1

Flat Earth Media / Misconception: Earth's rotation cannot be detected (accidentally this time)

« on: June 24, 2019, 08:07:32 PM »

On December 14 1966, during the Space Race portion of the Cold War, an unmanned Soviet rocket failed to launch when one of the engines didn't light.  Automatic systems reacted, stopping the launch and achieving a safe shutdown of the running engines.  27 minutes later, while ground crews were preparing to replace the igniters on the failed engine, the capsule's emergency escape system activated, launching the capsule off the top of the rocket.  This unfortunately set fire to the rocket stack, which unsurprisingly resulted in an explosion, total loss of the rocket, and months of repair to the launch complex.

What does this have to do with the earth's rotation?  Well, the capsule has gyros which measure the orientation of the capsule, and one of the things that triggers the escape system is if the capsule's orientation deviates from the expected orientation at any point in the ascent portion of launch.  Since the system knew that the rocket was still on the pad, it expected it to remain vertical.  However, the gyros were detecting the rocket slowly pitching away from the vertical position recorded at T minus zero vertical due to the earth rotating the rocket eastward.  Once it got close to 7° from "vertical" the system became vulnerable to small vibrations pushing it past the trigger point, which seems to have happened when crews returned the service gantries to the service position.  The escape system was not shut down when the launch aborted, and that is by design: in a manned mission launch abort, you still want that system live in case the rocket starts to actually fall over.

2

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Wiki correction: AN/DN

« on: May 18, 2019, 03:31:12 PM »

RET depicts the descending node as closest to the sun.

In that illustration, yes, but not always.  The line of nodes rotates in relation to the First Point of Aries, precessing westward over a cycle lasting approximately 18.6 years.  Sometimes the descending node is closest to the sun, sometimes the ascending node, and both solar and lunar eclipses happen during the narrow window of either node pointing at the sun.  Odd numbered Saros cycles are descending node eclipses, even Saros cycles are ascending node eclipses.  But for most of the year, neither node lines up with the sun at all.

3

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Theory/Model Request

« on: May 13, 2019, 06:56:20 PM »

174*10^15 watt / 3*10^8 m/s = 58 * 10^7 N spread out over the entire surface of Earth.
Let's assume that the sunlight hits an area of pi*6000*6000 km² = 113,000,000 km²
That means, sunlight is pushing us down with roughly 58*10^7 / 113*10^6 = 5.1 N/km²
Your theory has been disproven.

Oh darn!  I thought I would be famous.  But even with the Sun much closer and focusing all its energy upon a spot area?  May be you can recalculate for millions more Newtons/km² ?

I created a thread about solar radiation received by Earth a few years ago.

4

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Angle and Length of a pole's shadow

« on: May 13, 2019, 03:09:50 PM »

I am trying to crunch numbers for two shadows, but for some reason it became complex:

What: A vertical pole 10 meters high with an arrow on top

I assume you refer to this monument?

Shadow Time (#2): 16:00h (4pm) local time.

Curious as to why you chose 4pm instead of 3pm?  3pm would have a 45° elevation angle just like 9am does, but 4pm will not.

5

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The IceWall NASA lies and their is an IceWall at the end of the earth

« on: May 13, 2019, 07:34:54 AM »

Kazmax, if you intend to stick around you may be interested in hearing about several things wrong in your post.

• Most FE reject space flight, which means your appeal to satellite photos won’t be effective
• Marco Polo didn’t circumnavigate, and never went very far south.  Ice wall or not, he was not in a location to find out
• Nobody in the FE side believes the horizon to be the end of the world, as far as I have seen
• Appeals to “common sense” don’t come off as anything but condescending

6

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Universal Acceleration - Power Source discussion

« on: February 11, 2019, 10:38:30 PM »

Here’s the deal. Scientists have a very good understanding of how gravity works. So much so that we can accurately predict the motion of the celestial bodies and slingshot spacecraft past them to get a speed boost.

This isn’t the kind of evidence that will convince a group in which many believe that all space flight is faked.  (Yes, I know there are a few who have reconciled satellites and FE, but that is far from a majority opinion).  Better, in my opinion, to focus on measured phenomena like the Eötvös effect and why it supports the mainstream understanding of gravity while being difficult to explain in a UA model.

7

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Astronomical Prediction Based on Patterns

« on: November 21, 2018, 04:39:54 AM »

Tell Fred that response is nonsense.

Tell him yourself.  I would love to read the correspondence between the two of you.

8

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Astronomical Prediction Based on Patterns

« on: November 20, 2018, 12:06:56 PM »

NASA is describing that they are predicting the eclipses based on the ancient Saros Cycle as used by the Ancient Babylonians.

No, they are not claiming to use the Saros Cycle to predict eclipses.  They talk about how the geometry of the earth-moon-sun system creates the cycle, but not how to use the cycle to predict eclipses.  For example, they say that a cycle moves from partial eclipses to total eclipses "after ten or eleven Saros cycles..." Well, which is it this Saros, ten or eleven?  How would you know?  In fact, if you look on another of their pages you find the situation is more unpredictable than that: "the number of partial eclipses in the initial phase ranges from 6 to 25" with no guidance on how to know from past cycles how many might be in future cycles.  The futility of using the Saros cycle for prediction is made fully evident when they sum it all up: "...the exact duration and number of eclipses in a complete Saros is not constant. A series may last 1226 to 1550 years and is comprised of 69 to 87 eclipses, of which about 40 to 60 are central"  That's no kind of basis for prediction!

Everything in astronomy is predicted on basis of patterns.

No, it is not.  Patterns are a starting point.  Understanding the reason for the patterns and (just as important) the deviations from those patterns yields better tools for prediction.  For example, each Saros cycle has a different number of eclipses in it, and a different number of partial, annular, hybrid (sometimes zero), and total (sometimes zero) eclipses.  How can that form the basis for prediction?  The interval between eclipses in the same Saros is eight years, eleven days, and approximately eight hours.  APPROXIMATELY.  How can THAT form the basis for prediction?  The answer is that it cannot, and it does not.  The Saros Cycle is a way to categorize eclipses.  To predict them you need to know the underlying physical movements, not just look up dates in a chart and project forward from them.

9

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Theory of what our "Senses" tell us

« on: September 29, 2018, 04:29:21 PM »

The senses are notoriously easy to fool, especially vision.

10

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How does a Gyrocompass find geographical direction on a flat earth?

« on: September 29, 2018, 04:21:22 PM »

since wooden ships were replace with metal ships, the magnetic compass became rather useless and had to be replaced with a non-magnetic compass.

This is a misconception.  All modern ships still have a magnetic compass on the bridge, with correcting spheres to compensate for he uneven magnetic field disturbance caused by the vessel’s own materials.  See this Wikipedia article.

11

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Flat earth and the space race

« on: September 09, 2018, 12:24:53 PM »

There are plenty of FE'ers who fully accept the mainstream view on space travel.

Off the top of your head, can you remember any who are active here?  I would love to read their reconciliation of things.

as a consequence of EAT, you'd *expect* to see a significantly curved Earth from sufficiently high up.

I wonder what altitude is “sufficiently high up” for a flat earth to look like this

12

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Other confirmations of general relativity

« on: September 07, 2018, 02:40:07 PM »

I can’t make up my mind whether you are willfully being deceitful in your ‘interpretations’, just mistaken, or perhaps just sloppy.

I can.  This was no innocent copy-paste of someone else’s incomplete quote.  Tom sought out this article, strategically copied only the words which appear to support the story he’s telling, and excised the words that fill in the truth.  That’s deliberate.

13

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Questions for Flat Earth Model(s)

« on: September 06, 2018, 03:06:20 PM »

I took from NASA’s website the data for all 19th, 20th, and 21st century eclipses and isolated the data for the Saros cycle of the August 2017 eclipse.  Here is that data:



Notice the 4th column, which gives the difference between consecutive eclipses in this Saros cycle.  If NASA were truly “using the ancient pattern-based Saros Cycle” then they would be calculating it by simply adding 8 years, 11 days, and 8 hours, and that column would all have the same number in it.  The reason it does not: the Saros cycle is a convenient way to CATEGORIZE eclipses and to ESTIMATE their timing.  To get timing accurate to the second, and a corresponding geographic accuracy, one must calculate by understanding the orbital ephemeris of the bodies involved.

14

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How to measure Universal Acceleration with a laserpointer.

« on: September 01, 2018, 04:14:34 PM »

I have a question regarding the speed of light. From a flat Earth perspective, where the entire universe revolves around the Earth once every 24 hours, how can it be that the furthest galaxies are rotating around the Earth? Wouldn't they need to be moving many tens of thousands times the speed of light to rotate around the Earth once every 24 Earth hours?

Help me to understand if I misunderstand your view.

In the universe required by a flat earth, the distances to those galaxies is nowhere near the distances measured in a round earth universe.

15

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Flat Earth FAQ on Gravity is completely wrong

« on: July 06, 2018, 03:08:35 PM »

I'm not agreeing with OP, but how can any of Einstein's work be correct/provable in a FE universe?

why wouldn't it??   who said FE doesnt follow many laws of physics?

Because Einstein’s work assumes that gravity is a real thing and is a property of mass, which is rejected by many FE.  In fact, the UA model is an attempt to explain how objects fall to earth explicitly without mass-attracts-mass gravity.  If UA is the true physics, its proponents cannot appeal to gravity for anything, and cannot use gravity-based science either.

16

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Bishop Experiment

« on: February 19, 2018, 05:46:05 AM »

We shouldn't be so quick to judge. It's very possible that Tom believes what he saw and made a simple navigation mistake when trying to find out how far the other beach was.

Shouldn't have done, he repeated the experiment over and over:

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.
—Tom Bishop

And given the pride of place accorded to this experiment, one would think they would be diligent with the accuracy.

17

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Sun and Moon Orbit

« on: February 13, 2018, 05:55:10 AM »

Perpendicular isn’t right either.  The arc is at the angle of your latitude.

18

Flat Earth Theory / Re: "The stars are not light-years away"

« on: January 30, 2018, 04:36:02 AM »

Followed your link, Tom.  That was interesting, thank you.  I did wonder why you suggest that the behavior of molecules in a solvent is at all applicable to stars?  Anyway, I then did some more reading.  Wikipedia has this relevant point:

Bathochromic shift is a phenomenon seen in molecular spectra, not atomic spectra

That means the mechanisms you suggest as substitute explanations of spectral shift are not applicable here, as we are talking about atomic spectra. 

19

Flat Earth Theory / Re: "The stars are not light-years away"

« on: January 27, 2018, 05:47:53 PM »

If you are claiming that a specific observation that favors your model of the earth will be seen if some specific experiment is performed simultaneously from three different location on earth, it is your responsibility to organize that experiment. Why would you expect me to do your work for you? Are you funding me?

It has been done.

If this study has been done, where is it?

What?  It is embodied in the durable materials from which these monuments are constructed!  They memorialize the angles to the equinox sun.

20

Flat Earth Theory / Re: "The stars are not light-years away"

« on: January 27, 2018, 03:35:32 AM »

If you are claiming that a specific observation that favors your model of the earth will be seen if some specific experiment is performed simultaneously from three different location on earth, it is your responsibility to organize that experiment. Why would you expect me to do your work for you? Are you funding me?

It has been done.  All over the world there are equatorial sundials erected in steel, stone, concrete, and wood.  These demonstrate the azimuth angle to the sun at not merely three cities but hundreds of cities, perhaps thousands, each at different latitudes.

Representing Steel is this stern piece from the socialistic era, at the Hungarian Geographic Museum in Érd, Hungary


Representing Stone is this five foot diameter granite specimen in Bloomington, MN, USA:



Representing Concrete is the Larkin Memorial Sundial in Claremont, CA, USA.  I particularly like this one for its inclusion of the analemma in the gnomon:


Representing Wood is the Equatorial sundial at the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden Mount Tomah in New South Wales, Australia: