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Re: universe expanding, not from any particular spot

At 09:24 PM 8/13/00 -0400, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:
Newtonian mechanics implies existence of an absolute frame
of reference.

Absolute? That's news to me.

After laughing, ants started communicating and
decided that it is not reasonable to use local frames of reference.

Galileo's work, including his principle of relativity, preceded Newton's
work by decades, and was well known to Newton.

They decided to describe individual trajectories in the absolute
frame (the frame of "fixed stars"). Why not? It is available.

It is not available. The whole topic of conversation hinges on the fact
that the stars are all moving, with a velocity proportional to
distance. Each ant can average these velocities, or extrapolate them to
zero distance, to get her own stellar reference frame -- but her frame will
be moving with respect to other ants' reference frames!

It should be obvious from symmetry that the universe has no preferred spot
from which the expansion emanates.