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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why Rowbotham's Old Bedford River experiment proves the earth is round

« on: July 15, 2018, 11:37:27 PM »

East-West roads curve on the globe Earth as well, except at the equator. Have you done the math to compare the two?

The roads do not curve left or right on a round earth.  Think of a round gasket like you put between two flanges when you do pipefitting.  Driving on a flat earth is like driving on the face of the gasket where you are driving in a circle around the middle.  Driving on a round earth is like driving on the edge of the gasket.  You do not have to turn the steering wheel to drive on the edge.  Take a globe and slice it at the 49th parallel and again at the 48th parallel.  Draw a road on this slice and imagine driving down that road. You keep the wheel straight.  To slice the same part on a flat road you end up with a ring that you will have to drive with the wheel turned the whole time.  I hope this helps demonstrate my point.  East west roads are parallel to each other. Parallels of latitude.

What an observer would view as a 'straight' line on a sphere, is looking along a Great Circle; a circle with it's center at Earth's center. Circles following the same latitude will have their center above or below Earth's center. Or, the observer is oriented this way, that his z-axis goes through the center of Earth. The same way also the viewing line must follow a circle with it's center at Earth's center.
This way, your example, you would have to tilt your gasket, until it goes through both endpoints, keeping the center of the gasket exact at the same point (center of sphere); not lower or heighten your gasket.

Extreme example: Imagine two points near North Pole, same latitude, but on the opposite side of the North Pole (difference in longitude 180°).
Where does the 'straight line' go? Right over the Pole.

Entirely accurate I would say. But I would add that the OP is an insightful point. The East/West bend on FE vs RE are different. You need to know your latitude to say how much it is, but it can be tested for.

I apologize profusely as I realized the flaw in my logic on my own and meant to correct it before others do.  Seldom on this site have I seen a person admit they were wrong and I was wrong.  My gasket analogy is wrong because the edge would not be perpendicular to the plane of the face.  I also thought of when I was near the north pole myself and realized east west is more on the face than the edge.
But as I have said many times here, things mostly fall apart once you are near the equator and south of the equator.  Douglips is totally correct to challenge me and I was wrong.  But in addition to his observation that it would only work at the equator, south of the equator the curvatures are in opposite directions.  Since it seems that flat earthers refuse to travel, it is impossible to convince them that there is a south of the equator or a south pole.  When north - south roads go through the midwest US, they have to put in correction lines so that the number of roads decreases as you go north to keep the farmland in square pieces.  In Australia they have to decrease the roads as you go south.  Or in other words, you turn right as you go west in the north hemisphere and left as you go west in the south hemisphere.  But flat earthers do not acknowledge the differences between the north and south hemispheres (or at least have not in the past) and so I concede that my original point is flawed.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why Rowbotham's Old Bedford River experiment proves the earth is round

« on: July 15, 2018, 04:08:56 PM »

East-West roads curve on the globe Earth as well, except at the equator. Have you done the math to compare the two?

The roads do not curve left or right on a round earth.  Think of a round gasket like you put between two flanges when you do pipefitting.  Driving on a flat earth is like driving on the face of the gasket where you are driving in a circle around the middle.  Driving on a round earth is like driving on the edge of the gasket.  You do not have to turn the steering wheel to drive on the edge.  Take a globe and slice it at the 49th parallel and again at the 48th parallel.  Draw a road on this slice and imagine driving down that road. You keep the wheel straight.  To slice the same part on a flat road you end up with a ring that you will have to drive with the wheel turned the whole time.  I hope this helps demonstrate my point.  East west roads are parallel to each other. Parallels of latitude. 

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Flat Earth Theory / Why Rowbotham's Old Bedford River experiment proves the earth is round

« on: July 15, 2018, 03:41:51 PM »

When I woke up this morning I realized that in a flat earth, a road running east and west is  curved where the driver would have to circle the north pole.  On a round earth, the person could drive straight.  Looking at the map of the Old Bedford River, which is surveyed to be in a certain constant south east direction, I calculated that for a flat earth three stakes in the middle of channel would be 52 cm out of linear looking down the channel as Rowbotham did.  He claimed they were in a straight line. 
Similarly, if you drive straight west from Seneca to Marysville KY on highway 36, if the earth is flat you will have to drive 1 mile to the right of the direction you started out in to reach Marysville. On a round earth, you can get there by driving straight.  Try it out and see if you think the road curves to the right or not.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: The distance to sunset: a new simple way to debunk the flat earth

« on: April 19, 2018, 05:27:10 PM »

My first post was about how you can go farther away up a hill and see the sun after it set where you are.  I have done this with a snowmobile on Jan 22 in the far north. 
I have also posted that if you actually look at where the sun is, it stays up a few minutes longer than it should because the round atmosphere acts sort of like a prism and makes the sun at the horizon look higher than it really is.  This is the exact opposite of what FE'ers claim happens without actually doing anything other than reading books.
Back to my taking a snowmobile up a hill, the angle of the sun showed it was approximately 40 miles underground if the world is flat.
If you think you are better than people in other parts of the world, your perspective can let you believe in an FE. Other people either do not exist or are not important. People who fly from Sydney to Cape Town are easily fooled about where they are going.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: When I was in 4th grade...

« on: April 19, 2018, 01:40:10 PM »

So given it is a fish eye lens, what is the black stuff in the photo?  What shape should the black stuff have if it is not distorted?  The more appropriate answer is that the balloon flight was faked not that the lens of the camera it took pictures with has a fish eye lens.  If the FE model is true, the picture (if a fish eye lens was used) should have been of a distorted ice wall with whatever is on the other side of the ice wall.  How do we know that the photo is not of the FE pie plate?  It would be round too!  An undistorted photo that shows a straight line with black space on one side and the earth on the other still does not fit the FE model.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Examination of EnaG Chapter XIV, Motion of Stars North and South

« on: April 19, 2018, 01:28:54 PM »

I have mentioned a few times here that the FE theory works so long as you are willing to ignore that there are people who are your equals living in places you do not live.  The moon turns on its journey to face only you and your fellow countrymen.  I have also said many times here that if Rowbotham had been born in Christchurch, the sun would orbit a south pole and the wall of ice would be in the north.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Any one here "in" on the "Conspiracy"?

« on: April 18, 2018, 03:35:35 PM »

The main thing about the conspiracy is that they cannot be very bright.  Or else like Trump they appear to be idiots to cover their super high intelligence.  My point I have made before is that if you were in charge of a conspiracy, why make yourself look so stupid?  The Challenger and Columbia disasters make you look bad and then the fake inquiries you pretend to take place find the main problems to be managerial not technical or human error.  Laika, according to the conspiracy, died in space but it was not publicized as such.  Couldn't you not write the script so that Laika lived?  Some billionaire can send a Tesla up in space for far less money than you can do it for.  If you are motivated by money why create a story that continuously makes you look bad and threatens your budget.  If I was in charge, I would write the story that the private sector was much more inefficient and therefore my huge budget is justified, not the other way around. If I wrote the story about Challenger, I would have had the astronauts die a quick death, not sitting in the capsule for minutes waiting to die on impact. Why write the story so that Roger Boisjoly is shunned by colleagues and quits and then the movie comes out and makes him look like a hero and the conspiracy a bunch of idiots and bad managers?
I also previously calculated a rough estimate that paying everyone in on the conspiracy would cost $1 trillion a year and that is just paying each person $50,000.  This would hardly be enough to keep me from selling the story for say $500k considering just having sex with the president gets someone $130k.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Ice wall - the empirical evidence

« on: March 25, 2018, 03:26:42 PM »

This is a terrible argument from Tom. We do have data for going 'the long way around,' and you get it by connecting flights together like pz says. In another current case, Santiago to Cape Town to Sydney. It doesn't help his cause at all; again, the work has been done and it is a complete debunk of flat Earth belief. He's starting you all on a wild goose chase to retread an argument he already lost. Don't fall for it.

Connecting flights aren't traveling on the same latitude. They travel more northward. We have no idea how big the earth's circumference is at those far southern latitudes in question.

I again propose that people that live south of the equator are not stupider than those that happen to be born north of the equator.  If we sit in our basements and ignore that the human population is made up of individuals that live pretty much everywhere, we can propose that no one knows what happens in the south. Chile could be a hoax for all we know, based upon having no desire to ever go there.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: How Flat Earth model explains twilight?

« on: March 25, 2018, 03:19:09 PM »

And the magical model has to provide equal day and night to everyone everywhere.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: flipping moon

« on: March 25, 2018, 03:14:58 PM »

I will repeat that I think the moon is the best proof of a round earth that is visible to everyone.  During the arctic winter, the full moon goes around the viewer and is visible the entire night.  If you are in Norway, Siberia or Canada, the full moon circles you with the same face visible all the time.  How can it face all three viewers all the time on a flat model?  If it were an automobile, one should see headlights, or tailights, side doors and undercarriage as it circles around the overhead track if it is circling the north pole. And then again we have to assume the people south of the equator are not as important and can be ignored.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Ice wall - the empirical evidence

« on: March 21, 2018, 02:39:40 PM »

Have you stood in both Chile and Sydney at the same time and checked that you looked in the same direction when looking south?

It is offensive to suggest that people living south of the equator are confused about the directions they go when they think they are heading south.  Two roads heading south get closer together the farther south you go, just like the need for correction lines in the north.  As I mentioned many times, the FE model works great if you ignore the fact that there are other people in other countries that matter a little bit.  You can distort the map of the southern hemisphere and believe it, so long as you ignore that people live in the areas that are wildly distorted and they do not have to travel great distances to get to their neighbors.  They are not all bumbling idiots.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Ice wall - the empirical evidence

« on: March 18, 2018, 02:57:16 PM »

This debate pretty much ends as all the others.  If you take the stance of Rowbotham and assume that anyone that is not from where you live does not matter, you can build a model that works for you.  Whether the south pole exists or is a ring does not matter because anyone living south of the equator is less important and we do not have to consider what they might claim to see, such as a southern cross in the sky.  Around people that matter, the south magnetic lines diverge so they can keep diverging or start converging, who cares.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: flipping moon

« on: March 14, 2018, 03:06:00 PM »

I like the moon as the best proof for a round earth because we can see the details of the surface without a telescope.  If you use a telescope it clearly shows shadows like it is being lit by something else.
Instead of an arrow, I will again introduce the concept of a car.  It is coming from beyond the eastern horizon, passes over head and leaves beyond the western horizon.  Since you do not see the headlights coming, then the undercarriage and finally the tail lights, the only conclusion is that you are seeing the same part of the car all the time.  It is "turning" to face you.
Like Tom likes to acknowledge, if you refuse to travel, like Rowbotham, you can believe the the earth is flat and the universe jumps through hoops to give you a certain perspective.  But if you acknowledge that there are other people that matter in other countries, then you have to understand that they are not seeing the headlights, side doors, and tail lights as this "car" moves to suit you.  The only model that will allow everyone to see the same face of the moon on the same day all the time, is if it is far away and moving in a circle around a round earth.  A geocentric universe would work at this level, but only if the earth is round.  Or you can ignore that there are other people on this planet that matter as much as you.  The Zetetic way is to observe and conclude.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: The ultimate proof that the Earth is ROUND...

« on: March 13, 2018, 03:09:51 AM »

I think one of the easiest examples here to see and does not require living by a coast is to watch the full moon.  It is always facing you.  The only way for this to happen for everyone everywhere no matter if the moon is on the horizon or directly overhead, is for us to be turning on a sphere and for the moon to be very far away.  If you want to be a Rowbotham and ignore other people in the world, you can believe the moon turns to face just you, but if you acknowledge that there really are other people in the world that matter, you cannot stick to the FE idea.  Zetetic principles require it.

Actually this is another location where they invoke their perspective 'rule'. Anytime you have a visual oddity, simply assume they've decided it's perspective and you won't be too far off.

I am not sure they are saying that if a car is far enough away when it approaches you that you will see the undercarriage and not the headlights.  Then you see the undercarriage as it drives over you and as it races away, you do not see the taillights, but you still see the undercarriage. And everyone else watching it, no matter where they are, only see the undercarriage, and not the passenger side or driver side. That is some wacky perspective.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: The ultimate proof that the Earth is ROUND...

« on: March 12, 2018, 04:19:24 PM »

I think one of the easiest examples here to see and does not require living by a coast is to watch the full moon.  It is always facing you.  The only way for this to happen for everyone everywhere no matter if the moon is on the horizon or directly overhead, is for us to be turning on a sphere and for the moon to be very far away.  If you want to be a Rowbotham and ignore other people in the world, you can believe the moon turns to face just you, but if you acknowledge that there really are other people in the world that matter, you cannot stick to the FE idea.  Zetetic principles require it.

16

Flat Earth Theory / Re: No flat earth model can explain this case

« on: March 10, 2018, 10:50:01 PM »

Let me get this straight Tom, are you actually trying to claim that there is no way one person can observe the sun going up while another, a large distance away, can observe the same sun going down? This is something that can be seen every minute of every day (given the right locations)...

The OP’s point is basically the same as many other threads on this forum, including my latest one that shows objects hidden behind the horizon: the FE hypothesis cannot possibly explain this scenario. The common flerfer responses of "perspective" and "atmosphere acts as a lens" are non-answers because they really don’t explain what we actually see, no matter how many times you say it. Sorry Tommy, the evidence against your silly beliefs is overwhelming. Maybe it’s time to give them up?

I don't see any observations

OK. Well I can see why you come to such ridiculous conclusions. Like I said, you can make these observations any time you want to know. All you have to do is look.

All you have to do is dig.

All you have to do is dig a hole through the earth vs all you have to do is watch the sunrise/sunset with a friend?

You do realize you are being beyond ridiculous?

You have provided no observations or reports of that scenario. Until then it is a mere thought experiment no better than mine.

Are we saying that all the people around the world who watch a sunset or watch the moon and see that the same face is always towards us whereever you are in the world is simply a thought experiment the same as digging a hole straight through the world?  Why bother digging a hole when you can hop on a plane and go the opposite point in the world cheaper?

17

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Sun over a flat Earth

« on: March 10, 2018, 03:52:36 PM »

....but unfortunately for them, the map is not wrong. Anyone can draw this map just by looking up daylight hours across the world.

Distances are wrong on that map.

As mentioned in several other threads, the game here is not about believing in one thing or another, it is to pick holes in specific details to create a debate.  Play until backed into a corner and then move to another detail.  I cannot believe that anyone here who has been in any two different hemispheres could believe in a flat earth.  But that would not stop them from debating minute details to create a club.  We can argue about flying pegasuses but that does not mean anyone here actually believes they exist.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: What is the point of NASA and other space agencies lying to us?

« on: March 10, 2018, 02:21:51 PM »

The most common reply I see from FEers is a dollar bill sign. The implication being that NASA take the money, don't spend it all, and squirrel the remainder away; but it's never clear who gains from the transfer of funds from one govt agency to another....

And as I have noted elsewhere, the army of people required to be on the payroll including academics, trade workers, tour guides, Morgan Freeman, my friend who went to Antarctica, etc., would be an annual budget of bribe money of about $1 trillion.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Orbiting International Space Station visible from Telescope

« on: March 10, 2018, 03:46:50 AM »

Where are you going with this? Do you mean that flat-earthers don't believe any photographs and videos evidence just "for the sport of it"?

I mean, he is right. People ask for photographs proofs and when they get one they just say that it's fake. How do you want us to prove you anything?

At this point, the only thing we can tell FEs is :
- Go there https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=telescope
- Order a good one
- Travel around the world with it
- Observe the stars at night (at day for the sun :p) and the ISS when it gets near your location (http://iss.astroviewer.net/)
- Make your own conclusion

Because right now, FEs are literally believing... text. Where are FEs' actual observations?

Where I am going is that there must be FEers with enough experience to realize that the earth is round.  They are not believing anything for sport they are arguing for sport. They know the truth, but they want to have fun belonging to a society.  There would be others with less experience who believe the earth is flat simply because they refuse to believe there might be a New Zealand (if there is a New Zealand why is there no original Zealand?).  Just like people who claim there is now a New Mexico.  I have met older people who had never met anyone who believes in evolution.  These people could also easily believe in a flat earth.  Here certain FEers argue minute details for the sake of arguing and then stop when enough evidence is provided.  I was asked to provide a reference when I said that corrections lines were put in when farms could not be simply straight line surveyed in the western US.  I was asked why I believed that all parts of the world get equal day and night.  All those things are simply tactics to argue not to prove anything.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: The ultimate proof that the Earth is ROUND...

« on: March 09, 2018, 02:14:39 PM »

I see that the whole problem with the model demonstration is that even though light bends downward when passing from air to water, it bends upwards passing from water to air.  So for the sun to be staying above the horizon all the time and we just think it is setting we would have to live underwater.  I can use the same argument of the video by saying that scientists have concluded that not only is there a lot of water in the atmosphere, there is also a lot of air, actually more air than water.  So the light should bend upward.  And it does.  That is why sunsets actually last a little longer than they should.  Well it has nothing to do with the water vapour, just the curvature of the atmosphere acts like a lens so we can see the sun a little longer even though it has dropped just below the horizon.  So the opposite to the video is what is seen.  If we like to practice Zetetic principles, we should conclude the earth is round, not flat.

I will just add that for people who want to follow Zetetic principles, the sunset will last about 3 minutes longer than it should if there was no atmosphere (even with water vapour present).  So it will take a little bit of accuracy to measure this.