Many seem to lack basic knowledge on the movements of the heavenly bodies.  This applies to things like the following:

• The direction of the Sun’s rising and setting varies over the year.

• The times of the Moon’s rising and setting varies with its phases.

• The stars move across the sky over the course of a night.

• Five of the planets in the Solar System can easily be seen with the unaided eye.

People unaware of such things rely too much on unrealistic fictitious depictions.  Alternatively, they take idiomatic expressions literally.  Such as the Sun rising in the east and setting in the west.  It is just on the very Equator which it literally does year-round.

Individuals with such faulty expectations may believe these movements to have suddenly changed.  The places of the Earth’s geographical poles are believed to have suddenly moved.  Or the degree of the Earth’s axial tilt is believed to have suddenly changed.  Which processes could cause those?  Furthermore, it is supposed the only difference one notices in everyday life is the unexpected movements of the heavenly bodies.  That their expectations could be faulty they don’t spend a thought at.

Another expression of ignorance is the support of pseudoscientific catastrophism.  Planets are believed to move as arbitrarily as if they were crewed spacecraft.  Same applies to dwarf planets and stars in a strict sense.  Some claim electromagnetism to be more important than gravity.  Electromagnetism may be the strongest force in the universe.  However, the effects it does are nowadays well-documented.  It is completely useless for making different heavenly bodies move arbitrarily.

The stars move over time in relation to each other.  Over thousands or tens of thousands of years the stars of the sky changes for this reason.  This change is too slow to be noticeable during a human lifetime.  In contrast it occurs that stars are only visible for a few months.  Either it is a large star which violent death struggle one sees.  Or it is interactions between members of double star system creating an explosion.  Nothing of this is arbitrary but follows well-established natural laws.  There can be some uncertainty on when something will happen.  But this uncertainty does not mean we can’t know.

Several of the ancient state societies documented the movements of the heavenly bodies.  Those visible to the unaided eye have for this reason had their movements documented during several millennia.  Systematic observations by telescope have been done for more than 400 years.  No-one have ever seen heavenly bodies suddenly being somewhere completely else.  The number of stargazers should neither be underestimated.  At the time of the 2012 scare there were about 100,000 professional astronomers.  Such individuals have as their job to systematically examine the sky.  In addition there were several millions having stargazing as their hobby.  Now they have to be at least as many and presumably more than that.  If any sudden change happened they would discover it first.

The movements of the heavenly bodies are so regular they can be used for dating.  The standard method for correlating calendars is locking at astronomical observations.  One can calculate afterwards when a certain astronomical observation could be done at a certain place.  Then one count in relation to this observation.  All based on the presumption that the movements of the heavenly bodies can be calculated.  Denying this is denying the existence of centuries of documentation.

 

Uploaded on the 18th of April 2024.