In response to a question regarding the adopted value of the precession and the velocity of our sun, Peter offers us the following perspective, thereby questioning other so-called fundamental concepts in astronomy:

Uwe:

Thanks again for your perceptive observations. I wrote the article on Precessional Dating* to warn against investing in monumental theories of the past based on flawed dating methodologies. The occasion never arose to address precessional mechanics directly in the Copernican Series, so I am finding the issues you raise quite enlightening. Your observation that the computed velocity of the sun of roughly 500km/h appears too low to explain a general regression of 50.26" per year reminded me that I, too, had expected a higher value. However, I now realize that I had no basis for expecting any value for the sun's speed from the precessional measurement. The precessional measurement alone provides no information about the rate the sun is moving through space and thus suggests neither a large nor a small value for that rate.

The precessional measurement is a measurement of time which, standing alone, tells us nothing about the distance measurement required to determine the sun's speed. It represents a change in a measured phenomena rather than the two points in the path of the sun's course through space needed to compute its speed. The Earth's orbit is the ruler we use. The equinox is a specific point on the Earth's orbit defined by the tilt of the Earth in relation to the sun that fixes a star in space. The Earth then makes a full orbit and returns to the equinox. The star does not appear. The Earth has to move 50.26" for the star to appear. The measurement of 50.26" is the calibration of the particular ruler we are using, the time lapse in degrees of the Earth's orbit that marks the change in the measured phenomena.The two points on the Earth's orbit, the point at which the star is fixed the first year and the point at which the star is fixed after a complete orbit, might be 50.26' apart along the Earth's orbit, but the two points that are important in measuring the speed of the sun are the two points defined by the movement of the fixed point, the equinox, over the course of the year. We could conceivably use other rulers. If we used the obliquity of the Martian axis to measure precession, the precessional measurement would be approximately 1' 34.5" because the Martian orbital period is about 90% greater than the Earth's. From Saturn, the precessional measurement would be about 24' 42". These larger measurements do not change the nature of what is being measured, the movement of the sun with respect to the measuring star and they don't change the rate at which the sun is traveling in space. They are just made with differently calibrated rulers.

Because the equinox is fixed by the position of the sun with respect to the tilt of the planet in its orbit, the equinox moves with the movement of the sun in space. The star fixed at the first measurement does not appear at the same place because of this movement. The fact that the Earth has to move an additional 50.26" in its orbit to meet up with the measuring star has nothing to do with the movement of the equinox in space, the distance the sun has moved. This distance is unknowable without another piece of information, the distance to the measuring star.

The distance to the measuring star is the height of an isosceles triangle whose equal sides connect the actual points of precessional measurement, two points on the sun's path, with the measuring star to fix the angle of the vertex of the isosceles triangle. With an infinite number of bases for two sides of an isosceles triangle with a fixed vertex angle and with the length of the base of an isosceles triangle proportional to its height, the distance between the precessional measurements is dependent on the distance to the measuring star. The greater this distance, the larger the base, the path the sun travels between precessional measurements.

With the silent assumption that the distances in interstellar space are vast, we believe that the measuring star is far away, that the base that is the distance the sun travels is correspondingly large and that the rate that the sun travels is therefore high. However, if the measuring star is close, then the base is small and the distance can be covered at a lesser rate.

There are three reasons to conclude that the vast view of interstellar distances we absorb from modern astronomy has no basis in reality:

1. Light expands as it travels. As light expands, it diminishes inversely with the square of the distance over which it travels. Because light diminishes as it expands, it eventually expands out of existence. These statements are easily demonstrated. If the measuring star were as far as our assumption of vast interstellar distances would lead us to believe, it's light would have long since expanded out of existence. Because we can use the light of the measuring star to measure precession, the star is not that far away, a meaningful statement when the comparison is with incomprehensible distances. See "We Can See Light From Stars At The End Of The Universe And The Beginning of Time And Fibber McGee And Molly Are Out There Somewhere" at http://www.copernican-series.com/sss/lighttravels.html

2. Parallax, the basis for the astronomical measurement of interstellar distances, is simply not a measurable quantity. See "Four Hundred Years Of Progress: From Being At The Center Of The Universe To Being Isolated And Alone In The Universe" a http://www.copernican-series.com/sss/parallax.html . This is one of those consensus things that is relatively senseless to argue. The astronomical community can say pretty much anything it wants, and some of the things it is saying today are pretty much anything. The difference between preCopernican astronomers, with their orbits within orbits and orbiting orbits, and today's astronomers is that preCopernican astronomers actually attempted to explain what was there, the lights moving in the night sky, while today's astronomer's confidently explain what isn't there, the dark matter and black holes their theories predict. The belief in impossible interstellar distances is merely a psychological substitute for the position we lost when we discovered we weren't the center of the universe.

3. Assuming astronomy is right and parallax is measurable, parallax is only capable of measuring distance to the closest stars. And while parallax doesn't measure the real motion of stars (and doesn't take into consideration the motion of the sun when it does claim to measure apparent motion), precession is a form of parallax that views the measuring star from different angles, two points defined by the sun's motion. Because precession is a parallax type measurement, the fact that we can measure precession means that the measuring stars have to be among the closest measurable stars.

With no connection between the precessional measurement and the speed of the sun, and with good reason to believe that distances in the universe are not as claimed, the independent measurement of the sun's speed of roughly 500km/h by reference to the effect its motion has on the motion of the planets it carries with it through space does not need to explain the general regression of 50.26". The sun's speed therefore does not have to be higher to explain that measurement.

A check on this conclusion can be made with reference to the actual dynamics of the solar system. The sun is moving through space and in doing so, is dragging the planets along behind it. The sun's gravitational force can only capture planets that it can drag along with it. If the sun is moving at a high rate of speed, not many planets could keep up with it. On the other hand, the slower the sun moves, the more planets it can carry along with it. With the number of planets indicative of the sun's speed, then, a solar system with nine planets and an uncountable number of asteroids would indicate a leisurely rate of speed.

We should all be warned, however, that a moving sun requires an existing force for planetary orbiting and rotation and thus is anathema to empirical science whose centerpiece Celestial Mechanics requires the absence of a current force. And, of course, the sun is not actually motionless outside the confines of Celestial Mechanics. Measuring its speed in accordance with the principles of Hubble's constant, we clock a sun speed of 720,000km/h. This appears to defy physics because the Earth is only traveling at about 108,000km/h, making it difficult to keep up with the sun, but fortunately for us all, the rule that local forces trump cosmic forces means the Earth can move at 720,000km/h in one direction while moving 108,000km/h in another.

Peter

Peter@BrosMail.com