Over two thousand years since Aristarchus
suggested a Heliocentric model to explain the retrograde motion the planets,
five hundred years after Copernicus, and in spite of every observation made since, there are still people in scholastically-impaired
backwaters of society who believe that the cosmos rotates around
a fixed Earth. such outdated and demonstrably-false
believes are rooted in a lack of education and often go hand in hand with
creationism. It's a classic recipe. Take someone undereducated,
add in the arrogant belief that they can better hundreds of years of real science using a storybook, and sprinkle generously with claims of a science conspiracy. Speaking of which here's Golden Crocoduck
nominee FernieBoy100, who either doesn't understand the limited that
he has read, or deliberately misrepresents it to suit his Bible literalism. This is the same Bible that says the Earth has foundations. That we can't eat delicious, nutricious pork. That we can eat cows. And that we can't. That bats are birds. And that the best cure for dermatological complaints is to get a priest to sprinkle you with bird
blood and shave you! in the first part of his geocentrist
truth series his argument hangs almost literally on our current pole star, Polaris.
He has this to say: >> FERNIEBOY100: So the question comes up: Why does Polaris stay in the same place if the Earth is tilting? Um, Polaris is way up in outer space, and the Earth is down here, and... ...like I say, Polaris is a long way's
away from Earth. So if the Earth is tilting, throughout the year, enough to cause seasons (this is a very significant tilt) Why are we not seeing Polaris move all over the sky? >> CHL: Because he personally doesn't understand
basic celestial mechanics, the Earth's axial tilt or the seasons,
FernieBoy concludes that science is lying, and that his own position is therefore a fact. It's a typical argument from ignorance. It's easy to dismiss science as lies if your world view
is such that you can't or don't understand it, and it's the default position of many creationists. FernieBoy thinks that science says the Earth's tilt
the Earth's varies enough over the course of year to cause the seasons. Of course it doesn't say that at all.
But first, let's see how geocentrism explains the seasons: To geocentrists the seasons are caused by
by the Sun physically moving up and down from the celestial equator. It sounds simple but what are the
actual implications of that? Here are the Sun and the Earth. At this scale Earth
is about one twentieth of a pixel across. In our creationist's model the Earth is fixed,
and at the March Equinox the sun is here on the celestial equator.
The Sun circles the Earth with the rest of the Universe once a day. Over the next
three months the Sun spirals around getting higher in the sky, giving summer
in the northern hemisphere. If maintaining roughly the same distance
from the sun this means that the radius of the circle it describes decreases as it
heads towards the solstice by about twelve point four million kilometres. Somehow. As if that didn't defy enough laws of motion,
it then spirals down towards the celestial equator again threw the Autumnal
equinox and on to the winter solstice. This cycle then repeats each year. If you want to say, "well the Sun just moves up
and down instead," which would be simpler, then you have another problem: it'll end
up 163 million kilometres from the earth and with an angular diameter
of about 29.27 minutes instead of its current minimum of around 31.5 minutes. That doesn't happen. But the geocentrist picture gets more complex
because the distance to the Sun does vary on a cyclic basis. The Sun is furthest from the Earth in
early July and closest in earth January. Measure its angular diameter if you don't believe it.
This makes the motion of the Sun even more complex for the geocentrist.
The Sun isn't furthest or closest at each Solstice. If we project those back and use a
simple harmonic motion to find monthly intervals from the solstices, we
can plot changing distance of the Sun through the course of the year and it'll
look rather like this. Combine that with the daily circling of
the Earth and the Crazy Sun Spiral idea is how geocentrists think the seasons work. Naturally they have no explanation for
how or why any of this takes place, let alone anything that can explain the
complex motions needed for their idea to match what we observe. Now laws of motion. No maths. No physics. Just their twee little diagrams. Perhaps Helios is just making his
chariot driving work more interesting. Or perhaps the geocentrist idea to
explain the season is BOLLOCKS. As most people learned at school the Earth is
tilted at around 23.5 degrees. When the northern hemisphere is facing
the Sun it's summer in the north, and winter in the south. Six months later
Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun and it's winter in the northern hemisphere. It's so simplete children understand it,
so you'd need me to tell you where the spring and autumn equinoxes go in this cycle. FernieBoy seems to have encountered an incorrect
description of the seasons, which is probably due to sourcing his info
from geocentrists webshites. He's all too ready to dismiss proven facts
without really understanding them. >> FERNIEBOY: I mean this is just delusion. Honestly this is... hilarious. That that people will actually think that scientific hypothesis and theory is equal to fact. It's not. Hypothesis and theory is not fact. I don't know why so many people can't see...
Ummm.. It's not fact. It's simple as that. And so this is what you'll see.
You're going to see pictures like this. I think where it shows Polaris...
It's always on an angle. You'll see the Earth on an angle, on it's tilt.
Then they show Polaris above the Earth on that tilt. But this is not what's going on... The... the... Universe is rotating around Earth!
[Slapping sounds] >> CHL: One can't simply state "that's not what's going on"
unless you have a testable, alternative model that shows what IS going on. Personal belief based on utter ignorance
does not reality make. Our creationist friend doesn't understand why,
if the earth is orbiting on a tilt, Polaris is always seen near the North celestial pole. It's very simple: During the course of the year the orientation
of Earth's axis remains virtually constant. At the summer solstice the north celestial pole
is pointing towards Polaris. Three months later at the autumnal equinox
it's pointing at Polaris. Come the winter solstice
it's still pointing at Polaris, and at the vernal equinox
it's pointing at Mars. Not really. Polaris. The orientation of Earth's axis, that is the direction it's pointing to in space
does change, but not on the annual timescale FernieBoy thinks it does. The Earth is not a perfect sphere, and the gravitational
pulls of the Sun and Moon act on its equatorial bulge. This causes small cycles such as nutation, and
the most significant shift in the orientation of Earth's axis:
the precession of the equinoxes, a cycle that takes about 26,000 years to complete. We see the effect of this as a shift of
the celestial poles, and with them the celestial equator on the points of the
equinoxes. Hipparcus is credited with discovering
Earth's precession over a century BCE, and his work was continued by Ptolomy
in the second century. Two thousand years later, the cycles are now
well understood can be measured and calculated with precision. The celestial pole wasn't always
near Polaris. Five thousand years ago it was pointing
at Thuban in Draco. In another twelve thousand years the
pole will be near Vega. It moves about one degree every 72 or so years. It would be nice if geocentrists did some
actual measurements. Back to FernieBoy's cute diagram of what
he thinks is really going on... It really doesn't take much more than
simple observations to realize that Mercury is not between Earth and Venus. Actually doesn't take much more
than simple observations to realize that the entire diagram is based on a
foundation of uneducated, outdated RUBBISH. The inner planets pose problems for the
geocentric model. Mercury and Venus are always seen near the sun, and it's obvious that they don't orbit
the Earth. We see phases of both planets and
changing distances from Earth that are entirely consistent with them
orbiting the Sun. This magnificent sequence of images
taken by Chris Proctor shows the phases and changes in apparent size
of Venus that we observe. Venus appears fully illuminated when it
appears smallest in the sky, and only a small angle from the Sun. The geocentrist has Venus orbiting
Earth, like so. An observer on Earth would see phases
of Venus, like this. If Venus orbited the Earth rather than the Sun,
we wouldn't see the changes in size that we see. We'd see Venus in the middle of the night
on a regular basis. But we don't. We might expect to see Venus go through
Earth's shadow from time to time, but we don't see that either. We never see Venus more than 47.8 degrees
from the Sun. It's not called the Morning Star and
the Evening Star for nothing. It's the same principle with Mercury, which we never see more than about
27 degrees from the Sun. And according to this rubbish we should
also see Mercury transit across Venus from time to time. That never happens either, and never will, because this childish
model of the solar system is BOLLOCKS, and is easily shown to be BOLLOCKS by
looking at the sky and making measurements. For the geocentrist then Mercury and Venus must be following the Sun
on its annual crazy spiral and engaging in some unexplained motion of their own. Or perhaps the geocentrist thinks that
they are orbiting the Sun and it's just everything else that supposedly doesn't. The planetary problems don't stop with
Mercury and Venus. I mentioned at the start of this video
retrodgrade motion. This was key to disproving the geocentric
view of the ancients, which should obviously result in a steady motion. With actual observations we see something
that puzzled the ancient Greeks. Here's how Mars moves against the background
stars from the 11th October 2011 to the 11th July 2012, at weekly intervals. We see it slow down... reverse in January 2012...
and resume its Easterly motion from mid-April. We can measure the distances to the planets
easily, so what does this motion look like over months when see from above
a stationary Earth? It's far from the nice, neat circles
posited by this crap. Prolomy's answer to apparent retrograde
motion was the concept of epicycles, the notion that the planets orbit about a
point which is self circles the Earth. Prolomy's calculations took up 13
volumes but did provide a way to describe and predict retrograde motion. However, being so early in tackling
the problem Ptolomy can be forgiven for being unaware of one slight factor: "Gravity you f***ing retard!" Whilst Ptolomy's voluminous calculations
remained of use, they were far too complicated an unsatifactory to
astronomers of the middle ages, and we don't use the concept of epicycles
today because if it's BOLLOCKS. The geocentric model where planets go on
looping tours of the heavens becomes even more questionable when you factor in the
supposed daily rotation of the entire Universe: [Loud music]
"I'm a firestarter! Twisted firestarter!" "You're the firestarter! F***ing firestarter!" "I'm a firestarter! F***ing firestarter!" "F***ING FIRESTARTER!" Yeaaah... For non-physics-defying elegance,
try this: Oh look - Halley's comment in 1986! In the second part of the series we'll look
at even more shortcomings of geocentrism. See you then...
And, in related news, the members of /r/skeptic collectively decide to shoot fish in a barrel.
A valiant skeptic will now debunk the "turtles all the way down" cosmological theory.