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READERS' FORUM
Over a decade ago, an Australian physicist named Setterfield
reviewed the history of the determinations of the speed of light and the
physical constants which are tied to the speed of light and concluded that
said speed was much higher at the time of creation than it is now. Needless
to say, that has not set well in many religious circles (evolutionists
have, as a whole, ignored the issue). Actually, the evidence appears real
but, unfortunately, it is not really strong. You see, according to Setterfield,
the speed of light stopped decaying in 1963.
Now Hugh Ross, the Grand Dragon of theistic evolutionists, assailed
Setterfield's work on the basis that it violates the law of conservation of
energy. In his research on Hugh Ross's baseless claims, Dr. Bolton
Davidheiser asked whether or not Ross is right in his charge. At issue is
the famous E=mc2 of the late, lamented Albert Einstein. My response
(reworded somewhat from the original) follows:
E=mc2 was not original with Einstein as it had been derived by a
handful of physicists, including Maxwell, before him.
Ross's objection is a half-truth. Setterfield has always insisted
that energy be conserved and uses that law to relate other constants to
the speed of light. So Ross's objection has nothing to do with
Setterfield's model. Now, since energy is conserved, if c increases,
then the effective mass must decrease. This is not as unreasonable as
it may at first appear since the speed of light is a property of the permitivity
and permeability of space which also relates to electric
charge and could, via Barnes's feedback model of the electron and
proton, define mass-energy. So Ross is misrepresenting Setterfield's
position with a too-simplistic argument. Typical of an evolutionist,
I'm afraid.
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Tom Willis of the Creation Science Association of Mid-America,
Cleveland, Missouri, had some questions about our book, Geocentricity.
Particularly, he deplored the lack of clear models for such things as the
geostationary satellite and the Foucault pendulum. Are there any everyday
type analogies which can serve to illustrate the geocentric model for
such things? My response:
Your criticism of my analogies is fair. Unfortunately, there are no
every-day analogies for things like the geostationary satellite and the
Foucault pendulum: we don't see orbits in our day-to-day activities
because the force of gravity is too weak on such a scale. About the
only thing which can be done, and time is the biggest constraint, is to
present a series of video animations. Dirk Gastaldo started doing
some last year but he's been bogged down in work, too.
Since the book was written there is a parable I've come across
which may serve for the stationary satellite. The moon always keeps
the same face to the earth. Suppose that we lived on the moon. From
our lunar (selencentric) perspective we see the stars rotate about us
once every 27 earth-days, and the earth exhibits the same phase (e.g.,
new earth) every 29.5 earth-days which is the time it takes the sun to
“circle” the moon. But the earth is always hovering in the same position
in the sky. A Selenic Copernicus decides that the moon rotates
with a period of 29.5 earth days and that the moon orbits the sun.
Now we know that what goes up must come down. From that latter
observation a Selenic Newton formulates the laws of gravity and
discovers that the earth is 57,900 miles from the moon, the distance at
which an object orbiting the moon has a period of 29.5 days.1 Later, a Selenic geocentrist named Bouw proposes that the earth is really at
the center of the earth-moon system, that it is more massive than our
home, the moon, and that the earth is really 230,000 miles away.
“But,” the objection sounds, “if that were so, then the earth and moon
would long ago have parted company since at a distance of 230,000
miles from the moon the escape velocity is 8 cm/sec,2
whereas a period of 29.5 days would give a speed of more than 91,000
cm/sec!3 The earth would be
going more than 10,000 times too fast to stay near
the moon! Bouw counters with the claim that his critics are using the
wrong coordinate system, that they are not tying it to the earth as they
should but still coordinate to the moon. He claims that Barbour and
Bertotti have showed that, as per Ernst Mach, the moon, the earth, an
atom, the sun; any place can be taken as the center of the universe and
a physics can be derived which will account for all the phenomena.
The point of the story is that if in a geocentric system the geostationary
satellite must fall to earth, then by the same token, in the
selencentric system the selenstationary earth should fall to the moon.
So why doesn't the earth fall to the moon?
“Ah,” the heliocentric critic says, “because the moon goes around
the earth and not the other way around.” Bouw smiles and opens his
arms: “Welcome, fellow geocentrist!”
I don't know if that illustration helps or not. As for the Foucault
pendulum, I suppose illustrations using magnets may do something.
For example, suppose we consider a sphere made up of magnetized
wedges with all their south poles glued to the center of the sphere, so
that the surface is all north pole. This will act slightly like a magnetic
monopole and will act like an attracting force to a south pole without
inducing a spin. Now suppose that the sphere is hanging from a
gallows-like affair inside a hollow sphere made up of plastic with
scattered magnetic wedges (like the universe is made up of scattered
stars) glued to the plastic so that their south poles are all pointing
toward the center of the sphere. When the large sphere does not
rotate, the pendulum monopole will swing back and forth and may
even come to rest off vertical from the platform if there are more
magnets on one side of it than on the other. (The same is true in the
gravitational case.) Now suppose that the sphere spins. In that case
the passing magnets will drag the monopole with them in its swing.
Before long the plane of the monopole's swing will rotate in unison
with the sphere. The problem with the model is that the magnetic
field varies as the inverse cube while gravity is inverse square, so
there is a basic difference in how they behave.
**************************************
The following letter came from Minnesota in response to J. Timothy
Unruh's comet collision “scale model.”
The Jupiter article (p. 5, Fall '94 issue) by J. Timothy Unruh is
puzzling. What is he attempting to express, especially in the final
three paragraphs? He uses such terms as “sensationalized” and
”melodramatic media.” To me, a fireball greater than Earth's
diameter is a major astronomical event in our solar system.
His use of a model, as you must suspect, is utterly misleading. By
the same kind of pathetic reasoning we might conclude that
automobile collisions are mere products of our imaginative news
reporting, in view of the fact that small scale-model vehicles aren't
even dented at similarly down-scaled velocities. The energies do not
vary linearly, but by the fifth power of the scale (by my reckoning).
What does or does not happen with a grain of sand impacting a 74-
foot Jupiter model at 1/3 inch/sec is irrelevant…unless multiplied the
5th power of the scale [which amounts to (6.336x104)5]. Even that
does not adequately convey the reality of the collision.
Mr. Unruh responds:
My purpose in writing the article was basically threefold: First, I
felt that the model, which was intended to be the focal point in the article,
was useful in providing a layman's grasp on the overall scale or
magnitude of the event, although I realize it was not an exhaustive
model, especially in terms of the mass-velocity-energy equation, as
you have so deftly pointed out. Almost all of what I had been hearing
about the event was media hype. One headline in particular which
said, “Jupiter engulfed in giant fireball” gave the distinct impression
that Jupiter was being consumed. I thought that the model would help
bring the event more into a true astronomical perspective. Secondly,
up until the time of the impacts almost everyone I had talked to, including
avid astronomers, expressed that they didn't really expect to
see anything at all. To everyone's surprise the aftermath of the collisions
were visible not only from world class mountain top observatories
but through telescopes as small as three inches in aperture
from big city backyards. In fact, I was able to make video tape images
of Jupiter, myself, which clearly showed the impact marks.
Furthermore, the marks remained clearly visible for some weeks
after the collision events. There were other “surprises” as well, the
discussion of which was beyond the scope of my short treatise.
Finally, the magnitude of the impacts themselves very clearly exceeded
all expectations. I still have the “major league” newspaper
clippings that express this, which is the point I was making at the end
of my article when I said “Scientists themselves remain startled”. As
far as I could see little of this was really anticipated.
Astronomy, unlike other sciences, does not allow us much close
hand observation and experimentation. It is a science whereby we observe,
as best we can, from afar and I think in spite of all the technology
we have at our disposal there is a great realm of uncertainty in
astronomy. Articles of current interest on astronomy that occasionally
appear in print betray this fact when words like “theory”, “estimated”,
”scientists believe — based on”, etc., etc., are used. In spite of temptations
to the contrary usually they are honest enough to stay away from
expressions that claim absolute fact, although, unfortunately not always.
In
writing the article I had no anticipation that anyone would read
any kind of joke, trick, or riddle into it. In fact you are the first to
raise the question. It was intended to be as straight forward and as
”un” read-between-the-lines, for that matter, as possible. Perhaps this
reflects a deficiency of such a brief writing. I think your issue regarding
the mass-momentum-energy relationship is a valid concern and is
an issue in which I myself grappled with at length and which probably
could have been addressed in a little more detail in my article. One
engineer with whom I discussed this matter and the model in this con
text did see, as I saw, that the “damage” seemed to be excessive in
proportion to the object's size. Otherwise no one else that I have encountered
“out there” other than yourself seems to have really given it
a careful look.
Experiments in mass-velocity-energy relationships have never
been conducted on a cosmic scale by man, of course, so he is limited
basically to studies of ballistics, and these have usually been applied
to impacts on the Moon and Meteor Crater in Arizona, etc. The assumption
that the M-V-E equation is as consistent at the upper end as
well as the lower end, as the inverse square law of light intensity is
taken to be as it has to do with stars, might lead to endless debate. I
don't claim to be a physicist or mathematician, so you will have to
forgive me for my deficiencies there, but I am still convinced that the
magnitude of the event was a big surprise to most scientists and
astronomers even so far as touching the aforementioned “equation”
and that was part of my thesis. Others who read my article have
agreed. Even the scientists, armed with their letters, equations and
technology did not, and could not, predict the outcome beforehand!
I hope this helps clarify the misunderstandings you had in regards
to what I was attempting to express in my article. Again, thanks for
your interest. My best wishes to you and yours for this season, '95,
and after!
****************************************
It being the chiefe project of that old deluder, Satan, to keepe men from
the knowledge of the Scriptures as in former times, keeping them in an
unknowne tongue, ….
— Old Deluder Satan Law of Connecticut and
Massachussets, 1642
(Like Hebrew and a dead form of Greek, or Latin, or long-lost “originals” which no
one alive today has ever seen.)
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1 The law of gravity is F=GMm/R2 where G is the gravitational
constant, M is the mass
of the moon, m is the mass of the earth, and R is the earth-moon distance. The problem
is to solve for R, the unknown distance to the earth. The approach is as follows:
The centripetal force = the centripetal acceleration times the mass and that must equal
the force of gravity. I.e.,
m v2/R = GMm/R2
Note that the earth's mass, m, and one R cancel. We don't know the orbital speed, v,
or the distance R, but there is a relationship between the two, namely, v = R
w so that,
after cancelling, we can rewrite this equation as:
R2 w2 = G M / R.
Now there is a simple relationship between the angular velocity,
w and the orbital
period, P:
w = 2 p / P
and we write:
R3 = G M P2 / 4 p2.
This equation is solved for R with M = 7.37 x 1025 gm,
P = 2.55 x 106 sec and
G = 6.67 x 10-8 cm3/ gm sec2.
The result is R = 9.32 x 109 cm = 57,900 miles.
2 Solve above for v.
3 2 p D / P, where D is the geocentrist's
earth-moon separation of 230,000 miles).
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