Monday 3 August 2015

- But Parallax Guarentees the Distance of Kepler 452, Right? Right? Don't Tell Me It Doesn't!



1) On Spirographs and Standard Candles - Cosmic Markers for Mark Shea, 2) How Big is Kepler 452? A Geocentric Minority Report, 3) - But Parallax Guarentees the Distance of Kepler 452, Right? Right? Don't Tell Me It Doesn't!

- Bad news, pal! It doesn't.

There are a few quirks to that.

If we go to the articles on wiki entitled Stellar Parallax and Heliometer, we will show where the doubts occur.

Here is first a description of a heliometer:

The basic concept is to introduce a split element into a telescope's optical path so as to produce a double image. If one element is moved using a screw micrometer, precise angle measurements can be made. The simplest arrangement is to split the object lens in half; with one half fixed and the other attached to the micrometer screw and slid along the cut diameter. To measure the diameter of the sun, for example, the micrometer is first adjusted so that the two images of the solar disk coincide (the "zero" position where the split elements form essentially a single element). The micrometer is then adjusted so that diametrically opposite sides of the two images of the solar disk just touch each other. The difference in the two micrometer readings so obtained is the (angular) diameter of the sun. Similarly, a precise measurement of the apparent separation between two nearby stars, A and B, is made by first superimposing the two images of the stars and then adjusting the double image so that star A in one image coincides with star B in the other. The difference in the two micrometer readings so obtained is the apparent separation or angular distance between the two stars.


This means that parallax of one star is measured in relation to other stars.

And that in its turn means that if ALL stars have a movement same direction, it won't be detected by this method. For Heliocentrism that is no problem. The one movement all stars share in same direction and some size changing twice a year is - according to Heliocentrism, to the theory we are the ones moving - the aberration of light, changing their positions by 20 arcseconds a year through the speed we have (still according to Heliocentrics) and the speed light has.

For a Geocentric, there is a problem here. First of all, the Bradley phenomenon would not really be "aberration of light" - but some movement either in the stars or in the space between us and them (I settle for movement in the stars, as simpler, and as explainable by angels moving them). But second, for that reason we cannot tell "this belongs to aberration" (check the general size of all stars' quasi collective movement) and "this belongs to parallax" (the remaining differences between them). BOTH would be due to an angel for instance doing some liturgic dance in honour of God and in timing with Sun (which might have an angel functioning as "master of ceremonies") and all the movement would be that, and the differences of angles between stars would be the small différences in these movements of the stars - of the star to the right moves a little more to the left than the star to the left, the angle shrinks, and so on. If in ten stars exactly one moves half an arcsecond more to the left or right than the rest, these 9 will in a first time be registered as having "no visible parallax" (being very distant) and the one moving more will be registered as having 0.500 microarcseconds parallax. If the difference is in the direction parallax is supposed to be in, considering "earth moving opposite direction". But with angels, all could be moving without earth being involved at all except as stationary observer - and then the observation is not an observation of what parallax is according to heliocentrics supposed to mean.

This obviously means, notwithstanding the great precision of measurements taken by the heliometer, that parallax angles tell us nothing about the distance of stars. It is the very first rung of "cosmic distance ladder" which breaks down.

Let's do a little history on the matter! Other article, now:

Stellar parallax is so small (as to be unobservable until the 19th century) that it's apparent absence was used as a scientific argument against heliocentrism during the early modern age.


Note, as just noted, its apparent presence is not a proof for Heliocentrism, since it can, as just said, be explained by angelic movers (precisely as the spirograph patterns of some planetary orbits in Tychonian Geocentrism).

Note also, back in this time stars with own light (not counting Sun) and "fixed" (we would now say "relatively fixed") apparent position in relation to the whole cosmos as seen from us, were thought of as being one layer, as inner surface layer of a hollow sphere. This would give some expectations about parallax that have not been fulfilled.

Observing constellations, we do not see - as would have been expected then - the distance between stars in Virgo uniformly augment as Sun goes into Pisces or diminish as Sun goes toward Virgo (which Heliocentrics interpret as us going towards Pisces). If they did, astronomers would today conclude they do have some cohesion, as I read in a magazine (an article series debunking astrology), the stars in a constellation are considered, usually (example given was outside zodiac, it was Great Bear) as at very different distances from us - in other words, there is no "constellation uniform" either broadening or narrowing of distances between stars belonging to same or nearby ones, with corresponding narrowing or broadening of opposite constellation. The kind of parallax observations postulated as a consequence of Heliocentrism if it were true in those early modern debates (notably the one between Galileo and St Robert Bellarmine, who was judging Galileo's book) has in fact not been observed.

It would have involved Heliometer readings with "constellation uniform" widening and narrowing of angular distances as we approached or regressed around Sun from such and such a constellation.

What has been observed instead is a phenomenon which, if stars are in a cluster close enough to inner surface of a hollow sphere, then the phenomenon is due to own movements of stars (movements explainable now as well as back then by angels moving them), but if it is truly parallactic, if it is exactly due to the factors astronomers allege, namely "our own movement around the sun", then the cosmos is very much greater since stars are more like filling all of a hollow sphere which is a larger one - supposing it even has any kind of outer limit.

The reason astronomers prefer the latter explanation is not originally that "angels are not a scientific explanation, since they cannot be tested" (as if the explanations they currently accept could), nor was it any disproof of their existance, or proof that their powers are not adequate for stars or planets (something which would have surprised St Thomas Aquinas as well as Riccioli). No, it was that after Newton and after flirting around with his explanation, tied to masses and gravitation, it was apparent that a purely mechanistic cosmic explanation could not handle the universe of Galileo (with Sun in centre of hollow sphere whose inside is covered with stars) any more than St Robert Bellarmine's and Tycho Brahes. After some turns of the planets, the masses of the stars not turning would (in a Galileo type universe) fall into the Sun - and draw the planets in along with them. Only if the closest star in each direction had on its opposite direction a pull equal to and opposite to that of Sun, and that one an even further off behind it, and so on in infinity, only then would a Newton explainable cosmos not collapse. So, they preferred the latter explanation.

James Bradley first tried to measure stellar parallaxes in 1729. The stellar movement proved too insignificant for his telescope, but he instead discovered the aberration of light, the nutation of Earth’s axis, and catalogued 3222 stars.


The 20 arcseconds or so annual movement would have done fine as a "parallax value" in a Galileo cosmos. But Bradley was into Newton's mechanics more than into Galileo's Geometry. So this was rejected.

I am not sure if "speed of light through vacuum" has been measured with exactitude independently of "aberration of starlight" + presumed speed of Earth in relevant direction (i e opposite one?) : if not, aberration of starlight measured by Bradley and presumed to be what he presumed it to be has been involved in measuring light's speed and therefore it is circular to use that plus speed of Earth to calculate a value identic to observed "annual aberration".

This makes it harder to know what in any stellar distance widening or narrowing is due to which star moving, since "aberration" movement of 20 arcseconds could be part of a dance (liturgic, not bawdy) that angels dance holding stars. And therefore, no, one cannot safely say that even angle of parallax is definitely known in itself, it is only deducible by assumptions on what the différences depend on.

But even if angle of parallax were very definitely known in itself, it would still only prove star is at such or such a distance if one assumed that Geocentrism with angelic movers could be excluded - an assumption which as a Christian believing in angels I cannot make.

If you say "half of my argument is very exact measurements", I not only note there is some doubt about the exactness, but also above all ask "where is the other half"? If the other half was a dubious explanation rather than an certain fact, well, then your whole argument is not a proof.

I won't spare you how the quest for parallax continued through 19th C:

Stellar parallax is most often measured using annual parallax, defined as the difference in position of a star as seen from Earth and Sun, i. e. the angle subtended at a star by the mean radius of Earth's orbit around the Sun. The parsec (3.26 light-years) is defined as the distance for which the annual parallax is 1 arcsecond. Annual parallax is normally measured by observing the position of a star at different times of the year as Earth moves through its orbit. Measurement of annual parallax was the first reliable way to determine the distances to the closest stars. The first successful measurements of stellar parallax were made by Friedrich Bessel in 1838 for the star 61 Cygni using a heliometer.

Being very difficult to measure, only about 60 stellar parallaxes had been obtained by the end of the 19th century, mostly by use of the filar micrometer.


Yes, the intrinsic "movement" of a star (supposed to be a "movement" through our own, which is extrinsic to star, as opposed to a real intrinsic movement in it) is obviously difficult to measure if you measure it by difference between it and the extrinsic movements of nearby stars.

Astrographs using astronomical photographic plates sped the process in the early 20th century. Automated plate-measuring machines[7] and more sophisticated computer technology of the 1960s allowed more efficient compilation of star catalogues. In the 1980s, charge-coupled devices (CCDs) replaced photographic plates and reduced optical uncertainties to one milliarcsecond.


But the stars are still only getting their parallax measured by comparisons to other stars.

Even so, if one could have known that each star was really and truly fixed in position to the others, parallax would have conclusively proven Heliocentrism. But on the contrary, we know they aren't. Proper movements per annum differ between stars, and 200 stars have one exceeding 1 arcsecond and going up to 10 arcseconds.

In other words, the stars do move, the movements we see are not JUST due to ourselves moving. And if so, unless you can exclude angels and therefore exclude proper movements that are circular, all the movements we observe could possibly be proper movements and explainable by angelic movers. It is hard to imagine a barrier blocking angels from moving alpha Centauri and 61 Cygni less than 1 arcsecond each direction back and forth per halfyear, if it is not blocking other angels to move like Barnard's star, which has the largest proper motion of all stars, 10.3 seconds of arc per year.

This was the consideration which made me loose all faith in Heliocentrism. AND in astronomic "distance measures" (me being aware that "parallax" based trigonometry was the first rung of the cosmic distance ladder). So, yes, as far as I am concerned, Kepler 452 could still be only 1 light day away and only 41 miles across (or 66 kilometers across). And its very famous planet Kepler 452b could still be also only a light day away, and only 41.91 meters or 137 feet and 6 inches across.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Finding of St Stephen's Relics
and those of Sts Gamaliel, Nicodemus and Abibon
3-VIII-2015

10 comments:

  1. You are an idiot

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  2. OK, you can pretend that if you like, but you look a bit not so bright yourself.

    1) You give no argument. That looks simply like bad manners and stupidity to then add "you are an idiot".

    2) Since you use "anonymous" it is not linked to an account of yours, and you cannot even delete it. I can have this as a souvenir of a cowardly and stupid attack, where intelligent and courageous are lacking.

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  3. So, I suppose I should say thank you!

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  4. Two thousand words to claim that if what we observe cannot be explained by natural physical laws but by the miraculous agency of angels that therefore the conclusions of natural science are wrong, thereby denying the fundamental premises of western scientific culture and the Roman Catholic understanding that the world behaves according to discernible natural processes rather than the gnostic Eastern tradition of arbitrary mysteries. You are indeed an idiot.

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  5. "if what we observe cannot be explained by natural physical laws but by the miraculous agency of angels" THEN what we observe is right and we need not twist it around to suit any natural explanation.

    As, alas, practitioners of natural science are often doing in this case.

    the Roman Catholic understanding that the world behaves according to discernible natural processes rather than the gnostic Eastern tradition of arbitrary mysteries.

    Funny that you should call the explanation I share with St Thomas Aquinas the gnostic Eastern tradition of arbitrary mysteries. I think he would totally disagree.

    In fact, if we go to what he wrote, he did so in advance.

    Here is a little collection of his angelology:

    hanslundahl - Neglected Angelology in the Angelic Doctor
    http://hanslundahl.livejournal.com/964.html


    With a few comments of mine.

    Note also, you are misusing the word "miraculous". It really means angelic or divine agency over objects where corporeal and such agencies are the normal ones, but you are using it as if it were applicable even if God's agency for day and night and angelic ones for orbits are the ordinary ones. And that these agencies should therefore be discarded (despite being exactly what St Thomas Aquinas believed!) on the principle that "the miraculous" cannot be "the ordinary".

    There is nothing arbitrary in my chosing these agencies.

    1) They are the only ones that will explain the universe such as we observe it, the supposedly natural ones only work if we twist the universe around to annual and daily motions belonging to Earth instead of Sun, against what we observe;
    2) They do not explain them very well even then.

    Have you seen the water droplet experiment of Don Pettit?

    [ISS] Don Petit, Science Off The Sphere - Water Droplets Orbiting Charged Knitting Needle
    SpaceVids.tv
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyRv8bNDvq4


    Attraction by static electricity is a better model of attraction by gravitation than stone on string experiment. UNLIKE that one, the number of orbits the two opposing forces can do is limited.

    The arbitrary mystery is yours, in bowing needlessly down to Newton's speculation, when he was a mystagogue and has been called "not the first scientist, but the last Sumerian".

    Neither angels, nor static electricity, nor gravitation are visible. But angels fit the visible result lots better than static electricity, and presumably therefore also than gravitation.

    Two thousand words

    Thank you for making the word count!

    Btw, you are anonymous, you do not happen to have left behind a name identic to that of Esteban Maradona, by any chance?

    He was debating me on another thread:

    Antimodernism : Debate on Geocentrism
    https://antimodernismus.wordpress.com/2015/07/03/debate-on-geocentrism/


    Of course, I will ask him in person if he is you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "Funny that you should call the explanation I share with St Thomas Aquinas the gnostic Eastern tradition of arbitrary mysteries. I think he would totally disagree."
    If Aquinas did indeed hold that the planets and stars are moved by angels, then he is closer to Eastern gnosticism than the Western Catholic tradition of the intelligibility of the world. And only an idiot would think that anything that Aquinas believed about astronomy, or indeed any natural science, is a relevant or valid argument.

    "1) They are the only ones that will explain the universe such as we observe it, the supposedly natural ones only work if we twist the universe around to annual and daily motions belonging to Earth instead of Sun, against what we observe;
    2) They do not explain them very well even then."
    You have an utterly bizarre and idiotic definition of what it means to explain something, if you think that angels moving celestial bodies "explains" anything.

    "Attraction by static electricity is a better model of attraction by gravitation than stone on string experiment. UNLIKE that one, the number of orbits the two opposing forces can do is limited.

    The arbitrary mystery is yours, in bowing needlessly down to Newton's speculation, when he was a mystagogue and has been called "not the first scientist, but the last Sumerian".

    Neither angels, nor static electricity, nor gravitation are visible. But angels fit the visible result lots better than static electricity, and presumably therefore also than gravitation."
    Idiot! Why do you think the water droplets don't keep orbiting? Idiot! Do you think the same phenomenon that limits the orbits of the water droplets limits astronomical orbits under gravitation? Idiot! Do you think that scientists are as idiotic as you and not know why the water droplets don't keep orbiting. Think about it, idiot! How come the ones who accept that Newton's results are far, far beyond "speculation" are the ones to put man on the moon and probes on comets, and make the damn computer that you use to propagate your idiotic views possible? While idiots like you who believe in the arbitrary non-explanation of angels are utterly impotent to use their non-knowledge to do anything.

    Idiot!

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  7. "1) They are the only ones that will explain the universe such as we observe it, the supposedly natural ones only work if we twist the universe around to annual and daily motions belonging to Earth instead of Sun, against what we observe;"
    You're a geocentrist. LOL. Idiot.

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  8. "If Aquinas did indeed hold that the planets and stars are moved by angels, then he is closer to Eastern gnosticism than the Western Catholic tradition of the intelligibility of the world."

    Not so.

    He is closer to Catholic Tradition than to "Catholic Tradition" the Modernist version.

    There is nothing not intelligible about the explanation.

    "And only an idiot would think that anything that Aquinas believed about astronomy, or indeed any natural science, is a relevant or valid argument."

    You have unmasked yourself as being not a Catholic.

    A Catholic would not have such a disrespect for a canonised saint and a Church doctor, nor especially in metaphysical questions for precisely the Church doctor who along with St Augustine is the most interrested in philosophy.

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  9. "You have an utterly bizarre and idiotic definition of what it means to explain something, if you think that angels moving celestial bodies 'explains' anything."

    If a pen above the floor is not dropping down to it, someone holding it is a valid explanation. If bodies above us are seen to move in ways not explainable by Laplace mechanics, angels moving them is equally a valid explanation.

    You seem to think explanations must exclude the supernatural. This is an atheistic prejudice, even if you should happen to be a nominal Catholic.

    "Idiot! Why do you think the water droplets don't keep orbiting?"

    There might be more than one explanation, but one obvious one is that an orbit depending on two opposed forces is per se an unstable one.

    When you swing a stone on a string, you are NOT dealing with a pure centripetal force equal to centrifugal one, you are dealing with a string that has a cohesion superior to the centrifugal force. Otherwise the string would burst.

    Also, you are not dealing simply with a centrifugal inertia, otherwise the rotation would soon stop. You are dealing with your hands enforcing the motion from time to time.

    " Idiot! Do you think the same phenomenon that limits the orbits of the water droplets limits astronomical orbits under gravitation? Idiot!"

    Whatever limits the orbits of the water droplets is hidden from our direct observation and so does not exactly count as a phenomenon. It is on the level of unobserved explanations.

    As said, both have in common not to be the misleading stone on the string experiment. Do you think the same phenomena (here real such) which make the stone on the string experiment work (a string with a solid body cohesion tying orbitting stone to centre, a tug by a hand at the centre, voluntairly) are also making heliocentric orbits work?

    Gravitation is NOT a solid body. A balance between "two forces" is most perfet in our experience when one of them is superior but non-dynamic, like the cohesion of the string.

    "Do you think that scientists are as idiotic as you and not know why the water droplets don't keep orbiting."

    Well, why aren't they giving an explanation to the public?

    You aren't giving any. You are just asking me and our readers to simply trust them and not trust me, because I am stupid and they are smart.

    But in questions of truth there is also the question of who is arguing and what the arguments are. I am arguing and you can see my arguments here. If they are arguing at all, I can see their arguments - where?

    "Think about it, idiot! How come the ones who accept that Newton's results are far, far beyond "speculation" are the ones to put man on the moon and probes on comets, and make the damn computer that you use to propagate your idiotic views possible?"

    Sounds like the "science works" argument. However, we know that technologies have been developed and developed with technical correctness by people whose theories on the matter were what you consider wrong.

    SO, it is once again an appeal to authority and therefore a more Sumerian than a Catholic argument.

    "While idiots like you who believe in the arbitrary non-explanation of angels are utterly impotent to use their non-knowledge to do anything."

    I am SO FAR not impotent to write.

    Quite a few technologies have been developed by people believing this. If you use goggles (eye-glasses), you are using an invention from 14th C. by one Friar Bacon who pretty certainly was a Geocentric and pretty certainly believed God moves the universe daily and angels move sun and moon yearly and monthly.

    "You're a geocentrist. LOL. Idiot."

    Yes, you call me an idiot for believing my senses.

    What does that make of you? I think "idiot" is too nice a word, and I don't want to search for less nice ones.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Dialogue with Esteban on matter:

    HGLundahl :

    You are not the guy who anonymously commented on this one? Here:

    [linking here]

    EMaradona :

    Oh my gosh I just read the anonymous comments... absolutely not

    we may certainly disagree at even an emotional level but I can never and have never gone as low as insulting my adversary.

    these last couple weeks have been very intense at work... If I'm unable to find time to respond to our debates by this weekend, I may unfortunately have to recuse myself from the debate. I had plenty of time 4 or 5 weeks ago, but this is no longer the case.

    HGLundahl :

    I thought so after posting the comment, so I thought I had better get your what is it called when you tell you are not the guilty one when you are'nt ....

    May I post the q and your response under the debate thread so as to keep you free from suspicions?

    As to your getting lots of work, I am not really surprised. I mean, someone might be more foreknowing of the probable outcome than you are (after following me for ten years or part of it) and therefore might have thought it a great idea to get you more to do.

    For my own part, I have been given less time on the internet.

    A library with generous hours and you could line up for another internet ticket every forty minutes has just excluded me because of my macramé bag.

    But if I get another debater, I will try to make it a priority to satisfy him with responses.

    If you could please try to get a standin?

    I wouldn't even have thought of you in a very tired moment, unless the anonymous person hadn't used an appeal to Catholic Tradition.

    EMaradona :

    Yes feel free to use my answer on the thread of the anonymous guy, I appreciate your effort to clear my name.

    HGLundahl :

    Wonderful, will do. He revealed himself as a non-Catholic anyway, but even so.

    ReplyDelete