>in fact, geocentrism IS consistent with the
>Newtonian laws of motion. Some physicist please correct me if I am wrong.
I've been working in the field of light gyroscopes for 12 years at Stanford,
Honeywell and now at Texas A&M. These gyroscopes work on the principle that
light takes different times to traverse a closed loop in the clockwise and
counter-clockwise directions when the loop is rotating in inertial space.
This effect, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with Newtonian
mechanics. It works because of relativity. Classical relativity gives the
wrong answer (it's way off). The right answer (i.e. measured answer) can be
derived using either special and general relativity. These gyroscopes have
been used to navigate commercial airlines since the 1970s. These gyros
measure that the earth rotates about its axis once a day. There are no two
ways about it.
>One of the consequences of "relativity" is that there is not a unique
>mathematical description of many physical processes. But some are much
>better than others.
Relativity does allow us to distinguish between accelerated and
non-accelerated reference frames. Just not the cause of the acceleration, or
between different non-accelerated reference frames. A rotation involves an
acceleration which we can uniquely determine experimentally - so a
non-rotating frame is not equivalent to a rotating one.
Jim
Jim Blake
Associate Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843