"The Principal" - Earth center of universe?

[Outsider]

https://tubitv.com/movies/677221/the-pr ... start=true

"The Principle" brings to light astonishing new scientific observations challenging the Copernican Principle; the foundational assumption underlying the modern scientific world view. The idea that the Earth occupies no special or favored position in the cosmos has launched the last two scientific revolutions - the Copernican Revolution and Relativity - and, as Lawrence Krauss has said, we could be on the verge of a third, with "Copernicus coming back to haunt us." Interviews with leading cosmologists are interspersed with the views of dissidents and mavericks, bringing into sharp focus the challenges and implications not only for cosmology, but for our cultural and religious view of reality. —Rick DeLano, Producer/Writer, "The Principle"

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2458876/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_6

[Soloist]

The problem with Geocentrism is Parallax measurements. I've looked into it and while on a solar system level, one can argue for geocentrism but generally it ends up with some convoluted explanation about the sun circling us and most planets circling the sun and a gyroscopic universe.

[Neto]

I've often wondered how anyone can make any assumptions about where the center of the universe lies, when no one can find any of the edges. In contrast, it is possible to identify, for instance, the center of the continental United States (some place in central Kansas), because the boundaries are known.

[Ken]

Interviews with leading cosmologists are interspersed with the views of dissidents and mavericks, bringing into sharp focus the challenges and implications not only for cosmology, but for our cultural and religious view of reality.

All of the scientists interviewed in the film have discredited it and have said that they were mislead and that their comments were taken out of context. Claiming that the filmmakers presented themselves as making an ordinary science documentary and then distorted and edited their interview comments to support arguments that all of them flatly reject. It is not a good look if you have to lie and distort the words of others to try and make your point.

Since it has been 8 years since the film was released I don't think it has made any sort of mark on modern astronomy. Which is now more focused on the James Webb Telescope.

[Ken]

I've often wondered how anyone can make any assumptions about where the center of the universe lies, when no one can find any of the edges. In contrast, it is possible to identify, for instance, the center of the continental United States (some place in central Kansas), because the boundaries are known.

If you drop a pebble in the water and then photograph the expanding ripples can you deduce where the pebble likely sank and even when it likely sank, even though you can no longer see it? It is essentially the same principle.

[Soloist]

I've often wondered how anyone can make any assumptions about where the center of the universe lies, when no one can find any of the edges. In contrast, it is possible to identify, for instance, the center of the continental United States (some place in central Kansas), because the boundaries are known.

If you drop a pebble in the water and then photograph the expanding ripples can you deduce where the pebble likely sank and even when it likely sank, even though you can no longer see it? It is essentially the same principle.

Someone in the ripples may not be able to accurately determine the middle or when the ripples started.

[Ken]

I've often wondered how anyone can make any assumptions about where the center of the universe lies, when no one can find any of the edges. In contrast, it is possible to identify, for instance, the center of the continental United States (some place in central Kansas), because the boundaries are known.

If you drop a pebble in the water and then photograph the expanding ripples can you deduce where the pebble likely sank and even when it likely sank, even though you can no longer see it? It is essentially the same principle.

Someone in the ripples may not be able to accurately determine the middle or when the ripples started.

I'm not saying it is as simple as that example. The math involved in cosmology is very complex. But essentially if you can observe the trajectory and velocity of a lot of different celestial objects then you can theorize about both the point of origin and the time of origin.

This is actually done by observing shifts in the color of stars and galaxies and using the doppler effect to estimate trajectory and velocity rather than observing their actual movement since you can't really do that on a human time scale. Stars moving towards us will shift towards the blue end of the spectrum and stars moving away from us will shift towards the red end of the spectrum just like the sound of a car shifts its tone when it drives past and observer.

[Pelerin]

I was interested in this a few years ago, but my memory might be shaky. As I understand, from our point of view on Earth, it looks like almost everything (except a few local objects) is moving away from us. That is, the farther things are from us, the more redshifted they are. But that’s just the universe expanding and everything would look like it’s expanding away from you wherever you are in the universe.

What I don’t understand is how you couldn’t at least find the center of mass in the universe. Assuming there’s a finite amount of matter, why couldn’t you count up all the atoms and say there are exactly 100 trillion trillion on every side of this point? Or find the edge of matter by heading out toward the stars in a straight line, traveling until you reach the point where you find there are no more stars and no more matter? Unless the universe is some kind of extradimensional sphere where you keep wrapping round and round, but I’ve been told that that’s also wrong.

[Ken]

I was interested in this a few years ago, but my memory might be shaky. As I understand, from our point of view on Earth, it looks like almost everything (except a few local objects) is moving away from us. That is, the farther things are from us, the more redshifted they are. But that’s just the universe expanding and everything would look like it’s expanding away from you wherever you are in the universe.

What I don’t understand is how you couldn’t at least find the center of mass in the universe. Assuming there’s a finite amount of matter, why couldn’t you count up all the atoms and say there are exactly 100 trillion trillion on every side of this point? Or find the edge of matter by heading out toward the stars in a straight line, traveling until you reach the point where you find there are no more stars and no more matter? Unless the universe is some kind of extradimensional sphere where you keep wrapping round and round, but I’ve been told that that’s also wrong.

In theory you could. But until the Hubble and James Webb telescopes we couldn't remotely see even one millionth of the galaxies in the universe let alone even start to count stars and mass. So all you can really do is theorize about the size and shape of the whole thing based on the infinitesimal portion of the universe that we have actually observed. It is like taking a teaspoon of sand from a beach and using that to discern the size, composition, and shape of the whole thing.

[Josh]

One of the odder things to emerge from present-day science is that the solar system indeed does appear to be at the centre of the universe, at least in any way the universe could be described as having a centre.