1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/1-in-4-americans-dont-know-earth-orbits-the-sun-yes-really-140214.htm

by Benvie • 12 years ago

43 118 12 years ago

news.discovery.com

dubfan3• 12 years ago

The full paper is here (link in the story is broken): http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/c07....

To me the worst part is on page 25. Only about 30% of Americans understand scientific inquiry. I believe this is the root of the anti-science undercurrent in mainstream American society.

kderbe• 12 years ago

The table on page 23 shows the US tying or beating all other sampled countries for % correct in most of the basic science pop-quiz questions. How does this mesh with the widely-repeated statistics of US math and science education ranking 10th, 20th, or lower in the world? Is it because the answers come from the general population rather than students?

dubfan3• 12 years ago

Is it because the answers come from the general population rather than students?

I believe that is the case. Those studies you mention generally use results of standardized tests taken by students. For what it's worth I'm not convinced the methodologies used by those studies are very good.

kungpooey2• 12 years ago

I speak only as someone who was raised in a somewhat alternative upbringing. I wouldn't describe it as anti-science, but perhaps more critical of science. I thought moving away from those rural areas would bring me to see things differently, but overall anything claiming to be science, especially once you get into the more controversial subjects, seems to be more corrupted than nearly any industry which could impact society half as much. There almost seems to be a religious faith in certain bodies of self-claimed scientist. Funding, the lack of sharing their findings and sources has only embraced what I once thought I would see differently. Science is anything but, and the only one I trust is myself. I will not accept summerization of findings from the current community unless it agrees with traditional though or what I can come to understand myself.

dubfan3• 12 years ago

This is exactly what I mean. Science is not a religion. It is not a faith. Calling it that betrays a lack of understanding of the scientific method. The scientific method is not perfect and there are worrisome trends in modern practices of science (see the recent story about p-values being misused) but this is the sort of thinking that leads people to believe in nonsense like psychics, dowsing, homeopathy, anti-vaccine propaganda, etc.

_xhok• 12 years ago

Somewhat related: I've found in my general experiences that many people don't know what a scientific theory is. They think it means a guess. For example, a lot of people I've talked to think the Big Bang "Theory" is a work of fiction someone invented.

I've found that among a lot of the people I talk to there's this severe, fundamental lack of understanding around how science works. Not a lack of scientific knowledge per se; just a misunderstanding of science's modus operandi.

aortega5• 12 years ago

I've found in my general experiences that many people don't know what a scientific theory is. They think it means a guess.

Well they are correct.

Iftheshoefits3• 12 years ago

No, they are not even remotely close to being correct.

eksith3• 12 years ago

If a scientific theory is just a guess, then the human eye is a just lens.

I'm sure you're aware, there's a bit more to it than that.

jballanc4• 12 years ago

Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed.

Law: A descriptive generalization about how some aspect of the natural world behaves under stated circumstances.

Hypothesis: A testable statement about the natural world that can be used to build more complex inferences and explanations.

Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.

(Source: http://arstechnica.com/science/2006/08/5164/)

Edit:

How it works...

"Massive objects are attracted to each other by the force of gravity." == Scientific Fact.

"Objects in motion remain in motion. For every force there is an equal an opposite reaction. Force is mass times acceleration." == Scientific Law (Newton's Laws of Motion).

"The bending of space under the influence of gravity can cause light to curve around massive objects." == Scientific Hypothesis (Verified by Eddington's 1919 solar eclipse observations).

All of the above (and a whole lot more) put together == General Theory of Relativity.

Mz• 12 years ago

I once explained to my (very argumentative) ex that when most people use words like "hypothesis" or "theory" they basically mean "guess." He was shocked and then said something like "that explains a lot of conversations I have had..." Of course, he meant their scientific definition, not remotely what most people meant when arguing with him.

vezzy-fnord2• 12 years ago

Indeed, this is the reason why there is still so much backlash and state suppression of the highly established fact that is the theory of evolution.

Equivocation on top of religious biases.

sirtroll• 12 years ago

do you know why is it called theory instead of theorem,lemma or law?

BrownBuffalo• 12 years ago

I have Wikipedia for this. No joke. This is kind of like the argument about students during math using a calculator. General knowledge is less of a requirement even here in NYS with the Regents system. California I'm sure is more of the same. As long as you know how to find it, that's all that matters in life.

MichaelGG2• 12 years ago

Wikipedia for basic facts about the Earth? That's similar to saying you shouldn't need to learn how to add or multiply or calculate percentages because you have a calculator. (Not to mention, the real point of maths isn't calculation.)

robbiep• 12 years ago

This makes me so sad

eksith3• 12 years ago

Depressing, but not unexpected. The problem isn't necessarily anti-science; it's anti-authority. Anti telling me what I can or can't believe. Anti you think your "science" can tell me what I know in my heart/what I feel in my bones?

The last thing we should do is try to mash heads with this level of warm comfort and confidence in ignorance and instead ask questions to probe the depths of what they do know and why.

Why do you believe this? How would that happen?

People may be allergic to being told what to do and what to accept, but inviting them to wade in the waters of the scientific method may allow them to find answers themselves.

antocv2• 12 years ago

You're on to something.

I once met a person who was anti-anything which isnt coming from her own mind.

Science? Nah, she got "power of her mind" to bend and twist metals(move objects around - only if she could just focus and use more than 10% of her brain.

We got into a heated discussion about knowledge, science and philosophy, it all boiled down to "I believe whatever I want and thats the only thing that matters, no matter what you say or how things appear or whatever else".

At one point I asked her how she knows that she is right about that about anything, she said she doesnt really but she chooses to believe it. And hence anything, science, philosophy, knowledge, if the rock over there really is hard and if it really is going to fall to the ground if I keep it in the air and drop it, its all a matter of belief, and if people believe it hard enough it wont necessarily always fall to the ground.

How would you approach further discussion with her?

eksith3• 12 years ago

I think there was more to it than "I believe whatever I want". That's just her pride talking.

Heated arguments aren't very helpful IMO. I have a good friend who still believes the Earth is 5000 years old, but the last thing I want to do is bash his head into science.

That takes a long conversation over coffee (hopefully several cups) and ensuring that I don't make him feel like I'm looking down on him for what he believes. That's the worst way to convince anyone of anything, reality or not.

People have a tough time separating belief from idea. Beliefs need no evidence, but ideas are testable. Find out what her ideas are and we can move on to her beliefs later (or maybe you won't even need to go that far when she realizes the fallibility of unyielding belief).

andrewflnr• 12 years ago

The astrology thing is possibly a matter of vocabulary. Especially in a "let's talk about science" context, it would be easy to just hear "astronomy" and say "sure, that's a science".

vezzy-fnord2• 12 years ago

You'd be right about that: http://neoacademic.com/2014/02/14/nsf-report-flawed-american...

mercurial3• 12 years ago

I simply refuse to believe that. The notion that a quarter of the people supposed to vote in the ruler of the most powerful nation can't wrap their head around the most basic of scientific facts is too depressing to contemplate.

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

Ironically, this is probably exactly how that quarter of the population feels about the notion that the Earth orbits the sun.

PhasmaFelis2• 12 years ago

Note that the USA scored better than most of the rest of the world in this and several other basic science questions. The actual result is "humans aren't well-educated"; it's being cynically spun as "Americans are stupid."

mercurial3• 12 years ago

I'm not sure that makes me much happier.

antocv2• 12 years ago

Who cares about these studies?

I too would answer that the Earth orbits the moon if a sciency guy approached me in any kind of test and asked this question.

GhotiFish2• 12 years ago

You might have to explain that one to me.

lutusp14• 12 years ago

These sorts of arguments all fail the most basic principle of relativity -- that any viewpoint is relative. One can argue that the earth orbits the moon or the reverse, but the best way to think about it is that the earth and moon orbit their common center of mass. And that common center of mass orbits the sun -- or, if you prefer, the earth/moon common center of mass and the sun' center of mass have another common center of mass, around which they mutually orbit.

omarali• 12 years ago

I thought it's relative to what frame of reference you choose.

webXL• 12 years ago

That was my first snarky reaction. When I jump, it must appear to my feet that the earth is trying to catch up to them!

fahadkhan• 12 years ago

Yes! I find it more alarming that people claiming to understand science "believe" that the Earth orbits the Sun.

platz• 12 years ago

relative to us, then how to explain the sun's motion? I'm having a hard time visualizing/explaining this.

baddox4• 12 years ago

Technically, both objects are orbiting their barycenter, or center of mass. For the Sun and Earth, that barycenter is very near the center of the Sun, so in common parlance most people will refer to the Earth as orbiting the Sun.

Perhaps asking whether "the planets" orbit the Sun would lower the chance of ambiguity.

smnrchrds• 12 years ago

As long as you choose an inertial frame of reference, it wouldn't matter. Many people forget that while velocity is relative to the observer, acceleration is not. And we all know moving along a curved path has non-zero acceleration.

Imagine that you are in a vast empty dark abyss without gravity (a.k.a. the space) and all you can see is a transparent sealed container with some water in it positioned above your head. Consider these two scenarios: 1. You are rotating around the axis of your body with velocity Ω, and 2. The container has the velocity -Ω around the same axis. You might expect these two scenarios to be identical. After all, the relative velocity of two objects is similar in these cases. But only if the container is the moving body we will observe that the water is affected by centrifugal[1] force.

It is obvious that earth is rotating around the sun not the other way around. You just have to consider the forces.

[1] I know, I know. And you know it too.

lutusp14• 12 years ago

And we all know moving along a curved path has non-zero acceleration.

Not to give the OP undue attention for what is a truly weird post, but a curved path through curved spacetime (as seen from a different perspective), as with a gravitational orbit, can have zero acceleration.

It is obvious that earth is rotating around the sun not the other way around. You just have to consider the forces.

That's not obvious at all -- there are no forces at work in a relativistic orbit (because gravity is not a force). The earth and the sun orbit their mutual center of mass, neither experiences acceleration, and neither of them experience a real centripetal or fictional centrifugal force.

Therefore there would be no way to use centrifugal force to argue that one of the bodies has a special role in the orbit. It's easy to see why -- just adjust the relative masses, gradually make the sun's mass smaller and the earth's mass larger, and try to argue that there's a special moment where their roles reverse. Clearly not the case -- regardless of their relative masses they're always equal partners in an orbit, with one of the bodies farther from the mutual center of mass in proportion to its (smaller) mass.

sssbc• 12 years ago

So?

Even if title quote is true, what percentage of the population needs to know this (to live better, work better, act in some different fashion)? 5%? 1%? less?

In other words, it is knowledge of trivia for most people. Perfectly fine, if you go in for that sort of thing (and I do), but why look down your nose at those who don't?

Of course, knowing the scientific method can change how you act, but so can understanding lots of things. Finite time and attention. Or be a hater.

sonar_un• 12 years ago

The EU was even worse at 66% of those surveyed got the answer correct.

billyjobob• 12 years ago

The EU now includes a large number of ex-USSR countries and is not what most people think of when they think 'Europe'.

judk2• 12 years ago

1 in 4 Americans don't know a piece of technical trivia that has zero relevance to their lives, and is equivalent to their model on all ways that matter to them.

baddox4• 12 years ago

I found it bizarre that the author suggested that the heliocentric model and the spheroidness of Earth are the two most basic scientific facts.

RivieraKid• 12 years ago

Sherlock Holmes didn't either and he was a rockstar detective.

pessimizer• 12 years ago

You mean the 6000 year old earth borne through the ether by angels?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/145286/Four-Americans-Believe-Str... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/23/believing-in-angels...

jsdalton• 12 years ago

While true, the actual data presents a different picture:

http://i.imgur.com/FXMlOZB.png

[source: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/c07....]

So actually, the U.S. had the second highest score on that question, behind South Korea. Furthermore, the U.S. consistently performed on par or higher vs. the other countries/regions for the remaining questions.

The real outlier for the U.S. on this survey was the question about evolution -- only 48% of Americans got that right, significantly behind the rest of the pack.

lbrandy• 12 years ago

Another fun fact: Europeans were more likely to answer correctly about evolution than the earth going round the sun.

pyrrhotech• 12 years ago

That's obviously because a lot of people have religious beliefs that make more sense to them than evolution. It's not that they haven't heard of evolution, but that they reject it for the simpler theory found in their 3000 year old book.

ballard3• 12 years ago

Something like 95% of the entire human population believes in something supernatural. And also, what other nonsense do they believe?

MichaelGG2• 12 years ago

IME, that's because most people haven't ever heard any reasonable explanation of evolution. They honestly believe that evolution is just "random things happened and fish decided to walk on land". That "animals wanted to see so they randomly got eyes". Given that explanation of evolution of course they're going to reject it - that explanation is nonsense.

Creation is only simpler if you exclude the axiom of having some omnipotent creator in the first place.

kelseyfrancis• 12 years ago

The real outlier for the U.S. on this survey was the question about evolution...

Which, the way the question was worded, could reasonably be attributed to people just affirming their belief in creation irrespective of their actual ignorance of the accepted scientific explanation for the origin of humans.

ballard3• 12 years ago

Yes and the guns, mass surveillance and racially unequal incarceration tantamount to genocide.

piyush_soni2• 12 years ago

Does that mean around 1 out of 2 Americans doesn't believe in evolution? That's scary.

cema• 12 years ago

Why is that scary? If we assume it is indeed a matter of belief the 50/50 chance is not that bad. Now, I suppose both you and me think about it more as a matter of science, but how many people understand what science is (and why), how the scientific method is applied and so on? Well fewer than 50%, I'd guess. US, Europe or Africa, any place.

Houshalter2• 12 years ago

Why? The vast majority are religious as well.

stefan_kendall• 12 years ago

The form of evolution I was taught in school was strictly wrong. It's not hard to see why anyone would reject the principle outright.

tzs2• 12 years ago

On the question of whether or not the universe began with a huge explosion, they say the correct answer is "true".

Is that actually correct? This was before cosmic inflation, so the whole universe was very small at the instant of the Big Bang, and so wasn't it actually a small explosion?

lutusp14• 12 years ago

Cosmic inflation changed the expansion rate of the "explosion", but this doesn't mean there wasn't an explosion.

Cosmic inflation changed the density ratio between spacetime and mass/energy, but the entirety of the universe's mass/energy came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang. So yes, some explosion that.

Remember about this particular explosion that it wasn't an explosion of mass/energy into the empty space of a pre-existing universe, but an explosion of mass/energy and spacetime into nothing -- the Big Bang was space, time and mass/energy.

In other words, there was no "before" before the Big Bang, and there was no "outside" outside the Big Bang. The Big Bang was everything.

More detail here: http://arachnoid.com/gravity

ajayjain• 12 years ago

Where the percentage correct is significantly below 50%, it seems like there are very widespread myths being accepted, possibly dangerously. Malaysia scored 8% and Russia scored 18% on the second to last question (Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria) - that's scary to me from a public health standpoint.

dgant• 12 years ago

Here's a different way of looking a the data, on page 23 of http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/c07....

Americans know about as much as people in similarly developed countries.

Really. Compare to the success rates versus South Korea and Japan. And then compare it to less economically developed parts of the world. Americans were the most correct among the surveyed populations about radiation, antibiotics, atomic structure, and lasers.

The takeaway shouldn't be "Americans are ignorant" but really that "Education is hard" and "Poverty inhibits education"

triangleman• 12 years ago

Also interesting, only 32 percent of Indians answered "true" to the statement "The continents have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move" whereas 83 percent of Americans answered this question correctly.

waps3• 12 years ago

In other news : 3 in 4 hacker news readers don't know the earth doesn't orbit the sun at all. That is an impression created by the fact that the space around the sun moves as a result of gravity. This results in that the location of the earth doesn't change, but as the sun is sucking in space and constantly pushing out it's matter the distance doesn't change. This results in the fact that a straight line path around the sun at the relative speed difference that the earth the sun have, and then transpose said trajectory into an approximate euclidean space with the sun as it's point of origin results in a (roughly) ellipsoid trajectory.

But make no mistake : the earth is standing still, it's not moving. There is no actual movement of either the earth, or the sun, or for that matter, any other planet or body, as a result of gravity. The earth is not circling the sun, it is moving in a straight line through what just happens to be non-euclidean space. Hell there is no gravity acting on the earth, nor for that matter on you (on the contrary : you are being accelerated upward, not downward at roughly the rate at which the earth sucks up space).

(Here movement is defined as the only viable relativistic definition of movement : a movement that can be observed to be different from standing still, meaning travelling at a fixed speed in a straight line is not moving at all)

If the earth ever starts orbiting the sun, life on earth will become impossible in a matter of minutes, as the resulting acceleration would affect magma flow and would very quickly change the entire surface of the earth into a liquid state. In that case the earth's surface would quickly change to the average temperature of the earth itself : ~6000 degrees celcius.

People say that the earth is orbiting the sun, because people are thinking within an euclidean reference frame. If you ignore the fact that we live in a relativistic universe and just act as if it's euclidean, it looks like the earth is orbiting. But in (what we think) is the real structure of the universe, that's not the case at all.

Saying that the earth orbits the sun, or God forbid, that it circles the sun, are flat-out wrong statements. The last time scientists actually believed that was about 1931. The "science" that is being popularized is either old, or just flat-out wrong. This goes for other popular versions of scientific theories as well. If evolution is "mutate + natural selection + goto 1", then humans don't evolve at all, and neither does any larger lifeform (and it's still an open question if bacteria evolve or not). Hell, did you know the earth is the exact center of the universe ? No joke. Read a bit about Hubble's discovery. The big bang is not actually the beginning of time, google inflation theory (and even inflation theory doesn't model the beginning of time). Did you know that we lost ~98% (that's a lower bound) of all mass in the universe ? We have zero clue where the rest of the universe is.

chc2• 12 years ago

What is the meaningful difference between orbiting and moving in a straight line that creates an ellipsoid in Euclidean space?

lutusp14• 12 years ago

Well, apart from the fact that the OP is an undisciplined mixture of almost-right physics and fantasy, spacetime isn't Euclidean, it's curved by masses.

But, contrary to the OP, if you took a position above the sun's north pole, you would certainly see the planets orbiting the sun, just as in pre-relativistic physics. The reason? A different spacetime curvature at that location.

It's true that, in modern physical theory, there's no force called gravity. It's also true that the earth is moving in an inertial "straight" path through curved spacetime. But it is absolutely false to say that the earth isn't orbiting the sun.

baddox4• 12 years ago

I don't think that's an appropriate analysis, because "orbit" has a specific definition in science that abstracts away the technicalities like Euclidean space vs. gravity as "bent space." The Earth absolutely does orbit the Sun.

wvenable• 12 years ago

the earth is standing still, it's not moving... it is moving in a straight line

Wait, is the earth moving or not? I also can't figure out what definition of orbit you are using. Your comment feels far too clever for it's own good.

lutusp14• 12 years ago

The OP is trying to argue that there's a preferred frame of reference in a physical theory (relativity) that explicitly disallows preferred frames of reference. If you took a position roughly 200 million miles (about 320 million kilometers) above the sun's north pole, and watched from there, you would certainly see the earth orbit the sun. The reason? Different curvature from that perspective.

The OP could have simply said that, in relativity, there's no force called gravity, instead planets orbit their parent bodies because of curved four-dimensional spacetime. He then could have quoted physicist John Wheeler, who famously said, "Matter tells space how to curve, and space tells matter how to move."

After the OP correctly said that the earth is moving through curved spacetime in a straight line, IMHO he should have turned in his golf clubs.

Your comment feels far too clever for it's own good.

You got that exactly right. The OP's intention is to confuse, not enlighten.

Iftheshoefits3• 12 years ago

It is too clever, by half. From my perspective it's a long-winded and self-contradictory (as you note) attempt at punning with curvature tensors and metrics, only not doing it right.

300bps• 12 years ago

the earth is standing still, it's not moving...The earth is not circling the sun, it is moving in a straight line

You may have this somewhat right in your head but it comes out as contradictory nonsense in your comment.

everyone• 12 years ago

Yes the relativistic model is more accurate but like any physics it is still a model and only an approximation.

The newtonian / euclidian model is going to be accurate enough for most people (and some space missions) + its much simpler to compute and also it lies closer to human 'common sense' making it a lot easier for people to grasp and think about intuitively.

lutusp14• 12 years ago

This results in that the location of the earth doesn't change, but as the sun is sucking in space and constantly pushing out it's matter the distance doesn't change.

This is just one of many egregious errors the OP makes, scattered alongside a few obviously misunderstood elements of real physics. I advise HN readers to ignore the OP's post.

ealloc• 12 years ago

There are 3 main proofs (I know of) that the Earth orbits the Sun:

1. Stellar parallax: Stars will appear at slightly different positions in the sky due to the changing position of the Earth during its orbit. Many astronomers from the 1500s to 1800s hoped to measure parallax, and it was finally measured by Friedrich Bessel in 1838. This is the work that first made Bessel famous.

2. Stellar Aberration: Stars appear at slightly different positions during the course of the year due to the finite speed of light relative to the (changing) velocity of the Earth. This was first explained and carefully measured by James Bradley in 1729, making him the most famous scientist of the 18th century according to scientists of the time, including Laplace.

3. The Foucault pendulum: Pendulums on Earth precess. This is not so much proof that the Earth orbits the Sun, but that the Earth rotates in place. The fact that the sun appears to rise/fall/go around us is an illusion due to this rotation. First demonstrated by Foucault in 1851.

I disagree with you on the reference frame/general relativity argument. It is true that, by GR, the actualy picture of spacetime is more complicated. However, there is an intuitive notion of 'orbiting' which is very useful which applies in classical/SR, which applies in inertial reference frames, and in that ase the above observations make clear that the Earth orbits the sun.

Also:

it's still an open question if bacteria evolve or not
If the earth ever starts orbiting the sun...as the resulting acceleration would affect magma flow

This is silly.

GhotiFish2• 12 years ago

hell. No one knows anything if you assert that you don't truly know what something is unless you understand every minute intricacy of it. Most people wouldn't define gravity as an object moving in a straight line through space time. However those that know that that is the nature of gravity, would then define gravity as such.

pavelrub2• 12 years ago

There is so much wrong with this comment I don't even know where to begin. It will suffice to say that this is a huge conceptual muddle, and a great example of where conceptual confusion can lead us if we are not careful. You are confusing 'discovery' with 'giving new definitions', 'reality' with 'a mathematical model that describes...', physics with everyday language, and you also seems to be unaware of what 'orbit' and 'motion' actually mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_(physics)

It should be clear that it can never be the case that by using a new mathematical model we can come to the conclusion that "the earth is standing still". This would be equivalent to inventing a new theory of mind according to which people never get angry. At best, what we can achieve is a new interpretation of the words "standing still", different from what they actually means, under which the earth is doing something else. However, this would simply be a matter of choice, not of discovery, and a pretty bad one at that (see Wittgenstein's criticism of Freud).

lutusp14• 12 years ago

It should be clear that it can never be the case that by using a new mathematical model we can come to the conclusion that "the earth is standing still".

Apart from the OP's many outright errors, this one suffers from the defect that it assumes there is only one possible frame of reference. One can obviously choose a frame of reference in which the earth is motionless, but relativity denies any special significance to a particular frame of reference -- indeed, that's what relativity means.

rayiner• 12 years ago

The question as it's worded is: "does the earth go around the sun or does the sun go around the earth?" There's all sorts of reasons someone might get that question wrong. The way it's framed makes you visualize two systems and pick the right one, and people might have a problem with that. The phrasing depends on word order being significant in English in ways that might be confusing to foreign language speakers (of which the U.S. has many). Heck, just parsing it took me enough time that someone rushing through the survey might just not think about it too carefully before answering.

I bet if you showed two pictures, with a large sun orbiting the earth and one with a small earth orbiting a large sun, you'd get a much higher percentage right.

baddox4• 12 years ago

I'm not sure how you would setup the study, but has there ever been a study to see what percentage of people will respond to a survey like this incorrectly even if they know the correct answer, either due to a mistake, or general disinterest, or confusion over the question? Especially for the last possibility, I think reading comprehension could be a big culprit here.

jusben1369• 12 years ago

Everybody thinks the general population should be more knowledgeable about the particular topic they love. "Everyone should learn how to code!" "I can't believe people are so apathetic about how laws are made!" "Most people don't understand basic finance; how can they buy a home and save for retirement properly!"

alphydan• 12 years ago

I had a fascinating discussion with an ex trucker in Spain (who after an injury worked selling souvenirs in the old windmills where Don Quijote had once jousted according to Cervantes' book).

When he heard I was a physicist, he apologized in advance for being such a tool ... and then admitted that he thought the earth rotating around the sun was a mistake. He saw the sunrise every morning, always in the East, move around ... and then set in the West. Plus, wouldn't we feel the speed, or even disintegrate if we travelled so fast around the sun?

It was the first time I had encountered somebody who didn't think heliocentrism was possible, let alone other cosmological models. I paused before answering ... but then realized the man was right.

What evidence did he have that contradicted a sun rotating around the sun? He only studied until age 12. He never had a Foucault pendulum. And even if he had had one, the fixed stars idea and the earth's rotation is not the only interpretation.

I asked ... what about the astronauts who have been up there? Surely they must have seen the earth rotating. He was unconvinced. Things seem to rotate when you are very high as a result of vertigo. Could that be the explanation? What about the great speed of the earth he insisted? Wouldn't we feel that? [nobody had ever explained that to him, including his son who was an engineer]

I realized that this man was much more of a scientist than his peers who blindly believe what they are told in school: "the earth rotates around the sun". But ask them a deeper question: What is the evidence? Could the evidence be interpreted otherwise? Are we fooling ourselves (as is very common in science)?

Of course the answer to these questions is child's play for most technical people. There is a ton of evidence. But are the 3/4s aware of it? or do they just parrot the accepted wisdom.

The man turned out to be very smart, having learned the names of all his souvenirs in Korean, Japanese, German, French ... and having strong opinions about the dogmatism that religion blindly accepts.

So it's possible that in that 20% of "non believers" there are true scientists (or Quixotes!) who refuse to believe what they are told before seeing credible experimental evidence that they can reason deeply about.

1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

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