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Viliam comments on Open Thread, Apr. 13 - Apr. 19, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Gondolinian 13 April 2015 12:19AM

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Comment author: Eitan_Zohar 14 April 2015 03:51:38AM *  1 point [-]

I discovered, today, a letter by the Lubavitcher Rebbe in which he claims that the sun revolves around the Earth:

One of the conclusions of the theory of relativity is that when there are two systems, or planets, in motion relative to each other—such as the sun and earth in our case—either view, namely, the sun rotating around the earth, or the earth rotating around the sun, has equal validity. Thus, if there are phenomena that cannot be adequately explained on the basis of one of these views, such difficulties have their counterpart also if the opposite view is accepted.

Secondly, the scientific conclusion that both views have equal validity is the result not of any inadequacy of available scientific data, or of technological development (measuring instruments, etc.), in which case it could be expected that further scientific and technological advancement might clear up the matter eventually and decide in favor of one or the other view. On the contrary, the conclusion of contemporary science is that regardless of any future scientific advancement, the question as to which is our planetary center, the sun or the earth, must forever remain unresolved, since both views will always have the same scientific validity, as stated.

Does anyone understand what this is trying to argue? I suspect he's saying something analogous to, you know, the universe shifting around the Earth in sync with the sun, which technically makes the sun revolve around the Earth (in a semantical sense). But I'm not confident of that.

Comment author: Viliam 14 April 2015 08:42:34AM 2 points [-]

Does anyone understand what this is trying to argue?

That the Bible was always right and even science doesn't really contradict it. Yay, Bible!

The steelman version is that (ignoring all other bodies in our solar system), both Sun and Earth actually revolve around their common center of gravity. Saying "Earth revolves around Sun" brings the connotation that the Sun is not influenced by the gravity of Earth, which is not true.

Except that this is unrelated to the theory of relativity (you could get the same conclusion using Newtonian mechanics), and I believe the common center of gravity still happens to be inside the Sun (please correct me if I am wrong).

Comment author: Epictetus 14 April 2015 04:11:33PM 1 point [-]

The common center of gravity is inside the sun. However, the Earth-Sun system also revolves around the center of the galaxy. From that perspective, the main trajectory of the Earth is around the center of the galaxy, but the sun's gravity is deflecting it this way and that. If you plotted the Earth's motion, it would look something like a sine wave wrapped around a giant ellipse around the center of the galaxy. Saying the Earth went around the Sun wouldn't make much sense from this perspective.

The argument being made is that the theory of relativity doesn't give a preferred coordinate system for the Earth-Sun system, so saying "The sun goes around the Earth" is an accurate statement for an observer located on Earth.

In fact, the theory of relativity would say that the question of whether the Earth goes around the Sun or the Sun goes around the Earth is meaningless unless you specify a reference frame ahead of time. There has to be some observer who is observing the motion from a certain reference frame, and if we know the reference frame then we can decide whether the observer sees the Sun going around the Earth, the Earth going around the Sun, both of them going around Mars, etc.

That the Bible was always right and even science doesn't really contradict it. Yay, Bible!

That too.