Galileo was wrong - Earth is the center of the universe

Finally, the truth about geocentricism can be told, thanks to Robert A. Sungenis, Ph.D., "founder and president of Catholic Apologetics International Publishing," who is heading up a conference next month with a day of presentations, such as "Geocentrism: They Know It But They're Hiding It."

Did the Catholic Church make a grand and embarrassing mistake when it condemned the heliocentric system under Pope Urban VIII in 1633 as “formally heretical” and “opposed to Scripture”? Has modern science proven that heliocentrism is the correct system of cosmology? Did John Paul II officially concede that Galileo was right and the Church was wrong? To the surprise of many, the answer to all three is no. Now, abridged from the original two volume set of over 1200 pages, the essential facts and figures of one of the most controversial events in the history of man has been distilled down to 700 pages (350 pages of science and 350 pages of ecclesiastical history) and put in a comfortable 6 x 9 book frame in a less expensive paperback version.

Conference includes a free luncheon. Galileo was wrong

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

More at Boing Boing

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The Snowden Principle

Sapa

Lol the universe is fractal, I thought everyone knew that.
Ionosphere

This is blasphemy. Everyone knows that the Earth is flat.
Anonymous

Even God would facepalm to this. Incredible that there are people who believe blindly in anything theologists and priests pull from their derrieres.
abulafia

How easily we forget about Buzz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOo6aHSY8hU

As Poe has been invoked, nothing more to see here.
Carry on.
Snig

Future research will send prominent Christian mammalogists and herpetologists on a manned mission to investigate the true nature of the elephants and the turtle that the earth is situated atop.
- Anonymous
  
  No NO NO… it’s to view Atlas bearing the World to see if he really does shrug
Anonymous

It all depends on your frame of reference, some stupid quantum physics concept. Galileo wasn’t completely right with what he did say, but he got the part about the earth not being center right
TomDArch

Oh dear, this really isn’t a joke….

Actually, they’re willing to get in bed with the Devil, so to speak. For the most point, these are ultra Catholics – so nutty that I’m sure even the current Pope alternates between facepalming and groaning that he has to deal with these devout nutbags.

The “deal with the Devil” part is that one of the promoting quotes is from a guy who is mixed up with with the “Chalcedon Foundation”, which has been identified as a hate group for it’s anti-gay positions. The group was founded by JR Rushdoony, the “father” of Dominionism – a fancy word for throwing out the US Constitution and turning the country into a theocracy. This stuff is nuts (perhaps not as totally cookoo as earth-centrism), but it’s particularly nuts for Catholics to “get in bed” with radical Protestants. I sadly suspect that if the Rushdoony-types get into power, there will be some updated version of “boxcars and showers” prepared for America’s Catholics. (From the perspective of many radical Protestants, Catholics are in league with the Devil, and we all know how allies of the Devil are to be dealt with.)

But on the whole, these people are fervently applying an absurd and sad amount of brain power to mentally grind the real world in to subservience to a pre-Medieval, fundamentally arbitrary cosmology. For many of them, this goes beyond Creationism and Earth-centrism, to the project of making science subservient to theology. Part of why the Soviet Union fell was that they would, at times, say something to the effect of “Who cares if crops fail and diseases aren’t dealt with, it’s most important that science be reigned into a corral defined by the current political ideology.” These people may or may not believe that the earth really is the center of the universe, but many of them truly believe that science must be crippled so that it will only produce results in line with their personal theology – disease and starvation be damned. Ideological purity is paramount.
Sagodjur

The thing I find humorous about issues like this is that it actually has an influence on somebody’s theology. Their entire faith in religion hinges on scientific proof that stuff happened the way the Bible describes it.

For the more than 99% of the population of earth who will never travel into outer space or deal with the complicated calculations and astronomical knowledge required to get a rocket into space or a satellite orbiting the planet, it doesn’t matter one bit.

Whether we learn that the earth circles the sun or the sun circles the earth or my ego is actually the center of the universe, it doesn’t matter. Geocentristic theories don’t increase or decrease my mortgage payment or make my ex-girlfriend want me back.
Anonymous

If some of you don’t show up to this conference in full cosplay drag, I will be very, very disappointed.
ursusarctos

Unfortunately, the article only links to a .jpg of their flyer. The pdf version is handily posted at http://galileowaswrong.com/galileowaswrong/Flyer_for_Conference_3.pdf

Perfect for the bulletin board at the astronomy or geography department of your friendly neighborhood college or university!
Chuck

The Earth is the Center?

No. I’M the center of the Universe. (It might be easy to miscalculate and assume that the Earth is the center of the Universe, seeing as how I live there. But no — I’m at the center of the whole shebang.)
tideflying

The theologian has already been called out by his own bishop for his views on Judaism (because of anti-Semitism) and told to stop using the word Catholic in the title of the theological organization he founded. In that light, I think we can see this “conference” as an elaborate publicity stunt for the book (probably not a best-seller). The guy seems to live in South Bend. (At least, that’s the bishop that accused him of teaching anti-Catholic anti-Semitic theology.)

There will probably be 3 people there. So I’m guessing this is “nothing to see here; move along.”

Unless you want to see what other crazy stuff he’s up to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sungenis
- Anonymous
  
  “There will probably be 3 people there. So I’m guessing this is “nothing to see here; move along.”
  
  Better than a circus by far. I’d go in a heartbeat!
funksg

Maybe their scienticians can tell us how to keep the lasagna flying.
Anonymous

I don’t get it, do these people actually believe this or is this some sort of brilliant “devil’s advocate” excercise? Also, “first annual? FIRST annual?
mst3kmoxie

Will there be a flat earth seminar included, or is that going into a whole different conference?
Anonymous

I think my soul just died a little on the inside.
I made the mistake of reading the reviews they have posted on the site.
Anonymous

I’m Christian and entirely embarrassed.
realgeek

“But I’ve seen miracles in every way. And I see miracles everyday!”
ackpht

I tell people that science isn’t relevant for me, and they try to be smart and say things like “Well, where did your computer come from, then? Where does the electricity come from?”

I just laugh at their stupid questions. I say “The computer came from Dell, and the electricity comes from PG&E- what else ya got?”

Then they roll their eyes and walk away. Losers!
Ugly Canuck

Geocentrism: or, the raising of human selfishness to the status of a scientific principle.

The choice of an appropriate “frame of reference” in relativistic physics is not purely arbitrary: when doing gravitational physics, it needs to be the strongest source of gravity in the locality: “locality” being determined at an appropriate scale, and when studying gravity, that is an astronomical scale.
And that means our sun…not the earth.

To do otherwise would necessarily complicate the maths, based only upon….self-importance. Which is to say, that to do so adds un-necessary complication….and even taking the earth as your “center of reference”, the sun would yet still NOT orbit the earth.

Or are they actually denying the existence of gravity itself?
- ahmacrom
  
  Gravity? Is it pushing or pulling? Is the wind, blowing or sucking?
Dakkon

This “geocentricism” is one of examples why science-hating republicans are still exist on this earth…

Anyhow, a little piece of me just died when I read this post. Good job, Mark.
Anonymous

For people with a talent for belief, theology is art school.
knoxblox

I wish Buzz Aldrin wasn’t too old to go and slap some sense into these people (at 80, it’s probably unthinkable).
- Joergen Geerds
  
  Those people are “slap-resistant”, there is nothing Buzz Aldrin could do to them… the only “slap” that would help is a meteor hitting the hotel of the “convention” during the key note.
  - The Almighty
    
    I can arrange that. But you have to really believe …
- Mr. Sleepy
  
  My Grandmother lives near Mr. Aldrin and I believe she would be the first to tell you that he’s not all that he’s cracked-up to be.
  - knoxblox
    
    I don’t doubt it. Silly hero worship. However, he’s been on the moon and has seen the proof firsthand, though I’m sure this whole panel believes the “tv studio” theory.
mgfarrelly

Somewhere in England Richard Dawkins Creationism-Sense is tingling…
classic01

Every time I hear science and religion tied together I cringe. Religion is the lack of objective thinking, it is believing without proof, how can it ever be associated with any kind of science?
- Anonymous
  
  Science doesn’t prove religion. Science and religion are joined because science shows the complexities and marvels of our world. Yes, to have faith is to believe without proof, but there is more to faith than that. We must also have a reason to believe. Science can provide those reasons. Such a complex world, I can’t speak for everyone, maybe not even myself, but to some people, the beauties and complexities of the universe and the sheer luck that we are here at this moment, provide a reason for people to say why God exists.
Anonymous

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unaccredited_institutions_of_higher_learning#C

Sungenis’s PhD in ‘Religious Studies’ is from an unaccredited institution on a tiny island in the south pacific without so much as a wikipedia page of its own. Love it.
Anonymous

Cool Story Brother !!
Joergen Geerds

/cringe
it is debatable if it’s a good thing to give those nut-jobs a forum, or if it would be better to completely ignore them. if the event wouldn’t be so far away, i would be tempted to go there and a) document the intellectual disaster, and b) stir it up a bit.
Anonymous

I never understood why the Catholic church aligned itself with Ptolomy, a pagan, in the first place.

Then again I have never understood why CONSERVatives are against CONSERVation so often. They are always going on about waste in government and such.
MattF

It’s a fact that there’s really no limit to the stupid. No limit.
Anonymous

Of course it is the center of the universe, what kind of idiot would think it isn’t. It’s also on top of huge turtles and it’s turtles all the way to the infinite. Todays people is very ignorant. They don’t know like that the sun is made of joy and happiness from people. Some idiots that don’t know anything say its made of hydrogen, but these people are obviously not to be trusted since they probably don’t read the bible too much. I always tell my little redenck kids “don’t believe anything those teachers say, everything is just horseshit”
ha Evolution… Yeah right. What kind of stupid fella is going to believe that monkeys can grow human fingers. And then he’s going to grow a nose. And finally walk straight. PEOPLE IS JUST PLAIN STUPID
Art

Yeah, but they merchandised the message so well!
Cups, mugs, t-shirts…
joeross

I love that the domain name, galileowaswrong.com, redirects to the subdirectory, galileowaswrong.com/galileowaswrong, as if to reiterate the “fact” that the G Man screwed up.
jim weed

considering how narcissist our race is, the geocentric theory doesn’t seem so far-fetched. and why wouldn’t we be narcissistic? earth has never lost a miss universe pageant.
- Anonymous
  
  The center of the Earth has lost every miss universe pageant, though. Mole people just aren’t what the judges are looking for.
Brainspore

Technically any point in space has an equally good claim to being the center of the universe. It’s just a hell of a lot more complicated to plot the courses of stellar bodies if you use the Earth as your main point of reference instead of the Sun.

Basically, astronomers use a heliocentric model of the solar system because it presents the most elegant equations. (Damned lazy astronomers!)
- dainel
  
  I suspect, that is because everyone are still using newtonian physics. It’s already been proven wrong, but is still a good approximation, and much easier to calculate.
knappa

Could be, but there are plenty of hard scientists who go nuts. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Fomenko
- knappa
  
  That was supposed to be a reply to chgoliz.
  - chgoliz
    
    You’re right, of course! Still, one shouldn’t ASSUME a PhD from MIT automatically means the person has trained in the hard sciences.
Anonymous

I invoke Poe’s Law
Dave Locke

“Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, …and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.” — St. Augustine
Anonymous

Has anybody contacted the hotel to see if they’re actually hosting such a gathering?
Anonymous

More about Sungenis “credentials” here http://sungenisandthejews.blogspot.com/search/label/fake%20doctorate

Please note that Sungenis has no official capacity in the Catholic Church and was forced by his bishop to take the name “Catholic” off of his organization. Thank you.
KurtMac

Boy, are their faces going to be red when they find out it was Copernicus and not Galileo who came up with the heliocentric model!
Dave H

Pretty funny stuff. He holds a “conference” near Notre Dame for a (false) hint at legitimacy.

Then he tries to stir up controversy where none exists. Galileo was called up to the Inquisition for mocking the Church heirarchy (and, BTW, the people who paid him to do astronomy) And he got in trouble for telling the Pope how to do his job. The bottom line is Galileo was often an arrogant asshole.

I’ll bet the guys at the Vatican Observatory will het a laugh out of this nutter.
drkptt

The best thing about reading this topic is leaving with a They Might Be Giants earworm:

“Life’s parade of fashion
Just leaves me depressed
Under every garment I can see the world’s address

Call the men of science
And let them hear this song
Tell them Albert Einstein and Copernicus were wrong”
Anonymous

Wait a minute!! I thought I was the center of the universe!!! Are you saying my mom has been lying to me all along??
Unanimous Cowherd

This must be true. Because the Catholic Church would never collude and systematically lie about anything. Except if their priests abused thousands and thousands of children for centuries. That’s the only thing. And witchcraft. Oh, and that whole transubstantiation thing was a complete crock.
lovelymix

I believe that earth is the center of the world, everything is pointing to that direction I am not a christian, I am a muslim actually but in Quran it also says that sun rise & set, & for people who “don’t think so” I have some questions :

- Why there is no live recording for the planet revolving around the sun?
- Why there is a lot of theories that has been proofed wrong or weak but people still believed in
theold theories like Darwin who has been proofed is wrong but people still believes in him?
-Why didn’t “NASA” discover until now any other creature out from another planet? even if they
did is it hard for them to fake it like faking the first man landed on the moon which proved it
was a HUGE lie?
-Why choosing sun? in it just weird? the universe is so big why not another star or planet? there
is millions that are way bigger! if you look good I think you should search for why everything in
our life is turning towards the sun, sun in some churches, sunday, Egypt & Raa… Free mason,
worshipping sun… does that ring a bell?

Who is Galileo? Darwin Einstein or any other scientist! he is just a mere human being! why can’t we believe that “oh well they did a mistake or two! Galileo passed away since more than 300 years! the world has changes so much since that time! I can think! don’t let your brain hold you back because it refuses to change the information you’ve been taught since you were a kid in school! be different! clear your mind & look around you & ask yourself who is ruling this world? are you really free? where is the direction this world is going?

if you want some useful information check in youtube the “Arrivals” episodes watch something useful to fill some of your free time.
Rand Noel

Like the Flat Earth people, hundreds of Years from now when the world finally subscribes to the Hollow Earth paradigm they will all look back and wonder how we could have been so ignorant and why the powers to be wouldn’t allow the truth to be told. And still others will say that the Earth is really round and pooh pooh the present day accepted view point.
jphilby

But it’s so *obvious* that Venus twirls in a little circle between Earth and the Sun! Just like Ptolemy said! How could *anyone* believe anything else?

But okay, if you intend to remain *that* dense, I guess I can churn out 700 pages to explain why Venus orbits nothing. It’s not like there’s anything else important going on.
Felton / Moderator

The most astonishing thing about this revelation is that it means that everything in the universe, apart from the Earth, is not only spinning around us at great speed, but also moving in an elliptical orbit around some arbitrary fixed point.
Anonymous

One hundred twenty three comments and not one single shred of refutation of two very simple, objective, and completely established observational facts:

1. SDSS has published images of its survey of the redshift sky:

http://astro.kias.re.kr/yychoi/image/sdss_wedge.png

Notice that it consists of a series of concentric groupings of galaxies. Notice these concentric structures are centered upon Earth. Consider that these concentric groupings would not appear to an observer at every point in the universe, but instead only to an observer at or near…….Earth.
Well. You get my gist. The point is that these structures constitute observational refutation of the Copernican principle.

2. The WMAP has revealed that the cosmic background- “the oldest light in the universe”, so we are told, includes alignments with the ecliptic and equinoxes of one and precisely one supposedly insignificant system, in one insignificant arm of one insignificant galaxy in one insignificant group in one insignificant Universe among a landscape of 10^500 universes.

I am told (Huterer, 2006) that the chances of this alignment being a fluke are 1 in app. 10^-8.

With a few exceptions, the objections here are laughably incompetent, and basically boil down to “everyone knows……”

Which, of course, is history’s most certain indication that what “everyone knows” is exquisitely likely to be false.

Such as, for example, the Copernican principle.

False.

Scientifically falsified.

By that pesky thing called experimental *evidence*

Here it is, before your eyes.

What will you do now?
Felton / Moderator

Actually, not “fixed.” That center of orbit for each object would have to be moving around us as well. Damn you, scientists, for your lies!
Pab Sungenis

My name is Pab Sungenis. I’m the cartoonist behind “The New Adventures of Queen Victoria.”

Here is all you need to know about my Uncle Bob….

…even his family thinks he’s nuts.

That is all. Now go read my comic so we can push his name down when people google for me.
Ugly Canuck

Personally, I have faith that when bad things happen to good God-fearing people, it’s a trial; and when bad things happen to wicked profane people, it’s a judgment.
Anonymous

finally, the truth! it’s so nice for it to come out! everything is so much clearer now that i am sure that we are the center of the universe! lol jk i am actually embarrassed to be christian with this stupidity.
THLM

NASA lies: the earth is flat.
Anonymous

For a mere $300,000 “Robert Sungenis will move his entire family into your home for one year, and talk with you anytime you want (Religion, Theology, Geocentrism, Basketball, Football, Creationism, Evolution, Politics, Ecumenism, Other Religions, Wimmin Priests, etc.). ” This can be purchased on the site that markets his book http://catholicintl.co.cc/catholicintl/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=40
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Anon #86:
  Most interesting.
  Compare the Toronto Public Library’s new program of “living books”, where you can “borrow” real live human beings for 30 minutes, to hear their stories.
  
  http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/859037–library-to-make-books-come-alive
  
  But AFAIK, they aren’t charging you $$ for it.
bassplayinben

Fnord!
Boba Fett Diop

South Bend, eh? And I thought Fort Wayne was supposed to be the dumbest city in America.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/2005-01-19-dumb-cities_x.htm
bwaterhouse

Nonetheless, it moves!
Anonymous

oh, that’s amazing! next title: The Moon it’s cheese made, but Mice Lobbies keep it hide.
Anonymous

That is just stupid. How can the earth be the center of the universe. Everybody knows that if the world is flat the earth must be below the universe and the sky is obviously somewhere in between. And below the earth is where the munchskins, pixies and baptists live.
millrick

“These are facts and analyses that every Catholic should avail himself.”

so as an agnostic, i don’t have to avail myself of these “facts and analyses”?
thank god!
ackpht

Free lunch?? It says right there: fifty bucks. That ain’t no free lunch.

I suppose the to be precise, every heavenly body orbits a common center of mass, defined by the center of mass of the heavenly body, the center of mass of the remainder of the universe, the distance between them, and the ratio of the masses.

Virtually all science and engineering consists of mathematical simplifications of a general case. Equations describing the general case are usually big and hairy and full of Greek letters, and/or have a large number of terms- perhaps an infinite number. Simplified equations are easier to work with, but are only “nearly true” if certain conditions are met.

When NASA calculates the trajectory for a Mars probe, it takes into account the masses and positions of the Earth and Sun and Mars, and… Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, probably some of the asteroids, etc. An exact solution is probably not possible, since not all the mass in the solar system is known or has been mapped. At some point you just have to fire the thrusters and get back on course.
Winski

Was this a pee-party or Klan gathering in the US state of South Carolina?? Sure smells like it..
Anonymous

Ok . those people believe in DC’s Green Lantern – Blackest Night storyboard a lil too much
annoyingmouse

I’m stunned that the catholic church has finally convinced me of something with an indisputable scientific claim. There IS such a thing as a free lunch!
PKMousie

Wait, I thought the Sun and Earth orbited each other, around a COMMON center of gravity. It’s just that the Sun’s orbit is very, very tiny in diameter because it’s a much, much heavier object.
- Anonymous
  
  It’s tiny enough that the common center is still inside the sun, even if it’s a little to one side.
Anonymous

Remove the Earth (snap your fingers and make it disappear) from the solar system and what happens? Not a lot. Take the Sun instead and everything falls apart.

Without the Sun there never would’ve been a solar system. If the Earth hadn’t happened, the solar system would just look a bit different.
galileowaswrong

Please join our live coverage of today’s conference on The Twitter:

http://twitter.com/galileowaswrong

Thanks,
GWR

Ps, NO Magnets allowed.
PSS, Also, no women.
iCowboy

Their site is full of all sorts of quotable goodness. My particular favourite is:

‘”Robert Sungenis and Robert Bennett have done a great service to science and to men of good will. Those who see the universe as the handiwork of the benevolent God need no longer be subservient to fairy tales” (Anonymous, Ph.D., MIT);’

I’d like to think Chris Morris was behind all this, but sadly I suspect this is all a satire free zone.
Ugly Canuck

If people wish to help our understanding of things astronomical, perhaps they can offer some suggestions as to WTF Hubble captured in this image:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/1009/llpegspiral_hst_big.jpg

Some written info from APOD for Sept 14, 2010:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/

It seems that as of right now, “no one knows”….
Anonymous

Everyone knows earth is plate.
I remember someone told me it is a sphere.
Such an idiot.
- Anonymous
  
  Haha that’s funny. Next some idiot is going to say we wern’t the first to live on Earth. Psh dumb asses. (totally being sarcastic by the way)
Frank W

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

— Charles Darwin
- Ugly Canuck
  
  “Bravery is the kindest word for stupidity.”
  
  - Mycroft Holmes
sapere_aude

If you insist on holding to a truly literal interpretation of the Bible, then your cosmology had better look something like THIS.

If your view of the cosmos differs significantly from the one in this illustration, then you’re not truly a Biblical literalist, no matter what you claim. Virtually every so-called Biblical “literalist” today is really a pseudo-literalist who defends a highly distorted and rationalized notion of what the Bible actually says about the natural world, while glossing over the more glaring scientific errors in the text (e.g. that rabbits chew the cud, as it says explicitly in Leviticus 11:6 and Deuteronomy 14:7).

Unless you’re prepared to argue, against all scientific evidence to the contrary, that rabbits really do chew the cud, then what’s the point in arguing, against all scientific evidence to the contrary, that all species of life on Earth were created pretty much in their present form a scant 6,000 years ago? Unless you’re prepared to defend the view that the cosmos really is just a hollow sphere with a flat “Earth” spreading across the center, the dome of the “Firmament” above, “The Great Deep” below, and “Sheol” (i.e. the “underworld” where people go when they die) somewhere beneath the Earth’s surface, then what’s the point of defending geocentrism? Either you’re a Biblical literalist or you’re not. If you’re not, then what’s the point of rejecting the findings of modern science just so you can cling to a (rather distorted) literal interpretation of some (but not all) of the things the Bible says or implies about the natural world? If you’re not going to be consistent in your Biblical literalism, you might as well just read the Bible as myth or metaphor (as most liberal Jews and Christians do), and embrace a modern scientific worldview.
- robulus
  
  sapere_aude, that was very well put.
Anonymous

i dropped out of catholicism some years ago. occasionally i wonder if i made the right choice. i did. the pope’s(and the catholic church’s) claim to inerrancy has been dealt yet another staggering blow. like a fighter with a concussion, getting up off the mat to take some more shots to the head.

the devil makes us believe our planet circles the sun. if we could be sure there is no life on other planets in other solar systems, i’d agree that philosophically it is the center of the universe, but not physically.
Anonymous

I subscribed to the Braheian Debater in the mid-70s, the newsletter of the Defenders of the Geocentric Universe or DOTGU.

From what I could tell, it was a bunch of physicists and astronomers around the U. S. who had a lot of fun creating a theory to defend the geocentric universe, a theory that failed Occam’s Razor but otherwise held up to scrutiny.

Most of it was too dense for me to follow, but it was clearly a labor of love, and they played it straight. There’s almost nothing about the group or the newsletter on the Internet — I’m surprised someone hasn’t scanned a complete set of that newsletter and posted it somewhere…
Anonymous

I esp. liked the part about “condensed from the original 1200 pages in 2vols.” I mean, how did I miss that one whenit came out? No NYT Review of Books coverage?

Where oh where is the review of this epochal game changer in the evil secualar MSM?
VagabondAstronomer

Uh, uhm… ah, great, there goes my brain!
JesseH

/Christian facepalm
- Anonymous
  
  Right, because every Christian knows that the invisible man in the sky didn’t create a heliocentric world. That would be unscientific.
mlc

this is some kind of joke, right?
EH

Pfft, the earth isn’t even that old.
Prospero761

Um… okay. (Not!)
Anonymous

besides all of the other non-sense that will be brought up in this conference, allow me to point out one absurdity: there is no such thing as “first annual” —
the term is inaugural.
thank you.
have a nice day.
Ray Lehmann

post-relativity, the choice of a geocentric or heliocentric frame of reference is utterly arbitrary.
- Anonymous
  
  Cogito Ergo Sum. I think therefore I am… the centre of the Universe?
- sapere_aude
  
  @Ray Lehmann: True. But for some reason I don’t get the impression that these folks are making a relativistic frame of reference argument.
  - Anonymous
    
    Sure. But most of the folks calling geocentrists ‘stupid’ haven’t got a clue that heliocentrism is just a mathematical convenience, and not a very elegant or accurate one at that. If you stick the Earth at the centre, the relative motions are just more difficult to describe than if you stick the Sun at the centre. Assuming the Sun is fixed in some way is as dumb as assuming the Earth is fixed. What goes round what is a meaningless question akin to arguing about whether she’s kissing me or I’m kissing her. It’s a shame all those on their high horses are just as guilty of unthinkingly accepting the authority of their teachers as the creotard nutters. Here endeth the rant
    - Ugly Canuck
      
      Anon #88: The math gets a LOT simpler, and more elegant too, IF you assume the sun is at one of the foci of an ellipse traced out by the earth’s orbit.
      You know, like Johannes Kepler did, all those centuries ago, basing the mathematical proofs of his hypothesized model upon Tyco de Brahe’s indefatigable and painstaking observational records, which themselves were compiled decades before Kepler was even born.
      
      For more:
      
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler
      
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe
      
      Circular orbits? Bah!
      Get real!
      
      Anyhow, I thought that this thread about planetary orbits had gone on long enough without somebody mentioning Kepler.
    - Anonymous
      
      Have you ever studied Astronomy in any way or even picked up a book and actually read it? Anyone who does knows that the Sun is not in a “fixed” position. It moves around just like everything else.
- Anonymous
  
  No, it’s not. Post-relativity, you can work in either frame, but only one of them is going to have a universe where the stars don’t simultaneously wobble in time to the unusual shifting of the background radiation.
  
  I think an excellent sign of how this of reaction works is that the question “what is real?” is no more important than “what do renowned physicists Urban and John Paul have to say?”
- Anonymous
  
  Um, yes, if you ignore the rest of the planets, you indeed can claim that the sun revolves around the earth. But there ARE other planets.
  
  Now, if you could claim that there are other suns that revolve around earth, you idea would have merit.
- Anonymous
  
  There’s a fairly common misconception that relativity implies that “all motion relative.” To see the problem with this, stand up, turn around, and sit back down. Now describe the physics of what you just did in a reference frame in which you were at rest the whole time. You can do it, but it requires introducing some quite remarkable arbitrary forces. It’s true that relativity implies that there is no preferred *inertial* reference frame — one that isn’t changing speed or rotating. (And that’s incidentally true of Galilean as well as Einsteinean relativity.) But that doesn’t extend to non-inertial frames.
  
  So in fact, we cannot in any practical way do astronomy assuming geocentrism. In fact, we can even declare to a pretty good level of confidence that there is little or no net rotation for the universe as a whole, which obviously rules out it all spinning around us once every 23 hours 56 minutes and change.
Richard Kirk

Nah. There’s no god. Saw it proved in a webcomic somewhere…

http://amultiverse.com/2010/09/08/hot-tub-planet/

Seriously – go have a look. It’s a nice demolishing of both sides of that argument.
tim

No it’s not a joke. Tens of millions of people actually believe that stuff, just in America, let alone the rest of the world.

I guess if you believe in one sort of woo it acts as a gateway drug to pretty much any of the others.
- Anonymous
  
  Surely not. These crackpots wouldn’t be crackpots if tens of millions agreed with them, unless you’re grouping the entire of Christianity with this. I like to think that people are more rational than that.
- ZehnKatzen
  
  Pick up any local monthly or weekly “woo” periodical and you’ll see that proved to a fare-thee-well.
  
  Nothing invalid. Everything on an equal footing.
  
  After I read one, my brain had a stomach-ache.
ZehnKatzen

Okay. Cried and died inside right here.

If this isn’t a goof it’s yet another proof that all the learning in the world can’t cure organic-level stupid.
calvert4096

@mlc- Sadly, I doubt it. There are plenty of self-assured nutters out there. I was especially displeased to see the testimonial from “Anonymous, Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” Unfortunately, there are bright but impressionable and self-deluded people even at MIT– I know some of them personally.
- chgoliz
  
  FWIW, that PhD could have been in philosophy or linguistics (yes, at MIT).
eyeotiger

this is amazing… my mouth hasn’t closed from sheer astonishment for about ten minutes… just… WOW.
Teller

But Earth could be the center of the human universe!
Erik

Awesome. Two authors.

One is a theologian who is just basing everything on the Bible.

The other? A physicist whose last experience in true academia was when he worked for a COMMUNITY COLLEGE in 1983. His research is obviously highly regarded, considering how his latest post is doing private tutoring.
Anonymous

Free luncheon! I’m there!
Derrick

So all of that physics that NASA uses to launch spacecraft? All wrong. They must have been doing things right by coincidence!

/sarcasm
Anonymous

*weeps*

Anyway, it’s probably a bad thing you can put ‘PhD’ behind your name, even if you get it from a non-accredited remote learning university.
Anonymous

I’m just patiently biding my time until the world accepts my theory that the earth and sun both revolve around the moon!
JoshuaZ

Among geocentrists, it is common to give both arguments for geocentrism and appeal to relativity simultaneously. Yes, this isn’t very logically coherent.

Another thing to note is that Gerardus Bouw, one of the more prominent of the geocentrists, actually has a PhD in astronomy from a real university. Never underestimate the ability for religion or ideology to warp the mind.
Anonymous

God must get really sad every time some really smart person thinks the he has discovered the fundamental governing equation that orders the universe. Or just has a holy chuckle. Our mathematical expressions are nothing more the useful approximations. We have no idea whether the laws we have thus far “discovered” aren’t anything more than a few dimensional special case of some higher order expression that involve boundary conditions outside our own space time. So before accusing some religious writer of being a knuckle dragger, we would all benefit from realizing that own personal mathematical skills have been pretty bad and for the most part we have had to rely on others to figure out and spoon feed the mathematical proofs to us. Even then, we never really understood the math. Did we?
nixiebunny

I prefer the Hollow Earth theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth
- Mr. Sleepy
  
  Thank-you Wikipedia for stealing 2-hours of my time: Hollow Earth Theory > Nazi UFOs > Nazi Occultism > Hitler was into bondage, Wha-What??