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To: Dan Day
"Even in an inertial reference frame where the whole Solar System is zooming along at X miles per hour relative to some other reference object, it's true that the light reaching the Earth from the Sun comes from where the Sun "was" 8.3 minutes ago, HOWEVER, the matching velocity of the Earth causes the apparent position of the Sun to be shifted forward (via aberration) in a way that *EXACTLY* cancels the "lagged" view of the Sun, and from the Earth you'll see the Sun RIGHT WHERE IT IS AT THE PRESENT MOMENT." - Dan Day

Although the optical illusion (re: your "aberration" above) might be construed to cause an Earth-based observer to coincidentally be looking at the right angle and in the right direction "as if" to see the actual position of the Sun, in reality what the Earth-based observer actually views is both the Light and the image of the Sun when it was 67,728 miles back from its current path due to the 8.3 minute delay in Light reaching the Earth from the Sun.

Moreover, such an "aberration" fails to apply to Gravity. Neither the Earth nor Gravity "knows" where the Sun will be in the future. On the contrary, the Earth is being tugged around in its orbit by the Gravity from the Sun at the tme that the Gravity left the Sun. If Gravity traveled at the slow speed of Light as you maintain, then it would have an 8.3 minute delay before it reached the Earth from the Sun.

This would cause the Earth to be pulled around the location where the Sun was located 8.3 minutes ago, which is 67,728 miles off of the center of where the Sun was back then.

Furthermore, this orbital deviation around the "old" position of the Sun would increase for more remote planets such as Jupiter and Neptune, et al.

But that's not what astronomers observe. The deviation in orbits does not increase noticeably in the more remote planets; rather, the planets tend to actually be nearly in the very same level/plane of orbit around the Sun (indicating that Gravity travels so fast that the Sun and planets haven't uniformly moved very far by the time it covers the distance from the Sun to them).

222 posted on 01/14/2003 9:42:26 AM PST by Southack (Media bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
Although the optical illusion (re: your "aberration" above) might be construed to cause an Earth-based observer to coincidentally be looking at the right angle and in the right direction "as if" to see the actual position of the Sun

Thank you for admitting that you were wrong when you repeatedly asserted:

And if the Solar System is moving due North toward Polaris, then the Sun that we "see" is 8.3 minutes South of the actual position of the Sun itself due to that delay in Light reaching the Earth from the Sun.
...although if you were a more honorable person, you would have made it more clear that you were shifting your claim, instead of mealy-mouthing it with waffle-words like "construed" and "coincidentally" (sorry, constancy across inertial frames is real, not "construed" and it's a necessary law of nature, not a "coincidence") and putting quotes around the inarguable fact of aberration, and weaseling with "as if"...

Nor did you actually have the guts to admit that you were abandoning your original claim, you just accepted the fact (*finally*) and then used it as a springboard to launch into yet more silly trolling, hoping that no one would notice it was a shift in your position...

As for your new attempt at a troll, your error (again) lies where it has this entire thread. Hint: "Inertial frames of reference". Come back when you've caught up on the last 99 years of physics and can discuss a scenario without violating things that have been known and verified since 1905.

I wasn't put on this Earth to correct your poor education, nor amuse you by playing whack-a-mole with your amateurish trolls. I've wasted enough time on you in this thread. Now that I've established your track record for any lurkers who may be about, my work here is done. Good day.

226 posted on 01/14/2003 4:59:53 PM PST by Dan Day
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