Our solar system bears witness

The Forces of Nature by Kelland Terry, Ph.D.
In 1610 an Italian named Galileo began using a spyglass that was invented a couple of years early by a German spectacle maker living in the Netherlands by the name of Hans Lippershey. The spyglass he invented magnified objects because it used a two lens system.

Using a spyglass he built, Galileo quickly discovered that the planet Jupiter had moons that rotated around it. He had confirmed what Copernicus had concluded some 60 years earlier—that smaller solar bodies rotate around larger central bodies, which meant that Earth rotated around the Sun. Of course, we all know this got Galileo into hot water with the all powerful Catholic Church, and he was nearly executed because the Bible says the opposite. Science and religion have come a long way in the past 400 years, but unfortunately, strong remnants of this thinking exist today.

Using a spyglass that came to me as a gift from my wife, I had the pleasure one starry night in Rockville to see the moons of Jupiter and watch over a period of several nights as they appeared first on the left side then the right side of the planet. I realized I was viewing with my own eyes exactly what Galileo had witnessed 400 years earlier. I suddenly felt connected to this ancient scientist.

Not only do all heavenly bodies rotate around other heavenly bodies they also spin on their axes. Earth rotates around the Sun once per year, and it spins on its axis once every 24 hours, which means as I sit here at the computer, I am actually traveling eastward at approximately 1000 miles per hour because Earth is spinning on its axis in that direction.

The curious thing is this: All heavenly bodies have their own unique spin rate. What causes the planets, the moons and our Sun to spin at different rates, and some at rates far different than expected? What can elastic string theory tell us about the spin rate of the stellar bodies in our solar system? Kelland—www.vestheory.com