The Sun Revolves Around The Earth

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The Sun Revolves Around The Earth

By Thomas Keyes
Apr. 23, 2005

If you ask the average person on the street whether the Sun revolves around the Earth, as the ancients believed, or whether the Earth revolves around the Sun, which has been the accepted model of the solar system since the days of Copernicus (Mikotaj Kopernik, in Polish, 1573-1643), you will find that an overwhelming majority will say unhesitatingly and uncompromisingly that the Earth revolves around the Sun, which is not really false, but is only one way of looking at things. It is equally valid to say that the Sun revolves around the Earth, and this, of course, means that the ancients weren’t really wrong, nor are our instincts, which tell us approximately the same thing, really wrong. In other words, the geocentric model and the heliocentric model are both acceptable models. It’s only that the heliocentric model is more convenient for most purposes.

According to the theory of relativity, motion is relative. There is no single point anywhere in the Universe that we can call fixed and stationary, and with respect to which all other bodies are in motion. No, there is no such privileged object.

To give an analogy, let us imagine a map of the United States, with all the familiar cities—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, etc.—at their proper longitudes and latitudes. Over this we impose a sheet of transparent plastic ruled like graph paper, with the top-bottom and left-right centerlines, or axes, marked in darker ink than the other lines. We place the intersection of the axes, called the origin, say at Saint Louis, and we start reading off east-west and north-south mileages with respect to St. Louis. Thus one town is 250 miles east and 155 north, another is 715 west and 320 south, etc. So we have a pair of mileages for each town on the map. Now we move the origin to Amarillo, and all our numbers change. But the underlying map remains the same. Moving the plastic is called a transformation of ordinates, and the underlying distances are called invariant under all transformations. So which town is really the center of the US? Well, neither in this case, of course, since the US has definite boundaries and we can actually determine a geographical center.

We have also taken it for granted that there is a privileged direction called North, which is up on the map, because we know that somewhere beyond the US, there’s a North Pole. But if we just choose to disregard the North Pole, we can also rotate our piece of plastic so that the axes are southwest-northeast and northwest-southeast, 45º from our original orientation. The angle could also be 30º, 20º, 10º, or any other angle we choose, but the distances between the underlying cities haven’t changed. They are invariant under all transformations.

Now suppose we go to an infinite country, without a North Pole. What point shall we use for an origin? And what shall be the orientation of our axes? The answer is as obvious as can be. Any point is just as good as any other. There is no predetermined center and there is no privileged orientation.

In three or four dimensions, the same phenomenon abides, and in a Universe that has no limits or whose limits are unknown, we may select any point whatsoever as our origin, tilting our axes at any angles we choose.

So when you’re standing on Earth, naturally you’re inclined to think of Earth as the center of the Universe, and to consider everything to be in revolution around Earth, and this is not really wrong. This is an option that is entirely legitimate. The only fallacy that could occur in viewing the Earth thus is not to realize that any other planet or star might likewise seem to be the center of the Universe if you were there. All is relative.

In classical physics, a problem arose with respect to choosing a rotating body as the origin of a coordinate system, as sufficiently distant bodies would seem to be moving at tremendous speed. For example, a star four light-years away would seem to describe an orbit of 8 pi light-years per day. But with relativistic calculations, based on the Lorenz contraction, these difficulties have vanished.

So if you want the Earth to be the center of the Universe, you can have it your way!

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About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far.

I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents.

Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com

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