The Sunset of Darwinism

tfp ^ | 06.04.08 | Julio Loredo

[Coleus]

Praised until recently as dogma, Darwin’s theory of evolution is now fading away, discredited by the same science that bore its poisoned fruit. Instead, the Christian vision of a supernatural design is being increasingly affirmed. “Evolution is now a datum proven beyond any reasonable doubt and no longer a theory, it’s not even worth taking the trouble to discuss it.” This is what a spokesman proclaimed at the Festival of Science held in Genoa in November 2005, thereby neglecting a very important aspect of modern science—the need to be open to new perspectives. Instead, the truth is quite the opposite. Paradoxically, evolutionists are taking an ever greater distance from empirical science and are wrapping themselves up in a dogmatism that borders on ideological fanaticism.

Unprovable Hypothesis
“What is left, then, in evolutionism, that is valid according to the scientific method? Nothing, actually nothing!” This is the conclusion of journalist Marco Respinti in his recent book Processo a Darwin (Darwin on Trial, Piemme, 2007). He continues: "Not one of his postulates can be verified or certified based on the method proper to the physical sciences. His whole claim escapes verification. Based on what, therefore, other than on strong prejudices of an ideological nature, can anyone affirm or continue to affirm that the evolutionist hypothesis is true?"  Indeed, the consistency of a scientific theory is founded on its capacity to be verified empirically, be it through observation of the phenomenon in nature or by reproducing it in the laboratory. The evolutionist hypothesis fails on both counts. “Thus,” Respinti shows, “Darwinism remains simply an hypothesis devoid of empirical or demonstrable foundation, besides being unproven. . . . The evolutionist hypothesis is completely unfounded for it does not master the very domain in which it launches its challenge.”

Respinti reaches this “verdict” after a rigorous “trial of Darwin” in which he analyzes the main arguments that debunk the notorious theory, ranging from nonexistent fossil records to the conflict of Darwinism with genetic science and the flimsiness of the “synthetic theory” of neo-Darwinism, without forgetting the countless frauds that have stained notable evolutionists in their insane quest to fabricate the “proofs” that science tenaciously denied them.  Respinti concludes by denouncing the ideological drift of the evolutionist school: “To categorically affirm the absolute validity of the theories of Darwinian and neo-Darwinian evolution based on the claim that discussing them would be unscientific by definition, is the worst proof that human reason can give of itself.”

A Long Sunset
The sunset of the Darwinist hypothesis has picked up speed over the last two decades. For example, consider the work carried out by the Osaka Group for the Study of Dynamic Structures, founded in 1987, in the wake of an international interdisciplinary meeting convened “to present and discuss some opinions opposed to the dominant neo-Darwinist paradigm.” Scientists from all over the world participated, including the outstanding geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti, then a professor at the University of Perugia, Italy. In 1980, together with Roberto Fondi, now a professor at the University of Siena, Sermonti wrote Dopo Darwin—Critica all’evoluzionismo (After Darwin—A Critique of Evolutionism, Rusconi, 1980). “Biology,” Sermonti explains, “has no proof at all of the spontaneous origin of life, or rather biology has proved its impossibility. There is no such thing as a gradation of life from elementary to complex. From a bacterium to a butterfly to man the biochemical complexity is substantially the same.”   For his part, Fondi shows that from the first appearance of fossils to this day, the variety and riches of living beings have not increased. New groups have replaced older ones, but the intermediate forms that the evolutionists have so frantically searched for do not exist. “The theory of evolution,” Sermonti and Fondi conclude, “has been contradicted as have few other scientific theories in the past.”

In Le forme della vita (The Forms of Life, Armando, 1981), Sermonti unveils other obstacles to Darwinism. According to the renowned geneticist, the “random” origin of life and the gradual transformation of the species through “selective change” are no longer sustainable because the most elementary life is incredibly complex and because it is now proven that replacement of living groups takes place “by leaps” rather than “by degrees.”  Putting together forty years of experience, in 1999 he wrote Dimenticare Darwin—Ombre sull’evoluzione (Forgetting Darwin—Shadows on Evolution, Rusconi, 1999). With rigorous argumentation, the author demolishes the three pillars of Darwinism: natural selection, sexual mixing and genetic “change.” According to him, history will remember the theory of evolution as the “Big Joke.”

Not Just Creationists
Sermonti has been often accused of being a “creationist” or a “religious fundamentalist” even though he has always said he does not fit his scientific vision into a Christian perspective, and this yet one more aspect to note in the polemic against Darwinism, which many people other than Christians also contest it.  In this sense, it is interesting to note the recent editorial in Il Cerchio, “Seppellire Darwin? Dalla critica del darwinismo agli albori d’una scienza nuova,” ("Bury Darwin? From a Critique of Darwinism to the Dawn of a New Science") containing essays by seven specialists including Sermonti, Fondi and Giovanni Monastra, director of Italy’s National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research. The title refers to the famous phrase by Chandra Wickramasinghe, a professor of applied mathematics of the University College of Cardiff, “The probability that life was formed from inanimate matter is equal to 1 followed by 40,000 zeros . . . . It is large enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution.”

From Dimenticare Darwin—Ombre sull’evoluzione’s introduction: For the first time in Italy, a critique of Darwinism is presented in all its complexity thanks to the interdisciplinary contribution of scholars of several orientations—[b]eyond the polemic between neo-Darwinian fundamentalists and religious integralists, the essay demonstrates how the critique of the now old neo-Darwinist paradigm opens the doors to a new science.

A Crisis of the Positivist Paradigm
Francis Crick, who together with Watson discovered the structure of DNA, openly declared, “An honest man, armed only with the knowledge available to us, could affirm only that, in a certain sense, the origin of life at the moment appears to be rather a miracle,” In the same wavelength, Harold Hurey, a disciple of Stanley Miller who made history with his failed attempt to recreate life in the laboratory from a so-called primordial broth, said, “All of us who studied the origins of life uphold that the more we get into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved in any way.” Indeed, a lot of faith is required to believe in evolutionism, and it is precisely that faith, of a clearly positivist^[1] mold, that is now beginning to weaken.

In Darwinismo: le ragioni di una crisi (Darwinism: The Reasons of a Crisis), Gianluca Marletta sticks his finger in the wound by observing that “The crisis of Darwinism is above all a crisis of the philosophical paradigms that allowed its success.”  “One cannot understand the origin of this doctrine,” Marletta explains, “without going back to the cultural climate of ‘triumphant positivism’ straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” According to Marletta, Darwinism constituted a wonderful occasion to strengthen the positivistic view of the world being affirmed at that time. Darwinism represented the perfect tool to transplant, into the biological field, the mechanic and materialist paradigms already imposed on the social sciences. This is the true motive of this theory’s success. A motive that now begins to subside with the crisis of the positivist paradigm. This explains the almost fanatical tenacity with which evolutionists are defending their convictions. “Many fear,” concludes Marletta, “that the fall of Darwinism can bring down with it the whole positivist vision of the world.”

God’s Comeback
The crumbling of positivism is bringing back to the limelight issues that a certain conventional wisdom thought to have definitively eliminated. Shaken from the sudden crumbling of old certainties, worried about the chaos that increasingly marks this postmodern age, many people are once again asking the fundamental questions: Does my life have a transcendental meaning? Is there an intelligent project in nature? In short, does God exist?   Sociologist Rosa Alberoni wrote about this in her book, Il Dio di Michelangelo e la barba di Darwin (The God of Michelangelo and Darwin’s Beard), published last November by Rizzoli with a preface by Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council Justice and Peace. The onslaught of “Darwin’s worshippers,” Alberoni explains, is carried out by the “usual destructive atheists obsessed with the goal of stamping out Christ and destroying the Judeo-Christian civilization after having sucked its blood and essence.” This sullen assault, however, in the deeply changed ambience of post-modernity, risks being counterproductive: The monkey myth is what really shook ordinary people. Like soldiers woken up by an alarm in the middle of the night, Christian believers and [O]rthodox Jews prepared for the defense. Or rather for the war, because that is what it has become . . . [o]n the symbolic level, the bone of contention is the ancestor of man: God or a monkey? Should one believe in God or in Darwin? This is the substantial nature of the ongoing clash in our civilization.

In other words, a real war of religion looms in the dawn of the Third Millennium. Precisely that which secularists have tried to avoid at all cost.

Footnote:

1. Positivism is the philosophical system created by August Comte (1798–1857), which only accepts the truths that we can reach by direct observation or by experimentation. Thus it denies classical philosophy, theology and all supernatural religion.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

The more I hear of your idea the more crazy it sounds.

Let's apply LeGrande's diurnal lag theory to astronomical systems held together by gravity (binary stars, globular clusters, galaxies). Gamma Persei is an eclipsing binary. The two stars are separated by about 10 AU and their "apparent" images are hard to separate with a telescope. When the primary and secondary stars are side by side, their distances to the earth are roughly the same, so the LeGrandean diurnal lag theory says that their actual diurnal positions in the sky are ahead by some 225 years (wherever that may end up to be). But when the secondary eclipses the primary, it is 10 AU closer to the earth. So now the actual position of the secondary lags behind the actual position of the primary by 83 minutes or about 21 degrees or so. Since the period of this system is about 14.6 years, LeGrandean astronomy says that the these two stars wander away from each other by some 21 degrees in the sky every 7.3 years.

[LeGrande]

Suppose the sun was 173.5 AU from the earth. At this distance, it would take 24 hours for light to travel from the sun to the earth. According to LeGrande's theory of diurnal lag, this would cause the sun's "actual" position to lead its apparent position by 24 hours. So, the "actual" position would be the same as the apparent position. The sun would actually be where it apparently is. Furthermore this would be the case if the sun's distance were any multiple of 173.5 AU.

Only if you consider a stopped clock to be right twice a day : )

[LeGrande]

So let's say it's a sunny summer and an Eskimo is standing on the north poll watching the sun through his bone-slit sunglasses. Will he notice that the sun appears to change position as he rotates his head left to right and back? How is that different then the world speeding up or slowing down?

It isn't any different from the world rotating left to right and back. If both the earth and the sun where stationary then the sun would be where you see it.

What's your best evidence that this absurd-sounding idea is true? Why can't I replicate it on the merry go around? What is different between the merry go around rotating 180 degrees per 8.5 minutes and the earth doing the same?

As I patiently tried to explain before, your merry go round experiment is fine except that you have to pulse the water and laser to see what is happening and it would help if you used the outside of the center spinning cup instead of the center.

I think all of this spinning has you dizzy. I will give you three shooting examples. First when the skeet come by sideways you have to point the gun in front of them when you shoot them because it takes time for the shot to get to the skeet. Now lets put you in the back of a speeding pickup, with a rifle, shooting off to the side. The only difference this time is that you are moving not the target you still have to lead the target if you want to hit it. The amount of lead that you need depends on the speed of the bullet, your distance to the target and the speed of the pickup.

Now lets use a laser rifle and put you on a black comet, speeding by, shooting at me as I star gaze. Lets also say that your laser rifle illuminates the comet for a brief instant when you fire the rifle. Lets also say that it takes the light 10 minutes to get to me. Now when the laser pulse hits my eyes I will see you and your comet where you were 10 minutes ago. If you keep shooting laser blasts at me each blast I see will show me you and your comet 10 minutes in the past. Your actual position at the time I see you will be way in front of where I see you.

[LeGrande]

Are you saying that when I look up at the night sky half the stars I see are actually on the other side of the world?

They might be. They have had billions of years to move around. They most certainly aren't where you see them. Also except for the stars in our galaxy most of the stars that you see when you look into the sky are galaxies.

When I look up and see mars, is it also not where it appears? When nasa sent the mars rovers up to mars, did they have to calculate this in?

It isn't a big factor but they certainly calculate it in. You don't think that they simply point the rocket at Mars and fire it do you?

Can you find anyone at nasa who plans space missions and who agrees with you? The more I hear of your idea the more crazy it sounds.

LOL They all agree with me : ) If this sounds crazy to you, then I need to withdraw my reading recommendations. May I suggest "Physics for Dummy's" I think I saw that title at a bookstore once. And no I haven't read it, but I tend to trust elementary Physics books.

[mrjesse]

Said mrjesse: Are you saying that when I look up at the night sky half the stars I see are actually on the other side of the world?

They might be. They have had billions of years to move around. They most certainly aren't where you see them. Also except for the stars in our galaxy most of the stars that you see when you look into the sky are galaxies.

May I say that you sidestepped the question. It ought to be clear from the context of our conversation that I meant "Are you saying that when I look up at the night sky half the stars I see are actually on the other side of the word because of and to a degree as a function of the earth's rate of rotation?"

said mrjesse: Can you find anyone at nasa who plans space missions and who agrees with you? The more I hear of your idea the more crazy it sounds.

LOL They all agree with me : )

Great to hear! Now can you find a single official NASA statement that says "The sun when viewed from earth appears ~2.13 degrees behind its actual position due to the rotation of the earth ~2.13 degrees per ~8.5 minutes and the light-distance of ~8.5 minutes from the sun to the earth?"

thanks,

-Jesse

[LeGrande]

May I say that you sidestepped the question. It ought to be clear from the context of our conversation that I meant "Are you saying that when I look up at the night sky half the stars I see are actually on the other side of the word because of and to a degree as a function of the earth's rate of rotation?"

You seem to be implying that the earths rotation moved the stars from their locations. Are you really that confused?

Great to hear! Now can you find a single official NASA statement that says "The sun when viewed from earth appears ~2.13 degrees behind its actual position due to the rotation of the earth ~2.13 degrees per ~8.5 minutes and the light-distance of ~8.5 minutes from the sun to the earth?"

Why don't I put you out of your misery. Look up aberration of light. Google is your friend : )

[mrjesse]

Said mrjesse: So let's say it's a sunny summer and an Eskimo is standing on the north poll watching the sun through his bone-slit sunglasses. Will he notice that the sun appears to change position as he rotates his head left to right and back? How is that different then the world speeding up or slowing down?

It isn't any different from the world rotating left to right and back. If both the earth and the sun where stationary then the sun would be where you see it.

So let's say this Eskimo has his staff stuck in the snow 10 feet in front of him, directly between him and the sun, and he's got a flashlight taped to the top, shining at him.

Are you saying then that as he rotates his head right to left and back, the apparent position of the sun to him will lag its real position due to the 8.5 minutes flight time from sun to earth, causing the sun to first appear on the left of his flashlight then on the right?

Said mrjesse: What's your best evidence that this absurd-sounding idea is true? Why can't I replicate it on the merry go around? What is different between the merry go around rotating 180 degrees per 8.5 minutes and the earth doing the same?

As I patiently tried to explain before, your merry go round experiment is fine except that you have to pulse the water and laser to see what is happening and it would help if you used the outside of the center spinning cup instead of the center.

I've mentioned two different merry go around experiments. The first one was in 472 where I talked only about the sun's apparent lag and merry go around RPMs. I didn't mention a thing about water jets or laser pulses on the first merry go around experiment. Then in 488 you said "Your merry go round experiment conclusion was wrong " but never explained how or why it was wrong!

It wasn't until 490 that I first introduced the second merry go around experiment, which I introduced by saying "Here's another merry go around experiment." I proceeded to describe an experiment with me on a merry go around with a laser and water pulses shooting at me from the same position and timed together. But I never mentioned any cup in the center. Are you thinking of the "Turntable experiment" I described in 469?

Anyway, since you had proclaimed that my merry go around conclusion was wrong before I had even posted the second merry go around experiment, you must have been talking about the first one. In any case, here are my two merry go around experiments again, in order:

Said mrjesse:
Lets say that I'm on a mountaintop park, where there is a merry go around. It's a beautiful bright sunny warm morning, and as I sit on the merry go around, I look out and notice that the sun is exactly horizontal. Now let us further pretend that I get the merry go around rotating at 17 minutes per turn. This way, it'll have turned 180 degrees in the time it takes the light to reach the earth from the sun. So now let's say I have a very sensitive gravity meter which can measure the sun's gravitational pull.

Now let me ask you - which way will the sun's gravity appear related to it's light? Will the gravity of the sun be in the east while its gravitational pull will be toward the west?

And here's merry go around number two:

Said mrjesse:
If I am on a merry go around, and it's turning, and there is a pulsing water jet and laser (which pulse in unison) both pointing at the center of the merry go around. The pulse rate and turn rate of the merry go around are such that no water pulse overlaps the life of the previous, and the merry go around turns 1/4 of a turn in the time it takes the leading edge of a water pulse to reach the center of the merry go around. Now it's a warm day and I'm sitting in the middle of the merry go around, with a good water proof compass. The water jet and laser are exactly north, 20 feet, of the center of the merry go around.

Will I not find that every time either light or water hits me that it will be coming exactly from the north?

Logical answers would be "Yes, No, or Yes but this doesn't carry over to the situation with the sun and its apparent position."

So which is it, on these two experiments? They are careful and simple, and a simple "yes" or "no" would be perfectly reasonable and would solve a lot of confusion.

Thanks,

-Jesse

[LeGrande]

Hmm, I will give it one last try. Forget everything up till now : ) Break the loop and start fresh. Here is a slightly different topic but it may help you understand the principle.

The first thing to note is that you can’t see something until the light from it reaches you. It isn’t instantaneous. Now lets pretend that light (photons) are moving slowly like snow or rain. You go get in your car and observe the snow falling straight down. Then you slowly start driving the car down the road, gradually accelerating. As you accelerate you start to notice that the snow is not coming from straight above anymore it is coming from somewhere in front and and above you. Now as the car gets going really fast you notice that the snow is coming straight at the car as if the source of the snow is straight in front of you being blown horizontally by the wind. If the snow was photons you would see the sun above you as you got in the car and then as you accelerated to relativistic speeds you would see the sun directly in front of you.

If you watch many science fiction flicks you will occasionally see the effect illustrated when the space craft accelerate to faster than light speed. They bring the whole universe down to a single point of light as they accelerate. Some science fiction flicks are more accurate than others : )

You could also think of it like a strobe light except that the flashes of light tell you where your dancing partner was and that they have moved since you last saw them in the light. It is still pretty much the same effect.

[mrjesse]

Said mrjesse: May I say that you sidestepped the question. It ought to be clear from the context of our conversation that I meant "Are you saying that when I look up at the night sky half the stars I see are actually on the other side of the word because of and to a degree as a function of the earth's rate of rotation?"

You seem to be implying that the earths rotation moved the stars from their locations. Are you really that confused?

No, I'm not confused at all. I suspect you are. All I'm saying is that by your claim that if the earth were turning at the rate of 180 degrees per 8.5 minutes that the sun's apparent position would be 180 degrees off, and according to your claim that the sun's apparent position is 2.13 degrees behind where it actually is due to the speed of light and the distance from sun to earth, -- based on these claims I'm concluding that you believe that the stars which are multiple light-days away from the earth would appear to be in different places then they really are. For example, a star that is half a light day would (by your claim) appear on the other side of the world as compared to its real position. A star that was 1 full light-day away would appear in its normal position, but any star that is a non-integer number of light-days away will (by your claim) show up somewhere other then it is. Thus, since half the stars will be roughly xxxx.5+/-0.25 light days away, then it stands to reason that half the stars we see at night are actually on the other side of the world when we see them on our side - not because the earth's rotation moved then but because (by your idea) the earth's rotation caused them to appear in a different location.

Said mrjesse: Great to hear! Now can you find a single official NASA statement that says "The sun when viewed from earth appears ~2.13 degrees behind its actual position due to the rotation of the earth ~2.13 degrees per ~8.5 minutes and the light-distance of ~8.5 minutes from the sun to the earth?"

Why don't I put you out of your misery. Look up aberration of light. Google is your friend : )

Again, you're sidestepping the question and refusing to provide evidence of your claim.

But thanks for the tip about aberration of light - I did look it up, and I learned some more things, not the least of which was that you are wrong :-)

There are several types of aberration of light - but I'm assuming you're talking about stellar aberration of light since you did not mention - let me know if you were talking about another and we'll address that one.

WP says

"stellar aberration is independent of the distance of a celestial object from the observer, and depends only on the observer's instantaneous transverse velocity with respect to the incoming light beam, at the moment of observation."

In case you don't know, transverse velocity just means the speed with which the observer is moving sideways across the direction of the light.

But see how this is exactly the opposite of what you're saying. You're saying that the distance of the sun to the earth has something to do with it, and that the degrees per lightminute of earth's rotation have something to do with it. But in reality, neither has anything to do with it! The factors that count are the transverse velocity - in other words the surface speed of the earth as it orbits the sun and spins. But these aren't what you were talking about!

But maybe you were talking about light-time correction. WP says

Aberration should also be distinguished from light-time correction, which is due to the motion of the observed object, like a planet, through space during the time taken by its light to reach an observer on Earth. Light-time correction depends upon the velocity and distance of the emitting object during the time it takes for its light to travel to Earth. Light-time correction does not depend on the motion of the Earth—it only depends on Earth's position at the instant when the light is observed.

Furthermore, WP says:

Light-time correction is a displacement in the apparent position of a celestial object from its true position (or geometric position) caused by the object's motion during the time it takes its light to reach an observer.

Thus, if you are talking about light-time correction causing a 2.13 degrees lag in the apparent position of the sun, you must believe that the sun must be orbiting the earth!

So I don't know what you're talking about - it doesn't make sense with what WP says to be sure.

But do please answer yes or no to each of my merry g around experiments in my last post to you - that will help me so much.

thanks,

-Jesse

PS: I see that you just posted the rain falling example for "Stellar aberration." So I'm assuming you think that the reason the sun appears "about 7 minutes behind its actual position" is due to stellar aberration. But stellar aberration is independent of the distance from the sun and the earth, just like rain-aberration is independent of how far it's fallen! But that not what you've been talking about! You've been talking about an apparent lag which is a function of the distance from sun to earth and the rotational speed of the earth - not just a function of the transverse surface velocity!

[mrjesse]

As to the rain aberration experiment, I fully covered it in my previous post.

Hmm, I will give it one last try. Forget everything up till now : ) Break the loop and start fresh.

But I've already put out two great examples and each one only needs a yes or a no answer. Why do you refuse to answer these? My observation is that usually when someone refuses to follow a certain thought path it is because they know that if they go there they'll be proven wrong.

Here they are, again:

Lets say that I'm on a mountaintop park, where there is a merry go around. It's a beautiful bright sunny warm morning, and as I sit on the merry go around, I look out and notice that the sun is exactly horizontal. Now let us further pretend that I get the merry go around rotating at 17 minutes per turn. This way, it'll have turned 180 degrees in the time it takes the light to reach the earth from the sun. So now let's say I have a very sensitive gravity meter which can measure the sun's gravitational pull.

Now let me ask you - which way will the sun's gravity appear related to it's light? Will the gravity of the sun be in the east while its gravitational pull will be toward the west?

And here's merry go around number two:

If I am on a merry go around, and it's turning, and there is a pulsing water jet and laser (which pulse in unison) both pointing at the center of the merry go around. The pulse rate and turn rate of the merry go around are such that no water pulse overlaps the life of the previous, and the merry go around turns 1/4 of a turn in the time it takes the leading edge of a water pulse to reach the center of the merry go around. Now it's a warm day and I'm sitting in the middle of the merry go around, with a good water proof compass. The water jet and laser are exactly north, 20 feet, of the center of the merry go around.

Will I not find that every time either light or water hits me that it will be coming exactly from the north?

Logical answers would be "Yes, No, or Yes but this doesn't carry over to the situation with the sun and its apparent position."

So which is it, on these two experiments? They are careful and simple, and a simple "yes" or "no" would be perfectly reasonable and would solve a lot of confusion. By the way, if it simplifies things, the first merry go around (or both for all I care) could be placed right on the north pole.

Thanks,

-Jesse

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Only if you consider a stopped clock to be right twice a day

Ah, very good. So then, at distances of 173.5 AU and multiples thereof, an object's "apparent" diurnal position just so happens to coincide with an object's "actual" diurnal position. This number, 175.3 AU is then an important cosmological constant in LeGrandean physics. Take, for example, a galaxy in the northern hemisphere. Out of those millions of stars, a small fraction would happen to be nearly some multiple of 173.5 AU from the earth, and so these stars would, according to your theory, actually be in the galaxy that they appear to be in. The rest of the stars in this galaxy, although appearing to be in the same galaxy with the stars that are actually there, are actually strewn out along a circle around the Pole star.

[LeGrande]

Ah, very good. So then, at distances of 173.5 AU and multiples thereof, an object's "apparent" diurnal position just so happens to coincide with an object's "actual" diurnal position. This number, 175.3 AU is then an important cosmological constant in LeGrandean physics. Take, for example, a galaxy in the northern hemisphere. Out of those millions of stars, a small fraction would happen to be nearly some multiple of 173.5 AU from the earth, and so these stars would, according to your theory, actually be in the galaxy that they appear to be in. The rest of the stars in this galaxy, although appearing to be in the same galaxy with the stars that are actually there, are actually strewn out along a circle around the Pole star.

I don't have a clue about what you are talking about. When you look into the night sky you are looking into the past, sometimes billions of years into the past. Nothing is actually where it appears to us now. Some of the stars that you see still shining brightly in the sky burned out ages ago and there are new stars whose light our ancestors won't see for a billion years, if they ever do.

This is a simple concept, why are you struggling so hard with it?

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

I don't have a clue about what you are talking about.

If the sun was 173.5 AU from the Earth, by how many degrees would its apparent position lag behind its actual position? Would these two positions coincide?

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

[mrjesse] Are you saying that when I look up at the night sky half the stars I see are actually on the other side of the world?

[LeGrande] They might be. They have had billions of years to move around.

Sirius is 8.6 light-years away. Is there some reason why Sirius should move into the Southern hemisphere in only 8.6 years?

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

[mrjesse] If the earth were turning at the rate of 180 degrees per 8.5 minutes, how far lagged would the sun's optical image be from its real position?

[LeGrande] 180 degrees off.

So, then, it would be daytime on the side facing away from the sun, and nighttime on the side facing toward the sun, and the Earth, in this case, would cast a shadow toward the sun, according to you.

We need not look far for illustrations of this. Neptune is 30 AU from the sun. Neptune's period of rotation is 16 hours. For an observer on Neptune, the LeGrandean optical lag of the sun would be 30*8.3 = 249 minutes (4.15 hours) or 360*4.15/16 = 93.3 degrees. Thus, Neptune casts a shadow which is nearly perpendicular to the line joining Neptune and the Sun.

[LeGrande]

Sirius is 8.6 light-years away. Is there some reason why Sirius should move into the Southern hemisphere in only 8.6 years?

Sirius is close to us so its actual position is going to be very close to its apparent position. Why do you think that it would move into the Southern Hemisphere?

[LeGrande]

We need not look far for illustrations of this. Neptune is 30 AU from the sun. Neptune's period of rotation is 16 hours. For an observer on Neptune, the LeGrandean optical lag of the sun would be 30*8.3 = 249 minutes (4.15 hours) or 360*4.15/16 = 93.3 degrees. Thus, Neptune casts a shadow which is nearly perpendicular to the line joining Neptune and the Sun.

Why don't you do yourself a favor and look up aberration of light in Wikipedia. I don't think that I can help you.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Sirius is close to us so its actual position is going to be very close to its apparent position.

The Sun is even closer, but you say the Sun's apparent position is off by 2.1 degrees from its actual position. Do you believe the Sun revolves around the Earth?

[LeGrande]

The Sun is even closer, but you say the Sun's apparent position is off by 2.1 degrees from its actual position. Do you believe the Sun revolves around the Earth?

No and did you look up aberration of light in Wikipedia?

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Why do you think that it would move into the Southern Hemisphere?

No, I'm not crazy. But you say that maybe half the stars mrjesse sees when he looks up at the night sky are actually on the other side of the world. How would they get there without travelling faster than light?