Re: The great Western adaption

jsavard@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
oriel36 wrote:
It would probably be of little use to point out
that it is impossible to work the annual orbital cycle of the Earth
using a system with an alternative number of days every 4th year but
such is Newtonian system which forces planetary motion into the
celestial sphere geometry above.

It is true that I see no particular problem with the year and the day
being incommensurable. Synodic or sidereal.


When an observer looks out and sees a star return 23 hours 56 minutes
04 seconds earlier than the night before that system requires that
there must be an additional day every 4th year to maintain that
premise.Somehow a genuine participant in sci.astro.amateur would
acknowledge that this would be impossible to square with the annual
orbital motion of the Earth and axial rotation with a system of 3
years of 365 days and 1 year of 366 days.





A location on Earth does Not,I repeat,does Not return to face the Sun
every 24 hours.My astronomical ancestors knew that the total length of
a day varies and created the Equation of Time (EoT) system which uses
noon to equalise the variations in the total length of a day to an
equable 24 hour day

I left out these complications, due to the elliptical nature of the
Earth's orbit, but I am glad that you are aware of them.

But don't those complications mean that the idea of a 24-hour axial
period that has any meaning *except* as the mean solar day, which is
what you seem to be advocating, is even *less* tenable?


I am presenting the combined wisdom of ancient astronomical timekeeping
systems that you and everyone else will use today and for the rest of
your lives,no doubt the 17th century sidereal 'shortcut' which is
sub-geocentric in content and character gives you the observational
convenience of the Ra/Dec system but the actual principles which create
the clock system and the calendar system are far more intricate and
exquisite,they are also some of the greatest known achievements of
humanity.as they bridge the ancient timekeeping system with
heliocentric geometries.In short,if you cannot match the wisdom of the
men who created the 24 hour system and as a seperate extension; the
calendar system you will not appreciate the adations made by the
astronomers in the 16th century.

The 24 hour system correlating with axial rotation with clocks at
precisely 4 minutes for each degree of rotation admits no other value
or no attempt to force it into a celestial sphere geometry.It is
astyronishing that people would choose to believe an alternative value
even allowing that they can still retain the convenience of the Ra/Dec
system while acknowledging that it does not reflect and cannot be used
to justify the axial and orbital motions of the Earth.



Here you plummet back to your celestial sphere roots and that is
fairly usual,these posting are designed to make participants familiar
with the astronomical timekeeping side of things and no demands are
made beyond appreciating what our pre-Copernican and heliocentric
ancestors did and how they did it.

The celestial sphere defines a reference frame. Your "no demands are
made" statement here means I may be misunderstanding you in a different
sense.

Instead of claiming that the "celestial sphere" system - in its
simplicity and consistency - is _wrong_, you may simply be trying to
say that earlier systems of understanding the Solar System can also be
valid and consistent at least from the calendrical and horological
perspectives - even if we are pushed to the Newtonian celestial sphere
system when we try to account for the planets as moving bodies ruled by
Newton's Laws.


The celestial sphere system of Flamsteed/Newton is catastrophically
wrong,counter-productive for appreciating astronomical methods and
insights and represents the greatest obstacle to future progress in the
areas of astronomy,climatology,geology and anywhere an accurate
version of the Earth's motions are required.Is that explicit enough ?.

On another less technical level,the normally resilient Western
civilisation cannot withstand a corruption of its greatest astronomical
insights no matter how well established the Newtonian 'theories' have
become,the awful hijacking of intricate and exquisite astronomical
insights and methods by mathematicians is a holocaust by any other name
insofar as it completely obliterates the fuctioning intuitive side
by which individuals affirm or reject geometric proposals and
replaces them with vague equational descriptions.

The triumph of empiricism was that by using linguistic
fireworks,mathematicians could make themselves inheritors of the
Copernican and Keplerian insights however modern imaging and time lapse
footage undoes this by actually making the origfinal insights easy to
grasp and easier to use.




But you are advocating a heliocentric viewpoint, not a geocentric one,
and the idea of a heliocentric viewpoint *other* than the current
celestial sphere one - and other than Tycho Brahe's compromise, which
you seem to reject also - causes me a problem, since I can't visualize
what that viewpoint might *be*. Thus, I still don't understand what you
are saying some of our astronomical predecessors were doing.


The information loss in celestial spherte geometry is catastrophic for
it brushes aside the Copernican insight as the 'Earth orbits the Sun'
while the actual methods and insights are far more graceful and contain
far more insights.This thread is based on one such insight which
borrrows from a pre- existing hum an devised principles which create
the equable 24 hour day and applies it to a new discovery that axial
rotation is an independent motion.




The Earth does return to face in the *same direction* every 23 hours
and 56 minutes. That is a fact.

The 'fact' is that you are working on a 1461 day cycle broken into 3
years of 365 days and 1 year of 366 days,an impossible way to work with
the Earth's orbital motion and consequently the annual cycle.

It certainly is true that the Earth spends the *same* amount of time
every year going around the Sun once. But that time happens to be 365
days plus an odd fraction, somewhat less than 1/4 of a day. Why is it
untenable for that to happen?


Newton's awful 'achievement ' was making a system based on 3 years of
365 days and 1 year of 366 days sound like a system based on 365.25
days -

PHÆNOMENON IV.
"That the fixed stars being at rest, the periodic times of the five
primary planets, and (whether of the sun about the earth, or) of the
earth about the sun, are in the sesquiplicate proportion of their mean
distances from the sun.

This proportion, first observed by Kepler, is now received by all
astronomers; for the periodic times are the same, and the dimensions of
the orbits are the same, whether the sun revolves about the earth, or
the earth about the sun." Newton

http://members.tripod.com/~gravitee/phaenomena.htm

Any person here can appreciate what Kepler's 10th argument for
heliocentricity is rather than that intentionally muddled view of
Newton,again Kepler's argument is perfectly readable and understandable
and I will post it in a seperate thread.



The Earth travels slower the further it exists from the Sun and faster
the closer it exists,a simple attempt to fit the .986 degree sidereal
view will generate the ugly spectacle of the being contrary to this
Keplerian insight.

I assure you, when I use a 24 hour day on my clocks and watches, I am
not doing so with the intent of claiming that this mean solar day
matches exactly what I would see on a sundial; I am not denying the
Equation of Time!


Ah,you do not know where the Equation of Time comes from but I most
certainly do .To create a correlation between axial rotation and
celestial sphere geometry,Flamsteed had to introduce a variable axial
tilt to the Sun to give the impression that the postion of sunrise and
sunset and the arc of the Sun is a component in the Equation of
Time.Our timekeeping astronomical ancestors concentrated on the Total
length of the day and ignored the variations of sunrise/sunset or
daylight/dartkness asymmetry yet we have this ridiculous situation
where the vulgar 17th century explanations for the Equation of Time
are expressed in hemispherical terms using variable axial tilt -

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980116c.html

I promised in the last response that I would stay clear of presenting
these erroneous views but sometimes even this well shocked mind cannot
believe that men would do and believe rubbish like that.Do you really
think Nasa is doing people a favor by turning ancient wisdom on its
head and dumping that on humanity.

No point in presenting exactly where the Equation of Time comes from
until you drop celestial sphere geometry and star treating the Earth's
motions and orientations locally,something like this in terms of
temperature signatures-

http://www.climateprediction.net/images/sci_images/annual.gif



In claiming that the 24 hour day is more real than the 23 hour and 56
minute day, it seems like you're trying to work the Equation of Time
backwards, but I'm sure _that_ is only a clumsy and overly-literal
reading on my part.


The Equation of Time is basically a daily 'leap' correction .In its
pre-Copernican format it resets the human devised principle of the 24
hour day back to noon and keeps one 24 hour day elasing into the next
24 hour day.In its heliocentric adaption ,the Equation of Time keeps
clocks in correlation with axial rotation by exploiting the
equalisation from natural noon to clock noon.By switching the human
devised principle which spits the 24 hour day into equal divisions of
hours minutes and seconds,the astronomers divided the Earth
geographically into longitudes and meshed the correlation of the
equable day with geographical seperation at 4 minutes clock time for
each degree of longitude.As the Equation of Time keeps axial rotation
constant for the purpose of maintaining the correlation between 4
minutes of clock time for each degree of rotation as a principle,there
is never any need to bybass orbital motion and go off referencing axial
rotation to a non existent celestial sphere.

If you are not impressed with what our timekeeping ancestors did,both
ancient and Western,then I assume that you wish to keep this particular
creationistylike holocaust going.I do not set myself up against the
major institutions nor the people within them but how they live with
themselves is a question I cannot answer,not because of the false 17
nthe century shortcuts taken but because the original principles are
incredibly subtle ,enjoyable and rightly jewels of astronomy.


But it *really* seems to me that the Equation of Time only even begins
to make sense if we start from what you call the erroneous viewpoint of
Newton and Flamsteed, if we start from the celestial sphere as our
basis. So when I say I am baffled by your position, I am not being
merely rhetorical.


Start with Flamsteed -

"Flamsteed used the star Sirius as a timekeeper correcting the sidereal
time obtained from successive transits of the star into solar time, the
difference of course being due to the rotation of the Earth round the
Sun. Flamsteed wrote in a letter in 1677:-

.... our clocks kept so good a correspondence with the Heavens that I
doubt it not but they would prove the revolutions of the Earth to be
isochronical..."

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Longitude2.html

Again.I detest bringing up false conceptions however they are actually
useful in that they show that the person responsible ,in this case
Flamsteed, was not being deceitful,he actually thought that a 'proof'
was necessary and that celestial sphere geometry 'proved' it. It
does'nt and once you jump the conceptual tracks with a premise like
that, heliocentric astronomy becomes impossible.




I may be doing a great disservice to the astronomical timekeepers who
origially created the clock and calendar systems which we use today
insofar as I am presenting where Flamsteed/Newton jumped the tracks by
creating celestial sphere geometry out of axial rotation and
orientation.

The heliocentric astronomers could easily adapt what the antecedent
astronomical timekeepers created insofar as the unused portion left
over from explaining the observed motion of the planets is axial
rotation.You can see the orbital motion of the Earth overtaking the
slower moving outer planets as an independent motion to affirm that we
see planetary motion around the Sun from a moving Earth -

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0112/JuSa2000_tezel.gif

There is really nothing difficult in making the effort to draw the
conclusion that axial rotation causes the daily cycle and from there to
overlay the pre-existing Equation of Time system which creates the 24
hour day on top of the principle of axial rotation as being constant
and independent.Every single person here uses that principle day in and
day out whether they care to appreciate it or not but I would much
prefer if they did become familiar with this shared astronomical
timekeeping heritage,both pre-Copernican and heliocentric.

Perhaps in future I will be less inclined to explain where Newton went
astray for I am only obliged to present what is correct.

To the extent that you believe that Newton and Flamsteed went astray,
that the celestial sphere is not a good reference frame to start from,
I believe you to be mistaken. Furthermore, I feel that this error will
hinder your attempts to show how pre-Copernican and heliocentric
astronomy both share a common valid core of ideas between them by
rendering these unintelligible.


The pre-Copernican and heliocentric astronomers shared the same
observed data and the same 'predictions' of conjunctions and so on.The
most obvious and most important difference was when it camne to
observed retrogrades.The pre-Copernican astronomers seen these sweeping
periodic motions from a stationary Earth while Copernicus dramatically
altered the view by splitting the Earth into axial and orbital motions
and used orbital motion to account for the observed motionbal behavior
of the planets.

Newton's idea is sub-geocentric insofar as the perception of
retrogrades against the stellar background was common to both Ptolemaic
and Copernican astronomers however the resolution was either from a
stationary Earth (Ptolemy) or an orbitally moving Earth (Copernicus).

Nobody ever talked oif jumping to the Sun to explain apparent
retrograde motion but Newton certainly did -

" For to the earth planetary motions appear sometimes direct, sometimes
stationary, nay, and sometimes retrograde. But from the sun they are
always seen direct," NEWTON

It is customary for Newtonian disciples to run to his defence but it is
not worth it,the orbital motions around the Sun are affirmed from an
orbitally moving Earth,the only way to account for retrogrades -

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0112/JuSa2000_tezel.gif






Using the celestial sphere as a starting point is not just
"indoctrination". It makes sense as the simplest place to start from
and disentangle all the other individual motions of the various bodies
in the Solar System. Because that's going to be the starting point of
the people reading your words, it will keep them from making sense to
these readers. I wish to grapple with your claim that Newton and
Flamsteed went astray, because I hope to show you how you have
misunderstood them.

John Savard

It is not a question of misunderstanding anything,the outlines of the
ancient timekeeping systems and the reasoning behind them exist along
with the far more recent heliocentric reasoning.There is no authority
other than the satisfaction gained from making the effort to give the
outlines sharper detail and with contemporary imaging and time lapse
footage I see no reason why it can't be done.

I believe that more intelligent men already know that if current
doctrine matches the conclusions of a 1898 science fiction novel by
H.G. Wells (The Time Machine) then something has gone terribly wrong
..In this respect,the enjoyable and statisfying principles of the
original astronomical working methods and insights far outweigh the
novelistic value of the early 20th century Newtonian extensions which
has celestial sphere geometry lurking at its core.

So John, you are not meant to agree with me but rather to put the
geometric conceptions of Newton into modern imaging of planetary
motions and see the information loss for yourself.From there it is
anyone's guess where you take it.

.

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