[ExI] Relativity in Linearly Moving and Rotating Frames.

John K Clark jonkc at bellsouth.net
Mon Sep 29 15:50:29 UTC 2008


"Damien Broderick" <thespike at satx.rr.com>

> I'm not sure it's all that obvious that the earth orbits the sun.

I agree it is not obvious at all that the earth orbits the sun,
and in fact it seems pretty obvious that Newton's first law of
motion is untrue; in the real world a particle will NOT continue
at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force,
or at least that's what seems to be. Such is the disadvantage
in living in an atmosphere, if we lived in a vacuum I think it
would be much more intuitive. And yet Newton was such a
huge genius that he was able to figure it out despite the
existence of that nasty gas. Intelligent beings that lived in
the ocean would have an even harder time than we did in figuring
out the true nature of things, and they wouldn't even have the
motion of the moon and planets to help them. I think even an 
aquatic Newton would be at a loss.

 John K Clark






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