Geocentrism for Dumskies and Smart Kids, 2nd Ed.

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Have you ever heard something similar to these words?

“Geocentrism, you say? Poppycock! Everyone knows

the Earth revolves around the sun! There have been

all kinds of experiments that prove it so! Even the

Catholic Church admitted,

finally, that Galileo was

right in the pope’s 1992

speech! Newton showed us

that the smaller body, the

Earth, must revolve around

the larger body, the sun,

even as Galileo saw moons

circling Jupiter. There is no question the Earth must

revolve around the sun. Ask any scientist today and

he’ll tell you the Earth revolves around the sun.

You’d have to be a real quack to doubt it. You aren’t

a quack, are you?”

But if everyone can be so sure the

Earth revolves around the sun, why

do the following famous scientists

state or suggest otherwise?

Physicist, Albert Einstein: “…to the

question whether or not the motion

of the Earth in space can be made perceptible in terrestrial

experiments. We have already remarked that all attempts

of this nature led to a negative result.”

Lincoln Barnett (foreword by Albert Einstein): “We can’t

feel our motion through space, nor has any physical experiment

ever proved that the Earth actually is in motion.”

Stephen Hawking: “So which is real, the Ptolemaic or Copernican

system? Although it is not uncommon for people

to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not

true….one can use either picture as a model of the universe,

for our observations of the heavens can be explained

by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest.”

Astronomer, Fred Hoyle: “…we can take either the Earth

or the Sun, or any other point for that matter, as the center

of the solar system. This is certainly so for the purely kinematical

problem of describing the planetary motions. It is

also possible to take any point as the center even in dynamics,

although recognition of this freedom of choice had to

await the present century.”

Physicist, Hans Reichenbach: “It makes no sense, accordingly,

to speak of a difference in truth between Copernicus

and Ptolemy: both conceptions are equally permissible descriptions.

What has been considered as the greatest discovery

of occidental wisdom, as opposed to that of antiquity,

is questioned as to its truth value.”

Physicist, Dennis Sciama: “Whether the Earth rotates once

a day from west to east, as Copernicus taught, or the heavens

revolve once a day from east to west, as his predecessors

believed, the observable phenomena will be exactly the

same. This shows a defect in Newtonian dynamics, since an

empirical science ought not to contain a metaphysical as

sumption, which can never be proved or disproved by observation.”

Physicist, I Bernard Cohen: “There is no planetary observation

by which we on Earth can prove that the Earth is

moving in an orbit around the sun. Thus all Galileo’s discoveries

with the telescope can be accommodated to the

system invented by Tycho Brahe just before Galileo began

his observations of the heavens. In this Tychonic system,

the planets…move in orbits around the sun, while the sun

moves in an orbit around the Earth in a year. Furthermore,

the daily rotation of the heavens is communicated to the

sun and planets, so that the Earth itself neither rotates nor

revolves in an orbit.”

Physicist, Arthur Lynch: “Descartes is, however, doubly interesting

to us in the discussion of Relativity, for at one

time when the Inquisition was becoming uneasy about his

scientific researches, he gave them a reply that satisfied

them, or perhaps he merely gained time, which was long,

while they were trying to understand its meaning. He declared

that the sun went around the Earth, and that when

he said that the Earth revolved round the sun that was

merely another manner of expressing the same occurrence.

I met with this saying first from Henri Poincaré, and I

thought then that it was a witty, epigrammatic way of

compelling thought to the question; but on reflection I saw

that it was a statement of actual fact. The movements of

the two bodies are relative one to the other; it is a matter of

choice as to which we take as our place of observation.”

Physicist, Henrick Lorentz: “Briefly, everything occurs as if

the Earth were at rest…”

Phys. Wolfgang Pauli: “The failure of the many attempts to

measure terrestrially any effects of the earth’s motion…”10

Physicist, Henri Poincaré: “We do not have and cannot

have any means of discovering whether or not we are carried

along in a uniform motion of translation.”

Phys. Ernst Mach: “Obviously it matters little if we think

of the Earth as turning about on its axis, or if we view it at

rest while the fixed stars revolve around it. Geometrically

these are exactly the same case of a relative rotation of the

Earth and the fixed stars with respect to one another.”12

Phys. Julian B. Barbour: “Thus, even now, three and a half

centuries after Galileo’s condemnation by the Inquisition, it

is still remarkably difficult to say categorically whether the

earth moves, and, if so, in what particular sense.”

Physicist, Henri Poincaré: “A great deal of research has

been carried out concerning the influence of the Earth’s

movement. The results were always negative.”

Physicist, Albert Einstein: “The struggle, so violent in the

early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and

Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either coordinate

system 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

coordinate systems.”

Physicist, Isaac Newton: “In order for the Earth to be at

rest in the center of the system of the Sun, Planets, and

Comets, there is required both universal gravity and an

other force in addition that acts on all bodies equally according

to the quantity of matter in each of them and is

equal and opposite to the accelerative gravity with which

the Earth tends to the Sun….Since this force is equal and

opposite to its gravity toward the Sun, the Earth can truly

remain in equilibrium between these two forces and be at

rest. And thus celestial bodies can move around the Earth

at rest, as in the Tychonic system.”

Science historian, Martin Gardner: “The ancient argument

over whether the Earth rotates or the heavens revolve

around it (as Aristotle taught) is seen to be no more than

an argument over the simplest choice of a frame of reference.

Obviously, the most convenient choice is the universe.

Nothing except inconvenience prevents us from choosing

the Earth as a fixed frame of reference.”

Philosopher, Bertrand Russell: “But in the modern theory

the question between Copernicus and his predecessors is

merely one of convenience; all motion is relative, and there

is no difference between the two statements: ‘the earth rotates

once a day’ and ‘the heavens revolve about the Earth

once a day.’”

Astronomer, J. L. E. Dryer: “…the Earth-centered system…

is in reality absolutely identical with the system of

Copernicus and all computation of the places of the planets

are the same for the two systems.”

Physicist, Lawrence Krauss: “But when you look at CMB

map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in

fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth

around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt

us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe.

There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure

with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of

the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we

are truly the center of the universe.”

Physicist, Richard Feynman: “I suspect that the assumption

of uniformity of the universe reflects a prejudice born

of a sequence of overthrows of geocentric ideas.…It would

be embarrassing to find, after stating that we live in an ordinary

planet about an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy,

that our place in the universe is extraordinary…To avoid

embarrassment we cling to the hypothesis of uniformity.”

Physicist P. C. W. Davies: “It has always been realised,

however, that a redshift of light can have another causegravity.

When light climbs away from a massive gravitating

object it loses energy, a depletion which shows up as a

loss of frequency (colour shift). This explanation for the galactic

redshift has always been ruled out because it is

asymmetric: light falling towards a mass acquires a

blueshift. As we see only redshifts whichever direction we

look in the sky, the only way in which this could be consistent

with a gravitational explanation is if the Earth is

situated at the centre of an inhomogeneous Universe.”

Science Writer, Kitty Ferguson: “It is possible to describe

the entire universe using any chosen point as the unmoving

center—the Earth will do very well—and no one can

prove that choice is wrong….no one can prove that the

Earth moves.”

Astronomer, Phil Plait: “I have two things to say that

might surprise you: first, geocentrism is a valid frame of

reference, and second, heliocentrism is not any more or less

correct.”

Physicist, Timothy Clifton: “To entertain the notion that

we may, in fact, have a special location in the universe is,

for many, unthinkable. Nevertheless, that is exactly what

some small groups of physicists have recently been considering.”

Physicist, Max Born: “Thus we may return to Ptolemy’s

point of view of a ‘motionless Earth.’ This would mean that

we use a system of reference rigidly fixed to the Earth in

which all stars are performing a rotational motion with the

same angular velocity around the Earth’s axis…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. What

point of view is chosen is a matter of expediency.