Was physics wrong in Ptolemy's cosmology?

1919 solar eclipse

A recent article in the journal Science News has this title: Eclipses show wrong physics can give right results. It claims that Ptolemy’s physics was incorrect, because he assumed that the Earth was at the center of the universe, and yet Greek science was able to predict the dates of eclipses.

According to the article, Ptolemy’s physics was less correct than the physics of Copernicus, who fourteen centuries later proposed that it was not the Earth, but the Sun, at the center of the universe.

The analysis in this article in Science News is completely wrong. Ptolemy’s physics was exactly the same as the physics of Copernicus. Copernicus did not propose a change in the physical theories that had governed classical astronomy since Hipparchus (2nd century BC). Copernicus just showed that, with a change in the coordinate system, and applying the same physics, the calculations are easier to perform. Logically, the same results are obtained.

The mystery of too many variables

Standard theory of particle physics

We have now two great physical theories:

·         On one side, quantum mechanics, which applies primarily to very small objects (those scarcely affected by gravity), and is the basic tool for the standard theory of particle physics.

·         On the other, general relativity, which applies to very large objects (from the planets to the whole universe, those for which almost nothing matters except gravity), and is the main tool for the standard cosmological (Big Bang) theory.

Unfortunately, the two theories are not mutually compatible, so that physics is far from having resolved its outstanding issues. Moreover, these two theories depend on about forty independent variables. Many physicists think that they are too many. If it were true, it would mean that the configuration space of nature has about forty dimensions. If it is difficult to imagine a four-dimensional space, what about forty!

The v>c world

Albert Einstein

In 1967, Gerald Feinberg game the name tachyon (from the Greek tacus, fast) to hypothetical particles whose possible existence had been proposed five years before by other researchers. Tachyons would have a unique property: they always move at speeds greater than the speed of light. Their mathematical behavior would not infringe the limitations of the special theory of relativity, which prohibits bodies with mass reaching the speed of light. Unfortunately this would cause other problems.

The idea of ​​the possible existence of tachyons was embraced with joy by science fiction writers, for they seemed to make interstellar travel possible in a reasonable time. For this, the following procedure would be effective: