Wednesday 3 February 2016

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).”

2 comments:

  1. Incorrect. A lie is a statement made deliberately to deceive and I don't believe that Eric is doing that at all. Have you seen the 1986 experiment by the US air Force that recreated the Michelson and Morley experiment with better equipment and found that all of Michelson and Morley predictions were 100% accurate? if there is something that is inaccurate about that I would like to know it.

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  2. Good info, thanks. I didn't know about the arcsecond difference. One thing to note though, a lot of experiments discover things accidentally, especially in medicine. Just because an experiment wasn't intended to test a specific thing doesn't logically mean that it cannot have implications or even proofs upon other things that were not intended or predicted by the experiment's designers.

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