Book Review: Galileo Was Wrong

Catholic Truths ^ | 6/28/2006 | Mark Wyatt

[Markjwyatt]

Galileo Was Wrong, Vol. I Finally Released!

Robert Sungenis, Ph. D., and Robert Bennett, Ph. D. have just released Galileo Was Wrong, Vol. I (the Scientific Evidence). This book demonstrates through history, philosophy, and mainly through science itself that modern science has not demonstrated that the earth moves or is not in the center of the universe. It demonstrates that in fact observation after observation and experiment after experiment indicate that the earth does not move and is in the center of the universe. Scientists after scientist admit candidly that "it appears that the earth is standing still" or that " we appear to have a priviliged position" (i.e., are at center). Of course there are explanations as to why every observation indicates that we are at the center and not moving, yet we "know" that we are not at center and are moving. By studying the history of the observations and experiments the authors clearly show that the observations and experimental results, when they present themselves, are rejected out of hand by the scientists, without even considering one of the simplest explanations- THE EARTH IS AT CENTER AND IS NOT MOVING. Rather science becomes more complicated to reconcile the observations with the undemonstrated assertion that the earth is moving and not in the center. Now we must accept that the universe is a 4-dimensional hypercube or donut (in order to escape the possibility that we are at center) and that objects (and clocks) shrink in the direction of travel (to escape the interferometric evidence that we are not circling the sun at 30 km/second), etc.

This book will change the reader's view on what is reality and what is not.

[smpb]

you are absolutely wrong, Mark! All experts in General Relativity would agree that in GR acceleration is an absolute concept. The concept of an "inertial frame" is a crucial one in GR. An inertial frame is a non-accelerating frame. One can tell by local measurements whether one is in an inertial frame or not. This is non-controversial. Anyone who knows GR understands this. It is true that Einstein was led to GR by Machian ideas, and according to Mach's ideas acceleration is relative. But it is generally agreed by that the theory Einstein actually came up with is NOT Machian. Though he was inspired by Mach's ideas, Einstein's theory does not actually realize Mach's principle of the relativity of acceleration.

[smpb]

I am the author of "Modern Physics and Ancient Faith". Bennett is an ignoramus, and you can quote me on that.

[Markjwyatt]

The simplest explanation is the neo-Tychonic model: Earth stable at center, universe rotates, holding earth stable at center (expalined in the book). Sun revolves with the universe (though has a small difference in velocity), planets orbit the sun with elliptical orbits (earth is not a planet in this case). The stars revolution is centered on the sun.

This is an exact geocemetric inversion of heliocentrism.

Other more complex explanations are based on aether, aether flow, and abberation.

Mark Wyatt

[Markjwyatt]

Samuel M Barr says:

"you are absolutely wrong, Mark! All experts in General Relativity would agree that in GR acceleration is an absolute concept. The concept of an "inertial frame" is a crucial one in GR. An inertial frame is a non-accelerating frame. One can tell by local measurements whether one is in an inertial frame or not. This is non-controversial. Anyone who knows GR understands this. It is true that Einstein was led to GR by Machian ideas, and according to Mach's ideas acceleration is relative. But it is generally agreed by that the theory Einstein actually came up with is NOT Machian. Though he was inspired by Mach's ideas, Einstein's theory does not actually realize Mach's principle of the relativity of acceleration. "

An inertial frame is a non-accelerating one in general relativity (or any other theory), yes. BUT YOU CAN MAKE ANY FRAME IN THE UNIVERSE A REFERENCE FRAME. and the rest of the universe will accelerate around it and account for the forces which makes the frame you chose a fixed frame. This is the general principle of relativity.

General relativity describes the system (in this case the universe) relative to the rest of the universe from the perspective of the reference frame. Thus relativity.


Mark Wyatt

[CarolinaGuitarman]

Why is this thread in Religion when it's quite clearly YOUR blog?

[muawiyah]

The author Philip Jose Farmer had yet another thought on the matter that explained the "speed of light" problem for stars as far out as a light year.

He proposed the "pocket universe".

[reductio]

You're quite the brave soul, posting something like this.

I believe it is the truth.

[VadeRetro]

The simplest explanation is the neo-Tychonic model: Earth stable at center, universe rotates, holding earth stable at center (expalined in the book). Sun revolves with the universe (though has a small difference in velocity), planets orbit the sun with elliptical orbits (earth is not a planet in this case). The stars revolution is centered on the sun.

To the extent that this is totally unfalsifiable, it is scientifically useless. To the extent that it says anything heliocentric theories do not, it is wrong.

[smpb]

Mark, You are talking nonsense. Rotation is not relative in GR. Period.

By the way, Robert Bennett told me, when I pressed him, that he does not believe in either special or general relativity! I can send you the e-mail where he said this to me. Bennett talks (as you do) about the Lense-Thirring effect and the dragging of inertial frames, but the Lense-Thirring effect is something that exists in General Relativity and not in Newtonian physics. Yet Bennett says he believes in Newtonian physics and not General Relativity. He totally inconsistent!
He rejects GR and then appeals to a GR effect.

I just looked you up in the ISI database and find that no one named M.J. Wyatt has ever published a research paper in physics. There is an M.J. Wyatt who has published a few papers in engineering. What are your credentials for arguing about General Relativity with someone who has taught graduate courses in it at a major university? (In fact I am teaching it again next fall.) You have what some people call Chutzpah. Look, fellah. I do this stuff for a living. Do you also tell brain surgeons and airline pilots about the technicalities of their fields? Sorry to be harsh, but God is not served by his followers speaking nonsense.

Bennett is an ignoramus when it comes to physics and Sungenis is a bigger one. Sungenis wrote some brilliant theological works (like "Not by Faith Alone") but he is now dabbling in things he knows zippo about. He still obviously has the fundamentalist idea of every man his own Pope, except that instead of rejecting 2,000 years of Church Tradition, as he used to do as a fundamentalist, he now rejects 400 years of well established physics. Just as he used to think he could figure out the whole Bible on his own without the aid of Tradition, so now he thinks he can figure out the physical universe on his own without knowing what theoretical physicists have been up to for the last 400 years. Chutzpah to the nth degree.

[Markjwyatt]

Samuel Barr says:"All experts in General Relativity would agree that in GR acceleration is an absolute concept."

Another way of putting the same point is to say that, in Newtonian mechanics and special relativity, rotation is “absolute” because the transformations between inertial frames (Galilean or Lorentzian) preserve rotational states. Thus the “absoluteness” of rotation arises precisely from singling out one type of frame, by one type of transformation, instead of allowing arbitrary transformations and arbitrary frames. Einstein held that this epistemological insight had a natural mathematical representation in the principle of general covariance, or the principle that the laws of nature are to be invariant under arbitrary coordinate transformations. More precisely, what this means is that coordinate transformations are no longer required (as in the affine spaces of Newtonian mechanics and special relativity) to take straight lines to straight lines, but only to preserve the smoothness of curves (i.e. their differentiability). The general theory of relativity was intended to be a generally covariant account of spacetime, and its general covariance was intended to express the general relativity of motion. And the theory came into being because Einstein perceived a deep connection between this project and that of finding a relativistic theory of gravitation.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-iframes/

Mark Wyatt

[Markjwyatt]

Dr. Barr:

Are you basically saying you accept general relativity, but not its strong principle?

How do you explain this statement from Einstein with no relativity of rotation? Is our argument over semantics?:

"The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, 'the sun is at rest and the earth moves,' or 'the sun moves and the earth is at rest,' would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS." -- Einstein and Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, p.212 (p.248 in original 1938 ed.)

CS obviously = coordinate systems

How about:

Max Born in his famous book,"Einstein's Theory of Relativity",Dover Publications,1962, pgs 344 & 345 says:

"...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 Corpenicus are equally right."




Mark Wyatt

[Ichneumon]

This book demonstrates through history, philosophy, and mainly through science itself that modern science has not demonstrated that the earth moves or is not in the center of the universe. It demonstrates that in fact observation after observation and experiment after experiment indicate that the earth does not move and is in the center of the universe. Scientists after scientist admit candidly that "it appears that the earth is standing still" or that " we appear to have a priviliged position" (i.e., are at center). Of course there are explanations as to why every observation indicates that we are at the center and not moving, yet we "know" that we are not at center and are moving.

Sadly, this is no more bizarre or self-deluded than the folks who declare that the Earth is only a few thousand years old...

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Rather science becomes more complicated to reconcile the observations with the undemonstrated assertion that the earth is moving and not in the center.

This statement is true at least. You can simply assert that the earth is the center of the universe and let the rocket scientists use their model of the solar system to fly spacecraft.

Galileo actually stated that Copernicus description was just a model and not necessarily real anyway, so I'm not sure why Galileo is wrong as the blurb that was posted from the book says.

However, just as you can't prove the earth is not the center of the universe, you can't prove it is either. On larger scales the earth just disappears anyway. When you look at the relative motions over time of galaxies in the local cluster, the earth is ignored entirely while the centers of the galaxies as the center of mass of the galaxies is used.

[Mrs. Darla Ruth Schwerin]

"This book will change the reader's view on what is reality and what is not."

Is this real? I'm not sure of reality, ya know...