Re: What's wrong with this?

Humour ( mis-spelt humor) is unbecoming of this very serious listserve.
----- Original Message -----
From: "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>
To: "Donald Nield" <d.nield@auckland.ac.nz>
Cc: "Glenn Morton" <glennmorton@entouch.net>; "'Ted Davis'"
<tdavis@messiah.edu>; <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 3:02 AM
Subject: Re: What's wrong with this?

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Donald Nield" <d.nield@auckland.ac.nz>
> To: "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>
> Cc: "Glenn Morton" <glennmorton@entouch.net>; "'Ted Davis'"
> <tdavis@messiah.edu>; <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 9:25 PM
> Subject: Re: What's wrong with this?
>
>
> >
> >
> > George Murphy wrote:
> >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Glenn Morton" <glennmorton@entouch.net>
> > > To: "'Ted Davis'" <tdavis@messiah.edu>; <asa@calvin.edu>;
> <gmurphy@raex.com>
> > > Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 8:00 PM
> > > Subject: RE: What's wrong with this?
> > >
> > > > Darn, you got the gold star before me. But one addition. It was
only
> in
> > > > free fall when it was on a geodesic path outside of the part of the
> > > > atmosphere where enough atmospheric density could cause significant
> > > > drag.
> > > >
> > > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > > From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu
> > > > > [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Ted Davis
> > > > > Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 6:40 PM
> > > > > To: asa@calvin.edu; gmurphy@raex.com
> > > > > Subject: Re: What's wrong with this?
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > If this is a quiz, George, the answer is: It isn't
> > > > > weightless, it's in free fall. Like the moon around the
> > > > > earth, or the earth around the sun.
> > > > >
> > > > > Do I get a gold star or my pick of the toy bag??
> > >
> > > Ted & Glenn -
> > > Not exactly. Objects in free fall _are_ weightless because in
a
> > > coordinate frame moving with them the gravitational acceleration has
> been
> > > transformed away locally. It doesn't matter how high you are - you're
> > > weightless (except for the effects of air resistance) when you jump
off
> the
> > > high dive. Astronauts train for weightlessness - or at least they
used
> to -
> > > in planes that are in free fall (though perhaps moving upward &
> > > horizontally - on a parabolic path) for a fraction of a minute.
> > >
> > > Shalom
> > > George
> > > http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
> >
> > So I take it that what was wrong in the original account was that
> > "weightlessness" should have been replaced by something like "a
> significant
> > interval of sustained weightless"? Not a big deal, in my opinion. The
> connection
> > with YECs seems rather remote to me.
>
> No, what was wrong with the CBS statement was the idea that weightlessness
> has something to do with distance from the earth, as if it were a matter
of
> being "outside the earth's gravitational field" or something like that.
(I
> have seen that kind of assertion made explicitly in the past. It ranks
with
> the old claim that rockets couldn't work in outer space because there was
no
> air for the exhaust to push against.) & it doesn't. It shows a complete
> misunderstanding of gravitation - not just of Einstein's theory (which
> provides the best way of understanding the phenomenon) but even of
Newtonian
> theory (because of course 1/r^2 never goes to zero for any finite r).
This
> degree of misunderstanding, transposed to earth history &c, allows people
to
> think that humans were contemporaries with dinosaurs &c.
>
> I apologize if my reaction seems to extreme but such things, stated
> confidently by TV newspeople, make me go ballistic (so to speak!)
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Received on Tue Jun 22 03:31:21 2004