On Friday, November 20, 2009 5:27:36 PM UTC, Sam Wormley wrote:
oriel36 wrote:
On Nov 20, 1:41 am, Sam Wormley wrote:


To say that the earth turns 15°/hr may be "technically" true to a
"moving reference" but any accurate gyro will confirm that the earth
rotates exactly 360° in 86,164.09+ seconds and the rotation rate is
verified by direct observation by a star returning to a meridian.

Yes I am technically correct that the planet turns at a rate of 15
degrees per hour and while I could certainly label all of you kooks
for arguing against the rotational rate per hour.I would much prefer
that people treat this as an immediate crisis,deal with it and move on
to productive things which balance interpretation with speculation.


No, you are not correct! The earth rotate 15° in 59.836174 minutes
as any accurate gyro will confirm. If this was a legal case, it would
be Gerald against the World.

In science (and astronomy) the final arbiter is observation. Observation
confirms that the earth rotates exactly 360° in 86,164.09+ seconds and
the rotation rate is verified by direct observation by a star returning
to a meridian.

You cannot deny this observable fact, Gerald.

I am curios Wormley,you were pushing the 23 hour 56 minute 04 second value even as your empirical colleagues were morphing to a new story,equally vapid of course,that involves an idealized rotation once in 24 hours back in 1820 -

"At the time of the dinosaurs, Earth completed one rotation in about 23 hours," says MacMillan, who is a member of the VLBI team at NASA Goddard. "In the year 1820, a rotation took exactly 24 hours, or 86,400 standard seconds.. Since 1820, the mean solar day has increased by about 2.5 milliseconds." NASA

Instead of investigating the roots of the 24 hour AM/PM cycle in tandem with the Lat/Long system within the 365/366 day calendar framework and the external references involved,they are now trying to cut the external references altogether by trumping up a meaningless assertion about idealized rotation back in the year 1820.

The 'new' Google groups is horrible but it does allow retrospective postings like this one where you are held accountable for your previous beliefs but in such a non confrontational way.It just goes to show how empiricism rapidly adopted the 24 hour value for rotation but still managed to screw it up.