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Topics - AATW

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41
Suggestions & Concerns / Just Saying...
« on: September 07, 2018, 07:36:43 AM »
This:

normally if we are right about something, it gets ignored.
So, all the time? ;)

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=10606.40

Is a good example of a post which I’m pretty sure had it been posted by a RE poster would have resulted in a warning.

Not having a go, but it does feel like there is some inconsistency in how things are modded. I’m not actually sure that’s entirely a bad thing but I personally think there should be consistency when it comes to jokey posts like that. My view is that consistent line should be to allow them, within reason.

“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men...”

42
Flat Earth Theory / Empiricism and our Senses
« on: August 25, 2018, 11:55:37 AM »
Much is made on here of our senses and how we should use them to determine things such as the shape of the earth.
Few quotes from the Wiki:

Quote
Every man in full command of his senses knows that a level surface is a flat or horizontal one; but astronomers tell us that the true level is the curved surface of a globe!

https://wiki.tfes.org/A_hundred_proofs_the_Earth_is_not_a_globe
(Number 18)

Quote
Shall we blindly believe a theory which in the nature of things is so impracticable, and a theory which directly contradicts the evidences of our God-given senses? We feel no motion; we see no motion; and we hear no motion; while our senses favour the reasonable and demonstrable fact that the earth is stationary.

https://wiki.tfes.org/Albert_Smith

Quote
The average man can’t advance a single reason for believing that the world is round. He accepts that theory on blind faith and rejects the evidence of his own senses.

https://wiki.tfes.org/Leo_Ferrari

Quote
The evidence for a flat earth is derived from many different facets of science and philosophy. The simplest is by relying on ones own senses to discern the true nature of the world around us. The world looks flat, the bottoms of clouds are flat, the movement of the sun; these are all examples of your senses telling you that we do not live on a spherical heliocentric world. This is using what's called an empirical approach, or an approach that relies on information from your senses

https://wiki.tfes.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions

My question/point is: Is this a reasonable approach to determine truth?
I would say no because our senses are limited and can be fooled.
I'm going to focus here on our vision.
A few examples where we perceive things as different sizes where they are in fact the same:



And this one where squares A and B are in fact the same shade of grey but appear very different because of the shading in surrounding squares:



Context is quite important in how we perceive things. In the moon terminator illusion thread Bobby has demonstrated a real life example where the sun appears to be in completely the wrong place to illuminate the moon but the line between the terminator and the sun is in fact straight.

Another good example is horizon dip. The horizon might appear to be at eye level no matter your altitude but multiple experiments have shown it not to be, and the angle of dip increases with height, consistent with a globe earth. The dip cannot be perceived but it can be measured

To sum up:
Taking an empirical approach is a helpful way of determining truth but our senses are limited and can be fooled.
Relying on our senses alone can only get you so far in learning about our universe, since the invention of things like telescopes and microscopes we have been able to discover a great deal more.
"The horizon looks flat" is not evidence for any particular shape of the earth.

Discuss.

43
Suggestions & Concerns / GDPR
« on: May 29, 2018, 01:01:10 PM »
Have you guys done anything about GDPR? Not 100% sure you have to, asking because I run a similar board and am not clear if I need to do something.

44
Flat Earth Community / Flat Earth UK Convention
« on: May 01, 2018, 08:55:35 PM »
It sounds like it was a roaring success:

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/699627/flat-earth-conference-uk-birmingham-gravity-nasa-flintoff-musk

Quote
More than 200 believers paid £107 for the three-day convention in Birmingham.
In the conference room of Birmingham's Jurys Inn hotel, delegates bought and sold flat earth merchandise.

And they had an impressive line-up of highly qualified speakers:

Quote
Dave Marsh, an NHS manager who spoke at the conference, said: “My research destroys big bang cosmology.
“It supports the idea that gravity doesn't exist and the only true force in nature is electromagnetism.”
In his speech, Mr Marsh claimed he had disproved planetary motion using a Nikon camera and an app from his back garden

Quote
Dave Murphy, a former graphic designer who now lives “off-grid”, also spoke at the convention.

Quote
Darren Nesbit, a Bolton-based dance musician who spoke at the conference, claimed Earth is diamond-shaped and supported by pillars.
He said: “I’m not saying this is definitely what is going on, but I think it is a plausible model.”

Did anyone on here go? Had it been in London I might have been tempted.

45
Flat Earth Theory / Space Tourists
« on: April 30, 2018, 09:34:22 AM »
Space tourism is at best in its infancy. Right now only available to the mega-rich. But a handful of people have done it.
There's a list here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism#List_of_flown_space_tourists

Here's an interview with one of them, the only women to have done it.



So...is she lying? Was she tricked somehow? Is she "in on it" too?

46
Flat Earth Theory / Sunset At Altitude
« on: April 28, 2018, 03:20:42 PM »
Quote
"Technically the explanation for why the sun sets at higher altitudes is also "waves," and whatnot. The perspective lines meet at the horizon and are perfect, but the surface of the earth is not perfect. Any slight increase  in height at the Vanishing Point will allow something to disappear further behind it, much like a dime can obscure an elephant." - Tom Bishop

I did an experiment to explore the idea that waves could be an explanation for sunset or ships sinking below the horizon. This is the set up



So I built a tower 3 Jenga blocks high and a row of blocks which represent waves. Let's see how much of the tower is hidden behind the waves depending on the eye height. If the eye is below the level of the wave then the amount of tower hidden is more than the height of the wave. More than one block of the tower is hidden. Couple of pictures, the first slightly to the side so you can see that we are looking below wave level, the second looking straight along the row of blocks:





This is explained by this diagram:



You're looking up at the wave so more than the wave height is hidden. Although if the wave that is higher than your eye height is nearer the tower then less of it would be hidden because the angle is shallower:



This is also a demonstration that these side on diagrams don't need to "account for perspective" and do reflect the reality of what you see.
Now let's look at wave height. Here you can see that the amount hidden is the same as the wave height:



Which makes sense. You're looking across the level of the waves so only the height of the wave is hidden:



If you are above the wave level though then less than the wave height is hidden.
Jenga blocks are all the same height but you can clearly see that less than one block is hidden:



And that's because you are looking down over the waves:



Ergo, if you're at altitude you will be looking over the waves so the sun can't be hiding behind them.



Discuss.

47
Flat Earth Theory / How Far Is The Sun?
« on: April 08, 2018, 08:33:19 PM »
Your Wiki says 3,000 miles:

Quote
"Modern Mechanics describes how on a Flat Earth the sun can be computed to 3,000 miles via triangulation
whereas on a globe earth those same angles can calculate the sun to nearly 93 million miles away"

https://wiki.tfes.org/Distance_to_the_Sun

But Rowbowtham says it is "considerably less than 700 miles...

Quote
Hence it is demonstrable that the distance of the sun over that part of the earth to which it is vertical is only 700 statute miles. By the same mode it may be ascertained that the distance from London of that part of the earth where the sun was vertical at the time (July 13th, 1870) the above observations were taken, was only 400 statute miles, as shown by dividing the base-line L, D, by the distance B, L. If any allowance is to be made for refraction--which, no doubt, exists where the sun's rays have to pass through a medium, the atmosphere, which gradually increases in density as it approaches the earth's surface--it will considerably diminish the above-named distance of the sun; so that it is perfectly safe to affirm that the under edge of the sun is considerably less than 700 statute miles above the earth.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/za/za23.htm

So...which is it? What's with the big discrepancy between your Wiki and Rowbotham's experiment?
And what are you doing to determine the true distance?
I have suggested you guys experiment on this, taking observations from a few points and triangulating but haven't had much response.

48
Flat Earth Theory / Waves, Dimes and Elephants.
« on: April 01, 2018, 03:29:33 PM »
So, in response to pictures and videos showing a distant tall building over water occluded by the curve of the earth, the claim is the building is actually obscured by waves.
The old "a dime can obscure an elephant" argument, example of the reasoning here:

Quote
Since the horizon is always at eye level, any imperfection on the horizon will therefore be above the level of the eye, and create an area where something larger can shrink behind it from the bottom up. It does not matter if that mass is very small, because as I have said, it is possible for a dime to obscure an elephant. The object need only get far enough behind it to become obscured

OK. Firstly, the horizon DOES NOT RISE TO EYE LEVEL.
I don't know why this lie is repeated so often. The simplest diagram will demonstrate that is not true.



Whether the earth is a sphere or flat, in either case the horizon will be BELOW eye level, the person is looking slightly downwards:
The confusion here is that the horizon is very close to eye level. This graph shows that even at an altitude of 20 miles, far higher than any normal human experience, the dip is only about 6 degrees:

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/vhmcatpgud

But there IS a dip and the dip is measurable with the right equipment. If flat earthers are so bothered about empiricism, as they claim, why don't they test this?

Anyway. Waves. Let's assume that the waves are around a meter high and your eye level is nearer 2 meters. You can see in this diagram that because you can see over the waves the only part of the building which would be obscured is just under a meter by the farthest wave:



And note that this is the worst cast scenario, in real life buildings are not built on the beach, the building would be some meters above sea level and not obscured at all by waves on a flat earth.

If the wave was as high as eye level then then the amount of building occluded would be the height of eye level.



Note that as this is a straight line it doesn't matter which wave is as high as eye level.
But what if the wave is higher than eye level? Here it would occlude more of the building:



And here it DOES matter which wave is higher than eye level, the closer the high wave the more of the building occluded:



This is where Tom's claim gets a bit ridiculous because he says:
"any imperfection on the horizon will therefore be above the level of the eye, and create an area where something larger can shrink behind it from the bottom up[/quote]

My empahsis. So he's claiming there that it's waves on the horizon which can obscure buildings. Although I've seen him elsewhere claim that the horizon is the vanishing point where perspective lines meet so by definition you couldn't see anything beyond that anyway.

So, in brief it's actually waves closer to you that could obscure distant buildings. But they can only obscure more of the building than their own height if they are higher than your eye level. So if you're a few meters above sea level it can't be waves obscuring the buildings unless the waves are higher than that which, across a narrow channel, they are unlikely to be.

The infamous Bishop experiment:

Quote
"On a very clear and chilly day it is possible to see Lighthouse Beach from Lovers Point and vice versa. With a good telescope, laying down on the stomach at the edge of the shore on the Lovers Point beach 20 inches above the sea level it is possible to see people at the waters edge on the adjacent beach 23 miles away near the lighthouse. The entire beach is visible down to the water splashing upon the shore"

For this to be true even on a flat earth it would mean no wave of over 20 inches high over a 23 mile stretch of sea. I'd suggest that is implausible, especially as he claims to be able to repeat this at any time in any conditions.

49
Suggestions & Concerns / Wiki and Forum Order on Home Page
« on: February 08, 2018, 03:36:45 PM »
On the home page the Wiki link is to the right of the Forum link.
I just see a lot of people signing up and their first post is asking something which is dealt with in the Wiki.
Just wondering if swapping these so the Wiki is first would encourage them to go there before signing up and posting things like that.


50
Suggestions & Concerns / Database Errors
« on: February 08, 2018, 10:34:40 AM »
I'm getting database errors when trying to reply to the "Car In Space" thread :(

51
Flat Earth Theory / Long Shadows At Sunset
« on: February 05, 2018, 04:54:57 PM »
In the flat earth model the sun at sunset is about 6000 miles away horizontally and 3000 miles above the earth. Yes?
So how does the flat earth model explain the long shadows you see at sunset?



The FE Wiki has this diagram when explaining how the sun could be calculated to be 3000 miles high if the earth was flat:



So your own diagram agrees that shadow length depends on the physical relationship between the light source and the object which casts a shadow. No perspective is accounted for in this diagram, nor does it need to be. That is not how shadows work. Photons from a light source hit an object at a certain angle. That angle depends on the physical relationship between the object and the light source.

In the above diagram if we take 'h' to be 3000 and 'a' to be 6000. Let's say the height of the object at R1 is 1 and the length of its shadow is 'x':

The triangle formed by the object, its shadow and the ray from the sun is a similar triangle (in the mathematical sense) to
the triangle formed by the shadow+the horizontal distance to the sun, the vertical line from the ground to the sun and the ray from the sun (which is the shared hypotenuse of both triangles)

So: h/a+x = 1/x. Plugging in the numbers:
3000/6000+x = 1/x (multiply both sides by 'x')
3000x/6000+x = 1 (multiply both sides by '6000+x')
3000x = 6000+x (subtract 'x' from both sides)
2999x = 6000, so...
x = 6000/2999 - let's call that 2 for simplicity.

So the shadow is pretty much twice the height of the object. Which is what you'd expect if you think about it, the sun is twice as far away horizontally as it is high. The only way of making the shadow longer is to move it further away horizontally or move it lower in the sky. In the round earth model the sun is physically lower in the sky as the earth rotates, hence the long shadows. What is the flat earth explanation?
Perspective does not work as an explanation here, shadows depend on the PHYSICAL location of the light source and the object, not your or anyone else's perspective. Note that there are no units above, it could be 3000cm, meters, inches, yards or miles. So long as the 1, 3000 and 6000 are in the same units the unit of the shadow is the same so distance doesn't matter.

I should also say that perspective cannot make an object 3000 miles high appear to sink slowly below the horizon. Tom cites rail tracks which appear to converge



Note that "appear to" is the key phrase there. They don't really converge as this detail from the above shows:



Think about how we see things. Light bounces off an object and travels in a straight line to our eyes.
In this diagram you can see that the rays from the tracks at 'A' meet at the person who is looking at a bigger angle than the light at 'B':



So 'A' will appear to be bigger than 'B'. And there will be a distance at which the two rails can no longer be distinguished but that is only because of the limitation of the resolution of your eye.
Magnification would show that a gap still exists between the rails.
The angle of light rays will never be zero because the sleeper forms the hypotenuse and the light rays form the other two sides of an isosceles triangle. The hypotenuse remains constant so while the angle at the "apex" of the triangle becomes smaller with distance it is never 0 (apart from at infinity).

Long shadows at sunset prove that the sun is either physically low in the sky (as round earth model claims) or the light is bending somehow so it appears so.

52
Flat Earth Theory / Somewhere Beyond The Sea...
« on: January 12, 2018, 01:29:03 PM »
I'm trying to understand what the FE position is about things disappearing over the horizon at sea.
The conversation generally goes something like:

RE: "Ships disappear below the horizon, hull first. That can only be explained by a round earth"
FE: "No, the hull can be restored by a telescope, it does not disappear behind a hill of water"
RE: "OK, how about this <insert picture/video>? That clearly shows the hull/building behind the curve of the earth"
FE: "Waves..."

It's "Heads I win, tails you lose" reasoning. If the hull can be "restored" then that proves a flat earth.
If it can't then it doesn't prove a round earth, it's just waves. Is the claim that this video:



Is caused by waves? He shows where the different shots were taken from, looking at the times when he shows the GPS readings it looks like the same afternoon and the weather doesn't seem significantly different. While the channel does connect with the ocean, you can see that the water is pretty calm in all the shots as you would expect in a fairly narrow channel like this. It's not the open ocean. If waves were a factor you would expect the amount of the building you can see to vary significantly as the swell comes and goes, but you can't.

Also, the infamous Bishop Experiment ( https://wiki.tfes.org/Experimental_Evidence )
claims that:

Quote
With a good telescope, laying down on the stomach at the edge of the shore on the Lovers Point beach 20 inches above the sea level it is possible to see people at the waters edge on the adjacent beach 23 miles away near the lighthouse. The entire beach is visible down to the water splashing upon the shore. Upon looking into the telescope I can see children running in and out of the water, splashing and playing. I can see people sun bathing at the shore and teenagers merrily throwing Frisbees to one another. I can see runners jogging along the water's edge with their dogs. From my vantage point the entire beach is visible.

No photographic or video evidence of this claim is supplied on the Wiki. Tom also says that:

Quote
Whenever I have doubts about the shape of the earth I simply walk outside my home, down to the beach, and perform this simple test. The same result comes up over and over throughout the year under a plethora of different atmospheric conditions.

(my emphasis).

These observations are across a bay which, like the above channel is open to the sea. Arguably more open to the sea than the channel. So why aren't waves a problem here? Tom claims he can reproduce this result "over and over throughout the year", waves are apparently never an issue. But videos like the above are simply explained by waves? You can't have it both ways...

Tom says that

Quote
Samuel Birley Rowbotham has proven that sinking ships are restored when looking at them with a telescope, proving that they are not really behind a "hill of water".

I'm interested by the world "proven" here. Rowbothom makes this claim and says it is backed up by what he saw but that is all. Apparently this is enough proof for Tom which is strange given the levels of proof he demands for anything which doesn't fit in with his world view. Which brings me on to Rowbothom's claims about perspective:

Quote
In a long row of lamps, standing on horizontal ground, the pedestals, if short, gradually diminish until at a distance of a few hundred yards they seem to disappear, and the upper and thinner parts of the lamp posts appear to touch the ground

http://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/za/za32.htm
From this and other examples he concludes that:

Quote
upon a plane or horizontal surface the lowest parts of bodies receding from a given point of observation necessarily disappear before the highest.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/za/za33.htm

The only evidence Rowbothom provides for any of this is him saying that is what he saw. So my rebuttal is "No they don't".

The lowest parts of "bodies receding from a given point of observation" do NOT disappear before the highest parts IF the two objects are on a plane. Assuming no refraction or other atmospheric conditions the entire object should be visible no matter how far away it gets.
The whole object is just less clear as it recedes and on the sea if the hull and sea are similar in colour they may be hard to distinguish. All optical zoom will do is make things bigger and make them easier to distinguish again. The way to demonstrate this is to think about how we see things at all. Light bounces off objects and in to our eyes. So long as there is clear line of sight between me and all of an object then I will be able to see all of it which, on a flat plane, there should always be. The only limiting factor would be atmospheric conditions. Here is a diagram showing how the light travels from the bottom of a distant person and the top of the person into my eye:



So I should be able to see the whole person, just less clearly as the person gets further away. If you think about it, the closer the person is the larger the angle between the top and bottom lines and thus the bigger the image formed on my retina. Other than the size I perceive something, perspective is NOT a factor here. If photons can physically travel from both the bottom and the top of the object then I see the whole object.

If I was on a curve though then I would see less of the object because the curve in between me and the object and physically blocks the photons from the bottom, so in this diagram I only see the person's head:



If the person was closer there would be less of a curve between us and I would see more of them
When considering how seriously to take Rowbothom's claims about perspective, it's worth noting he also wrote:


Quote
During a partial solar eclipse the sun's outline has many times been seen through the body of the moon. But those who have been taught to believe that the moon is a solid opaque sphere, are ever ready with "explanations," often of the most inconsistent character, rather than acknowledge the simple fact of semi-transparency. Not only has this been proved by the visibility of the sun's outline through segments, and sometimes the very centre, of the moon, but often, at new moon, the outline of the whole, and even the several shades of light on the opposite and illuminated part have been distinctly seen. In other words we are often able to see through the dark side of the moon's body the light on the other side.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/za/za63.htm

He also believed the moon to emit its own light and that light to be cold (Hint: Light is made up of photons. Photons have energy. Heat is also a type of energy. If you think you have discovered cold light then another Nobel prize awaits).

I have yet to understand why Rowbotham's claims are given such credence by some on here.

53
Flat Earth Theory / The Flat Earth Sun
« on: January 07, 2018, 06:27:47 PM »
I hope this is the right place for this. I've looked through the Wiki about the sun in the FE model. I have the following questions.


What is the empirical evidence for the sun's size (32 miles in diameter) and height (3000 miles above the plane of the earth)? I see a page in the Wiki reinterpreting the data from Eratosthenes' stick experiment, there is a link on that page to an article from Millersville University which  does the maths of that reinterpretation but that article concludes:

Quote
as we move from Florida to Pennsylvania, our distance from the sun increases by about 30%. As a consequence the apparent size of the sun should decrease by 30%. We see no noticeable change in the apparent size of the sun as we make the trip. We conclude that the flat earth/near sun model does not work

If the sun really is only 3,000 miles above the earth then it should be fairly easy to prove that by measuring the angle of the sun at cities a couple of hundred miles apart and triangulating. The Wiki page actually notes this is a way to determine the distance to the sun. Has this been done? Can the evidence be provided if so?

What in the FE model powers the sun and keeps it shining? And if it is circling above the flat earth then what keeps it in the sky? Why doesn't it fall on us?

I see that seasons are explained by the circular motion changing so it is a tighter circle in summer and bigger circle in winter. What causes the sun to move between these orbits and what makes it speed up in winter and slow down in summer as it would have to as the circumference of the circle changes, otherwise the day / night cycle would change length

If the sun is a sphere then what causes the spotlight effect? The Wiki compares it to a lighthouse but in a lighthouse the light is focused by lenses. What focuses the light in the flat earth model and stops it shining over the whole earth?

It is stated that sunrise and sunset are an effect of perspective. How does that explain the effect of clouds lit from below as in this photo?



Perspective cannot explain that. For a shadow to be cast upwards the light source has to be PHYSICALLY below the object. I have provide some proof of that in this thread
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=6875.160

Perspective also cannot make a distant object slowly sink below the horizon on a flat plane. I believe the claim in ENaG is that perspective only makes it appear as though an object is sunken into the horizon and magnification can make the object reappear but you can zoom into a sunset and still see the sun slowly sink below the horizon. If the sun is 3000 miles above the earth then that wouldn't happen. Maybe a scale model could be built and photos taken from the appropriate perspective to explain how this would work?

Thanks in advance.

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