Astronomical and Metaphysical Consequences of Earthquakes

"The problem set forth by the [Royal Berlin] Academy [of Sciences] is expressed in the following terms: Whether the Earth in its Rotation around its Axis, by which it brings about the alternation of day and night, has undergone any alteration since the first period of its origin. What may be the cause of this, and what can make us certain of it? The question may be investigated historically. This may be done by examining monuments of antiquity dating from remotest times...." -- Immanuel Kant, natural philosopher, 1754

Scientific American: How the Earthquake in Chile Could Change Earth's Axis.

The 8.8-magnitude earthquake that jolted Chile on Saturday was felt as far away as São Paulo. But NASA scientists are proposing that its repercussions are truly global in a geophysical sense: it likely shifted the Earth's axis by about eight centimeters.

Such a shift would have the effect of shaking as much as 1.26 microseconds off of the Earth's daily rotation, noted NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Richard Gross in an agency release.

Those microseconds (each one millionth of a second) might not sound like a lot, and they probably will not change your sleep patterns or birthday, but they do accumulate. And as such a change will be permanent, over the decades and eons, it will eventually amount to a trickle of "lost" time. (If the scientists' early estimates are on target, this quake's impact, however, will take about 130,500 years to shear off a full minute.)

What Time Is It?

Louis, as in Louis Hissink, made a very keen Kantian observation the other day in the comments section.

"What we have thrown out is purely mathematical science with no connection to physical reality, and why we throw out Einstein's relativity theory - his initial error was to make time a physical entity - it isn't. Knock that assumption off its perch and the rest falls down." -- Louis Hissink, Nov 2008

Which got me thinking (yet again) about the unparalleled genius of my favorite scientist and philosopher of all time, Immanuel Kant, a.k.a. "The Great Chinaman of Königsberg" (Nietzsche, 1886).

"Ah-so, Grasshopper, your shaolin metaphysical training with respect to transcendental idealism in accordance with empirical realism is now complete," Kant must've been saying with folded legs and squinting eyes in Nietszche's imagination.



As you may or may not know, it was Immanuel Kant who discovered in 1754 that the Aristotelian/Newtonian concept of "absolute, true, and mathematical time" (Newton, 1687) does not exist in material reality but can only be thought of as ideal.

In order for time to be known in any absolute sense, it must be in the form of units, and in order for it to be in the form of units, it must be measured. So what units is time measured in? Days of course.

What Kant discovered in 1754 that changed the world forever is that the rotation of the Earth is being retarded due to tidal forces not to mention the radial increase of the Earth, thus the lengthening of the day.

"Kant pointed out in the middle of last [18th] century, what had not previously been discovered by mathematicians or physical astronomers, that the frictional resistance against tidal currents on the earth's surface must cause a diminution of the earth's rotational speed. This really great discovery in Natural Philosophy seems to have attracted little attention,--indeed to have passed quite unnoticed,--among mathematicians, and astronomers, and naturalists, until about 1840, when the doctrine of energy began to be taken to heart." -- Lord Kelvin, physicist, 1897

Time, according to Kant (1781), is the a priori form of our intuition and therefore not a thing in itself or a so-called "fabric" as claimed by 20th century dogmatism.

"If we...consequently take objects as they are in themselves, then time is nothing." -- Immanuel Kant, philosopher, 1781

"...As our intuition is always sensuous, no object can ever be presented to us in experience, which does not come under the condition of time. On the other hand, we deny to time all claim to absolute reality; that is, we deny that it, without having regard to the form of our sensuous intuition, absolutely inheres in things as a condition or property. Such properties as belong to objects as things in themselves never can be presented to us through the medium of the senses. Herein consists, therefore the transcendental ideality of time, according to which, if we abstract the subjective conditions of sensuous intuition, it is nothing, and cannot be reckoned as subsisting or inhereing in objects as things in themselves, independently of our intuition." -- Immanuel Kant, philosopher, 1781

If I had known about the essay contest "On The Nature of Time" and the $10,000 cash prize being offered by the Foundational Sciences Institute earlier [in time?], I would've addressed this issue in detail.

Physicist Brian Cox and others, interviewed on the BBC, agree as well.



And thus the house of cards that Einsteinian relativity is built upon comes tumbling down.

The speed of light is not a constant "c" as there is no such material thing as empty space, a vacuum, or void (the universe is filled with plasma) and the speed of light has been experimentally slowed to less than 38 miles per hour (Hau et al., 1999, 2001) in a frozen sodium ion chamber. The records continue to be broken. Therefore special relativity has been empirically falsified.

Newton, I., Principles of Math Treating Time As Absolute, 1687

Kant, I., Kant's Cosmogony: As In His Essay On The Retardation Of The Rotation Of The Earth And His Natural History And Theory Of The Heavens, 1754

Kant, I., Critique of Pure Reason, 1781

Kant, I., Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, 1786

Nietzsche, F.W., Beyond Good and Evil, 1886