660 HELIOCENTRISM

Why Educated People Accept the Theory by JMW

Why do educated people accept the heliocentric theory of our solar system, even though it seems to contradict what they observe every day?

According to astronomers, the geocentric theory cannot explain the following groups of observations, while the heliocentric theory can explain them:

• 1. The phases of Venus. The Moon reflects the Sun's light onto Earth. During a lunar month the Moon's position relative to the Sun and to the Earth changes, which causes the Moon to exhibit phases - New, Gibbous, Full and Gibbous again. Like the Moon, Venus reflects sunlight onto the Earth. As Venus and Earth both orbit the Sun, the position of Venus relative to the Sun and to the Earth changes, which causes Venus to exhibit phases like the Moon;

• 2. The periodic retrograde motion of planets. Planets usually move westward across the sky from one night to the next. Periodically planets, however, appear to do a backwards loop and head eastward. in the Earth's sky. This is known as retrograde motion. Planets orbit the Sun at different speeds. Mercury and Venus, being closer to the Sun orbit faster than Earth does, while Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, being further from the Sun, orbit more slowly than Earth does. When Venus or Mercury overtakes Earth, it appears to do a backwards loop in Earth's sky. When Earth overtakes Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune, the planet appears to do a backwards loop in Earth's sky;

• 3. Stellar parallax. During the course of its annual orbit round the Sun, the Earth changes its position by 300 million kilometres. This change is enough for a star that is close to the Earth to appear to move relative to stars that are further away from Earth. We see this effect when we drive past buildings. Seen from our car, buildings change their position from being ahead of us to being behind us. Distant buildings do not change their position as much as near-by buildings, near-by buildings appear to move relative to distant buildings. This effect is known as parallax. As the Earth obits the Sun, stars that are near to Earth appear to change position relative to stars that are distant from Earth. In 1838 Friedrich Bessel used the parallax of 61 Cygni to estimate the distance between the Sun and 61 Cygni;

• 4. Stellar aberration. A star can appear to move slightly in the sky from day to day. In 1727 James Bradley suggested that this phenomenon was due to variations in the Earth's speed as it orbits the Sun. In the 20th century Einstein's theory of special relativity adjusted Bradley's mathematics without changing his basic explanation.

See the Flat Earth website for related articles

This page was created on 10 July 2018 Last updated on 10 July 2018

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