[Woody]

How are these shadows being cast if the sun remains at or close to the same altitude over the Earth?

[Rounder]

We all know the answer will be "bendy light" of some kind, don't we?  Consulting the Wiki, which quotes Rowbotham's Earth not a Globe for much of the linked page, but adds another quote (shown below) as a Summary; a quote for which I can find no online corroboration.  Everything I find on the web either copied it exactly as found here without attribution, or copied it and cited the TFES wiki as the source)

Emphasis added by me:

At these times it appears close to the horizon where the density of the air differs greatly. The air near the ground is denser than the layer of air just above it, and the layer of air above that is less dense still, and so on upwards until the Earth's atmosphere peters out at some 400 km. Now consider what happens when the Sun is setting. When the Sun is at the horizon, light from the top of the disc is going through the air at a different angle than that from the lower part. So the rays are bent by different amounts before they reach the observer's eye. The result is that the bottom part of the Sun's disc appears to be lifted up. In consequence the Sun's disc appears slightly compressed."

- Samuel Birley Rowbotham

The FE side places great importance on the fact (and it IS a fact, I'll agree with them in this one small way) that light is refracted by the atmosphere.  But they try to force this bendy light to do two opposing things at the same time:
 
A. Either as Rowbotham says (and we round earthers agree) thicker air refracts light rays to make objects "appear to be lifted up",
B. Or they cause objects to appear lower than they are; so low, in fact, as to appear to actually go below the horizon.

It's one or the other, you can't have it both ways.  And we can disprove option B with an observation (you remember "observation" right?  Supposedly the Zetetic's foundational activity?).  Observe the apparent shape of the sun's disc at sunset.  Consider that portion of the sun's disc which appears nearest the horizon (call this "the bottom" for visual descriptive purposes).  Do you observe the bottom appear to move down toward the horizon faster than the middle and top?  No, you do not; if this happened then you would observe the sun appearing to stretch out into an ellipse with the major axis vertical and the minor axis parallel to the horizon.  (In fact, this should have been happening all day, ever since the sun passed your local zenith.  It might only be dramatic enough to be observed when the sun reaches the farthest point from which it is visible to you.)  Instead we observe the exact opposite effect, the sun compressing top to bottom.

[Rounder]

...a quote for which I can find no online corroboration.  Everything I find on the web either copied it exactly as found here without attribution...

I did a little more digging.  Since the quoted passage actually contains good science, it will come as no surprise to the RE side that it did NOT come from Rowbotham after all.  Turns out to be a passage from the 1981 book "The Practical Astronomer", by Colin A Ronin, Roxby Press Ltd.  Check out the link, the passage is on page 16 of the text (page 15 of the pdf: they included the book's cover as page 1 and appear to have omitted some blank pages, resulting in non-matched page numbers). 

Come on, Flat Earthers!  Are you guys even trying here?
If you're going to plagiarize things and falsely attribute them to your guy, at least steal things that support your position!!

[andruszkow]

I've asked this question before. First answer was sunlight bouncing off of the surface of the earth. Read the rest here: http://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=3899.0

[andruszkow]

Of course, it didn't take long before sandokhan polluted the thread with the tunguska event, and when I asked him about the meteor that hit Teljabinsk (recorded by at least 20 different cameras) in 2013, he tried to convince me that the meteor was in fact a tesla weapon strike carried out by America.

So yeah.

[brainsandgravy]

It's an absolute debunk of the flat earth. They have no reasonable explanation.

[CableDawg]

It really is quite obvious from looking at the pictures that someone has mounted dark lights on the tops of the mountains for no other purpose than to cause this perception.

For those of you who don't know, dark lights are the same as, but different from, regular lights in that instead of casting light for the purpose of illumination they cast light for the purpose of providing darkness.

This is, in fact, what the moon is and is why we experience darkness when the moon is out.  Please keep in mind that the source of dark light doesn't have to be physically seen for its effects to be perceived.



Please, oh god, please know and understand that 100% of the above is absolute BS and sarcasm.

[geckothegeek]

Maybe some of those "moonshrimps" (or is it "moonshramp" ?) have migrated to those mountain tops ? Maybe they can cause darkness, too ?

[rabinoz]

It really is quite obvious from looking at the pictures that someone has mounted dark lights on the tops of the mountains for no other purpose than to cause this perception.

For those of you who don't know, dark lights are the same as, but different from, regular lights in that instead of casting light for the purpose of illumination they cast light for the purpose of providing darkness.

This is, in fact, what the moon is and is why we experience darkness when the moon is out.  Please keep in mind that the source of dark light doesn't have to be physically seen for its effects to be perceived.

Please, oh god, please know and understand that 100% of the above is absolute BS and sarcasm.

It is a bit hard to tell! Either it's complete balderdash or a direct quore from "the Wiki". Which of the following is a true quote from the Wiki and which is rubbish?

• The sun remains the same size as it recedes into the distance due to a known magnification effect caused by the intense rays of light passing through the strata of the atmolayer.
  
  
• You are assuming that the sun is being magnified in a similar method as a magnifying glass, where blurriness occurs as a ratio with distance. This is incorrect. The magnification of the sun occurs through a projection. A projection of light is occurring upon the atmolayer between the sun and observer.
  
  
• The sun moves constant speed into the horizon at sunset because it is at such a height that already beyond the apex of perspective lines. It has maximized the possible broadness of the lines of perspective in relation to the earth. It is intersecting the earth at a very broad angle.

Come now, no cheating!

[CableDawg]

It really is quite obvious from looking at the pictures that someone has mounted dark lights on the tops of the mountains for no other purpose than to cause this perception.

For those of you who don't know, dark lights are the same as, but different from, regular lights in that instead of casting light for the purpose of illumination they cast light for the purpose of providing darkness.

This is, in fact, what the moon is and is why we experience darkness when the moon is out.  Please keep in mind that the source of dark light doesn't have to be physically seen for its effects to be perceived.

Please, oh god, please know and understand that 100% of the above is absolute BS and sarcasm.

It is a bit hard to tell! Either it's complete balderdash or a direct quore from "the Wiki". Which of the following is a true quote from the Wiki and which is rubbish?

• The sun remains the same size as it recedes into the distance due to a known magnification effect caused by the intense rays of light passing through the strata of the atmolayer.
  
  
• You are assuming that the sun is being magnified in a similar method as a magnifying glass, where blurriness occurs as a ratio with distance. This is incorrect. The magnification of the sun occurs through a projection. A projection of light is occurring upon the atmolayer between the sun and observer.
  
  
• The sun moves constant speed into the horizon at sunset because it is at such a height that already beyond the apex of perspective lines. It has maximized the possible broadness of the lines of perspective in relation to the earth. It is intersecting the earth at a very broad angle.

Come now, no cheating!

I'm going to say this is a trick question and that all 3 are quoted from the wiki.

[Rounder]

My guess is that #1 is from the wiki, while #2 and #3 came as replies to you from some thread participants on the FE side.

[rabinoz]

My guess is that #1 is from the wiki, while #2 and #3 came as replies to you from some thread participants on the FE side.

It is a bit hard to tell! Either it's complete balderdash or a direct quore from "the Wiki". Which of the following is a true quote from the Wiki and which is rubbish?

• The sun remains the same size as it recedes into the distance due to a known magnification effect caused by the intense rays of light passing through the strata of the atmolayer.
  
  
• You are assuming that the sun is being magnified in a similar method as a magnifying glass, where blurriness occurs as a ratio with distance. This is incorrect. The magnification of the sun occurs through a projection. A projection of light is occurring upon the atmolayer between the sun and observer.
  
  
• The sun moves constant speed into the horizon at sunset because it is at such a height that already beyond the apex of perspective lines. It has maximized the possible broadness of the lines of perspective in relation to the earth. It is intersecting the earth at a very broad angle.

Come now, no cheating!

I'm going to say this is a trick question and that all 3 are quoted from the wiki.

Full marks to CableDawg, yes they are all from "the Wiki", no wonder we get no reasonable answers.

They trouble is that I sort of insist that light travels in straight lines unless refracted, diffracted, scattered or curved by large mass/energy^[1] according to well defined rules.
That makes these perspective and magnification hypotheses very hard to swallow.

Don't you just "lurve"

"it is at such a height that already beyond the apex of perspective lines. It has maximized the possible broadness of the lines of perspective in relation to the earth"

for meaningless gobbledygook. Though I believe that I am now guilty of redundant verbosity.

It would do a political speech writer proud!

Wouldn't it be nice to get some straight answers on the topic.

[1] Bonus mark for Roundabout for noting my omission of GR effects (which of course are minute even near the sun).

[İntikam]

Shadows on the clouds are the waters that falling down from heavens. The places that have heavy water seems as shadows.

[andruszkow]

Shadows on the clouds are the waters that falling down from heavens. The places that have heavy water seems as shadows.

Haha. Yes. Its water. Definitely not shadows from objects visible in the picture. It's pure coincidence.

[Roundabout]

They trouble is that I sort of insist that light travels in straight lines unless refracted, diffracted or scattered according to well defined rules.
[...]

Aha! Aha! Never heard of general relativity, have ye, mate? Posit a few black holes circulating above the earth, and there's your explanation for bendy light.

Flat earthers, feel free to adopt this explanation for the appearances and apparent motions of celestial objects, so long as you don't credit me for it.

Wouldn't it be nice to get some straight answers on the topic.

I think the FE response is so obvious that they didn't bother to post it:

"Yawn. The photos are obvious fakes. If NASA can fake several entire space programs complete with thousands of witnesses that say that they actually happened and tell consistent stories about them, and can create hundreds of Potemkin scientific conferences with thousands of attendees, dozens of Potemkin scientific journals, thousands of fake professors and scientists populating hundreds of Potemkin university departments of space science, aerospace engineering, and electrical engineering, then surely NASA can create some fake photos supposedly proving a round earth."

[brainsandgravy]

Shadows on the clouds are the waters that falling down from heavens. The places that have heavy water seems as shadows.

Water doesn't make shadows. Light makes shadows. How does direct sunlight cast shadows on the underside of clouds? It's impossible on a flat earth.

[TotesNotReptilian]

Aha! Aha! Never heard of general relativity, have ye, mate? Posit a few black holes circulating above the earth, and there's your explanation for bendy light.

Flat earthers, feel free to adopt this explanation for the appearances and apparent motions of celestial objects, so long as you don't credit me for it.

Some people just want to watch the world burn...

[rabinoz]

Aha! Aha! Never heard of general relativity, have ye, mate? Posit a few black holes circulating above the earth, and there's your explanation for bendy light.

Flat earthers, feel free to adopt this explanation for the appearances and apparent motions of celestial objects, so long as you don't credit me for it.

Some people just want to watch the world burn...

Fixed my post, hope you approve!

[TotesNotReptilian]

Aha! Aha! Never heard of general relativity, have ye, mate? Posit a few black holes circulating above the earth, and there's your explanation for bendy light.

Flat earthers, feel free to adopt this explanation for the appearances and apparent motions of celestial objects, so long as you don't credit me for it.

Some people just want to watch the world burn...

Fixed my post, hope you approve!

NOOOOOOOooooooo!

Now they are going to incorporate that into their theory, and the burden of proof will be on us to prove that there aren't a bunch of completely undetectable black holes orbiting 3001^[1] miles above the earth, affecting light in mysterious and convenient ways.


^[1] They aren't at the same height as the sun, they are at about the same height as the sun