[geocentrism] Re: Life after death

Martin G. Selbrede,

  My comments in red. - Regner

Martin G. Selbrede wrote:
On Mar 17, 2008, at 12:57 PM, Paul Deema wrote:

Martin S
Where have you been? I've missed you!

Paul D


Hi Paul,

I find your approach a bit odd:
I've been following all the discussions very closely for months, wondering when Regner would make a mistake. It took this long for him to make that misstep
-- he's formidable,
Well, thank you.
but not invincible.
I don't have divine powers to consult.
He wasn't sufficiently well-read in the general relativity literature to avoid the error regarding the effect of a rotating cosmos on a stationary earth.
Correct - and I apologize for previously having considered that a profusely esoteric subject.

We'll see how that plays out -- I want to see how he reacts to the situation.
Why don't you ask me instead?
It can't be fun being lectured by your opponents on something this basic.
This is not a political debate - it is (supposed to be) a scientific debate.
He's been a gentleman to this point, so I harbor some hope that the dialogue will continue on a collegial level.
If I could just enjoy the same privileges from my opponents...
- I do from most, I would hasten to add.

Still, I was very surprised that he hadn't encountered the general relativity exposition of the centrifugal force undertaken with the earth at rest. Still, on first principles, one would have thought the error avoidable simply by taking general covariance seriously. Even if one was unaware of why the Schwarzchild solution applied to the local spacetime wouldn't apply, mere cognizance of general covariance should have given Regner pause. This was an uncharacteristic oversight on his part -- he's usually so very careful in applying physics to the question at hand.

It seems to me that you have a strange idea of what science is.
Science is not the knowledge - it's the method. Scientists are mere mortals,
and probably more than others, know what a vast Universe of knowledge
there is to be known - and how little of it a single person can know.
  No scientist (including me) would ever claim to know everything - and I
actually thought it would be blasphemous of you guys to expect that of us.
  We, do however, have the tools to find out. My rough estimate, that I couldn't
think of a force that would cause a centrifugal bulge on a stationary Earth in a
rotating Universe was obviously not a detailed calculation, and I must admit
that I don't find it worthwhile to pursue it with a GR calculation at present.
It seems to me like shooting flies with a canon. If at a later point, this issue is
the only one standing between a Geo-centric Universe and a Helio-centric
Solar system, then we can return to it.

    - Regner

Anyway, Paul, you've also been having some good clean fun at the others' expense while I became a fly on the wall, and I've enjoyed reading the resulting exchanges, although you and I do indeed find ourselves, with all due mutual respect, on the opposite sides of most issues.

Martin
--------
Martin G. Selbrede
Chief Scientist
Uni-Pixel Displays, Inc.
8708 Technology Forest Place, Suite 100
The Woodlands, TX 77381
281-825-4500 main line  (281) 825-4507 direct line  (281) 825-4599 fax   (512) 422-4919 cell

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