Chapter 29: EROS & TYCHOS: love at first sight

"In Greek mythology, Eros is the Greek god of love and sex. His Roman counterpart was Cupid (‘desire’)." Source: Eros - Wikipedia (opens in a new tab)

What follows is the tale of my most cherished encounter during the course of my ardent Tychos research adventure: namely, that with the tiny planet or, if you will, near-earth asteroid (NEA) Eros. As we shall see, not only does Eros strenghten the Tychos model’s tenets; it also provides the strongest disproval of the heliocentric theory's 'explanation' for the periodic retrograde motions of our planets. Firstly though, a brief summary of our world's astronomers’ strenuous quest to measure the Earth-Sun distance is in order.

There was enormous excitement among the late 19th-century astronomers as Eros was discovered on 13 August 1898. In the previous decades, humongous efforts had been invested in determining the all-important Earth-Sun distance. For example, only for the sake of observing "Venus’ 1874 transit" - Wikipedia (opens in a new tab) across the solar disk, France, England and the US organized as many as 19 official expeditions around the globe, some of which cost the lives of several sailors and astronomers.

Why all these frantic and titanic efforts, you may ask? Well, since Venus is the (largest) celestial body that transits closest to Earth, the idea was to measure its parallax vis-à-vis the Sun, and thus to finally determine the exact Earth-Sun distance. In fact, both the close-passing Mars and Venus had been used for this purpose, yet there were ongoing controversies as to the accuracy of these observations. This is described in an essay by Edmund Ledger titled “The New Planet Eros”, published in 1900:

"“It was at one time hoped that this (the Earth-Sun distance) might be accurately determined in the case of Venus by observations made on those rare occasions when it passes in transit across the sun’s disk. But the glare of the sun’s light, the ill-defined edge of the sun’s disk, and the atmosphere of Venus itself, combine to deprive such observations of the necessary accuracy. Apart from some other methods, involving long periods of time and highly complicated theoretical investigations in their use, attention was therefore next given to an attempt to obtain the distance of the planet Mars when it makes its nearest approaches to the earth. It was, however, found to be difficult to measure the exact position of the centre of its disk.”

Enter Eros - the first near-Earth asteroid (NEA) to be discovered. When Eros was discovered by German astronomer Carl Gustav Witt at the Berlin Observatory on 13 August 1898, it was soon realized that it would pass much closer to Earth than either Mars or Venus. Two years after its discovery, Edmund Ledger wrote:

“But in the case of Eros we meet with something utterly different and unexpected. A new planet has been discovered whose average distance from the sun is less than that of Mars; a planet which at times comes within a distance from the earth not much more than one third of the nearest distance within which Mars ever approaches it.” "Essays in Astronomy" - by Edmund Ledger (1900) (opens in a new tab)

Today, Eros’ closest passages to Earth (~0.17 AU) are estimated to be roughly 2 and 3 times closer than the closest passages of Venus (~0.3 AU) and Mars (~0.45 AU), respectively. Eros is the largest member of a group of NEAs referred to as ‘the Amor asteroids’ (opens in a new tab). In Latin, ‘amor’ means ‘love’, and ‘Eros’ was the Greek God of love. Why this peculiar nomenclature is interesting will soon become clear.

As I studied the available data of Eros so as to integrate it into the Tychosium simulator, I noticed that Eros’ closest near-Earth passages occur approximately every 81 years at virtually the same place in our sky (note that this is somewhat reminiscent of Mars’ 79-year cycle). Having gathered the known parameters of Eros (i.e. orbital size, speed, ephemerides, closest passages to Earth), I activated the Tychosium simulator's ‘Trace’ function for Eros and pushed ‘play’. That’s when my jaw dropped. I think you can imagine me gasping in utter fascination at the lovely shape traced by Eros’ orbit around our Solar System...

That’s right, ladies and gents: Eros - named after the Greek God of love - traces a huge heart around our Mother Earth - otherwise known as a "cardioid" (opens in a new tab)!

I then proceeded to adjust (within the Tychosium simulator) some of Eros’ closest Earth passages by perusing the data at the JPL/NASA website. Within a few hours of toggling, I was pleased to see that ‘my TYCHOS Eros’ was in excellent agreement with the JPL/NASA ephemeride tables for asteroid Eros. Here follows a back-to-back comparison chart between the JPL and the Tychosium ephemerides of five super-close passages of Eros (1850, 1931, 2012, 2093, 2174). They make for a most spectacular match.

Eros’ closest Earth passages (in ‘opposition’) at intervals of ~81 years.

At this point, you will probably be curious as to how this excellent agreement between the JPL and the TYCHOS ephemerides of Eros will look like, as viewed in the respective JPL/NASA and Tychosium solar system simulators. My below diagram compares the latest super-close passage of Eros (January 31, 2012) - as depicted in the two simulators:

As you can see, the two simulators are in near-perfect accordance as to the relative spatial positions of all the celestial bodies of our Solar System. Yet, in the Tychosium, it is the Sun that revolves around the Earth - and not vice versa. I would now like to encourage the inquisitive readers to verify this for themselves: go to the Tychosium 3D simulator (opens in a new tab) and activate Eros' orbit (by checking the Eros box in the 'Planets' menu). You may then open the JPL orbit viewer for Eros (opens in a new tab) at the JPL/NASA website - and start comparing the orbital motions of Eros in the two simulators.

As I further studied the longterm / secular motions of Eros I came to realize that its more exact 'short' cycle is in fact 81.1 years. This piqued my curiosity, since 81.1 years is exactly 1/10000th of 811000 years, i.e. our Solar System's "Mega Cycle" (as expounded in Chapters 16 and 20). Well, as you may verify in the Tychosium simulator, Eros will indeed return to the almost exact same place in our skies at both ends of any 811000-year period! Example: On the date 1-06-21, Eros was at RA 10h33m and DEC +1°50', and on the date 811001-06-21, Eros will be at RA 10h36m and DEC +1°28'.

EROS DISPROVES THE HELIOCENTRIC "EXPLANATION" FOR OUR PLANETS' RETROGRADE MOTIONS

We shall now look at the most peculiar aspect of Eros’ observed behavior in the skies: it is a true 'mystery of astronomy' that Eros is hardly ever observed to retrograde (i.e. to reverse direction), unlike all the other planets of our Solar System.

“Unlike most objects in the solar system, Eros never appears to be retrograde (back-track across the sky).” "Eros" - Simple Wikipedia (opens in a new tab)

The above statement from the Wikipedia is not quite correct. As Eros passes closest to Earth, it will indeed back-track a tiny bit (by a mere ~20 min of RA on average - and sometimes as little as 5min of RA). Now, remember: the Copernican model’s proposed explanation for the periodic retrograde motions of our planets is that, as Earth overtakes Mars (or as Venus overtakes Earth), the planets will appear to backtrack (i.e. reverse direction) for several weeks due to a supposed optical parallax illusion caused by the shifting viewing angle of the planet in relation to the starry background.

Well, the observed celestial motions of Eros highlight the glaring problem with this explanation: as we saw earlier, Eros transits almost twice closer to Earth than Venus. Thus, if retrograde motions were caused by such angular shifts, this would violate the basic laws of parallax and perspective: if the Copernican explanation for these retrograde motions were true, then the near-Earth asteroid Eros should be observed to retrograde against the starry background by a much larger amount than Venus!

As always, a picture speaks more than a thousand words:

Note that the orbital speed differential between Earth (~30 km/s as of the Copernican model) and Venus (~35km/s) is virtually identical to the speed differential between Earth (~30 km/s as of the Copernican model) and Eros (~25 km/s). In both cases, the speed differential is 5 km/s. Hence, the fact that Eros hardly retrogrades at all remains a total mystery - that is, as viewed under the Copernican model's paradigm.

You may now be curious to know exactly how Eros is empirically observed as it transits closest to Earth. Once more, the Wikipedia provides us with a handy illustration showing how astronomers recorded the super-close transit of Eros in the early months of 2012:`

You may concede that, when viewed in the Copernican model, Eros’ trajectory (what with its abrupt, V-shaped retrograde pattern) is extremely bizarre. How can this possibly be reconciled with what would be a simple, linear ‘overtaking maneuvre’ on the part of Earth? Surely, something else is going on? Once more, the Tychosium simulator can show us (via its 'Trace' function) precisely why Eros is empirically observed to behave in such a peculiar manner as it transits closest to Earth:

In conclusion, it is the heart-shaped orbital trajectory of Eros (as of the Tychos model) that causes this peculiar, minuscule, V-shaped 'retrograde' of Eros. All of the planets, comets and Near-Earth Asteroids revolving around the Sun appear to obey to some magnetic force - and behave as if they were attached by a virtual yo-yo string to our star. It is the length and speed of this 'yo-yo string' that determines the variable shapes of our planets' orbital, spirographic paths - and their variable retrogrades. After all, there's really nothing otherworldly about this apparent 'action-at-a-distance': here on Earth, we can all make small magnets levitate and revolve (just by a little finger push) around a large 'Mother Magnet' - as if attached by invisible strings. Of course, what remains to be understood is just what sort of ethereal forces originally set all of our universe's celestial bodies in motion in the first place - and how they are kept rotating in such constant and clockwork-like manner, century after century.

As an anecdotal aside, I'd like to share this dazzling tale concocted by the ever-so-imaginative NASA scriptwriters. You see, NASA claims to have landed a probe upon Eros back in February 2001, as it found itself at 2AU (i.e. twice the distance to the Sun). As their story goes, their remote-contolled probe would have landed just around Valentine's Day, February 14. Apparently, the fairytale wasn't deemed to be complete without an even sillier claim that the probe had captured some pretty sharp photographs of Eros from a distance of 2590km (i.e. roughly the distance between Stockholm and Rome!). Now, and here's the kicker: these alleged photographs would have revealed a distinct HEART-SHAPED depression on the very tip of the dildo-shaped Eros. Yup, folks - you've gotta love it!

The worldwide NASA fan club will probably dislike the TYCHOS - much like we all loathed the moment when we realized that Santa Claus was just a deceptive tale sold to us by our own, trusted parents. Evidently, one of the hardest things for most people to overcome is their emotional attachment to such dreamy and seductive childhood beliefs. Alas, our current generations grew up under the spell of NASA's crafty storytellers; yet, more and more people around the world are starting to realize just how deeply they have been deceived. Around 2015, NASA's propaganda department launched a (quite clever and successful) "damage control psychological operation" designed to discredit-by-association (DBA) anyone questioning their purported space exploits; in what I like to call "the Flat Earth DBA operation", scores of seemingly 'independent / grassroot' videomakers have kept diffusing the (silly) idea that the Earth is flat as a pancake. Now, the 'trick' consists in portraying these flat-earth proponents as 'NASA deniers'. In such manner, the general public will promptly dismiss the very notion that NASA is an outright scam, since this (correct) idea is being championed by 'those kooky, tinfoil-hatted flat earthers'. The bottom line to all this is that, as long as people will keep buying into NASA's 'authoritative' claims that rockets can somehow propel themselves beyond the Earth's atmosphere, they can be kept believing in just about any fairytales and quack science diffused through the monopolistic, globalized media machine put in place by the ruling oligarchy of this planet.

Yet, the art of deception isn't only about people fooling other people. In the next chapter, we shall see how even Mother Nature herself can sometimes deceive our entire planet's population - including our sharpest observational astronomers. As will be revealed and meticulously demonstrated, their (specious) determination of the 'cigar-shaped' orbital paths of comets was a case of mistaken identity (asteroid Eros was mistaken for 'the first sighting' of "the Great Comet of 1680" - a.k.a. "Newton's comet"). This fateful trickery of Mother Nature prompted Sir Isaac Newton to formulate what has to be the most bizarre conclusion of his entire career; namely, that comets would move around extremely elongated, cigar-shaped ellipses. This is, of course, in stark contrast to all other orbital motions in our skies. Keep in mind that asteroids and comets - e.g. Eros and Halley's - can be very similar in size and can approach Earth at very similar distances: for instance, asteroid Eros (size: ca. 16km) and comet Halley (size: ca. 15km) can both transit as close as ~0.1AU to planet Earth. So the question becomes: WHY then would asteroids and comets have wildly different orbital shapes? Weren't Newton's 'laws of Universal Gravitation' precisely meant to equally apply to the entire universe? The term 'universal' clearly doesn't apply if two types of Earth-grazing celestial objects of similar dimensions would obey to wholly different physical principles!

Indeed, any rational thinkers should pause right here and ask themselves: "why would the Universal Laws of Gravity govern the orbital paths of asteroids and comets in totally different manners?" I suspect that even our world's top astrophysicists would be unable to answer this question. However, the next chapter should clarify just why comets are (wrongfully) believed to 'revolve around' cigar-shaped orbits. Chapter 30 will be the most long-winded of this book - and necessarily so - but I do hope that the logic of its reasoning will be fully assessed and appreciated; I dare say that it provides indisputable and definitive evidence that even comets move along circular (yet trochoidal) trajectories, much like all other celestial bodies. By 'reverse engineering' the secular motions of Halley's comet as (dubiously) recorded throughout the ages, we shall see that only the TYCHOS model can account for the same - rationally and without contradictions.