Opinion:Victorious Biblical Astronomy Part 8

Solar Parallax - a Way to Test Science's Basic Assumption
If you have not read the previous articles in this series, you may not have encountered this rendering of 2nd Peter 3:4. '''Peter predicted that in the last days mockers, false teachers (empaigmonê empaiktai), will say: since the fathers died (slept) panta outôs diamenei - all things remain the same in being. ''' Did the early church accept that all matter changes its being (its essence) as it ages? Origen, an early church scholar, interpreted several biblical passages as: all substance corrupts. He interpreted 1st Corinthians 7:31 as: “if the fashion of the world passes away, it is by no means an annihilation or destruction of their material substance that is shown to take place, but a kind of change of quality and transformation of appearance.” (On First Principles - De Principiis, Book 1, Chapter 6 paragraph 4). He wrote that "since the beginning of the world laws were established for the purpose of regulating the changes of bodies, and which will continue while the world lasts. . . ." (Contra Celsus, Book 4, Chapter 57) Paul wrote in Romans 8:19-22 that the creation is in bondage to phthora. The Greek philosophers used phthora for the process that changes everything. Origen interpreted this passage and others as: the whole of corporeal nature is enfeebling. (On First Principles - De Principiis, Book 1, Chapter 7 Paragraph 5). The early church apparently accepted the Bible literally - that all matter is changing itself.

How did modern Christians come to believe that the properties of matter are fixed and unchanging? Aristotle, a pagan philosopher, invented the idea that the properties of matter are not emergent. His ideas were not widely accepted during the classical age. Fifteen hundred years later, Friar Thomas Aquinas convinced the universities of Europe to teach Aristotle’s system. Over the centuries, many Christian philosophers built Western science on Aristotle’s foundational assumption that matter cannot change its being.

The reader may reason, but scientists don’t measure changing matter. Scientists measure things with operationally defined units. '''An operational definition does not question the existence of invariant time. Scientists simply define seconds as real and invariant because they assume that atoms do not change their emission frequencies.''' Since seconds are the primary unit in science, most other units depend on them, such as meters. Why do they believe that seconds have the same duration, since no clock can compare past seconds with current ones? Why should they believe this when billions of distant galaxies all transmit different clock rates than local atoms and the differences increase with the age of the light? Even locally calibrated clocks that transmit their signals from the past - diminish their frequencies with distance. The radio frequencies transmitted from the spin stabilized spacecraft Pioneer 10 & 11, Galileo and Ulysses showed a gradual slowing of the received clock rates that correlated with increasing distance (rather than velocity - Doppler). In the case of the Pioneers, they left the solar system more than 30 years ago in opposite directions. '''The farther from the past they emitted their signals, the slower their clock rates compared to the Deep Space Network’s reference clocks. Even in the solar system, local atoms emit higher clock rates than past atom-versions.''' Article on Pioneer Anomaly

If matter is changing its properties, then clocks and orbits would both simultaneously change - from the same root cause. In that case, orbits would seem clock-like (Newton and Kepler) only because clocks were used in their measuring. If both are changing relationally, optics (angles) could detect it, but not radar or clock-based ephemerii.

Hold up a finger about at arm’s length in front of your nose. Look past the finger at the background - first with one eye and then the other. The finger seems to move. This apparent shift in position is known as parallax. If you know the distance between the sighting points (~ 7 centimeters between your pupils), parallax angles can accurately measure distances. Astronomers can use the earth’s rotation or widely separated observation points to increase the distance “between the eyes” and thereby increase the parallax shift.

The earliest societies could not measure parallax because portable, standard-sized degrees were unknown. The geometrically minded Greeks were the first to measure astronomical parallax. Claudius Ptolemy wrote that astronomers can only measure distances with parallax. Twenty-three hundred years ago, Aristarchus of Samos taught that the earth revolves around the Sun in an oblique circle - as it rotates on its axis. He wrote a book, which survives, On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon. He reasoned that when the moon was bisected by shadow, the shadow forms a 90-degree angle between the observer and the Sun. We do not now how he timed his observation, but he claims to have measured the Moon to Sun parallax and distance. His solar distance was more than 18 times and less than 20 times the distance to the moon - about 1273 earth radii. A century later, Hipparchus wrote of a total solar eclipse at Hellespont that was 4/5th eclipsed at Alexandria. He used this to calculate the lunar distance as between 62 and 72 + 2/3 earth radii. He only gave a minimum solar distance - greater than 490 earth radii. Eratosthenes measured the shadow of the Sun at noon in Alexandria on the day of the summer solstice. He knew that on that day a vertical well at Syene (Aswan) had no shadow. He used this to calculate the diameter of the earth.

Three hundred years after Hipparchus, Claudius Ptolemy described the four cubit (2 meter) parallax instrument he used to measure the moon’s parallax. Using the lunar parallax, the angular diameters of the Sun and Moon and the diameter of the Earth’s shadow, he calculated the Sun’s distance as 1210 earth radii, about a twentieth of the modern distance. Ptolemy also measured the diameter of the planets, which are five to nine times their modern diameters. He wrote that his diameters were “considerably smaller” than those of his predecessors. Here is a list of his planet diameters. (Data from - "The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy" by James Evans page 389)

Ptolemy made his measurements with bare-eyeball instruments. Could he really see the planets as disks and measure their diameters? Someone could argue that he just estimated the diameters using a planet’s brightness. If so, why did he estimate Mars and Saturn as having almost the same angular size, although Saturn is visibly dimmer than Mars at opposition. (At opposition, the Earth is between the planet and the Sun).

In October 1672, two astronomers measured the solar parallax with telescopes and micrometer eyepieces when Mars occulted a bright star while at opposition. Giovanni Cassini sent Jean Richer to South America to measure the background stars during the occultation. Cassini measured the same stars from the Paris observatory. Their simultaneous parallax was 25" of arc. On October 6, 1672, John Flamsteed used a micrometer eyepiece to measure the diurnal parallax at just under 25". Mars was at a turnaround point - so it was almost stationary relative to earth. Flamsteed calculated the maximum solar parallax as 10" or 81.7 million miles. Cassini calculated 9.5" for the parallax and 86 million miles for the distance. Their parallax measurements resulted in a solar distance 6 to 7% smaller than today’s accepted value. Astronomers continued to measure the solar parallax during the next three centuries. (Some data from - "Sky and Ocean Joined - the US Naval Observatory" by Steven Dick - page 241)

For the 1769 Venus transit, Captain James Cook took a team to Tahiti where they timed the transit at 5 hours 32 minutes. Another group traveled to Lapland and timed the transit at 5 hours 54 minutes, a difference of 22 minutes. They used Halley’s method to calculate the parallax. However, the black drop effect was unknown in those days so their timings were probably in error. The black drop is an apparent stretching of Venus’ disk in the direction of the solar limb at ingress or egress. During the later part of the 19th century, astronomers calculated the solar parallax repeatedly using all sorts of techniques, such as perturbations of the moon and the speed of light. Every few years the size of the AU tended to increase as famous astronomers, using the best instruments and mathematics, came up with slightly different values. If one excludes the 18th century timing attempts, the solar parallax tended to decrease, suggesting an increasing Sun distance. During the 1960's, scientists changed the definition of time from an astronomically calculated second to an atomic second. During the 1970's, astronomers arrived at a “final” solar parallax using radar (clock timed) reflections from Venus and the other solid planets. Once astronomers defined the Astronomical Unit (AU) with radar, they did not need to measure the optical parallax. This is because radar is referenced to precision atomic clocks. Scientists define atomic clocks as invariant because they accept atoms as perpetual motion machines.

Yet a California observatory measured the optical Martian parallax during the 2003 opposition and arrived at an AU centered on 151.6 million kilometers, one percent larger that the radar value. Thirty-two of the forty-two on line calculations of the 2004 Venus transit arrived at a lower parallax than the radar value. The on line calculator computed the parallax using either Halley’s method or Delisle’s method. The mean value from all the calculations was 8.538" of arc. This is about three million kilometers larger than the radar distance. (Halley’s method involves timing the duration of the transit. Delisle’s method uses clock-time to time the moments of ingress or egress.) The reader could argue that these measurements could be in error. Without question, observers can make mistakes. How likely is it that generations of astronomers keep on making mistakes that gradually increment in the same direction? Why should we test science’s first principle? Over the last few centuries, Christians have worked tirelessly trying to show that the Bible is scientific, that it fits our Western way of thinking. The more we try, the more we have encountered many problems, especially with the age of the universe. No modern Christian has a simple, wide-ranging explanation for the apparent age of the universe. Yet the problem is not difficult if we just question one historical, elementary assumption. Peter predicted that the false teachers of the last days will say “all things remain the same in being” and use this to ignore that the heavens are ekpalai - came out long ago. Without the assumption that matter is static substance, we can accept what is visible as fact. The visible properties of matter always change with age (distance). If matter is continuously changing relationally, the simple words of the Bible will vanquish science. Think about it. Ist Corinthians 1:20 --Victormc 07:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)