81

Flat Earth Theory / Re: What is the altitude of the North Star above the flat plane?

« on: May 30, 2018, 10:44:00 AM »

"Physical Review Letters (PRL), established in 1958, is a peer-reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society. As also confirmed by various measurement standards, which include the Journal Citation Reports impact factor and the journal h-index proposed by Google Scholar, many physicists and other scientists consider Physical Review Letters to be one of the most prestigious journals in the field of physics."

Ruderfer's classic experiment was published in the Physical Review Letters Journal in 1960.

You don't have to explain me the value of PRL, I have published there some papers myself. But not all papers in such journal are of the same value. You have to look also for the impact of the specific paper on the scientific community. And his paper (anyway the only one in a Journal of that rank) has more or less no impact. It's cited by himself, some conference contributions, nothing outstanding. Overall about 30 citations in 60 years, most of them in the early years after the publication.

Around that time it was still quite popular to speculate about the ether, but that was not a discussion with high impact on the field of relativistic physics.

This Ruderfer guy seems to noticed that himself. His publications (nothing published with any co-authors, seems he was a complete outsider of the scientific community from the beginning), went more and in the direction of obvious pseudo-science, speculation and even parapsychology.

He was never member of any university. His affiliation for the PRL paper is "Dimensions, Incorporated, Brooklyn, New York". Whatever this is, a least not a scientific institute with any reputation.

His first paper from 1952 is titled "TELEPATHY AND THE QUANTUM". I think it's not worth spending any time on whatever this guy measured or calculated...   

Edit:

I have to add, that he published a paper in Science already 1949. Also something very wired. It seems he tried to measure the validity of the conservation of energy law over life span of a living being. I think that already laid out the path he was following throughout his whole "career"...

82

Flat Earth Theory / Re: What is the altitude of the North Star above the flat plane?

« on: May 30, 2018, 08:58:04 AM »

Martin Ruderfer, another great scientist... Published later in journals like "Journal of Parapsychology" or "Speculations in Science and Technology". Now I understand, why I never heard about that guy up to now...

83

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Observation of Sun Size During the Day

« on: May 30, 2018, 08:27:33 AM »

The lights in this gallery above get bigger because of blurriness. People used a lens with low depth of field and focused on something in the foreground. Photographers call this effect "bokeh", which is Japanese for "blurry".

I also would suggest to have a look into an optics book to inform oneself what the expression "far field" means... 

84

Flat Earth Theory / Re: 100% undebunkable

« on: May 29, 2018, 01:52:02 PM »

I think what we're missing, Tontogary, is that sandokahn wants us to recognize an enigma about the motion of earth in an orbiting/rotating round earth model that is confronting the scientific community that can only be answered by abandoning that model for a stationary flat earth model.  In other words, the round earth with its supposed GPS satellites is internally inconsistent, and even prominent scientists like Dr. Su recognize it and are trying to answer the enigma.

Don't be mislead, this "Dr. Su" is not a prominent scientist. This guy has no credibility in this field. There is also no enigma, that puzzles the scientific community. In his papers (not recognized by any scientist) he speculates about effects, beyond the measurement limit that would maybe lead to some discussion. This nothing worth to discuss about.

85

Flat Earth Theory / Re: 100% undebunkable

« on: May 29, 2018, 12:53:24 PM »

For your famous author Web of Sciences can only find 7 publications, all published between 2001 and 2006. No co-authors and only 3 citations beside self-citations. No publications in high-impact journals. Nothing... Any of our PhD students has a better reputation then this guy...

86

Flat Earth Theory / Re: 100% undebunkable

« on: May 29, 2018, 11:43:39 AM »

The paper is crap with no impact on the scientific discussion. The guy published some papers around the time on related topics only cross-referenced by himself. No experimental data, just speculation about effects too small to be measured. Try better...

87

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Electromagnetic Accelerator

« on: May 29, 2018, 10:58:13 AM »

If you want to see an object as a whole, at least some light from it's surface has to reach your eye, but of course not all the light.  The amount of light does not determine the apparent size, but the brightness of the object. If there are inhomogeneities in the light distribution, then the perceived brightness distribution of the object will be inhomogeneous, too.

It seems that the EA idea assumes that the light emission of the sun is isotropic, but depending on the angle between the earth surface and the direction of a particular light beam the angle is continuously increased which results in a bending of the light path. But cause we assume a straight light path, the apparent position of the sun is moving down in the sky the further we are away from the sun.

This would explain, why the further north or south relative to the equator you go, the sun is lower in the sky at noon and it would explain sunrise/sunset in the east and west, respectively.

But it also has some inherent inconsistencies. E.g. the spreading of the light would be nonlinear, therefore the intensity goes down the further away you are. This might work for sunrise/sunset, but not at noon along the north-south direction. The change in intensity is not comparable.

But the biggest problem, is the total lack of experimental evidence that light can be curved in that way (beside in general relativity due to bended space by great masses). Photons carry no charge, so they do not interact with electromagnetic-fields in that way. Light can be scattered, refracted, reflected, can be absorbed, it can be changed in frequency, and it's polarization can be rotated (also by magentic or electric fields), it can be trapped in resonators, it can be interfered and some other things, but nothing like this EA was ever observed experimentally and no theory indicates this possibility.           

88

Flat Earth Theory / Re: 100% undebunkable

« on: May 29, 2018, 08:39:57 AM »

The whole discussion shows a fundamental problem in how to address the problem. If you see the earth spinning inside a medium (the atmosphere), than indeed you would have a problem due to energy loss by friction at the interface between the earth surface and the medium.

But this is simply not correct. You have to look at whole earth-atmosphere system spinning together in the vacuum of the space.

Of course, there are a lot of complications to this picture, and you can discuss about this endlessly, but that is the very basic picture you have to start with.

89

Flat Earth Community / Re: What is being done to prove the flat earth?

« on: May 29, 2018, 07:22:07 AM »

As Popper noted, science often proceeds by disconfirmation or falsification, rather than by proof or verification. So, create a model of reality, say, the world we live on is a nearly flat plane, and see whether the observations match up.

Regarding the FE model, it soon became apparent, indeed more than two thousand years ago, that it was very difficult to model reality using the FE assumptions. You have to explain stuff like sunset and sunrise, longitude, the pole star etc etc.

The modern FE movement tries to deny this science, however it is incumbent upon them to show how the standard and well-known problems can be explained under the FE model. E.g. why is half the world in darkness at any one time? That’s really hard.

And while the theories might seem plausible (if flawed) taken individually, when put together they can in no way be taken seriously.

Take the earths magnetic field, which is mapped, and measured, and ask a FEer to explain how it can apply to a FE, and they will say that there is a South Pole all around=d the ice wall, as a way of explaining the field we know it there, but ask them about magnetic dip, and it is either never explained or fudged over, then ask them how it works with a bi pole model of the earth, and it really falls apart, and then how that all ties in with the aurora, and it becomes a complete shambles.

Such a model is not possible. In that case the density of magnetic field lines would be much higher in the north compared to the south which means a strong gradient in magnetic field strength going from the north to the south. Its basically the same problem as with the increasing distances in east-west direction if you go south on the mono-polar flat earth.

90

Flat Earth Theory / Re: 100% undebunkable

« on: May 28, 2018, 03:14:36 PM »

The earth is not like the wing of an airplane moving through a static atmosphere, the atmosphere is moving together with the earth, like the air inside a train. It's not that in the back of the train is all the air and in the front is vacuum...

Of course the coupling between the earth and the atmosphere is not perfectly rigid. And you have many other effects, e.g. due to thermal gradients and so on leading to all sorts of atmospheric effects. But it is rigid enough that we do not feel a permanent storm blowing in our face from one direction.   

91

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Latitude and Longitude

« on: May 28, 2018, 02:43:30 PM »

It's a bit of a problem that he always on the level of qualitative description regarding perspective. He never gives a formula or some numbers how far away or how large something should appear according to his concept of perspective. And one has to admit, that on this level the concept is quite compatible with daily life observations. If he would have tried (maybe he did, but never mentioned) and calculated this e.g. for person  on a very high mountain or for a distant object like the sun, moon or stars, he would by himself noticed the contradictions of his concept. 

92

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Latitude and Longitude

« on: May 28, 2018, 08:16:45 AM »

Found on YouTube:

‘Latitude and Longitude are concepts that originate with Astronomy and which assumes that we live on a spherical surface’.

As far as I can determine, the second part is not correct. The first part is misleading, given that the practical application of of these measurements is for navigation to avoid ships crashing into land.

The second part is wrong. No such assumption is required. Latitude is an observable quantity based on the sun’s position. Longitude requires an accurate clock and a measurement of local noon.

Both are therefore measurable quantities, and so don’t depend on spherical earth assumptions. Of course, a spherical earth is a consequence of this, but a consequence and an assumption are quite different things.

Of course coordinate systems can be transformed one into each other, but you have a kind of natural coordinate system depending on the geometry and symmetry of your space. In Euclidean space you would naturally use Cartesian coordinates, in a cylindrical space you would use an angle, radius and height as coordinates. For a sphere radius and two angles. Longitude and latitude are spherical coordinates and I would say the use of them originates in astronomy cause the night sky appears as half sphere and you can easily describe the position and movement of celestial objects in spherical coordinates. And only later this was applied to locate certain points on the earth surface. For a flat earth cylindrical coordinates would be much more natural.     

93

Flat Earth Theory / Re: 100% undebunkable

« on: May 28, 2018, 07:55:37 AM »

Via k_B * T temperature of gas molecules is equivalent to a certain amount of kinetic energy and therefor a certain velocity. A value of 1m/s or 86400 Km/day at room temperature is a very conservative estimate...

Anyway, the earth and its atmosphere is a closed system, you don't feel it's speed because you, the air and everything else is moving with the same speed with you. You only feel accelerations, but the outward acceleration due to earth's rotation is even at the equator so tiny compared to gravity, that you can measure it, but not feel it.     

94

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Would you consider arguing in favor of a Flat Earth if this were a Debate Club?

« on: May 25, 2018, 03:55:59 PM »

God only knows what Tom is even arguing here - Tom certainly doesn't.

The above really demonstrates, for me, why "arguing on the other side" probably won't work.

The only way to defend flat earth, at a certain stage, is to be intellectually dishonest.

I like to think we on the side of facts also have a sense of honesty and fair play about us.

Definitely, for me to even pretend to defend the flat earth with Tom's usual tactics would feel icky.

And also kind of boring too: how satisfying can it be to be backed into a corner over and over again and respond ad infinitum, "well have you tested every little aspect of that yourself?" or "yes, but Rowbotham says [derp derp]" or "perspective and optics and fairies and waves"?

Or, if none of that works, to just leave the room and come back later when a whole new group has arrived and start the whole thing over again?

Of course you can, in principle, honestly discuss a flat-earth as kind of gedankenexperiment. So you can take the laws of physics and then assume a flat world. Then think of the consequences and design a model. You can even invent new laws of physics and use them in your model. That's all fine and honest.

The only problem is, that this would end up, if you keep your model self-consistent, in a very different world compared to the one we live in. This is the obvious problem of any flat-earth model. You can find alternative explanations for certain aspects, but you can never find a consistent model. Because you cannot, as any cartographer knows, without distortions transform a 3D space into a 2D one.   

95

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Would you consider arguing in favor of a Flat Earth if this were a Debate Club?

« on: May 25, 2018, 03:44:13 PM »

One can come up with lots of follow up questions... e.g.:

If the earth is flat and mono-polar, its natural symmetry is cylindrical, so one should use cylindrical coordinates to define a place on the earth. One is the angle around the pole, the second is the distance to the pole and the third one the height above sea level. Why using spherical coordinates made for a sphere?

On a sphere, straight lines, defined as the shortest connection between two points, are part of great circles if the points are on the surface of the sphere. In this non-Euclidean spherical space this lines meat twice going around the sphere. How would you then define parallel or vanishing point, infinity and so on in such a 2D spherical space (the surface of sphere) opposed to a 2D Euclidean space?   

96

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Would you consider arguing in favor of a Flat Earth if this were a Debate Club?

« on: May 25, 2018, 03:06:31 PM »

Perspective has in the first place nothing to do with geometry, its an optical effect due to imaging of 3D space onto a 2D plane via a diffracting medium. In this sense the merging of parallel lines at large distances has no physical reality. If I build a railway track and at every point I take care that at every point the tracks have the same distance, then this does not change suddenly if I look along the tracks and I have the impression they are merging.

And this has also nothing to do with Euclid. As I said before, the Euclidean space is self-consistently defined, if it holds the axioms it is Euclidean, if not, its non-euclidean.

97

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Would you consider arguing in favor of a Flat Earth if this were a Debate Club?

« on: May 25, 2018, 02:34:32 PM »

I don't think Euclid has ever defined parallelism in the view of perspective perception. It's completely unrelated. What we nowadays call 2d or 3d Euclidean spaces are two of many possible n dimensional geometrical spaces. They are defined by certain axioms. And because this are definitions, one has not to proof that one of the axioms is valid in a certain space. If e.g. the axiom of parallelism in Euclidean space would not be valid, the space would not be Euclidean, it would be a different space.

What you can try to proof is, if a certain real space is Euclidean or not. E.g. can our universe be described as an Euclidean space? Regarding to Einstein's general relativity theory we are living in a 4 dimensional non-Euclidean space where we describe points in this space by Gaussian coordinates. Nevertheless, regarding more down to the earth problems compared to general relativity, the space around us is Euclidean.       

98

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Is surveying an accurate science?

« on: May 25, 2018, 12:24:58 PM »

As I said, it depends on your problem. Calculate the expected angle you want to measure and if your tool is accurate within 10% of that value, it would be already good enough.

99

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Is surveying an accurate science?

« on: May 25, 2018, 10:48:04 AM »

The level of accuracy you need scales with the problem you have. If you want to measure the distance between to points in a city something like a meter is quite ok, if you want to make an accurate drawing of something, maybe a millimeter is sufficient, a biologist investigating some cell material needs a micrometer scale, and in the semiconductor business you go down to some angstroms.   

If you do standard optics, you don't have to solve the Schrödinger equation for the photons involved, but if you're playing with single photons it could be necessary. 

There is no universal rule for the level of accuracy.

100

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Examining EnaG claims of “horizon rises to eye level”

« on: May 25, 2018, 10:20:51 AM »

I have asked about concave refraction here before, but no one has given a satisfactory answer.

What d you mean by "concave refraction"? "Concave" is a property of the lens, not the refraction. The refracted index difference of both sides of an interface determines if the angle of refraction is larger or smaller than the incident angle. But that effect you don't call "concave" or "convex".

A lens as it is used in a telescope or similar instruments is usually a spherical lens, that means it's surface is part of sphere. Therefore it's optical properties are isotropic with respect to center of the lens (the optical axis). There can't be just a vertical distortion. That would only be possible if the telescope as such is not well manufactured or misaligned. But this would be visible in the same way for objects close by or far away.