by Jim Wood

Created on: March 15, 2008   Last Updated: July 19, 2008

Which way is up?

We are now living in a world where most everything has been discovered for us. We are told that there are just so many planets and how far apart they are, how big they are, why they revolve around he Sun as they do, etc., etc. That is just the tip of the mountain of information that has been gathered for us. I suppose we must be thankful and seek not to dispute any of this collected knowledge and wisdom. Not many of us get to use billion dollar telescopes and other expensive equipment to scan the heavens so it is not well received by the privileged when the bottom feeders venture an idea intruding on their exclusive domain.

This discussion could have started with excerpts from astronomy textbooks written 30 years ago and then updated the data every 5 years from textbooks written in those years
by which to compare the progression of documented facts and theories as time passed. This would not be a popular effort and, in fairness, I must admit that more discoveries will always produce better data for the authors and the publishers of textbooks. My attention is drawn to the vigor that was exerted by the authors of the textbooks in support of their original conclusions until proven discoveries showed they were only partially correct or not at all correct in their original assessment of the facts. Well, you probably feel that "no harm done" so what is the problem. I ask, "Will we ever know how much harm was done, not by an erroneous contention, but by the wrath by which that viewpoint was enforced?" The answer is no. We cannot anticipate how many budding concepts get squashed in their infancy when confronted with "established views".

We can thank Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton for the breakthrough in astronomical physics. Newton's formulas give us the means to calculate the Mass of an object, such as the Sun or a Star, that has objects in orbit around it. In our case within the limits of the two-body system and the use of Newton's "constant" the Sun's Mass can be calculated. I recall reading that Newton's "constant" was 6.67e-7 many years ago. Possibly 100 years after Newton Henry Cavendish revised the "constant" by experiment to G = 6.67e-11. This looks like .0000000000667 or four more zeros than the original constant.

Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation tells us that all objects of Mass in space atract all other objects of Mass. This means that the Sun attracts the Earth that in turn attracts the Moon. A common offer of proof of the Earth Moon

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