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The Feynman Series

The Sagan Series

I stumbled on this new series recently. There are a few others that I’ll assemble together soon. Check out their facebook page if you like it https://www.facebook.com/thesaganseries

It’s been difficult balancing free time to update this blog in the past couple months, but I have a few things planned.

It’s not as good as his others, but bears meaningful quotes all the same.

If you’re like me and wanna hear this on loop : http://www.postnuclear.net/youtubeaudio.php?urlv=1PT90dAA49Q&lp&ap&hq

http://www.nikonsmallworld.com/gallery/year/2010/1

There has been a bit of a buzz on the internet lately collectively asking “Are you serious?” at the news about the ‘First Annual Catholic Conference on Geocentrism’. It is titled “Galileo was wrong: The church was right.’.

What is geocentrism?

It’s pretty simple really, it’s the belief that the Earth is the immobile center of the universe. It quite literally dictates that everything revolves around us. It stems from the idea that we, as humans, are the most important thing in existence and therefore it is only natural that everything exists solely for the purpose of human beings (the universe included). As you might imagine, this is an idea only really subscribed to by biblical literalists and other fanatical religious sects.

Introduce the Scotsman.

One of the biggest attributes of strongly held beliefs without evidence is that they have a sort of self-defense against defeat. One way they do this is with a logical fallacy known as “No True Scotsman“. If I say “All scientists believe the earth is the center of the universe”, you would respond with “Actually I can’t seem to find any scientists supporting that”, at that point I’d modify my statement to say, “Any real scientist with integrity believes the Earth is the center of everything” rendering my argument immune to defeat. Similarly , a conspiracy theorist will often assert that anyone that doesn’t agree with them is part of the conspiracy too.

The Cherry Tree of Science

Let us forget for a second that my search terms “pulsar”, “supernova”, and “celestial mechanics” seemed to return no results when searching the Bible, or the 4000 successful space launches based on the orbital mechanics of the Earth in motion, or the picture of Earth as seen from the surface of Mars, what really “grinds my gears” is this idea that people like this suggest that the body of science as a whole is conspiring to mislead people. The first speech at that conference is titled “Geocentrism : They know it but they’re hiding it”. This is then followed up with the phrase “For once you see that God, his Church, and Holy Scripture have given us the unadulterated truth, proven by modern science itself, you will have no choice but to put yourself completely in His trust and care for everything else in your life.” Wait, you mean that devious entity conspiring to lie to you also proves your point? This cherry picking of anything that supports your beliefs is common in the world of psuedo-sciences, anti-reality, and religious justifications.

The world is flat – an acceptable scientific theory… in the 15th century

You can thank Pythagoras for challenging the idea of a “disk earth” and developing the view of the Earth as spherical. Just the same, the work of Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and of course, Galileo Galilei for revealing that we orbited the sun. Prior to those discoveries however, it was perfectly acceptable to believe we were the center of the universe. The stars spin in a circle around us at night, the sun follows the same path in the sky (more or less); The majority of the evidence available at the time supported this, even though it had a few problems. This is how many scientific models are formed and developed. The biggest of the problems was retrograde motion as demonstrated on the diagram to the right. When you look at stars in the sky, they don’t really move much compared to other stars. However, there are a few exceptions to these, bright stars that seem to move faster and possess one really strange trait : as they move through the sky, sometimes, they stop and go backwards in a loop, then return on their path in the sky. These strange stars were labeled “πλανήτης” or ‘wandering stars’. When you translate this, suddenly it becomes a word all of us are familiar with : planētēs. For those with an interest in reading a more in-depth scientific concept that geocentrism is unable to account for, check out Stellar aberration and Relativistic_aberration.

So why is it important to know all this ‘wandering star’ business?

Understanding science helps us discern garbage ideas from descriptions of reality. If you understand retrograde motion, you understand it still strongly refutes geocentrism, and it is impossible to explain or provide scientific evidence for it within the geocentrist model. This is why geocentrism was obsoleted and abandoned : It was wrong. This is what science does, it corrects itself in search of the most accurate truths about the world. To defy this progress hurts not only science, but human progress as a whole. Challenging conventional understandings of things is a necessity for science to remain as accurate as it can be, but to do with nothing but your own self-centered convictions about why you’re the most special thing in the universe is just outright wrong. Science’s role in our world is to provide us with evidence-supported and reasoned facts about reality. Reality does not heed to the conceits of man, facts remain facts regardless of anyone’s opinion of them.

Time Lapse Videos from space