List Members,
I have a very introductory book to physics, with simple illustrations, by
Larry Gonick and Arthur Huffman. It was translated by a professor from the
University of São Paulo, which in number one in South America. I can't
believe the folly of a certain explanation/drawing which I have come across
relating to tides and the penetration of gravity.
The idea of unlimited and uniform penetration of gravity has important
implications for the Hollow Earth Theory ( HET ); it implies the death of
the theory! The classical Newtonian concept is that the center of gravity in
a sphere is the central point. In such a case, if you were walking along any
inner surface, you would fall inwards, headlong. And the existence of huge
caverns way, way down would be impossible because the weight of the Earth
would crush them. In fact, the weight of the shell would implode into any
hollow cavity. In short, it is hard to combine the HET with Newtonian
gravity, gravity as an attraction by mass, according to density, which would
have penetration all the way through the globe, and even increase as you go
down.
And that is what the drawing was about. The tides were being explained. The
Moon was shown next to the Earth. On the far side of the Earth from the
Moon, it was explained that the gravity of the moon penetrated through the
Earth globe and " inflexed " the far side, flattening the curvature ever so
slightly and allowing the ocean to fill in, creating the tidal bulge on the
opposite side of the Earth from the Moon.
The Moon's gravity didn't work its way through the Earth and " pull in " the
other side of the Earth. The tidal bulge on the other side is simply a
matter of an oscillatory wave which had started when the Earth was showing
that side to the Moon. Twelve hours later, the Moon moved back around, but
the bulge from the tide, which was initiated by the Moon the last time
around, was still active and, in fact, 12 hours later, is on the direct
opposite side from the Moon. ( But not being caused currently by the Moon. )
Gravity didn't penetrate the Earth, it doesn't even penetrate several miles
down, uniformly. The tides prove this. Cater explains that two bodies, which
receive the same acceleration, cannot display different velocities. So if
the tidal waters flow ahead of the Earth itself, that means that gravity
from the Moon is stronger in the first few miles of the surface than it is
deeper down, even just a few miles below the ocean bed.
This is from Cater's older book, The Awesome Life Force, page 53:
" It is now apparent that the idea of unlimited gravity penetration is not
valid. This means that the surface gravity effects of the Moon penetrate the
Earth for only very limited distances. Therefore, the total acceleration
that the surface gravity of the moon imparts to the Earth, as a whole, is
very small compared to the acceleration force exerted on an object at the
Earth's surface, such as a body of water facing the moon. This means the
water, not being fixed to the Earth, is free to move across the surface by
means of the Moon's gravitational influence. The difference in gravitational
accelerations is so great that the acceleration given a body at the surface
follows very closely the inverse square law, since the acceleration given
the Earth as a whole can be disregarded."
How can they put such unbelievable stuff in a physics book?
Dean/Dharmapada