Post by Clark on May 23, 2015 8:20:28 GMT
Is the Sun Really 93 million miles from Earth?
Copernicus estimated the sun to be 3 million miles from earth. Kepler calculated 12 million; Newton 28 million; Martin at 81 million; Mayer at 104 million. All doubtless worked out with “mathematical exactness!” Dr Rowbotham of London worked out by plain triangulation, made the sun to be a comparatively small body, and something under 3,000 miles distance. But he was not listen to because he was only “a medical man” and not a well placed astronomer.
Where is the proof of Newtonian assumption of solar attraction, and you will be referred to the fact that heavy bodies fall to earth. If a body falls down by its own weight to the earth, I am asked to believe that the sun can pull a large body upwards by some mysterious force in itself, called solar gravitation! I reply that there is no necessary connection between the premises and the conclusion. The sun has never been proved, by experiments, to have any attractive force whatever upon earthly bodies; nor, on the other hand, has the earth ever been shown to have any central power of “pulling” at the heavenly bodies. It is all pure conjecture. Why does not the earth “pull” down the balloon while it is suspended in the air inflated with gas? Or, if the gas escape, why not pull every particle or atom of it down to the earth? How is it that a little atom of hydrogen can mount upwards in spite of the combined “pull” of all the atoms of which the world is composed? But we are informed that Newton “found” that the moon “fell towards the earth” at the same rate of 16 per second. Well, all I have time now to say is, that we had better look out; there must be a great crash somewhere soon. And if there be mountains on the moon, as they say there are, let us hope that some kindly valley will, at least, fall over Leicester. I was going ask some astronomer, if I cold be supplied with the “exact” distance of the moon, to divide that distance by 16 so as to get the “exact” number of seconds when the crash would come; so as I can be at the right place at the right time :-)