Gerald Kelleher wrote:
On Wednesday, March 14, 2018 at 3:13:23 PM UTC, palsing wrote:
Gerald, must you hijack virtually every thread


I keep to my own topics by and large and it has been that way for quite some time.

Physics at an engineering level is fine but astrophysics, cosmology or
whatever buzz word attached to it nowadays always was contrived.

Timekeeping is easy enough despite the multiple reference systems used
through history but unfortunately Sir Isaac adopted the RA/Dec celestial
sphere system which tries to undermine timekeeping and the Lat/Long
system as it refers to the Earth's daily and orbital motions.

Sir Isaac was trying to bridge the gap by doing a hatchet job on the
Equation of Time by trying to define that timekeeping facility as time itself -

"Absolute time, in astronomy, is distinguished from relative, by the
equation of time. For the natural days are truly unequal, though they are
commonly considered as equal and used for a measure of time; astronomers
correct this inequality for their more accurate deducing of the celestial
motions...The necessity of which equation, for determining the times of a
phænomenon, is evinced as well from the experiments of the pendulum
clock, as by eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter." Principia

I give you more than a brief history of timekeeping, I presented this
forum with a comprehensive perspective of 5 reference systems all the way
back to the creation of the calendar framework and the astronomical event
that determines it.

Unlike the originator of relativity as another outrigger of Newton's
absolute/relative 'definitions' who became acclaimed, the astrophysical
narrative is so burdened with voodoo and bluffing presently that Hawking
is only recognized for the headache inducing pronouncements about God.




Don’t forget his ground breaking collaboration with one of your heroes
Roger Penrose of Penrose tiling fame. Penrose seemed to have a much better
opinion of Stephen Hawking on TV today.