16) “The experiment known as
“Airy’s Failure” proved that the stars move relative to a stationary Earth and
not the other way around. By first filling a telescope with water to slow down
the speed of light inside, then calculating the tilt necessary to get the
starlight directly down the tube, Airy failed to prove the heliocentric theory
since the starlight was already coming in the correct angle with no change
necessary, and instead proved the geocentric model correct.”
and
18) “The Michelson-Morley and
Sagnac experiments attempted to measure the change in speed of light due to
Earth’s assumed motion through space. After measuring in every possible
different direction in various locations they failed to detect any significant
change whatsoever, again proving the stationary geocentric model.”
These experiments did not test either the spherical or flat earth
hypotheses, at all. At the time, of these experiments, one of the prevailing
theories of the nature of light was that it required a medium through which it
could travel and this was know as the aether.
Both of these experiments were
trying to determine the effects of the aether on the motion of light, by a
theoretical process called aether drag. Airy’s experiment showed that there is
no aether being dragged along by the Earth (and objects flying through space in
general) and the Michelson-Morley experiment showed that the Earth isn’t flying
through the stationary aether.
In either case, the experiments don’t show that
the Earth isn’t moving, but instead that there is no aether and the null
results for both cases can be explained with special relativity. In fact, there
is even a measurable amount of aberration in the location of stars that varies
between +/- 20 arcseconds across the course of a year, depending on where the
Earth is in its orbit, giving us evidence that the Earth is, in fact, moving.
He also perpetrates a well know fallacy called false
dichotomy. He says that an experiment failed to prove Hypothesis A, so it
proves Hypothesis B. Not true – what about the
possibility that the truth might be Hypothesis C, or D, or E….
Mr Dubay just didn’t understand what the experiments were testing.
They really don’t have anything to do with proving the shape of the Earth.
As Daimonie says: “I think we got sidetracked. Airy's failure - a term
only used by flat earthers, as far as I can find - refers to an experiment that
falsified a specific model and generally any aether model that included
first-order drag. There is nothing in the experiment about relative motions and
so forth. So, it's a false claim (also known as a lie).”
