[Jane]

it is supremely paranoid to conclude that the fact you haven't spent years studying something and it doesn't adhere to your personal understanding, means it must be wrong and everyone saying it must be liars.

The hypocrisy is astounding.

That would be a valid statement, if what I said was not the basis for what you believe. That renders your foundation rotten, and your comparison invalid yet again.

But, regardless, make a new thread if you want to discuss credulity and credible sources. This thread is about equatorial bulging, or a lack thereof.

[Ghost of V]

There is superheated plasma under the Earth's crust according to modern RET.

[Jane]

There is superheated plasma under the Earth's crust according to modern RET.

Which does not make up the entirety of the Earth, nor is it remotely at the same temperatures, so the comparison's still pretty pointless. (And I'm not certain that it's actually plasma, for that matter).

[Tau]

This thread perfectly describes the difference between RE'ers and FE'ers. RE'ers are so convinced of their correctness that they think it's impossible for them to lose a debate about anything even vaguely related to FET/RET. This is how you get angry noobs fervently denying the existence of the Equivilence Principle, etc. It's completely unfathomable to them that they might just be wrong.

[Jane]

It's completely unfathomable to them that they might just be wrong.

Oh, I'm happy to admit I'm wrong, I'm just not going to do it for no reason. The most extreme conclusion Thork could get from this line of reasoning is "Physics isn't complete," which no one denies.

There are two possible explanations for why someone's mind wouldn't change. First, as you say, they're so convinced they refuse to concede: or, second, the arguments intended to make them change their mind just aren't all that great.
Don't assume it's necessarily the former.

[Rama Set]

Who says the sun is made of superheated plasma? NASA? Based on calculations they made from their perverse 93 million mile distance versus heat? Yeah, jog on. Make a new thread if you want to discuss the composition of the sun. This thread is about equatorial bulging or lack thereof.

Scepti?  It all makes sense.

[Pongo]

Oh, I'm happy to admit I'm wrong, I'm just not going to do it for no reason. The most extreme conclusion Thork could get from this line of reasoning is "Physics isn't complete," which no one denies.

How come "Physics isn't complete," is an acceptable answer for round-earthers but any unknown variable in flat-earth science is clear and irrefutable proof that the flat-earth theory is totally wrong in all facets and forms imaginable?

This is another example of round-earth debating failures.  The clear double standards they hold to their theory.  It's to jarring to question these super-mores they have so they will argue literally anything that aligns with their preconceptions.  In this common case, they say that they don't know an answer and that's fine (which it is) while also saying that flat-earth theory needs to be 100% complete and unify all of physics under one cohesive model.

Whats-more, they can't even see the irony

[Jane]

Oh, I'm happy to admit I'm wrong, I'm just not going to do it for no reason. The most extreme conclusion Thork could get from this line of reasoning is "Physics isn't complete," which no one denies.

How come "Physics isn't complete," is an acceptable answer for round-earthers but any unknown variable in flat-earth science is clear and irrefutable proof that the flat-earth theory is totally wrong in all facets and forms imaginable?

Because there's a difference between an as yet unfilled gap, and a contradiction.

The number of things that occur in the Sun (extreme heat, predominantly plasma, fluidity, wild magnetic field...) mean there are a lot of things that can and do explain the supposed problem: and even if there weren't proposed explanations, the comparison to the Earth would still fall for that very reason.
Whereas if you look at proprosed problems with FET you have, for example, sunsets: and I'm not saying that's a good argument, I'm purposefully choosing a less convincing one, but if it was in fact true that under FET the sunsets we observe would not occur, that is a contradiction: that is not a gap waiting to be filled.

There is a huge difference between "Unknown," and "Untrue." Asking after the outside of the ice wall, the formation of the flat Earth, maps, etc: those are questions that target unknowns. Even with no answer, it doesn't render FET untrue, merely incomplete.
A contradiction for RET would be, for example, measuring a distance far shorter than what should be the case on a sphere, or a photo showing that the Sun is indeed a spotlight, or looking over the horizon with a telescope. Those things would contradict RET, and certainly they could be explained, it's just a matter of whether it's explained within the knowledge we already have, or if it needs more to be supposed.

[Pete Svarrior]

Is there really a difference between "unknown" and "untrue"? Because RE'ers sure like to conflate the two when it comes to their own theory. After all, without this basic conflation they couldn't even claim to have a working model of gravitation.

[Jane]

Is there really a difference between "unknown" and "untrue"? Because RE'ers sure like to conflate the two when it comes to their own theory.

There's a huge difference.
Again, 'untrue' would be if two pieces of knowledge contradicted one another. 'Unknown' would be if there were a few oddities, and when there are many available explanations: you can't use an example of something distant and incredibly hard to examine, and use it as an example of a contradiction, because it simply isn't. Especially gravity, I wish you luck finding any scientists who'll say gravity is a complete theory.

Further, the term 'unknown' is applied heavily due to context. For example, a flower pot in my garden was dug up several times in winter, over several weeks. I didn't see what did it, but I'm fairly sure soil didn't spontaneously jump out of it. I didn't see anything go and dig into it, and it was more vigorous than you'd expect from the cats I've seen around, should I have concluded that my belief that soil didn't jump out of flowerpots on its own power was untrue? Or should I merely say that the cause is unknown, as many likely and possible explanations exist?

[Thork]

So NASA got back to me.

Hi and thanks for your question. I'm guessing you are referring to a study that received a lot of press a few years ago in which scientists used an instrument on the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft to precisely measure the shape of the Sun's photosphere (the visible part of the Sun). They found that the Sun is round to about 7.6 parts per million, which is about 10% less than the expected value of 8.3 parts per million. While this discrepancy is statistically significant (it's larger than the errors in the individual estimates) and hints at some addition physical processes being involved in determining the shape of the Sun, it hardly justifies the headlines like "Perfectly Round Sun Baffles Scientists".

Someone isn't happy. So the Maths doesn't add up and the pesky press have noticed. Very good.

As to why the Sun is so round to begin with, we asked our colleague Dean in the Heliophysics division here at Goddard for his explanation. The degree to which the Sun deviates from a sphere is called its "oblateness" and for a simple model of a fluid object, it is determined by the balance between the centrifugal "force" and the gravitational force at the Sun's surface.  The gravitational force will tend to make the object round but a larger centrifugal force will make it more oblate. If you plug in values for the Sun's mass, radius, and rotation rate, you'll find that the centrifugal force is only about 20 parts per million of the gravitational force. With some correction factors, this gives us the 8.3 parts per million prediction described above.

Yes, I knew that before I asked the question.

And he signs of with a bit of special pleading and some wild conjecture

Effects that have been proposed to explain the discrepancy between the model and measurement include turbulence in the convective cycles that operate between the photosphere and deeper layers of the Sun as well as forces due to the magnetic field at the surface of the Sun.

Now naturally I have a few follow up questions but right at the bottom of the email it reads

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE
Replies will not be read or forwarded.

Its nice they replied though. 

[Sceptom]

Well, according to your standards, 10% error is not that bad. After all, you're completely happy with a 100% wrong theory of the earth.

[Thork]

After all, you're completely happy with a 100% wrong theory of the earth.

No, I'm not. That's why I joined the flat earth society.

[Pete Svarrior]

Is there really a difference between "unknown" and "untrue"? Because RE'ers sure like to conflate the two when it comes to their own theory.

There's a huge difference.
Again, 'untrue' would be if two pieces of knowledge contradicted one another.

Did you deliberately ignore the latter half of my post where I show an example of two pieces of RET "knowledge" contradicting one another and yet being dismissed as an unknown or an "incomplete theory", or was that an honest mistake on your part? You seem to have done a lot of restating and repeating yourself (a trend for you, I see), but didn't actually address the issue.

[Rama Set]

Is there really a difference between "unknown" and "untrue"? Because RE'ers sure like to conflate the two when it comes to their own theory.

There's a huge difference.
Again, 'untrue' would be if two pieces of knowledge contradicted one another.

Did you deliberately ignore the latter half of my post where I show an example of two pieces of RET "knowledge" contradicting one another and yet being dismissed as an unknown or an "incomplete theory", or was that an honest mistake on your part? You seem to have done a lot of restating and repeating yourself (a trend for you, I see), but didn't actually address the issue.

Could you explicitly state what pieces of RE knowledge you believe are contradicting each other?  All I see is a link to a Wikipedia page on gravity. I assume you are probably referring to the Galaxy spin curve, but would like to be sure.

[Pete Svarrior]

Could you explicitly state what pieces of RE knowledge you believe are contradicting each other?  All I see is a link to a Wikipedia page on gravity. I assume you are probably referring to the Galaxy spin curve, but would like to be sure.

I directly linked to a section which outlines discrepancies between observation and the currently-dominant theory. The only way I could make it more explicit is by copy-pasting it here.

[Rama Set]

Could you explicitly state what pieces of RE knowledge you believe are contradicting each other?  All I see is a link to a Wikipedia page on gravity. I assume you are probably referring to the Galaxy spin curve, but would like to be sure.

I directly linked to a section which outlines discrepancies between observation and the currently-dominant theory. The only way I could make it more explicit is by copy-pasting it here.

When I follow your link on my phone it goes directly to the title, not a specific section. No need to be so touchy about it.

[Boots]

What I want to know is why FEers think the earth is flat when we can see that the moon, sun and other planets are round.

[Pete Svarrior]

What I want to know is why FEers think the earth is flat when we can see that the moon, sun and other planets are round.

My room contains 5 pieces of furniture. 4 of them are chairs. How dare you try to tell me that the 5th item might be a table?!

This logic is ludicrous. The Earth is not other planets. You can't ascertain anything about the Earth's shape merely from the shape of other celestial bodies.

To quote myself from 2 years back:

The Earth is not other planets. Other planets' characteristics may suggest things about the Earth, but they don't have to. Similarly, so far we have not seen a planet with intelligent life, so why does the Earth have intelligent life? Surely that's completely illogical since everything around us disproves our existence!

[Boots]

What I want to know is why FEers think the earth is flat when we can see that the moon, sun and other planets are round.

My room contains 5 pieces of furniture. 4 of them are chairs. How dare you try to tell me that the 5th item might be a table?!

This logic is ludicrous. The Earth is not other planets. You can't ascertain anything about the Earth's shape merely from the shape of other celestial bodies.

To quote myself from 2 years back:

The Earth is not other planets. Other planets' characteristics may suggest things about the Earth, but they don't have to. Similarly, so far we have not seen a planet with intelligent life, so why does the Earth have intelligent life? Surely that's completely illogical since everything around us disproves our existence!

The logic is not ludicrous. I agree that the fact that the other planets are round is not proof that the earth is round. It is definitely an indicator though. And for that matter, what shape do you really think the earth is? You say it's flat but what about the other dimension? Is it a cube? An icosahedron? People who say the earth is round do not mean that it is 100% spherical, only that it is somewhat spherical. Any three dimensional object has the characteristic that if you keep going in one direction you will eventually come back to your starting point. So when you say the earth is flat what exactly do you mean?