Hoyle admits that the stars affect what occurs in our Sun-Earth system, which is not hard to understand since, in his system, the sun is revolving around the Milky Way at a speed of about 500,000 miles per hour (which is about eight times faster than he believes the Earth is revolving around the sun). If the sun must travel so fast in order to equal the Milky Way’s pull toward the center, then it can be safely said that the mass of stars at the core of the galaxy have a great effect on the sun, and in turn, a great effect on the planets going around the sun. Hoyle, for simplicity’s sake, confined his example to “a star…moderately close to the solar system,” but in reality, there are billions of stars in the universe; and each one, however small, has an effect on our sun-Earth system. As such, the stars must be strategically placed in the universe in order to allow the proper balance of forces to be maintained in the sun-Earth system. No doubt this is implied in such Scriptural passages as
Psalm 147:4 [146:4]: “He determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names,” or
Isaiah 40:26: “Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars. He who brings out their host by number, He calls them all by name; by the greatness of His might, and by the strength of his power, not one is missing.”
We can draw two more points from the foregoing information. First, since the stars produce forces affecting our sun-Earth system, then it would be logical to conclude that the forces we experience in our locale are, in part, a product of the conglomeration of stellar forces acting upon us. This means that such things as the inverse-square law, centrifugal force, Coriolis force, and any other force or momentum we calculate on Earth must in part be a result of the forces surrounding us from the universe. As Misner, Thorne and Wheeler have stated it: “Mass there governs inertia here” (
Gravitation, pp. 543, 546-47, 549. That is, the mass of the stars governs inertia on Earth). For example, although the inverse-square law is normally understood as being the ratio of the mass to the distance of two or more local objects (e.g., sun and Earth), in reality, the formula
implicitly includes the mass, force, and distance of all the universe’s stars, as well as the objects in the immediate locale under consideration. A simple way to understand this is: if the universe did not have stars, then
would be inaccurate and need to be revised. As Hoyle has noted, even one close star can affect the “center of mass” in our sun-Earth system, thus it is just a matter of understanding the effect of the billions of stars in the universe and applying it to the phenomena of gravity and inertia.
Consequently, modern science is unable to refute the proposition that formula
is a product of both the local and the non-local systems due to the fact that it is not been able to explain the cause of gravity. Although the components of
appear as if the force of gravity is merely a ratio of mass to distance of the local bodies, since modern science has no explanation for what actually causes gravity and can only tell us that the force increases or decreases depending on mass and distance, it is at a loss to discount the rest of the universe as being an integral part of what causes the increase or decrease of the gravitational force. For example, the two local bodies may merely be disturbances in a sea of gravitational force emanating from the remote regions of the universe that we, in turn, conveniently measure by the formula
and which modern science, without knowing any differently, attributes only to the interaction between the two bodies in our local system.
Another facet of the principle that Hoyle brings out regarding the “center of mass” (also known as a “barycenter”) and how it is affected by the stars is that, since, as we stipulated, the stars are precisely numbered and strategically placed in the universe (which coincides with the fact that, according to
Genesis 1:1-2, the Earth was the first strategically placed object in the universe), then it follows that this precise alignment of the stars would be in a counterbalancing formation against our sun and planets, situated in such a way as to make Earth the immovable barycenter of the universe. Accordingly, such passages as
Job 26:9 [26:7]: “He…hangs the Earth upon nothing,” which indicates that the Earth is suspended in space and not supported in any sense by any other celestial body, would be precisely the case if the Earth were the “center of mass” for the universe. If a hole could be dug to the center of the Earth, the above circumstance would be analogous to placing a baseball at the center where it would be suspended weightless and motionless. Yet gyroscopic laws show that any force that attempts to move the barycenter will be resisted by the entire system, and analogously the Earth will resist any force against it with the help of the entire universe. Just as a small gyroscope will keep a huge oil tanker afloat across the ocean without swaying, so the universe in rotation does the same with the center of mass, the Earth (Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne and John A. Wheeler, Gravitation, New York: W. H. Freeman, 1973, pp. 1117-1119. Misner, et al, already stated much earlier in their book that the CMB had the precise form and intensity expected if Earth were the centerpiece of a blackbody cavity (Gravitation, pp. 764-797). The logical conclusion should have been that the Earth is in the center of the universe and the universe is closed).
Anaximander (d. 547 B.C.) held to the same idea: “The Earth…is held up by nothing, but remains stationary owing to the fact that it is equally distant from all other things” (As obtained from Aristotle’s
De Caelo, 295b32, cited in
Popper’s Conjectures and Refutations, p. 138. Anaximander, however, understood the Earth to be in the shape of a drum rather than a globe).