DIY Experiment: Function of the sun's movement through the sky w/r to time

This could be an easy experiment to conduct with enough coordinate transformation knowledge.

Both FE and RE predict how the sun should move in the sky.

With RE, the earth rotates, causing the sun to move through the sky at a constant angular velocity with respect to the observer

With FE, the sun spins above the disk, causing the sun to move through the sky at a non-constant angular velocity with respect to the observer.  Quite simply put: it would move fastest when it is right above the observer, and slow down as it nears the horizon.

One could plot out the position of the sun in the sky on a clear day every 30 minutes, and the points should be evenly distributed on an RE.

On an FE, the points should be closer together near the horizon, and spread out when above the observer.

Great argument!  I love it.

This experiment assumes the sun in both theories are similar and behave alike. It is very obvious that they are not. You cannot place the same framework on the both suns.

Regardless of whether the earth is round or flat, the observed behavior of the sun must match what the respective theories predict that behavior should be.  The mechanisms can be different, but the observed results can not.

This experiment assumes the sun in both theories are similar and behave alike. It is very obvious that they are not. You cannot place the same framework on the both suns.

No this only assumes that geometry on both FE and RE are the same. That is that Maths on a RE state that 1 + 1 = 2 and that maths on a FE state that 1 + 1 = 2.

This has nothing what-so-ever to do with the make-up of the Sun on either FE or RE. None what-so-ever.

All that is required is that Geometry (that is Maths) works on both the same way.

You are assuming, of course, that the space in between the Sun and the Earth can be approximated to a Minkowski metric for both calculations?

Wel I suppose you are assuming that the metric isn't that insane but i wouldn't have to be a flat space time. Bleh why does this stuff always come back to space time when its not really relevant. I hate contravariant and covariant vectors, am I the only one, or something.

edited - stupidity

Wel I suppose you are assuming that the metric isn't that insane but i wouldn't have to be a flat space time. Bleh why does this stuff always come back to space time when its not really relevant. I hate contravariant and covariant vectors, am I the only one, or something.

edited - stupidity

It doesn't have to be anything as elaborate as spacetime topology. The "bendy light" effect means you're not seeing the sun where it really is, so without calculating that effect in, the experiment is useless.

This experiment assumes the sun in both theories are similar and behave alike. It is very obvious that they are not. You cannot place the same framework on the both suns.

It clearly does not.  In FE, it assumes that the sun moves in a flat plane hovering above a flat earth disk.  In RE, it assumes that the sun is rotating around in circles relative to earth.  How can you possibly assume that I was assuming that both theories are similar?  They are clearly different theories!

You are assuming, of course, that the space in between the Sun and the Earth can be approximated to a Minkowski metric for both calculations?

No.  I am not even talking about spacetime.  I'm just talking about simple geometry in cartesian, spherical, and cylindrical coordinate systems.

Quote from: bowler on February 05, 2009, 07:16:35 AM

Wel I suppose you are assuming that the metric isn't that insane but i wouldn't have to be a flat space time. Bleh why does this stuff always come back to space time when its not really relevant. I hate contravariant and covariant vectors, am I the only one, or something.

edited - stupidity

It doesn't have to be anything as elaborate as spacetime topology. The "bendy light" effect means you're not seeing the sun where it really is, so without calculating that effect in, the experiment is useless.

Will bendy light have a profound enough effect to alter the experiment?  Why or why not?   It would be simple to just do the experiment and see what the results are, and if the effects are unsatisfactory, as in, not consistent with either theory, then you can start introducing how "bendy light" causes illusions.  Until someone actually carries out this simple-to-do experiment, it is unscientific to automatically dismiss it as useless by assuming that some other variable will ruin it, without the math to back it up.

Quote from: Matrix on February 05, 2009, 07:05:54 AM

You are assuming, of course, that the space in between the Sun and the Earth can be approximated to a Minkowski metric for both calculations?

No.  I am not even talking about spacetime.  I'm just talking about simple geometry in cartesian, spherical, and cylindrical coordinate systems.

I think you'll find the Cartesian coordinates produce interesting results when not mapped onto a flat surface - such as the interior angles of a triangle not adding up to 180 degrees, for instance. Space-time is no different - a 'straight line' in your locally Cartesian reference frame could be an orbit or a crazy hyperbolic function of radius to another observer. You have to be clear what your metric is for the entire system, or you can end up with crazy results like a flat round Earth.

Quote from: Ferruccio on February 05, 2009, 12:49:59 PM

Quote from: Matrix on February 05, 2009, 07:05:54 AM

You are assuming, of course, that the space in between the Sun and the Earth can be approximated to a Minkowski metric for both calculations?

No.  I am not even talking about spacetime.  I'm just talking about simple geometry in cartesian, spherical, and cylindrical coordinate systems.

I think you'll find the Cartesian coordinates produce interesting results when not mapped onto a flat surface - such as the interior angles of a triangle not adding up to 180 degrees, for instance. Space-time is no different - a 'straight line' in your locally Cartesian reference frame could be an orbit or a crazy hyperbolic function of radius to another observer. You have to be clear what your metric is for the entire system, or you can end up with crazy results like a flat round Earth.

What's being measured: Rate of change of the angle of the sun w/r to a stationary observer.

Most appropriate coordinate system: spherical.

Just posting an example:





Basically, you'd see something like that at equal intervals of time, and you'd measure the individual angles between each sun position.

Quote from: zeroply on February 05, 2009, 09:53:31 AM

Quote from: bowler on February 05, 2009, 07:16:35 AM

Wel I suppose you are assuming that the metric isn't that insane but i wouldn't have to be a flat space time. Bleh why does this stuff always come back to space time when its not really relevant. I hate contravariant and covariant vectors, am I the only one, or something.

edited - stupidity

It doesn't have to be anything as elaborate as spacetime topology. The "bendy light" effect means you're not seeing the sun where it really is, so without calculating that effect in, the experiment is useless.

Will bendy light have a profound enough effect to alter the experiment?  Why or why not?   It would be simple to just do the experiment and see what the results are, and if the effects are unsatisfactory, as in, not consistent with either theory, then you can start introducing how "bendy light" causes illusions.  Until someone actually carries out this simple-to-do experiment, it is unscientific to automatically dismiss it as useless by assuming that some other variable will ruin it, without the math to back it up.

I'm thinking something like this:



As you can see, dtheta/dt is a constant to the observer.

Quote from: grogberries on February 05, 2009, 01:38:44 AM

This experiment assumes the sun in both theories are similar and behave alike. It is very obvious that they are not. You cannot place the same framework on the both suns.

It clearly does not.  In FE, it assumes that the sun moves in a flat plane hovering above a flat earth disk.  In RE, it assumes that the sun is rotating around in circles relative to earth.  How can you possibly assume that I was assuming that both theories are similar?  They are clearly different theories!

You are assuming the nature of the sun would be the same in both theories. It is not.

Quote from: Ferruccio on February 05, 2009, 12:56:19 PM

Quote from: zeroply on February 05, 2009, 09:53:31 AM

Quote from: bowler on February 05, 2009, 07:16:35 AM

Wel I suppose you are assuming that the metric isn't that insane but i wouldn't have to be a flat space time. Bleh why does this stuff always come back to space time when its not really relevant. I hate contravariant and covariant vectors, am I the only one, or something.

edited - stupidity

It doesn't have to be anything as elaborate as spacetime topology. The "bendy light" effect means you're not seeing the sun where it really is, so without calculating that effect in, the experiment is useless.

Will bendy light have a profound enough effect to alter the experiment?  Why or why not?   It would be simple to just do the experiment and see what the results are, and if the effects are unsatisfactory, as in, not consistent with either theory, then you can start introducing how "bendy light" causes illusions.  Until someone actually carries out this simple-to-do experiment, it is unscientific to automatically dismiss it as useless by assuming that some other variable will ruin it, without the math to back it up.

I'm thinking something like this:



As you can see, dtheta/dt is a constant to the observer.

How would that happen without the sun itself becoming distorted and non-circular in appearance?

What is the course of this bending? You are either suggesting a strange and massive gravitational potential a dielectric structure in the atmosphere or a new undiscovered field which the photon couples to. Given the accuracy with which photons are studied the later seems unlikely.

What is the course of this bending? You are either suggesting a strange and massive gravitational potential a dielectric structure in the atmosphere or a new undiscovered field which the photon couples to. Given the accuracy with which photons are studied the later seems unlikely.

Refraction?

What is the course of this bending? You are either suggesting a strange and massive gravitational potential a dielectric structure in the atmosphere or a new undiscovered field which the photon couples to. Given the accuracy with which photons are studied the later seems unlikely.

Of course there is some "strange and massive gravitational potential a dielectric structure in the atmosphere or a new undiscovered field" or shortly "dark matter/energy" between earth and sun/moon. How else can they stay above earth despite of the earth accelerating steadily towards them.

Well only FEers demand that the Earth is accelerating towards them. The rest of us are happy that the moon is in a stable but slightly decaying orbit. Also I would have said that by definition dark matter does not couple to the photon. Anything coupling to the photon is many things but it certainly isn't dark more or less by definition. The theory that electromagnetism is a U(1) field at low energy is overwhelming now. Dark energy is a more ethereal phenomenon however its effects are definitely small as the one thing we know about is that its energy density in space is very small. Assuming the cosmological model is in any way accurate.

Quote from: zeroply on February 05, 2009, 02:34:57 PM

Quote from: Ferruccio on February 05, 2009, 12:56:19 PM

Quote from: zeroply on February 05, 2009, 09:53:31 AM

Quote from: bowler on February 05, 2009, 07:16:35 AM

Wel I suppose you are assuming that the metric isn't that insane but i wouldn't have to be a flat space time. Bleh why does this stuff always come back to space time when its not really relevant. I hate contravariant and covariant vectors, am I the only one, or something.

edited - stupidity

It doesn't have to be anything as elaborate as spacetime topology. The "bendy light" effect means you're not seeing the sun where it really is, so without calculating that effect in, the experiment is useless.

Will bendy light have a profound enough effect to alter the experiment?  Why or why not?   It would be simple to just do the experiment and see what the results are, and if the effects are unsatisfactory, as in, not consistent with either theory, then you can start introducing how "bendy light" causes illusions.  Until someone actually carries out this simple-to-do experiment, it is unscientific to automatically dismiss it as useless by assuming that some other variable will ruin it, without the math to back it up.

I'm thinking something like this:



As you can see, dtheta/dt is a constant to the observer.

How would that happen without the sun itself becoming distorted and non-circular in appearance?

I'm not sure how distorted it would become. The odds are no one would notice - who stares directly into the sun, let alone measures it?

Every FE'r forgets that at least three things have to match in every observation with the proposed hypothesis: location of the Sun and Moon (and the other celestial objects), brightness and apparent size.

You can find a mathematical formula for a transformation that matches "FE location" with observed location. The proposed solution is wrong, but illustrates how this can be done:



But you have to match the three parameters and it is clear from the picture that the path of the light is greatly increased as dusk gets near. This means apparent size and brightness will decrease dramatically as the FE Sun and Moon get closer to the horizon, and this is never seen in actual observations.

As the path of the light doubles, the apparent size will halve and the brightness will be reduced by 3/4. Have you ever seen that magnitude 4 stars (faint but clearly visible) get totally obscured as they approach the horizon? FE'rs would have you think that these magnitude 4 stars will drop below magnitude 6 and become invisible to the unaided eye when approaching the horizon.

Lets be clear: you do not need to adhere to one "theory" like bendy light or the "sun is spotlight", for example, to be in trouble with the brightness requirement. Every possible model where the Sun, Moon and stars hover above our heads will have the same problem with decreasing brightness.

Every FE'r forgets that at least three things have to match in every observation with the proposed hypothesis: location of the Sun and Moon (and the other celestial objects), brightness and apparent size.

You can find a mathematical formula for a transformation that matches "FE location" with observed location. The proposed solution is wrong, but illustrates how this can be done:



But you have to match the three parameters and it is clear from the picture that the path of the light is greatly increased as dusk gets near. This means apparent size and brightness will decrease dramatically as the FE Sun and Moon get closer to the horizon, and this is never seen in actual observations.

As the path of the light doubles, the apparent size will halve and the brightness will be reduced by 3/4. Have you ever seen that magnitude 4 stars (faint but clearly visible) get totally obscured as they approach the horizon? FE'rs would have you think that these magnitude 4 stars will drop below magnitude 6 and become invisible to the unaided eye when approaching the horizon.

Lets be clear: you do not need to adhere to one "theory" like bendy light or the "sun is spotlight", for example, to be in trouble with the brightness requirement. Every possible model where the Sun, Moon and stars hover above our heads will have the same problem with decreasing brightness.

But celestial objects DO decrease in brightness when they get near the horizon. The sun is the obvious case. In the RE model, why does the sun have decreased brightness when it is near the horizon compared to overhead, but the same does not apply to magnitude 4 stars?

But celestial objects DO decrease in brightness when they get near the horizon. The sun is the obvious case. In the RE model, why does the sun have decreased brightness when it is near the horizon compared to overhead, but the same does not apply to magnitude 4 stars?

The sun maintains a fairly consistent brightness as it moves across, the sky, only really dropping in intensity as dusk approaches, as at such point the light reaching you has to pass though a fairly thick piece of atmosphere ,which is going to be fairly turbulent, dusty and such being so close to the ground. Stars behave, as far as I can see, in much the same way for what I imagine are much the same reasons.

The problem is that the sun's brightness should decrease at a fairly 'inverse-square' rate, rather than remaining at a fairly stable brightness until it's nearly hit the horizon where it plummets. Perhaps a better point would be the Moon. When it' a crescent, it's no more than several hundred kilometres from the Sun, whereas when it's full, it's about 20,000 kilometres away. yet despite this, the lit portion remains at a fairly constant brightness.

Very well explained. For any FE model to work, even those that have not quite been defined yet, you have to have the celestial objects dimming to at most 1/4 of the intensity in lumens by 4 pm and probably 1/9 at dawn and dusk. We are not talking about a slight dimming due to more atmosphere between the Sun and the observer.

And remember, we are accepting that FE theorists do not give us any model at all, since they have never been able to define one in sufficient detail to make some predictions.

The rest of us are happy that the moon is in a stable but slightly decaying orbit.

Actually the radius of the moon's orbit is expanding by about 2" a year as a result of tidal forces. The moon will completely escape the Earth's gravitational well in ~50bn years time.

Quote from: Ferruccio on February 05, 2009, 08:18:38 PM

Quote from: zeroply on February 05, 2009, 02:34:57 PM

Quote from: Ferruccio on February 05, 2009, 12:56:19 PM

Quote from: zeroply on February 05, 2009, 09:53:31 AM

Quote from: bowler on February 05, 2009, 07:16:35 AM

Wel I suppose you are assuming that the metric isn't that insane but i wouldn't have to be a flat space time. Bleh why does this stuff always come back to space time when its not really relevant. I hate contravariant and covariant vectors, am I the only one, or something.

edited - stupidity

It doesn't have to be anything as elaborate as spacetime topology. The "bendy light" effect means you're not seeing the sun where it really is, so without calculating that effect in, the experiment is useless.

Will bendy light have a profound enough effect to alter the experiment?  Why or why not?   It would be simple to just do the experiment and see what the results are, and if the effects are unsatisfactory, as in, not consistent with either theory, then you can start introducing how "bendy light" causes illusions.  Until someone actually carries out this simple-to-do experiment, it is unscientific to automatically dismiss it as useless by assuming that some other variable will ruin it, without the math to back it up.

I'm thinking something like this:



As you can see, dtheta/dt is a constant to the observer.

How would that happen without the sun itself becoming distorted and non-circular in appearance?

I'm not sure how distorted it would become. The odds are no one would notice - who stares directly into the sun, let alone measures it?

I dunno!

Well only FEers demand that the Earth is accelerating towards them. The rest of us are happy that the moon is in a stable but slightly decaying orbit. Also I would have said that by definition dark matter does not couple to the photon. Anything coupling to the photon is many things but it certainly isn't dark more or less by definition. The theory that electromagnetism is a U(1) field at low energy is overwhelming now. Dark energy is a more ethereal phenomenon however its effects are definitely small as the one thing we know about is that its energy density in space is very small. Assuming the cosmological model is in any way accurate.

Could be an axion field allowing photons to couple to a large magnetic field?  Or perhaps a legacy scalar potential field which was formed during the decoupling of gravity from the other forces? Or a quintessence field? Or a nonzero spatially varying kappa trace term (within the photon sector of the Standard Model Extension as defined by Kostelecky et al.)? Could even be a dark matter/energy bow shock as championed by several FE'ers on here.

The list is pretty endless, so what's needed is a nice solid set of experiments that do not rely solely on the observed position and shape of the Sun.  I can think of a few such experiments, but I think it'd be more fun to let the RE squad suggest some.

Ooooooo I like where this is heading, I wasn't planning on coming back but i can't resist a bit of real 'Science'. Well I maintain nothing here is Science in the strict sense but at least its something I can show off with. The axion is the first thing that popped into my head when someone mentioned bendy light. There have been extensive axion searches carried out at CERN so far no expect has been seen. Im not sure that the axion would cause light to bend in the way described but thats neither here nor there given the wavelength of visible light and the strength of the Earths magnetic field its not a realistic solution at least under current QCD.

Its very easy to suggest a scalar field at high energies however making to couple to the photon at low energy is very difficult. Especially given how well studied optics is, the behavior of the EM field is the most tightly constrained quantity in physics. Ditto to the quintessence field dark energy is defined by being negligible over small distances. There are a number of theoretical justifications for this I go for the FLRW metric needing an isotropic universe. But again any coupling this strong would have shown up in and number of experiments long ago. Dark matter is by definition dark, a key criteria it must satisfy to be dark matter is of course that its coupling to the photon must be negligible (presumed non-existant). I'm not sure I can answer much about varying a kappa trace term beyond the fact I assume it means a Lorentz invariance violation, I guess you found this in reference to quantum gravity, so again its effects here would have to be small as we not operating in that regime around the Earth.

Though I think this problem can be generalized quite safely even more so given the Suns proximity to Earth in FE theory. The path of light over such short distance is incredibly well known. Also we don't need light to tell where the sun is. As I pointed out in my solar neutrino thread we don't even need the EM spectrum. We can even do a simple when do we see a flare on the sun and when to the particles start to batter the atmosphere go guage the distance. Really this is not a difficult problem.