[Tom Bishop]

The Wiki is composed almost entirely of third party sources which we did not write at all.

The source material doesn't come from the Wiki. Look into what quotes and references are.

[stack]

The Wiki is composed almost entirely of third party sources which we did not write at all.

The source material doesn't come from the Wiki. Look into what quotes and references are.

Are the distance, size, arrangement, and orbits of the planets unknown to FET? I couldn't find any 1st or 3rd party references to this in the wiki.

[Tom Bishop]

If you can't find it in the Wiki it means that the few people editing it probably haven't looked into it. Others may have, such as old zetetic societies. You are welcome to contribute.

[George Jetson]

Why do you need to have studied it personally to provide a source?

The point above is a brilliant one. Neptune was discovered because when Uranus was discovered it was shown mathematically that another planet must be out there. This is such powerful evidence for the heliocentric model and Newton’s theories. Since when has FE ideas had any predictive power?

The Wikipedia page on the "Discovery of Neptune" notes that it had been observed repeatedly prior to its official discovery. As for the mathematical prediction of the planet, it turns out to have been somewhat of a fluke.

"Luck also played a part in the discovery, for it turns out (as it would in the case of the discovery of Pluto) that both Adams and Le Verrier succeeded in getting the predicted longitude because of a 'fluke of orbital timing'.  Had Uranus and Neptune been elsewhere in their orbits the methods of prediction employed by Adams and Leverrier would not have resulted in such an accurate prediction."

https://books.google.com/books/about/Discovery_and_Classification_in_Astronom.html?id=IT8oAAAAQBAJ

[stack]

Why do you need to have studied it personally to provide a source?

The point above is a brilliant one. Neptune was discovered because when Uranus was discovered it was shown mathematically that another planet must be out there. This is such powerful evidence for the heliocentric model and Newton’s theories. Since when has FE ideas had any predictive power?

The Wikipedia page on the "Discovery of Neptune" notes that it had been observed repeatedly prior to its official discovery. As for the mathematical prediction of the planet, it turns out to have been somewhat of a fluke.

"Luck also played a part in the discovery, for it turns out (as it would in the case of the discovery of Pluto) that both Adams and Le Verrier succeeded in getting the predicted longitude because of a 'fluke of orbital timing'.  Had Uranus and Neptune been elsewhere in their orbits the methods of prediction employed by Adams and Leverrier would not have resulted in such an accurate prediction."

https://books.google.com/books/about/Discovery_and_Classification_in_Astronom.html?id=IT8oAAAAQBAJ

"On September 23, 1846, Galle used Le Verrier’s calculations to find Neptune only 1° off Le Verrier’s predicted position. The planet was then located 12° off Adams’ prediction...
Ironically, as it turns out, both Le Verrier and Adams had been very lucky. Their predictions indicated Neptune’s distance correctly around 1840-1850. Had they made their calculations at another time, both predicted positions would have been off. Their calculations would have predicted the planet’s position only 165 years later or earlier, since Neptune takes 165 years to orbit once around the sun."
https://earthsky.org/human-world/today-in-science-discovery-of-neptune

Not bad I would say, 1° & 12° off, for the first guys to locate/identify a planet with just their pens.

Fast forward 170+ years later, seemingly due to the lack of time, resources, or interest, FET still hasn't found Neptune.

[manicminer]

If I was able to predict the position of a celestial object that had never been seen before to an accuracy of just 1 degree even with todays technology I would be quite happy with that. To do the same in the mid 19th century I would regard as a massive achievement. Adams was slightly less accurate but even 12 degrees for his day is not at all bad. 

A 'fluke' as George puts it is more a matter of unplanned or unintentional success. Flukes as such are often seen in sport for example.

The discovery of Neptune was not a fluke since astronomers were specifically looking for it based upon the observed 'perturbations' of Uranus. They were looking for something that they were expecting to find. Evidence for the scientific method in action I would suggest.

Fast forward 170+ years later, seemingly due to the lack of time, resources, or interest, FET still hasn't found Neptune.

Wow..is that true?

[AATW]

It's a pretty astonishing achievement and powerful validation of the scientific method and the heliocentric model and Newton's laws.
Meanwhile, Tom is asserting that "Mercury is closer to the sun than Saturn" although provides no evidence for that in the FE model.
As a wise man once said:

If you are making your claim without evidence then we can discard it without evidence.

I presume that his only reason for saying that, ironically, is that's what the heliocentric model claims and observes.
Hint: We get transits of Mercury and Venues but not the other planets. In the heliocentric model where we are "3rd rock from the sun" this makes perfect sense.

[markjo]

A 'fluke' as George puts it is more a matter of unplanned or unintentional success. Flukes as such are often seen in sport for example.

The discovery of Neptune was not a fluke since astronomers were specifically looking for it based upon the observed 'perturbations' of Uranus. They were looking for something that they were expecting to find. Evidence for the scientific method in action I would suggest.

I'm thinking that the "fluke" mentioned is that Neptune just happened to be near enough Uranus for the orbital perturbations to be detected.   A few years earlier or later and they would have been too far apart to see any perturbation in either orbit.

[manicminer]

I guess it's a similar fluke that the rings of Uranus were only discovered when the planet occulted a star. Unexpectedly at the time, the star was seen at the time to blink on and off several times just before and just after the actual occultation. The pattern of blinks before the occultation was symmetrically the reverse of the pattern after the occultation.  The rings themselves, not visible from Earth were subsequently confirmed by the Voyager pass by.

Another fluke is that the Sun and Moon distance and size ratios as seen from Earth are also equal. That makes the Sun and Moon look the same size on the sky so we see total solar eclipses. 

[George Jetson]

If I was able to predict the position of a celestial object that had never been seen before to an accuracy of just 1 degree even with todays technology I would be quite happy with that. To do the same in the mid 19th century I would regard as a massive achievement. Adams was slightly less accurate but even 12 degrees for his day is not at all bad. 

Except it had been seen before: 

Neptune is too dim to be visible to the naked eye: its apparent magnitude is never brighter than 7.7.[5] Therefore, the first observations of Neptune were only possible after the invention of the telescope. There is evidence that Neptune was seen and recorded by Galileo Galilei in 1613, Jérôme Lalande in 1795 and John Herschel in 1830, but none is known to have recognized it as a planet at the time.[6] These pre-discovery observations were important in accurately determining the orbit of Neptune. Neptune would appear prominently even in early telescopes so other pre-discovery observation records are likely.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_Neptune

How do you know La Verrier and Adams weren't familiar with those observations or hadn't made similar observations (being that Neptune is stated to be easily observable using equipment available at the time) and merely made it seem like they "predicted" the observation ex post facto?  Wikipedia specifically mentions that "pre-discovery observations" helped determine the orbit of Neptune, although a citation isn't given for that claim unfortunately.

[Tom Bishop]

The matter is a pretty questionable argument. Neptune was discovered via perturbation (pattern) methods, not with full Newtonian Gravity. Newtonian Gravity can't even keep the solar system together without falling apart...

As George states, the Wikipedia page says that it was only through luck that Neptune was discovered with the particular methods used. The "pre-discovery" stuff doesn't sound too confident either.

[AATW]

Why do you keep lying?

In 1821, Alexis Bouvard had published astronomical tables of the orbit of Uranus, making predictions of future positions based on Newton's laws of motion and gravitation.[15] Subsequent observations revealed substantial deviations from the tables, leading Bouvard to hypothesize some perturbing body.[16] These irregularities or "residuals", both in the planet's ecliptic longitude and in its distance from the Sun, or radius vector, might be explained by a number of hypotheses: the effect of the Sun's gravity, at such a great distance might differ from Newton's description; or the discrepancies might simply be observational error; or perhaps Uranus was being pulled, or perturbed, by an as-yet undiscovered planet.

Adams learned of the irregularities while still an undergraduate and became convinced of the "perturbation" hypothesis. Adams believed, in the face of anything that had been attempted before, that he could use the observed data on Uranus, and utilising nothing more than Newton's law of gravitation, deduce the mass, position and orbit of the perturbing body

[QED]

The matter is a pretty questionable argument. Neptune was discovered via perturbation (pattern) methods, not with full Newtonian Gravity. Newtonian Gravity can't even keep the solar system together without falling apart...

As George states, the Wikipedia page says that it was only through luck that Neptune was discovered with the particular methods used. The "pre-discovery" stuff doesn't sound too confident either.

Tom,

As sympathetic as I am for this cause, I cannot permit such claims to go unanswered. Especially when I routinely lambaste REers for equivalent claims against FE.

I have explained to you previously the consistency of Newtonian dynamics in explaining orbits. I addressed your concerns regarding the lack of analytical solutions for n=3 and greater, and walked you through the rationale for why that thinking was flawed.

Continued dispute of these items without proposing new evidence which might serve as a rebuttal only serves to present you as entrenched and non-rational. I do not think this is the reputation you wish to propogate.

I highly recommend that your efforts be devoted to developing a consistent FE explanation for planetary motion. Further blanket denial of Newtonian success in it is ineffective and counter productive.

[manicminer]

Just to recap a bit on a point that Stack made earlier, how does FET account for the discovery of Uranus and Neptune?

[Tom Bishop]

QED, I recall giving references to experimental evidence that a three body problem with a sun that that a planet that had a moon was not possible and did not exist in the n-body families. They all required at least two bodies of equal masses, and were in configurations that looked nothing like heliocentric orbits. You appeared to agree that there were no numerical solutions with such a configuration in the galleries or the studies and told me that we could cheat by treating it as a two body problem and considering the earth and moon as one, because that is what students do.

If this were true and Newton's gravity worked based on approximations then we should expect to see those configurations in the three body problem galleries.

It is my opinion that experimental evidence from Newtonian gravity simulators > "We can fudge a little" and "it's close enough". We should emperically favor experimental evidence over an idea of approximations.

[George Jetson]

In order for Newtonian mechanics to work the ad-hoc and unfalsifiable hypothesis of 85% of the universe consisting of invisible and undetectable matter has to be assumed.  Such a theory is hardly worthy of any triumphalism.

[Tom Bishop]

In order for Newtonian mechanics to work the ad-hoc and unfalsifiable hypothesis of 85% of the universe consisting of invisible and undetectable matter has to be assumed.  Such a theory is hardly worthy of any triumphalism.

They need all sorts of shortcuts to make it work. For me, the most damning of the matter is that they cannot make a sun with a planet that has a moon.

The available solutions to the Three Body Problem, beyond looking unlike anything seen in Heliocentric Theory, are so sensitive that the slightest change or imperfection will tear the entire system apart.

We can see the behavior of the systems in this Three Body Problem simulator that uses the simplest possible figure eight pattern, which requires three identical bodies of equal mass that move at very specific momentum and distance in relation to each other.

Demo: Figure-Eight Three Body Problem



Adjust the slider values in the upper left to something very slight to find what happens. What you will see is a demonstration of Chaos Theory. Any slight modification to the system creates a chain reaction of random chaos.

So we can see how the ideas of being able to just use two body problems and the practice of considering the masses of some bodies as negligable or combined, or shortcuts of any kind, may be questionable. The configurations of the solutions need to be very precise.The slightest change in mass of one of the bodies in the above demo created an instable system that caused the system to tear apart.

This is precisely the issue of modeling the Heliocentric System, and why the fundamental systems as depicted in popular astronomy cannot exist. Only very specific and very sensitive configurations may exist. The slightest deviation, such as with a system with unequal masses, or the minute influence from a gravitating body external to the system will, as Poincare found, cause the entire system to fly apart!

[manicminer]

Very interesting Tom but to repeat the question I posted only a few minutes ago but which seems to have been skipped over in favour of some rambling on about your speciality of the 3 body problem. What is the FE account for the discovery of Uranus and Neptune?

[QED]

QED, I recall giving references to experimental evidence that a three body problem with a sun that that a planet that had a moon was not possible and did not exist in the n-body families. They all required at least two bodies of equal masses, and were in configurations that looked nothing like heliocentric orbits. You appeared to agree that there were no numerical solutions with such a configuration in the galleries or the studies and told me that we could cheat by treating it as a two body problem and considering the earth and moon as one, because that is what students do.

If this were true and Newton's gravity worked based on approximations then we should expect to see those configurations in the three body problem galleries.

It is my opinion that experimental evidence from Newtonian gravity simulators > "We can fudge a little" and "it's close enough"

I remember you providing references that detailed investigations into analytical solutions for n=3 bodys. You expressed concern that this was problematic because for these analytical solutions, two of the three had equal mass, which is not the case for the Sun moon earth system.

In response, I explained that n body problems lacking an analytical solution is not a constraint on the physical model, but instead a constraint on mathematical techniques. Numerically, the solutions exist and undergraduates find them. In other words - they are COMMON. I also explained that their commonality is why you cannot find research on them - because we research unknown things....

I also explained how we use Newtonian dynamics to solve for orbits in our solar system. I explained that in the earth moon sun system, the equations decouple, and we solve this by considering the equivalent 2 body systems. Indeed, the force on the moon from the earth >> the force on the moon from the sun. It is in most textbooks how one completes the calculations.

That the equations decouple is not a fudging...it is what happens to some differential equations, and is rather commonly found, in fact.

What you refer to as “loopholes” or “cheats” are what scientists call: mathematical methods, and those methods are pretty basic as applied to central force problems.

If you wish to learn how to do this, then take a physics class! The reason you don’t see these methods in “galleries” is the same reason why you don’t see investigations of 1+1=2 in galleries: because it is basic and understood.

Tom, I wish I could get you to see this. You are not presenting valid criticisms of central force problems. Continued denial of what I am explaining to you looks foolish, not because I have any agenda, or wish to be hurtful, but because any undergraduate physics student can immediately see your mistake - and as a zetetic council member, the mistake represents the FE community as an uninformed and scientifically juvenile movement.

I promise that I am trying to guide your efforts in a productive direction.

[ChrisTP]

Tom, every time you use that three body problem as an argument it gets more and more tedious and it shows you're being disingenuous. Here's another simulation using actual gravity calculations and you can even interact with it to see what happens if you throw things off course. I've linked this about 3 or 4 times to you now in response to the three body problem since you insist on bringing it up.

https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/gravity-and-orbits/latest/gravity-and-orbits_en.html