I was happy to receive a message today from my friends Phil, Matt and Ben over at the Amish Inquisition podcast informing me that they had posted a new episode featuring a video interview with Simon Shack and Patrik Holmqvist regarding the Tychos model of our solar system, and the abundant evidence casting serious doubt on central tenets of the Keplerian model which we all are taught from an early age and which we tend to accept without question.
This interview is very much worth your consideration and attention, and afterwards you may want to dive deeper into the evidence and analysis presented by Simon in his book, which he has made available for free in its entirety online here, as well as check out the Tychosium digital planetarium which Patrik crafted, based upon the model developed by Simon in his book and his research.
During the conversation, Patrik and Simon use the Tychosium to illustrate some of their arguments, both arguments illustrating the problems with Kepler's model and arguments demonstrating the way that the Tychos model neatly explains those problems.
One of the strongest arguments they discuss is the concept of stellar parallax -- and the stubborn readings of so-called "negative stellar parallax" which astronomers continue to observe, causing a king-sized problem for the Kepler model (but constituting a powerful argument in favor of the Tychos model).
Another powerful argument discussed in this conversation is the troubling pattern of the so-called "empirical sidereal intervals" of the planet Mars, in which Mars is observed from earth to align with any specific star at intervals of about 707 days (for seven times in a row) followed by a "short interval" or "short ESI" of only about 543 days -- a pattern very difficult to explain using the conventional paradigm.
Once again, although this unusual pattern causes king-sized problems for proponents of Keplerian-type models of solar-system mechanics, it is easily explained by the Tychos model, and thus constitutes yet another strong piece of evidence in favor of the Tychos model, even as it calls into serious doubt the conventional model.
The way that the Tychos model explains this unusual pattern of Mars sidereal intervals takes a bit of time and explanation in order to properly illustrate -- and due to the pressures of time, it wasn't really fully explained during this particular conversation. For those interested, I recommend checking out the video that I made exploring some aspects of the Tychos model, back in August of last year, which you can find here (and embedded below):
You can also listen to a podcast conversation I had with Patrik and his co-host Martin on their Radio Qui Bono podcast, from April of this year.
And, if you're interested, you can also check out my visit to the Amish Inquisition podcast, from November of 2020.
I remain somewhat "agnostic" regarding the mechanics of our solar system, but it is undeniable that Simon Shack has presented overwhelming evidence which raises grave doubts regarding the viability of the Keplerian model (as well as showing evidence which raises serious doubts about Kepler's character -- Kepler in fact having been proven by modern research to have falsified his data). But the sheer difficulty we have of even considering the possibility that the Keplerian paradigm could be wrong -- a model that we have all been taught since childhood -- shows the power of swimming like a fish within a single paradigm all our lives, and one that is basically not allowed to even be so much as questioned.
For this reason, I believe it is extremely valuable to consider the arguments that Simon and Patrik are bringing to light which demonstrate the possibility that this "unquestioned and unquestionable" paradigm may indeed be incorrect, if only because it reveals so much about the power of unquestioned assumptions and the power of authority (both in academia and in the media) to shape our thinking and put boundaries on our curiosity.
At one point in the interview, around 0:43:27 in the YouTube video (and at about 0:41:00 in the audio file on iTunes and other podcast platforms), Simon says something extremely important about the way that supporters of the Keplerian paradigm appear to start with the assumption that their model must be correct, and then "work backwards" to explain the evidence and make it fit with the conclusion that they have already decided must be right -- which is "exactly the opposite of science," as Simon puts it.
An analogy might be a trial in which the guilt of a party is already predetermined by the judge, who then forces all the evidence to point towards that verdict, no matter how much the evidence might point in the exact opposite direction.
Needless to say, such an approach does not lead to good science -- and indeed, as Simon points out, such an approach is not actually science at all. It is exactly the opposite of science.
This should be a powerful lesson to us, not to do the same thing in areas of our lives where we simply assume that the things that people in the media and in academia tell us must of course be correct, especially in areas in which abundant evidence exists to call those paradigms into question.
