From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Dec 20 1999 - 17:05:00 MST
The Foucault pendulum experiment could probably serve to demonstrate
that the Earth rotates. Given that the Earth rotates once every 24
hours, as the pendulum will demonstrate, it's easy to see that the Sun
is probably staying in the same place. As for the Earth itself going
around the Sun, that probably takes the computation of planetary
motions; at best it could be demonstrated more immediately by the
incredibly tiny changes in the apparent positions of stars depending on
which side of the Sun we're on.
But in my opinion, the most compelling demonstration that Earth must
orbit the Sun is dropping an apple, computing Newton's laws, and thus
demonstrating that if not for the orbital velocity we'd drop into the
Sun. Of course, pre-Newton there was no Principle of Mediocrity...
Now for a different stumper I got hit with (once; after that I looked it
up). How do we *know* the Earth is 4.5 billion years old?
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html
Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns Writing in gender-neutral
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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