Cosmological Evidence Shows Central and Non-Moving Earth
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | Cosmological Evidence Shows Central and Non-Moving Earth |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | Robert A Sungenis |
| Keywords | earth, Michelson-Morley experiment, Special Relativity, expanding universe, quantum mechanics, geocentrism, CMB anisotropy |
| Published | 2011 |
| Journal | Proceedings of the NPA |
| Volume | 8 |
| No. of pages | 10 |
| Pages | 594-604 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
Using the simplest interpretation of the current cosmological evidence concerning galactic redshift; the isotropy of the CMB; gamma-ray and X-ray bursts; and quasar distribution, as provided by the 2005 Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the 2001 Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and other such studies, show that the Earth is in the center of the universe and that alternative interpretations advancing homogeneity and the LCDM universe (e.g., "the center is everywhere and nowhere due to an expanding universe") are contradicted by the di- quad- and octu-pole outcomes of the CMB; the large void area at the observation point; and the consistent concentric and quantized z-factor of the redshift around the observation point. Further evidence from the Michelson-Morley and Sagnac-type experiments from 1881 through 1932, as well as post-1932 maser and laser interferometry, including the Sagnac-based pre-programming for the Global Positioning Satellites, show that some type of ponderable ether exists, which is in principle agreement with Quantum Mechanics but opposed to Special Relativity. It is postulated that interpretations of the historic interferometer experiments that were said to yield a "null" result were simply the victim of presuming, without proof, that the Earth was translating at 30km/sec around the sun, which leads us to the inevitable conclusion that Special Relativity was invented precisely to avoid having to answer the Michelson-Morley experiment by recourse to a motionless Earth. In actuality, none of the interferometer experiments showed a "null" result, and as such they give convincing evidence of an ether drift that can be easily accounted for within the orthogonal margin of an ether-universe rotating around a non-rotating and non-translating Earth.
Overview
Robert Sungenis, author of the two-volume Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right, argues here for a fully geocentric cosmology: an Earth that neither rotates nor revolves, sitting at or very near the centre of a universe that turns around it. The paper is an assembly of two distinct bodies of evidence. The first is observational cosmology — the alignment anomalies of the microwave background, redshift periodicities in galaxy and quasar catalogues, the isotropy of gamma-ray bursts, the Barr effect in spectroscopic binaries, and the distribution of globular clusters — all of which, Sungenis argues, single out the Earth's position. The second is interferometry, from Michelson 1881 through Joos 1930, plus Sagnac 1913 and Michelson–Gale 1925.
The departure from the mainstream account is total, and the paper is unusually explicit about what it takes the mainstream's motive to be. Sungenis reads the Michelson–Morley experiment as having presented three options, of which the first — a stationary Earth — was ruled out a priori as "unthinkable", so that special relativity "was invented precisely to avoid having to answer the Michelson-Morley experiment by admitting to a motionless Earth". He collects statements from Hubble, Hawking, Ellis, Krauss and Tegmark that he takes as admissions that the Copernican principle is an assumption rather than a result — Hubble's "the unwelcome position of a favored location must be avoided at all costs", Hawking's "we have no scientific evidence for, or against, this assumption; we believe it only on grounds of modesty."
The argument
A central Earth from the CMB
The paper's centrepiece is the set of large-angle anomalies known as the "Axis of Evil". It reports that the CMB quadrupole and octupole align with the ecliptic and the dipole with the equinoxes, quoting Copi, Schwarz, Starkman and colleagues that the quadrupole–octupole correlation is "excluded from being a chance occurrence in a gaussian random statistically isotropic sky at > 99.87%", that the ecliptic "traces out a locus of zero of the combined quadrupole and octupole", and their own remark that "physical correlation of the CMB with the equinoxes is difficult to imagine, since the WMAP satellite has no knowledge of the inclination of the Earth's spin axis." Krauss's television remark — "That would say we are truly the center of the universe" — is quoted at length. Sungenis's inference is that the anomalies are physical and geocentric: "It is as if our particular locale has been imprinted on the CMB; as if the CMB originated from us."
He adds Tomozawa's argument that a Friedmann universe on the surface of an expanding balloon admits no CMB dipole, so the observed dipole excludes that interpretation; Tomozawa's separate finding of a preferred direction from the distribution of apparently circular galaxies, with a putative centre 22.8 Mpc from Earth; and Ellis's 1978 "Cosmic Heresy" episode, in which an inhomogeneous general-relativistic model placed our galaxy near one of two antipodal centres.
Quantized redshifts and concentric structure
Building on Tifft's periodicities at intervals near 36 km/s, Sungenis cites Hartnett and Hirano's Fourier analysis of galaxy number counts, which reports preferred redshift spacings Δz = 0.0102, 0.0246, 0.0448 in the Sloan survey with similar values in 2dF, and a concentric arrangement of galaxies about a void roughly 60 Mpc across with its centre 26 Mpc from Earth. Varshni's 1975 catalogue of 384 quasars between z = 0.2 and 3.53 is quoted at length: 57 groupings arranged "on 57 spherical shells with the Earth as the center", with a stated probability of 3 × 10−85 against chance, and Varshni's conclusion that "the cosmological principle will have to go" and "both the Special and General Theory of Relativity must be abandoned for cosmological purposes." Later Sloan analyses by Hartnett (Δz = 0.258, 0.312, 0.44, 0.63, 1.1) and by Bell and McDiarmid on 46,000 quasar redshifts are cited in support, with the authors' own cautions about selection effects noted.
Gamma-ray bursts, binaries and clusters
Katz's "Copernican Dilemma" chapter is quoted in full: the isotropy of burst arrival directions implies a spherical or shell-like distribution "with us at the center", and neither the isotropy nor the departure from the N–S−3/2 law can be reconciled with our not being centrally placed. Tikhomirova's sample of 3,906 bursts finding "no significant deviations from isotropy" is offered as confirmation. The Barr effect — Barr's finding that 26 of 30 spectroscopic binaries had longitudes of periastron between 0 and 180 degrees — is read as the binary axes pointing at the Earth. Globular clusters, quoting Larson and Clube–Napier, are said to form a spherical, non-rotating distribution around us.
The interferometry: the paper's own calculation
Section 9 is where the paper does its own arithmetic. Sungenis reproduces the Michelson–Morley prediction from Δt = (l1 + l2)v2/c3. With arms totalling 22 m and v = 3.0 × 104 m/s he gets Δt ≈ 7.3 × 10−16 s; a 5.5 × 10−7 m wave has period 1.8 × 10−15 s; the ratio is 0.405 fringe, matching Michelson's own stated 0.4. Michelson reported the actual displacement as "certainly less than the twentieth part of this, and probably less than the fortieth part."
Sungenis's alternative is to replace the orbital velocity with the Earth's rotation speed, v = 4.65 × 102 m/s — recast as the ether of a rotating universe slipping past a fixed Earth. The same formula gives Δt = 1.76 × 10−19 s and a shift he quotes as 9.7 × 10−5, "or .00097 fringe". He then reproduces Shankland's table of expected and measured shifts from 1881 to 1930 with his own ratios: Michelson 1881 (0.04 / 0.02), Michelson–Morley 1887 (0.4 / <0.01), Morley–Miller 1902–04 (1.13 / 0.015), Miller 1921–26 (1.12 / 0.03–0.088), Kennedy 1926 (0.07 / 0.002), Illingworth 1927 (0.07 / 0.0002), Piccard–Stahel 1927 (0.13 / 0.006), Michelson 1929 (0.9 / 0.01), Joos 1930 (0.75 / 0.002). His conclusion: no experiment was truly null, and the small residuals are exactly what a slowly rotating ether would produce, "as slight a movement of the ether against Earth as there would be against a ship in the eye of a hurricane." Galaev's criticism that later null results used enclosed metal chambers, and Múnera's criticism that Joos discarded his large amplitudes, are cited to discount post-1930 nulls.
Sagnac and Michelson–Gale
The Michelson–Gale result — an observed displacement of 0.230 ± 0.005 against a computed 0.236 ± 0.002 — is presented as proof of an absolute rotational frame. Sungenis grants that the experiment does not distinguish an Earth rotating in the ether from an ether rotating around a fixed Earth, and takes Michelson's own remark ("All we can deduce from this experiment is that the earth rotates on its axis") to be an overstatement. He endorses Hayden and Whitney's question, "If Sagnac, Why Not Michelson-Morley?", and answers it with a stationary Earth: rotation is detected because the ether turns, translation is not detected because there is none.
Assessment
The paper is well sourced, and it is right about one thing that deserves saying clearly: the Copernican principle is an assumption in standard cosmology, not a derived result, and the quotations from Hawking and Ellis to that effect are accurately given and in context. The large-angle CMB anomalies are also real; the quadrupole–octupole alignment and the ecliptic correlation have survived from COBE through WMAP to Planck, and cosmologists have not fully explained them. Sungenis's grant that Michelson–Gale cannot distinguish a rotating Earth from a rotating ether around a fixed Earth is kinematically correct as far as the local optics go, and his statement of the Michelson–Morley arithmetic is exact: 22 m, 3.0 × 104 m/s and 550 nm do give 7.33 × 10−16 s and 0.407 fringe, just as he says.
But the paper's own central calculation refutes its own thesis, and it does so in the numbers printed on the same page. Sungenis computes that a rotating ether at 465 m/s produces a fringe shift of 9.79 × 10−5 — and then, four paragraphs later, tabulates measured shifts of 0.002 to 0.088. Those measurements are between 20 and 900 times larger than the effect his model predicts. Miller's 0.088 corresponds, on Sungenis's own formula, to an ether speed of about 14 km/s, and Michelson 1929's 0.01 to about 4.7 km/s. Far from explaining the residuals, the rotating-ether hypothesis under-predicts every one of them by orders of magnitude. The residuals he cites as "convincing evidence" are evidence against the model he offers. (Two smaller slips accompany the calculation: 9.7 × 10−5 is 0.000097, not "0.00097", and a fringe count is dimensionless, not "9.7 × 10−5 s". Also, an apparatus at Cleveland's latitude sees only 348 m/s of the equatorial 465, making the predicted shift smaller still.)
The percentages in the centrality argument are likewise internally inconsistent. Sungenis says Tomozawa's centre 22.8 Mpc away leaves Earth "within 99.97% of the exact center", and Hartnett's centre 26 Mpc away "within 97.98%". Those two figures imply universes of radius 76,000 Mpc and 1,287 Mpc respectively — a factor of 59 apart — and neither matches the 93-billion-light-year diameter he cites, which gives 99.8% in both cases. More fundamentally, the whole framing begs the question: in a homogeneous universe every observer sits at the centre of their own observable sphere, so "the Earth is at the centre of what we can see" is a tautology, not evidence. It is precisely the finding that Hubble described and that FLRW geometry was constructed to accommodate.
Several evidential planks have been overtaken. Katz's "Copernican dilemma" was a genuine puzzle when only burst directions were known; it dissolved in 1997 when afterglow spectroscopy gave gamma-ray bursts measured redshifts and placed them at cosmological distances, where an isotropic sky distribution is exactly what an FLRW universe predicts for any observer. Varshni's shells rest on a probability computed from groupings identified in the data themselves — the classic post-hoc grouping fallacy, in which the 3 × 10−85 is not a valid p-value because the 57 shells were not specified in advance; SDSS now contains three orders of magnitude more quasars than Varshni's 384 and shows no such shells. The redshift-periodicity claims are cited with their own authors' warnings about selection effects, and Hartnett is quoted cautioning about an "unknown selection effect" — a caution the paper records but does not weigh. The Barr effect is a known selection bias in the determination of orbital elements for spectroscopic binaries from limited-phase-coverage velocity curves, and it concerns longitudes of periastron in the binary's own orbit, not axes pointing anywhere.
The geocentric model also faces a difficulty the paper never raises. If the universe rotates around a fixed Earth once per sidereal day, everything beyond c/ω = 4.1 × 1012 m — about 27.5 AU, inside the orbit of Neptune — must move faster than light. The stars would circulate at superluminal speeds by factors of 109 and beyond. There is no dynamical account of this in the paper. Nor is there an account of stellar parallax, which Hipparcos and Gaia have now measured for over a billion stars with the correct annual period and with amplitude falling as 1/d — a direct geometric measurement of an orbiting Earth, using a baseline the model denies exists. The 20.5-arcsecond annual aberration constant, the annual Doppler modulation of stellar spectra, and the light-time variation of Jupiter's satellites all point the same way.
Finally, the framing of Michelson–Morley versus Sagnac rests on a confusion the paper inherits from Hayden and Whitney. There is no mystery in one experiment showing an effect and the other not: rotation is absolute in relativity as well as in ether theory, since a rotating frame is non-inertial, and the Sagnac phase is a standard prediction of both special and general relativity — it is why GPS receivers apply a Sagnac correction. Uniform translation is not absolute, and is undetectable. The "Cheshire cat" puzzle is answered by that distinction, not by a stationary Earth. Readers should also treat the historical narrative — that relativity was invented to escape geocentrism — as the paper's interpretation of motive, unsupported by the quotations offered, which say only that terrestrial optical experiments failed to detect the Earth's translation.