Part III : On Bradley and Bessel

Creation vs. Evolution : Responding to Dystopian Science · Part II of Dystopian Science, my answer part A · Part II, part B - CMI on Deeper Waters · HGL's F.B. writings : Carter's Tactics · Back to Creation vs. Evolution : Part III : On Bradley and Bessel · New blog on the kid : Do Lorentz Transformations Prove a Universal Inconditional Speed Limit? · Back to Creation vs. Evolution : John Hartnett Pleads Operational Science · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Steven Taylor on Lorentz Transformations, Speed of Light, Distant Starlight Problem, Creation Week, Miracles

Here is their part III:

Dystopian science Part 3: Rebuilding science from the ground up
by Robert Carter, Lita Cosner | Published: 11 April 2019 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/dystopian-science-3

In fact, James Bradley figured out the speed of light (to a high degree of accuracy) by simply looking at two stars every night in a telescope that was strapped to his chimney so that it could not move. He could, however, tilt the eyepiece a little and he took careful notes on the position of the eyepiece through the seasons. He did this for 20 years and published his result in 1729. Did you get that? We knew the speed of light nearly 300 years ago and this was done with extremely simple tools. The tilting changed over time, and he reasoned that this was due to the earth moving with respect to the stars. We can explain it in this way: If someone threw you a ball and you were trying to catch it in a pipe in such a way that it did not hit the walls of the pipe, you would have to angle the pipe toward the direction of the throw. In the same way, a telescope must be angled ever so slightly in order for the light coming from a star to not hit the side of the telescope, because as the earth revolves around the sun it is sometimes moving toward the star and sometimes moving away from the star. But the angle also depends on how far away the star is from the North or South Celestial Pole.

If the earth is assumed to orbit sun, Bradley's interpretation of what he saw will jump to mind.

However, it is also possible to account for it by assuming angels are wiggling stars (individual angels for individual stars).

And Friedrich Bessel made the first measurements of stellar parallax (the little wiggle close-in stars make as the earth goes about the sun each year) in 1838. He determined that the star 61 Cygni is only about 10 light years away. The ‘wiggle’ was less than 0.00009 degrees! But he was able to measure this with good critical thinking and a telescope that is comparable to something you can order out of a catalogue today.

I'd disagree on the quality of his thinking and on what he actually used.

He did not figure out that stellar movements could be due to angelic movers, despite this explanation being available well before him, he just went on to ignore that one, so his thinking was not quite as good as claimed.

Also, the parallaxes are in fact not determined directly, by observation, but against the background of other stars with less parallax, by presuming their movement to be equal to "aberration" movement.

I used to be a fan of trigonometry back in high school, not very good, but I got the basics of it.

To figure out the lengths of one triangle, you need three magnitudes at least one of which is a length.

If Earth is orbitting Sun we have one length and two angles, which is the requirement. Length being Earth position A to to Earth position B. Angles being between Earth position A and star at Earth position B, and, at Earth position A, you have angle between Earth position B and star.

If Earth is standing still in the middle of the Universe, we have no length and only one angle.

Do the maths, the trig, the soh-cah-toa. Yes, it absolutely means the Bessel phenomenon is not telling you anything about how far away the star is.

Other things perhaps are.

Supposing Voyager I and II are not frauds, we can tell they are c. 18 light hours away, and that means that stars which they have not yet reached must be further away than that.

Even so, they would be travelling faster than the speed of light. Locally. If they were 1 light day away (as I think they were* on day 4), they would be doing a circle each day of approximately 6.28 light days. And 6.28 light days in one day = faster than the speed of light.

I am right now not yet started with transscribing a comment on that one, related to Lorentz transformations, from notebook to blog.

But on the other hand, Carter and Cosner have so far not argued that speed of light through vacuum coincides with absolute cosmic speed limit of any movement of any type whatsoever.

If we get to more acceptance of modern sceince, my point is, the speed limit applies to movement through the aether, and aether being the fabric of space time, the medium of vectors, adding no vector and without mass.

But Carter and Cosner have not yet even argued that one.

Here is one further comment, related to the topic:

Methodological naturalism applied to astronomy will lead to the idea that the universe is billions of years old, because some stars are much further away than 6,000 light years.

Only with the medium of denying absolute Geocentrism, as you cannot even measure 4 light years to alpha Centauri without that assumption.

Likewise, there will always be some who argue for non-real alternative theories (like the modern ‘flat earth’ theorists).

I am a wee bit tired, as a globe earth believing Geocentric, to being compared to flat earthers.

Also, it is not so much about "non-real" theories as about some of them being disproven.

How many have heard the argument from curvature of earth being such and such to "things that far away should not even be seen"? Well, they forget that this applies if you try to watch Chicago's skyline from across Lake Michigan, not from a building, but from eyes at foot level and feet at water line of where you are. Lie down flat not much higher than the waters, on opposite side of Lake Michigan, you will NOT see Chicago. But if you don't, it depends on how high you are watching from. Their "observation" means ignoring every level of altitude above your feet at sea level.

But a good dose of science from a biblical foundation should help us to avoid those pitfalls. There is no reason to dive head-first down the rabbit hole. The world is real, understandable, and physically non-contradictory. If we trust the Bible, we will be able to rebuild science. And when we do, we will be bringing glory to the Creator, the God of the Bible.

That's what I am doing and what CMI is giving me no credit for, as I am a Geocentric.

In so doing, we will be following in the footsteps of the founders of modern science, who almost unanimously believed in the Scriptures and used it as a basis for their thinking.

First portrait given by Sarfati in that article is Isaac Newton.

He was horrible on Bible prophecy (behind the awful idea that 1260 days are 1260 years of "papal" persecution against "the saints").

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Ezechiel
10.IV.2019

Apud Babylonem sancti Ezechielis Prophetae, qui, a Judice populi Israel, quod eum de cultu idolorum argueret, interfectus, in sepulcro Sem et Arphaxad, Abrahae progenitorum, sepultus est; ad quod sepulcrum, orationis causa, multi confluere consueverunt.

Update, the article I was working on is now on the blog:

New blog on the kid : Do Lorentz Transformations Prove a Universal Inconditional Speed Limit?
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/04/do-lorentz-transformations-prove.html

* Supposing Voyager I and II to be real, it might be that stars need to be further away than one light day, I contacted one Carl Hostetter I knew from Tolkien contexts whom I recall seeing as employee of NASA and he refused to answer me, but here are my own preliminary conclusions on that one:

New blog on the kid : A threat to my "one light day up" view?
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-threat-to-my-one-light-day-up-view.html

New blog on the kid : Apparent Size depends on Tangent, Right?
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/02/apparent-size-depends-on-tangent-right.html

Update:

The very next day, an article published by CMI passes their vetting while containing this disinformation:

In the first place, the geocentric view was not rooted in Scripture at all but in Aristotelianism.8 According to Jonathan Sarfati, “Many historians of science have documented that the first to oppose Galileo was the scientific establishment, not the church. The prevailing ‘scientific’ wisdom of his day was the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic theory” [emphasis in original].

That note 8 cites "a creditable source" as Clark, G.H., Modern Philosophy, The Trinity Foundation, Unicoi, TN, pp. 32–35, 2008, does not mean it is a true one, and as to Sarfati's article (note 9 just after quote), I already refuted it.