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Geocentrist Robert Sungenis, author of Galileo Was Wrong and executive producer of the documentary The Principle considers himself uniquely competent to overthrow the entire world of physics and astrophysics. As such, it seems reasonable to have a look at his background and demonstrated competence in maths and physics.

Physics Major?

Sungenis presents himself as virtually the only person in the world who is both qualified and honest enough to expose the supposed vast scientific conspiracy to hide the truth of geocentrism from the world. He has repeatedly insisted that he’s credible in the field of cosmology because he was a “physics major”. But as documented in “Robert Sungenis, Physics Major?” we find that:

• Sungenis only took the first two most basic prerequisite physics courses that didn’t even involve calculus.
• He didn’t finish the four physics courses required to fulfill the prerequisites for a physics major.
• He inexplicably took two basic astronomy courses that would not contribute to the requirements for a physics major and were so basic as to be labeled “Primarily for nonscience majors”.
• He took none of the undergraduate physics courses that are listed as “Required courses in the major”.

Basic Math and Physics Blunders

Sungenis regularly makes basic blunders in physics, demonstrating that he does not accurately grasp even very elementary concepts. He also makes basic mathematical errors, again calling into question his fundamental competency to be pontificating on scientific matters. Here are many documented examples:

In the article “Geocentric Physics: Is That All You’ve Got?” Dr. Alec MacAndrew demonstrated that the geocentrist attempt posted by Sungenis, attempting to answer the extremely significant “Lagrange point challenge” issued to them by physicist Dr. Tom Bridgman, is plagued by basic mathematical blunders, naturally calling into question the fundamental mathematical and scientific compentence of the geocentrists. Perhaps even more significantly, Dr. MacAndrew discovered that the bulk of their “case” consisted of material plagiarized from mainstream scientists and presented, unattributed, as their own. Further examination shows that the problem of plagiarism by the top geocentrists – Robert Sungenis, Dr. Robert Bennett, and Dr. Gerardus Bouw – is much deeper than that and even extends into the pages of the geocentric “bible,” Galileo Was Wrong. While not exhaustive by any means, “Top Geocentrists Caught Plagiarizing” documents many cases of plagiarism by these top geocentrists.

At one point Sungenis attempted to rebut Sky and Telescope editor Camille Carlisle and demonstrated that he is simply not competent to handle even high school-level physics.  In “Elementary Physics Blunders in Sungenis’s Reply to Sky and Telescope’s Camille Carlisle” Dr. Alec MacAndrew pointed out many basic errors in Sungenis’s work. These are compounded by Sungenis’s replacement of the well-known and perfectly adequate mechanism of gravity with a made-up medium that, “magically [does] just what he needs it to do, while remaining completely undetectable whenever he doesn’t need it.”

In his attempt to respond to Dr. MacAndrew, Sungenis ended up compounding his errors by making even more basic math blunders.  See “Sungenis Botches the Math….Again!”

Sungenis’s incompetence in physics was again on display in his two mutually exclusive, but equally wrong, attempts to answer the CMB Alignment Challenge which we issued back in February of 2015, in response to the panoply of extravagant claims made by the new geocentrists about certain unexpected features of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). As Dr. MacAndrew says, “There is no shame in not knowing about a subject, but there should be shame in not knowing and yet pretending that you do, especially when you use your counterfeit knowledge to bamboozle others.”  See “Sungenis Fails the CMB Alignment Challenge…Twice”

In “Aether, Springs, and Light: Physics Blunders in Galileo Was Wrong” we find that when Sungenis tried to explain the propagation of light and more particularly the speed of light in his own system he managed to get the physics exactly backwards, while deploying still more basic mathematical errors.

In “The ‘Simple’ and ‘Scary’ Mindset of Robert Sungenis” we took a somewhat lighthearted look at Robert Sungenis falling hook, line, and sinker for a Youtube video which purported to “prove” the incredible claim that our Sun is much less massive than the Earth. Sungenis’s original verdict on the video’s claim was that, “It’s so simple it’s scary — scary in that it makes you wonder what other simple ideas we are missing because we’ve been so brainwashed by the Copernicans. I can’t find any flaw in this man’s logic or math . . .” Two days later, after receiving help from others, Sungenis completely reversed himself, declaring that the video was instead, “wrong, very wrong”. (His followers bravely stuck by him, though, as laid out in “Sungenis Followers Double Down”. One of them excused Sungenis, stating that without “specific expertise” the video could appear convincing. But Sungenis found this fundamentally erroneous video completely convincing. Shouldn’t Sungenis’s followers expect their leader to have at least the sort of elementary “specific expertise” that would allow him to spot the flaws in a preposterous claim that the Sun is much less massive than the Earth? If not, then how in the world can they trust his analysis of the complex physics and mathematics involved in proving the case for geocentrism?)

Somewhat more recently Sungenis has insisted that by “using the parameters of modern science”, “it turns out that the Earth is the heaviest object in the universe, just as Aristotle said.” His alleged support for this remarkable claim is laid out in more detail in a section of his book, Galileo Was Wrong. Turning there we find yet again that when Sungenis and his associates try to do actual physics the results are shot through with demonstrable misconceptions, oversights, logical contradictions, and outright math errors. All of these and more are documented in “Getting on the Wrong Wavelength: More Basic Physics Blunders by the Geocentrists”

In “Geocentrism and Stellar Aberration” we find not only that the geocentric “explanation” for stellar aberration absolutely will not work, but that in laying out that case Sungenis demonstrates that he fundamentally misunderstands aberration.

Dr. Tom Bridgman has said of the new geocentrists:

Geocentrists, like many other pseudo-scientists I’ve confronted on this blog, seem to be nothing but posers.  They want credit and recognition for achievements they have not done (link).

and:

Everything I’ve seen from Geocentrists is a cheat, trying to take someone else’s heliocentric solution and then moving the origin to the Earth.  They don’t appear to have the competence, or courage, it takes to actually transform the known equations of motion, Newtonian gravity and acceleration, well-tested in everything from laboratories to mechanics to spacecraft, to a reference frame where the body of the Earth is not rotating (link).

The bottom line is that the new geocentrists in general and Robert Sungenis in particular have yet to demonstrate that they have even a basic competence in science. And Sungenis, at least, dispenses himself and his cohorts from the same academic standards he expects from everybody else. It’s another unfortunate example from him of “one standard for me and another for thee.”

You can tell that you’ve got a great argument against strict Geocentrism when you see the geocentrists obfuscate, misdirect, do anything rather than actually address that argument.  In “Top Geocentrist Fails Pioneer Challenge” we saw that Robert Sungenis engaged in just such a misdirection campaign when challenged by Dr. Alec MacAndrew to explain how all of the corrections for daily motions necessary to glean data from the Pioneer spacecraft could plausibly be attributed to motions of the spacecraft, rather than motions of the Earth.  Sungenis never ponied up with an actual answer to the question – he sought instead to misdirect his readers by focusing on the interesting, but completely irrelevant, “Pioneer anomaly”.

Geocentrist Rick DeLano was confronted with a very similar challenge regarding geocentrism and the Voyager spacecraft.  Here’s how that challenge was laid out:

When viewed from ground [the Voyager spacecraft] also appear to be orbiting a stationary Earth once a day. IF the Earth was not rotating that would mean that V1 is now traveling at a speed of over 1.3 x10e6 km/sec. as it circled the planet, discounting its outward velocity.

Here’s the kicker. Both spacecraft are equipped with three gyroscopes containing sensitive accelerometers. All are still functioning and have been returning solid data since launch. But neither of the data sets shows any acceleration anywhere near that required to achieve your required orbital velocity. In fact, both data sets show the completely expected acceleration from their launch through their gravity slingshots by heliocentric planets to their location today. . . . As a matter of fact, no deep space probe at all has detected the kind of motion your . . . geocentric claims require.

Rather than answer the challenge, DeLano did the same thing Sungenis did – he obfuscated by pointing to the Pioneer anomaly without actually answering the question (see his pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain “answer” here.)  Several forum participants saw right through his shennanigans and pointed it out:

Evasive non-answer by DeLano noted. You Googled lots of information but you completely forgot to answer the questions:

How did the spacecraft manage to accelerate to the huge velocities required when all of the onboard instruments show only the normal trajectories? None show the huge accelerations and position changes your . . . Geo idea requires.

Why does all the space probe data support heliocentrism while none supports geocentrism?

Your cowardly side is showing here Ricky.

Another rightly pointed out that the Pioneer anomaly has nothing to do with the challenge to the geocentrists:

The “Pioneer anomaly”, interesting as it might be, has no relationship whatsoever to the question OA asked, which is a simple observational “point of view” item. It’s pretty telling that Rick chose to deposit squid ink and run rather than simply address the very simple question in front of him.

And yet another pointed out that, like Sungenis, DeLano even ignored the fact that the Pioneer anomaly had been explained, using perfectly conventional physics:

Rick’s counterpoint was to claim that the [anomalous] velocities of the Pioneer probes somehow answered OA’s questions about the Voyager probes.

Rick really didn’t answer anything and pooh-poohed the scientific findings of differential heat thrust that was applied to the Pioneer [anomaly].

Rick seems to live on [anomalies] but never reads the following addendum where the [anomalies] are explained.

In other words, DeLano never answered anything, he simply obfuscated and then refused to answer any of the subsequent challenges.  But the challenge that the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft represent to the neo-geocentric theory won’t just go away.  Here’s Dr. MacAndrew’s Pioneer challenge again:

Geocentrists would have us believe that the daily Doppler modulation was caused by variations in the velocity of the source (the spacecraft) and not by the Earth’s rotation which they claim does not exist. In that case, shouldn’t they explain why, according to them, the velocity of the Pioneer spacecraft, freely flying through space and several billion kilometres from Earth, cycled with a period of exactly one sidereal day? Can they explain why the details of the supposed Pioneer velocity cycle reflected all the subtle variations in the velocity of the ground station such as Earth’s precession, nutation, polar motion, and so on? Can they give us one good reason to conclude that the daily Doppler modulation was caused by daily changes in the velocity of the spacecraft rather than by earth’s rotation?

Obviously, neither Robert Sungenis or Rick Delano can give even one good reason.