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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Are plane tickets real?

« on: April 04, 2020, 05:12:09 PM »

The distances calculated by the Haversine formula match a sphere and no other shape.

That is where part of the problem is. According to the RE model the earth is NOT a sphere. It is a spheroid or an oblate spheroid.
 If those overseas distances truly are accurate that it is VERY strong evidence which suggest:

1. The earth is NOT the shape that is claimed.
2. Someone made a mistake somewhere

So if your Bing distances are always 100% in agreement with a Haversine distance for any two locations then the underlying shape used by Bing cannot be anything other than a sphere.

Someone would need a pretty big sample size to start to believe that it's 100%. Even if it was 100% it's just more evidence that the earth is not the shape that we were told it was.

iampc:  You continually harp on this "sphere, spheroid, oblate spheroid" issue but the difference between the equatorial axis and the polar axis of the earth in RET is less than approximately 50 km.  This is less than one half of one percent.  For most calculations like the distance between Hong Kong and San Francisco the calculations will come out roughly the same regardless of whether you use a perfect sphere as your model or a spheroid.

In most conversations it's reasonable to call the earth a sphere in RET, even if we know it's not a perfect sphere.

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Flat Earth Community / Re: If you could who would it be.

« on: March 03, 2020, 05:25:51 PM »

"It's also worth bringing up that this whole "absolute certainty" schtick is a position only RE'ers hold (I won't speculate as to why they do that). The FE perspective is that a trip to space would likely be inconclusive, unless both RET and modern FET got things entirely wrong."

Pete.
I'm curious why a trip to space would 'likely be inconclusive".  Would that depend upon the altitude of the trip?

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Mapping the Earth

« on: June 27, 2019, 03:35:31 PM »

I'm chiming in on this as a cartographer/geographer.

To reiterate what sperical, ICanScienceThat, Bad Puppy are saying (and I hope I'm not misrepresenting their thoughts):

If the earth is flat, or flatish (in imacpc's words), then a projection is not necessary to represent the earth.  A simple scaled drawing would be the most accurate representation of the world on a flat surface.  Just as an architectural drawing is a scaled drawing of the layout of a house and does not have any projection applied to it.  And the scale would not change from north to south or east to west and the shapes of land masses.  All the angles and distances between objects would all be correct.  And all the objects (the land masses) would not be distorted in any way.

However, if the earth is not flat and is, say, close to a sphere, then to represent that shape on a 2D surface one must use some sort of projection.  And all projections will distort some aspect of the original shape.  So you can have accurate angles, accurate distances, accurate shapes.  But you can not have all three on the same map.  So you choose your projection based upon the purpose of the map.  If navigation is important then the Mercator projection is one of the preferred projections.  But it does distort the surface areas of the continents, as mentioned above. 

All this gets back to the original OP question: "Is there such a map?" (i.e. "a perfect map of the earth without any distortion")

And the answer is that there is not such a map of the FE world.  Which does seem odd since a scale drawing of a 2D surface should be pretty straightforward over the course of human history.

On the difference between a sphere, an oblate spheroid, and an ellipsoid in discussions of the earth. 
   While it's true that in the RE world the earth is not a perfect sphere, it is so close that in everyday language the term 'sphere' is perfectly adequate.  The diameter of the earth at the equator is approximately 12,756 km and the diameter from North to South pole is approximately 12,714 km.  A difference of 42 km, or 0.3%!  Although those distances are necessary to know for many applications, for most people and in most instances that difference of 42 km has no practical meaning and we can talk of the earth as being a sphere.  But technically it is an oblate spheroid. which is just a type of ellipsoid.

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: South Pole as the FE center?

« on: June 07, 2019, 12:40:29 PM »

Quote from Pete Svarrior on June 6, 2019, 05:44:04 AM

This logic is extremely backwards. You assume that the Earth is round, and that you can therefore arbitrarily redefine its projection onto a flat plane. There is no "need" for the world to be the way it is - it just happens to be.

Pete, I agree that the world '...just happens to be', as you put it.  But since there is no agreed upon or coherent physical model of the Earth in FES, why couldn't the South Pole be at the centre.  All other models/maps have serious problems with them and while any one model may answer some questions about geography and the layout of the Earth, all FES models fail at some fundamental point.

Note:  I'm a longtime lurker bemused and fascinated by this site.  Apologies if I get some of the posting etiquette incorrect.