Friday, November 9, 2007

Galactocentricity.

It's geocentrism for the Milky Way. We may just be this one little clump of rock flinging around this massive ball of fusing gas in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way... but even with the trillions upon trillions of other stars and galaxies... ours is at the center of that!

According to CreationWiki:
Few creationists disagree that the Earth is in motion around the Sun, and our solar system in movement within the Milky Way galaxy. However, simply put, geocentrism is the belief in a universe-centered world.

Evidence, such as quantized redshift, offers strong support that the Milky Way exists at the center of the universe.


How simply put... geocentrism (earth centered) is the belief in a universe-centered world. Wait, a universe centered world. What the hell? That's not even vaguely coherent. And the term is "galacto-" not "universeo-". Shouldn't it be "simply put" as an Earth centered view, simply put, is a Milky Way centered view.

And what was the evidence for this? Oh, Quantized redshift... who could argue with that! Oh, I can, oh physicists, oh everybody who understands what a redshift is. Basically due to a nice little doppler shift (change in apparent frequency due to motion) (think of the change in the sound waves (pitch) an ambulance (ecnalubma) makes when it is coming toward you and going away from you) when galaxies or stars or whatnot are flying away from our galaxy they seem to be shifted more toward the red. Noticing this red shift is what has lead us to understand the universe is accelerating in its expansion. What does this have to do with the Milky Way being at the center of the universe? Nothing. In fact, there's no real reference points at all, we might as well be flying around in any direction.

I'm glad these Creationists have stepped away from silly ideas like Biblical geocentricism and concluded much more reasonable things like "screw you we are too special cuz quantized redshift says so!"

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