30/03/2007

More Nonsense Science

"Gravity: Doesn't exist. If items of mass had any impact of others, then mountains should have people orbiting them. Or the space shuttle in space should have the astronauts orbiting it. Of course, that's just the tip of the gravity myth. Think about it. Scientists want us to believe that the sun has a gravitation pull strong enough to keep a planet like neptune or pluto in orbit, but then it's not strong enough to keep the moon in orbit? Why is that? What I believe is going on here is this: These objects in space have yet to receive mans touch, and thus have no sin to weigh them down. This isn't the case for earth, where we see the impact of transfered sin to material objects. The more sin, the heavier something is. "

Well this is clearly a case of a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Of all the scientific theories in existence why attack gravity? We have been able to describe it accurately for a long time now!

It's almost not worth doing, but I'm going to dissect it.

Firstly some background, gravity is associated with mass. The exact 'cause' of mass is still under investigation, but we expect it to be discovered in the next few years at CERN (try looking on google for Higgs Boson). We know that masses attract each other. This attraction is very small, and tiny compared to the electromagnetic force. We also know that the attraction weakens with distance (we know by how much too!).

Mountains are large, and do have a gravitational attraction to people (and vice versa), but it is swamped by the gravitational field of the Earth.

I guess it's worth explaining simply how gravity works in relation to orbits. The simplest way to think about this is to imagine throwing a ball in front of you. It follows a parabolic trajectory, falling to Earth because of gravity. But what happens if you are able to throw it far enough that the Earth's surface curves away beneath it. The gravitational field of the Earth still tries to pull it in, and it curves with the surface (unless you throw it fast enough to escape the gravitational field). So, if there is a small enough resistance to its motion (e.g. very thin or no atmosphere) it will keep falling in an orbit around the Earth.

The Earth's field even at the distance of shuttle operations is many, many times larger than the attraction between the shuttle and the astronauts. So small in fact it is safe to ignore it.

To attribute mass to sin is clearly bullshit.

3 comments:

nullifidian said...

try looking on google for Higgs Boson

D'oh! If only the physicists had thought of that! ;-)

Ed said...

Haha!

If only Google had ALL the answers!

M. Tully said...

Those sinful black holes! They even attract light with their gravity. Bending the space-time continuum so greatly, the vastness of the sin those hydrogen and helium atoms must have had is almost too much to consider.

ShareThis

Copyright