How do we reconcile the Vedic idea that the sun moves around the earth with the scientific idea that the earth moves around the sun?

Quotes by scientists about how absolute motion has never been proven:

From Galileo was Wrong by Robert A Sungnis, PhD and Robert J Bennet, PhD

“…the unsuccessful attempts to establish a motion of the Earth…”

Albert Einstein27

“Briefly, everything occurs as if the Earth were at rest…”

Henrick Lorentz28

“There was just one alternative; the earth’s true velocity through space might happen to have been nil…”

Arthur Eddington29

“The failure of the many attempts to measure terrestrially any effects of the earth’s motion…”

Wolfgang Pauli30

27 Albert Einstein, “Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Korper,” Annalen der Physik, Vol.

17, 1905, pp. 891-892. In the same paragraph he writes: “…the same dynamic and

optical laws are valid, as this for first-order magnitudes already has been proven,”

showing Einstein based Relativity on his supposition that Copernicanism is a “proven”

fact, which it is not.

“We do not have and cannot have any means of discovering whether or not we are carried along in a uniform motion of

translation.”

Henri Poincaré31

“A great deal of research has been carried out concerning the influence of the Earth’s movement. The results were always

negative.

Henri Poincaré32

“This conclusion directly contradicts the explanation… which presupposes that the Earth moves…”

Albert Michelson33

“The data were almost unbelievable….There was only one other possible conclusion to draw — that the Earth was at rest.”

Bernard Jaffe34

“Nor has any physical experiment ever proved that the Earth actually is in motion.”

Lincoln Barnett35

28 From Lorentz’s 1886 paper, “On the Influence of the Earth’s Motion of Luminiferous

Phenomena,” as quoted in Arthur Miller’s Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of

Relativity, p. 20.

29 Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, New York, Macmillian

Company and Cambridge University Press, 1929, pp. 11, 8, in sequence.

30 Wolfgang Pauli, The Theory of Relativity, New York, Dover Publications, 1958, p. 4.

31 From Poincaré’s lecture titled: “L’état actuel et l’avenir de la physique

mathematique,” St. Louis, Sept. 24, 1904, Scientific Monthly, April, 1956.

32 From Poincaré’s report La science et l’hypothèse (“Science and Hypothesis”)

published in 1901, now published in Paris, Flammarion, 1968, p. 182, as cited in

Ludwik Kostro’s, Einstein and the Ether, Aperion, 2000, p. 30.

33 Albert A. Michelson, “The Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous

Ether,” American Journal of Science, Vol. 22, August 1881, p. 125, said after his first

interferometer experiment could not detect the movement of ether against the Earth.

34 Bernard Jaffe, Michelson and the Speed of Light, New York, Doubleday, 1960, p. 76.

Jaffe, however, adds this conclusion on to the above sentence: “This, of course, was

preposterous.”

35 Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein, New York, New American Library,

2nd revised edition, 1957, p. 73.

 

 

How geocentric and helio-centric models are equivalent due to the concept of relativity:

–          From Vedic Cosmography from Richard L Thompson (Sadaputa Das)

The watershed in the development of modern astronomy was crossed when Copernicus replaced the ancient geocentric model of the universe with a heliocentric model. Although the relative merit of the two models was initially debatable, the development of Newton’s laws of motion seemed to give overwhelming support for the heliocentric model. This can be argued as follows: If the stars and planets are rotating around the earth once per day, then they should be subjected to tremendous centrifugal forces that will have to be counterbalanced in some way. Isn’t it more reasonable to suppose that the earth, which is much smaller and more compact than the universe as a whole, is rotating on its axis? Likewise, isn’t it more reasonable to suppose that the small earth is orbiting around the massive sun than to suppose that the sun is orbiting around the earth?

This objection can be partially answered by invoking the idea of relativity of motion. Consider two objects, A and B, that are approaching one another at a constant velocity. According to classical physics, there is no physical difference between saying that A is standing still and being approached by B and saying that B is standing still and being approached by A. Thus, as far as physics is concerned, no objection could be raised to either statement.

In classical physics this relativity of motion is not thought to apply to rotation. Imagine an axis running from the center of A through the center of B. Suppose that A is rotating with respect to B on this axis. According to classical physics, rotary motion generates centrifugal force, and thus the actual rate of rotation of A and B can be determined by measuring this force. Thus if A exhibits a certain amount of centrifugal force and B does not, the conclusion of classical physics must be that A is rotating and B is not.

However, the physicist Ernst Mach once made the following argument: Suppose that A and B are the only objects in the universe, and suppose that they are of equal mass. Then why should it be that A shows measurable evidence of rotation and not B? After all, if we say that A is rotating, then what is it rotating with respect to? If B is the only other object in the universe, then A could only be rotating with respect to B. But it could equally well be said that B is rotating with respect to A. Thus Mach concluded that neither A nor B would exhibit centrifugal force if they were the only objects in the universe. He proposed that centrifugal force is generated in one object due to the rotation relative to it of another, much larger object. Thus, Mach maintained that if A is rotating with respect to the rest of the universe, then one could equally well say that the universe was rotating with respect to A and thereby generating centrifugal forces in A. Mach’s argument implies that there are no physical grounds for rejecting the statement that “A is standing still and the universe is rotating around it.”

Here one might object that the rotation of the earth is directly indicated by the Foucault pendulum experiment and the evidence that the prevailing winds are affected by Coriolis forces. Also, the rotation of the earth around the sun is indicated by a number of minute but measurable effects, such as aberration of starlight and the parallax of some stars.

It turns out, however, that Mach’s argument also disposes of these objections. For example, Mach would say that the rotation of the Foucault pendulum can be attributed to the rotation of the massive universe around the earth, just as well as to the rotation of the earth under the pendulum.

If this idea of relativity of motion is granted, one can then argue that the geocentric or heliocentric viewpoints stand on the same footing physically, and we can choose one or the other, depending on what is convenient. In the case of the astronomical siddhantas, we could argue that the geocentric viewpoint is simply the more practical of the two, since all computations must ultimately be expressed in geocentric terms.