Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Secular Aberration

"It is not an optical illusion, it just looks like one."

Phil White

Secular Aberration and the MTLs

Secular aberration will now be revisited with respect to the MTLs. Aberration of

starlight is a phenomenon that requires telescopes to be tilted slightly in order to

track stars, but why do telescopes need to be tilted? There are actually two ways

to describe why they need to be tilted.

Suppose there is a train that is traveling at 50 kph (kilometers per hour) under a

bridge. On this train is a flatbed car that has a tall, thin bucket standing in the

middle of this car. As the train goes underneath the bridge, someone who is

standing on the bridge drops a drop of water such that it enters the exact center

of the top of the bucket. Because of the motion of the train, this same drop of

water will not hit the center of the bottom of the bucket. The bucket is attached to

the train and the train is moving while the drop of water is moving down the

bucket. In order for the drop of water to hit the center of the bottom of the

bucket, the bucket must be tilted. If this train, on the next day, was traveling in

the opposite direction, the bucket would need to be tilted in the opposite

direction.

Note that the drop of water and the bucket/train entity move independently of

each other. The drop of water is never "carried" or "dragged" with the train or the

bucket.

The second way is to talk about rain and cars.

When we drive down the highway during a rain storm, even if the rain is coming

straight down, it appears to the driver that the rain is coming down at an angle.

This is an optical illusion. CCD chips that are used in telescopes are not subject

to this kind of optical illusion because they only see starlight when it hits each

pixel, and they see nothing until this light beam hits the CCD chip. The reason a

person is confused is because he or she sees the light before it hits the

windshield. Thus, the tilt of aberration of telescopes is not caused by the same

kind of optical illusion as people encounter while driving in the rain.

To understand why aberration is an application of the MTLs, consider that the

earth is orbiting the sun, and the target (i.e. the bottom of the telescope) is

attached to the earth (the platform), just as the bucket above is attached to the

train. Thus the target is moving around the sun with the earth at 30 kps. A tilt of

the telescope is required so the light that hits the center of the top of the

telescope also hits the center of the bottom of the telescope. Since the 1700s

scientists have used aberration of starlight as evidence of the velocity of the

earth in total space, because they felt the sun was at rest in the universe.

But now we know a lot more about the universe. We now know that our earth's

total velocity in space is 370 kps. Suddenly, we know that the actual tilt of

aberration of starlight must be based on our total velocity in space of 370 kps.

To be more specific, it is based on our range of velocities from 340 kps to 400

kps.

Since the tilt for secular aberration is constant for a given star, and always

causes telescopes to be tilted in exactly the same direction, we cannot isolate

this tilt. We can only measure the tilt caused by our variable velocity of 340 kps

to 400 kps.

The main point to this discussion is that because the bucket and drop of water

are independent of each other, we can therefore conclude that photons

(assuming they exist) move independently of the telescope (i.e. they are not

dragged with the telescope), and thus independently of the earth. This

observation, in fact, was one of the key arguments against the ether drag theory

of light. To put it another way, the path of a photon, once in motion, moves

relative to the 3D CMBR of the universe, totally independently of the earth in its

motion in the 3D CMBR of the universe (i.e. the photon, unlike air, is not dragged

with the earth). If it were not for this, there would be no aberration of starlight

with the photon theory.

Before moving on another metaphor would be helpful, “The Glowing Suit

Metaphor.”

The Glowing Suit Metaphor:

Let us consider a train that is traveling at 370 kph in a vacuum, meaning we can

ignore all types of wind. The train tracks are straight. One of the cars on this

train is a flatbed car that has a table on the middle of it. A person is running in

circles around the table on this flatbed car at 30 kph, 3 meters from the table.

The running person is carrying a tall, narrow bucket.

As this person runs in circles around the table, note that the table is always

traveling at a perfectly constant velocity of 370 kph towards the train's

destination. This means the person, if he were standing still, would also be

traveling at a constant 370 kph down the train tracks. However, the person is not

standing still. When he happens to be running in the same direction as the train,

his total speed is 400 kph, relative to the ground, 370 kph from the motion of

the train plus 30 kph from his motion running around the table. When he

happens to be running in the opposite direction the train is headed, he is running

at 340 kph, relative to the ground, 370 kph from the motion of the train minus

30 kph from his motion running around the table.

Image, for a moment that the table and the suit of the running person glow very

brightly in the dark. Imagine that astronauts in space are looking at this train at

night and they can only see the glowing table and the glowing suit of the running

person. These astronauts would see the glowing table traveling in a straight line

at a steady 370 kph. They would also see the glowing suit moving in an almost

straight line, but not at a constant speed. They would probably think that the two

objects were in a race down a highway. The glowing suit would travel in nearly a

straight line, but it would slow down and speed up and at times would be in front

of or behind or on different sides of the table. The astronauts would be very

puzzled, particularly if they could not see the table (try to visualize that!).

Now consider two people that are standing far above our galaxy. The "ecliptic

plane" is the 2D (2 dimensional) plane in space defined by the sun at its center,

and by the orbit of the earth. In other words, the earth orbits the sun on the

ecliptic plane by definition. The 12 zodiac constellations are all on the ecliptic

plane, including Leo, the constellation we are headed for. Let us assume these

two people are normal (i.e. perpendicular) to the infinitely wide ecliptic plane, but

are totally stationary relative to Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

(CMBR). Suppose they stood in the same spot for a thousand years, and could

only see the virtually linear motion of our sun and the motion of our earth in the

cosmos (i.e. they could not see anything else in our galaxy). They would see

almost exactly the same thing the astronauts just described would see from

space.

If they could measure the velocities of the sun and earth they would note that the

sun is moving at a constant 370 kps in a linear direction, but they would also note

that the earth is not moving at a constant velocity. At times the earth is moving at

340 kps, at times it is moving at 400 kps (because it is going in circles around the

sun), and at most times it is moving at some velocity between these two

extremes. As with the astronauts, these observers would think that there was a

race between our sun and our earth. At times the earth would be in front of the

sun and at times it would be behind the sun in this race. At times it would be

moving faster than the sun, and at times it would be moving slower.

Just because we don't "see" our 370 kps average linear speed in the cosmos on

a daily basis (this is because of our "slow" speed relative to the vastness of the

Universe) does not mean it is not happening. For many centuries before Kepler,

no one believed our earth was rotating or that it was orbiting the sun. Their

belief, no matter how popular or how sincere, did not stop our earth from rotating

and orbiting the sun - and heading towards Leo. Between the time of Ptolemy

and Kepler, the earth continued to rotate and orbit the sun and move with the sun

towards Leo at 370 kps.

The important point to make with this metaphor is that the sun is traveling at a

virtually constant velocity towards Leo (this is why secular aberration is generally

ignored in celestial mechanics calculations), but our earth’s velocity towards Leo

varies from 340 kps to 400 kps, depending on where we are in orbiting the sun,

relative to our joint path towards Leo. Since Leo is on the ecliptic plane, the

above example is very accurate.

The Bucket

Now lets talk about the bucket the running man is carrying. Suppose that high

above the train and train tracks is a long pipe. On this pipe are occasional

buckets that are full of water and each has a small hole in their bottom. The

water is dripping slowly out of each of these buckets. These buckets are not

moving, meaning each drop of water reaches the train perfectly vertical.

Suppose each water drop hits the top of the bucket at the exact center of the top

of the bucket, no matter where the running man is in his circular running around

the table.

When a water drop hits the center of the top of the bucket, the train is moving at

370 kph and the running man is running at 30 kph. As just mentioned, the

relative velocity of the running man to the ground varies between 340 kph and

400 kph. This means that the bucket is also moving at this range relative to the

drops of water that are coming down. This is because the pipe is not attached to

the train, it is attached to the ground. Thus, in the time that it takes the drop of

water to travel from the top of this long, thin bucket (that is being carried by the

man), to the bottom of the bucket, the bucket is moving with the train and running

man. No drop will hit the center of the bottom of the bucket.

Because of the MTLs, in order for each drop to hit the center of the bottom of the

bucket, the bucket will have to be tilted. However, because the man is running in

circles around the table, his velocity is changing and the tilt of the bucket will

need to be constantly changed, depending on where he is relative to the table at

the time a drop of water hits the top of the bucket.

In a similar way, the tilt of aberration of starlight varies between 340 kps and 400

kps. It is this variance that is measurable and is caused by our earth's orbit

velocity around the sun (remember this discussion is pertaining to the photon

theory). We don't really care about the motion of each star or galaxy, what we do

care about is the angle of this light relative to the telescope.

Note that with the running man, the tilt of the bucket is always based on two

factors: first, the constant speed of the train, and second, the variable speed of

the running man. If we were to measure only the change in the tilt of the bucket

(and ignore the constant or absolute tilt caused by the train's motion), the change

would only be caused by the variable speed of the running man. In other words,

no part of the change is caused by the train's motion, because the train's motion

is constant. The change in the tilt would be caused exclusively by the motion of

the running man.

Likewise, with light, aberration of starlight is always based on two factors: first,

the constant velocity of our solar system towards Leo at 370 kps, and second,

our earth's orbit velocity around the sun at 30 kps. As with the running man, if we

were to measure the change in the tilt of aberration (and ignore the absolute tilt

caused by our solar system's motion towards Leo), the change would only be

caused by the variable speed of the earth around the sun. No part of the change

would be caused by secular aberration because secular aberration is constant.

Thus, the USNO dictionary is quite right, secular aberration can justifiably be

ignored.

The key point to all of this, and the point the reader needs to absorb, is that with

the photon theory, actual aberration of starlight always includes our 370 kps

motion towards Leo. There is absolutely nothing in the photon theory to

challenge or contradict that secular aberration is actually observed, no matter

what the source of light is.

If we think about the bucket mentioned above being horizontal, instead of

vertical, and if we think about the water source as being in front of the train, little

tilt would be needed for these drops. In other words, stars on or near the ecliptic

plane have far less secular aberration or stellar aberration than stars normal to

the ecliptic plane. But this does not negate that secular aberration exists for

these stars, it simply means that because of their location much less tilt is

necessary (i.e. the lack of tilt is not because of the lack of secular aberration, it is

because of the angle at which the light arrives relative to our ecliptic plane or to

be more accurate for secular aberration - the plane of our path towards Leo).

So why can’t we measure the absolute tilt of aberration? We could if we knew

where a star really was. But we don’t know where any star really is, we only

know where each star appears to be. We “see” the star in our telescope, and we

think we know where it actually is, but in fact we don’t know where that star is

really located.

The scientific community is willing to ignore knowing where stars are actually

located because it is impossible to determine where they really are. In fact we

will never know their exact location because there may be many other factors

that affect the light between the star and our tiny planet.

Has the total 370 kps tilt of aberration ever been isolated and proven to exist?

The answer is ‘no’ because we don’t know where the stars really are, thus we

have no basis for calculating actual aberration. The term "secular aberration"

was invented because our true 370 kps average velocity towards Leo must be

accounted for in terms of aberration, no matter whether the photon theory or the

ether theory is true. But the two theories account for secular aberration in vastly

different ways, as will be seen as the book progresses.

In reality, it should be very easy to detect and isolate secular aberration, simply

use terrestrial light, but things are rarely as simple as they seem.

With the ether drag theory, why is there any aberration of starlight? Late in this

book there will be an entire chapter on aberration of starlight and ether drag. The

conclusion of this chapter will be that aberration of starlight occurs at the

boundary (i.e. the outside surface) of the ether drag. There are two different

ways this can occur, but they will be mentioned later. This means that if the

sun's ether drag extends beyond the orbit distance of the earth, that the 370 kps

secular aberration actually occurs at the boundary of the sun's ether drag,

millions of miles from earth. Only the 30 kps stellar or annual aberration occurs

at the boundary of the earth's ether drag. In other words, with the ether drag

theory, the total aberration of starlight is broken into two pieces, if the sun's ether

drag extends beyond our orbit distance. A future chapter will detail this.