Kevin Wampler <wam### [at] uwashingtonedu> wrote:
> The closest thing I've seen is the argument that a hollow earth is 
> possible because our theories of gravity are wrong.  You're correct that 
> it's amusing though, here's an example:

> http://hollowplanet.blogspot.com/2010/08/gravity-modern-enigma.html

  I just love the cherry-picking that these people do.

  The pioneer anomaly is indeed existent (as well as the flyby anomaly,
which might or might not be related, and which the blogger missed even
though it would have been a wonderful addition to the list) and physicists
fully acknowledge its existence.

  The problem is that mentioning only it is cherry picking. It ignores the
hundreds and thousands of other experiments which can be and have been used
to corroborate GR, and they do give accurate results to as much precision
as we can measure, exactly how GR predicts.

  So if we have something like a thousands different experiments that
confirm GR to the highest degree of measurable accuracy, and two which
deviate a bit from it, which option is more probable, that GR is wrong,
or that there's something else affecting those two particular cases?

  It's also making a category error. While pioneer and flyby anomalies
are significant (in the statistical sense, iow. they cannot be attributed
solely to measurement errors), they are minuscule. Even if (and that's a
big if) they mean that GR has to be fine-tuned, the change wouldn't be
large. On the other hand, if the hollow Earth hypothesis is correct, it
would require a completely humongous change in not only the theory of
gravity, but to most other physics as well.

  It's a bit like saying that "the measurement of the distance between the
Earth and the Moon using a laser has an error of 1 meter; that means that
we could just as well estimate the diamater of the Earth to be 1 kilometer".

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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