The responsibility of the claimant is to prove his positive.
If you were answering my post (you may have noticed the button?),
I was giving YOU the opportunity to prove the Globe false, so come down off your high horse!
But, since you brought up the proof question, you are claiming the earth is flat, when without doubt most people accept that it is a Globe.
So, I would claim that: "The responsibility of the claimant is to prove his positive."
If you look out the window you will see evidence that the earth is flat. We have yet to see something as obvious and clear to tell us that the earth is a globe.
Some time back I claimed that the globe simply will not fit on "your flat earth", you asked for evidence. I gave some, but was completely ignored! So, I'll try again!
Please provide your evidence.
I apologise for the length, but you wanted evidence!
There is not much disagreement about the distance from the equator to the north pole being close to 10,000 km.
- That is how Napoleon defined the metre.
- The Wiki says so!
Latitude
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Knowing that as you recede North or South from the equator at equinox, the sun will descend at a pace of one degree per 69.5 miles, we can even derive our distance from the equator based upon the position of the sun in the sky.
Since there are 90° of latitude from the equator to the north pole, the distance must be 90 x 69.5 = 6,250 miles or 10,058 km, close enough for this application. Mind you Napoleon was closer!
The equatorial circumference is where there may be a dispute. The accepted (globe) distance is 40,075 km.
A value very close to this this has been accepted for over 1,000 years. Of the medieval Persian Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (973–1048) it is said:
Al-Biruni
Important contributions to geodesy and geography were also made by Biruni. He introduced techniques to measure the earth and distances on it using triangulation. He found the radius of the earth to be 6339.6 km.
This gives an equatorial circumference of 39,833 km - not far from the current 40,075 km. Note that his methods were some of the earliest examples of Geodetic-Surveying. Al-Biruni is regarded as "the father of Geodetic-Surveying".
I doubt that FE supporters will accept even this evidence, so I have calculated my estimate of the circumference from a couple days travel, on mainly west to east journeys on an "almost round the block trip". Of course the road (even across the Nullabor) is not quite straight. So I actually used the Garmin GPS Map for the distance. Just in case that naughty NASA has been tricking us with the GPS readings I compared used the car's odometer with the map and GPS (the Landcruiser Prado odometer is almost exact)[1]. From the point-to-point distances I worked the west-east component of distance, the longitude difference and the average latitude of each of two journeys. From these figures I can calculate the km/degree at the latitude of that journey and hence the (circumference at that latitude) = 360 x (km/degree).
If these figures are accepted, we now have to work out what the equatorial circumference. On the globe that is easy (at least to a good appoximation), where the (equatorial circumference) = (circumference at that latitude)/cos(latitude).
But, for the flat earth we have the problem that no-one seems certain of the accepted map! I will take it as the map on the right on which we should be able to calculate the (equatorial circumference) = (circumference at that latitude)*90/(90-latitude), since on this map the meridians of longitude are straight lines radiating from the north pole.
| The most widely accepted map model of a flat earth. |
I was going to put the detail of calculations in, but it got too large! In summary:
Origin and Destination | "Long Diff" | "at Lat" | "km/deg" | "Circ at Lat" | "Circ at Equ Globe" | "Circ at Equ Flat" |
Balladonia (Western Australia) to Eucla (Western Australia) | 5.264° | -32.01° | 94.5 | 34,021 km | 40,123 km | 31,302 km |
Eucla(Western Australia) to Penong(South Australia) | 4.125° | -31.80° | 94.7 | 34,087 km | 40,108 km | 32,055 km |
The circumference at the equator for the globe reasonably quite well with the "accepted value" of 40,075 km.
The value, however, for the flat earth does not help the flat earth case at all. It is simply based on measured distances, scaled by the ratio of the radiating meridian spacing.
It should be stressed here that the actual distances used were from a (GPS) map, but they were checked against driving distances between the same locations. The driving distances did come out a little larger (eg for the first case 532 km on road, 503 km direct).
It would be good if others could do similar measurements at other locations. We have quite a few long E-W roads, but I imagine USA has similar of better in Texas, Arizona of Nevada.
In summary I contend that :
the Equator to North Pole is indeed | close to 10,000 km and |
the Equatorial Circumference is indeed | close to 40,000 km |
Now, if anyone disagrees, tell us what you claim these dimensions are and please present your evidence!
[1] An indication of the agreement between the car oddometer, the in-car Garmin Navigator and the direct route (great circle) from the Garmin map can be seen from the following:
Route | from Lat Long | to Lat Long | Car oddo | in-car GPS | Direct Garmin Map |
Ballodonia to Eucla | -32.35° 123.62° | -31.68° 128.88° | 532 km | 531.5 km | 503.0 km |
Eucla to Penong | -31.68° 128.88° | -31.93° 133.01° | 424 km | 423.0 km | 390.6 km |
As expected, the road distance is somewhat longer than the direct route, but it does verify that the GPS distance is not "faked".
I have compared the oddometer with sign posted distances (yes, surveyed) and GPS distances ans always had agreement - never more that 1% out (except for a few poorly surveyed roads - up to 200 m from GPS track).