Stupid Geocentrist Tricks

James Philips responded to “Heliocentrism's 'Vested Interests'...” with a number of comments which I will address in this post.

Most of Mr. Phillips' claims suggest he is either ignoring or (deliberately?) misrepresenting much of the material I have already described in earlier posts of how coordinate systems are defined and used in astronomy.  These coordinate systems, verified by many experiments, make it impossible to define an absolute frame of rest.

Here's some excerpts from previous posts defining these issues:

Geocentrism: Galileo was wrong?

Excerpt: Phil notes the distinction of geocentrism as a reference frame, a convenient way to relate measurements, and Geocentrism as a physically distinct frame that defines an absolute rest, so that the Earth is unmoving, unmovable, and not even rotating.  Astronomers use alternative references frames all the time - choosing the frames convenient for the analysis of the problem at hand - there are a number of them for the Earth and the Sun, which I utilize in my day job.

Geocentrism: Does NASA use Geocentrism?

Excerpt: Why would they not?  Why would you reference everything with heliocentric coordinates if you are in orbit around the Earth?  Or in orbit around Mars?  The heliocentric coordinates are just a coordinate transformation away from any other coordinate system you choose to use.

You use the model appropriate to the scale of the problem you are solving. A geocentric model can be sufficiently accurate near the Earth, but deviates as one moves further away from the Earth.  When traveling between planets, NASA routinely transitions between the frame of the Earth, to the heliocentric frame, and to the frame of the target planet when the spacecraft gets near.

The bottom line is that any coordinate can be used interchangeably, provided you do the correct transformation between them.

The use of any coordinate system, even geocentric systems, is generally a matter of convenience, and does not (and by relativity cannot), define any kind of frame of absolute rest, which is the general interpretation of Modern Geocentrism (wikipedia).  In the blue sections below, 'B' is Mr. Phillips' marking of quotations from the original post, “Heliocentrism's 'Vested Interests'..., while 'JP' indicates Mr. Phillips' response in the comment section.

B: As for my viciousness (maliciousness), why would anyone in their right mind listen to 'knowledge' which does not come from some actual accomplishment in the field they are claiming?

JP: But Dr. Bridgman, the knowledge posted on your blog by geocentrists (and others!) challenging you has come from peer reviewed and published scientific papers. What are you so afraid of?

Geocentrists are not promoting peer-reviewed science.  They are twisting the interpretation of peer-reviewed science.   Every time I check the details of papers referenced by Mr. Phillips and others, I find very inaccurate reporting of the results.  Mr. Bennett (mentioned later) directed me to some papers by R.V. Jones and others claiming the papers validated aether theory.  I finally retrieved the full papers and supporting citations and will have a future post with another example of gross misrepresentation of scientific results.

B: Would you accept medical advice from an actor or other non-medical professional?

JP: I think the best medical professionals agree that it is always wise to seek a second or even a third opinion, and that is what we shall do here, in a moment, and we shall request our second opinion from Dr. Einstein if you don't mind (or, frankly, even if you do).

But it does seem as if you are suggesting here that truth is determined by academic credential. Surely you must admit that the whole history of scientific advancement shows us the fallacy of your implication above. In fact, if we think about it, every single scientific discovery begins life as the act of one single mind, advancing an hypothesis in direct contradiction to the established wisdom of the rest of the scientific establishment, doesn't it?

By your 'lone mind going against the establishment' criteria and rhetorical games, we can cherry-pick our evidence and prove that the world is flat.  I have actually played this exercise with a creationist, where I used many of the creationist rhetorical games to 'prove' the Earth was indeed flat.  The creationist gave up after just a few rounds.

Using rhetorical logic, Zeno 'proved' it was impossible for Achilles to overtake the tortoise (wikipedia).  Such games in rhetoric, or 'logic' don't make it true, much less useful.  Also see Item 6 of: Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science, by Robert L. Park, Ph.D, (Quackwatch)

Truth determined by academic credentials?  You have the cart before the horse.  Success at determining and expanding scientific understanding determined the academic credentials.  Many of those 'academic credentials'  were earned developing an accurate understanding of how atoms work that make small computers possible today, and understanding how gravity works which eventually made spaceflight possible.  I'm still waiting for a successful 'geocentrist' algorithm for interplanetary navigation.  Or are Geocentrists (again) going to opt for trying to steal, er, 'relabel' the standard coordinate transformation techniques and claim it is the same as the geocentrists theory? 

It is apparent that you want us to shut up and accept your word.

I submit this is hardly an authentic expression of the honest scientific mindset.

I don't want to you accept my word.

I insist that Geocentrists adhere to the same standards that real scientists must accept.  Hence it is the Geocentrists who must demonstrate the validity of their science through such tests as finding Lagrange points, etc. (see Geocentrism: Does NASA use Geocentrism?).  I want the Geocentrists to put their money where their mouth is.  Let's see the Geocentrists actually DO something with their 'science'.  If they can't do that, then it is they who is asking others to accept their word.

Are your readers not ashamed of you, since you are a teacher? And how unfortunate are your students if they are indoctrinated in this way, instead of being invited to work through these questions carefully and honestly.

Students ARE required to work through the theories carefully in physics and astronomy classes as anyone who's taken a real physics class knows.  Most physics students know that many of those equations in the engineering texts come from Newton's laws and other more fundamental principles.  A disturbing number of engineers seem to just blindly accept these equations and then deny much of the science behind them.  The better engineers understand the science behind the equations and can develop technology beyond rote applications of engineering formulae.

B: There are plenty of people that do that and worse (see What's the Harm?), and they can pay a high price for ignorance.

JP: But Dr. Bridgman, there is nothing in your link which addresses the question of whether heliocentrism has been scientifically proven. In fact, in a moment, we are going to allow Dr. Einstein to teach you that it has not been.

It is well known that you censor the comments of geocentrists such as Dr. Robert Bennett and Rick DeLano, who have already pointed out the key fallacy embedded in your article here; that is, you assert that only the heliocentric reference frame is scientifically valid, when even Dr. Einstein and his scientific heirs insist it is not.

There is NO preferred frame (beyond convenience for a given application).  Such a fact cannot 'prove' heliocentrism, but it is sufficient to disprove Geocentrism.

But the real hoot is Mr. Phillips resorts to spinning quotes of Einstein and other developers of relativity to support his position, even though those quotations favor the equality of ALL reference frames, with favor to none.  Of course, the Einstein arguments are only valid if RELATIVITY is valid.

So after spending a large part of his comments DENYING relativity, Mr. Phillips now invokes relativity when it is convenient?

Unfortunately, physical laws are not a cafeteria plan, where you can pick-and-choose which physical laws you wish to believe.

Bob Sungenis is your astronaut

B: If you convince someone that a toxin is not poisonous, and they take a dose of the toxin and die, who is morally responsible for the death? You? Or do you just claim that it was their choice and go on your merry way?
JP: Why, that would be *you*, Dr. Bridgeman. But please allow a geocentrist to apply the remedy.

This is exactly the type of answer I expected.  So let's put it in a clearer perspective.

You have a rocket (multi-stage) with a life support capsule capable of sustaining a human occupant for, say 10 hours or so. 

Bob Sungenis is your astronaut.

Mr. Martin & Mr. Phillips are in charge of designing the flight trajectory.  The goal is to successfully launch Dr. Sungenis into orbit, have him circle the Earth three times (to guarantee the flight has indeed achieved a sustainable orbit) and then return to Earth at a pre-defined destination.

The spacecraft will be built making sure the star trackers don't correct for aberration (or perhaps only an earth-based aberration), since the spacecraft will be in a different reference frame.  This error would be small, but perhaps not entirely negligible.  Mr. Martin & Mr. Phillips must calculate the amount of fuel needed to perform the trajectory (with some reasonable margin of safety).  They must also compute the times and angles needed to apply the thrust to direct the rocket into orbit and for the re-entry maneuver.

So will Dr. Sungenis make it back safely to Earth, or is he a potential Darwin Award candidate?

If Mr. Martin & Mr. Phillips' calculation result in the spacecraft being placed on a bad trajectory, and consequently Dr. Sungenis' death, are they guilty of murder?

Remember that NASA and other space agencies do these types of calculations routinely, launching humans into space (okay perhaps not so much for a while as the last space shuttle has just landed :^(.  Is Geocentrism's 'science' up to the task?

Note that this is strong test of the geocentrist claim that the Earth is not rotating.

Considering the extensive efforts being make to facilitate commercial access to space, this exercise may actually be testable in the not-to-distant future.  In fact, I'd be interested in working with other organizations to design an actual protocol for such tests, similar to the JREF paranormal challenge.

B: Real lives depend on the proper computation of spacecraft trajectories, and not just the lives of astronauts (more below). The Geocentrists have offered nothing but rhetorical games to back their claims - nothing of the rigor required by science and engineering beyond a word game to relabel the mathematics.

JP: Balderdash. The mathematics have been rigorously worked out and published nearly a century ago, in order to make mathematically precise the expression of Relativity's *foundational* postulate, that there exists no “best“ referencer frame.

[ stuff deleted ]

Again,  Mr. Phillips is apparently supporting relativity?  Relativity demonstrates the equivalence of ALL coordinate systems as a frame of reference.

Then Mr. Phillips flip-flops yet again, trying to deny the validity of relativity with the claim below:

JP: But wait a minute, Dr. Bridgman. Isn't it true that GPS uses a geocentric reference frame?

Why, it certainly is: ttp://www.satsleuth.com/GPS_ECEF_Datum_transformation.htm

So?

I dealt with this issue in Geocentrism: Does NASA use Geocentrism?  Since the great majority of GPS customers are on the Earth, why wouldn't we use the Earth as a key coordinate system?  If we built a GPS system in orbit around Mars, we would use a Mars-centered coordinate system, and but for the parameter values that describe the planet and its atmosphere, the equations would be identical (A GPS System for Mars).

So how does this prove Geocentrism, that the Earth defines a frame of absolute rest?

That GPS uses a geocentric system is irrelevant to geocentrism being a 'favored' coordinate system beyond matters of convenience.  They are already in planning for a positioning system to work ANYWHERE in the solar system.  Which coordinate systems do you think it will use?

In fact, it has been shown by Wang and Hatch that all of the JPL software used for GPS and deerp space satellite navigation does “the entire calculation“ in the Earth-centered inertial (ECI) frame:

Really? Mr. Phillips didn't check his 'facts' very carefully. 

While the JPL GPS software uses  geocentric coordinate systems, it also uses ICRF for celestial reference, as noted in Geocentrism: Ubiquitous Aberrations.  But that is not the software used for 'deerp (sic) space satellite navigation', where ephemerides are based on ICRF, a system based on the solar-system barycenter (as described in Geocentrism: Does NASA use Geocentrism?).

“…NavCom Technology, Inc. has licensed software developed by the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) which, because of historical reasons, does the entire computation in the ECI frame. Because of some discrepancies between our standard earth-centered earth-fixed solution results and the JPL results, we investigated the input parameters to the solution very carefully. The measured and theoretical ranges computed in the two different frames agreed precisely, indicating that the Sagnac correction had been applied in each frame.“--Ruyong Wang and Ronald R. Hatch, Conducting a Crucial Experiment of the Constancy of the Speed of Light Using GPS, ION GPS 58th Annual Meeting / CIGTF 21st Guidance Test Symposium, 2002, p. 500.

So, Dr. Bridgman, it seems that *real engineers* writing *real software* for *real spacecraft* in fact use the very earth-centered frames you insist cannot be correct.

I've been accumulating some info on Mr. Hatch's claims for some months now.  Notice that Mr. Hatch's work has only been published in the ION CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS (conference proceedings generally published papers from anyone who pays the conference fee), while none of his material has appeared in ION's peer-reviewed publication.  Mr. Hatch's errors are far too extensive to add to this already too-long post, so they're being collected for a future post.

Mr. Phillips apparently doesn't know what it means to 'license' software.  He also claims I say one cannot use geocentric frames, contrary to my statements in Geocentrism: Does NASA use Geocentrism?

Mr Phillips is becoming a bore.

See how important it can be to get a second opinion, Doctor Bridgeman?

Well, I could continue on mano a mano with all the rest of your comments, but if anyone reading all that I've responded to still wants to keep a closed mind on the question of geocentrism there's perhaps not too much else to say at this point.

The greatest scientists have approached the great scientific paradigms of their day with an open mind, not a closed one. Truth be known, even the greatest ones today have not closed their mind to geocentrism even if many of them may be pre-disposed due to atheistic inclinations to reject it out of hand!

If we have a better world today as Dr. Bridgman talks about it is due at least in part to the fact that the great scientists retain an open mind not a closed one. This is a simple fact which should not even be necessary to point out.

And again Mr. Phillips' arguments degenerate into the standard drivel.

So let's summarize...

In his same set of comments, Mr. Phillips both advocates and denies relativity.

Mr. Phillips has incorrectly claimed that I have stated heliocentrism is an absolute favored frame and that it is invalid to use geocentric reference frames. In both cases I have referenced recent posts illustrating I have not made such claims.  This is the kind of 'bearing of false witness' so common in creationist circles, which give Christianity a bad name and which I have complained about before (Creationist Junk Debunked).

This suggests Mr Phillips is making stuff up to stay in the game (see Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth).  Mr. Phillips has reached the point that he is arguing in circles and is wasting my time.  Similar nonsensical responses from him or others will be rejected in the comments.

Challenges for Geocentrists

Since Mr. Phillips has accused me of asking readers to 'take my word for it', let me clarify the questions that Geocentrists must answer, lest they be guilty of insisting readers take THEIR word for it.

First, when Geocentrists wish to respond to any comments on this blog, the must first clearly specify which flavor of Geocentrism are they supporting:  A totally non-rotating Earth?  Perhaps a rotating Earth but fixed in the solar system?  Some other 'flavor'?  Failure to do so will result in comment rejection.

1) If Geocentrists want to claim that the GEI/ECI/ECRF or GEO frames is favored, how would you tell?  What differences would one expect in the equations?  What make GEI/GEO a favored coordinate system, beyond personal preference?

2) Let's consider for a moment the possibility that Wang & Hatch are correct and that the speed of light is 'c' only in the ECI reference frame.  But Sungenis uses the null MMX result as evidence that the Earth is not rotating, i.e. that 'c' is fixed in the GEO frame.  But the GEO frame rotates relative to the ECI  frame!  Relativity explains this in full mathematical detail today.  How do Geocentrist's explain this inconsistency?

3) There are already proposals to install atomic clocks on Mars-orbiting satellites to make a GPS system to support rover and human operations on that planet (The global positioning system, relativity, and extraterrestrial navigation).  According to relativity, the equations for such a system in a Mars-centered coordinate system would look precisely like the Earth-centered system but for parameter values describing the planet's mass, size and atmosphere.  If relativity is incorrect, can the Geocentrists provide the equation systems needed to successfully support Mars exploration, or will Geocentrists be, like their 'science', limited to the Earth?

4) Some months ago, Rick DeLano claimed that Geocentrism could explain the Lagrange points, five points of stability in the restricted 3-body problem (Wikipedia), and one of the predictions of Newtonian gravity and laws of motion. I challenged him to demonstrate it, considering that we make use of these locations in a number of operating space missions.

• STEREO @ Earth-Sun L4 & L5
• Sentinels of the Heliosphere at Earth-Sun L1
• WMAP at Earth-Sun L2
• ARTEMIS at Earth-Moon L1, L2

The Geocentrists have been strangely silent on this so I add this to the official list.