Chapter 20: Understanding the TYCHOS' Great Year
As we saw in Chapter 10, the supposed "Lunisolar wobble" of the Earth's polar axis simply does not exist - a fact that has now been empirically demonstrated. Ever since antiquity, astronomers (and astrologers) have noticed that our firmament appears to slowly drift Eastwards in relation to Earth’s equinoxes by about one of the 12 zodiac constellations, every 2100 years or so. As we just saw in Chapter 11, this is simply a natural consequence of Earth’s slow revolution around its PVP orbit - which it completes in 25344 years (or 12X 2112 years).
The so-called "Precession of the Equinoxes" has obviously puzzled astronomers and astrologers for millennia. In our modern times, the latter are often scoffed at for their apparent 'un-scientific and emotional' approach to the cosmic realm. However, it may now seem ironic that the former have likewise failed to make any sense of it, insofar as providing logical and scientific explanations for its causes. Could it be then that this world's "astro-logical" minds are every bit as confused as the "astro-nomical" ones? Oh well, I'm digressing - so let me round off this light-hearted intermezzo of mine with a short extract from Giorgio de Santillana's most fascinating 1969 essay, "Hamlet's Mill":
"For us, the Copernican system has stripped the Precession of its awesomeness, making it a purely earthly affair, the wobbles of an average planet’s individual course. But if, as it appeared once, it was the mysteriously ordained behavior of the heavenly sphere, or the cosmos as a whole, then who could escape astrological emotion? For the Precession took on an overpowering significance. It became the vast impenetrable pattern of fate itself, with one world-age succeeding another, as the invisible pointer of the equinox slid along the signs, each age bringing with it the rise and downfall of astral configurations and rulerships, with their earthly consequences". "Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time" (1969)
In the TYCHOS, all of these precessional 'phenomena' can be readily explained and illustrated: as the Sun revolves once every year around Earth - while Earth slowly revolves in the opposite direction - the resulting pattern of the Sun's and Earth's motions (over 25344 solar years) will look like this:
Now, please know that I tentatively computed and composed the above graphic (using a basic / consumer image-editing program) long before I met Patrik Holmqvist - the Swedish programmer whose professional skills helped me translate my 2-D drawings into 3-D motion graphics. You may perhaps imagine my delight when our Tychosium 3-D simulator then confirmed the Sun's "spirographic" 25344-year motions that I had laboriously calculated in the early stages of my TYCHOS research. The below image is a screenshot from the Tychosium 3D simulator showing how the Sun will in fact trace this gorgeous spirographic pattern (over a 25344-year period) - as everyone can now verify for themselves by checking the "Sun" box in the Tychosium's "Trace" menu:
The “magic” 0.27378% value
In the TYCHOS, the Earth moves each day by 38.428 km, which is 0.27378% of 14036 km (Earth's annual motion around its PVP orbit).
In the TYCHOS, the Sun moves each day by 2 573 424 km, which is 0.27378% of 939 943 910km (the Sun's orbital circumference).
In a TYCHOS Great Year, the Sun revolves 25344 times around Earth, while Earth rotates 9 256 706 times.
Now, at the completion of one Great Year, the Earth will of course have “subtracted” ONE revolution from the Sun - since it will then have fulfilled ONE full revolution around its PVP orbit (which revolves in the opposite direction of the Sun’s orbit).
Well, we see that 0.27378% of 9 256 706 = 25343 (or, in fact, 25344 minus 1 !)
My below explanatory graphic shows how the TYCHOS model accounts for the famed “precession of the equinoxes”. As Earth moves clockwise around its PVP orbit, it will drift by 30° every 2112 years, which then will add up to a full 360° circle in 25344 years (30° X 12 = 360°).
Why does the observed rate of “equinoctial precession” appear to increase exponentially?
The exact duration of the Great Year (a.k.a. “Annus Magnus”) has, to this day, never been determined with any degree of accuracy. This, because the observed rate of precession keeps increasing (by minimal amounts) over the centuries - to every astronomer’s perplexity. There currently exists no explanation for this cosmic mystery which is compounded by the fact that the precession's rate of acceleration is observed to grow exponentially. Of course, tentative explanations abound, yet none offer more than speculative hypotheses invoking a plethora of imaginary and untestable 'gravitational perturbations', 'non-gravitational effects', 'secular turbulences', 'chaotic states' - or whatnot.
Astronomers have long been puzzled by the observed non-linear increase of the stars’ West-to-East precession rate. Many have tried to quantify the exact amount of annual precession increase, only to find that the rate of increase (from one century to the next) isn’t linear, but exponential. For instance, Simon Newcomb offered (back in the 19th century) a constant of annual precession-rate increase of 0.00022″-per-year. Over time, however, this “constant of precession” soon proved to be a misnomer since it wasn’t constant at all! In fact, ever-higher rates of secular increase of the precession were subsequently observed. In this last century, the annual rate of change has averaged 0.000337". Here's a quote by Walter Cruttenden of the Binary Research Institute:
"The actual observed change between 1900, when the precession rate was 50.2564” p/y and the year 2000 when the rate was 50.290966” p/y (Astronomical Almanac) was 0.0337, equating to an annual rate of change of 0.000337” p/y over the last 100 years."
— "Response to The Precession Dialogues – BAUT Forum post" by Walter Cruttenden at BRI blog (July 16, 2009)
As Walter Cruttenden also points out:
“The constant seems to work for a while until a close examination of the precession observable shows it is increasing at an exponential rate, outstripping the fixed constant. Thus the equation, even with an annual addition falls a little farther behind each year.”
My below graphic shows how the TYCHOS accounts for this observed, exponential increase of the observed rate of precession:
The rate of increase is naturally exponential because it is caused by two separate, cumulative components:
1. The East-to-West motion (i.e. lateral displacement) of Earth vis-à-vis the stars
2. The East-to-West secular rotation of Earth’s equinox vis-à-vis the stars
As it is, this observed secular increase of the stellar precession is intimately related to the apparent accelerations and decelerations of the motions of our Moon, Sun and Earth — and goes to resolve a string of longstanding and still hotly-debated riddles of astronomy:
• The apparent secular decrease of the length of the tropical year;
• The apparent acceleration of the Moon’s orbital speed;
• The apparent secular increase of the length of the sidereal year;
• The apparent deceleration of Earth’s rotational speed.
My next graphic illustrates how, under the TYCHOS model, all four of these apparent secular variations are part of the same effect of perspective. They are caused by the gradually expanding angular shift between Earth in relation to the Sun, our Moon and the background stars. Of course, under a heliocentric model, no such angular shift would be expected, since Earth is believed to revolve around the Sun — and not vice versa. Hence, a Copernican astronomer won’t make any sense of it and will reach the wrong conclusions:
In the TYCHOS model (as conceptually illustrated in my above graphic), these perceived accelerations & decelerations of the Moon and Earth are illusory and only a matter of inverted (geocentric/heliocentric) spatial perspectives. The Moon’s revolution isn’t speeding up - nor is Earth’s rotation slowing down. All such observations are, of course, closely related to the above-expounded secular increase of the equinoctial precession. Most significantly, in a 1932 astronomy paper, J.K. Fotheringham provided this precious piece of information:
“It should be noted however, that when it was discovered that precession was subject to acceleration, the acceleration of precession was not usually included in the acceleration of the Moon’s motion, so that acceleration is generally expressed as if it were a term in the sidereal longitude, not in the longitude as measured from the equinox.”
In other words, the Copernican astronomers who vividly debated about the Moon’s puzzling, apparent secular acceleration were measuring the Moon’s motion against the starry background and not in relation to Earth’s equinoctial points. Thus, they never envisioned the possibility of an illusory acceleration caused by the clockwise motion of the Earth-Moon system, slowly curving in space against the starry background. Nor did they, of course, ever consider the Sun revolving on an external orbit around Earth.
THE “GREAT YEAR" OF MARS (50688 solar years)
As we saw in Chapter 10, Copernican theorists attribute the "Great Year" (i.e. the ca. 25500-year precession of the equinoxes) to a clockwise wobble of the Earth's axis - as of the infamous Lunisolar theory. Well, if this were the case, WHY then would Mars exhibit a “Great Year” of its own - almost precisely twice as long? To wit, what sort of 'cosmic sympathy' would possibly cause the orbital precession rate of Mars and the axial precession rate of the Earth to be locked at a 2:1 ratio? To be sure, Mars is indeed officially reckoned to have a 51000-year equinoctial cycle:
“The Martian equinoxes also precess, returning to an initial position over a period of about 51,000 years.”
— "A Change in the Weather" - by Michael Allaby and Richard Garratt (2004)
Now, the fact that the Martian equinoxes precess in about 51000 years (i.e. two Great Years) would be entirely expected under the TYCHOS model paradigm - since our two binary companions (Sun & Mars) are locked in a 2:1 orbital ratio. Mars will thus naturally employ twice as much time to complete its own equinoctial precession.
“As a combined effect of the precession of the spin axis and the advance of the perihelion, alternate poles of Mars tilt towards the Sun at perihelion every 25,500 years – that is, on a 51,000-year cycle.”
— "The Planet Mars: A History of Observation & Discovery" - by William Sheehan (1996)
Under the TYCHOS paradigm and its proposed 25344-year duration of the Great Year, Mars is expected to have a 50688-year period (25344 X 2). And in fact, the Tychosium simulator shows Mars returning to virtually the same place in our skies between June 21, 2000 and June 21, 52688 (i.e. a 50688-year interval) and - as we saw in Chapter 16 - the Tychosium simulator even has Mars returning to the same place in 405500 years (8 X 50688).
As you can see, the body of evidence in support of Mars having a binary relationship with the Sun is simply overwhelming.
Why Mars appears to rotate around its axis a little slower than Earth
As of the best astronomical observations, Mars appears to rotate once around its axis only about 40 minutes slower than Earth. One may rightly wonder: why would the rotational periods of Earth and Mars be so similar? Could perhaps Mars’s rotation around its axis be, in actuality, synchronous with Earth’s axial rotation rate? Let’s see if we can find any indications in support of this interesting hypothesis.
Each year, as we have seen, Earth covers 14036 km or 0.0039457% of the total PVP orbit. Since the 'mean' orbital circumference of Mars's orbit (of 1 435 079 524 km - see diagram at the end of Chapter 5) is 4.034266 X larger than Earth’s PVP orbit, this will correspond to a segment of Mars’s orbit equal to:
14036 km X 4.034266 ≈ 56625 km (which is in fact 0.0039457% of 1 435 079 524 km, i.e. Mars’s orbital circumference).
Since Mars completes one of its 'long ESI's' of 707-days (or 16968h) around the celestial sphere, its ('perceived' or 'relative to terrestrial time') orbital speed will be:
1 435 079 524km / 16968h = 84575.6km/h
Mars will therefore employ roughly 40 minutes to "catch up" with the earthly observer:
56625km / 84575.6km/h = 0.6695h (or 40.17 minutes).
Thus, Mars will only appear (to an earthly observer) to rotate around its axis slower than Earth, since he will be offset by that amount in relation to Mars’s celestial position. He will thus conclude that Mars rotates around its axis about 40 minutes slower than Earth.
My below graphic conceptually illustrates how Joe (our earthly, Copernican observer) will erroneously conclude that Mars rotates around its axis slightly slower than Earth; the green dot marking a given point on the Martian surface will be seen by Joe from another angle after 2 years, but in reality, Mars has returned to the same angular orientation in space it had two years earlier. Since Joe believes that Earth also revolves around the Sun, his computations for the green dot's expected spatial orientation will be based on the assumption that Earth has 'subtracted' one half of Mars's biyearly revolutions around the Sun. Hence, his estimation of Mars's 'rotational delay' will correspond to 'one yearly unit' (rather than two).
It is also worth noting that Mars’s rotational speed around its axis would therefore be 891.5 km/h, which is 1.88 X slower than Earth’s rotational speed of 1676 km/h. As it is, Mars revolves once around the Sun in 686.9 days (on average) - or just about 1.88 X 365.25 days.
Lastly, consider this: the axial tilt of Mars's polar axis is reckoned to be 25.2°. This is 1.8° more than Earth's current axial tilt of 23.4°. However, the inclination of Mars's orbit (in relation to our ecliptic) is reckoned to be 1.8°. In other words, the 'absolute spatial orientation' of Mars's polar axis may quite possibly be identical to that of Earth's polar axis.
In conclusion, Mars would appear to rotate around its axis in the very same amount of time as Earth - and to be tilted at the very same angle as Earth. The significance of this is unclear, but it would certainly seem to jar with the notion that Mars and Earth are just two wholly unrelated bodies randomly revolving around the Sun - as implied by the Copernican, heliocentric model.