We were all having fun laughing at that silly creationist textbook in Cory’s post today until we scrolled down and saw this.  Now we’re just sad.  So sad.

The video’s artist claims in the video and elaborates on the blog and in the comments that this model is not just a different viewpoint, but actually makes different predictions about the motion of the planets.

In one Youtube comment, the artist says “The heliocentric model and the helical model are both hypotheses.” That’s true, and excellent news — science to the rescue here. If the two models make different predictions, all we need to do is use each one to make a prediction about future observations the planets, and then see which is right.

Me, I’m placing my money on the model developed to match  hundreds of years of observed data and which we routinely use to land robots on other planets.

Thank you, Boing Boing, for lending credence to this claptrap.

Don’t whine.  Instead, read the post again.  Especially this part: “You can stop it at 2m…”.  That would be after the amusing bit, and before the woowoo bit.  Any lending of credence has been erroneously inferred, not actually implied.

It’s the equivalent of explaining sexual reproduction as the process of “infecting” a female “egg” with a male “virus”, causing the resulting “fetus” to “mutate” into human form. That’s not simplified, it’s a misleading, incompetently presented jumble. (Yes, my example is worse than the (first part of the) video. But subtlety is hard.)

But I suggest we call the 2:00 mark the “Schauberger point” of this video, after Viktor Schauberger.  That’s where a legitimate interest in vortex phenomena (which are in fact fascinating) spirals off into highly dubious mysticism.

Is this better?

The Sun’s north pole is roughly aligned with theNEP.  The planets’ orbital motions are all prograde, so looking from the Sun’s south pole towards its north pole the motion would appear to be clockwise.None of this is related to the North Star, since that has to do with the Earth’s north pole.  However, since the earth’s pole precesses it goes through a series of north stars; in about AD 13 700 the North Star will be Vega, which is particularly close to the solar apex.  Purely coincidence, but interesting nonetheless.

It should go without saying that the text that accompanies the video is drivel.

I’ve often wondered what the absolute speed of our planet is in relation to some imaginary fixed point in the universe but as far as I can tell, the ~1.8 billion MPH estimates are based on some petty heavy guess work.