[Avodah] Geocentrism

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 01:17:46PM +0300, Eliyahu Grossman wrote:
: The short of it is that in a Heliocentric model, Mars is correctly *34
: MILLION MILES* away, and so it took the space rover less than a year to get
: there. That is a fact.

: In the Geocentric model, Mars is *226 MILLION MILES* away, which would mean
: a travel time of about 6 years. That is a variance of nearly 1000%. That is
: a fiction.

There is no "the geocentric model". Geocentrism is a single idea, not a
model. RMMS's assertion isn't that Aristotle or Ptolmey or some other
geocentric model that dates back to Chazal's day was right. Just that
Chazal only speak of adopting geocentrism, and that one idea was no less
right than heliocentrism.

RMMS suggests we take the accepted model and translate it to a
non-inertial frame of reference by viewing the earth's spin as a universal
gravitational field that bends space around in the opposite direction.

Everything would be the same interval apart, using a space-time metric.
Since nothing is moving relative to eachother in a way that would create
significant Lorentz contraction (shrinkage due to relativity's weirdness),
all the distances would be pretty much the same.

Technically that point stands up -- holding the earth still and moving
everything else around it is identical under General Relativity to
looking at its orbit from the sun's frame of reference. But it does
make doing physics a lot more complicated. It's much easier to explain
the source of earth's spin than the source of a field that pervades the
universe. And calculating paths is easier the heliocentric way as well.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Good decisions come from experience;
micha at aishdas.org        Experience comes from bad decisions.
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