Well yeah, that... It's funny that evangelicals, born-agains, fundamentalists, whathaveyous seem to have this need to use science (or more like twist it) to prove that the Bible, especially Genesis, is literally true and they bend over backwards trying to disprove actual scientific evidence that contradicts Genesis... this need for approval and confirmation shows a tremendous lack of faith on their part.
Well, heliocentrism is just a theory, not a fact, so we might as well teach the controversy and let the students decide for themselves... But seriously, we cannot prove heliocentrism. And I'm not talking about evil demons or anything like that. Even assuming that reality exists, we still couldn't prove it, because there really is no way to differentiate between the sun orbiting earth, or earth spinning on its own axis on its orbit around the sun. The only reason why we believe that the earth orbits the sun is because it leads to a more beautiful model. A model in which we can describe all the motions of the planets with a couple of rather simple formulas, a model in which there are natural laws that apply always and everywhere. The geocentric alternative doesn't have this beauty. We'd need one (massivly complex) formula for every body out there and there wouldn't be any universal laws. We choose the simple model with a hand full of universal natural laws over a complex model with an infinity of laws, none of which is universal. So yeah, there is an extremely good reason to believe in heliocentrism. Also because every new finding fits in nicely with the current models, giving it more credibility, not to mention that it's predictive and simply works. Yet, geocentrism still has a much better case going on for itself than creationism. I mean there are a lot of similarities: Evolution is a simple concept, it has explanatory power, it works, it's universal, everything we find fits into this model (genetics!), etc. However, unlike with geocentrism, there's lots of evidence against creationism, not just philosophical considerations. All the evidence goes against a 6000 year old earth, it goes against a global flood, it goes against a specific creation event. All that would have to be fudged as well, which in return goes against a benevolent god. So when creationists make fun of geocentrists, they need to look into the mirror first, because they're making even bigger fools out of themselves.
My first sentence was meant to be sarcastic, a play on the creationist spiel regarding the "theory" of evolution. It is of course still true, heliocentrism is "just" a theory. The point is however that in science, a theory doesn't mean the same as it does colloquially. Becoming a theory is the highest honor any model can achieve. There is no dichotomy between theory and fact, theories explain facts and are hence even more valuable.
You can see the constellations change, but there's no way of telling who's the one that is moving, you or the constellations. As I tried to point out, it makes much (!!!) more sense to assume that we're the ones that are moving, but we cannot prove it.
I'm one very confused individual. The earth orbiting around the sun is just a theory? We can't go live in the international space station for a whole year and see the background constellations of the spiral arm of the milky way galaxy change? Or we can't use the photographs taken by the voyager taken back when it was approaching mars?
Every motion of the stars or the planets can be described as a motion around the earth. Think of this analogy: Here's a famous scene from the movie 2001 where the stewardess walks up the wall: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iiXUeil5fQ"]YouTube - 2001: A Space Odyssey - The lady who walks on the ceiling‏[/ame] Now who's moving? Is it the stewardess or the room itself? From watching the footage, you cannot tell which one it is. That doesn't mean that there aren't good reasons to think one way or another, but there's no absolute proof.
Well, the constellations (other stars really) do move. They revolve around the massive black hole at the center of our milky way galaxy. And the stars closest to the black hole move faster in a circular motion which allows us to track them. We've seen this now with modern telescopes. It follows that the other billions of stars, including our sun, do the same thing albeit more slowly. So when we analyze those voyager photographs we take all that into consideration. The fact that we're at the edge of the milky way galaxy allowing us to see the center of the milky way for roughly half of the year, and see the other galaxies the rest of the year, gives us a point of reference too. But I see your point, back in the 80s we couldn't prove anything. We've made a lot of progress understanding the universe in the last 20 years.
It has been a long time since I was in junior high, but my recollection of the lesson is that the geocentric people came up with all kinds of strange models to try to save the principle, but Gallileo destroyed all of the competing theories by using the phases of the moons around Jupiter or something like that.
TBH, I don't think you see my point. It's not about progression of science, it's about its limitation. What you describe as stars circling a black hole is a model we've created based on our data, not reality. But that's only part of the model. Because that very same star that we interpret as orbiting a black hole races across the Earth's sky. Something that we interpret as the Earth rotating. However, you can also interpret this motion as the star orbiting Earth on a very complicated trajectory. To make it somewhat simpler, imagine a universe with only the Earth and the Sun in it. How could you possibly distinguish between the earth rotating on its own axis and the sun orbiting the Earth? The answer is that you couldn't, because there is no frame of reference. As I said, there are good reasons for the heliocentric interpretation, but there cannot be any proof.
The moons of Jupiter disproved a specific geocentric model. Today we can disprove the Ptolemaic model of geocentrism, because (like creationism) it makes predictions that are demonstrably false (e.g. the size of the sun) but not geocentrism as such, for the reasons I've given above.
Sorry but the center of the milky way, and the other galaxies besides our own, don't qualify as a frame of reference, even if they appear as a frame of reference as seen from a spacecraft
This also reminds me of another model that I encountered 12 years ago or so. Back then I accidentally landed on some personal webpage by some religious nut, who had another cosmological model. He claimed that we live on the inside of a hollow sphere. That sounds pretty stupid of course, but actually, it works pretty well. You have to change some fundamental axioms of physics, but once you do that, our current formulas apparently work just as well. One change was that space itself and everything with it shrinks towards the center of the hollow sphere. A second change was that light doesn't propagate in a straight line, but is curved along the curvature of space that follows its shrinking towards the center and that light doesn't travel at constant speed but slows down towards the center. The entire universe would then be packed inside the hollow earth. I might have forgotten something, but I think that was it. With those assumptions, a hollow earth perfectly fits our observations and all our physical formulas still work. So unlike the geocentric model, this hollow earth model actually has universal laws and predictive power, just like the heliocentric model we're accustomed to. So as far as crackpot theories go, the hollow earth is actually pretty good. Anyway, I only went into this much detail, because I wanted to point out, that while most everybody laughs at geocentrists (for good reasons), and even more so at hollow-earth people (again for good reasons), creationists are even worse, but somehow they get away with their crap in the media. Instead of getting laughed off of any stage they're on, they're treated as if they actually have something profound to say. Creationists are simply fractally wrong.
Yes, I know. It's a good thing people in the 1500s were able to leave planet earth to physically see that the earth was indeed spherical.
The point is that all movement is relational. There is no fixed coordinate system along which the stars, the planets, etc. move. Think about this question: Where is "up"? "Up" to someone in Australia is almost the exact opposite from "up" to someone in Europe. That is because the relation towards the earth differs. There is no universal "up" direction, only one in relation to earth (or any other body you choose as your reference). Similarly, there are no absolute positions is space. Think about my simplified example once again, a universe with only sun and earth in it. Now imagine two scenarios: 1) The earth rotates around its own axis. 2) The sun orbits the earth. How can you distinguish between those two? Only by tracking their movements along a universal coordinate system. But that coordinate system does not exist, hence you can't tell which scenario is true. The same is true for the relation between the earth and any other object in space, be it comets or far away stars that form galaxies. you cannot distinguish between them orbiting earth, or earth rotating.
Again, I'm not an astronomer, by I don't think this is true. Geocentric and heliocentric systems won't look the same in the sky. The planets appeared to move backwards from time to time in the sky in a retrograde motion. My recollection is that to try to account for this, the geocentric people added strange mechanics to their models, but those models fell apart, because you can't just account for the movement of the celestial bodies in relation to each other, you also have to account for the light and shadows from the sun's illumination, which gives you additional information to determine how the planets and moons move in relation to one another. Sure, our conceptions of some of the most basic aspects of space, gravity and light might be subject to revision and for all we know even conceptualizing the universe in 3D space isn't accurate, but even conceding those things, I don't see how any geocentric model is anything but creationist-level crazy based on current scientific knowledge.
1) Let me first make clear that geocentrism is of course crazy. 2) However, you're still stuck with the Aristotelian and subsequently the Ptolemaic geocentric models. These are specific models that were based on the idea that the celestial objects wander in perfect circles around the earth. These specific models are by and large disproven. 3) But geocentrism only means that the earth is fixed and at the center of the universe. We can interpret the earth as fixed and all the celestial objects as orbiting earth (not on perfect circular orbits). That we cannot disprove. In fact it's an equally valid interpretation of the data as our heliocentric model¹. And according to our current understanding of physics, both are equally true². 4) However, and this is the important point, if we interpret our universe as geocentric, we cannot account for anything that goes on in space with natural laws. There wouldn't be any reason why all these objects orbit earth and especially not why they're moving along the weird trajectories they're on. There wouldn't be any pattern behind it. In a heliocentric model on the other hand, this all makes perfectly sense. ______________________________________________ ¹ The word "heliocentric" is of course a misnomer as it implies that the sun is at the center of the universe. In truth, the model says that there is no center at all. ² Indeed, the geocentric model is not only a valid interpretation, but it's equally true as the heliocentric model. But before the geocentrists jump up in joy, read on. Because this actually follows from there not being a center to the universe, which at the same time means that every point in the universe can be interpreted as the center. So we can interpret the earth as being the center of the universe and it would be a true interpretation of the data (because there is no frame of reference). But so would be the interpretation that the moon is the center of the universe, or mars, or some tiny speck of dust somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy. We could also define a football as the center of the universe and when you kick it into the goal, it's not the ball that's flying into the net, but the entire universe that rotates in such a manner so that the ball ends up in the goal. So if anything, this undermines geocentrism even more, as geocentrism is based on the idea that the earth is a special place, which it most certainly isn't.
First, I'm obviously talking about the solar system, not the universe. The center of the universe has nothing to do with the earth or the sun. The universe is expanding and not from a point centered at either the sun or the earth. I'm talking about actual science, not crazy talk where there are no natural laws and we can't explain anything in space. Crazy talk about how the planets and stars move is not "equally true" as things established by science. Astronomy isn't philosophy, you can't just go around arbitrarily defining whatever you want to be the center of the universe just because you feel like it.
creationists are retards. if you're going to reject several fields of science just reject them all...... and all they have produced for humanity. become Amish..... at least they are honest about it (kind of..... everything up to a certain point is awesome like Newtonian physics, everything post 18-who-gives-a-toss is gross).
Well, first of all, the center of the universe is by definition also the center of our solar system. So it has a lot to do with earth and sun. Secondly, the universe is expanding from every point. From our vantage point, it appears as if the earth is exactly at the center of the cosmic expansion, but that would also be true from every other vantage point in the universe. A geocentric model certainly isn't scientific, as it doesn't have any predictive power or universal laws. Still it is a true interpretation of the data because there is no frame of reference. This is generally hard to visualize, because in our daily lives, there's always a frame of reference. I can recommend you Brian Greene's book "The Fabric of the Cosmos" in which he does a pretty good job explaining why this is and what it means.
Sounds to me like you've completely butchered the concepts. We can't tell whether the sun orbits the Earth or whether the Earth orbits the sun, and the "unscientific" idea that the sun orbits the Earth is still "true" because there is "no frame of reference"?