*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Flat Earth Map
« on: January 04, 2019, 12:36:29 PM »
As there is no flat earth map I thought I'd have a go at making one
I had a look on Google Maps and used that as my source for distances between places.
Obviously if you don't accept those distances as accurate then that's going to be a problem from the start but given that Google Maps is used by millions of people to get around you'd think we'd know about it if their maps were wrong.

I took some US Cities - I used mainland US partly because it's continental so we get away from complexities about measuring distances across oceans. I picked them fairly arbitrarily but I wanted them far apart as this is where we should see most difference between a flat earth and a globe.

I started with Seattle. Final image is at the bottom of this post.

The distance between Seattle to New York is 2405 Miles
So I drew a black circle diameter 2405 pixels. Seattle is the centre. New York must be somewhere on that circle.

New York to Dallas is 1368 miles. I picked an arbitrary point on the circle surrounding Seattle - to the right of the circle as New York is due East of Seattle. I called that point New York and drew a red circle 1368 pixels around that point.
So Dallas must be somewhere on that red circle.

Seattle to Dallas is 1684 miles so I drew another blue circle around Seattle of diameter 1684 pixels. Dallas must be somewhere on that blue circle

So, Dallas must be on the intersection between the red and blue circles.
There are 2 possibilities as the circles intersect in 2 places. Dallas is south of both New York and Seattle though so I've picked the lower one and called that Dallas.

So now we know where Seattle, New York and Dallas are in relation to one another.
I've marked the cities with rough X's and labelled them.
Now what happens if we add a 4th city?

I picked Minneapolis as it is fairly central to the above 3 cities.
The distance from Minneapolis to
New York is 1020 miles
Seattle is 1384 miles
Dallas is 1389 miles.

So I've drawn green circles with the corresponding number of pixels around those 3 cities.
Minneapolis must be somewhere on each of those green circles so it must be at the intersection of them.

The problem is the three green circles don't all intersect at any point. So either:
1) The distances on Google Maps are wrong
2) I have made an error somewhere in my reasoning or method
3) The earth isn't flat.

Are there any other possibilities?

Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #1 on: January 05, 2019, 12:08:22 AM »
Bother.
I just realised I have made an error.
I was drawing circles where the *diameter* in pixels was the distance between cities in miles when that should have been the *radius*. So each circle should be twice as big as it is. As I have done this consistently the error actually cancels out, the whole diagram is simply half the size it should be, it’s 2 miles to the pixel instead of one.
Just thought I’d mention that in case anyone else notices.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

totallackey

Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #2 on: January 07, 2019, 05:13:47 PM »
What is with all the circles?

If you are drawing a connection of three circles intersecting three common points, the result should not be surprising.

*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2019, 05:33:07 PM »
What is with all the circles?

If you are drawing a connection of three circles intersecting three common points, the result should not be surprising.
If the earth is flat and the distances between cities given by Google Maps is accurate then using the above method I should have found that the 3 green circles intersect at one point. That point would be Minneapolis. But they don't, so either:
1) The distances as given on Google Maps are wrong
2) There is something wrong with my method (I already admitted one error but that error cancels out, it just means the scale is half what I meant)
3) The earth isn't flat.

If you plot 4 points on a piece of paper and measured the distances between them I believe I could use the above method to reconstruct where the 4 points are in relation to one another.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

Offline edby

  • *
  • Posts: 1214
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2019, 08:14:06 AM »
There is nothing wrong with your method, as far as I can see. You can triangulate any three points on a curved surface and the distances will be consistent with their being on a flat surface. Add a fourth point, and you will immediately tell whether the surface has Euclidean geometry (i.e. is flat) or not.

How the distances could be wrong. Tom Bishop has always wisely insisted that distances given by the establishment are incorrect. Distances and flight times should be the focus of all future FE research.

*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2019, 08:54:03 AM »
Thanks. Yes, I deliberately used distances over land so get away from issues of measuring distance over sea. Over land basic surveying methods can and have been used and if distances were inaccurate you'd think we'd know about it by now. I'd be interested to hear some FE response.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2019, 10:07:04 AM »
I repeated the above for a few cities in the UK - I even repeated the error, I used the distances as the diameter, not the radius.
I'm not going to post all the details, you can check the distances for yourself.
Interestingly, here we do get a point where the green circles meet which must be where Oxford is.



My conclusion from this is
1) The method I am using is valid
2) The distances as given by Google Maps are likely to be accurate.
3) The difference between a flat earth and a globe earth in terms of accurate mapping is less noticeable over smaller distances, which is as you'd expect.
« Last Edit: January 08, 2019, 10:10:44 AM by AllAroundTheWorld »
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

Offline ChrisTP

  • *
  • Posts: 926
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #7 on: January 08, 2019, 11:17:26 AM »
I'd like to see this for Russia and Australia too but I suppose you'd not be able to validate the distances unless you go there. I'm in the UK and google map distances are accurate, but then the UK is small. your USA example is telling though.
Tom is wrong most of the time. Hardly big news, don't you think?

*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #8 on: January 08, 2019, 12:47:19 PM »
You arbitrarily draw pretty kindergarten pictures of different color circles and x's on a whiteboard (mind you with absolute ZERO reference as to how anyone could actually verify scale) plus openly admit your ineptitude in formation and then have the temerity and gall to write I have no understanding of what you've done?

Simply writing when you actually do something might be a better place for you to start.

The fact you think that the circles are drawn arbitrarily shows that you don't understand what I've done.

If A and B are 'x' miles apart then if I plot a point A and then draw a circle centred on A of radius 'x' cm/mm/pixels around it then B must be somewhere on the circumference of that circle. Yes? My mistake was I used 'x' as the diameter, not the radius. But I did so consistently so all that does is means the scale is 2 miles to the pixel, not one. It doesn't affect the result.

I have followed the above logic to find the relationship between 3 cities in America and shown that if you try and plot a 4th then you don't find any common point which is at the right distance from those 3 other cities. I have now done the same for some UK cities and, as the UK is much smaller, I have found a common point for my 4th city. This shows the veracity of the method I've used and shows that the error between a flat map and a globe is, as expected, negligible on smaller scales.

If you have any sensible critique of what I've done then please post it. If I've made an error (apart from the one I've already admitted which only changes the scale, not the result) then please explain it.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

totallackey

Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #9 on: January 08, 2019, 01:01:03 PM »
You arbitrarily draw pretty kindergarten pictures of different color circles and x's on a whiteboard (mind you with absolute ZERO reference as to how anyone could actually verify scale) plus openly admit your ineptitude in formation and then have the temerity and gall to write I have no understanding of what you've done?

Simply writing when you actually do something might be a better place for you to start.

The fact you think that the circles are drawn arbitrarily shows that you don't understand what I've done.

If A and B are 'x' miles apart then if I plot a point A and then draw a circle centred on A of radius 'x' cm/mm/pixels around it then B must be somewhere on the circumference of that circle. Yes? My mistake was I used 'x' as the diameter, not the radius. But I did so consistently so all that does is means the scale is 2 miles to the pixel, not one. It doesn't affect the result.

I have followed the above logic to find the relationship between 3 cities in America and shown that if you try and plot a 4th then you don't find any common point which is at the right distance from those 3 other cities. I have now done the same for some UK cities and, as the UK is much smaller, I have found a common point for my 4th city. This shows the veracity of the method I've used and shows that the error between a flat map and a globe is, as expected, negligible on smaller scales.

If you have any sensible critique of what I've done then please post it. If I've made an error (apart from the one I've already admitted which only changes the scale, not the result) then please explain it.
How is one to know if the pixels are as you state?

What work that entail?

*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #10 on: January 08, 2019, 01:04:41 PM »
How is one to know if the pixels are as you state?

What work that entail?
Here is the original image, you can check:

https://i.ibb.co/zVdBcqm/FEMap.jpg

The scale was intended to be one mile to the pixel. Because of my mistake it ended up being 2 miles to the pixel.
Feel free to check my workings or draw your own diagram. All you need is Google Maps. Pick 4 cities and try it yourself. As I've found in this thread, the discrepancy between the globe earth and flat maps is best seen over distances in the order or one or two thousand miles, not a couple of hundred.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

totallackey

Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #11 on: January 08, 2019, 01:08:46 PM »
How is one to know if the pixels are as you state?

What work that entail?
Here is the original image, you can check:

https://i.ibb.co/zVdBcqm/FEMap.jpg

The scale was intended to be one mile to the pixel. Because of my mistake it ended up being 2 miles to the pixel.
Feel free to check my workings or draw your own diagram. All you need is Google Maps. Pick 4 cities and try it yourself. As I've found in this thread, the discrepancy between the globe earth and flat maps is best seen over distances in the order or one or two thousand miles, not a couple of hundred.
One more time ssslllooowwwlllyyy so you might get it...

A pixel based on WHAT resolution?

Why would you think scaling would remain consistent?


*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #12 on: January 08, 2019, 01:12:52 PM »
That's a completely nonsensical question. The resolution of your monitor doesn't matter. So long as you use a consistent scale all the resolution will do is make the image appear bigger or smaller on your monitor. It doesn't change the result.
I honestly don't understand what your objection is.
Again, if you prefer to do your own diagram then feel free to do so.
You could draw one on a piece of paper and use a scale of 1cm to 100 miles, or something.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

totallackey

Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #13 on: January 08, 2019, 01:15:39 PM »
That's a completely nonsensical question. The resolution of your monitor doesn't matter. So long as you use a consistent scale all the resolution will do is make the image appear bigger or smaller on your monitor. It doesn't change the result.
I honestly don't understand what your objection is.
Again, if you prefer to do your own diagram then feel free to do so.
You could draw one on a piece of paper and use a scale of 1cm to 100 miles, or something.
Maybe you better rethink your response.

You are telling me you drew a scale drawing using your resolution settings and expect someone to use their resolution settings to examine it?

Have you ever enlarged a drawing you might make in MS Paint?

What happens to the lines you see when you enlarge a drawing or shrink a drawing?

Do they not occupy more pixels on your screen as you enlarge it (i.e., become less defined?)

Do the lines not become more defined and sharp as the image shrinks?

You have three x's drawn with no corresponding grids?

How do we know those are laid out properly?
« Last Edit: January 08, 2019, 01:35:32 PM by totallackey »

*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #14 on: January 08, 2019, 01:37:16 PM »
You are telling me you drew a scale drawing using your resolution settings and expect someone to use their resolution settings to examine it?
Yes, because your resolution will only change the size of the image on your monitor, as will your monitor size. It will not change anything else about the image so is not relevant. If you go into a paint package and draw a circle of diameter 'x' pixels then you could send me that image and I could verify whether the circle was indeed 'x' pixels across using my paint package. Your resolution and mine would be entirely irrelevant.

Quote
You have three x's drawn with no corresponding grids?
I don't know what you mean by that. The first city is Seattle. That was my starting point, it has to be somewhere so I put an X to mark where I defined it to be.
The second X is New York. If the distances on Google Maps are correct then New York must be somewhere on the perimeter of the black circle. I have picked a point, it doesn't matter which one, all that affects is the orientation of the final map.
I then used the distances from Seattle to Dallas and New York to Dallas and drew circles of the corresponding size around my first 2 X's.
If the distances are correct and I've drawn my circles correctly then Dallas must be on the intersection between the red and blue circles.
There are two possibilities, I picked the lower one because I know that Dallas is south of both New York and Seattle.
That's my third X.
So now I know where those 3 cities are in relation to one another.
The green circles represent the distances from those 3 cities to the 4th. If the distances are correct then I should get an intersection between those 3 green circles, but I don't.
Note that when I used the same method with 4 English cities which are on a much smaller scale I DID get an intersection between the 3 green circles. The reason for this is over smaller distances there is less discrepancy between the globe earth and a flat map.

Quote
How do we know those are laid out properly?
You can check Google Maps to see if I have used the correct distances.
You can check the image to see if the circles are the number of pixels across I claim (again, you can do that regardless of your monitor and computer resolution)
You can pick your own cities and draw your own image. I look forward to seeing your results.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #15 on: January 08, 2019, 02:04:36 PM »
Have you ever enlarged a drawing you might make in MS Paint?

What happens to the lines you see when you enlarge a drawing or shrink a drawing?

Do they not occupy more pixels on your screen as you enlarge it (i.e., become less defined?)

Do the lines not become more defined and sharp as the image shrinks?
Again, none of this is relevant. I have given you the full scale image, you can check it for yourself or you can draw your own if you don't trust my work. I encourage you to actually.

But here's some very basic checking I've done on my image to show you why resolution doesn't matter. So in the OP I said that it was 2405 miles from Seattle to New York and said that was the black circle. So I just loaded my image into Paint .NET and very roughly did a select of the area across that black circle:


Note the bottom where Paint .NET helpfully tells me I've selected 2404 pixels which I'd suggest is close enough given that I did this while the image was zoomed out so it was hard to select perfectly. I've put a red ring round the screenshot where it tells you how many pixels you have selected. So the fact I'm zoomed out doesn't matter, the paint package tells me how many pixels the full size image is.

Bottom line: Do your own tests, make your own image or drawing and see what you find.
« Last Edit: January 08, 2019, 02:23:17 PM by AllAroundTheWorld »
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

Offline edby

  • *
  • Posts: 1214
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #16 on: January 08, 2019, 03:29:27 PM »
[etc]
It is also possible to do this using protractor and ruler like in the old days. Same result.

*

Offline WellRoundedIndividual

  • *
  • Posts: 605
  • Proverbs 13:20 is extremely relevant today.
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #17 on: January 08, 2019, 04:40:14 PM »
I also reproduced his results in AutoCAD. I got the same discrepancy where the points do not converge. So not sure what your issue is, totallackey?
BobLawBlah.

*

Offline RonJ

  • *
  • Posts: 2615
  • ACTA NON VERBA
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #18 on: January 08, 2019, 08:27:41 PM »
The bottom line here is that on a flat plane the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  On a sphere the shortest distance between two points is the curved great circle line. 

There isn't anyway around it.  Geometry is earth shape agnostic, it just cares about shapes.  Over short distances there isn't much difference between a great circle curved line and a straight line on a plane.  As distances increase so does the overall difference between the two examples.  If you want to look at maps in the area of the Arctic Circle the differences are smaller than around the Antarctic Circle.

You can expect that the distances on Google Earth are accurate.  I've checked them using spherical trigonometry as well and the figures very accurately match up.

The airlines know exactly the distance between airports, and the shipping companies know exactly the distance between ports.  I haven't seen any disputes from flat earth advocates about the accuracy of that.  Basically the only defense of the flat earth would be the accuracy of those distances and/or the accuracy of the GPS system.  There is a difference between plain geometry just using the x & y coordinates and spherical geometry using x, y & z coordinates.  The distances are different.  Since I was traveling long distances for a living (before I retired) it was important for me to get things right.  Distances based on a sphere were always used.  The GPS figures were always accurate.  Great Circle routes were always accurate.

Barring that argument the flat earth paradigm can be shown to be a non-starter by the circles above.  Just compare an East-West route between two points in Australia and see what kind of difference you get using circles on a flat plane with the longitude lines diverging and great circle routes on a sphere where the longitude lines are converging. 
« Last Edit: January 08, 2019, 09:43:19 PM by RonJ »
You can lead flat earthers to the curve but you can't make them think!

Offline ChrisTP

  • *
  • Posts: 926
    • View Profile
Re: Flat Earth Map
« Reply #19 on: January 17, 2019, 01:37:10 PM »
Quote
Still struggling with the screen resolution and monitor settings uh...still unable to comprehend how different resolutions render pixelation.
Totallackey, to clear things up for you, resolution doesn't matter. Think of a raster image as a set grid of squares with each square being a 'pixel'. In the image, no matter the resolution of your screen or however you see the image in different sizes based on zooming in or screen resolutions, the raster image will still have a consistent grid of squares which does not change. Each square in the grid is assigned a hex value which you will see represented visually as a colour. So for example a 300x300 grid of coloured squares will still be exactly that regardless of screen resolution.  :)
« Last Edit: January 17, 2019, 01:39:15 PM by ChrisTP »
Tom is wrong most of the time. Hardly big news, don't you think?