Sunday, April 18, 2010

Earth Tilt Conspiracy - so lame.



This fellow (here) believes he has proven that the earth's tilt is massively larger than scientists are telling us. The argument is not quite explained, but I think it goes like this:

(1) Dallas, Texas is at latitude 32.8 degrees north, almost a full 10 degrees north of the Tropic of Cancer;
(2) The Tropic of Cancer marks the limit of the sun's northern travel, on June 21 (summer solstice)
(3) Therefore the sun should never appear to be to the north when in Dallas.
(4) The sun is observed to rise in a direction about 26 degrees north of east, and to set at 26 degrees north of west.

(5) Since (3) contradicts (4), something is wrong, and thus the tropic line must be further north than Dallas, which means the earth is tilted more than 23.5 degrees. I don't know how the estimated 'true' tilt is calculated, but it is alleged to be about 40-45 degrees.

In fact, (3) is utterly wrong. If you go to a far northern place (like Nome, Alaska) on the 21st of June, you will find the sun rises soon after midnight, far to the north of east, and doesn't get very high in the southern sky at noon, and then sets very late in the day, quite close to north again. By the logic of divulgence.net you would conclude that Nome must be very far south of the tropic of Cancer.

The problem in (3) appears to arise out of a simple misunderstanding of the geometry. Anybody with a globe can confirm that it's not just a question of adding angles. Photo below shows the earth as the sun is rising in Dallas on June 21st. The planet's axis is tilted to the right in the image, and the sun is exactly to the right. At sunrise, Dallas is on the 'terminator' -- this is the line between light and shadow, and appears as a vertical straight line in this photo, though of course it actually is a circle around the Earth. Where does the sun appear to be, to the folks in Dallas? The rays of the sun arrive exactly from the right in the photo, so in Dallas they appear to be coming from the direction of Boston (red dotted line) which, yes, is about 26 degrees north of geographic east.



The difference between 'east' and sunrise comes from two sources: First, Dallas, like the whole planet, is tilted 23.5 degrees towards the sun -- which means the sun is 23.5 degrees north of east -- when Dallas is at the 'front' of the globe (at point P). Second, when this occurs, the sun has already risen in Dallas; the actual sunrise occurs about an hour earlier than that, at sunrise the sun will appear to be even farther north (since it travels from north to south as it rises in the east). It is this second effect which is far more pronounced in Nome; the first is the same everywhere. The second effect is also the reason why days are longer than 12 hours in the summer and shorter in the winter, and more so the farther north you are.

At sunset, you have this situation: we have moved around to the other side to watch the sun set in Dallas, so now the sun is on the left of the image. The rays of the setting sun come from the left, from the direction of Oregon, about 26 degrees north of due west. So, those observations of the sun rising and setting that far 'north' from Dallas aren't "proof" that the earth's tilt is anything different from 23.5 degrees.



But, I guess it makes more sense to believe from "measurements and official data" that the earth's tilt has massively changed -- and that all astronomers and climate scientists are either ignorant of this, or hiding it from the world -- than to consider that maybe your understanding of the situation isn't quite right? And maybe, get out a globe and see if what you're saying makes sense?

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