Requiem for Relativity

<i>Originally posted by Stoat</i>
<br />Hi Joe, I think that you are letting your, quite understandable, frustrations make for a counter-productive introductory letter. ...


You may well be right. Some of my friends here in the US say what you're saying. Thanks for your input!


Notice:

$100 reward! I, Joseph C. Keller of Roland, Iowa, USA, will pay $100 to whomever is the first, to get someone with a 40 inch (1 meter) or larger optical telescope, to look for Barbarossa. The reward is for getting someone to look, not for looking yourself. With a telescope this size, it's professionals who will look, and they're unlikely to be swayed by $100. So the contest is, somehow to get professionals to look, and see whether Barbarossa is there, or not there.

Whether the search finds Barbarossa, or shows that Barbarossa isn't there, is not important. It is important that it be a bona fide attempt.

To prevent complications, I'm the sole judge of what is a bona fide attempt to look for Barbarossa (with an optical telescope at least 1 meter in size) and of who is first. Many disputes can arise in a deal like this, so to save everyone grief, I'm the judge of who, if anyone, wins, and there's no appeal. I don't promise fairness. I don't promise any particular standard of judgment. I'm the arbitrary judge.

Sincerely,
Joseph C. Keller, M. D.

Hi Joe, somewhere in this thread I mentioned a post by cosmicsurfer, which links to the site of this very rich man who believes we have a brown dwarf companion. Now the down side with this guy is that he appears to have an ego as large as a brown dwarf. Having said that, perhaps he's worth a try. I wouldn't argue with him too much. I'd just say I believe that I've found something and that it's at such and such co-ordinates. Say that I have some photographic evidence but that it needs verifying with the use of a larger telescope.

My draft introductory letter, I'd send by pm here to Tom Van Flandern, for comment. I believe that he once did some work for this chap but that they had to part company, because as I've said this guy makes King Canute look like a modest man. This guy will probably try to save face by claiming that it was his idea all along but people are going to see through that hubris.

(Edited) Perhaps now would be a good time to put together a pdf that explained, in layman's terms, the idea of a "failed" binary system. Lots of diagrams and pictures. Probably written in a Carl Sagan like style.

Then approach your local radio/t.v station and also get a lecture set up for school sixth formers. Tape or video the whole thing, and burn that onto a cd to send to science reporters of the larger national newspapers. Do expect that newspapers will garble your argument but don't fret about that, the object is to get the thing into the public domain.

Hey Joe, check this place out for publishing your work, it is Cornell U. arxiv.org/ . They print papers on many subjects daily. I have been reading your work for quite some time and your efforts are deserve a chance. Good luck.

Stoat et al, the "very rich man" must be the guy who believes the phenomenon of precession of the equinoxes is due to the solar system orbiting an unseen companion. That idea was critiqued pretty thoroughly on another thread on this board, and in any case, the required period of 23,000 years or so would be far to long for Barbarossa at 198 AU. But still, he could well be interested, there's nothing to lose.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Stoat</i>
<br />Hi Joe, somewhere in this thread I mentioned a post by cosmicsurfer, which links to the site of this very rich man who believes we have a brown dwarf companion...<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I think these are good ideas. I won't be offended if somebody else does these before I do.

An analogy might be to Charles Darwin & Thomas Huxley. Huxley did more than Darwin, to gain acceptance for Darwin's evolution theory. Either Huxley was a better persuader, or Darwin was beat up from the Beagle voyage and the tropical diseases, maybe including Chagas disease.

Reply to "thebobgy": when Cornell took ArXiv.org over from Los Alamos, they made it a closed club. Last time I checked, you can't post unless someone already in the club, and in that subject area, "endorses" you for membership. A few years ago, when I was a graduate student in Math at Iowa State Univ., I asked several physics/astronomy faculty at ISU to "endorse" me for membership, but they refused.

Reply to "nemesis": a year or so ago a magazine I saw (in the Borders bookstore) had an article about solar system precession vs. Newton's sun/moon-on-Earth's-equatorial-bulge torque-on-Earth-rotation precession. I tried to email the authors but never heard back. They said there was a discrepancy between Earth's observed polar motion, and that predicted by Newton's equatorial-bulge theory. Although my own calculation (and surely the calculations of many astronomers before me) shows that Newton's theory does give roughly the right answer, it may well be that there is, due to some unknown cause, a discrepancy, perhaps revealed only by modern measurements of Earth's mass distribution and polar motion. However, even another sun, at 200 AU, would cause only 1/200^3 = 1/8,000,000 the precession that the sun does, according to Newton's equatorial-bulge theory.

Barbarossa, and Lescarbault/LeVerrier's Vulcan

Lescarbault's data didn't determine "Vulcan" 's eccentricity. So, the near equality, of Vulcan's and Barbarossa's inclinations (to the principal plane of the known solar system) suggests that Vulcan is a tail-less long-period comet related to Barbarossa dynamically. Though the sky surveys came close, I don't know of any astrophotographic record on which such a body should be visible, even with the most optimistic diameter and albedo estimates.

Barbarossa's and Vulcan's inclinations to the principal plane, differ almost two degrees, but their inclinations to (Earth's) ecliptic (by LeVerrier's calculation) are equal, to the nearest arcminute. Torques from distant objects precess Earth's orbit 12 times slower than Jupiter's, so the ecliptic might better indicate initial solar system conditions. Also, LeVerrier's calculation of Vulcan's ascending node, is only 25.5' less than 90 degrees ahead of Barbarossa's.

Because Vulcan grazed the sun's disk, not crossing the center, a parabolic orbit for Vulcan (instead of LeVerrier's circular assumption) lessens by parallax, Vulcan's calculated inclination by about 1/250 radian = 15'. This advances its calculated node, by 1/2500 radian = 1.5'. So the nodes (modulo 90) and inclinations of Barbarossa and Vulcan are each only ~20' different.

Alternatively, Lescarbault's estimate of Vulcan's apparent diameter as less than 2.7" (1/4 Mercury's) is consistent with a 1:1 or 2:1 mirage image of Barbarossa. From a compromise, between the brown dwarf diameter estimated from theoretical physics, and the somewhat smaller diameter inferred for Barbarossa from its apparent magnitude combined with theoretical chemistry's estimates of brown dwarf albedo, a 60,000 mile diameter for Barbarossa, gives 1.5". With "one arcsecond [atmospheric] seeing" (i.e., each point of light becomes a two-dimensional normal distribution with half-maximum 0.5" from the center) if Barbarossa's black image somehow were superimposed on the sun, the half-maximum brightness circle would have diameter 1.2".

Two special correlations with Earth, suggest that Vulcan was a mirror image of Barbarossa. Barbarossa and Vulcan (assuming circular orbits) have, as discussed above, exactly the same inclination to (Earth's) ecliptic, within an arcminute (this accuracy isn't impossible with the sky survey, or with Lescarbault's data). Also, Vulcan was observed when about 70' S of the celestial equator. At the time, correcting for equinox precession, the center of gravity of the Barbarossa/Frey system, was about 40' S; and with 2 A.U. (roughly Frey's maximum distance from the center of gravity) subtending 30', Frey might have been 70' S.

There is a correlation with Dayton Miller's annually varying "ether drift vector". The equatorial component of that vector, is roughly proportional to a 90-degree rotation of the vector, between Earth, and the center of gravity of the solar system including Barbarossa.