Another Mockumentary: Holocaust Denial Blends With Creationist Codswallop

The news on salon.com that physicist Lawrence Krausse and former Star Trek actress Kate Mulgrew were integrated into an asinine  pseudo-science documentary, entitled ‘The Principle’ (what I call a mockumentary)  caught many people by surprise. Surprise that idiots are still peddling this geocentric bunkum – that the Sun revolves around the Earth and not vice versa, and also that a prominent Holocaust denier named Robert Sungenis was behind it.

 

Anyway , it has been reported to be narrated by “Star Trek” alum Kate Mulgrew. Now the actress, who played “Star Trek’s” Capt. Kathryn Janeway, has come out publicly on her Facebook  page to distance herself from the film. Ms. Mulgrew’s FB post stated:

 

“I understand there has been some controversy about my participation in a documentary called THE PRINCIPLE. Let me assure everyone that I completely agree with the eminent physicist Lawrence Krauss, who was himself misrepresented in the film, and who has written a succinct rebuttal in SLATE. I am not a geocentrist, nor am I in any way a proponent of geocentrism.

 

More importantly, I do not subscribe to anything Robert Sungenis has written regarding science and history and, had I known of his involvement, would most certainly have avoided this documentary. I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that. I apologize for any confusion that my voice on this trailer may have caused. Kate Mulgrew”

Her reference to Prof. Lawrence Krausse refers to the fact he also had somehow  been snagged into a pseudo-appearance on this travesty, along with several other scientists to appear in the trailer. Since being alerted of this perfidy Prof. Krauss wrote a response piece in Slate in which he lambasted geocentrism and stated that he did not know how the clips of him were obtained.  He wrote:

“Even after being inured to such things, I was surprised to learn of the premise of the film, until I learned that its producer also apparently questions the Holocaust. It is tempting to say that both claims are obscene nonsense, but I believe that does a disservice to the word nonsense.”

 

‘The Principle’ follows along  the typical moronic lines of approach displayed in piffle such as the work of Young Sun- Young Earth aficionado, Jason Lisle.  That is, ignore all the scientifically discounting  evidence in favor of ancient tracts – scribbled by semi-literate peasants and sheep herders.

Both the ‘Young Sun- Young Earth’ and geocentric perspectives are those of firm pseudo-scientific knuckle draggers in the creationist mold. Both are made up nonsense extracted from Genesis. However,  the geocentric bilge probably beats the former by a hair in terms of having the most bull pockey.  The reason is that anyone who’s been exposed to the most basic Newtonian mechanics (usually taken in high school physics – at least it used to be) would know that the primary and more massive object always  attracts the less massive with a greater force of attraction, according to Newton's law of gravitation.

 The force of attraction of a  large mass M for a less massive orbiting object, m , is equal to the centripetal force:

 
GMm/R² = m v²/R

Here m is the mass of the planet and R its distance, while M is the mass of the Sun.

 

Now the Earth’s mass is 6 x 10 ²⁴ kg and Sun’s mass M = 2 x 10 ³⁰ kg.

 The centripetal acceleration with which the Earth ‘falls’ toward the Sun’s center is then found by solving for a = v²/R  or:

a =   GM/R² =  

  (6.7 x 10 ^-11 Nm²/ kg ²) (2 x 10 ³⁰ kg )/  (1.5 x  10 ¹¹ m) ²  =

 

5.9 x  10 ^{- 3} ms^{- 2} 

Thus the unbalanced attractive force is on the side of the vastly more massive (by 330,000 times) Sun. Hence, like a massive (200 lb.) human swinging a much lighter child (50 lb.) around at the end of a rope, the Sun exerts the dominant central force. 

 Sungenis’ bunkum, then,  makes about as much sense as claiming that a fifty pound child can swing  a 200 pound adult around at the end of a rope and dictate the adult’s  circular motion. It is total irredeemable idiocy that only confirmed  idiots  and semi-educated fools could believe.

 It is unclear how much Ms. Mulgrew knew before she signed up, but it is possible she could have been told any old lies or story to get her onboard, including that it would be a “scientifically educational presentation like ‘Cosmos’” These sort of degenerates – like Holocaust deniers- will say anything to push their  crap onto the unsuspecting or enlist their support. As for Prof. Krauss and the other scientists, we know the copy and paste motif exists in video as well as in still images, so that Sungenis could have grabbed pieces of other presentations from anywhere (say PBS series) then spliced them into his grab bag of bollocks.

 

The cautionary tale in all of this is that we need people - especially celebrities and scientists-  to be wary and suspicious before they accept a role for any claimed "scientific" documentary. The knuckle draggers will stop at nothing to push their lies or recruit whoever they can to help push them.