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Real_Trouble -> RE: How Much Do You Really Know? (4/25/2008 6:07:16 PM)
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quote:
Earth is the center of the universe. Prove me wrong.
1) I see the sun and moon circling us, every day and night, we must be in the center.
2) There are stars all around us, we must be in the center.
3) Assuming space is infinitely large, we can travel infinite miles in any direction. Since we can go exactly the same amount right as we can left, we must be in the center.
I hate to do this, but...
1) Any rotational motion would necessarily provide this as possible. For example, having the earth rotating and the sun stationary would provide the same effect; you cannot determine motion from a single point. This is why things like triangulation are so important. All you have managed to prove here is that there is motion of some kind occurring, or the illusion thereof.
2) Given a dense enough three dimensional spread, any location within a group of stars would have stars all around it. This is not proof of a center, it is merely proof that we are not at the precise edge of a galaxy of stars (or multiple galaxies of stars).
3) How do you actually know this? We aren't even totally sure space is infinitely large. To quote Einsten: "I know of only two things which are infinite, space and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
I reject your claim of being able to travel in equal distances either way until you actually provide me evidence of having done so. I believe this is a baseless claim; we suspect but cannot prove space is infinite, and in that context, every single point would be the center by your criteria.
So to counter your points:
1) You see the sun and the moon, but have you considered Venus? In a geocentric solar system model, as Venus rotates around the sun, we would only be able to see the various solar phases as crescents, not full illumination. In theory, Venus should remain between the Sun and the Earth during the orbit around the earth (unless you are positing non-circular, non-elliptical orbits, which would raise further questions about your initial sun assertion). Experimental evidence disconfirms this. We can observe Venus in full illumination as it rotates around the sun, giving evidence to the fact that, actually, it's probably the sun in the center of our rotational system.
2) Technically speaking, you have provided no evidence that the universe is actually filled with stars! What if we posit a vast open space, in which one corner is filled with stars, and we are situated merely somewhere within that corner? Of course, we would see stars, and they would be all around us, but no point within the star-field would actually be the center of the universe. There would be a vast void surrounding it, and somewhere in that void would be the "center".
3) You've also not defined what a center is; are we talking the gravitational center in terms of a balance point of mass spread in every single direction, or are you talking about a distance-based center, in terms of the actual physical location of the center-point of the universe. We can take a swag at the latter, based on the motion of all of the objects in the universe outwards (which is also evidence of the big bang), and if you review the accumulated research and experiments on the subject, it's clearly not us. In fact, the earth appears to be moving very quickly AWAY from many other objects, and not at a uniform pace from all objects that would leave us at anything resembling a center.
I'm not going to bother to re-discuss virtually every major astronomical study of the past 100 years in this text box, if that is what you were hoping for, but some pretty basic use of google should enable anyone to do enough research to falsify the claim that the Earth is in the center of the universe. It might, depending on definition, even falsify the claim that the universe has a meaningful center.
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