Chapter 6 – The Planets in the Tychonian System

Using the Kepler’s harmonic law from the previous chapter, we can construct a table showing distance from the Sun and orbital period of each planet:

Be aware that orbital periods are relatively easily determined by watching how long it takes for a planet to visually orbit the Sun and return to its starting location in the sky. For planets more distant from the Sun than Earth, the process is a simple matter of keeping track of the time while keeping track of the planet’s position. For planets closer to the Sun than we are, one must take care to subtract the Sun’s own orbital motion from the total result. Some examples will make all of this much clearer. Jupiter requires 11.86 years to travel through all twelve constellations of the zodiac. This is a fact, found by monitoring the years required for Jupiter to return to the constellation it was initially observed within. Planets more distant from the Sun than Earth are called superior planets. All superior planets from Mars outward to Neptune have been physically observed throughout at least one orbital period, so their orbital periods are not in dispute. The planets more distant than Neptune have only been observed through a fraction of one orbital period. Fortunately, the techniques of modern astronomy allow one to extrapolate the complete orbit from observations of only one small section. As you can see from the above table, for very distant planets, this practice results in a huge savings in time!

Planets closer to the Sun than Earth are called inferior planets. There are only two such planets currently known in our own Solar System, Venus and Mercury. Inferior planets, by virtue of their position in the Solar System, display phases like the Moon, although the time required for the cycle of phases to repeat is much longer than in the case of the Moon. We used Venus as an example planet in Chapter 3 and 4, and so we will continue that trend here. Venus takes 584 days to complete its cycle of phases, from new to full and back to new again. This period of time is called Venus’ synodic period by astronomers. Does that mean that Venus orbits the Sun in 584 days? No, because the Sun is orbiting the Earth while carrying Venus along with it, and so some of the observed sky motion is due to Venus, and some is due to the Sun. Fortunately, in the case of Venus, at least, it is a simple matter to separate out the two effects. All one does is subtract the Sun’s orbital period (with respect to the background stars) from Venus’ synodic period, leaving just Venus’ orbital period (584 – 365 = 219). Therefore, Venus orbits the Sun in about 219 days. More refined measurements by professional astronomers indicate an orbital period of something more like 225 days. Considering the various errors involved in measurements of this type, these figures can be regarded as equal. It is very common in science for different methods to yield slightly different values for the same measurement. It is no cause for alarm. After all, 219 is very nearly 98% of 225! If we use 219 days as Venus’ orbital period, we can apply Kepler’s harmonic law to determine Venus’ distance from the Sun. The result is 0.71 AU, very nearly the distance seen in the table above. Again, Kepler’s harmonic law is confirmed, and knowing the period allows one to calculate the distance between the planet and the Sun with confidence. Once the distance is known, one can apply the small angle equation and telescopic measurements of angular width to calculate a planet’s true dimensions.

The superior planets orbit so slowly, and so far from the Sun, that no correction for the Sun’s motion around the Earth is needed. The inferior planets do require correction but, fortunately for us, there is another law that we can apply to the planets of the Solar System, thereby avoiding any corrections entirely. This is the Titius-Bode law. Discovered in the 1700s, this law is not so much a law of nature as an observation set to mathematics. It simply describes the spacing of the planets in the Solar System. It goes like this: A = 4 + X, where A is the distance between the planet and the Sun, and X has the following values: 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, and 384, each number being twice as large as the last. Mercury gets 0, Venus 3, Earth 6, Mars 12, the asteroids 24, Jupiter 48, Saturn 96, Uranus 192, and Neptune 384. When A is divided by 10, the result is the distance of the planet from the Sun in AU. The Titius-Bode law is firmly Copernican and heliocentric in its outlook, but we can adapt it to our geocentric purposes by merely removing the Earth from the roster of the planets, as we have done in the table above. Some may say that this is cheating, since the Earth is obviously a member of the Solar System (according to MSS, at least). Keep in mind, though, that the Michelson-Morley experiment, about which we will have much to say later on, established that the Earth is not orbiting the Sun, which places the Earth in a class all of its own. When you consider that the Earth is the abode of life, and is the only celestial body with breathable air, drinkable water, and a beneficial, life-giving, and life-nurturing environment, one in which it is possible to walk around without a spacesuit, and you have the recipe for a thoroughly unique object which has every right to look down its nose at the other planets, so to speak. Besides, the harmonious “double spacing” of the planets in the Titius-Bode law (spacing between one pair of adjacent planets is roughly doubled for the next pair) is completely ruined by the presence of the Earth, but completely restored by removing it. Therefore, in this book at least, the Earth is not considered to be one of the Sun’s planets. In fact, you won’t believe what class of object the Earth actually belongs to! Get ready for Chapter 8!

When Uranus and Ceres were discovered by astronomers in 1781 and 1801, respectively, their unique Sun-to-planet distances fit nicely into the law, suggesting that this mathematical progression was trying to tell us something fundamental about the Solar System. Two possibilities come to mind. First, with the exception of the initial jump from the Sun to Mercury’s orbit, it appears that the spacing between adjacent planets is essentially twice as far as the spacing between the previous planet pair. If nothing else, this ample spacing is a great way to keep planets from smashing into each other! And second, the law could simply be telling us that God likes this mathematical progression so much that He has used it to map out the Solar System! It appears that God loves mathematical relationships and intricacies. We shouldn’t be surprised at this, since the Solar System/Universe will turn out to be fundamentally mathematical, as we will see.

Note that Neptune deviates from the law to a considerable extent. We will have more to say about this in a later chapter. Also, the Moon shows phases like Mercury and Venus, but it is not an inferior planet, since it orbits the Earth directly, and we have already established that the Earth is not a planet in the conventional sense. This raises the issue of the definition of a planet. In this book, planets are large, globular bodies that orbit the Sun directly, obey Kepler’s harmonic law and the Titius-Bode law, and have unique orbits that do not cross those of the other planets. Moons, on the other hand, orbit planets directly, and are carried around the Sun only because of the gravitational attachment that they have to their respective planets. The smallish, distant bodies (dwarf planets) beyond Neptune, such as Pluto, the largest member of this group, that were first discovered in the 20^th Century, and continue to be discovered in the 21^st, are not planets, by this definition, and have a greater resemblance to comets than to planets. They may be nothing more than gigantic comets, whose orbits never allow a close approach to the Sun. Neptune is the “odd man out”, so to speak, of the planetary scheme, but it is still considered to be a planet since a case can be made for it to have moved into a new, closer orbit within its initial Titius-Bode location some 40 AU from the Sun. Asteroids, even when hundreds of miles across, are considered too small for planetary status. Ceres, at 600 miles in diameter, is the largest of all of the asteroids, and is known to be round. All other asteroids are smaller, and are often irregular in shape. Asteroids are distinguished from comets by their lack of icy materials, asteroids being rockier and comets being icier.

We can make another table showing the average speed of each planet in its orbit around the Sun:

The orbital speed of a planet is calculated by the following procedure: 1) Convert the distance of each planet from the Sun into miles by multiplying each AU value in the table above by 93,000,000. 2) Convert that distance into a circumference by multiplying by 2 and by pi. 3) Convert each planetary orbital period into hours by multiplying by 8,760 (which is the number of hours in a year). 4) Divide 2) by 3) to get the orbital velocity in miles per hour (mph).

Obviously, orbital speeds get slower as distance from the Sun increases. But where does a planet get its orbital speed from in the first place? This is a very interesting question, and its answer demonstrates the ad hoc nature of much of what passes for science these days. MSS says that the ancient nebula out of which the Sun formed slowly collapsed in on itself over an immense span of time, perhaps due to the action of gravity in concert with other forces. To conserve angular momentum during collapse, the cloud had to increase its rotational velocity, just like an ice skater does when she pulls in her arms while she spins. Eventually, smaller vortices formed and/or spun off of larger ones, perhaps due to centrifugal forces, forming the planets and their moons as nebular collapse continued. These so-called proto-planets with sufficient orbital velocity somehow avoided collisions with other bodies and have survived to this day. This is a typical MSS theory. It conceals what it doesn’t know in the distant past, thus ensuring total protection from any dissenting viewpoints. Also, initial conditions are chosen such that what we see today is guaranteed. Such theories feature facts not in evidence, are ultimately unknowable, and are not falsifiable. This is MSS today. Examples of such theories include evolution in biology, the big bang theory in astronomy, and global warming in climatology. Such ideas are fundamentally unscientific because they are enforced by consensus (rather than by experiment or, at least, a cogent theory), and can never be proven wrong by virtue of their constantly changing initial conditions which guarantee perfect alignment with experiment and the reigning scientific paradigm of the day.

To avoid this trap, in this book we will start with the Bible, and see what it has to say about our origins. Genesis 1:2 (the 2^nd verse in the Bible!) says that God moved upon the face of the deep:

Genesis 1:2 King James Version (KJV)

And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

This is a very interesting choice of words. The face of something is its outermost surface. Your face, for example, is the exterior surface of your head, the portion that you present to the world. What could this mean with reference to the Universe? I believe this verse is saying that God took a certain point in Heaven (the region where He dwells, the true reality), expanded it by some means, and started it spinning. The result would be a rotating “vacuum bubble” in Heaven. How fast was the bubble’s rotational speed? Probably right at the speed of light, since nothing is impossible for God. What we have here, essentially, is a Dyson sphere, but not one surrounding just the Earth, or just the Sun, but the entire Universe! There are many verses in the Bible that describe God stretching out space like a rubber sheet. Here are just a few, to get the point across:

Isaiah 40:22 King James Version (KJV)

It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the Earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the Heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

Job 37:18 King James Version (KJV)

Hast thou with Him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking glass?

Jeremiah 10:12 King James Version (KJV)

He hath made the Earth by His power, He hath established the world by His wisdom, and hath stretched out the Heavens by His discretion.

Clearly, it would be a simple matter for God, a super-powered energy being from another dimension, to expand a zero-dimensional point within His own realm into a three-dimensional hollow sphere (the Universe that we know today). Further, even though this expansion has left the sphere filled with a vacuum, God refers to that nothingness as “the deep” and “the waters”. Obviously, what we call “space” is not the “nothingness” between separate objects but a “thing” in its own right, a dense, fluidic medium of some kind with unique properties that are vital to God’s creative purpose.

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical object devised by British scientist Freeman Dyson in 1967. It is an artificial, hollow, opaque, solid, thin-walled shell surrounding a celestial body for the purpose of capturing all of the radiant energy emitted by that celestial body. The idea is that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization might build such a structure to capture all of the light energy of their star, thereby supplying all of their energy requirements. One could imagine solar panels, for example, covering the entire inside surface of the shell. The energy produced would be beyond calculation. In our case, God is providing us, not with energy, but with living space – essentially a terrarium for mankind.

How big would this shell be? Let’s say that the circumference of the entire Universe is only one light year. After all, God seems to be fond of nice, round numbers. Also, if the hollow shell spun around at the speed of light, it would take one full year to make one complete rotation, which seems significant, since the year is such a fundamental quantity in all of our lives. What would follow from that? Well, the Universe would be a great deal smaller than we are told by MSS. The “walls” of the Universe would only be about one-sixth of a light-year away! How could all of the stars and galaxies that astronomers see be able to fit into such a confined space? This is easily accomplished if all of the heavenly bodies beyond the Solar System are merely images or projections on the inner surface of the hollow shell, which we shall call from this point forward “the stellatum” (the Latin word for “starred”). The Solar System, then, would extend from the Sun outward only as far as the stellatum, with illusory stars, star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies existing only as two-dimensional images projected on the stellatum’s inside surface. How big would the Solar System be under these conditions? Only 10,000 AU in radius. That works out be a radius of 930,000,000,000 miles. That’s still a lot of space for mankind to get lost in. Our most distant space probes have only explored out to 145 AU or so from the Sun. We have barely scratched the surface of the Solar System’s true size. We can predict at this point that no new planetary bodies in our Solar System will ever be discovered with an orbital radius greater than 10,000 AU, simply because the star-covered, solid walls of the Universe begin at that point! How long would it take our space vehicles to reach the stellatum? Well, the Apollo astronauts needed three days to reach the Moon. At that rate, a manned trip to the surface of the stellatum would take something like 32,000 years! Our fastest unmanned space probe, NASA’s Voyager 1, cuts the time down considerably, but still requires around 3,000 years. Obviously, the great distance to the stellatum, though much less than that of the stars in MSS, places it forever beyond the reach of human technology. What about using powerful radar signals or laser beams to illuminate the stellatum, thereby establishing its existence by timing how long the reflected radiation takes to return to Earth, since the speed of light is a constant 300,000 kilometers per second? Sadly, these technologies, though impressive by human standards, are limited by distance and the inverse square law to that of the planet Saturn and its large moon, Titan, both a mere 10 AU from the Sun. Clearly, mankind is not going anywhere anytime soon. We seem fated to be rooted to the Earth like so many trees:

Mark 8:24 King James Version (KJV)

And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.

You might be saying right now that this is the most ridiculous thing that you have ever heard. But that is only because of the indoctrination of our society. Our culture is unabashedly in the Godless, limitless space paradigm camp. We have never been taught anything else. Still, if the inner surface of the stellatum were studded with incredibly advanced light sources of suitable brightness (something like our LEDs, but far more sophisticated), we would never be able to distinguish what we see in the night sky from the worldview that has been foisted upon us. Is the Andromeda Galaxy 2,000,000 light-years away, as MSS tells us? Or is it a clever illusion designed to cast light on the Earth at night, as Genesis 1:14-15 says:

Genesis 1:14-15 King James Version (KJV)

And God said, Let there be lights in the Firmament of the Heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

And let them be for lights in the Firmament of the Heaven to give light upon the Earth: and it was so.

How would we ever be able to tell the difference? Actually, there is a way, and it is a relatively simple technique. We will have much more to say about these matters in a later chapter. Suffice it to say at this point that experiment and observation both suggest that we are living in an immense, hollow ball whose distant surface is essentially a gigantic video screen. We are, in a very real sense, living inside an elaborate digital simulation. The only real objects that exist, in the human sense of the word, in the sense that you could actually travel to them and stand on their surfaces, are those in the Solar System itself (Sun, Moon, Earth, planets, moons, asteroids, and comets). In other words, the Solar System is the Universe! Interstellar travel is impossible – not because of the slowness of our ships or the great distances between the stars – but because interstellar and intergalactic bodies are not physical objects. They merely provide light for the Earth at night, as the Bible has stated:

Genesis 1:14-15 King James Version (KJV)

And God said, Let there be lights in the Firmament of the Heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

And let them be for lights in the Firmament of the Heaven to give light upon the Earth: and it was so.

Some may object at this point by saying that God is a liar by creating false surroundings that make us believe that space is real. “I could never worship a God like that!” some would retort. This is missing the whole point. God never said that His Creation has to comply with our current, Godless viewpoints. He has provided a home for mankind. It is mankind that insists that God doesn’t exist. I think we should look at God as more of an artist than a scientist. If you saw a beautiful landscape painting that looked incredibly real and three-dimensional, like a doorway or window into another, better world, you would congratulate the artist on his talent, technique, and skill. The rich would pay millions to own the artist’s works. Yet, when God does the same thing on the great canvas of the night sky, we respond by conjuring up scientific theories that don’t include Him at all. It is our focus that needs to change, not God’s.

For now, though, our focus is on the rotational velocity of the stellatum itself, for this has application to the Tychonian model of the Solar System. Let’s say that the stellatum is spinning at the speed of light, and that the medium of space itself – the so-called “luminiferous ether” – is moving just alongside the stellatum’s inner surface at this same speed, since the “fluid of space” is dragged along by the solid, spinning shell. We have already established that the speed of light is the maximum possible velocity within our Universe. Furthermore, let’s say that the “ether wind” produced by the rotational motion of the stellatum decreases linearly with distance, becoming zero at the center of the Sun. The magnetic field projected outward from a current-carrying wire, for example, diminishes in just this way, so there is precedent for our model of the Universe right from the outset.

There are several points to be made here. First, we are proposing that space is filled with a fluidic medium of some kind (the “luminiferous ether” or “ether” for short, not to be confused with the organic solvent diethyl ether, which is also commonly referred to as “ether”). This is not a new idea. The ether wind was an active field of scientific investigation in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries. Today, MSS has done away with the ether (and replaced it with Einstein’s Relativity theories), but there are specific reasons for bringing it back, which we will come to. Second, the rotational motion of the stellatum that contains the entire Universe is “communicating” its motion to the fluidic spatial medium, much like a spinning propeller immersed in a viscous liquid sets the liquid to spinning. Third, the stellatum is physically centered on the Sun, and is carried around with it as it orbits the Earth daily. Fourth, the planets, and all of the objects that orbit the Sun, obtain their orbital velocities from the ether wind that is continually “blowing” against them, in much the same way that a sailing vessel receives its motive force from the ocean breezes. Fifth, the rotation of the stellatum forms concentric rings of ether wind centered on the Sun and parallel to the stellatum’s equator, with the fastest wind (at the speed of light) blowing just inside the hollow shell of the stellatum, and the slowest wind (actually, no wind at all) right at the very core of the Sun. And sixth, the variation in ether wind speed from the speed of light to zero is strictly linear, so that one can easily calculate the speed of the ether wind at any point within the Universe simply by using the method of proportions and knowing the radius of the Universe (930,000,000,000 miles) and the distance from the center (which is the core of the Sun).

These ideas may sound fanciful, but they are no more outlandish than many ideas that find wide acceptance in MSS today (interstellar travel, time travel, parallel worlds, alternate timelines, alternative histories, the many world theory of quantum mechanics, quantum computing using servers and processing units located in other people’s Universes, etc.). Also, there is some backing for them in Holy Scripture, since the moving of the Spirit of God on the waters of the deep (the luminiferous ether) sounds very much like the Hand of God itself “spinning up” the hollow ball of the Universe He has just created:

Genesis 1:2 King James Version (KJV)

And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Therefore, we now know the source of the “sideways force” that keeps the planets moving in their orbits – the ether wind. This is a drastic break with MSS, which simply says that the planets were given an initial push at some time in the distant past, from a source or sources largely unknown, and which have retained that motion ever since. We are instead proposing a continual pushing force that keeps the planets in motion while they orbit the Sun. Ultimately, the energy for this push comes from the rotational motion of the Universe itself. What keeps the Universe rotating? God, of course! From this can be seen God’s continual, daily involvement in everybody’s life, from salvation by grace through faith, to breathable air and drinkable water, to the way that gravity holds you to the ground, to the eternal, second-by-second motion of the planets, moons, and stars in their courses:

Matthew 5:45 King James Version (KJV)

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven: for He maketh His Sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Luke 12:7 King James Version (KJV)

But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Returning now to our table of planetary orbital velocities, we can see that each planet’s orbital speed is merely that of the ether wind pushing it along. The planets are like little pieces of cork caught in the overwhelming onslaughts of the currents of space. Any planet “released” into this current by God at any point or position would automatically acquire a stable orbit. This drives home the point that God likes the Titius-Bode law, and has used it to decide where He would place the planets. What is it about the Titius-Bode law that is so appealing to God? Who can say? We can only state that there is something about this particular mathematical progression that appeals to our Creator. God, then, has likes and dislikes. In this respect, then, He is not so different from ourselves, which makes perfect sense given Genesis 1:26-28:

Genesis 1:26-28 King James Version (KJV)

And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the Earth.

So God created man in His Own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the Earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the Earth

What is particularly odd about our theory is that the speed of light works so well as the initial velocity of the ether wind at the edge of space. Why should this be so? Why should the Universe have a circumference of exactly one light-year? Why does the diameter of the Universe (1,860,000,000,000 miles) have a numerical kinship to the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), much like the diameter of the Sun’s orbit around the Earth (186,000,000 miles)? Why is the radius of the Solar System (and the Universe, for that matter, since the two are one and the same) exactly 10,000 times larger than the radius of the Sun’s orbit? I believe that, once again, God is “blowing the whistle” on Himself, giving us subtle clues about the constructed, artificial nature of our environment so that we, His children, will turn back to Him before death overtakes us, and it then becomes too late to choose Him at all.