Geocentrism for Dumskies and Smart Kids, 2nd ed.

“Geocentrism, you say? Poppycock!” That is the reaction most people have, certain that everyone knows the Earth revolves around the sun. Written to be read by “Dumskies and Smart Kids” alike, this book takes that confident dismissal and gently turns it over, asking a simple question: if the Earth's motion is so obvious, why have so many of the greatest names in physics said it cannot be demonstrated at all?

Robert Sungenis lets the scientists speak for themselves. A few of the witnesses:

Albert Einstein: “...to the question whether or not the motion of the Earth in space can be made perceptible in terrestrial experiments. We have already remarked that all attempts of this nature led to a negative result.”

Stephen Hawking: “So which is real, the Ptolemaic or Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true....one can use either picture as a model of the universe, for our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest.”

Fred Hoyle: “...we can take either the Earth or the Sun, or any other point for that matter, as the center of the solar system. This is certainly so for the purely kinematical problem of describing the planetary motions.”

Isaac Newton: “...And thus celestial bodies can move around the Earth at rest, as in the Tychonic system.”

Ernst Mach: “Obviously it matters little if we think of the Earth as turning about on its axis, or if we view it at rest while the fixed stars revolve around it. Geometrically these are exactly the same case of a relative rotation of the Earth and the fixed stars with respect to one another.”

Along with these, the book gathers the words of Lincoln Barnett, Hans Reichenbach, Dennis Sciama, I. Bernard Cohen, Arthur Lynch, Henrick Lorentz, Wolfgang Pauli, Henri Poincare, Julian B. Barbour, Martin Gardner, Bertrand Russell, J. L. E. Dryer, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Feynman, P. C. W. Davies, Kitty Ferguson, Phil Plait, Timothy Clifton, and Max Born, an accessible and disarming case that the question is far from settled.