MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
Newton's (F)laws (Astrophysics)
Reply to topic Goto page 1, 2, 3 ... 9, 10, 11  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Our story begins with Mikołaj Kopernik (Copernicus), a practical scholar who applied Occam's principle to the Ptolemaic system of orbits within orbits that explained the geocentric solar system proposed by Aristotle. The reality of his time was that navigation had become of extreme importance due to the discovery of the New World and an accurate picture of the stars and planets was a necessity for this new age of discovery.

By putting the Sun at the centre of the solar system Copernicus eliminated the confusion of the former system and replaced philosophical science with deductive reality. However by removing the Earth from the centre of the universe he knew he had violated the dicta of the church, of which he was a member, and chose wisely to release his work on his deathbed.

Before Copernicus gravity wasn't a problem. It was reasonable for all objects to fall toward the centre of the universe -- the Earth. After Copernicus gravity became a problem. The earth was now spinning on its axis and orbiting the Sun. What was holding everything on the surface, why didn't they all just fly off into space and why did objects fall?

The problem remained for some time until a man named Niccolo Tartaglia came along. He was a Venetian military engineer who was more interested in fortifications and ballistics than gravity but he was the first to come up with a specific measurement of gravity. Tartaglia was also a man interested in reality, he wanted to know the optimum angle of a cannon ball's trajectory. So he set up a cannon in a huge open field and started shooting cannon balls into the distance at different elevations until he came up with 45%. A half a century later this obscure experiment would lead Galileo Galilei to his greatest discovery.

Galilei wasn't interested in ballistics, he was interested in gravity and used the result of Tartaglia's experiment to design a system of rolling balls down an incline and letting them roll off the end of a table to see how far they would travel. As a result of this experiment he was able to derive gravity's inverse square nature. He tried to prove Copernicus correct but was unable to. With his invention of the telescope he observed Jupiter and how its moons orbited it. He had found an analogue of the solar system. It didn't prove Copernicus right but it did convince others he might be correct.
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Our story now takes us to Scania and and the work of Tycho Brahe. He was a firm believer in a geocentric universe and spent a lifetime plotting the course of the moon and planets. He carefully recorded this data in a series of journals but despite his years of effort he was unable to make sense of it. His stubborn belief, Catholic upbringing and ignorance of the real world inhibited him from using his data to form a better picture of reality. Even though Kopernik tried to convince him of a heliocentric universe Brahe refused to believe. But one thing that Brahe did discover from all his observations was that the moon and planets, especially Mars, appeared to speed up in the summer and slow down in the winter. To this day his assumption is believed to be a fact; it isn't.

According to Brahe the moon and planets were speeding up and slowing down. This rather ridiculous notion that something the size of a planet or moon could speed up and slow down has been accepted as rote learning ever since and encoded the first mistake that subsequently led to the most famous error in science.

Our next player in this saga is a man of dubious character, one Johan Kepler. Kepler became Brahe's assistant and it appears his motive for insinuating himself into Brahe's life was to gain access to his astronomical tables. Kepler was a believer in a heliocentric universe and was either unwilling or unable to put in the effort to produce his own observations. What is known is that master and apprentice argued bitterly over their views and that Kepler conveniently acquired Brahe's journal upon his death. A death that has recently, thanks to forensic anthropology, been discovered to be by foul play. Brahe died of poisoning and the prime suspect with means, motive and opportunity was Johan Kepler. The recent book Heavenly Intrigue delves more deeply into the murder.

Kepler used Brahe's tables to produce his laws of planetary motion, the most famous of which states that planetary bodies sweep out equal areas in equal times. This law was developed from Brahe's false assumption that planetary bodies were speeding up and slowing down. The fact that with the sun at the centre of solar system and the earth now in motion didn't prompt Kepler to revisit Brahe's assumptions. He could vehemently disagree with Brahe's geocentric view of the universe but he couldn't bring himself to doubt Brahe's calculations as they were essential for his own heliocentric theory.

He was a mathematician and a believer in God. He could only conceive a perfect universe made by the creator and if orbits were not perfect Ptolemaic circles they had to be perfect ellipses. He too was ignorant of the real world and mistakenly encoded into his law the inverse square law. This was the second and much more egregious mistake that would later produce the greatest fraud in science. For as anyone who has read a Farmer's Almanac knows, Kepler's law is wrong. But farmers rarely if ever delve into astronomy; they are much more interested in reality. And tenured astronomy professors are not likely to consult growing season tables perused by rustics. They are far more interested in producing more FAIRIE DUST*. You see Kepler made the same fatal mistake that Brahe made. Brahe assumed his primary (the Earth) was stationary. And Kepler assumed his primary (the Sun) was stationary. They were both ignorant of reality.
In the real universe EVERYTHING is in MOTION.


* Fairie Dust

[Fabricated Ad hoc Inventions Repeatedly Invoked in Efforts to Defend Untenable Scientific Theories]
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Motion being the operative word our next mathematician is erroneously credited, nay deified, for discovering the laws that govern it. But before we get to him we need to flesh out the period and some of the other players who had a direct and indirect bearing on the events that led to his 'discovery'.

Our story moves to England where thanks to Henry VIII several generations of English scholars had grown up without the constraints of the Roman Catholic Church and its Ptolemaic scientific dogma. They were firm believer in Kopernik's Heliocentric universe. It was a new age of enlightenment that saw the discoveries of virtually all the scientific principles we hold dear today. But like all creation stories it is based on a myth. It started well enough with the creation of the Royal Society. The society was founded on the principles of Francis Bacon, more commonly know as the scientific method. Bacon believed that no theory could be proposed before the collection of fact. And that any theory must be modified or discarded in light of new fact that would subsequently come to light.
It didn't last very long.

Three of the Royal Society's founding members were Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren and Edmund Halley. It was during a conversation between this trio that Hooke, who was aware of the works of Kopernik, Galilei, Brahe and Kepler suggested there may be a link between Galilei's experiment of falling objects and Kepler's theory of planetary motion. Both outcomes encoded an inverse square outcome. He himself had tried to find a relationship between the two but couldn't reach a resolution. Halley suggested they offer a small financial reward to any mathematician who could.

The Royal Society was at Gresham College in London and it was ground zero of a scientific revolution. Hooke as master of experiments was in the loop so to speak as were the other members of the society. At that time Newton lived and worked in Cambridge and was not. He had gained favour with the society with his new invention of the reflection telescope which was demonstrated with success. This emboldened him to submit his theory of light. His theory, that light was composed of particles and that white light was made up of all the colours of the spectrum, was not well received. Hooke and Christiaan Huygens rejected the proposal as the current dogma (which has lasted till the present) was that light was a wave. This soured Newton's relationship with the society in general and Hooke in particular. He would eventually get his revenge on Hooke when he became the head of the society years later after Hooke's death. He had every likeness of Hooke removed from the premises and 'disappeared' Hooke's papers and experimental equipment.

Wren, who was a friend of Newton's mentioned Hooke's proposal to Newton on one of his trips to Cambridge. Newton told Wren he had found a mathematical solution to the problem but it took a decade for him to reveal it.
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

In order for Newton to formulate his laws he had to make some assumptions; assumptions that were totally incorrect. His first to assume all motion in the universe was created by God. His second was the legacy of both Brahe and Kepler that that planets were speeding up and slowing down as they orbited. This led him to believe that planets were falling towards the Sun by the inverse square law. But in order to calculate this he had to first assume that the Moon and Earth were made of the same intrinsic particle and then he had to explain what the Moon was doing before it went into orbit. He assumed incorrectly that the Moon would be travelling in a straight line. This led to his first and second laws. Laws that have no basis in reality.

Nothing in the real universe travels with straight line motion. Nothing falls toward the Sun and misses, anyone who know of the periodic table of elements know that the Earth and the Moon are not composed of the same intrinsic particles of matter. And any one who reads the Farmer's Almanac know that the Earth does not sweep out equal areas in equal times. What we have is a series of false assumptions made by ignorant men. Men who in their time may have been the best and brightest but in the cold hard light of today are nothing more than authors of fiction novels. They all forgot Bacon's warning that theories are only as good as the CURRENT data of the time and must be adjusted in accordance with it or completely discarded.

All these men were ignorant of reality. Their assumptions about the nature of the universe couldn't have been more wrong and as a consequence we have laboured under the misguided notion that Newton gave substance to the workings of the universe and that we can use his laws to discover its mysteries. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The problem stems from Tycho Brahe's basic misunderstanding of Time = Rate / Time = Distance. Brahe assumed incorrectly that Moon's Rate was changing. With a stationary Earth it was the only conclusion he could make. With a stationary primary the Moon 'appeared' to speed up and slow down. When Kepler gained Brahe's tables he never thought to revisit his basic assumption now that the Earth was in motion around the Sun. Kepler wasn't interested in the Moon his focus was on Mars and he too had a stationary primary; the Sun. So he too erroneously concluded that the planets were speeding up and slowing down. When he discovered that the orbits were not perfect circles but ellipses he concluded that God would not create perfect ellipses without them having some other perfection. If the planets were speeding up and slowing down then they had to do so perfectly. The only way they could do this was by God given laws. Laws with a perfect geometric basis. Therefore as the planets sped up they moved closer to the Sun and as they slowed down they moved further from the Sun. The faster it went the the closer it was but the more area it swept out and the slower it went the further it was and the less area it swept out.
Thus a planet swept out equal areas in equal times.
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

But this is not what happens in reality.
Everything in the universe is in motion.

So what is really happening.?

Let's take the Earth as our example. The Earth is orbiting the Sun but the Sun is also orbiting the Milky Way galaxy. As the Sun moves forward the Earth is moving in the same direction as the Sun for half its orbit and against the direction of the Sun for the other half. When it is travelling in the opposite direction to the Sun's path it sweeps out a smaller area than when it is travelling in the same direction as the Sun's path. When the Earth is moving in the same direction to the Sun it not only has to travel half the distance of its orbit but also make up the distance of the Sun's forward motion. The Sun is travelling towards the Winter Solstice, that is why planets pass closest to the Sun at that point and are furthest away at the Summer Solstice. Brahe was wrong to assume the Rate was changing thereby leading him to a false assumption that planets speed up and slow down. It is not the Rate that is changing but the Distance. If one consults the Farmer's Almanac you will find that the time from the Winter Solstice to the Summer Solstice is SHORTER than from the Summer Solstice to the Winter Solstice -- by two days.

The reality is that planets sweep out equal areas in UNEQUAL times.

Kepler who used Brahe's tables produced a law based on a false assumption. In light of this there is no way that Kepler's Law has any relevance, to astronomy in general or Newton's laws in particular. Planetary orbits are not perfect ellipses as Kepler assumed and his formula that encoded the inverse square equation is therefore invalid. Planets do not speed up and slow down and any one who thinks about it logically would realise that to suggest something the size of the Moon, let alone Jupiter, could speed up and slow down is pretty ridiculous. A planet travels at the same Rate; it is the Distance that changes due to the forward motion of the Sun.
-
How does all this relate to Newton's Laws. It invalidates them. Newton used Kepler's Law and Brahe's tables to concoct his laws of motion and universal gravitation. Newton had no idea what caused motion. In Principia he ascribes it to God. God set the Moon in motion in a straight line and gravity changed that straight line motion into orbital motion.

What keeps object in motion?

He believed God came back regularly to give them a push. He believed with his universal law he could calculate the orbit of planets, but his calculations were wrong from the start. Kepler and Brahe were no help and his assumption that he could calculate the volume of the Earth and Moon by assuming they were made of the same particle was totally wrong. When Halley made observations based on his calculation they didn't work. Direct observation and calculation proved the law was useless. Newton pestered Halley his whole life to get better observational data that would bring the orbit of the Moon into closer agreement with his gravitation law but he never could. Even on Newton's death bed he was asking Halley to get better data.

Newton's gravitation law could not then and cannot now calculate the orbit of planets.
As time went by and the law was applied to other planets it became even more glaringly obvious.
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

So how did his laws become the benchmark of science?

Through his position of power within English society. Newton's niece was the mistress of Charles Montagu a man who would become one of the most powerful men in England. He and Newton met at Cambridge and became good friends, they even tried to set up their own Cambridge-based society in opposition to Gresham College but it failed. Montagu was instrumental in putting William of Orange on the English throne and became William's chief advisor. He installed Newton as master of the mint, a position that held enormous political and social power. Newton literally had the power of life and death in his hands and sent many accused counterfeiters to be hang drawn and quartered. Isaac was not a man to be trifled with. When Hooke, who had been with the Royal Society since its inception died in 1703, Newton, with Montagu's assistance, was installed as its president, a position he held for three decades. Hooke had publicly accused Newton of plagiarism over his theory of universal gravitation and he rightly protested that it was at his instigation that Wren informed him of the problem and that he had been working toward a solution as well. He wanted recognition for his contribution to the theory. Newton refused to acknowledge it and the dispute that had simmered since Hooke's rejection of Newton's theory of light was rekindled.

The first thing that Newton did when he became president of the Royal Society was to have the society rubber stamp his theory of light. The second was to remove all physical evidence of Hooke. His only known portrait and all his papers and paraphernalia disappeared. The very mention of Hooke's name was enough to sent Newton into a violent rage. The dispute with Hooke and Newton's position of power in both government and the society went a long way to legitimising Newton's theories which by the end of his tenure at the Royal Society had become immutable laws of physics. Even though his law of universal gravitation was flawed in so many ways that even the most basic observation could tear it to shreds, no one dared question it during his presidency of the society. After his death it was simply accepted as fact. Not because it was right but because it produced an explanation for planetary motion and a reason we weren't hurtling off into space on a planet spinning a a thousand miles an hour.

The real problems arose as more accurate observations were carried out. Halley couldn't get it to work for the Moon and when it came to Mars and the other planets the errors only became larger. Newton's entire collection of laws was to demonstrate mathematically that gravity was a property of matter. By using the amount of matter by volume (this was later changed by others to mass) he could calculate the correct orbit of the planets. In this endeavour he failed.

By the end of the 17th century God had become an anathema to science. In order to remove Newton's God from the universe completely Laplace conjured up the swirling gas cloud as the cause of force in the solar system. Totally missing from this giant leap forward in logic was an explanation of the force that set the gas cloud in motion it the first place. Nobody really had a clue, all they cared about in those enlightened times was that religion had finally been expunged from science. The cause of motion had been reduced to an artefact of history.
But the nagging problem that Newton's law of universal gravitation was not so universal couldn't be ignored. So the 'enlightened' mathematicians of the Royal Society decided to use reverse logic. Newton's laws had to be right. They were based on the work of Kepler and Brahe's calculation of planetary motion and we know their maths is faultless. There must be something wrong with the planets. If we can't determine the orbit of planets by their volume (now called mass) we can determine the planets' mass by their orbits. So these certified geniuses turned Newton's law upside down and verified by consensus, the unverifiable: the mass of planets. That is how comets became balls of ice and gas giants like Saturn would float in a bath of water if you could find one big enough. The real logic is that if Newton's law couldn't calculate the real orbit of planets how could reversing it possibly come up with the real mass of any planetary body. It couldn't. But mathematics isn't about reality, it's about turning concepts into immutable laws. Once they are set in place no one is likely to question their methodology or their validity.

After Isaac Newton fantasy became reality and the Royal Society's motto 'nullius in verba' became an antonym; a mirror image of reality. During his tenure as its head Newton ruled the Royal Society with an iron mace, literally. His three decade dictatorship saw Bacon's principles discarded in favour of a discipline where nature was forced to conform to perfect mathematical equations. Nothing has changed since.
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Question 1: Did you write this?
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

As for the substance, I do not believe Newton et. al. were ignorant of the dates for the summer and winter solstices. If your proof that their theories are invalid requires this supposition, your argument must fail.

The models made by Kepler and Newton assume a stationary star -- they do not presume a stationary star. The laws are correct but produce inaccurate results for a real solar system -- as a real solar system does not exist in the vacuum assumed by the model.

The very explanation you propose for the disparity between the solstice dates relies upon a Newtonian model of gravity.

Imagine, if you will, a juggler in a rocket pack, juggling balls in the air as slowly he lowers himself toward the surface of the earth. The balls falling toward his hands have a longer trip to make than those moving away from his hands toward the apex of their flight -- as the juggler himself has moved in the meantime.

This is the situation with the sun vis-a-vis the planets: The sun is the moving juggler; the planets are the balls.

This hardly invalidates Newton's laws.
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Ish wrote:
As for the substance, I do not believe Newton et. al. were ignorant of the dates for the summer and winter solstices. If your proof that their theories are invalid requires this supposition, your argument must fail.

What you believe Newton et.al. did or did not know at the time is irrelevant.

What we are dealing with here are the facts.
Kepler could have easily put his law to the test by nipping out into the nearest open field, hammering a stake into the ground and observing its shadow lengthen and shorten as the year progressed. If he had done so he would have discovered what every civilised farming culture has know for over three thousand years. That planets sweep out equal areas in unequal times, thereby disproving his own theory. But Kepler was not a man to waste his valuable time. He couldn't wait for Brahe to die, literally, to get hold of the one thing that he need to produce his elegant equations.

The models made by Kepler and Newton assume a stationary star -- they do not presume a stationary star.

presume
1. To take for granted as being true in the absence of proof to the contrary
2. To constitute reasonable evidence for assuming; appear to prove

Newton took for granted that Kepler's Law, based on Brahe's calculation, was true in absence of the fact that neither Brahe nor Kepler were aware of the real motion of the universe. This constituted reasonable evidence for making his assumptions.

This one is irrelevant too.

The laws are correct but produce inaccurate results for a real solar system -- as a real solar system does not exist in the vacuum assumed by the model.

The laws are incorrect and still produce inaccurate results for the real solar system when the currently know observations are added to the model.

This one doesn't stand up either.

The very explanation you propose for the disparity between the solstice dates relies upon a Newtonian model of gravity.

Nope this one is wrong as well.

The disparity is caused by the fact that the time is changing not the rate.
Newton presumed that the planets were speeding up and slowing down just as Kepler and Brahe did. With a stationary primary it was the only thing they could assume given the knowledge at that time. Newton said the speeding up and slowing down was caused by the planets falling toward then away from the Sun with an inverse square rate of fall that was encoded into Kepler's Law. On that basis he proposed his theory of gravity. But as we now know Kepler was wrong. Planets do not fall toward anything. They orbit at the same rate but travel different distances due to the forward motion of the Sun.

Imagine, if you will, a juggler in a rocket pack, juggling balls in the air as slowly he lowers himself toward the surface of the earth. The balls falling toward his hands have a longer trip to make than those moving away from his hands toward the apex of their flight -- as the juggler himself has moved in the meantime.

I like this one, not because it is right but because I can use the Juggler idea to explain things as Newton saw it.

This analogy is irrelevant as well.

The Juggler, but for his rocket pack, and the balls are falling. In the cosmos nothing is falling anywhere. Newton saw God as the juggler he set the balls in motion and then stepped out of frame and the balls kept moving on their elliptical paths with out the juggler's assistance. Although he did step back into frame and give them a little help occasionally.

This is the situation with the sun vis-a-vis the planets: The sun is the moving juggler; the planets are the balls.

This of course is wrong because the juggler is providing the balls with a CURRENT force. They cannot maintain their motion without the juggler's help. But according the Newton (and standard cosmology) THERE IS NO CURRENT FORCE . God put everything in motion in a straight line at the beginning of time and gravity merely changes straight line motion into orbital motion WITHOUT any need for a current force. All motion in the universe has been reduced to a historic artefact. Laplace simply replaced God with a swirling dust cloud as the cause of motion WITHOUT explaining how it began swirling in the first place.

This hardly constitutes a rebuttal.
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Komorikid wrote:
This hardly constitutes a rebuttal.

If you say so.

What you believe Newton et.al. did or did not know at the time is irrelevant.

Maybe. But your case rests in part on what you believe they did not know at the time. And I think it's rather funny you think they didn't have a calendar.

Kepler could have easily put his law to the test by nipping out into the nearest open field, hammering a stake into the ground and observing its shadow lengthen and shorten as the year progressed. If he had done so he would have discovered what every civilised farming culture has know for over three thousand years. That planets sweep out equal areas in unequal times, thereby disproving his own theory.

I think you have erred here again Komorikid.

What Kepler would have discovered had he nailed some stakes into the ground was that the planet in question -- the Earth -- swept areas of different sizes in the same time relative the position of the Sun. What these men were trying to find were the laws that operated beneath apparent motions.

When your thesis requires your opponent -- and his intellectual heirs over several generations -- to have been unfailingly stupid, it's best to reexamine your thesis. It's more likely you misunderstand their argument.

I don't give orthodoxy a lot of credit but I do think them capable of consulting the calendar.

I am happy to see that you remain confident in your conclusions. I as yet have seen no evidence in their favor other than their repeated assertion.

And did you miss Question 1?
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Ish wrote:

Maybe. But your case rests in part on what you believe they did not know at the time. And I think it's rather funny you think they didn't have a calendar.

No my case rests on what they said and did at the time. If Kepler did have a calendar at the time he obviously didn't consult it or he did and decided his law was better. I have no idea why he just didn't put his theory to a practical real world test. Whatever he did or didn't do to corroborate his theory is really immaterial.
He created a law that is wrong and it can easily be proved to be wrong.

What Kepler would have discovered had he nailed some stakes into the ground was that the planet in question -- the Earth -- swept areas of different sizes in the same time relative the position of the Sun. What these men were trying to find were the laws that operated beneath apparent motions.

Kepler could not have discovered this and nor could you or anybody else because that is not what happens in planetary orbits. They all sweep out equal areas in unequal times. It's the nature of the motion of the Sun as it drags its complement of planets along as it is moving.

When your thesis requires your opponent -- and his intellectual heirs over several generations -- to have been unfailingly stupid, it's best to reexamine your thesis. It's more likely you misunderstand their argument.

Exactly when do you think these intellectual heirs became privy to the knowledge that the Sun is actually moving around the Milky Galaxy. Every astronomer from Halley to Hubble believed the Sun was stationary. Two hundred years of Kepler's Law ingrained in their psyche by rote learning. By the time we had the resources to question Kepler's equations the law was accepted as an unimpeachable fact.

I don't give orthodoxy a lot of credit but I do think them capable of consulting the calendar.

It's my experience that people who spend their entire lives cosseted away in universities have very little understanding or contact with the real world especially mathematicians. Most of them couldn't tell what day of the week it was.

And yes I did write it.
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

To give you a little insight into the inanity of Newton's method this should make you chuckle.

Kepler with the aid of Brahe's tables noted that the planets and the moon appeared to speed up and slow down. They sped up in the summer and slowed down in the winter. When Newton saw Kepler's calculations and the inverse square component encoded in them he posited that the planets were falling towards the Sun by the same rate as an object falls. This formed the basis for his Gravity Equation. The planets fell toward the Sun speeding up then fell away from the Sun slowing down. The only problem was Kepler noted that the closer a planet got to the Sun the slower it travelled and the further away it got the faster it travelled. The exact opposite of what Newton was proposing. Planets travelled slower in winter than they did in summer; the winter solstice being the closest point to the Sun in the Earth orbit.

Newton saw the inverse square component and falling planet; two calculations that were crucial for his mass/gravity equation. The fact that the planets appeared to be falling AWAY from the Sun didn't seem to matter.

How's that for genius logic?
Send private message
Grant



View user's profile
Reply with quote

Newton literally had the power of life and death in his hands and sent many accused counterfeiters to be hang drawn and quartered.


It's been the fashion for a while to denigrate Newton as a person whilst lauding him as a scientist. But to say he had the power of life and death is nonsense. As Master of the Mint he was very concerned to reduce counterfeiting, which was widespread in those days. He ensured that those responsible were prosecuted and the penalty for counterfeiting was death. To say he sent them to be "hang drawn and quartered" is lurid nonsense.

And note the
and sent many accused counterfeiters


the author is insinuating that Newton didn't even execute genuine counterfeiters but merely accused ones.

The depiction of Newton as an ambitious social climber doesn't fit the facts. He spent more time studying the Bible than he did promoting himself or running the mint.
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Komorikid wrote:
...and it can easily be proved to be wrong.


Yet several generations have somehow failed to notice -- until now!
Send private message
Brian Ambrose



View user's profile
Reply with quote

Komorikid said:

Let's take the Earth as our example. The Earth is orbiting the Sun but the Sun is also orbiting the Milky Way galaxy.


Agreed. So we are using a point in the Milky Way galaxy as a reference.

As the Sun moves forward the Earth is moving in the same direction as the Sun for half its orbit and against the direction of the Sun for the other half.


Not really. Relative to the Milky Way, the Earth is moving in the same 'direction' as the Sun the whole time (albeit that 'direction' is constantly changing by a tiny amount). It has to move a little faster than the Sun for half the time (to get 'ahead' of it), and a little slower than the Sun for the other half (to get 'behind' it).

When it is travelling in the opposite direction to the Sun's path it sweeps out a smaller area than when it is travelling in the same direction as the Sun's path.


Relative to the centre of the galaxy - yes (but this 3rd party influenced effect is hardly what Kepler had in mind). Relative to the Earth - no.

When the Earth is moving in the same direction to the Sun it not only has to travel half the distance of its orbit but also make up the distance of the Sun's forward motion.


Yes - it has to 'overtake' the Sun.

The Sun is travelling towards the Winter Solstice, that is why planets pass closest to the Sun at that point and are furthest away at the Summer Solstice.


Er, no. The solstices do not depend on the nearest/furthest points of the Earth's orbit, but at the points where the Earth's axis is aligned with the Sun. The northern hemisphere's summer solstice is the southern's winter solstice.

Brahe was wrong to assume the Rate was changing thereby leading him to a false assumption that planets speed up and slow down. It is not the Rate that is changing but the Distance.


If the Earth has to 'overtake' the Sun, then it is the 'rate' that is changing - isn't it?

If one consults the Farmer's Almanac you will find that the time from the Winter Solstice to the Summer Solstice is SHORTER than from the Summer Solstice to the Winter Solstice -- by two days.


I'm not sure of the relevance of this - if the Earth travels slightly faster (relative to the Sun) between two (geometrically fixed) absolute points (the solstices), is that not compatible with the Earth having a Keplerian elliptical orbit? Again, there is no reason why the solstices should match the periapsis/apoapsis of the Earth's orbit (is there?).

So I find the following hard to follow:

The planets fell toward the Sun speeding up then fell away from the Sun slowing down. The only problem was Kepler noted that the closer a planet got to the Sun the slower it travelled and the further away it got the faster it travelled. The exact opposite of what Newton was proposing. Planets travelled slower in winter than they did in summer; the winter solstice being the closest point to the Sun in the Earth orbit.


As far as I can tell, Kepler's law says that the further the planet is from the Sun, the slower it moves - which is why the area it covers stays equal to an area caused by a smaller radius, which requires a further distance to be travelled - ie planet travels faster. This is exactly what Newton proposed. As for planets travelling slower in winter, and the winter solstice being closest to the Sun, I think this is incorrect, if only in that closeness to the Sun and solstice are not the same thing.
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page 1, 2, 3 ... 9, 10, 11  Next

Jump to:  
Page 1 of 11

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group