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To: GourmetDan

Ah, but the nuances come later. You are aware that there are differences between being locked in an accelerating spaceship, and being in a gravitational field, I’m sure. Similar issues occur with rotating reference frames.

As a practical matter, it takes a lot less energy to rotate an object, than to rotate the entire universe around it.


80 posted on 05/05/2008 5:06:54 AM PDT by PreciousLiberty
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To: PreciousLiberty
"Ah, but the nuances come later. You are aware that there are differences between being locked in an accelerating spaceship, and being in a gravitational field, I’m sure. Similar issues occur with rotating reference frames."

Ah yes. Now we are left with allusions to undefined 'nuances'. I think we have found who has the reading comprehension problem.

When Einstein stated that a set of physical laws could be formulated for all reference frames, that includes gravitational fields and accelerating spaceships. And when Hoyle stated that you cannot say that Copernican theory is 'right' and Ptolemaic theory is 'wrong' *in any meaningful physical sense*, he meant exactly that. No meaningful physical sense means no meaningful physical sense. That leaves only philosophy and belief.

We could discuss nuances forever. Such as the nuances around whether GR was developed to reconcile the 'fact' that we 'know' that the earth moves while lacking evidence for such motion? (M-M null result) Or nuances like the continued lack of evidence for the motion of the earth, like Airey's Failure.

And nuances like centrifugal force and Coriolis effects arising naturally in a rotating universe but defined as 'fictitious' forces in GR?

Or how about nuances like the failure of Gravity Probe B's effort to find evidence of 'frame-dragging' (which was one of it's main goals) because of 'un-modeled' effects?

But, the fact remains that both Einstein and Hoyle understood what continues to escape you.

81 posted on 05/05/2008 6:20:41 AM PDT by GourmetDan (Eccl 10:2 - The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.)
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To: PreciousLiberty
"As a practical matter, it takes a lot less energy to rotate an object, than to rotate the entire universe around it."

Which is a philosophical preference wrt the origins of the universe that has nothing to do w/ Occam's Razor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor

"Thus the popular rephrasing of the razor - that "the simplest explanation is the best one" - fails to capture the gist of the reason behind it, in that it conflates a rigorous notion of simplicity and ease of human comprehension. The two are obviously correlated, but hardly equivalent."

82 posted on 05/05/2008 6:28:57 AM PDT by GourmetDan (Eccl 10:2 - The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.)
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