This is a disturbing statement by Anderson, that “total geocentric orbital energy per unit mass should be the same before and after the flyby. The data indicates this is not always true.” What does this mean exactly?

Korjik above said: Indeed this is a frustration, that tantalizing information is released by Anderson, but without specifics. (I can’t access beyond the abstract listed above by Eta C, so don’t know full contents of Anderson’s paper on these flyby anomalies). More details would be useful.

As far as “how science is done” by Eta C reference above: “Total garbage” is too strong a label here, IMO. I read recently in a book on Galileo’s trial ("The Crime of Galileo" by Giorgio de Santillana, pp. 6-7), where in the correspondence between Galileo and Kepler, Kepler complained that it is not the Church they should worry about in presenting their new astronomy evidence, mostly from telescope work, but the ‘scholars’ who are entrenched in their geocentric cosmology, which is obviously wrong. Kepler’s criticism alludes to the fact that they have a very high vested interest in preserving what they had come to understand, even if wrong, since they had put so much effort into their understanding, which is now being threatened with the Copernican revolution. It seemed a legitimate complaint then, some four centuries ago, same as it is a legitimate complaint (Jerry, me et al) today. If we have a ‘vested interest’ formed from difficult labors and study of a cosmology that (just maybe) could be founded on bad assumptions (expanding space/BBT), then it is regrettable that so many man hours (years!) had been invested in studying something that should in the end prove wrong. However, this is the gamesmanship part of cosmology . To prove the Mainstream wrong is quite a trick, since not only must we (who doubt) come up with a better model, but we must also swim upstream against the mainstream of science as it is today. Not an easy task, and surely beyond the scope of us who argue for a new idea (like my variable G) without the necessary tools (mostly relativistic math), but also locked within a short deadline to revolutionize astronomy within 30 days! Are we published? In a manner of speaking, ALL our posts here are ‘published’ by copyright law.

Getting an ‘alternative idea’ (especially one so unpolished as to appear ridiculous) published in a respectable ‘peer reviewed’ publication, even those of the alternative kind (like Apeiron) still requires a good enough command of the tools of science that the paper is not only reasonable but durably convincing of such new ideas. The obvious solution is to spend years of study to acquire the right tools, including mathematical competence, which may involve studying what is now acceptable in cosmology (even if potentially wrong) and then coming back into the Mainstream (and swim upstream) to make a credible case for your ‘alternative idea’. There is no easy out here.

I believe this had been covered earlier, but our dependence upon mathematical models (and they are ONLY models) of natural phenomena, especially astronomical phenomena, at great distances away from our "local terrain", leads us into an unavoidable ‘bias’ in our understandings of nature, where the chaotic nature of the universe is reduced to simple laws of physics, some of which are mathematically extremely complex (and require years of study), to explain what we can see plainly. Or as korjik stated earlier: ” Spend all the time with nature that you want, but while nature dosent lie, what you think you see and what is there can be two very different things.” Well, yes, we may be fooled by observation, but we may also be ‘fooled’ by the mathematical models we created to interpret these observations. In the end, Nature may prove to be a lot simpler than we think, once we understand it more fully. That is the goal of a really good ATM, to make what is now exceptionally complex (like was pre-Copernican astronomy) into something easily understandable (where Nature is actually ‘lazy’ and exceptionally economical in its simplicity) by all human minds, and not merely a small cadre of highly skilled mathematicians. However, to prove this will require the same skills of math that are missing from most ATM presentations, IMO.

The point here is that in Jerry’s above ” The latitude given to MS scientists in making these assertions is incredible...when they are accepted without question; there is no latitude left for alternative theoriest to stake out a claim,” there is latitude in interpreting real observable events within the parameters of mathematical models (they’re ONLY model approximations), but only so far. At what point do we call it quits and admit that perhaps models with so many adjustable variables are not good enough to interpret what we observe in Nature? And since ATM proponents are not given the same ‘latitudes’ as MS, how valid is it to demand they have a more robust theory than those so often adjusted? The answer to this, if ATM is not to fall into demise, is to find a simpler and more elegant solution to those nagging problems in cosmology that refuse to fit neatly into acceptable theory. But that’s the conundrum, that to do this one must have the necessary tools to refute what may (in reality) be wrong. I think one can say with some confidence (ala Ockam’s razor) that once we find interpretative models of observable data that require less (not more) parameter adjustments, we may be closer to the truth. That's the challenge, to come up with ideas that require fewer, and perhaps none, of those adjustable parameters to fit data into theory, no matter how elegant and beautiful the math, to more simply explain natural phenomena observed.

For example, some ATM ideas: If distant light redshift is NOT from space expansion, then from what? If spaceprobes are consistently coming in too high or too low on target, and their mass units change, why? If comets are shooting out dirt rather than water on closer approach to the Sun, even at Jupiter, where did the loosening matter come from, and why is it now released? If Mercury’s perihelion precession is not from relativistic GR, but from momentum transfer of the Sun’s mass equatorial spin, where’s the math? If Titan’s atmosphere is ten times taller than Earth’s, though it is much smaller than Earth, but what mechanism can such a large atmosphere exist, even for all the gas giants? Etc. Or, what about Earth’s spin seasonally slowing 1 millisecond during (northern hemisphere’s) winter, but accelerating 1 millisecond during summer? Weird! Is it from atmospheric drag or something else? All these may be subject to a newer and more elegant theory of cosmology, which may be just around the corner, but we who are not skilled, and do not possess Ph.D. in physics, have only the slimmest change of ever being heard, except for ATM boards such as these. Are these ideas a waste of time? Perhaps. But if not, then it would all have been worthwhile in the end, when all those loose pieces (which now require many adjustments) suddenly fall into place neatly. That, IMO, is the goal of an ATM forum such as this. But is it realistically feasible?

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