and described Niagara, the Falls was accepted as simply an instance of a different type of waterfall that otherwise complied with the known characteristics of the Class called Waterfalls. mahuna

I think it is the ordering based on nothing (nihilo / zero) which provides a framework for the universe, while the existence of the entire universe and everything in it can be changed per decision, within the framework that the totality equals zero. Creatio ex nihilo, and, ex nihilo nihil fit. At the start of the universe there is the most freedom to choose. Then after the first decision is made, possibilities around what has already been chosen are more likely, providing for stability around the framework. mohammadnursyamsu