Prime Crackpot

Response to "A Geocentrist vs. Relativity" by Martymer81

2016-02-07T21:32:00.003-07:00

Response to Youtube video “A Geocentrist vs. Relativity” by Martymer81

1:22 Have you actually read the original Michelson-Morley paper? I would say no, because your 5-point outline is a complete misrepresentation of it.
According to your bullet points, the hypothesis of Michelson-Morley is (1) “Light is a wave in a medium, the aether (or ether).” The alleged consequence of this hypothesis (2) is that “The Earth moves through the aether at at least 30 km/s, the Earth’s orbital velocity.”
(2) is actually NOT a consequence of (1). It is an assumption independent of (1), and was explicitly labeled as an assumption in Michelson’s 1881 paper, and implicitly labeled as such in Michelson-Morley’s 1887 paper. Both your prediction (3) and your conclusion (5) are dependent upon the truth of that assumption. Anyway, (1) was NOT the hypothesis of the Michelson-Morley experiment. The title of the 1887 paper was “On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminferous Ether,” which gives a pretty good idea of exactly what the experiment WAS about. Is the paper titled, “On the Question of the Ether’s Existence” or “On the Question of Whether Light is a Wave in a Medium”? No. The actual hypothesis of the 1887 experiment was one of Fresnel’s, that “the ether is supposed to be at rest except in the interior of transparent media.” It had to do with the question of whether the ether is entrained in objects moving through it, NOT with whether the ether actually existed. The existence of the ether was another assumption of the experiment. It’s even clearer in Michelson’s 1881 experiment: “The result of the hypothesis of a stationary ether is thus shown to be incorrect, and the necessary conclusion follows that the hypothesis is erroneous.” The conclusion of the 1887 paper: “It appears, from all that precedes, reasonably certain that if there be any relative motion between the earth and the luminiferous ether, it must be small; quite small enough entirely to refute Fresnel's explanation of aberration.” Part of Fresnel’s explanation being that the ether is stationary except in the interior of transparent media. Where exactly in the paper does it state that the conclusion of the experiment is that there is no ether? It isn’t even implied. Einstein, decades later, was the one who said there was no ether. The point: your 5-point outline of MM is riddled with errors and a conclusion based upon a biased misstatement of the true experimental hypothesis.
Here is a summary of the experiment inferred from your 5-point outline of it:
Light is a wave in a medium, the aether (or ether). Therefore the Earth moves through the aether at at least 30 km/s, the Earth’s orbital velocity. The experiment failed to detect Earth’s motion through the aether. Therefore the aether does not exist.
Completely illogical. Neither of the “therefores” follows from the assertion in their respective preceding sentences. A more accurate summary of the experiment, NOT a summary of the experiment as re-interpreted in hindsight by relativists to support their theory (which is what your 5-point summary is), is:
The aether is supposed to be at rest except in the interior of transparent media (according to Fresnel’s theory). Assuming the Earth moves against the aether at at least 30 km/s, the experiment will detect such motion. The experiment failed to detect such motion. Therefore, Fresnel's explanation of aberration (stationary ether -- NOTE: NOT NO ether) is entirely refuted.
You have misrepresented/misstated/mischaracterized the entire experiment to fit your biased interpretation of the results. Use it as evidence in favor of relativity if you’d like, but at least give an honest summary of the experiment. Is your position so weak that it can’t withstand an honest summary? 1:36 “And you do realize that the experiment has been repeated with more sensitive equipment, right?”

So they just have more accurate data that there is no relative motion between the Earth and the ether. Or that Fresnel’s hypothesis of a STATIONARY ether is incorrect. So what? Repetition of the same experiment with more sensitive equipment does not change the hypothesis of the original experiment or its conclusion. An increase in the accuracy does not change the fact that the experiment is only designed to detect the relative motion of the Earth and the ether, NOT to detect whether the ether actually exists. You DO realize this, right? As I said to some other commenter, the failure of a car’s speedometer to detect relative motion between the car and the road is not evidence that there is no road. It is evidence that there is no relative motion. Anything more is your own explanation of WHY there is no relative motion.

But let’s pretend you’re right. The ether has been disproven. Why then do they keep repeating the experiment? Educational purposes? To make sure there’s still no ether 130 years later? You’ve got to watch out for that ether stuff, because some of it might have condensed out of the void after the original experiment? Whatever the reason, assume for the sake of argument that it’s no longer about the ether. Even so, as you say, they’re still testing for the effect of motion on the measured speed of light, still testing for evidence of c –v, v being the velocity of Earth through space. And have they detected any evidence of c-v? No. Hypothesis of a motionless Earth: supported, regardless of the existence or non-existence of the ether.

2:05 “Uh, no, it [relativity] has its limits, indicating that it’s incomplete, but it works perfectly fine within those limits…” Perfectly fine? No. Dark matter is evidence that it doesn’t work perfectly fine. 2:33 “Nope. The Twin Paradox is a misunderstanding within special relativity.”
Nope, it’s not. It’s a thought experiment within special relativity. The thought experiment itself is not a misunderstanding; rather, people who think it can’t be resolved have a misunderstanding of the supposed paradox.
Bowden calling it a paradox isn’t an indication of his misunderstanding; it’s an indication that he’s choosing to call it by the common name for that thought experiment. So simply referring to it as “The Twins Paradox” doesn’t mean someone doesn’t understand that it isn’t actually a paradox, any more than calling a cheese product “cheese” doesn’t mean it isn’t understood that it isn’t really cheese; it simply means that you’re referring to it by one of its accepted names. You have to look for other evidence that Bowden doesn’t understand The Twins Paradox.
7:03 “And what would that material be, and what other effects would it have that we could look for and confirm its existence?”
You’re dismissing Poor’s idea of a small amount of material around the sun simply because we don’t know what the material would be and need some other effects to confirm its existence, yet you’re willing to accept the existence of an invisible, unknown, mysterious and purely hypothetical type of matter to explain the galaxy rotation problem. Double standard. Seems like there might be some dark matter around the sun causing Mercury's precession. Dark matter. Wonderful stuff. We can use it to explain any discrepancy between theory and observation.
8:19 “When you’re standing in a field and looking up at the stars… The point of general relativity is that there is no correct way of looking at it. Are you spinning or are the stars orbiting you?” Thank you for acknowledging the equality of a geocentric reference frame, be it absolute or relative. Getting some relativists to even acknowledge the existence of a geocentric reference frame is a monumental task.

9:36 “You do know that relativity is a classical theory, right? Classical physics includes everything except quantum mechanics.” Only according to people who hold to a such a definition of classical physics. Many people (not just us alleged crackpots) consider classical physics to be physics pre-1900, excluding relativity. For example: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/classical-physics http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/classical https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/ideas/allabout.htm http://www.thefreedictionary.com/classical+physics 10:26 “I’ve looked for a peer-reviewed paper by Setterfield and Barnes and I can’t even find a reference to it.”

You DO know how to competently do an Internet search, don’t you? It’s a valid question, because I didn’t know who Bowden was referring to either, but half a minute’s work on Google reveals that the two people referred to are creationists, who separately have written several articles, some of which Bowden has apparently read, since he cites them. I doubt that your own apparently feeble research skills revealed as much, because if they had, I’m sure you wouldn’t have wasted the opportunity to mock the fact that Bowden is citing non-peer-reviewed, creationist sources (no disrespect to creationists intended). Simply Google “Setterfield and Barnes muons” and boom! You have plenty of stuff to work with. One of the guys cited even has his own entry on Wikipedia, so it’s not difficult to find out who they are. How did your search fail to uncover this? They’re clearly creationists. You have done a disservice to your audience by not revealing this and mocking Bowden for citing creationists. I DOUBT you failed to mention this merely to grant Bowden a sole merciful moment of reprieve from your scorn, so the only conclusion is that your research skills are ineffective, OR that you didn’t actually look, despite your claim that you did. “If you’re going to cite sources, why don’t you provide proper references so that I can check for myself.” I’ll second that, because you apparently can’t dig information up on your own without having someone take you by the hand and lead you directly to it. Bowden gave you two names and a few other keywords to work with, and you came up with NOTHING?! I came up with plenty of stuff in about thirty seconds. There doesn't seem to be any peer-reviewed papers, of course, but geez, I can’t actually believe you wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to expose Bowden’s use of creationist sources. Or maybe you only searched the websites of a few peer-reviewed journals, deigning to forsake the common Internet search. Come on! You should have known better. 11:09 “Also, every time we use a GPS device, we use technology that wouldn’t work if the speed of light were different in different directions.” Incorrect. GPS is based upon the average speed of light on a round trip, which doesn’t preclude the possibility of an anisotropic speed of light on each leg of the journey. THE ONE WAY VELOCITY OF LIGHT HAS NEVER BEEN MEASURED, so it’s only by convention that the speed of light is not different in different directions, not by any empirical evidence. What we know as the speed of light is the average speed over a two-way path. We could give light any speed we wanted on each leg of the journey, as long as round-trip it came out to 186,000 miles per second. Also, absolute Geocentrism predicts exactly the same necessary corrections to the GPS system that relativity does. So let’s go set up a GPS system on some other planet and see if it works identically to the way it does on Earth. Earth: the only place in the universe where GPS will work as it does. Lo and behold, where is the only place in the universe where a GPS system has been set up? You guessed it: Earth. GPS cannot yet be validly claimed as conclusive support for relativity that excludes all contending theories, since it supports absolute Geocentrism equally well. 11:57 “And these [Sagnac’s fringe shifts] are always the same regardless of how fast you’re moving or in what direction.” Not true. The magnitude of the fringe shifts depends upon the relative rotational speed of the table. The faster the table or the universe around it rotates, the greater the fringe shift. 12:14 “You’re citing an example of how the non-existence of the ether is used for practical purposes.” No, he’s citing an example of how the unequal lengths of the two light paths around the table (unequal due to rotation from the viewpoint of an observer external to the frame of the device) are used for practical purposes by an observer. Assume you are correct and there is no ether. In the Sagnac experiment, from the viewpoint of an observer on the table, the table is not rotating and he is stationary relative to his interferometer, and the light paths are equal, yet he still measures a fringe shift. However, in the Michelson-Morley experiment, the observer is likewise stationary relative to the device and the light paths are likewise equal, yet he measures NO fringe shift (except that he does, but we’ll put it down to the experiment’s margin of error). How do YOU explain this inconsistent result? 12:37 “How people reacted to the theory before the overwhelming evidence that we have today was available has no impact on its validity.” You’re right. It doesn’t. But you also don’t know how they would have reacted if they DID have all the “overwhelming” evidence. You seem to be implying that they would have reacted differently, but you can’t know what might have been. As for the “overwhelming” evidence gathered by observers from within a geocentric reference frame -- Michelson-Morley, GPS, particle accelerators, et al. Go out into the rest of the universe, set up these things, and replicate the results you obtained on Earth. THEN you can claim them as support for relativity. For now, they only support a geocentric reference frame. 12:55 “Right. Because you can’t ignore one of the cornerstones of physics and still be taken seriously as a physicist.” Right. Just as a self-proclaimed Satan-worshipper wouldn’t be taken seriously as a Catholic priest. You’ve got to drink the Kool-Aid of whichever group you want to join. Which was Bowden’s point. But just because someone with contrary views is barred from a certain group doesn’t mean that the views of that group are correct. 13:30 "Except that it’s not [false]. It’s perfectly valid at macroscopic scales, and that’s where it’s applied.” Which is exactly what you would expect someone who advocates a pseudoscience to say. Relativity is NOT “perfectly valid at macroscopic scales.” If it were, you wouldn’t need to fabricate dark matter and dark energy in order to reconcile theoretical prediction with empirical observation, two substances for which the only “evidence” is exactly the prediction/observation problem you’re attempting to solve. 14:21 “The Earth is only the center of the observable universe, and that’s only for the trivial reason that we must observe the universe from where we happen to be. Far from land, your boat is always the center of the observable ocean.” You’re implying that there is a larger universe beyond the observable universe. What empirical evidence do you have (1) that this hypothetical larger, unobservable universe actually exists, and (2) that we are not at the actual center of that larger universe? Prove your implicit claim that our observable universe is bounded by a horizon rather than an edge. Also, what physical law says that the Earth, or any other planet in the universe for that matter, MUST be the metaphorical equivalent of a boat FAR FROM LAND at the center of its own observable ocean, utterly precluding the possibility of any boat being closer to one shore or another and observably NOT at the center of its observable ocean? [insert Martymer81-style video clip of me making condescending faces at the camera, playing with my iPhone as I patiently wait with crickets chirping in the background] 16:12 “…so you have made the decision not to care about reality.” Says Martymer81 as he studies a CGI animation of gravitational lensing. That’s classic.

Geocentrism: The Debates - Scott Reeves vs. NGC 6205 and CoolHardLogic, Part 1

2016-02-07T20:11:00.001-07:00

Comments on YouTube video “TestingGeocentrism Part 2” by CoolHardLogic

NGC 6205 wrote:

I agree with you that a geocentric reference frame is a valid reference frame. I use it when I observe the night sky. However, you do not understand that the absolute geocentric reference frame is debunked by demostrating that there are other reference frames which are also completely valid. That's because absolute geocentricism, or capital G geocentrism claims that it is the only, One True Reference Frame. That's what absolute means. It claims that geocentrism is more valid than heliocentrism, which is false. It is actually no more valid than marscentrism or venuscentrism or jupitercentrism. If you were to build a "Neo-Tychonic" model (which I suppose you adhere to) with Mars at its center, and then go to Mars, it would make exactly the same number of successful predictions as a geocentric Tychonic model used on Earth. Furthermore, you can take a simulation of the Neo-Tychonian model and let it run. Pause it. Go to the Sun and fix your position (your view of the simulation) above the Sun. Unpause the simulation. What you would see is pure heliocentrism. That means that the Neo-Tychonic model is actually a heliocentric model in which the observer is fixed relative to the Earth, rather than the Sun. It also goes vice-versa: heliocentrism is a Neo-Tychonic model in which the observer is fixed relative to the Sun rather than the Earth. Besides the position of the observer, the two models are completely equivalent. This is why absolute geocentrism is false: because there are many different valid reference frames besides the geocentric one, while the capital G geocentrism claims that it is the one true reference frame, more real or correct than other reference frames. Special and general relativity are not required to prove that absolute geocentrism is false. And this is why you are biased and a pseudoscientist. You adhere to one reference frame absolutely and reject the others, despite the fact that other reference frames are completely valid. Only reason I can find for this is religious in nature. If your reason for adhering to geocentrism is not religious, then please tell me which is? Why are you adhering to geocentrism as more true than heliocentrism or marscentrism or jupitercentrism?

Scott Reeves wrote:

“However, you do not understand that the absolute geocentric reference frame is debunked by demostrating that there are other reference frames which are also completely valid.”

You are correct. I do not understand that the absolute Geocentric reference frame is debunked by demonstrating that there are other reference frames which are also completely valid. I do, however, understand that it is debunked by demonstrating that there are other reference frames which are also completely valid and equal to the absolute Geocentric reference frame. Which has not yet been done.

I completely understand the concept of reference frames, and I do not deny that every conceivable reference frame is a valid reference frame. But the simple existence of other valid reference frames does not mean that all valid reference frames are equal.

“That's because absolute geocentricism, or capital G geocentrism claims that it is the only, One True Reference Frame. That's what absolute means.”

That may be your concept of what absolute G means, but to me it refers to absolute rest vs. relative motion, and actual center vs. relative center. Relativistic geocentrism says that there is no actual center to the universe and all motion in the universe is relative, with no absolute motion, period; while absolute Geocentrism says the universe has a center and Earth is stationary there, and all motion in the universe is relative to the frame of absolute rest as established by the absolutely motionless Earth. That’s the distinction between absolute Geocentrism and relativistic geocentrism. Don’t quote me on that, though; what’s important here is the concept of absolute vs. relative motion, and an absolute center vs. a multitude of observer-dependent centers.

One thing to note here is that I believe there could be a center to the universe, establishing an absolute frame of rest, but without the Earth there. In which case, the universe would not be absolutely Geocentric. It would only be relativistically geocentric – relative to the center of the universe, regardless of whether some other planet was at the center or not. But unfortunately for relativity, there is no physical law that requires Earth to be at the center of its own observable universe, yet modern science both empirically and philosophically says that we are. More on that down below.

“If you were to build a ‘Neo-Tychonic’ model (which I suppose you adhere to) with Mars at its center, and then go to Mars, it would make exactly the same number of successful predictions as a geocentric Tychonic model used on Earth.”

Yes, that is what relativity hypothesizes. Now let’s all go to Mars and test it.

“This is why absolute geocentrism is false: because there are many different valid reference frames besides the geocentric one, while the capital G geocentrism claims that it is the one true reference frame, more real or correct than other reference frames.”

Again, that's your concept of what capital G geocentrism claims. But the existence of many different valid reference frames does not make absolute Geocentrism false. Absolute Geocentrism (at least this absolute Geocentrist) does not deny the existence of other reference frames, nor does it claim that it is more real or correct than other reference frames. It only claims that it is absolute, and all other frames must be considered relative to it.

“Special and general relativity are not required to prove that absolute geocentrism is false.”

Correct. They’re required to prove their hypothesis that all reference frames are equal by putting it through the scientific method. They have not yet finished that task. Thus far, they have merely gathered evidence from within a geocentric reference frame, whether it be absolute or relativistic.

“And this is why you are biased and a pseudoscientist. You adhere to one reference frame absolutely and reject the others, despite the fact that other reference frames are completely valid.”

As I said, I do not reject other reference frames as invalid. I merely say that the absolute Geocentric frame is unique among all frames.

“Only reason I can find for this is religious in nature. If your reason for adhering to geocentrism is not religious, then please tell me which is? Why are you adhering to geocentrism as more true than heliocentrism or marscentrism or jupitercentrism?”

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean by “more true,” but I can only say again that I regard the absolute Geocentric reference frame as unique and absolute among a multitude of reference frames.

As for why I adhere to absolute Geocentrism, for me, religion and God have nothing to do with my reasons. Here is my reasoning:

Since modern mainstream science admits that we are empirically at the center of our observable universe, then it follows that if our observable universe is actually the ENTIRE universe, then Earth is most definitely motionless at the center of the actual universe, thereby establishing the Earth as an absolute reference frame. Thus, in order for the relativistic geocentric reference frame to be the correct choice when choosing between a relativistic geocentric or an absolute Geocentric frame, relativity must say that everyone is at the center of his/her/its own observable universe, including an observer on a planet at the edge of our observable universe, which observer must therefore be able to see something beyond the edge of our (observers on Earth) observable universe.

But anything outside our observable universe is…wait for it…unobservable, and so outside the scope of rational scientific inquiry by scientists on Earth. So before relativity can be claimed to have been properly tested by the scientific method, observers on Earth must travel to the edge of our observable universe to make observations confirming that there is a universe beyond Earth’s observable universe, and that that point on the edge is the center of its own observable universe. Conveniently enough for relativity, such a test can never be performed, since according to current cosmological theory, Earthers can never reach the edge, because the edge of our observable universe is expanding away from us in all directions at faster than the speed of light. This makes relativity a pseudo-science, since its proponents wrongly tout it to the public as having been scientifically tested, even though it can never actually be scientifically tested.

Therefore as far as science as practiced by observers on Earth will ever be concerned, the observable universe is all that there is, and therefore we are absolutely at rest at the center of the entire scientifically observable universe.

Look at it this way. If relativists ever find an edge to the universe, that disproves their theory and proves absolute Geocentrism. So your theory cannot allow an edge to the universe, or at least can only allow an edge that is either unreachable by any observer in any reference frame, or is at an infinite distance from Earth, which amounts to the same thing. Therefore relativity can only ever prove absolute Geocentrism, and can never prove itself. To prove itself, relativity must prove that an edge does not exist. And how do you prove that something does not exist? Ask an atheist how he/she empirically proves that God does not exist.

You’ll note that at no time in my argument do I appeal to God or the Bible to decide between absolute Geocentrism or relativistic geocentrism. So you are incorrect in your contention that I must be advocating absolute Geocentrism solely on religious grounds. Yes, I am a Christian, but whether we are or are not absolutely at the center of the universe makes no difference to my belief in God or to my ego. I choose the absolute Geocentric frame merely because I don’t want to choose the pseudo-scientific alternative.

NGC 6205 wrote:

I have to say that you make some good points and that your civilized debating style differs much from the debating style and arguments of the vast majority of people promoting, let's be honest, extremely fringe ideas. I commend that. However, I think you've misinterpreted the nature of science. You said: "Therefore relativity can only ever prove absolute Geocentrism, and can never prove itself. To prove itself, relativity must prove that an edge does not exist." Science is not in the job of proving theories. Science is in the job of constructing ever better models, which explain all the phenomena that previous models could explain plus new data previously unexplained. It must also make successful predictions. Simplicity is also valued, although it is not that important. The point is, if you have a successful theory which explains a lot and has never been disporved, you can allow yourself to derive assumptions from the model which you consider true unless disproved, although they have not been proved. For example, until 20 years ago we hadn't found a single planet orbiting a star other than the Sun. But scientists were long before that taking for granted that there are planets orbiting orbiting other stars. Why? Because they were pseudoscientists? Because they were dogmatic? Because they were atheists trying to shake our faith in a personal God? Of course not. They were doing that because that's a conclusion that you derive when you look at the bigger picture: The Sun is an ordinary star with planets, there are many other stars in the galaxy, we can see stars being born from large molecular clouds, we have a sensible theory of the formation of the Solar System, and so on and so on... Given this knowledge, scientists could say: "We can be 95% sure (or 70%, or 99%, it doesn't matter) that there are other planets in the galaxy." Science is all about probabilities. We cannot be 100% sure that there isn't something seriously wrong with the theory of plate tectonics, or quantum mechanics, or any other theory for that matter, but we behave like there isn't, because the probability of there being something wrong with the theories is very low. That's science. If you want absolute proof, go to mathematics or logic, because science cannot give you that. We have the same situation here: We know the fundamental forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force. We know planets and stars are made of protons and neutrons and electrons, they interact via these forces, the Earth is also made of this stuff. We can see other planets orbiting their stars. They are not at the center of our observable universe by definition, why should the Earth be at the center of the entire universe? Why should the center of the observable universe as seen from the Earth be the center of the entire universe, but not the center of the observable universe as seen from these planets? Given that we know that the Earth is not special in the physical sense (because it's made of the same stuff and subjected to the same forces), there is no reason to believe that it just so happens that the Earth is at the center of the universe. Given the size of the universe, it is much, much more probable that the center of the universe happens to be in some other place, if there is any center at all. It's simply a matter of probabilities. It is not sensible or scientific to adhere to a very low probability model, although it has not been disproved. That's what science says: Geocentrism is simply not sensible or probable, given the big picture, which includes all our knowledge of physics, astronomy and cosmology. It is much more probable that the Earth, being made of the same stuff and subjected to the same forces as the other planets, is in the same situation as them: Not in the center of the universe and orbiting its star like the laws of physics dictate. Absolute proof isn't necessary, and I definitely don't lose sleep over it.

Scott Reeves wrote:

Thanks for your comments. I actually appreciate the opportunity to be challenged to defend what I'm saying.

“Science is not in the job of proving theories. Science is in the job of constructing ever better models, which explain all the phenomena that previous models could explain plus new data previously unexplained. It must also make successful predictions.”

Science is, however, in the job of testing the predictions its theories make, and science has not yet done that with relativity. It has only gathered data from within a geocentric reference frame, which does not speak to the issue of whether the absolute Geocentric or the relativistic geocentric model is correct. The true test of relativity will be made when we leave whichever sort of geocentric reference frame we are currently in.

“We cannot be 100% sure that there isn't something seriously wrong with the theory of plate tectonics, or quantum mechanics, or any other theory for that matter, but we behave like there isn't, because the probability of there being something wrong with the theories is very low.”

Actually, the probability of there being something wrong is NOT very low. We can be 100% sure that there is something seriously wrong with either quantum mechanics or relativity, since they are not compatible. The search for a theory of everything is an implicit admission that we are 100% certain that there is something seriously wrong with one or the other, or possibly both.

“They are not at the center of our observable universe by definition, why should the Earth be at the center of the entire universe?”

Because Earth is by definition and by empirical evidence at the center of our observable universe, and anything beyond our observable universe, the so-called “entire” universe, is unobservable and thus beyond the realm of science. Why should the Earth, against all empirical evidence, NOT be at the center of the entire scientifically-observable universe?

“Why should the center of the observable universe as seen from the Earth be the center of the entire universe, but not the center of the observable universe as seen from these planets?”

Because if our observable universe IS the entire universe, and we have no empirical evidence that it is not, then obviously a planet near the edge of the entire universe cannot possibly be at the center of its own observable universe. Why should a point on the circumference of a circle not be at the center?

“Given that we know that the Earth is not special in the physical sense (because it's made of the same stuff and subjected to the same forces)…”

Actually, if Earth is at the center of the entire universe, then it’s NOT subject to the same forces as all the other stars and planets. It’s the only planet in the universe that would feel the combined gravitational force of all the mass in the universe, equally from all directions.

“Given the size of the universe, it is much, much more probable that the center of the universe happens to be in some other place, if there is any center at all. It's simply a matter of probabilities.”

You mean it’s more probable that the center of the universe would be in some other place where there is no life similar to ours? Given the size of the solar system, it’s much more probable that humans would have arisen on some other planet. Oh wait, it's not, because science recognizes that Earth occupies a special zone in the solar system. We’re in the so-called Goldilocks Zone precisely because science recognizes that there is something special about this narrow strip of space around our sun. If the center of the universe happens to be a similar sort of Goldilocks Zone (maybe a motionless, non-rotating Earth is the most stable place in the universe, and thus somehow most conducive to life, I don’t know), then it would actually be more probable that we would be at the center than elsewhere in our universe.

Your statement about probabilities is meaningless unless you’re willing to claim that science knows all there is to know about how the universe works. If we’re at the center against all probability, then it either means we’re exceptionally lucky, or we don’t have the proper information to accurately estimate the probabilities.

“It is not sensible or scientific to adhere to a very low probability model, although it has not been disproved.”

Again, it’s only a low-probability model if you arrogantly assume that you have a complete understanding of the universe. What your’e implicitly saying is that it’s more sensible and scientific to choose the relativistic geocentric model over the absolute Geocentric model. But it’s not sensible or scientific to choose the model that is part of a theory that has at least a 50% probability of ultimately being shown to be incorrect (quantum mechanics and relativity can’t both be correct).

“That's what science says: Geocentrism is simply not sensible or probable, given the big picture, which includes all our knowledge of physics, astronomy and cosmology.”

That’s not what science says. That’s what people who assume they have an accurate big picture say.

“It is much more probable that the Earth, being made of the same stuff and subjected to the same forces as the other planets, is in the same situation as them: Not in the center of the universe and orbiting its star like the laws of physics dictate.”

The laws of physics dictate that a system of bodies orbits the center of mass of the entire system. Which is what our sun is doing: it’s orbiting the center of mass of the entire universe. And Earth happens to be located at that center. That's why Earth is the only place in the universe where you'll see a star appearing to orbit one of its smaller planets.

CoolHardLogic wrote:

"Science is, however, in the job of testing the predictions its theories make, and science has not yet done that with relativity. It has only gathered data from within a geocentric reference frame,."

False. Measurements validating GR are not confined to Earth.

"The true test of relativity will be made when we leave whichever sort of geocentric reference frame we are currently in. "

No. And you have no a priori reason to assume a "geocentric reference frame". You're just being intellectually dishonest.

"We can be 100% sure that there is something seriously wrong with either quantum mechanics or relativity, since they are not compatible."

False dichotomy. Both are extensively tested and work within the domains to which they apply. Germ Theory is incompatible with GR. The inability to reconcile them into a single relativistic germ theory doesn't mean that one is wrong. Again you're being intellectually dishonest.

"The search for a theory of everything is an implicit admission that we are 100% certain that there is something seriously wrong with one or the other, or possibly both. "

No, it isn't. Your conclusion is a non-sequitur borne of your desire for your conclusion to be correct.

"Because Earth is by definition and by empirical evidence at the center of our observable universe,..."

By definition? Regardless, you appear to utterly fail to understand the concept of a light horizon, and the simple fact that any observer anywhere in the Universe will appear to be at its centre.

"Because if our observable universe IS the entire universe, and we have no empirical evidence that it is not, then obviously a planet near the edge of the entire universe cannot possibly be at the center of its own observable universe."

Argument from ignorance and special pleading. But thanks for demonstrating that you don't understand light and that you appear to think that the Universe is a fixed size bubble with an edge. That's just priceless.

"Why should a point on the circumference of a circle not be at the center? "

Because the universe is neither a circle nor a sphere with an edge.

"Actually, if Earth is at the center of the entire universe, "

And sinc eyou have no reason to assume the former, everything you said after this was completely pointless.

"then it’s NOT subject to the same forces as all the other stars and planets."

Special pleading.

"It’s the only planet in the universe that would feel the combined gravitational force of all the mass in the universe, equally from all directions."

Assuming your conclusion as your premise. Bad idea.

"We’re in the so-called Goldilocks Zone precisely because science recognizes that there is something special about this narrow strip of space around our sun."

And so now you want to co-opt science when it suits you. How disingenuous. Also, the strip to which you refer isn't as narrow as you would like to imply to sate your apparent need to feel special.

"If the center of the universe happens to be a similar sort of Goldilocks Zone "

Again, you have no reason to even suppose that as a premise other than your desire to engage in circular reasoning.

"then it would actually be more probable that we would be at the center than elsewhere in our universe."

No, that conclusion doesn't follow from your contrived premise in any way, shape or form.

"Your statement about probabilities is meaningless unless you’re willing to claim that science knows all there is to know about how the universe works."

Non-sequitur conclusion again. And hypocrisy, given that you were just making bullshit claims about probabilities.

"Again, it’s only a low-probability model if you arrogantly assume that you have a complete understanding of the universe."

Straw man. And hypocrisy again given your obvious and rather desperate attempts to want to be at the centre of the Universe.

"What your’e implicitly saying is that it’s more sensible and scientific to choose the relativistic geocentric model over the absolute Geocentric model."

Even if there were a relativistic geocentric model, it would still be bollocks.

"But it’s not sensible or scientific to choose the model that is part of a theory that has at least a 50% probability of ultimately being shown to be incorrect (quantum mechanics and relativity can’t both be correct)."

Repeating this claim again huh? It had no bearing on anything when you first mentioned it, and it still has no relevance now. So NGC 6205 pointed out that “Geocentrism is simply not sensible or probable, given the big picture, which includes all our knowledge of physics, astronomy and cosmology.”

And you hilariously respond with: "That’s not what science says. That’s what people who assume they have an accurate big picture say."

OH go on then, I'll briefly humour you and your failure to understand the information you've been supplied with: What does science say then? Don't forget to name the scientists concerned and reference papers supporting your claims.

"The laws of physics dictate that a system of bodies orbits the center of mass of the entire system. Which is what our sun is doing: it’s orbiting the center of mass of the entire universe."

Wrong again. You're really not very good at this are you?

"And Earth happens to be located at that center."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!! You think Earth is "the centre of mass of the entire Universe". You don't have a fucking clue about physics and now would be a good time for you to stop pretending that you do.

"That's why Earth is the only place in the universe where you'll see a star appearing to orbit one of its smaller planets."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! There you go with your special pleading again. Instead of engaging in this tedious, fallacious bullshit that you seem to be so very keen on, why don't you provide a paper showing conclusively that Earth is the centre of MASS of the entire Universe and that the Sun orbits it.

Scott Reeves wrote:

“False. Measurements validating GR are not confined to Earth.”

Allowing for the sake of argument that you are correct, GR is an incomplete theory, and GR is not the sum total of Einstein’s relativity. The part I object to is that all reference frames are physically equivalent. That is the heart of Einstein's theory, and it has yet to be tested by the scientific method.

“No. And you have no a priori reason to assume a "geocentric reference frame". You're just being intellectually dishonest.”

Actually I do have an a priori reason. We are currently in a geocentric reference frame, so I’m assuming that frame because I am an observer within that frame. Since relativity puts forth the hypothesis that all reference frames are physically equivalent, relativity must test that hypothesis by gathering evidence from within other reference frames, not just a geocentric frame. I’m not being intellectually dishonest, you are.

“False dichotomy. Both are extensively tested and work within the domains to which they apply. Germ Theory is incompatible with GR. The inability to reconcile them into a single relativistic germ theory doesn't mean that one is wrong. Again you're being intellectually dishonest.”

Then you tell me what a physicist such as Brian Greene means when he writes, “As they are currently formulated, general relativity and quantum mechanics cannot both be right” (The Elegant Universe, pg 3). Saying that one of them cannot be right does not mean that one of them is wrong? What is this, Orwellian doublethink?

What does Stephen Hawking mean when he writes, “We have general relativity, the partial theory of gravity…” The Theory of Everything, pg 112). Tell me by what screwed-up logic an incomplete theory of gravity does not equal an incorrect theory of gravity? If a theory is only half right, then it is wrong, period. Almost right doesn’t count.

But now I suppose I’m going to be ridiculed as a quote miner for citing authoritative figures to back up what I said. Or let me guess. I’m taking them out of context.

And I'm not being intellectually dishonest. You are.

“By definition? Regardless, you appear to utterly fail to understand the concept of a light horizon, and the simple fact that any observer anywhere in the Universe will appear to be at its centre.”

The commenter to whom I was responding said that we were ‘by definition’ (his words) at the center of our observable universe. I was merely agreeing with his definition. As for the alleged appearance that I utterly fail to understand the concept of a light horizon, appearances can be deceiving. As for the alleged ‘simple fact’ that any observer anywhere in the universe will appear to be at its center, you’re assuming that there is something beyond our own light horizon. In fact, you are making a hypothesis. Prove that an observer at our light horizon will see something beyond our horizon. Obey the rules of science. Go ye forth and test your hypothesis. Refusing to consider the possibility that there might be nothing beyond our light horizon does not make it true that there is something beyond our light horizon.

“Argument from ignorance and special pleading. But thanks for demonstrating that you don't understand light and that you appear to think that the Universe is a fixed size bubble with an edge. That's just priceless.”

How do I know that you understand light enough to tell me that I don't understand light? Anyway, I never said that the universe is a fixed-size bubble. Are you denying that our observable universe has an edge? That’s just priceless. We can only see about 14 billion light years out, and can see nothing past that. Seems like an edge to me. If you don’t call that an edge, what DO you call it? Our light horizon, perhaps? A rose by any other name… Prove that there is something beyond our horizon. Or the edge of the universe, as I call it.

“Because the universe is neither a circle nor a sphere with an edge.”

Special pleading.

“And sinc eyou have no reason to assume the former [that Earth is at the center of the entire universe], everything you said after this was completely pointless.”

I do have reason to assume Earth is at the center of the entire universe: we have no empirical, scientific evidence of a universe beyond the edge of our observable universe (or beyond our light horizon, as you apparently insist that it be called). It is YOU who have no valid reason other than special pleading to assume that there IS something beyond our light horizon.

“Assuming your conclusion as your premise. Bad idea.”

Actually, no. The premise is that Earth is at absolute rest at the center of the entire universe. The conclusion based upon the premise is what I said: ‘It’s the only planet in the universe that would feel the combined gravitational force of all the mass in the universe, equally from all directions.’ Which is what I said in response to a non-geocentric statement that Earth is subject to the same forces as all the other matter in the universe.

“And so now you want to co-opt science when it suits you. How disingenuous.”

I’m not co-opting science. I’ve been using science all along in my argument. I mentioned the concept of the Goldilocks Zone as a possible explanation of why we find ourselves at the center of the universe.

“Also, the strip to which you refer isn't as narrow as you would like to imply to sate your apparent need to feel special.”

Actually it is fairly narrow compared to the overall size of the solar system. You should look it up sometime. As for my apparent need to feel special, I have no such need. Why do you presume to know what my needs are?

“Again, you have no reason to even suppose that as a premise other than your desire to engage in circular reasoning.”

Why do you keep presuming to know what my needs and desires are? Can you tell me what my thoughts are as well? Quick, what am I thinking right now? Anyway, I guess my alleged desire is sort of like your desire to engage in similar circular reasoning when you insist without any evidence that every point in the universe is at the center of its own observable universe.

“No, that conclusion doesn't follow from your contrived premise in any way, shape or form.”

The allegedly contrived premise to which you refer is that Earth is in a unique Goldilocks Zone at the center of the universe. The conclusion is that it would therefore actually be more probable that human life would evolve at the center than elsewhere in our universe.

If you believe my conclusion doesn't follow from my premise, then you must also believe the premise that Earth is in a Goldilocks Zone in our solar system doesn’t lead to the conclusion that it’s therefore more probable that human life would evolve on Earth than elsewhere in the solar system.

“Even if there were a relativistic geocentric model, it would still be bollocks.”

IF there were? There has to be one. ALL relativists are implicitly geocentrists, they're just geocentrists who don't believe that the geocentric frame is a preferred or unique frame as do the other sort of geocentrists. So if you think relativity's geocentric model is bollocks (can I use that word too, or have you trademarked it?), then you are an anti-relativist. Welcome to the club.

“Repeating this claim again huh? It had no bearing on anything when you first mentioned it, and it still has no relevance now.”

It had every bit of relevance when I first mentioned it, and it still does now. The choice on offer is between a relativistic geocentric reference frame and an absolute Geocentric reference frame. Relativity is pseudoscience, therefore the only real choice is the absolute Geocentric reference frame.

“OH go on then, I'll briefly humour you and your failure to understand the information you've been supplied with: What does science say then?”

What does science say about what? The big picture to which NGC 6205 referred? Science doesn’t say anything. It’s merely a tool that people use (or misuse) to test their hypotheses, and then make statements regarding their interpretation of the test results. My view of the big picture given to us by science and reason says that we’re absolutely at rest at the center of the entire universe. You apparently hold the view that the big picture given to us by science and reason says that we’re only at the center of our own observable universe, and likewise every other observer is at the center of his/her/its own observable universe. One of us has an incorrect view of the big picture. Can you guess which one of us I believe it is? I’ll bet you can, since you seem to be intimately familiar with my needs and desires.

“Wrong again.”

What’s wrong? That the laws of physics dictate that a system of bodies orbits the center of mass of the entire system, or that the sun is orbiting the center of mass of the entire universe? If you think the former is wrong, then you really should study physics a bit more, and if it’s the latter, then I call special pleadings on you.

“You're really not very good at this are you?”

Actually, I’m actually VERY good at this.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!! You think Earth is "the centre of mass of the entire Universe". You don't have a fucking clue about physics and now would be a good time for you to stop pretending that you do.”

Did I say that I thought Earth was the center of mass of the entire universe? Show me where I said I thought Earth was the center of mass of the entire universe.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! There you go with your special pleading again. Instead of engaging in this tedious, fallacious bullshit that you seem to be so very keen on, why don't you provide a paper showing conclusively that Earth is the centre of MASS of the entire Universe and that the Sun orbits it.”

I don’t need to provide a paper showing conclusively that Earth is the center of MASS of the entire universe, because I never made that claim. Re-read my comments and then show me where I made that claim.

[no further response as yet that I am aware of]

Geocentrism: The Debates - Scott Reeves vs. MomoTheBellyDancer, Part 1

2016-02-06T21:56:00.001-07:00

My Comments from the YouTube video “TYCHO BRAHE Says No Spheres NoParallax No Planets - All Lies” by jeranism

Scott Reeves wrote (responding to MomoTheBellyDancer's comments to Last Trump):

“That is not an assumption [that the Earth is revolving around the sun]. The fact that we can observe stellar aberration is already plenty of evidence. Another piece of evidence is the fact that Newtonian physics perfectly describe the motion of planets, including earth.”

We can also observe and explain stellar aberration from a geocentric frame. Stellar aberration doesn’t speak to whether Earth is revolving around the sun.

As for Newtonian physics, choosing to make Newtonian calculations using a non-geocentric coordinate system does not mean that the Earth is actually revolving around the sun. It simply means that you've chosen to make Newtonian calculations using a coordinate system in which the Earth is revolving around the sun.

As for Newtonian physics perfectly describing said motion of the planets – they didn’t perfectly describe the precession of Mercury, did they? So thy DON’T “perfectly” describe the motion of the planets.

“No, because you have to introduce massive amounts of unknown variables to make the geocentric model work, which simply disappear then you go with the heliocentric model. Occam's razor compels us to go with the model with the least amount of assumptions.”

Occam’s razor is a philosophical preference for simplicity, not a physical law that governs the universe. The geocentric frame IS just as valid as any other frame, unless you want to deny Relativity. What you’re basically saying is that Occam’s razor compels us to conclude that all reference frames are not physically equivalent, in violation of Relativity.

Perhaps you might object that you were referring to the geocentric MODEL as being invalid, not the geocentric REFERENCE FRAME. But how can you acknowledge the geocentric reference frame yet deny the geocentric model that goes with it? If you’re going to allow someone to assume the role of an observer within the geocentric reference frame, then that observer MUST have a model that describes the universe from his geocentric viewpoint, and that model MUST be as valid as any other model. If that model is not fully developed by such an observer, it MUST be possible to fully develop it, or else Relativity is an invalid theory. And I'm assuming you are not an anti-relativist.

MomoTheBellyDancer wrote:

"Stellar aberration doesn’t speak to whether Earth is revolving around the sun."

Then explain how we could get stellar aberration that way.

"choosing to make Newtonian calculations using a non-geocentric coordinate system does not mean that the Earth is actually revolving around the sun."

Then present a model in which the Newtonian calculations are correct, but in which the earth does not orbit the sun. Make sure it is at least as comprehensive as the heliocentric model, with as few assumptions as possible.

"Occam’s razor is a philosophical preference for simplicity, not a physical law that governs the universe."

Irrelevant. It states that we should choose the model that works fine with the least amount of assumptions. Really, why would we throw in a lot of assumptions when a simpler model explains the same facts just as well, if not better?

"The geocentric frame IS just as valid as any other frame, unless you want to deny Relativity."

In the geocentric model, the universe would be revolving the earth at several trillion times the speed of light.

"What you’re basically saying is that Occam’s razor compels us to conclude that all reference frames are not physically equivalent, in violation of Relativity. "

No, Occam's Razor compels us to conclude that they are equivalent. You're not using it correctly.

"Disclaimer: these comments should not be construed as support for Flat Earth or a denial of stellar parallax or of accepted standards for distances to the sun and stars."

You could've fooled me.

Scott Reeves wrote:

“Then explain how we could get stellar aberration that way.”

The fact is that if you are a relativist and you believe that stellar aberration cannot be explained from within a geocentric reference frame, then you are actually an anti-relativist, because you do not believe that all reference frames are physically equivalent. If you ARE a relativist, then you MUST admit that stellar aberration can be explained from within a geocentric frame, even if you don't currently know what the explanation is. So I don't need to explain it, because neither true relativists nor absolute Geocentrists (this one, at least) disagree that stellar aberration is geocentrically explicable.

That being said, here is one of several explanations put forward by modern Geocentrists: "Stellar aberration is star motion centered on the sun as viewed from Earth, hence there is no aberration in stellar motion as seen from the sun. The aberration is due to the apparent shift in the stellar positions that are centered on the sun. This is a parallax effect due to the change in position of a reference point." - Robert Sungenis, Galileo Was Wrong, the Church Was Right, Volume 1.

And anyway, to quote Stephen Hawking in The Grand Design: “So which is real, the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true. As in the case of our normal view versus that of the goldfish, 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.”

Stellar aberration qualifies as one of the “observations of the heavens,” and can thus be explained by geocentrism, according to the man who is allegedly one of the greatest physicists of our time. Unless, of course, he meant to say all our observations except the aberration of light. Which could be possible, since he is incorrect that our observations can be explained by the Ptolemaic model. Modern geocentrists do not adhere to the Ptolemaic model, because we know it is inaccurate, as it has all the planets orbiting the Earth. But I’m sure Hawking meant a geocentric model, rather than the Ptolemaic model specifically.

“Then present a model in which the Newtonian calculations are correct, but in which the earth does not orbit the sun. Make sure it is at least as comprehensive as the heliocentric model, with as few assumptions as possible.”

I present to you: the geocentric model! Ta-da! Could be a relativistic geocentric model, or it could be an absolute Geocentric model. I’m not going to explain the details of the model because there’s probably not enough space in this comments section, and because frankly I as an absolute Geocentrist do not KNOW all the nuances of the absolute Geocentric model any more than relativists appear to know all the nuances of their own relativistic model As far as Newtonian calculations – as I pointed out, Newtonian calculations aren’t even correct in the model in which Earth DOES orbit the sun (precession of Mercury, for example). But I assume you mean that Newton's laws don’t allow for a greater mass like the sun to orbit a lesser mass like the Earth, and so the geocentric model doesn’t work with Newtonian calculations because of that. But the sun only appears to be orbiting the Earth in a geocentric reference frame; the sun is actually orbiting the center of mass of the universe, and the Earth happens to be located at that center. A system of masses orbits the center of mass of the system, according to Newton, and that is not violated in a geocentric model.

“Irrelevant. It states tat we should choose the model that works fine with the least amount of assumptions. Really, why would we throw in a lot of assumptions when a simpler model explains the same facts just as well, if not better?”

To what assumptions are you referring? And as far as choosing a simpler model, simpler does not necessarily mean correct. If your allegedly simpler model is too simple to accommodate a complex universe, then the simpler model is not preferable because it doesn't represent reality.

“In the geocentric model, the universe would be revolving the earth at several trillion times the speed of light.”

This argument is often presented against geocentrism, but it is not valid. Einstein, Dialogue About Objections Against the Theory of Relativity: “The situation, that the fixed stars are circling with tremendous velocities, when one bases an examination on such a coordinate system, does not constitute an argument against the admissibility, but merely against the efficiency of this choice of coordinates…” See, Einstein was actually a geocentrist, as all relativists are. We're ALL geocentrists; the only difference between us is whether we claim that all reference frames are physically equivalent.

Phil Plait, Seriously? Geocentrism?: “Things actually can move faster than light relative to the coordinate system, it’s just that things cannot move past each other with a relative speed greater than light. In the weird geocentric frame where the Universe revolves around the Earth, that is self-consistent. In other words, the Neptune-moving-too-quickly argument sounds good, but in reality it doesn’t work, and we shouldn’t use it.”

I’m a quote miner. Should I continue throwing out similar quotes, or are those two sources reputable enough?

“No, Occam's Razor compels us to conclude that they are equivalent. You're not using it correctly.”

So now Occam’s Razor, as well as Relativity, compels us to conclude that the geocentric frame IS equivalent to the heliocentric?

“You could've fooled me.”

Only if you believe that Flat Earth and geocentrism are not completely separate and unconnected theories (and I can understand why you might have that impression, since a lot of flat Earthers seem to be trying desperately to connect the two), and that stellar parallax and accepted standards for distances to the sun and stars can’t be explained from within a geocentric reference frame.

MomoTheBellyDancer wrote:

"Robert Sungenis, Galileo Was Wrong, the Church Was Right, Volume 1."

Not a peer-reviewed work. Dismissed.

“Stephen Hawking in The Grand Design"

Not a peer-reviewed work. Dismissed.

"the sun is actually orbiting the center of mass of the universe, and the Earth happens to be located at that center."

With would mean that the earth would be at the bottom of an immense gravity well i.e. a black hole. This is not what we observe. Dismissed.

"To what assumptions are you referring?"

What would cause the retrograde motions of planets in the geocentric model? Oh right, you will have to make the planets go loop-de-loop around some unexplained center.

OR you could put the sun be the center of the solar system.

Geocentric model -> dismissed.

"simpler does not necessarily mean correct."

Whether model is correct is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether it explains all observations with the least amount of assumptions.

"If your allegedly simpler model is too simple to accommodate a complex universe"

Then it wouldn't explain all observations, so your objection is silly.

"The situation, that the fixed stars are circling with tremendous velocities, when one bases an examination on such a coordinate system, does not constitute an argument against the admissibility, but merely against the efficiency of this choice of coordinates"

And later he says, "For the decision which representation to choose only reasons of efficiency are decisive, not arguments of a principle kind."

This is still a strike against geocentrism. Besides, it's not a peer-reviewed article, so it's dismissed anyway

"Einstein was actually a geocentrist"

Don't be stupid.

"Phil Plait, Seriously? Geocentrism?"

Not a peer-reviewed work. Dismissed.

"I’m a quote miner."

That's not something to be proud of.

"So now Occam’s Razor, as well as Relativity, compels us to conclude that the geocentric frame IS equivalent to the heliocentric?"

Point me to a peer-reviewed work that posits this, and then we'll talk.

Scott Reeves wrote:

“With would mean that the earth would be at the bottom of an immense gravity well i.e. a black hole. This is not what we observe. Dismissed.”

Really? Google ‘Are we inside a black hole’ and see how many articles come up about how scientists on your side are proposing that we are inside a black hole.

“What would cause the retrograde motions of planets in the geocentric model? Oh right, you will have to make the planets go loop-de-loop around some unexplained center.”

What causes it? The planets orbiting the sun, even as the universe as a whole revolves around the universal barycenter. There’s nothing inexplicable about retrograde motion. It’s a combination of gravity and the rotation of the universe. What causes the retrograde motion in the relativistic geocentric model?

“OR you could put the sun be the center of the solar system.”

You could, but for Relativity to be a valid theory, you also have to be able to put the Earth at the center. If you’re going to advocate for Relativity, then you can’t deny the geocentric reference frame.

“Whether model is correct is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether it explains all observations with the least amount of assumptions.”

How does the heliocentric model explain the fact that neither Newton nor Relativity can explain why galaxies are spinning faster than they should according to either theory, yet the galaxies don’t fly apart? Neither theory explains it. They assume the existence of dark matter and dark energy, neither of which has been observed to date. So none of the models you are advocating explain all observations.

“Then it wouldn't explain all observations, so your objection is silly.”

And as I noted above, your allegedly simpler model does not explain all observations so your objection to my objection is equally silly. Hypothesizing the existence of an unobserved entity to explain disagreements between your theory and observation is actually no explanation at all.

“This is still a strike against geocentrism. Besides, it's not a peer-reviewed article, so it's dismissed anyway.”

It’s only a strike against geocentrism if you believe that Occam’s Razor is infallible and utterly applicable to every situation imaginable. Einstein does not say that it’s impossible for the universe to rotate around the Earth at several trillion times the speed of light, which is what your previous statement implied.

Dismissing highly reputable scientists who disagree with your statement regarding geocentrism being forbidden due to some faster-than-light problem simply because they're not peer-reviewed statements does not change the fact that highly reputable scientists are contradicting you.

Plus, one of those contradictory voices is Einstein himself, and he’s got to be the most peer-reviewed person I could possibly quote. Everything he has written has been intensely scrutinized for a hundred years. Point me to a peer-reviewed article that says the statement I quoted is not accurate, or that the geocentric reference frame is not valid within relativity.

“Don't be stupid.”

I’m not being stupid. Are you saying that Einstein was NOT a geocentrist? A geocentrist from a relativistic perspective is simply someone who assumes the viewpoint of an observer within an Earth-centered frame. All relativists have to allow for the possibility of assuming such a viewpoint. Therefore, all relativists are inherently geocentrists. The difference between relativistic geocentrists and absolute Geocentrists is that relativistic geocentrists claim that the geocentric reference frame is simply one of a multitude of equal of physically equivalent reference frames. If you claim to be a relativist and deny the geocentric reference frame as being equally valid, then you are not actually a relativist.

“That's not something to be proud of.”

And yet I am.

“Point me to a peer-reviewed work that posits this, and then we'll talk.”

I wasn’t positing this. In your earlier comments, you first said that Occam’s Razor compelled us to reject geocentrism, and then later said that Occam’s Razor compelled us to conclude that all reference frames were physically equivalent. I was merely questioning your apparent inconsistency.

Scott Reeves wrote:

“I knew you'd mention this.”

You, sir, are a true seer.

“But of course, it's nonsense (as most anything else you say). Yes, the whole universe could be inside of a black hole (or equivalent), but that's not the same as the earth being in a gravitational well with the rest of the universe rotating around it.”

Fine. The geocentric reference frame is invalid because otherwise we would all be crushed to death in the singularity of a black hole. And yet we’re alive in a geocentric reference frame. Go figure. So I guess something must be wrong with the theory of black holes as currently formulated. Or something wrong with your assertion that Earth being in a gravitational well with the rest of the universe rotating around it would mean that we are inside a black hole. Because it certainly can't mean that a geocentric reference frame is invalid, because that would mean relativity is invalid.

“The fact that all planets go around the sun in elliptic orbits.”

Which is what they do in a geocentric model as well. All planets except Earth, that is. Unless you’re going with some old school Ptolemaic model to which the majority of modern absolute Geocentrists no longer adhere. The way the planets are observed to move against the celestial sphere does not mean that geocentrists must claim the planets do not orbit the sun in elliptic orbits, any more than it means such a thing for heliocentrists.

Geocentric model not dismissed.

“Nonsense.”

Then you don’t quite understand relativity.

“Citation needed.”

Citation needed for what? The question where I asked for your explanation, my assertion within the question that galaxies are spinning faster than they should according to either theory, or my assertion that neither relativity nor Newtonian dynamics can explain that faster spin?

If you’re asking for citation on the question itself, I don’t need to cite anything to ask you a question. If you’re asking for citation about the question’s assertion that galaxies are rotating faster than they should be according to current theories, it’s standard knowledge and really shouldn’t need any citation. But if you want citations, go to the wikipedia entry on ‘galaxy rotation curve’ and browse through the articles in the footnotes. I’m confident that one of them supports me. As for whether Relativity or Newton’s laws can explain this rotation problem, the hypothesis put forth as an explanation is dark matter. But a hypothesis that has not been tested is not a valid explanation. And no, saying that the galaxy rotation problem is both the test for and evidence of dark matter is not an explanation either. It is circular reasoning.

The fact that the concept of dark matter exists and is widely accepted by the mainstream scientific community is all the citation I need to back up what I said in my earlier comment. And if you dispute that the concept of dark matter exists and is widely accepted by the mainstream scientific community, then all I can say is, “Have you been living under a rock for the past few decades?”

"Citation needed" [to my comment that ‘your allegedly simpler model does not explain all observations’]

Dark matter.

“Please explain why, given the choice between two models that explain observations equally well, we should ever have a reason to choose the model with the most assumptions.”

Possibly we wouldn’t ever have such a reason, but I can’t really address this unless you give me a list of the assumptions of both models which show that one model has more assumptions than the other. And the list for each has to contain only assumptions that are not special pleadings favoring one model over the other, or that are not themselves assumptions that the opposing model is correct.

“No, he doesn't. Einstein merely points out that this motion in and of itself it not impossible in principle, but that it is still impossible in practice, since nothing can move at trillions the times the speeds of light. Try to read for comprehension. Better yet, try to read the original German.”

Yes, he does. And he doesn’t say it’s impossible in practice. He says it’s inefficient in practice to use a coordinate system based upon such a reference frame, but that the tremendous speed of the circling stars is not a problem when you examine the geocentric coordinate system. And he’s right. Unless you’re some huge fan of mathematics who enjoys a challenge, then using a simpler coordinate system would be more efficient because it wouldn’t take as much time and you’d have less chance for error creeping in. But mathematical inefficiency does not render a reference frame invalid. As for the original German, does the German concept of ‘impossible’ translate to the English word ‘inefficient’? I don’t know, but I’m going to assume no. Besides, Einstein is not the only one who talks about the speed of light not being a problem for a geocentric frame. I mentioned Phil Plait for one, but there are plenty of others. The whole faster-than-c problem that’s bandied about by CoolHardLogic and others is actually no problem at all. It’s only a demonstration that those people have not actually dug deeply enough into the geocentric issue, and don’t know what they’re talking about.

“Einstein doesn't disagree with my statement. You're quoting him out of context.”

Actually he does, and no I’m not. He is actually defending the validity of the geocentric reference frame, because he understands that if the geocentric reference frame can be shown to be invalid in any way, then so is relativity, since ALL reference frames must be equally valid for his theory to be valid.

“His articles are peer-reviewed, not his person.”

Yes, but his peer-reviewed articles are so thoroughly peer-reviewed, verified and accepted by the scientific community that it’s pretty safe to assume that something he says regarding relativity outside a peer-reviewed article is most likely correct. Anyway, I do not subscribe to relativity, so I really don’t care whether Einstein is correct or not. As an anti-relativist, I hold that he most certainly is NOT correct. My only reason for mentioning him and other relativists is to get anti-geocentrists such as yourself to realize that relativity MUST accept the validity of a geocentric reference frame. People who understand relativity realize that the geocentric frame is valid, which is why you get people like Einstein and Hawking defending it. It’s merely one equal reference frame among a multitude of reference frames, according to them. If you can’t accept that, then we haven’t even actually gotten to the point yet of debating whether the geocentric reference frame is relative or absolute. Not to mention that if you can’t accept any sort of geocentric reference frame, then you are both an anti-relativist and an anti-absolutist, and since relativity and ‘absolutivity’ are the only possibilities, rejection of both means that you are going entirely against reason and logic.

“If you claim he was, then I will need a citation. Something along the lines of Einstein saying ‘I believe the earth is unmovable in the center of the universe’ will do.”

To the best of my knowledge, he never made such a direct and comprehensive statement, and even if he had, he would not have made it unconditionally. If he made such a statement unconditionally, he would be claiming to be an absolute Geocentrist, which I acknowledge he never did. He only espoused a democracy of reference frames and defended a geocentric frame specifically, making him implicitly and logically a geocentrist. But only relatively. He was also a Mars-centrist, a heliocentrist, a Moon-centrist, a Tatooine-centrist, a point-in-deep-space-centrist, etc. Whatever sort of observer the situation called for, he was it. For a relativist, any point in the universe can be chosen as the center of a relatively immobile reference frame. It is modern scientists who add fuel to relativity’s funeral pyre by claiming that we are at the center of our observable universe.

“And that's why you're stupid.”

That’s fine. I don’t think you’re stupid. But also, thanks for taking the time to respond to my comments. I appreciate the opportunity to be challenged and forced to defend my position. Seriously.

“There is no inconsistency.”

There was, even if it was unintentional. But I’ll just put it down to miscommunication on your part, and you can put it down to misunderstanding or downright stupidity on my part.

MomotheBellyDancer wrote:

"And yet we’re alive in a geocentric reference frame."

I am not saying that you can't have a geocentric reference frame. I am saying that the earth is not at the center of the universe with he univere orbiting around it. For that, the vast majority of the universe would have to break the speed of light limit.

We'd also be dead.

"Which is what they do in a geocentric model as well. All planets except Earth, that is."

If all planets except for the earth wold orbiting the sun, then we'd seem them move in completely different patterns across the sky. The patterns we do see though match with all planets orbiting the sun, including the earth.

"Citation needed for what?"

Your assertion that "neither Newton nor Relativity can explain why galaxies are spinning faster than they should according to either theory."

"it’s standard knowledge"

No, it's not.

"really shouldn’t need any citation"

It does, so get to it.

"the hypothesis put forth as an explanation is dark matter."

Dark matter has nothing to do with the claim that the "galaxies should fall part due to their rotation." Really, where do you get this stupid idea?

"Dark matter"

Dark Matter falls perfectly within Newtonian mechanics. It's because of that fact that we can detect its presence, since it has a definitive gravitational influence on surrounding matter.

"Possibly we wouldn’t ever have such a reason"

Good.

"And he’s right."

No, you are making him right by misrepresenting his position. As long as you keep doing that, I will ignore the rest of your blather, since it's nothing but a dishonest move anyway.

"To the best of my knowledge, he never made such a direct and comprehensive statement"
There you go.

"That’s fine. I don’t think you’re stupid."

Well, I am not the one doing the quote-mining.

"There was, even if it was unintentional."

You failed to point out any inconsistency. It's you who has no idea what a reference frame really is.

Scott Reeves wrote:

“I am not saying that you can't have a geocentric reference frame.”

At last, forward movement.

“I am saying that the earth is not at the center of the universe with he univere orbiting around it.”

Fair enough. But you do realize that the majority of modern scientists claim that Earth is at the center of our observable universe?

“For that, the vast majority of the universe would have to break the speed of light limit.”

No it wouldn’t, not according to Einstein and many others. We’ve already been over this. But if you fail to accept that, we can agree to disagree.

“We'd also be dead.”

And yet we’re not.

“If all planets except for the earth wold orbiting the sun, then we'd seem them move in completely different patterns across the sky.”

Citation needed.

"The patterns we do see though match with all planets orbiting the sun, including the earth."

Correct. If you assume the role of an observer in a heliocentric reference frame.

"No, it's not."

Yes, it is.

“Dark matter has nothing to do with the claim that the "galaxies should fall part due to their rotation." Really, where do you get this stupid idea?”

I bought it at the Stupid Idea Store. It was on sale for a dollar. Do you think I paid too much? Anyway. Fine. Forget the part about galaxies falling apart due to rotating too fast. Assume I was in error regarding the falling apart aspect. I misspoke. I was being completely stupid and totally in error about the galaxies falling apart. I completely miscommunicated what I meant to say. Still does not change the fact that the observed rotation speeds of galaxies measured over a large range from their centers to their outer edges do not fit theoretical predictions, and the explanation put forward for the discrepancy between theory and observation is dark matter. Look up ‘galaxy rotation curve’ on wikipedia. Plenty of citations at the bottom. But I know, wikipedia is a poor source of information, right? Still doesn’t change the fact that observation does not fit fact regarding galaxy rotation, and the explanation put forward is dark matter. So dark matter actually has everything to do with galaxy rotation, if not with galaxies falling apart due to rotation.

“Your assertion that 'neither Newton nor Relativity can explain why galaxies are spinning faster than they should according to either theory.'" [in response to ‘citation needed for what?’]

Fine. They can explain it. But their explanation is to hypothesize the existence of a form of matter that has only been detected through a discrepancy between theoretical prediction and empirical observation. Dark matter is an ad hoc explanation.

In that spirit, I hereby explain why we are inside a black hole and yet are not crushed to death. The universe is permeated by some sort of physical force or matter that prevents everything from being crushed inside our black hole universe. SOMETHING exists that makes our geocentric, black hole universe habitable. That something MUST exist, because we’re here and my theory (for the purposes of this sentence) doesn’t work without it. There. If such ad-hoc explanations as dark matter are permissible, then mine is too. X explains how we can live inside a black hole, and X is whatever it needs to be. Matter, energy, a pink elephant, whatever it needs to be. No theory need ever be wrong again. X can always plug the hole.

“Dark Matter falls perfectly within Newtonian mechanics.”

Citation needed.

Dark matter MIGHT fall perfectly within Newtonian mechanics if we knew what it was. But since it’s never actually been detected other than discrepancy between theory and observation, we have no idea what dark matter and dark energy actually are. It hasn’t even yet been determined whether we are detecting the presence of dark matter, or whether we are detecting the presence of errors in standard theories. Right now, the best that can be said about dark matter is that it MUST exist IF standard cosmological theories are valid. But that doesn’t mean it DOES exist. It could just mean that standard theories don’t work.

“It's because of that fact that we can detect its presence, since it has a definitive gravitational influence on surrounding matter.”

It’s not a fact that we can detect its presence. It is only a fact that we can detect a discrepancy between theoretical prediction and empirical observation, and dark matter is generally regarded as the culprit.

“Good.”

That’s your response to my statement ‘Possibly we wouldn’t have such a reason.’ But I made that statement with a huge qualification which you are not addressing.

“No, you are making him right by misrepresenting his position. As long as you keep doing that, I will ignore the rest of your blather, since it's nothing but a dishonest move anyway.”

Dude, you misunderstanding his position is not the same thing as me misrepresenting it. Go ahead and ignore my blather; even IF I am wrong, there’s nothing dishonest about it. It’s a genuine and honest misunderstanding of Einstein’s position. But I’m not wrong.

“There you go.”

I made a highly qualified concession, but you’re taking it as an unqualified concession. So you’re following through on your vow to ignore my alleged blather, but only after you pick out a portion that misrepresents my true position. Now who is being dishonest and misrepresentative?

“Well, I am not the one doing the quote-mining.”

Neither am I. At the beginning of our discussion, I facetiously labeled myself as a quote-miner. But absolutely no quote I’ve used in this discussion has been taken out of context or misinterpreted.

If I cite a source but don't offer a quote from the source, you'll demand that I point to a particular section that supports my position. If I then offer a quote from the source but it supports my position, you'll accuse me of being a quote-miner and taking the quote out of context and demand that I give a larger quote to offer a larger clue to the context. But with the quotes I HAVE offered, no matter how much I expand the quote, it won't alter the quote's support for my position, since I'm not taking it out of context.

“You failed to point out any inconsistency.”

Fine. Whether there was or was not an inconsistency is not important to me, so for the purposes of this discussion, there was no inconsistency.

“It's you who has no idea what a reference frame really is.”

Is not.

[no further responses as yet]

NOTE: when I say "no further responses as yet" in these debates, I probably should add "as far as I know." I'm only aware of responses that show up in my Google+ notifications, so if someone doesn't actually reply to one of my posts, but instead just posts a reply to the comments thread as a whole, it won't show up in my notifications. So "as far as I know" is the caveat regarding no further responses.

Geocentrism: The Debates - Scott Reeves vs. Nope, Part 1

2016-02-06T20:32:00.001-07:00

Comments on YouTube video “TestingGeocentrism Part 2” by CoolHardLogic

Scott Reeves wrote (in a general comment directed at CoolHardLogic)::

Einstein and Stephen Hawking, and many other reputable scientists, say geocentrism works, but we're supposed to believe you that it doesn't?

Nope wrote:

No, you're supposed to believe the evidence gathered through observations, which clearly points out that geocentrism is bollocks. Also, I'm pretty sure none of those fellas actually believed for a second that geocentrism is an even remotely plausible explanation, but who knows? Even Newton said hillariously stupid shit back then so yeah.

Scott Reeves wrote:

Here is the ColdHardTruth that all you relativity supporters are going to have to accept if you want to be relativists: there is absolutely not a single shred of evidence you can put forward to disprove the geocentric reference frame. The geocentric reference frame is a perfectly valid reference frame in relativity.

The only thing you can do is try to talk me and other Geocentrists out of advocating an absolute Geocentric reference frame. How do you do this? You point out that relativity forbids an absolute reference frame, and then try to convince us that relativity has a hundred years of empirical evidence behind it. You tell us that it is the most well-tested theory in the history of science, and only a fool would reject an argument with that magnitude of empirical weight behind it. And if those tactics don’t work, you begin to pile on the mockery and the public humiliation in attempt to silence us.

That is ALL you can do. You all keep trying to prove that the Earth is in motion and the geocentric reference frame is invalid. News flash: that is most definitely not going to happen. If you think it will, you do not understand relativity. Trying to disprove the geocentric reference frame by saying that the Earth is definitely in motion is just the opposite of what I do by advocating the absolute Geocentric frame: you are trying to prove a frame of absolute motion. So by denying geocentrism in any form you’re also working hard to try to disprove relativity.

When you eventually come to accept this ColdHardTruth and start putting forth the proper argument against absolute Geocentrism, I will still reject you, because I utterly reject relativity on the grounds that it is pseudo-science, so I really don’t care if relativity forbids an absolute reference frame, and I reject the claim that relativity has the weight of empirical evidence behind it and is the most well-tested theory in modern science, because it cannot possibly have been properly tested, because all that alleged evidence is merely control data that has been gathered from within a geocentric frame and is awaiting replication in another reference frame at a cosmologically significant distance from Earth (yes, I know, run-on sentence).

Relativity is pseudo-science, and I don’t care how many “reputable” and intelligent scientists support it, scientific and empirical truth is not decided by how many people believe in a theory.

Nope wrote:

You know, you're saying all this nonsense right under a video that is part of a 12-episode series talking about why the geocentric view is inconsistent with our observations and therefore utterly useless for humanity. In every video there is at least 3 to 10 points why your model is unviable , many of them using simple math and basic scientific theories like gravity etc.

You know, the thing is, you can come up with as many frames as you want to describe the universe with the same amount of arrogance you display, but no matter how much you think reality depends on what science you "accept", at the end of the day it's always the practical usability that decides wich model is more plausible. If a model has efficient predicting capabilites, we use that and ignore the ones that hold no practical value to us or flat-out contradict our observations. We launch satelites into space and maintain them on a daily basis, we send probes to other planets, we predict the orbit of millions of celestial bodies, we look into the past of our universe... None of these things would be possible with the use of the geocentric model.

It's the same reason why there's a scientific concensus regarding general relativity: not because most scientist just happened to agree on it because they felt like it, but because it's a useful model with predictive powers. Your own GPS depends on that very theory.

So if you're done playing the victim of the "big conspiracy", please start addressing these videos point by point and refute them using evidence. Not this "well, my reference frame should be as valid as yours and relativitiy is pseudo-scientific anyway" crap, because that's nothing but whining. SHOW IT! Cheers.

Scott Reeves wrote:

"You know, you're saying all this nonsense right under a video that is part of a 12-episode series talking about why the geocentric view is inconsistent with our observations and therefore utterly useless for humanity."

You're kidding. I did not realize that. And absolutely nothing I said was nonsense. I stand by every word of it.

"In every video there is at least 3 to 10 points why your model is inviable, many of them using simple math and basic scientific theories like gravity etc."

So what you're saying is that in each video there are at least 3 to 10 points explaining why relativity is an inviable theory. And anyway, the Geocentric model which CHL attacks, in his first video at least, is an obsolete Geocentric model that no modern Geocentrist endorses, except perhaps for Fernieboy100, which makes him the perfect straw man for CHL .

"If a model has efficient predicting capabilites, we use that and ignore the ones that hold no practical value to us or flat-out contradict our observations."

Unfortunately for relativity, the predictions it allegedly makes are predictions for what you would expect to see from within a geocentric reference frame, which is precisely the frame from which we make those observations. This is why relativists, to strictly adhere to the scientific method, must perform those same observations from a cosmologically significant distance from Earth, and in a statistically significant number of reference frames, and replicate the results they obtained on Earth, from within the geocentric reference frame. To date, this has not been done, therefore relativity has not yet passed through the scientific method.

"We launch satelites into space and maintain them on a daily basis, we send probes to other planets, we predict the orbit of millions of celestial bodies, we look into the past of our universe... None of these things would be possible with the use of the geocentric model."

Yes, they would be possible with the geocentric model. They have to be possible with the geocentric model, or relativity is invalid. As for looking into the past of our universe: how would this in particular not be possible from an absolute Geocentric reference frame? Show me a Geocentrist who denies that light takes time to travel from distant parts of the universe, leaving aside any arguments as to the actual size of the universe?

"It's the same reason why there's a scientific concensus regarding general relativity: not because most scientist just happened to agree on it because they felt like it, but because it's a useful model with predictive powers."

I'll simply copy and paste an earlier answer: Unfortunately for relativity, the predictions it allegedly makes are predictions for what you would expect to see from within a geocentric reference frame, which is precisely the frame from which we make those observations. This is why relativists, to strictly adhere to the scientific method, must perform those same observations from a cosmologically significant distance from Earth, and in a statistically significant number of reference frames, and replicate the results they obtained on Earth, from within the geocentric reference frame. To date, this has not been done, therefore relativity has not yet passed through the scientific method.

"So if you're done playing the victim of the 'big conspiracy'"

I didn't mention any big conspiracy, and I didn't imply any big conspiracy. And I would in no way view myself as a victim if there were any such big conspiracy.

"please start addressing these videos point by point and refute them using evidence."

Why would I want to address point by point the videos of someone who is attempting to disprove relativity, whether or not CHL realizes that is what he is actually attempting? More power to him. I just recommend that he be a little less obnoxious in his attempts, and that he should attack a CURRENT Geocentric model, one propounded by most modern Geocentrists, at least in his first video.

"Not this 'well, my reference frame should be as valid as yours and relativitiy is pseudo-scientific anyway' crap, because that's nothing but whining. SHOW IT! Cheers."

I can only assume you mean I'm 'whining' that 'my' absolute Geocentric frame should be as valid as your relativistic geocentric frame. My absolute frame is actually valid and your relativistic one isn't, so I'm not whining. I'm just spreading truth.

Anyway, if that assumption is correct, then yes, the choice available to us is between an absolute Geocentric reference frame and a relativistic geocentric reference frame.

To date, NO observation has been put forward that cannot be accommodated by an absolute Geocentric reference frame. You can cite any sort of evidence you'd like: GPS, Focault's pendulum, geosynchronous satellites, geostationary satellites, parallax, aberration, particle accelerators, Hafele-Keating, cosmic ray muons - anything you'd like, and none of it contradictory to absolute Geocentrism. And according to relativists who actually understand relativity, all the observations support a relativistic geocentric reference frame as well. As I said earlier, you should be admonishing me for advocating an absolute Geocentric frame, not trying to disprove any sort of geocentrism whatsoever.

You have to find a way to choose between the two possible geocentric frames. Since the relativistic geocentric reference frame is dependent upon the truth of the Copernican principle, which is actually a hypothesis that has no empirical support and is basically a twin of the principle of relativity, then the choice is clear: relativity has not been properly tested, yet is presented to the public as scientific fact, making relativity a pseudo-science. Therefore, the choice is between absolute Geocentrism or a pseudo-science. Which does a true scientist choose?

Nope wrote:

OK, so to cut this short, let's start this over again with you describing this so-called "absolute Geocentric model" of yours. And please, don't just refer me to your video. Maybe it's just that I'm an idiot, but I couldn't make any sense of it. I'm more of the reading type.

Scott Reeves wrote:

I don't have any video that I recall which describes the modern geocentric reference frame in detail. [NOTE: at the time I wrote this response, that statement was true. But I have since made such a video, prompted by this very sequence of comments]. Maybe the best way to describe it would be "The relativistic geocentric reference frame, except the absolute version of it." And there's really no difference between the two, other than the assertion that the absolute Geocentric reference frame is...well...absolute as opposed to relative. And it has a capital-G to distinguish it, following the convention of Phil Plaitt, the so-called Bad Astronomer. It looks a lot like the one CHL attempts to debunk in video 10, which he dubs Brahe 2.0. You'll note that he(?) doesn't claim that the model doesn't work or can't be modified to work, only that it fails a shave with Occam's Razor and is "Bollocks!" which doesn't speak to whether or not the model is viable. Occam's Razor isn't a physical law that governs the universe. If it violates Occam's razor, I don't care.

Not being sarcastic, but which video of mine did you watch and couldn't understand (all of them is not a helpful answer) because I've got like 150 or so on YouTube, and if you're going to start asking questions about one, I'll need to know which one you're talking about.

[No further response as yet from Nope]

Geocentrism: The Debates - Scott Reeves vs. EmperorZelos, Part 1

2016-02-06T19:25:00.000-07:00

Comments on YouTube video “Heliocentric Vs ConcaveGeocentric Model Of Our Universe” by Godrules

Scott Reeves wrote in response to an earlier comment by Mike Vizioz:

"There is absolutely no reason to believe in something like that unless you are out to prove the validity of the bible."

How about a desire to be scientifically accurate? The choice is either absolute Geocentrism or relativity. Since relativity requires the existence of an unscientific concept, namely the unobservable universe, to be valid, relativity is not a scientific theory, yet is presented as scientific fact. Therefore the choice is either absolute Geocentrism or pseudoscience.

From a religious and Biblical perspective (yes, I am a Christian) I couldn't care less whether we're at the center of the universe or not. Makes no difference to my belief in God. I only want to follow the scientifically sound view of the universe, and protest all you want, that view is Geocentrism.

Scott Reeves wrote in response to an earlier comment by EmperorZelos:

Prove it. Have you gone to other points in the universe to check your assertion?

EmperorZelos wrote:

EVERY point of the universe will be seen as the center you idiot and big bang/ relativity does nto depend upon a larger universe. Go back to highschool

Scott Reeves wrote:

Prove that every point in the universe will be seen as the center. Get in your little spaceship and fly a few thousand light years away from Earth and start proving the Copernican principle.

And Big Bang/relativity DOES depend upon a larger universe. If we're at the center of the observable universe, which science acknowledges that we are, then in order for us not to be motionless at the center of an absolute Geocentric universe, there MUST be a larger universe beyond the observable universe. YOU go back to high school.

Emperor Zelos wrote:

"Prove that every point in the universe will be seen as the center. Get in your little spaceship and fly a few thousand light years away from Earth and start proving the Copernican principle."

It's demonstrable by the laws of physics, they are frame independed which means all points are equal.

"And Big Bang/relativity DOES depend upon a larger universe"

It doesn't, it might be a conclusion but it's not a dependence.

"If we're at the center of the observable universe, which science acknowledges that we are"

It doesn't, cite a single peer reviewed article from a reputable journal that says we are the center.

"then in order for us not to be motionless at the center of an absolute Geocentric universe, there MUST be a larger universe beyond the observable universe. YOU go back to high school."

That's a non-sequitor.

The ceocentric model is dead and easily done so by simple newtonian physics because the earth moves around the sun, which moves around the center of the galaxy. We've measured these speeds and much else.

Scott Reeves wrote:

"It's demonstrable by the laws of physics, they are frame independed which means all points are equal."

Which laws of physics, specifically?

"It doesn't, it might be a conclusion but it's not a dependence."

It is a dependence, because if the observable universe is all that there is to the universe, which obviously there can be no proof that there IS more to it given the inherently unobservable nature of that alleged more, and we're at the center of the observable, then we're absolutely, non-relatively at the center. Therefore relativity at least, and probably the Big Bang, depend upon there being more to the universe than what can be observed.

"The ceocentric model is dead and easily done so by simple newtonian physics because the earth moves around the sun, which moves around the center of the galaxy."

Prove that the Earth moves around the sun. All you can prove is that there is relative motion between the Earth and the sun. That is ALL you can prove.

Scott Reeves wrote:

Forgot this part:

"It doesn't, cite a single peer reviewed article from a reputable journal that says we are the center."

I’m not looking through peer-reviewed journals, wading through their tech-talk to find an instance where they say we’re at the center of the observable universe. I can, however, throw all sorts of websites at you with quotes from physics professors and such saying that we are at the center of the observable universe. I’m not going to waste my time doing that, though, because I’ve got all that in one of my videos here on YouTube.

And anyway, how can you claim in one breath that every point in the universe will be seen as the center, and then deny in the next that science acknowledges that we’re at the center of the observable universe? What is that, some sort of retard double-think to try to confuse the issue?

Emperor Zelos wrote:

"I’m not looking through peer-reviewed journals, wading through their tech-talk to find an instance where they say we’re at the center of the observable universe."

That's what you gotta do because webshites are worthless.

"I can, however, throw all sorts of websites at you with quotes from physics professors and such saying that we are at the center of the observable universe."

Not relevant unless the entire context of the quote is supplied.

"And anyway, how can you claim in one breath that every point in the universe will be seen as the center, and then deny in the next that science acknowledges that we’re at the center of the observable universe? What is that, some sort of retard double-think to try to confuse the issue?"

First of you have not given any evidence that science says we are at the center, which I know is not the case because scientists know that all the laws of physics are frame invariant. This means no frame is prefered and special and all give equal predictions and as such tehre cannot be any centre without every point being the centre and if all points are the centre, do we really have a centre? No, it's just a product of the frame then.

Scott Reeves wrote:

“First of you have not given any evidence that science says we are at the center, which I know is not the case because scientists know that all the laws of physics are frame invariant.”

You yourself gave the evidence in an earlier comment. I quote you from one of your comments on this very video: “+Godrules Idiot, they know exacly how to deal with the data because....guess what? EVERY FUCKING POINT IN THE UNIVERSE WILL SEE ITSELF AS BEING THE CENTER!?”

So unless you don’t really know what you’re talking about and thus everything you say to me is complete shite, we are at the center of the observable universe, and you have acknowledged it. The observer in the phrase "the observable universe" is us. When scientists talk about the observable universe, they're not talking about the observable universe as observed by Spock over on Vulcan.

That we are at the center of the observable universe is such a basic tenet of modern science that I don’t NEED to slog through a bunch of peer-reviewed, “scientific” journals to search for a “credible” statement in support of my claim regarding modern science’s position on the subject, any more than you have to do the same in support of your previous “EVERY FUCKING POINT IN THE UNIVERSE WILL SEE ITSELF AS BEING THE CENTER!?” comment.

What YOU need to do is slog through the scientific journals in search of empirical PROOF for your contention that EVERY point in the universe, not just ours, will see itself as the center. Guess what? THERE IS NO EMPRICAL PROOF OF THAT! Because the way you empirically prove it is to travel a cosmologically significant distance from Earth, perform your observations, and get the same results that you got on Earth. Unless you are aware of some secret space program that has done just that, then the claim that every point will see itself as the center of its own observable universe, which is a paraphrase of the Copernican principle, is an untested hypothesis.

“…which I know is not the case because scientists know that all the laws of physics are frame invariant. This means no frame is prefered and special and all give equal predictions and as such tehre cannot be any centre without every point being the centre and if all points are the centre, do we really have a centre? No, it's just a product of the frame then.?”

So you WERE talking about the principle of relativity earlier. The relativity principle is actually a hypothesis that says basically, as you put it, “…no frame is pefered [sic] and special and all give equal predictions…”

It’s a HYPOTHESIS, closely tied to the Copernican principle (actually, another hypothesis), and it is exactly this hypothesis that makes relativity pseudo-science, because the hypothesis implicitly requires the existence of a larger universe beyond our observable universe. As I said, if the (our) observable universe is all that there is to the universe, AND we are at the center of it (“EVERY FUCKING POINT IN THE UNIVERSE WILL SEE ITSELF AS BEING THE CENTER!?”), then both the principle of relativity (read hypothesis) and the Copernican principle (read hypothesis) will fail. Thus, relativity and its adherents MUST prove that there is a larger universe beyond our observable universe, which, because it is implicitly unobservable and thus beyond the scope of rational scientific inquiry, is an impossible task for relativity.

So your statement “…no frame is prefered and special and all give equal predictions and as such tehre cannot be any centre without every point being the centre…” is an as-yet-untested hypothesis, a hypothesis that depends upon the existence of something that cannot be observed, making it a hypothesis that cannot be empirically tested. And since relativity is presented to the public as scientific fact, relativity is PSEUDO-SCIENCE.

So we’re left with two options: 1) We are absolutely, non-relativistically at the center of the observable universe, and the observable universe is all that there is, or 2) We are relativistically at the center of the observable universe, but that’s okay, because “EVERY FUCKING POINT IN THE UNIVERSE WILL SEE ITSELF AS BEING THE CENTER!?”

Option 1 is scientifically sound and is supported by ALL empirical evidence. Option 2 is scientifically unsound as it depends upon the existence of something that is as real as fairies and unicorns and the flying spaghetti monster.

Which option should a true scientist choose?

EmperorZelos has no clothes.

EmperorZelos wrote:

"You yourself gave the evidence in an earlier comment. I quote you from one of your comments on this very video: “+Godrules Idiot, they know exacly how to deal with the data because....guess what? EVERY FUCKING POINT IN THE UNIVERSE WILL SEE ITSELF AS BEING THE CENTER!?”

If every point is the center than no point is the center you imbecile.

"because the hypothesis implicitly requires the existence of a larger universe beyond our observable universe."

It doesn't.

"So your statement “…no frame is prefered and special and all give equal predictions and as such tehre cannot be any centre without every point being the centre…” is an as-yet-untested hypothesis, a hypothesis that depends upon the existence of something that cannot be observed, making it a hypothesis that cannot be empirically tested."

It can and has been tested Scientists go with evidence you imbecile and geocentrism is not it. We know that earth is moving through space, our galaxy is moving and all

Scott Reeves wrote:

"If every point is the center than no point is the center you imbecile."

That's a mighty big if with no empirical evidence behind it. Every point is not the center, that's the point. There's only one point that is the center, and that point is us.

“It doesn't."

Does too.

"It [principle of relativity] can and has been tested"

How has it been tested? Particle accelerators? GPS? Astronomical observations? Hafele-Keating? Cosmic ray muons? Those aren't tests of the principle of relativity. They're merely the gathering of observations from within an Earth-based reference frame, observations which say that strange things happen when you move relative to the Earth, which doesn't contradict absolute, non-relativistic Geocentrism. Now, to properly test the principle following the scientific method, the same observations must be made, and the same results obtained, at a cosmologically significant distance from Earth. To date, that has not been done. "

“Scientists go with evidence you imbecile and geocentrism is not it."

You're correct. Scientists do go with evidence. Which is why relativists and anti-geocentrists do not qualify as scientists.

"We know that earth is moving through space, our galaxy is moving and all"

How do you know this? Cite me any empirical evidence that says it's Earth that is definitely moving, rather than just relative motion between Earth and something else. You cannot cite me any such evidence, because there IS none! I, however, can cite evidence that Earth is motionless: interferomter experiments.

I quote Albert Einstein: "For example, strictly speaking one cannot say that the Earth moves in an ellipse around the Sun, because that statement presupposes a coordinate system in which the Sun is at rest..."

"You fool!" he said with a flourish of his cape, "It is not I who am the imbecile! It is you!"

EmperorZelos wrote:

"That's a mighty big if with no empirical evidence behind it. Every point is not the center, that's the point. There's only one point that is the center, and that point is us."

It isn't because all laws of physics have been tested and they are frame independed.

"They're merely the gathering of observations from within an Earth-based reference frame, observations which say that strange things happen when you move relative to the Earth, which doesn't contradict absolute, non-relativistic Geocentrism."

Geocentrism is dead since long ago so drop that already. We have gathered data in space, from other planets, satelites, as earth moves around the sun, sun through the galaxy and more.

"You're correct. Scientists do go with evidence. Which is why relativists and anti-geocentrists do not qualify as scientists."

Realitivity is confirmed to all levels on non-quantum levels and geocentrism is long since dead as it matches no fucking data.

"How do you know this? Cite me any empirical evidence that says it's Earth that is definitely moving, rather than just relative motion between Earth and something else"

Diurnal aberation, annual aberation, paralax, the dipole in microwave background radiation just to mention a small fraction of all evidence.

"You cannot cite me any such evidence, because there IS none! I, however, can cite evidence that Earth is motionless: interferomter experiments."

Yet I did you imbecile.

Scott Reeves wrote:

"It isn't because all laws of physics have been tested and they are frame independed [sic]."

The speed of light at least, from the Geocentric viewpoint, is not frame independent. So ALL the laws are frame independent only if relativity is true. Relativity still has not been tested as required by the scientific method. Such testing cannot have been tested as required by the scientific method until such tests are replicated at a cosmologically significant distance from Earth, since non-relativistic Geocentrism is true if relativity is false.

"Geocentrism is dead since long ago so drop that already. We have gathered data in space, from other planets, satelites [sic], as earth moves around the sun, sun through the galaxy and more."

I will not drop Geocentrism, ever. I will chase it round the Moons of Nibia and round the Antares Maelstrom and round Perdition's flames before I give it up! Unless of course you're just saying you want to end our little back and forth now, which is okay with me. Anyway, Geocentrism is only "dead since long ago" by a consensus of pseudo-scientists, not by any empirical evidence against it. We may have gathered data in space, etc, as you say, but it wasn't gathered at a cosmologically significant distance from Earth, so it says nothing against Geocentrism. And the data gathered from other planets relates only to the planet in question, such as surface temperature, soil and atmospheric composition, etc. Have these planetary probes been making detailed astronomical observations regarding distant parts of the universe? Not that I've been hearing. And even if they have, they are still not being performed at a cosmologically significant distance from Earth, which is a requirement to properly test both relativity and the Copernican principle.

"Realitivity [sic] is confirmed to all levels on non-quantum levels and geocentrism is long since dead as it matches no fucking data."

No it's not and yes it does.

"Diurnal aberation [sic], annual aberation [sic], paralax [sic], the dipole in microwave background radiation just to mention a small fraction of all evidence."

All of which are easily explainable within a Geocentric universe if you care to look into the matter.

Here's a bit from Stephen Hawking. He's pretty smart, even though he believes in a pseudo-science, so you should listen to him: "...for our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest. Despite its role in philosophical debates over the nature of our universe, the real advantage of the Copernican system is simply that the equations of motion are much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest." - Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design, pages 41-42

All the experiments you cited - diurnal aberration, annual aberration, etc - are all observations of the heavens, and if Stephen Hawking says they can be explained by assuming the Earth is at rest, I believe him. Plus, I've looked into each of those on my own, and Geocentrism can definitely explain them. Geocentrism can even explain geostationary and geosynchronous satellites, just in case you're going to bring those up.

You do realize that if there are any sort of observations showing Earth is definitely in motion, then relativity is an invalid theory, don't you? In which case, non-relativistic Geocentrism is your only alternative. So by arguing that there are observations that definitely prove the Earth is in motion, you are shooting yourself in the foot. If the Earth is definitely in motion, you're once again stuck having to explain why we can't detect Earth's motion using interferometers, which will lead you once again to the relativity of all motion, which will once again lead to your alleged detection of the Earth's definite motion, which will again destroy relativity...

"Yet I did you imbecile."

No, you didn't, you imbecile (can't we talk like mature people and stop the name-calling? I get it already; you think I'm an imbecile. Chill out, dude.). All you cited me are observations which show the relative motion between Earth and the universe, not any observations which show that the Earth is definitely the object in motion.

MikeVizioz wrote:

"Geocentrism is only ‘dead since long ago’ by a consensus of pseudo-scientists"

...You just called every single scientist in history a pseudo-scientist.

Scott Reeves wrote:

That's all right. If you're wrong, you're wrong, no matter who you are. But I'm sure there are a few scientists out there in history and the present who weren't covered by my sweeping statement.

But maybe that was a bit too harsh. I'll be gentler and modify it to "Geocentrism is only 'dead since long ago' by a consensus of scientists who were fooled by a pseudo-science."

EmperorZelos wrote:

"Relativity still has not been tested as required by the scientific method."

This is completely false, it has been tasted over and over and over again and it has succeeded at every point. It is tasted everyday by cellphones.

"Anyway, Geocentrism is only "dead since long ago" by a consensus of pseudo-scientists, not by any empirical evidence against it."

Yeah no, it's dead by scientists because all evidence ever gathered goes against it.

"All of which are easily explainable within a Geocentric universe if you care to look into the matter."

Easily explainable? Look up cool hard logics video and see what explination is required for al of those to work in a geocentric universe, the model is assinine.

"You do realize that if there are any sort of observations showing Earth is definitely in motion, then relativity is an invalid theory, don't you?"

This is flatly wrong because it doesn't matter in relativity you imbecile.

Scott Reeves wrote:

“This is completely false, it has been tasted [sic] over and over and over again and it has succeeded at every point. It is tasted [sic] everyday by cellphones."

Maybe it's been tasted, as you say, but it hasn't been tested. Once you have gone a cosmologically significant distance from Earth, repeated the observations made on Earth, then and only then can you claim that relativity has been tested. Until you've done that, all that can be said at this point is that relativity has been tasted (whatever that means) and relativists have merely been gathering data from within an Earth-based reference frame, data that you all can use for comparison when you finally get in your little spaceships and zoom off to the distant stars and replicate your experiments there.

"Yeah no, it's dead by scientists because all evidence ever gathered goes against it."

Yeah, no. The only "evidence" against it is a philosophical principle. Here's another quote from The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking: ""At first sight, all this evidence that the universe appears the same whichever direction we look in might seem to suggest there is something distinctive about our place in the universe...There is, however, an alternative explanation: the universe might look the same in every direction as seen from any other galaxy too. This, as we have seen, was Friedmann's second assumption [the cosmological principle]...But today we believe Friedmann's assumption for almost the opposite reason, a kind of modesty: we feel it would be most remarkable if the universe looked the same in every direction around us but not around other points in the universe!"

Modern scientists believe we're not at the center of the universe not based upon any empirical evidence, but upon a desire for modesty.

"Easily explainable? Look up cool hard logics [sic] video and see what explination [sic] is required for al [sic] of those to work in a geocentric universe, the model is assinine [sic]."

Between CoolHardLogic and Geocentrism, the only thing asinine is CoolHardLogic, and there's certainly no HardLogic in his obnoxious arguments against geocentrism. Guy's a jerkwad. Ad hominem attacks (that's the sort of attack I just did in the previous sentence, but I'm sure you know that, you imbecile);) against a well-meaning but misguided geocentrist who advocates an obsolete geocentric model to which no knowledgeable modern geocentrist adheres. Fernieboy100 is a straw man that CHL props up to demonstrate CHL's own misunderstanding of both modern geocentrism and relativity itself. Why don't you look up Robert Sungenis's excellent rebuttal of CHL's first video? (Yes, I know, Sungenis is a religious nut and an imbecile and you won't waste your time, right?)

"This is flatly wrong because it doesn't matter in relativity you imbecile."

Relativity itself doesn't matter because it's pseudo-science. But anyway, once again you're demonstrating your lack of understanding of relativity. If you can point to a reference frame and say, "This frame is definitely, absolutely in motion," then relativity is invalid, because you have just identified a special reference frame, unequal to other reference frames. When there is relative motion between two frames, relativity requires that each reference frame be allowed to consider itself at rest and the other reference frame in motion. If you say, "That frame is most definitely in absolute motion," then that frame cannot consider itself to be at rest and the other frame in motion. If you can point to such a frame, then you have just identified a frame that is not equal to other frames, thereby invalidating relativity. Do you really not know this, or are we just miscommunicating somewhere? You ARE familiar with the concepts of absolute motion and absolute rest, aren't you?

EmperorZelos wrote:

Are you really so weak in your position that you have to latch onto a typo? Really? You need to both grow up then and learn some basic science.

Scott Reeves wrote:

"Are you really so weak in your position that you have to latch onto a typo? Really?"

Not really. I only did it because I noticed elsewhere in these comments that you were very nastily cursing someone out for their atrocious spelling. Meanwhile, your responses to me have been littered with a ridiculous amount of misspelling.

"You need to both grow up then and learn some basic science."

I'm plenty grown up. If you read back through our interactions, you'll notice that you were the first to start calling me names. I ignored it at first, but lately it's getting ridiculous, so I've been returning the favor a bit. But you're right. I shouldn't be stooping to your level, so I revert to my previous position of ignoring your juvenile attacks against me personally. And I've learned plenty of basic science, and urge you to do the same. Or at least reassess whether you've actually learned what you think you've learned.

EmperorZelos wrote:

It's only name calling if the terms are not descriptive and for you, they are very accurate. You've learned no science if you advocate geocentrism, something that is 500 years out of date.

Scott Reeves wrote:

Well, then, I know what you are, but what am I infinity.

These are The Undeniable Facts (aka the CoolHardLogic-al facts), whether you choose to accept them or not:

1) A relativist can only say that Earth is in relative motion. Could be Earth that is in motion, could be the other guy. If you say something, such as the Earth, is definitely in motion, then you are in violation of relativity.

2) We, the observers on Earth, are at the center of our own observable universe. This is what the empirical evidence says. Both relativists and absolute Geocentrists acknowledge this.

3) Absolute Geocentrists say that our (we, the observers on Earth) observable universe is all that there is to the universe. There is nothing beyond our observable universe.

4) If our own observable universe is the entire universe, and we are at the center of it, the Earth can be empirically shown (interferometer experiments) to be at absolute rest. Therefore if our own observable universe is all that there is, Earth is immobile at the center of the universe.

5) According to standard Big Bang cosmology, anything beyond our (we, the observers on Earth) observable universe will be forever unobservable to us due to the expansion of space.

6) Things that are unobservable do not exist as far as science is concerned. Therefore anything beyond our observable universe does not exist as far as science is concerned. How could it, since the ability to observe something is a requirement of the scientific method?

7) If 4) is correct then relativity is false, because Earth is a preferred, special reference frame, defining an absolute rest frame.

8) The only way 4) can be false is if there is a larger universe beyond our (we, the observers on Earth) observable universe.

9) Therefore, both relativity and the Copernican principle require the existence of a universe larger than our observable universe, i.e. both depend upon something that is beyond the scope of the scientific method and rational scientific inquiry.

10) Mainstream science claims that there is a larger universe beyond our observable universe. They MUST claim this, because both relativity and the Copernican principle require it (see 9)) Google “the observable universe vs. the entire universe.”

11) Relativity is presented to the public as scientific fact, yet, due to the requirement in 9), relativity is an unscientific theory.

12) Therefore, relativity is pseudo-science.

13) The only options available to us are absolute Geocentrism or relativistic geocentrism.

14) Relativity is a pseudo-science, therefore the only option available to strict adherents to science is absolute Geocentrism.

Earth is at absolute rest at the center of the universe as far as science is concerned. Relativity is a pseudo-science and anyone who adheres to it is a kook. Case closed, class dismissed.

EmperorZelos wrote:

"A relativist can only say that Earth is in relative motion. Could be Earth that is in motion, could be the other guy. If you say something, such as the Earth, is definitely in motion, then you are in violation of relativity."

We can say everything is in motion because everything is in motion in some frame of reference. The thing is also there are certain things that shows that it's in motion such as acceleration, while the direction of acceleration and quantity differs depending on the frame of reference it can always be measured in any frame and show that it's moving and changing.

"We, the observers on Earth, are at the center of our own observable universe. This is what the empirical evidence says. Both relativists and absolute Geocentrists acknowledge this"

It's the same with every point when you look out from it, we can observe it's not stationary though.

"f our own observable universe is the entire universe, and we are at the center of it, the Earth can be empirically shown (interferometer experiments) to be at absolute rest. Therefore if our own observable universe is all that there is, Earth is immobile at the center of the universe."

Really? Cite the peer reviewed work of it. All measurements have shown that earth is not at rest. The rest is irrelevant

Scott Reeves wrote:

"We can say everything is in motion because everything is in motion in some frame of reference."

Incorrect. To an observer in any reference frame, that reference frame is not moving. It's the all the other reference frames that are moving. To say that you've got all the bases covered because you can always find a reference frame where any object under consideration is in motion, is to assume the viewpoint of an ultimate observer in an ultimate reference frame. Which = absolute reference frame.

"The thing is also there are certain things that shows that it's in motion such as acceleration, while the direction of acceleration and quantity differs depending on the frame of reference it can always be measured in any frame and show that it's moving and changing."

Incorrect. An observer in an allegedly accelerating reference frame can claim that it's the other reference frames that are accelerating. A car on the highway can say that he is motionless and the ground is racing past him. When he puts on his brake, a momentary gravitational field is generated ahead of the car which decelerates the entire universe. It sounds ridiculous, but that is exactly the position of general relativity. The car is always motionless from the viewpoint of its observer. It's the entire universe that accelerates, moves at a constant velocity for a time, and then decelerates.

"It's the same with every point when you look out from it, we can observe it's not stationary though."

Again, you have no proof that it's the same with every point. That's the Copernican Principle, and there's no empirical evidence that the Copernican principle is true. Again I quote Stephen Hawking from The Grand Design, pg 62: "We have no scientific evidence for or against that second assumption." The second assumption to which he refers is Alexander Friedmann's assumption, which, in Hawking's words, is "...the universe might look the same in every direction as seen from any other galaxy too." Sound even remotely like what you've been saying? As Hawking says, there's no empirical evidence for it. And Hawking is wrong that there's no evidence AGAINST it. The evidence against it is that it requires the existence of a larger universe beyond the observable universe, which is something that cannot be verified because the alleged larger universe is unobservable, and so is beyond the scope of rational scientific inquiry. So there's no evidence for the Copernican principle, and there's evidence against it. Goodbye, Copernican principle, and, through guilt by association, goodbye relativity.

"All measurements have shown that earth is not at rest."

Not ALL measurements have shown that Earth is not at rest. If ALL measurements showed that Earth is not at rest, then those measurements are showing that Earth is in absolute motion. Absolute motion is as deadly to relativity as absolute rest. All that relativity can speak to is relative motion between reference frames. An observer on Earth can say that Earth is motionless and the sun is moving. An observer on Mars can say that Mars is at rest, Earth is moving around the sun, and both are moving around the Mars. Depending on which observer you ask, Earth is either in motion, or it is stationary. That is relativity. So if you say that ALL measurements have shown that Earth is moving, you're assuming the viewpoint of a non-Earth-centered observer. And that's true. All of HIS measurements have shown that Earth is not at rest. But If you ask an observer on Earth, all his measurements will show that Earth is not moving. In relativity, you cannot say whether Earth is moving or not. You can only ask different observers about Earth's state of motion or lack of it, and all of them are correct, at least according to relativity. I don't think you are quite understanding that about relativity.

[No response from EmperorZelos as yet to the above]

Scott Reeves later wrote (commenting on EmperorZelos’s comment to another user) :

"Imma call you stupid if you keep holding onto them when I try to educate you."

Could just mean that the teacher is stupid.

EmperorZelos wrote:

Could be, that is known to occure in life but more often than not that is not the case.

In this instance for example when the teacher says the earth is round and moving through space, the teacher is 100% absolutely correct and opposition to say otherwise is stupidity.

Scott Reeves wrote:

You've got the round part right, but regarding the moving through space part, you're still merely a student who obviously has not yet received his diploma in Relativity.

EmperorZelos wrote:

How cute! Except we know we move through space because relativity, as I bet you mean special, only applied to linear motion and not accelerating frames of references

Scott Reeves wrote:

“How cute! Except we know we move through space because relativity, as I bet you mean special, only applied to linear motion and not accelerating frames of references”

Only an observer in a reference frame relative to which Earth is moving “knows” that Earth is moving. You’re correct that special relativity doesn’t apply to accelerating frames of reference. But general relativity provides no answers regarding the question of the motion of the Earth, because Earth is only an accelerating reference frame if you assume the viewpoint of an observer outside the geocentric reference frame. For a geocentric observer, the geocentric reference frame is an inertial reference frame.

For a relativist, there is no objective fact as to whether the Earth is moving. Not even in general relativity. Earth’s motion and rotation, or lack of motion and rotation, depend upon which observer you ask, and every observer you ask is correct. So according to relativity, if someone in a geocentric reference frame says Earth is neither orbiting the sun nor rotating, then he/she is just as correct as an observer in a non-geocentric reference frame who says that the Earth IS orbiting the sun and rotating.

The following is a response that I had anticipated having to make to what I said in the immediately preceding, but which I haven't actually posted, since as yet there has been no further response. Also, this is only a partial piece of a much larger response I had planned:

Fine. For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll retract what I said about a geocentric frame being inertial, and allow that technically a geocentric reference frame is non-inertial due solely to the presence of gravity. But this doesn’t change the fact that general relativity provides no answers as to whether the Earth is actually orbiting the sun and rotating. In such a geocentric frame, Earth is stationary and non-rotating even as it experiences a gravitational field. So Earth is non-inertial due to solely gravity, while the rest of the universe is non-inertial due to its rotation around the stationary Earth. Likewise when you choose the sun as the center, or our galaxy as the center, or the local cluster as the center, etc. In each case (when you're choosing planets, stars, or galaxies as the center, at least, rather than ships moving at constant velocity far from any significant mass), you're comparing the subject reference frame vs. everything else as a reference frame, so in most cases, you're comparing two non-inertial reference frames.

Geocentrism: The Debates Introduction

2016-02-06T18:53:00.001-07:00

I'm going to start posting discussions I have had over the past month in the comments sections of various Youtube videos. Of course they're all on the subject of geocentrism and relativity. The illustrious CoolHardLogic even puts in a lengthy appearance.

In a lot of the cases, the other debate participant eventually dropped out, whether it was due to my craziness, their lack of time, or their growing tired of carrying the discussion onward. Or maybe they will eventually get around to responding to dangling response to their previous comments, and just haven't yet. For whatever reason, a lot of the discussions are left hanging, so I'm calling each one "part 1," even though there may never be a subsequent part.

I in no way mean to imply anything at all about the other participant's leaving the discussion; I know life gets in the way, or the debate eventually becomes pointless, or they think things have gotten a little too crazy, or they're in over their heads, or they think I don't know what I'm talking about. Whatever reason, nothing against the other commentor, and their leaving the debate shouldn't be construed as an admission of defeat on their part (although predictably and, being human, I do of course consider myself the hands-down winner of every exchange). I appreciate each participant having taken the time to respond to what they did. It has helped to me hone my own arguments.

It should also be noted that I have absolutely no idea who any of my opponents are in "real life." I don't know their educational background - nothing. So I didn't choose to respond to a comment they made because I researched them and found them to be knowledgeable; I merely wanted to respond to something they had said to some other commentor, and so our discussion began.

In each case, I'm going to identify myself and my opponent using "Scott Reeves wrote:" and "[insert name] wrote:" with each participant's section having the words of the opposing participant quoted in bold.

Also, the presence of my comments in a particular video's comments section shouldn't be construed as either agreement or disagreement with the content of that video. Also, any spelling or grammatical errors have been left in and are the "fault" of whoever made them, including myself.

Also, a lot of these debates are quite long, so be sure to click the "read more" link at the bottom to read the whole thing.

Any copyrighted material is used under Fair Use.

Geocentric vs. relativistic time dilation

2015-12-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

Here is a quote from Wikipedia.com: Time dilation can be inferred from the observed fact of the constancy of the speed of light in all reference frames. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

Just as accurately, the above quote could read: Time dilation can be inferred from the observed fact of light's unique speed relative the absolute Geocentric reference frame.

That's right. Time dilation does not belong to relativity. I've posted a new YouTube video which explains how there are absolutely no Einsteinian concepts involved in time dilation. It is merely an a-relativistic theory which Einstein adopts for his own theory by declaring time dilation to be symmetric, or relative.

Time dilation can be derived exactly according to the same equations and diagrams used by relativists everywhere.

GPS corrections, particle accelerators, cosmic ray muons - all easily predicted from within an absolute Geocentric reference frame by the exact same method Einstein uses, with no sleight of hand and no mathematical corrections.

What does relativity's geocentric model look like?

2015-12-27T13:01:00.001-07:00

I was asked a question on a YouTube forum about what the absolute Geocentric model of the universe looks like. I decided to turn the question around. Everyone seems quick and eager (CoolHardLogic, anyone?) to claim victory in debunking the geocentric reference frame. But hold on a second - relativity contains a geocentric reference frame. So if all the geocentric models put forth by absolute geocentrists can be debunked, then what exactly do the relativists think their own geocentric model is? Since they've got a geocentric reference frame, they MUST have their own geocentric model of the universe. So what does it look like? I explain EXACTLY what it looks like in the following two videos. And (spoilers ahead)surprise, surprise, it looks exactly like the most current geocentric models that the relativists have allegedly debunked. Brings to mind an image of Barney Fife shooting himself in the foot as he attempts to draw his pistol.

2015-12-24T10:40:00.000-07:00

These are The Undeniable Facts:

1) A relativist can only say that Earth is in relative motion. If you say something, such as the Earth, is definitely in motion, then you are in violation of relativity.
2) We, the observers on Earth, are at the center of our own observable universe. This is what the empirical evidence says. Both relativists and absolute Geocentrists acknowledge this.
3) Absolute Geocentrists say that our (we, the observers on Earth) observable universe is all that there is to the universe. There is nothing beyond our observable universe.
4) If our own observable universe is the entire universe, and we are at the center of it, the Earth can be empirically shown (interferometer experiments) to be at absolute rest. Therefore if our own observable universe is all that there is, Earth is immobile at the center of the universe.
5) According to standard Big Bang theory, anything beyond our (we, the observers on Earth) observable universe will be forever unobservable to us due to the expansion of space.
6) Things that are unobservable do not exist as far as science is concerned. Therefore anything beyond our observable universe does not exist as far as science is concerned. How could it, since the ability to observe something is a requirement of the scientific method?
7) If 4) is correct then relativity is false, because Earth is a preferred, special reference frame, defining an absolute rest frame.
8) The only way 4) can be false is if there is a larger universe beyond our (we, the observers on Earth) observable universe.
9) Therefore, both relativity and the Copernican principle require the existence of a universe beyond our observable universe, i.e. both require something that is beyond the scope of the scientific method and rational scientific inquiry.
10) Mainstream science claims that there is a larger universe beyond our observable universe. They MUST claim this, because both relativity and the Copernican principle require it (see 9)) Google “the observable universe vs. the entire universe.”
11) Relativity is presented to the public as scientific fact.
12) Therefore, relativity is pseudo-science.
13) The only options available to us are absolute Geocentrism or relativistic geocentrism.
14) Relativity is a pseudo-science, therefore the only option available to strict adherents to science is absolute Geocentrism.

Earth is at absolute rest at the center of the universe as far as science is concerned. Relativists are the kooks, not the Geocentrists. Case closed, class dismissed.

Stephen Hawking, relativists and anti-geocentrists get taken to school

2015-12-21T20:34:00.000-07:00

A little graphic I made today. If you right-click on the image and select "save image as," you can download this to your computer for easier zooming. The kid is me, of course, forty-some years ago.

Video Transcription: Part 1 of Death to Einstein! The Center of the Observable Universe Flaw

2015-11-25T21:08:00.004-07:00

This is the first part of the transcription of my video Death to Einstein! The Center of the Observable Universe Flaw. It's a LONG video, and hence is going to be a long transcription, so I'm posting it in parts as I work on it. This first part covers about the first 1/3 of the video.

Video on Youtube: https://youtu.be/U7oP1OfJ4_I

Video on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/DeathToEinsteinTheCenterOfTheObservableUniverseFlaw

Again, this is unedited. Also, there's a lot going on in the video that doesn't translate to text, so some of the transcription might not make sense without the video, but I'm doing it anyway.

Death to Einstein! The Center of the Observable Universe Flaw

I did a Google here on “the observable universe.” The first result is Wikipedia: “The observable universe consists of the galaxies and other matter that can in principle be observed from Earth at the present time.”

How big is the observable universe? 46.5 billion light years. How far is the edge? Something wrong with these figures here.

Anyway, there’s the observable universe. How big is the universe? The diameter of the observable universe is a sphere around 92 billion light years. Has a radius of 46 billion light years.

The observable universe is basically everything we can see. Let me pull up Wikipedia here just to have something to read.

“The observable universe consists of the galaxies and other matter that can in principle be observed from Earth at the present time because light and other signals from these objects have had time to reach the Earth since the beginning of expansion.”

So look, this diagram here is a bunch of stars enclosed in a sphere.

So there’s the observable universe. It’s the universe that we can observe. Going on down the Google results, just looking at the summaries: “The observable universe only contains the light that has had time to reach us. A lot more universe exists beyond what we are able to observe.” Let me repeat that. “A lot more universe exists beyond what we are able to observe.”

Do you realize what a bullshit statement that is? Excuse my French. That is a completely unscientific statement. “A lot more universe exists beyond what we are able to observe.” How can you possibly know that?

If you can only observe what is contained within the observable universe, how can you possibly know that there is anything beyond the observable universe? Science is about observation. How can you possibly observe something outside the observable universe? If it is outside the observable universe, it is de facto in the unobservable universe, is it not? It’s unobservable. If you cannot observe it...

Look at Wikipedia: “The observable universe consists of the galaxies and other matter that can in principle be observed from Earth at the present time.” The observable universe is everything in the universe that can be observed. So how can you possibly make the statement that “A lot more universe exists beyond what we are able to observe” and consider yourself to be making a scientific statement? That is complete bullshit. You cannot possibly observe anything outside the observable universe. That should be completely obvious. So to say that there is anything beyond the observable universe... You cannot possibly know that.

And yes, the size of the observable universe is obviously changing day by day, because allegedly the universe is expanding. But you can’t observe anything beyond that. So to say “a lot more exists” — how do you know “a lot” more exists? Maybe there’s only a tiny bit more that exists. It gets to the question, is the universe infinite? Is it closed? What is the universe expanding into? Is it expanding into nothing?

It’s all pure speculation. “A lot more universe exists beyond what we are able to observe.” You can’t possibly know that.

Here’s this. “However, our understanding of the actual universe is bounded by the edge of the observable universe.” Here they’re distinguishing between the “actual” universe and the observable universe. Again, PBS is assuming that there is more to the universe. There’s the observable universe, and then there’s the entire universe. They’re claiming that the observable universe is not the entirety of the universe that exists. There is more to the universe beyond the observable universe. But you cannot possibly know that. It’s unobservable, hence it is a pseudoscientific concept and pure speculation to say that anything lies beyond the observable universe. Science only deals with what is observable.

And note that it isn’t called the “indirectly observable universe.” There is no distinction made between directly observable and indirectly observable. It’s the observable universe, period. It doesn’t imply that there are other ways you can infer the existence of something beyond the edge of the observable universe. Because you can’t. You can’t infer the existence of anything beyond the edge of the observable universe. How could you possibly infer such a thing? Because that would mean it’s observable. You would see the behavior of something at the edge of the observable universe and infer that there’s something beyond the edge of the observable universe that is affecting something within the observable universe. In which case, the thing beyond the edge is observable by its effects on the something within the observable universe. But in such a case, how would you know what is affecting the object being observed? Is it a leprechaun? A fairy? An asteroid? Homer Simpson? A black hole? What? What is it? There’s nothing but pure speculation as to its identity. And how do you even know that the unobservable entity actually exists? Because the observable entity is behaving in a way that violates your current theories, therefore something in the unobservable universe must be affecting it? Something inherently beyond the realm of science? Wouldn’t a more reasonable explanation be that your theories as to how the observable object should behave are flawed?

You can’t possibly observe anything outside the observable universe. That’s completely stupid. So the whole idea that “a lot more universe exists beyond what we are able to observe” is about as whacked out as you can get. If you can’t observe the unobservable universe, how do you even know that it exists to be there but unobservable?

From PBS.org, in an article by Paul Halpern. Who is Paul Halpern? Professor of Physics at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. Recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, Fulbright scholarship. So he’s a credible source. He says, “Although you might speculate about what lies beyond the edge, you’d lack tangible evidence to support your hypothesis.”

Yes. Exactly.

He says that, and yet he still makes the distinction that there’s the actual universe and there’s the observable universe. He still makes the allegation that there is something beyond the edge of the observable universe. He basically says that although we lack tangible evidence to support our speculation as to what lies beyond the edge of the observable universe, but there is a “rest of the universe” out there beyond the edge of the observable universe.

But you cannot even say that with even the slightest degree of scientific credibility. You can’t credibly say, “We don’t know what’s in the rest of the universe because we can’t observe it, but there is more to the universe than what we can observe.” It’s a completely ridiculous assertion. You cannot even say that there is actually more of the universe beyond the edge of the observable universe, never mind what is actually contained within the rest of the universe beyond the edge of the observable universe. You cannot say that there is anything beyond the edge to even speculate about. It’s pure speculation that there is an “actual” universe, as if the observable universe is embedded within a larger universe. That’s pure speculation.

Here’s that diagram again. It’s 93 billion light years. Here’s the edge of the observable universe. Here we are at the center. We are at the center of the observable universe, which is what I’m going to get to in a moment. Yes, this is going to be another discussion about Geocentrism.

“Naturally not everything within the observable universe has been identified. It represents the spherical realm that contains all things that could potentially be known through their light signals.”

“Beyond the observable universe lie unknown unknowns.”

“Beyond the observable universe.” That in itself is an unknown. You don’t even know that there is anything beyond the observable universe. You can’t observe anything beyond it. He’s doubly digging himself in here. “Beyond the observable universe.” First, he’s assuming that there is indeed a beyond. That’s assumption one, that there is a “beyond the observable universe.” And then he’s adds on another layer of speculation and assumption: “Beyond the observable universe lie unknown unknowns, the subject of speculation rather than direct observation.”

“Beyond the observable universe.” The “beyond” portion of that sentence is itself a subject of speculation rather than direct observation.

The author is doubly suspect here. He’s going doubly into the realm of pseudoscience.

Who else is saying this? We’ve got a few reliable sources here [naming websites] Physics of the Universe, Science Blogs, Physics Forum. The Observable Universe vs. the Entire Universe. “This lesson will tie in the concepts of our observable universe to explain why we cannot see the entire universe.”

So again, there’s a distinction everywhere you look between the observable universe and the universe as a whole, as if the observable universe is merely embedded within a larger, unobservable universe. My contention is — and there shouldn’t be any debate about what I’m saying — that you cannot possibly know that there is an unobservable universe. You can’t make the distinction, “Okay, we’ve got the observable universe embedded within a larger unobservable universe” because you cannot possibly know that. It’s pure speculation to say there is a larger, unobservable universe. That’s pure speculation. And yet all these people are drawing a distinction between the observable universe and the actual universe.

“A lot more universe exists beyond what we are able to see.” We can label that the unobservable universe. “However, our understanding of the actual universe...” Change that to read, “However, our understanding of the unobservable universe...” Just rephrase that and see how ridiculous it sounds. “Our understanding of the unobservable universe is bounded by the edge of the observable universe.”

[laughing]

Let me go back to that PBS thing. Let me go back to the top, find the full statement there.

“However, our understanding of the unobservable universe is bounded by the edge of the observable universe. We cannot know for sure what lies beyond the observable...” [laughing]

You see how ridiculous it sounds. You can call the “actual” universe the “unobservable” universe. You’ve got the observable universe embedded within a larger, unobservable universe. So this “actual” universe should be called the “unobservable” universe. Just swap all these instances of “the actual universe” with “the unobservable universe” and see how ridiculous it becomes. That’s the perfect summation of what I want to say.

“Our understanding of the unobservable universe is bounded by the edge of the observable universe.” That’s completely stupid. It’s true, but it’s completely stupid. No duh the unobservable universe is bounded by the edge of the observable universe. It’s because we can’t see beyond the edge of the observable universe. So we don’t even know that there is an unobservable universe.

Now I’m back to the Wikipedia entry here, on The Observable Universe. I just wanted to reiterate this again. They’ve got the Universe versus the observable universe. You know, the Universe, with a capital U, versus the observable universe.

“Some parts of the Universe are too far away for the light emitted since the Big Bang to have had enough time to reach Earth, so these portions of the Universe lie outside the observable universe.” Once again: “...these portions of the Universe lie outside the observable universe.”

That’s a completely unscientific statement. If you cannot observe it, you cannot be certain it even exists! Is it just me? This is completely unscientific! And yet it’s presented as science. If it’s outside the realm in which you can observe it... Science is based upon observations of Nature. If something is outside the observable universe, you cannot observe it. So you don’t even know if it exists! You don’t even know if there are “some parts of the universe [that] are too far away for the light emitted since the Big Bang to have had enough time to reach Earth.” You don’t know that! They’re unobservable! These parts of the universe are unobservable. They are beyond the reach of science. You cannot observably confirm that these parts of the universe exist. So why, then, are these people saying that these parts of the universe exist?

They’re basically saying, “They exist, we just can’t see them. We can’t confirm their existence, but they exist. Trust us, they exist.”

No, I’m not going to trust you. You’re making an unscientific statement there. This is pseudoscience because you’re presenting this as science, yet it cannot be tested by the scientific method because it’s outside the observable universe. This should be completely obvious. “Some parts of the universe are too far away for the light emitted...” You cannot possibly know that. It’s unobservable. It’s unscientific. That is your belief. It is pure speculation. Pure, utter speculation with absolutely no shred of evidence for it.

If you could prove this, then it would be within the observable universe. If you had anything other than just your belief that these distant places exist, then you should have some kind of scientific measurement that they exist. And hence, you would be able to observe them. If science were able to observe these alleged parts of the universe that are too far away for light to have reached us... If science could observe them, they would be within the observable universe, would they not? You can’t say that there’s the observable universe, and then there’s the capital-U Universe. That capital-U Universe is complete speculation. There’s absolutely not a shred of empirical evidence for its existence.

Wikipedia continues: “Both popular and professional research articles in cosmology often use the term ‘universe’ to mean ‘observable universe.’ This can be justified on the grounds that we can never know anything by direct experimentation about any part of the universe that is causally disconnected from us. Although many credible theories require a total universe much larger than the observable universe.” And that’s the whole point I’m going to be getting at here. “Many credible theories” — i.e. relativity — “require a total universe much larger than the observable universe.”

I ask you, how can it be a credible theory if it requires something that is unobservable? This is insanity! This is completely unscientific! “Although many credible theories...” And I’m reading that to mean relativity and other theories, but many relativity, because I’m against relativity, and that’s what I’m ranting against here. “Many credible theories require a total universe much larger than the observable universe.” It says “citation needed,” but I don’t need a citation, because I know that’s an absolutely true statement. “Although may credible theories require a total universe much larger than the observable universe.”

Many credible theories. They are credible theories. But they require something that is not scientifically verifiable. So how can it be a credible theory if it requires something that is completely unobservable and beyond the realm of empirical science? Science cannot test for the existence of this larger universe beyond the observable universe. So how can it be a credible theory if it requires the existence of something that cannot be empirically verified? That is insanity. That is completely against science. That is pseudoscience. That is complete ridiculousness. It just irritates me to read this, because this is completely unscientific, and yet it’s touted as a “credible theory.” There’s nothing credible about it!

[Scrolling on down web page] Here’s the End of Greatness. I did another video on this. Oh, that reminds me. Should I bring that in right now, or later?

Back to that many credible theories thing. How do I know they’re talking about relativity there? How do I know that relativity is included in that “many credible theories” category they’re discussing? I’m going to get to that in a minute, because it’s my assertion that relativity requires a “total Universe much larger than the observable universe.” And that’s basically the subject of this video, which I haven’t actually gotten to yet.

So let me go back to Google here.

To be continued...

Video Transcription: Death to Einstein! The Pseudoscience Flaw

2015-11-24T19:39:00.001-07:00

This is a transcription of my video Death to Einstein! The Pseudoscience Flaw
Also on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/DeathToEinsteinThePseudoscienceFlaw

According to Wikipedia, “scientific theories are testable and make falsifiable predictions. Further, the overall process of the scientific method involves making conjectures (hypotheses), deriving predictions from them as logical consequences, and then carrying out experiments based on those predictions…The hypothesis might be very specific or it might be broad.”

As a sidenote, I’ve found that if you even refer to Wikipedia or use any of their diagrams, which are exact duplicates of diagrams that are used elsewhere in what are taken to be more “reputable” sources -- the moment you talk or write about a scientific topic and then refer to Wikipedia in the same breath, the attitude is, “Nothing you say can possibly be correct, because you’re referring to Wikipedia. You’ve gotten your education on relativity from Wikipedia. Anyone can put anything on Wikipedia. It’s not a valid source of information, so the very fact that you’re referring to it calls into question everything you say. Your knowledge is suspect.”

My response to that attitude is, “Whatever.” Wikipedia is a good source. I know enough to know whether what I’m reading is actually valid or not. I know when I’m being BS’d on Wikipedia. And I learned relativity long before Wikipedia was even the barest seed of an idea in the minds of Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. So if you disregard what I say or write because I happen to refer to Wikipedia -- not my problem. Wikipedia is fine, in this case.

Returning to the Wikipedia quote regarding scientific theories:

Based on the above, relativity (both the special and the general theories) makes the broad hypothesis that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames, or alternately, that there are no privileged reference frames. This is the basic, core hypothesis upon which all other facets of relativity are based.

Is this a testable, falsifiable hypothesis? Yes, it is.

How would you test this hypothesis? Well, the method of testing is suggested within the hypothesis itself. If your conjecture is that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames, then obviously, to support your hypothesis, you must test the laws of physics in all reference frames, or at least a statistically significant proportion thereof.

In what way is relativity falsifiable? Like the means of testing, the means of falsification is suggested within the hypothesis. If your tests of the laws of physics do not yield identical results when tested in multiple reference frames (replication), then your hypothesis is obviously incorrect. It has been falsified.

Now, before such tests are even begun, it should be noted that if the laws of physics are shown to not be the same in all reference frames, then there must de facto be a privileged, absolute reference frame. Further, according to all current observation, Earth seems to be at rest within that frame.

Since relativity must necessarily incorporate the one frame (the Earth-centered frame) that, if it can be shown to exist, would disprove the relativity hypothesis, then the existence of that special frame must be ruled out before relativity can be considered a valid theory. That special frame therefore represents the disproof, or the falsification of relativity.

Meaning that relativity includes a non-absolute geocentric reference frame. Relativity necessarily includes such a frame. The alternative to relativity is that the relativistic, non-absolute geocentric frame is non-relative and absolute, i.e. we are absolutely at the center of the universe. If for relativity’s sake, you’re pretending that the Earth is not in motion, and yet relativity includes a relativistic geocentric frame, within its plethora of reference frames, then first of all, before you can move any further, you have to disprove that you are not in the absolute Geocentric reference frame.

There are two geocentric reference frames: relativistic and non-relativistic. If relativity is incorrect, we are in an absolute, non-relativistic reference frame. So before you can move on to relativity, the first step is to show that we are not in an absolute, non-relativistic Geocentric frame. How do you do that? One thing you do not do is conduct your experiments solely from within the geocentric reference frame, whether it be relativistic or non-relativistic, because both frames are, for all we know right now, identical. So to distinguish between those two and determine if relativity is true, you have to move a significant distance away from the Earth. Light years away, to other solar systems. You have to get a significant distance away from the Earth, which is quite possibly the center of the universe, to prove that it is not.

You cannot conduct your experiments about physical laws from within any sort of geocentric reference frame, because you don’t know which type you are in, relativistic or non-relativistic. You could be in either one as far as we know right now.

According to all observations -- all astronomical observations, all physical observations -- we appear to be at the center of the universe. A relativistic geocentric frame would only be one of many equivalent frames, but we cannot distinguish between relativistic and non-relativistic geocentric frames as of the writing of this book. So before relativity can claim victory, observers must move away from the center of the universe. They must move out of the Earth’s reference frame.

Further, since Earth must reside within that special frame if it exists, then the relativity hypothesis must be tested outside of that special frame. So not only must the hypothesis of relativity be tested in multiple reference frames, it must also be tested a cosmologically significant distance from Earth, or from the center of the universe if Earth and the center of the universe are not coincidental points.

To put it another way, the geocentric frame is sort of the control frame, i.e. the only frame, if relativity is false, in which we would expect to get the experimental results that we do when we test the laws of physics. Meaning that if relativity is false, the absolute, non-relativistic Geocentric reference frame is the only reference frame where we’re going to get the results that we do. Whatever experiments we perform here on Earth on physical law, if we go into another reference frame, or away from the center of the universe, we will get different results, if relativity is false. To date, such testing external to this frame of falsification has not been carried out. All observation has been done from within the very reference frame that represents the disproof of relativity! In other words, all tests of relativity have been carried out relative to the Earth. All observation has been made from within an Earth-centered reference frame. You cannot deny this. It is inarguable. Rather, you can argue it all you like, you can deny it all you like, but you’re wrong.

Interferometer experiments

Interferometer experiments, such as those carried out in the 19th century by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, were originally conceived to detect the motion of the Earth against the light-carrying medium.

These experiments failed to detect such motion. (Actually, they weren’t null. There was a very slight reading, but it’s considered null because it has to be null for relativity, even though there was a slight positive reading. It just wasn’t the magnitude they expected, so they just decided to zero it out and call it a wash).

One interpretation of that failure is that the Earth is not moving. If you’re trying to detect the motion of the Earth against the aether, and you fail to do it, one interpretation of that is obviously that your assumption that the Earth is moving against the aether is incorrect.

The other interpretation is that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames.

One interpretation fits all currently available empirical evidence.

The other interpretation fits all currently available empirical evidence if it can be proven that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames. It has not yet been proven.

Occam’s razor, as well as the scientific method, says that the former interpretation is correct, meaning the non-relativistic, absolute Geocentrist interpretation.

A violation of both Occam’s razor and the scientific method says that the latter interpretation is correct, namely Einstein’s theory of relativity.

i want to stress that last point. You’ve got two possible interpretations of the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment, which was originally conceived to detect the motion of the Earth against the light-carrying medium. The first interpretation is that the Earth is not moving against the light-carrying medium. The first interpretation of the failure of that experiment to detect the motion of the Earth against the aether -- the first interpretation is that the Earth is not moving. And if the Earth is not moving, Earth must be absolutely at the center of the universe. The first interpretation fits all currently available empirical evidence.

The second interpretation of the failure to detect the motion of the Earth against the aether fits all currently available evidence if it can be proven that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames. And that has not yet been proven.

You’ve got one interpretation of the results that works just fine without anything extra. An unmoving Earth fits all currently available evidence. Works just fine, explains everything just fine.

You’ve got another explanation that fits all available empirical evidence if it can be proven that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames. But that “if” has not been tested. That “if” is a hypothesis that has not yet been through the scientific method. It has not been tested scientifically.

Occam’s razor, as well as the scientific method, says that the first interpretation of the results of Michelson-Morley is correct: Earth is not moving against the aether.

A violation of both Occam’s razor and the scientific method says that the second interpretation is correct: there is no aether and the Einstein was right.

Currently, it’s all relative to Earth

The idea that we are at the center of the universe, and that things behave strangely when in motion relative to the Earth, has been empirically supported to an astonishing degree.

Unfortunately, this vast wealth of empirical observation does nothing for the relativity hypothesis. The relativity hypothesis has never been put through its paces as required by the scientific method. Instead, the hypothesis has been assumed to be true, slapped with the label “principle” to disguise the fact that it remains an untested hypothesis, and hailed as the most rigorously and thoroughly tested hypothesis in the history of science.

As things stand now, empirical observation says, “Earth is at rest at the center of the universe.”

The hypothesis of relativity essentially says, “From a certain point of view, Earth is at rest at the center of the universe.”

But the hypothesis’s caveat “from a certain point of view” cannot be attached to any statement of empirical observation until the hypothesis has been appropriately tested.

The definition of pseudoscience

According to Wikipedia, “pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is incorrectly presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method…”

How does that not sound exactly like relativity? Relativity is based on a hypothesis that has not been validly tested in multiple reference frames (which is the only way one could possibly test the assertion that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames), yet it is presented as scientific. Yep. Sounds like relativity to me.

Therefore, because relativity has bypassed the testing requirement of the classic scientific method that we all know and love, relativity thus falls into the category of pseudoscience.

The only truly reasonable and scientific attitude toward relativity is to adopt the stance, “It could be a valid theory, but I am awaiting the results of experimental replication in multiple reference frames. Until then, only the non-relativistic, absolute Geocentric reference frame is currently supported by observation.”

Sadly, the majority of mainstream “scientists” have not adopted that stance, having instead chosen to become missionaries for—and practitioners of—pseudoscience.

So Einstein states the principle of relativity, which is that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames, and then goes on to outline all the consequences of that principle (read “hypothesis”). Those consequences are basically the theory of relativity. He starts off with the hypothesis that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames, and everything else he says after that point is a development of the idea that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames, based upon the unproven assumption that that base hypothesis is true. He has never proven that initial hypothesis. It has never been experimentally proven. And therefore, the theory of relativity is pseudoscience.

Geocentrism is insanity (he said ironically)

Modern scientist/John Q. Public: “Everyone knows that it was definitively proven long ago that the Earth isn’t at the center of the universe. All the evidence points to the contrary. Anyone who believes Earth is at the center of the universe is insane and wants to take us back to the Dark Ages.”

This is an incorrect notion. The most serious blow that has every been struck against Geocentrism is that the Geocentric model of Copernicus’s day erroneously had the orbit of Venus centered incorrectly around the Earth. A simple modification of that orbit makes the Geocentric model fit observation.

None of the lesser arguments put forth against Geocentrism (Focault’s pendulum, particle accelerator experiments, GPS satellites, geosynchronous and geostationary satellites, the moons of Jupiter, etc) disprove Geocentrism. All they prove is that strange things apparently happen when you move relative to the Earth.

And anyway, proponents of relativity must recognize that all current empirical evidence fits the relativistic geocentric (note the lower-case g) reference frame. If they claim there is evidence that “disproves” the geocentric frame, then they are claiming that the laws of physics are not the same in all reference frames, contradictory to their hypothesis and thereby invalidating relativity, and thus leaving us with a non-relativistic, absolute Geocentric frame.

Relativists are fine with a non-absolute geocentric reference frame. They have to be, because relativity requires them to be fine with it. They are only against an absolute Geocentric reference frame (again, note the use of upper-case G as opposed to the lower-case g).

The only way they can disallow the absolute Geocentric reference frame (which is supported by hundreds of years of empirical observation) is to bypass the scientific method and loudly proclaim that the hypothesis of relativity has been irrefutably supported by empirical evidence (which it most definitely has not), thereby transforming relativity into pseudoscience, and also thereby making Geocentrism the only empirically supported model of the universe.

If you’re still confused as to why I’m claiming relativity is pseudoscience, ask yourself the following questions while keeping in mind relativity’s hypothesis that physical laws are the same in all reference frames:

1) Have relativists made empirical observations of physical laws from outside of an Earth-centered reference frame?

2) Have the tests of physical laws been performed, and the results replicated, in a statistically significant number of reference frames?

3) Have we been to other solar systems and gathered observational evidence about physical laws from that vantage point?

Obviously the answer to each of those questions is a resounding “No.”

But in order to satisfy the scientific method, thereby qualifying as a scientifically tested theory, the answer to each of those questions must be a resounding, “Yes.”

Since proponents of relativity choose to untruthfully answer each of those questions with a resounding “Yes” anyway, relativity qualifies as pseudoscience, and its proponents are pseudoscientists.

So contrary to popular belief, it is NOT insane to say that Earth is at the center of the universe. At this point in history, it is actually the only empirically supported, scientifically allowable thing to say. To say that Earth is at the center of the universe is the very model of scientific rationality and strict adherence to the scientific method.

Relativity is founded upon a pseudoscientific hypothesis, and thus, relativity is fatally flawed right out of the gate.

Notable quotes:

“…for our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest.” — Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design, pages 41-42.

“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.” — Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer

Phil Plait distinguishes between relativistic geocentrism and non-relativistic, absolute Geocentrism by using either a capital-G or a small-g. Captial-G is bad, small-g is good. Which is exactly backward, because his statement that “heliocentrism is not any more or less correct” is a pseudoscientific statement, since the hypothesis that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames has not yet been tested.

“For example, strictly speaking one cannot say that the Earth moves in an ellipse around the Sun, because that statement presupposes a coordinate system in which the Sun is at rest, while classical mechanics also allows systems relative to which the Sun rectilinearly and uniformly moves…” — Albert Einstein, Dialog About Objections Against the Theory of Relativity

So I’ve given you the statements of three highly respected scientists acknowledging the relativistic geocentric reference frame. If there was any evidence against a relativistic geocentric reference frame, do you think they would be making such statements? I think it’s safe to say that they would acknowledge that if such evidence could be put forward, then relativity would be disproved. And if relativity is disproved, we are left with the non-relativistic, absolute Geocentric interpretation of the results of the Michelson-Morley experiments.

Going back to those three questions, you might say, “You’re just making up those questions to fit what you’re trying to say.” If you think that, you haven’t been paying attention to what I’ve been saying. Relativity’s main hypothesis, its core hypothesis, is that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames. Just look in the first few pages of “Relativity.” Before he even starts talking about time time dilation and the relativity of time dilation, Albert Einstein talks about the “principle of relativity in the restricted sense.” He calls it a principle, but it’s actually a hypothesis. It’s labeled a principle because it’s never been proven. It’s an untested hypothesis. That principle says that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames, and everything else Einstein says derives from that first, initial, unproven hypothesis. That’s what makes relativity pseudoscience, that and the fact that it is presented to the public as scientific. If it were a scientific theory, then it wouldn’t be based upon an untested hypothesis.

If relativity makes the exact hypothesis that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames, how do you prove that? If you make that claim, you’ve got to go out into a whole bunch of different reference frames and test the laws of physics. Have we done that? No. We’ve only conducted those tests from within Earth’s reference frame. You can refer to particle accelerator experiments and say, “Oh, we’ve got these results that support relativity.” But those particles are only accelerated relative the Earth. GPS is done relative to the Earth. Sure you’ve accelerated things into other reference frames, technically, where things are going faster than they are on the Earth, so in that sense, you’ve gone into other reference frames. But as I said, if relativity is false, the hypothesis that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames is false, then the Michelson-Morley results still need to be explained, and the only way you can explain them is that the Earth is motionless. And if the Earth is motionless, the only way it fits all the observational evidence, the astronomical observational evidence, is that we are at the center of the universe as well.

Earth could just be motionless somewhere out in space, off center. Or it could be motionless at the center of the universe. But it has to be motionless at the center of the universe to fit with astronomical evidence that can only be explained away with the Cosmological Principle, which says that any vantage point in the universe will seem to be at the center of the universe.

So to test the hypothesis (I refuse to call it a principle) of relativity, it’s not enough merely to do tests in multiple reference frames. Not only do you have to do tests in multiple reference frames, you must do tests at a cosmologically significant distance from Earth to determine whether Earth is in a relativistic, non-absolute geocentric reference frame, or a non-relativistic, absolute Geocentric reference frame. At this point in history, we don’t know, and the only way to determine that is to move a cosmologically significant distance from Earth. Have we done that yet? Of course not, and that’s where I get those three questions. Have relativists made astronomical observations and empirical tests of physical laws from outside of an Earth-centered reference frame? No! Have the tests of physical laws been performed and identical results obtained (replication) in a statistically significant number of reference frames? No!

Have we been to other solar systems and gathered observations about physical laws from that vantage point, as well as astronomical observations from that vantage point? No, of course not.

The answers to those questions are obviously “No,” and yet those questions have to be answered “Yes” for the hypothesis of relativity to have been proven. And even when you answer “Yes” to those questions, you still have to ask, “Did we get the same results that you got on Earth?” If you answer “Yes” to that last question, then fine, relativity is true. But you have to carry out the tests far away from Earth in multiple reference frames, and in a statistically significant number of reference frames, and you have to get the same results that you got on Earth.

None of that is true for relativity. Relativity has not been properly tested through the scientific method, yet it is presented as scientific to the public. Therefore, relativity qualifies as pseudoscience. It passes the pseudoscience test with flying colors. It is founded upon an untested hypothesis. Going back to Wikipedia’s definition of pseudoscience, “Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is incorrectly presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method.”

You can’t deny that relativity is presented as scientific. It’s presented as such by Stephen Hawking, Brian Green, etc -- every respected, well known scientist, and other scientists that are lesser well known -- it’s presented as scientific. But that is an incorrect presentation, because relativity is not scientific, since it is founded upon an untested hypothesis that is only assumed to be true.

Relativity has all the hallmarks of pseudoscience. And any alleged scientist who professes relativity without saying, “It looks like a good theory, but I’m holding off my endorsement until it’s properly tested as Scott Reeves has outlined” is a pseudoscientist, because you are professing a pseudoscience. You are presenting as scientific a theory that has not been scientifically tested. You are a pseudoscientist, and relativity is pseudoscience.

When you’re talking about relativity, all these flaws that I’ve presented (elsewhere in this book), I shouldn’t even have to be talking or writing about them because relativity’s pseudoscientific nature should preclude the need to point out any further flaws in relativity. I shouldn’t even bother pointing out any further flaws because relativity goes wrong right at the outset. Relativity is proven to be wrong right out of the gate, right at Einstein’s presentation of the “principle” of relativity. I’ve gone further than is necessary.

There is no denying that relativity is pseudoscience. But of course mainstream scientists ARE going to deny my contention. In doing so, they are either being deliberately misleading or are lying, or they haven’t thought about it, haven’t considered it, and have just simply accepted relativity because authorities on the subject (college professors, respected “scientists,” etc) have said that relativity is valid and has over a hundred years of empirical verification to back it up.

If Stephen Hawking (or someone of that ilk) comes out and says, “No, Scott Reeves is wrong, relativity is not pseudoscience,” who are you going to believe? Are you going to believe Stephen Hawking, or are you going to believe me, Scott Reeves? Of course you’re going to believe Stephen Hawking, because he’s got his PhD and his reputation as a highly respected intellectual. He has authority that I don’t have. But that doesn’t mean he is correct. It means he is a well respected practitioner of pseudoscience who has, for whatever reason, been given authority over the masses in the field of science. And of course he’s going to tell you he’s not a pseudoscientist, or that relativity is not pseudoscience.

If you make a career of lying about something, or at least unintentionally and perhaps unknowingly deceiving the public, you’re not going to admit your deception, whether your deception is deliberate or unwitting. If you’re doing it deliberately, you’re not going to admit that you’re doing it. And if you’re not doing it deliberately, you’re going to say that I’m wrong simply because you don’t know any better. Either way, scientists are going to tell you that relativity is not pseudoscience. And I have no illusions that Stephen Hawking’s or someone else’s word is not going to carry more weight than mine. But I’m the one that’s correct in what I’m saying.

I should stress that I don’t think that Stephen Hawking and other scientists are deliberately lying about relativity. They may even admit that what I’m saying is correct, that relativity hasn’t been proven and it is just assumed that the hypothesis of relativity is true. In such a case, they would most likely say that it is a safe assumption, because the notion that we are in a special place in the universe is patently absurd. Which it actually is not. Is it patently absurd to go where the empirical evidence leads you?

Let he who has wisdom consider this: it’s not a case of “I’m right and you’re wrong and if you disagree with me you’re wrong.” This is not a case where it’s open to interpretation as to who is correct and who is incorrect. The principle of relativity has never been tested in the way that is required by the scientific method. The simple proof of this is that we have not been to other solar systems; we have not been a cosmologically significant distance from Earth. And this is a requirement, because right now we cannot determine whether we are in a relativistic or a non-relativistic geocentric frame. To make such a determination, we must travel a great distance outside of our solar system. The only way you can assert that relativity has satisfied the scientific method is to make the assertion that we have made such an extra-solar voyage. And if you make such an assertion at this time in history, you are obviously speaking an untruth, unless you are aware of some secret, advanced space program that is being concealed from the public.

Suppose I am absolutely wrong about everything I’m saying, and yet I’m insisting that it’s correct. I believe everything I’m saying is true, so when I say, “Yes, it’s true,” I’m not deliberately lying. It’s what I actually believe.

You may say, “Well, Stephen Hawking (or any other well-known scientist) believes the opposite of what you believe, because he’s so much more brilliant than you, and he can see that you’re wrong.” No. It’s not that. I would say that my brain’s abilities are equal to Stephen Hawking’s. He may have a more in-depth knowledge of the mathematical and more advanced aspects of relativity, but in my view, he simply has a more in-depth knowledge of a pseudoscientific theory. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.

What scientists in the public’s eye go to great lengths to combat a pseudoscientific theory? They don’t. They simply say, “I’m not going to waste my time,” turn up their noses, and move on. What sorts of pseudoscience do I have in mind? Creationism, for one. Creationism, in “credible” scientific circles, is regarded as pseudoscience. There are many other examples of pseudoscience, but I’m just using creationism as an example. So most scientists won’t even bother to rationally talk about the subject, other than to snicker and say, “Pseudoscience! Poppycock! I don’t need to refute pseudoscience, because it’s pseudoscience! It’s obviously untrue. I’m not going to waste my time with it.”

In the same vein, I shouldn’t waste my time by further debunking relativity, beyond saying, “It’s pseudoscience! Poppycock!” But unlike other scientists, I do “waste” my time with this particular pseudoscience.

We have two geocentric reference frames. One of them says, “We are absolutely at the center of the universe.” The other one says, “From a certain point of view, we are at the center of the universe.” If relativity is correct, you go with the latter statement. If relativity is not correct, you go with the former. So the former represents the falsification of relativity. So to falsify the relativity hypothesis, you MUST go to a cosmologically significant distance from Earth. Relativity has not yet done that, yet relativity is presented as correct and tested, which it most definitely has not been. Therefore, relativity is pseudoscience.

Look at it this way. Both geocentric frames, relativistic and non-relativistic, contain the phrase, “I am at the center of the universe.” The only difference between them is the caveat which relativity adds: “From a certain point of view.” But you cannot validly add on that caveat until you’ve traveled a cosmologically significant distance from Earth and determined, through proper scientific testing, that “From a certain point of view, I am at the center of the universe” applies universally to all points. I say again, relativity has not yet done so.

Say you’ve got a floor in a building with 100 rooms on that floor. One room is your office, and Ralph and Gerty pass through each morning. You make the statement, “Ralph and Gerty pass through every room each morning, so there’s nothing special about them coming through my office.” How are you going to test your statement? All you have is the one example where you know Ralph and Gerty come through your office each morning. You have verified that. But will you just assume that because they pass through your office, they also pass through every room on the floor? What if you assumed that, and then you decide to test your statement. You observe each room on the floor, and lo and behold! Ralph and Gerty do not pass through each room each morning as they do your office. Your office is special.

The point is, you’re just assuming that Ralph and Gerty go through each room every morning as they do yours. Until you actually observe all those other rooms and confirm your statement that “Ralph and Gerty pass through every room each morning, so there’s nothing special about them coming through my office,” your statement is mere speculation. But if you present it to your co-workers as scientifically proven fact before you’ve actually observed all other rooms, your statement, and any further conclusions based upon it, becomes pseudoscience.

A relativist is the guy in the office making wild claims about Ralph and Gerty’s morning ambulatory habits without actually having visited all the rooms on his floor.

You may say, “Your insistence that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames is not the heart of relativity; that isn’t the core hypothesis of relativity. You’re making that up. Relativity has to do with time dilation and light and length contraction. What’s this whole thing you’re talking about the laws of physics being the same in all reference frames?”

Well, for one, if you say that, you really need to study relativity a bit more.

For another, that IS the core hypothesis, the base of relativity. That’s where relativity starts, with the hypothesis of relativity. Again, I refuse to call it a principle. Call it what it is. It’s a hypothesis. The rest of that -- length contraction, time dilation, etc -- doesn’t come into it until Einstein says, “Okay, we have the principle of relativity in the restricted sense, which is Galilean relativity. Light appears to violate that principle, because we know it travels at a constant speed, yet we can’t detect our own motion relative to the the aether. So it looks like we need to throw out the principle of relativity. But no we don’t. Here is how you keep the principle of relativity and make it compatible with observations regarding light.” And then he goes on to describe his theory of relativity.

But instead of moving on to relativity, he first needs to question the assumption that the Earth is moving relative to the light-bearing medium. He fails to do so, and that failure is the downfall of relativity, because it leaves open the alternative which fits all available empirical evidence: “Hey, Earth is motionless at the center of the universe.”

Einstein simply glosses over this alternative, thereby bypassing the scientific method and taking relativity into the realm of pseudoscience, where he presents time dilation, length contraction, the relativity of simultaneity, etc.

But if you take the results of interferometer experiments at face value, namely that the Earth is motionless, you don’t have to go any further. Galilean relativity (at this point in our argument) doesn’t need to be thrown out, and you don’t have to come up with a theory to make light compatible with it.

The theory of relativity is an attempt to make the law of the propagation of light (that it moves at a constant velocity) compatible with Galilean relativity. That attempt assumes the validity of Einstein’s assertion that all observers regardless of their state of motion will measure the same speed for light (the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames). It simply assumes the validity, without adhering to the scientific method. And that makes relativity a pseudoscience.

You’ve got the hypothesis that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames. If it’s true, you have relativistic geocentrism, and if it’s false, you have absolute Geocentrism. How do you tell if it’s true? Because absolute Geocentrism means, obviously, that you are definitely at the center of the universe and the laws of physics are not going to be the same in all reference frames. The only way to distinguish between geocentrism and Geocentrism is to go away from the center of the universe, whether it’s the relativistic center or the absolute center.

The only way to determine which sort of geocentrism we have is to go a cosmologically significant distance away from the center, and see if you still get the same results at these distant points that you get when you are on Earth. If you get the same results, you’ve replicated them, then you have proven that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames, and you go with relativistic geocentrism. If you get to those distant points and the hypothesis turns out to be false, say, interferometer experiments actually detect a fringe shift that you’re expecting based on classical physics, then you have proven absolute Geocentrism.

You can definitely distinguish these two geocentric frames. You just can’t do it based on measurements performed on Earth alone.

And you must get a cosmologically significant distance away. If you say, “Oh, we’ll just go to Mars or somewhere close by and try our experiments,” that’s a little bit better. But if you go somewhere near to Earth, you’re still within spitting distance of the center of the universe, whether it’s the relativistic center or the absolute center, and you might not be able to achieve the appropriate sort of “resolution” in your experiments.

You may say, “You’re just trying to move the bar back further so that it will take us longer and make it harder to prove relativity.” No, I’m not moving the bar back to benefit my argument. That’s the way it has to be to satisfy science. If you merely go to Mars, or Jupiter, or Pluto, or somewhere nearby, you’re still a cosmologically insignificant distance from the center of the universe. You know, if Earth is right at the center, whether it’s merely a relativistic center or an absolute center, even Pluto might as well almost be at the center. It’s almost, but not quite. It’s not good enough.

So the bar is, go way distant from Earth. Light years distant. I don’t know how many light years would be significant, but it’s definitely not merely somewhere as nearby as Pluto.

That’s what makes relativity pseudoscience. The scientific method is bypassed by assuming the truth of the hypothesis without any properly performed experimentation, and is then presented to the public, and to scientists themselves, as true. And the mere fact that we have not been out of our solar system makes it blatantly obvious that the base hypothesis of relativity has not been tested. That’s the litmus test. “Have we been outside the solar system and performed interferometer and other experiments?” No. Obviously not. Therefore relativity is pseudoscience until, and not before, the honest answer to that question is yes.

Another argument that may be leveled against me is that my insistence that the relativity hypothesis has not been empirically verified is incorrect. “Focault’s pendulum! GPS satellites! Particle accelerators! Cosmic ray muons! Those all support, or prove, relativity, so you’re wrong, Scott!”

No, they don’t. Those things are not empirical verification of the hypothesis that physical laws are the same in all reference frames. Those things do not prove that hypothesis at all. For one thing, you’re making all those observations from within an Earth-based reference frame. For another, with these two types of geocentrism that we cannot yet distinguish between (for the purposes of this present argument), assuming that time dilation, length contraction, etc., are the proper interpretation of the results of various experiments, that interpretation does not speak to which type of geocentric reference frame we reside in, because you would expect to get those results in either type of reference frame.

The experiments that are widely touted as proving the hypothesis of relativity still do not distinguish between the two possible types of geocentric reference frame. It is perfectly plausible that if we are at the center of the universe, i.e. in a privileged place in the universe, and we move relative to the center of the universe, we’re going to get strange effects, and those strange effects might show up as time dilation and length contraction, etc. So those experimental are not incompatible with the Earth being absolutely at rest at the center of the universe. So the absolute Geocentrist is perfectly within his/her right to claim all those experiments as evidence that strange things happen when you move relative to the Earth. That’s all that’s been tested so far, or proven. Strange things happen when you move relative to the Earth. You’ve only made those observations, performed those observations, from within an Earth-based reference frame, whether relativistic or non-relativistic.

That’s why I insist, rightly so and correctly so, that the hypothesis of relativity has never been tested. It still has not distinguished between those two types of geocentric frames. And we won’t be able to distinguish between the two types (at least for the purposes of the present argument) until we are whizzing around the galaxy in starships, or going through Stargates.

Of course there are problems with relativity, as I show elsewhere in this book, that are fatal to the theory, and bring us to the inescapable conclusion that Earth is absolutely at the center of the universe. So I can, contrary to relativity and with much more empirical support for my position, that the laws of physics are NOT the same in all reference frames, at least as far as the behavior of light is concerned.

If it turns out that I am wrong in my contentions, my whole worldview is not going to fall apart. But the same cannot be said of mainstream scientists who refuse to look at relativity simply because it smacks of God. It’s going to affect their entire worldview. That’s one of the reasons they don’t want to so much as look in the direction of absolute Geocentrism. Even though it shouldn’t affect their worldview, if they are true scientists. They should be able to accept what the evidence says without any unscientific misgivings. But now I’m digressing into another topic, which I call “The God Flaw.”

Starting to transcribe my YouTube videos

2015-11-24T19:21:00.001-07:00

I've begun the long and laborious process of transcribing my YouTube videos. I'm going to post them here as I finish them. The transcripts are basically going to be unedited for the most part. These transcription posts are going to be LONG and there will probably a lot of repetition and rambling. When I'm done, I'll probably edit them and collect them into a new book, but for now, they're pretty much going to be raw. Not sure how long it's going to take, but probably quite a while. Years, maybe.

Why time dilation is a physical impossibility

2015-10-05T19:01:00.002-07:00

I've put up a new YouTube video explaining why time dilation, whether relativistic or non-relativistic, is physically impossible. It's also on archive.org

This is a new idea, not something I've talked about in previous videos.

New YouTube videos - Relativity's Pseudoscience Flaw, and the End of Greatness

2015-09-05T20:41:00.000-07:00

I've posted two new YouTube videos. One explains why relativity is pseudoscience. The other is on Geocentrism, the so-called End of Greatness that lies 300 million light years from Earth, and the astronomical observations of an extinct alien civilization billions of light years from Earth.

Are there two versions of relativity? And no, Virginia, I don't mean the special and the general.

2015-07-21T13:21:00.002-07:00

In various places (Smashwords reviews, Amazon reviews, etc), I’ve been accused of attacking a simplified version of relativity, an 8th grade-level theory that is used to introduce beginners or laypeople to relativity, and that if I destroy such a simplified version, I’m not really destroying the “true” theory of relativity, because the “higher” version of relativity, the one that beginners eventually move on to and attempt to master, the one that requires a university major in relativity to comprehend, is not simple.

I always counter this by saying that no, relativity really is absurdly simple, and the so-called simplified, introductory version is the true meat and bones of the theory, and that the “higher” version is built upon the shaky, faulty foundations of this absurdly simple “introductory” theory. The “higher” version is where the mathematical acrobatics are introduced to mask the faults in the theory. Relativity is a house that should be condemned because it is unsafe to enter.

But when relativists object to my saying that relativity is a simple theory, what are they actually saying? They’re basically saying that relativity is not simple. But if relativity is not simple, then it must not be “elegant” (which is the scientist’s way of saying something is so simple it’s beautiful). Elegance, or synonymously, simplicity, is often presented by scientists as evidence of a theory’s truth (an elegant theory is more likely true than a similar, less elegant or inelegant one). So if relativity is not simple, not elegant, then by objecting to my statement that relativity is a simple theory, relativists are implicitly admitting that relativity has a strike against it.

Basically, imply the relativists, I’m attacking the beautiful, elegant version of relativity, but the true, ugly, inelegant version safely survives my assault.

Either that, or they’re trying to say that the “higher” version is the elegant version. So what does that make the so-called beginner’s version? A simpler than simple version, in which case, wouldn’t it be doubly elegant? Or does it make it an inelegant version that only becomes simple, or elegant, once you delve into the higher, mathematical version, which sort of streamlines that beginner’s inelegant version? In which case, why is the relativist accusing me of attacking a simplified version of relativity?

Or are they really saying that the beginner’s version is a “dumbed down” version of relativity, especially designed for idiots like me?

Whatever the case, it seems to me the objections that I’m attacking a “beginner’s version” of relativity, whether it’s characterized as an inelegant version, a dumbed-down version, or whatever, implicitly acknowledge that my attacks are succeeding in destroying the “beginner’s” version. It's like, "Ha! You destroyed that one, but guess what? It was only a decoy!"

The question then remains: is there actually a “beginner’s” version and a “higher” version of relativity, as implied by the objection, or are they one and the same, differing only in the depth and mathematical detail to which the subject is studied? (That's a rhetorical/sarcastic question).

Two new YouTube videos

2015-07-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

I've put two new videos on YouTube. The first is more on what I call the Planck Length Problem, mixed with some stuff comparing relativity to the "oil culture" of the world. The second is on the announcement of Stephen Hawking joining the Breakthrough Listen project and a few other topics.

New video: The Paint Roller Problem of Special Relativity

2015-07-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

I've put up a new Death to Einstein! video on YouTube, this one on what I call The Paint Roller Problem.

New video: The Planck Length Problem of Special Relativity

2015-07-09T17:33:00.001-07:00

I've put up a new Death to Einstein! video on YouTube, this one about the Planck length problem of special relativity.

Internet Archive

2015-07-07T17:06:00.000-07:00

Just because it's there, I've been putting all my videos and science-related books on Archive.org. The videos are on YouTube as well, of course, but now they're in more than one place. And two places, much like two heads, are better than one.

The Angled Emitter Problem of Special Relativity

2015-06-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

I recently added a couple of videos to YouTube that I think demonstrate yet another fatal flaw in special relativity.

New YouTube videos

2014-12-21T14:05:00.001-07:00

I've posted a bunch of new videos to YouTube regarding my Death to Einstein! ideas. These are completely unedited and raw videos. I stumble and stammer my way through the explanations (that's what happens when you don't rehearse, I guess), the lighting in the videos is poor, sometimes the video gets out of synch with the audio, and then there's my ugly face to contend with the whole time -- but if you can get past all those faults, I think I get some interesting ideas across.

The two below are the ones that have presentations of new ideas I haven't really written about anywhere, namely exactly WHY I think the time dilation/relativity of simultaneity thought experiments MUST be combined into one, and if relativity isn't able to combine them, then relativity is invalid. And obviously relativity isn't able to combine them.

I've posted a whole lot of similar videos, but I think the above two are the crucial ones. The others are basically a lot of rehashing of my ideas, with a lot of repetition within the videos themselves.

I think these types of videos are going to replace my blog. I like talking off the cuff and not having to organize my ideas into an arguably coherent book. These videos are more like stream-of-consciousness, just going wherever my thoughts of the moment takes me.

Here's a link to the main playlist that most of these videos are in:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_r5GVmgbpf_N3_qE6rwwhHWO5_q9jxPE

And here's a link to the Death to Einstein! playlist:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_r5GVmgbpf9AxM-OLQKqV36VQ5DRKHt7

Higgs Boson not discovered?

2014-11-17T19:19:00.001-07:00

Since I blasted the alleged "discovery" of the Higgs boson shortly after the announcement of it last year, you might think that I'd be crowing now that some apparently legitimate scientists are also questioning the discovery. Yeah, it's nice that others are now becoming vocal about it. But the group of scientists who have recently begun questioning the discovery are claiming that the alleged Higgs is actually something completely ridiculous that can supposedly explain dark matter. So basically they're saying that it's not the Higgs, but rather it's a telltale of dark matter or dark energy.

BS!

Then there's the story about the scientists who think the GPS system can be used to detect dark matter and dark energy. More BS. The thing in this article that really irks me is the following statement: "'Despite solid observational evidence for the existence of dark matter, its nature remains a mystery,' Derevianko, a professor in the College of Science at the University, said."

What solid observational evidence? The observational evidence doesn't fit the standard cosmological model. The observational evidence doesn't support Currently Accepted Theory. You cannot then fabricate entities such as dark matter and dark energy to explain why your theory doesn't work, and then claim that the observational evidence that undermines your theory is actually solid observational evidence for the entity you pulled out of your butt to save your defective theory! It's complete absurdity!

And so they're going to use the GPS system to detect this completely fabricated entity, dark matter. And when they actually discover discrepancies in the synchronization of the clocks, as outlined in their proposal, instead of taking that as evidence against the validity of Relativity, they'll say it's evidence of dark matter and dark energy.

This is how Science works? Observational evidence doesn't support one theory, so they fabricate an entity to save it, then when one of the methods used to detect said fabricated entity finds evidence that undermines a second theory, they'll use the defect in that second theory to prove the existence of an entity they fabricated to save the first theory. It's completely absurd!

A simple way to prove that simultaneity is NOT relative

2014-05-23T19:56:00.001-07:00

Relativity makes the following claim:

“Events which are simultaneous with reference to the embankment are not simultaneous with respect to the train, and vice versa (relativity of simultaneity). Every reference-body (coordinate system) has its own particular time; unless we are told the reference-body to which the statement of time refers, there is no meaning in a statement of the time of an event.

“Now before the advent of the theory of relativity, it had always tacitly been assumed in physics that the statement of time had an absolute significance, i.e., that it is independent of the state of motion of a body of reference. But we have just seen that this assumption is incompatible with the most natural definition of simultaneity.” (Relativity Chapter Nine)

Einstein comes to this conclusion by using the thought experiment of two bolts of lightning striking either end of the train. An observer along the embankment sees the lightning strikes as simultaneous, while an observer inside the train, moving with respect to the embankment, is also moving toward the lightning flash at the front of the train, and receding from the flash at the rear of the train. The train’s observer will thus see the flash at the front of the train first, and conclude that the lightning struck the front of the train first.

Einstein uses this simple thought experiment to draw sweeping conclusions about the nature of time and simultaneity.

But adding a tiny detail to Einstein’s thought experiment will actually invalidate his conclusions about the relativity of simultaneity.

Let’s take Einstein’s thought experiment and add a simple device I will call a “simultaneity detector,” or SD. This device consists of several parts. First is a clock at the center of the train carriage. This clock need not be synchronized with clocks at the front and back of the train, or anywhere else. It’s simply a clock whose time can be independent of any other clock, since it will only be recording its reading of an event in its immediate vicinity. Next, there is a lightning rod at each end of the train, equidistant from the central clock. Each rod has an attached length of wire that feeds into the central clock. Each wire is exactly the same length as the other. The central clock is able to detect when a current reaches it through either wire, and records the time at that instant, so that any observer will be able to consult the clock for a readout of the exact time (according to that clock) that a current was detected in either wire.

Now, when the lightning bolts strike the lightning rods at either end of the train, a current will flow through the rod’s respective wire and reach the central clock, where the time of the current’s detection will be recorded.

How does this alter Einstein’s experiment in any significant way? Well, it takes the determination of simultaneity out of the realm of relativity and puts it into classical Newtonian-Galilean physics. This is because the current in the wire will not behave as the lightning flashes of Einstein's experiment does. Consider: electrical current is a flow of electrons within a wire. The wire is moving along with the train, and hence will obey classic addition of velocities, which light does not. Thus, the detection of current in the wires will be an arbiter of simultaneity.

How so?

Well, if the embankment observer sees the lightning strikes as simultaneous, while he will see the train’s observer rushing toward the forward flash and receding from the rear-ward flash, he will not likewise see the train’s observer rushing toward the front current and away from the rear current. The two currents will reach the central clock together and will each receive the same time stamp from the clock.

However, the train’s observer will see things differently. He will see the flashes as non-simultaneous, yet will be astonished to find that the central clock tells him the currents have the same time stamp. He will thus conclude that he must be moving.

Unlike with Einstein’s thought experiment, where the observers are free to accept that they disagree on simultaneity because there are no actual, physical consequences of such disagreement, the central clock cannot physically display different time stamps depending upon who consults it. There is an absolute fact as to what time the currents were detected, according to the central clock.

You might wonder why I don’t just have the central clock recording the time at which each flash reaches it. I’ll reiterate my earlier reasoning for you: the current in the wire obeys classic addition of velocities, while the light flashes, according to relativity, do not. The current in the wire is not light; it is movement of electrons.

Think about it. If the observer on the embankment were to consider the current in the way that he considers light, then he must also consider the train observer in the same way. Light does not hold to addition of velocities. If the electrons and the train observer likewise did not hold to such, then if the train’s observer were to walk from the rear of the train toward the front, then the rear wall would be racing toward him even as the front wall was receding, just as with the flashes of light. Same with the current. Even as the current from the rear flowed through the wire, the central clock would be receding from it even as the central clock raced toward the front current, and the central clock would stamp the current from the front as reaching it first, in conflict with the embankment observer’s assertion that the strikes were simultaneous.

You might object that the train’s observer would indeed drift backward if he were to jump up and down; he only moves forward with the train because he is attached to it. But this violates physics; remember Newton’s first law of motion, and Galilean relativity? Relativity doesn’t discard those. If you believe that the Earth is rotating, then if these laws weren’t true, you could jump straight up in the air and land in a different spot.

You might further object that I am incorrect. Current in a wire behaves the same as light, and thus the time stamps from the central clock will confirm the train observer’s conclusion that the front strike happened first. OK. But in such a case, we are left with physical evidence that contradicts the embankment observer’s assessment that the strikes were simultaneous. We now have the testimony of the train observer and the testimony of the central clock to contradict the embankment observer. This would allow the train’s observer to assert that the embankment observer is the one in motion, which on the face of it seems okay, since we now have reciprocity, one of the hallmarks of special relativity. Each observer is allowed to conclude that he is at rest while the other observer is the one in motion. But this objection, as I’ve pointed out above, comes at the cost of violating physical laws which relativity retains: “…in reality there is not the least incompatibility between the principle of relativity, and that by systematically holding fast to both these laws a logically rigid theory could be arrived at.” (Relativity Chapter Seven).

As simple evidence that electrons must hold to classical relativity, I offer the following: our bodies contain many, many electrons. So if you try to assert that electrons don’t hold to classical relativity and instead behave as light does, then you must throw out the classical principle of relativity, since EVERYTHING within the rocket (rocket, train, whatever) is made of electrons. Even the walls of the train. So if the ship, train, rocket, whatever, is moving at near light speed, in what sense could the outside observer say that he sees the train observer racing toward the forward flash even as he recedes from the rear flash? Matter does not behave like light. Matter adheres to addition of velocities, light does not.

NOTE TO SELF: But perhaps matter behaves more like light the faster it goes, so that at near light speed it is a lot more like light than matter. And perhaps in such a case the central clock actually CAN display two different time stamps depending upon who observes it, existing in both states until one or the other observes it, much like Schrödinger’s Cat. Connection between relativity and quantum mechanics? Even such a situation would still be a blow to relativity, since, as evidenced by Einstein’s thought experiments, relativity still considers matter to behave like matter even at relativistic speeds, as evidenced by matter adhering to the addition of velocities in the thought experiments

Now, I should point out that the weakness of the preceding is my assertion that electricity flowing through a wire does not behave like light, instead obeying addition of velocities. I can find nothing to support this assertion. I recall stumbling across an article long ago that confirmed this, but I have no idea where I stumbled across that article, and I can find nothing to support me now. But I can find nothing to refute my assertion either. But it seems reasonable to me that since electrons carry the flow of electrical energy through a wire, then they can’t behave in such a way that, were someone in a moving spaceship to flick a light switch on the front wall, then a light bulb at the center of the ship would turn on sooner than it would if the person flicked a switch on the rear wall. Such behavior would require the electrons to forsake the addition of velocities, and if electrons in a wire do so, why shouldn’t my entire body also forsake the addition of velocities? Such behavior would lead to a different world than the one we observe.

Anyway, realizing as I do that the weakness of my preceding thought experiment is its reliance on the wire current not behaving like light, I have a few variations on the thought experiment, using things that definitely don’t have a relation to electricity. These are earlier iterations of the above thought experiment. I actually wrote the following well before I came up with the final version as above.

Imagine a cube-shaped ship moving through space. There is relativistic motion between this ship and an outside observer. All the dimensions of the ship are exactly equal as measured by an observer within the ship. Also, there is a strip of some sort of substance connecting the forward wall with the aft wall, like a string or something. The strip, when struck by lightning, undergoes a chemical reaction that proceeds along the string from the source of the strike, so that it changes to a different color, the different color depending upon the source of the strike. Say a strike on the forward wall causes the string to turn blue traveling backward, and a strike on the aft wall causes the string to turn red traveling forward. The chemical reaction stops when each reaction meets the other.

It seems to me that the chemical reaction will travel along the string at a constant rate that can’t possibly depend upon the motion (or lack of it) of either the ship or an outside observer. In other words, you can’t run into a situation where the walls are moving toward or receding from the “leading edge” of the chemical reaction, since the reaction is relative to the string alone rather than relative to an observer, i.e. it’s not the same situation as light traveling fore or aft.

Now lightning strikes the fore and aft walls, kicking off the reaction, which travels along the string in each direction, heading aft along the strip from the forward wall, and running forward along the strip from the aft wall.

If simultaneity is truly relative, then when the reactions run their course, the length of the string that is red and the length that is blue will depend upon which observer examines the strip. If the outside observer says the lightning strikes were simultaneous, and he considers the ship to be in motion, then the string should be equal lengths red and blue when he examines it, the point at which blue turns to red being at the exact center of the ship. Likewise, when the ship’s observer, considering the strikes to have been non-simultaneous, examines the string, he should find that more of the string is red, the point at which red turns to blue being off center toward the rear of the ship. If simultaneity is truly relative, then the amount of red and blue on the string should be different depending upon who examines it, which should be physically impossible, therefore simultaneity cannot possibly be relative.

Here’s an even better visualization: imagine that the fore and aft walls of the ship are connected by a steel pipe, and that the pipe is filled with gunpowder. This is some sort of strange gunpowder that explodes at the point where the two flames come together, bursting the pipe. So the lightning strikes set off the gunpowder, and a flame runs forward from the rear wall and rearward from the front wall. Where the two flames meet, the pipe explodes, marking the spot. If relativity is correct, then the spot at which the pipe explodes will depend upon which observer we ask.

Better yet, let’s put a rifle at each wall, triggered by the lightning strikes. And the interior of a ship is a perfect vacuum, so that there’s no drag on the bullets. According to relativity, depending upon which observer we ask, the observer at the center of the ship is struck by both bullets at the same time, or he’s struck by the front bullet first.

All of the above versions transfer a relativistic problem into the realm of Galilean relativity. You could argue that the difference in the timing of the bullet strikes, or the difference in the amounts of red and blue on the string, or the position at which the pipe burst, as measured by either observer, would be too infinitesimal to measure, that such a Galilean experiment would be too “coarse,” or lack the temporal or spatial resolution to measure such relativistic effects, and is hence worthless, but that’s just avoiding the issue. I could argue back that in Einstein’s thought experiment, human observers couldn’t possibly tell with their naked eyes whether or not two lightning strikes are simultaneous because our conscious brains lack that sort of temporal resolution, and that Einstein’s thought experiment is worthless.

The take-home lesson from this thought experiment is that we can’t rely on our eyes and upon mathematical calculations to determine simultaneity. Just because someone SEES events as simultaneous or non-simultaneous, he is not justified in using mere math to support the conclusion of his eyes. There MUST be an absolute physical fact as to whether the lightning strikes are simultaneous or non-simultaneous.

Einstein Himself Responds to Me

2014-05-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

Going back to an earlier post in which I said that the proper way to resolve the Twins Paradox is to follow it into general relativity where it belongs, which leads to the foolish nonsense of saying that the pressing of the brakes on Einstein’s train generates a gravitational field that causes the entire universe to lurch to a halt — today I’ve been heartened to discover that Einstein himself has already responded to my objections, in a short paper titled Dialog About Objections Against the Theory of Relativity. I came up with the ideas in my earlier post all on my own, and it pleases me to find that I’m treading in the footsteps of great minds.

And what do Einstein and his sock-puppet critic have to say about my criticism? (I say this facetiously. I actually do have great respect for Einstein. You can’t argue with the greatness of the theory he came up with, and that it took a brilliant mind to do it. I can acknowledge that, even as I acknowledge that the theory is complete bunk).

He agrees with me that the Twins Paradox can be resolved in terms of general relativity. And it’s basically resolved exactly how I said: the gravity field generated by the pressing of the train brakes, or the turning of the rocket’s steering wheel, affects the clocks of both frames, thereby resolving the supposed paradox.

Einstein’s hypothetical critic then asks what I basically asked: isn’t this gravity field merely fictitious?

To which Einstein responds: “..the distinction real - unreal is hardly helpful.” He says that it’s a real gravitational field as far as the observer in question is concerned, so let’s not quibble over unimportant things like real or unreal, gravity or pseudo-gravity.

And my answer to that? What a lame answer, Einstein! Bollocks! I call bull**** on this! I demand that we quibble over such terms!

He also talks about “just how little merit there is in calling upon the so-called ‘common sense…’”

So: Einstein’s considered response is basically that where relativity is concerned, we shouldn’t worry about concepts like real or unreal, and we shouldn’t appeal to common sense.

He further says that the main difficulty most people have when studying relativity is that “…the connection between the quantities that occur in the equations and the measurable quantities is much more indirect than in terms of the usual theories.” Read: relativity is mainly a theory of mathematical abstractions that has little obvious bearing on actual physical reality. Just as I’ve been saying all along.

In this paper Einstein also has some interesting things to say about the universe revolving around the Earth: “For example, strictly speaking one cannot say that the Earth moves in an ellipse around the Sun, because that statement presupposes a coordinate system in which the Sun is at rest, while classical mechanics also allows systems relative to which the Sun rectilinearly and uniformly moves…Nobody will use a coordinate system that is at rest relative to the planet Earth, because that would be impractical. However as a matter of principle such a theory of relativity is equally valid as any other…For the decision which representation to choose only reasons of efficiency are decisive, not arguments of a principle kind.”

In other words, if I choose to say that the Earth is in an absolute frame at the center of the universe, there is little the relativist can muster in the way of scientific principle or empirical evidence to refute me. The best relativity can do is to say, “Hey! Relativity demands that all reference frames are equal, so you can’t say there’s an absolute frame.” Yeah, well, since I don’t subscribe to relativity, then I’ll say it, and you can’t disprove me. It reminds me of an old Robin Williams joke about cops in England who don’t carry guns, so they can only shout, “Stop! Or I’ll say stop again!” The relativists, in effect, have no gun with which to force Geocentrists to cease and desist.

In reality, rather than the idiot being the one who proclaims that the Earth is at the center of the universe, the idiot is actually the one who proclaims that no way, no how can the Earth be at the center of the universe.

“But come on,” the relativist objects. “You can’t possibly believe that the Earth is really at the center of the universe, can you?”

What? So now the relativist wants to quibble over concepts like real or unreal? Again, in the words of Einstein himself, ““..the distinction real - unreal is hardly helpful.”

So as to whether we’re really at the center of the universe — why are we arguing about such trivial concepts as the reality or unreality of our position in the universe? Surely it can’t bother the relativist if one chooses to believe that we absolutely are at the center of the universe.

Gravity or pseudo-gravity, Earth-centered or non-Earth-centered, real or unreal, up or down, left or right, man or woman…these distinctions are hardly helpful, people.