"Hatunen" wrote in message
...
| On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 19:21:15 GMT, "Androcles" Androcles@
| MyPlace.org wrote:
|
|
| wrote in message
| roups.com...
|
| | http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/ianandmar...relativity.htm
|
| "Relativity (both Special and General) has impeccable experimental
| credentials, so much so that anyone who questions the theory must
have
| mischievous intent. Let us look at them."
|
| This is so silly.
|
| Ptolemy's epicycles have impeccable observational credentials, so
much
| so that anyone who questions the theory must have mischievous intent.
|
| Conclusion: Copernicus had mischievous intent.
|
| The difference is, of course, that the Ptolemaic system was
| descriptive and could not make a prediction.

Silliness again.
Prediction of planetary positions are the heart of astrology, wrapped
in mumbo-jumbo.
"When Mars is in the fifth house..."
That garbage has been with us for 2000 years, but it could accurately
predict when two planets would be in conjunction.
Lunar and solar eclipses we always predicted.
Comets were not predicted until Halley came along.

http://alpha.lasalle.edu/~smithsc/As...retrograd.html

Go outside and watch for the next couple of months.
I predict you'll see Mars go retrograde. You dont need
to stay outside for long, just find Mars and note where it is
relative to the fixed stars each night before you go to bed.


| Discovery of a new
| orbiting body would require the creation of new epicycles,
| whereas the Newtonian theory of gravitation will explain newly
| discovered orbits without kludges like epicycles. Copernican and
| Keplerian mechanics are easily seen as subcases of the
| application of the inverse square gravity law. In fact,
| derivation of Kepler's laws is one of the little exercises for
| students in a classical mechanics course.

Nothing wrong with teaching kids real mechanics.
E = M-e.sin(E) is too much for most though.
http://www.akiti.ca/KeplerEquation.html

Androcles