Investigating the shape by direct measurement
« on: October 22, 2020, 05:33:16 AM »
Ok, let's investigate:

The best way to get the shape of something is to measure it directly.
The Earth included.
Here we shall investigate at least one way of doing it.

People measured Earth countless times, and compared each other's results.
People measured parts of Earth for various purposes.
They measured distances, areas, altitudes, depths...
They needed to know travel times, fuel consumption, quantity of materials to build infrastructure (roads, power lines, phone lines, water pipes, ...)
Or they were just curious.
When you are curious you measure things yourself, you don't wait until someone else measures it for you.
Whatever was their reason, everyone knows very well the distances from his own town or village to all the next ones around.
You can not sell them some other distances if they were traveling those routes many times.
That way the distances between places are well known by local, and by less local population.
And those distances concatenate.

The information spread among people and can't be faked.
You can't publish wrong values without being overwhelmed by complaints from people who live there.
Also, tourists learn the distances when come to visit and rove around.

In this post we will use those distances to measure the Earth parameters without anyone's personal bias.

Every latitude has own parallel in the shape of a circle.
Each is divided by meridians into 360 degrees.
Within each degree of latitude we can select two places, find their distances and their longitude differences.
From those we can easily find the length of each degree along that parallel.

I will select some places, you can check them, or you can select your own.
Anyone can do it, and we can all compare our results.

Let's start with the Equator (0 degrees of latitude):
Libreville, Gabon - 9.376 degrees East
Kampala, Uganda - 32.593 degrees East
Longitude difference - 23.217 degrees
Distance - 1598.51 miles
Along the Equator each degree is 1598.51 / 23.217 = 68.85 miles long.

Now we go to 31 degree North:
Sirte, Libya - 16.554 E
Port Said, Egypt - 32.291 E
Longitude diff. - 15.737 deg
Distance - 929.65 mi
One degree - 59.07 mi / deg

More to the north, at 41 degree:
Barcelona, Spain - 2.183 E
Istanbul, Turkey - 29.011 E
Longitude diff. - 26.828 deg
Distance - 1390.17 mi
One degree - 51.82 mi / deg

Latitude 69 degrees North:
Harstad, Norway - 16.541 E
Tumanny, Russia - 35.668 E
Longitude diff. - 19.127 deg
Distance - 475.08 mi
One degree - 24.84 mi / deg

As we can see, the more to the north we go, the shorter gets each degree of longitude.
We can conclude that towards North our meridians converge.
Do they intersect at the North pole? For now we will leave that question open.

If we compare this with the most common Flat Earth map (Rowbotham's map), we will find that it fits.
But it also fits with the globe.
To find out which of the maps is closer to the reality, we would have to explore that reality more.
Let's go south.

Latitude is now 23 degrees south:
Windhoek, Namibia - 17.066 E
Vangaindrano, Madagascar - 47.591 E
Longitude diff. - 30.525 deg
Distance - 1939.38 mi
One degree - 63.53 mi / deg

More to the south, at latitude of 38 degrees:
Temuco, Chile - 72.594 W
Necochea, Argentina - 58.753 W
Longitude diff. - 13.841 deg
Distance - 746.6 mi
One degree - 53.94 mi / deg

Here we can see that the more to the south we go, the shorter each degree gets again.
So, meridians converge to the south just as they do to the north.

Do they intersect at the South pole? For now we will leave that question open as well.
All we can easily see is that this doesn't fit Rowbotham's map.

Here we can organize our measurements into neat little table like this:

So many people directly measure so many things.
And they are getting more precise each day.

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: Investigating the shape by direct measurement
« Reply #1 on: October 22, 2020, 07:48:01 PM »
It's difficult to find direct demonstration for anything related to this. The best I can tell you is that there are two FE theories.

Monopole Model -

Traditional Flat Earth model. The lines of longitude diverge in the South greater than assumed. It would mean that the content linked on this page would need to be true:

https://wiki.tfes.org/Distances_in_the_South

Bi-Polar Model -

The lines of longitude do converge together in the South:

https://wiki.tfes.org/Bi-Polar_Model
« Last Edit: October 22, 2020, 07:49:38 PM by Tom Bishop »

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Offline LuggerSailor

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Re: Investigating the shape by direct measurement
« Reply #2 on: October 22, 2020, 10:38:43 PM »
It's difficult to find direct demonstration for anything related to this. The best I can tell you is that there are two FE theories.

Monopole Model -

Traditional Flat Earth model. The lines of longitude diverge in the South greater than assumed. It would mean that the content linked on this page would need to be true:

https://wiki.tfes.org/Distances_in_the_South

Bi-Polar Model -

The lines of longitude do converge together in the South:

https://wiki.tfes.org/Bi-Polar_Model

So there are two theories.

Any one of them matches any observations?

LuggerSailor.
Sailor and Navigator.

Re: Investigating the shape by direct measurement
« Reply #3 on: October 30, 2020, 01:53:09 AM »
It's difficult to find direct demonstration for anything related to this.

Maybe difficult, but we can use direct measurements in any part of the land and/or sea.
We already have all measurements, done and redone by many people, and re-tested and confirmed by many others.

We can also measure some of those distances on our own.
Theodolite and sextant can't be expensive, especially compared to that Knodel's laser gyroscope.

The two versions of Flat Earth models both have problems matching the measurements.
Do you, by any chance, know about some third one?
Thanks.
So many people directly measure so many things.
And they are getting more precise each day.

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Offline RonJ

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Re: Investigating the shape by direct measurement
« Reply #4 on: November 07, 2020, 03:54:10 AM »
You can always use the directional gyros on a ocean going ship.  Unfortunately they are even more expensive than Knodel's laser gyro.  An additional difficulty would be access to the right software.  When you have access to this equipment it's possible to see the change in the z axis as the ship moves forward in any direction.  Since I was aboard a ship doing my job it wasn't much of a problem to witness a 90 degree change in the z axis when traveling to a foreign port 1000's of miles away.  That's a direct measurement of the surface of the ocean that wouldn't fit either of the two flat earth models.  The manufacturer of the gyroscopic equipment also specifically states (in the service manuals) that the proper and accurate operation of the equipment requires that the earth rotates.  I kept a close eye on the accuracy of the gyros and maintained a log.  It wasn't unusual for both of the gyros to be accurate to within about 0.3 to 0.4 degrees.  Verification of this was possible because we always knew the exact heading of the docks to within a degree.  I believe that this would constitute a direct and accurate measurement of the earth's shape by direct measurement.  If you wanted to make the effort you probably could also determine the size.  I never did that but correlating the change of the z axis to the distance traveled could give you a good idea of the radius.     
You can lead flat earthers to the curve but you can't make them think!

Re: Investigating the shape by direct measurement
« Reply #5 on: November 12, 2020, 11:35:13 AM »
It's difficult to find direct demonstration for anything related to this. The best I can tell you is that there are two FE theories.

Monopole Model -

Traditional Flat Earth model. The lines of longitude diverge in the South greater than assumed. It would mean that the content linked on this page would need to be true:

https://wiki.tfes.org/Distances_in_the_South

Bi-Polar Model -

The lines of longitude do converge together in the South:

https://wiki.tfes.org/Bi-Polar_Model
Your thoughts please on WGS-84, the internationally accepted and proven model.