Huh? Who said anything about tidal accelerations? I just used Hamiltonian dynamics to get the relative acceleration from the potential energy. If you're going to argue, point out a math error, don't try to pick apart the concept. Also, re: the equation of motion derived from Newton's theory; to everyone else reading, brucep repeatedly mentioned the equation dr/dt=[2M/r]^1/2 in the other thread. I finally figured out that it's the equation for the velocity of a small test mass falling into a massive body from infinity. Note that I said "small test mass", because I was able to re-derive it by treating the large mass as fixed and setting kinetic+potential energy equal to zero for the falling mass. Like every other formula that contains M without m, this is an approximation; in reality, the large mass would not be fixed, which is what leads to the effect RJBeery and I are arguing for.
I agree, and I'm sure RJBeery would as well, assuming we're still just talking about Newtonian mechanics.
You're quite right here, but I don't know why you think center of mass is the important coordinate. It seems to me that the time it takes a dropped object to fall to Earth could be rigorously defined as the time it takes for that object to collide with the Earth, which will be slightly shorter for a heavier object. The fact that the system's center of mass will be in a different place relative to the point of collision is true, but irrelevant.
You've just reinforced why I think it's important, it also somewhat obviates {in my opinion} this whole 'falling towards a black hole' thing.
There are a whole lot of contexts that are being missed . For example, what Gallileo
actually said, as I understand was that all objects fall at the same rate, in opposition to the aristotlean proposition which was popular at the time which was that the rate at which an object falls is dependent on its composition. Nothing that has been offered in this thread so far contradicts the observation that all objects fall at the same rate towards the earth. The only thing the OP has offered is that the earth falls towards more massive objects more quickly - well duh! But this is beside the point. To the best of my ability to discern Gallieo's comments were made, more or less, considering objects (essentially) falling through a bottomless pit. My point being that the rate at which the earth falls towards the objects is irrelevant to anything that gallileo said and the assertion that he is wrong - especially in the experiments described in the thread so far, would require measurements precise enough that quantum effects are going to become important. In fact the level of discrepancy where taling about here is... I don't have the words to describe it.
The average weight of a golfball is 45.93 g
The maximum weight of a Bowling ball is 7260g.
The mass of the earth is (5.97219x10^{27})g
The mean radius of the earth is 637,100,000 cm.
The center of gravity of a golfball and the earth, assuming the earth is a homgenous sphere {it isn't) with the golfball at an altitude of 1km is at a distance of (4.9x10^{-20})m from the center of the earth - this is about (\frac{1}{150}) of the charge radius of a proton.
A bowling ball is 158 times more massive than a bowling ball, so the center of gravity of a bowling ball and the earth, using the same assumptions as above, with the bowling ball at an alttitude of 1km is going to be displaced by approximately the charge radius of a proton.
But this is the maximum distance the earth can fall, the earth isn't even going to move that far - the bowling ball and golf ball can only fall a
maximum of 1km before it hits the earth, and the earth and the bowling/golf ball stop moving. The actual distance the earth is going to move in the case of the golf ball is (\frac{1}{150} * \frac{1}{6371}) or on the order of one ten millionth of the charge radius of a proton, for the bowling ball it will be on the order of on ten thousandth of the charge radius of a proton.
Setting aside the fact that for the OP being correct requires taking gallileo's words out of the context they were originally phrased in.
Setting aside the obvious problems regarding accuracy of the numbers to begin with.
We're still left with numbers that are so small that I would go as far as saying that they're practically meaningless anyway.