[manicminer]

Under the 'Distance to the Sun' section of FEW, one of the answers given includes the statement...

The celestial bodies must be close because if the shape of the earth changes, the distance to the celestial bodies must change as well

How then does the shape of the Earth change?  Is the Earth made of jelly or blamange then?!?  I know the Earth wobbles over time but not like that!

[JRowe]

It changes between models, not in one model. All that means is that one shouldn't expect the same distances in FET that get defended in RET.

[manicminer]

If that is the case then perhaps they should make that a bit clearer. Leads me to ask then how many versions of the FE model are there? Inconsistency is never a good sign when it comes to getting acceptance for a hypothesis.

[JRowe]

If that is the case then perhaps they should make that a bit clearer. Leads me to ask then how many versions of the FE model are there? Inconsistency is never a good sign when it comes to getting acceptance for a hypothesis.

It's perfectly clear if you're not actively looking for dumb misinterpretations. In RET the distance to the celestial bodies is huge. If the shape of the Earth changes to flat, that is if you change models to FET, it's not as huge.

[manicminer]

That is basically what I don't understand about the whole flat Earth hypothesis. When there is so much evidence stacked against them I can't help but be curious about why they continue to insist that their flat Earth idea is right. Dismissing all evidence that happens to discredit what you want to believe in as fake (I'm taking mostly about images taken from space that SHOW the Earth is round) is a classic 'stick your head in the sand' case but it won't change what is true.


There are loads of ways of proving that the stars and galaxies are all very remote but why should I waste my time explaining why when I know the FE brigade will simply dismiss it.   

[JRowe]

There are loads of ways of proving that the stars and galaxies are all very remote but why should I waste my time explaining why when I know the FE brigade will simply dismiss it.

I could say the same. Why should we take the time to explain why we dismiss it, if the RE brigade's just going to view it as "Dismissing all evidence that happens to discredit what you want to believe in as fake."

[ChrisTP]

There are loads of ways of proving that the stars and galaxies are all very remote but why should I waste my time explaining why when I know the FE brigade will simply dismiss it.

I could say the same. Why should we take the time to explain why we dismiss it, if the RE brigade's just going to view it as "Dismissing all evidence that happens to discredit what you want to believe in as fake."

There are loads of ways of proving that the stars and galaxies are all very remote but why should I waste my time explaining why when I know the FE brigade will simply dismiss it.

I could say the same. Why should we take the time to explain why we dismiss it, if the RE brigade's just going to view it as "Dismissing all evidence that happens to discredit what you want to believe in as fake."

Because people who claim something then dismiss evidence to the contrary, who then walk away from the argument/debate feeling like they won makes those people look like drunken children. Take Tom Bishop for example, when he loses a debate, instead of conceding and becoming a better, more educated person he just stops replying, then continues elsewhere in a different topic with different people spouting the same old stuff, like he was never proven wrong before.

You get nowhere by dismissing everything that disagrees with you and I do understand that the average "round earthers" can be similar (because lets face it the general public are morons who've also never researched anything to do with the globe), at least there are some people who are educated and willing to accept evidence that goes against their ideas. No flat earth seems to concede. Every flat earther I've come across *always* puts their head in the sand when faced with evidence of a globe.

FE'ers can keep claiming "fake" and CGI" or dismiss every scientific paper because "scientists are in on it" (then cherry pick from those same papers to try prove flat earth) but it doesn't make the evidence go away. Denying facts doesn't make it fiction.

[JRowe]

You get nowhere by dismissing everything that disagrees with you and I do understand that the average "round earthers" can be similar (because lets face it the general public are morons who've also never researched anything to do with the globe), at least there are some people who are educated and willing to accept evidence that goes against their ideas. No flat earth seems to concede. Every flat earther I've come across *always* puts their head in the sand when faced with evidence of a globe.

FE'ers can keep claiming "fake" and CGI" or dismiss every scientific paper because "scientists are in on it" (then cherry pick from those same papers to try prove flat earth) but it doesn't make the evidence go away. Denying facts doesn't make it fiction.

As far as I'm concerned every REer does that too. REers love to caricature our answers the way you put it, and then twist any actual FE explanation to fit that narrative with no regard for what they actually said.

[AATW]

As far as I'm concerned every REer does that too. REers love to caricature our answers the way you put it, and then twist any actual FE explanation to fit that narrative with no regard for what they actually said.

Every? I mean, I'm not denying some do, but I don't think I've done that.
The description of Tom above is exactly what he does. I have never, not once, cede any ground in any discussion.
But I've seen him walk away from discussions a bunch of times when he's lost the argument, only to pop up again in the next thread about the same topics with the exact same arguments. Just recently he questioned why objects fall at the same rate regardless of their mass. I did the maths for him to explain him and I used to result to calculate the value of g fairly accurately. He didn't respond, he just walked away from the thread.

The original post in this thread is nit-picking. I think what the Wiki is saying is pretty clear. Were the earth flat then you'd get a different result for the distance to the sun and it would be close (compared with the accepted 93 million mile value). But a close sun doesn't work for other reasons - if the earth were that close then its angular speed and size would vary over the course of the day but that isn't what we observe. FE uses some fudge about lights magnifying but the examples given in the Wiki show glare, filtered images of the sun eliminate this and show a consistent angular size and that means a consistent distance. RE doesn't need any of these fudges, the earth rotating and a distant sun explain all this perfectly.

[manicminer]

OK JRowe, you seem to be on the FE side so how do you account for Cepheid variables and Type1a supernovae as standard candles in distance measurement of stars?  FET seems to go by the belief that they are just a few thousand miles above the plane of a flat Earth.  Interesting idea to say the least.

And AllAroundTheWorld I would disagree with your claim that I am 'nit-picking'.  I think a lot of Wiki claims are a bit ambiguous and hardly clear in their wording.  Probably deliberately vague just like the wording of horoscopes.

[JRowe]

Every? I mean, I'm not denying some do, but I don't think I've done that.
The description of Tom above is exactly what he does. I have never, not once, cede any ground in any discussion.
But I've seen him walk away from discussions a bunch of times when he's lost the argument, only to pop up again in the next thread about the same topics with the exact same arguments. Just recently he questioned why objects fall at the same rate regardless of their mass. I did the maths for him to explain him and I used to result to calculate the value of g fairly accurately. He didn't respond, he just walked away from the thread.

Maybe, maybe he gets tired of explaining the same things and the RE responses which you take as victory were already responded to in his post. I can't tell you how many times I've had to deal with that. Of course he'd give the same arguments if nothing new's being offered, and REers rarely have anything new to offer, just a handful of stock arguments they repeat with minimal understanding and so cannot develop.

OK JRowe, you seem to be on the FE side so how do you account for Cepheid variables and Type1a supernovae as standard candles in distance measurement of stars?  FET seems to go by the belief that they are just a few thousand miles above the plane of a flat Earth.  Interesting idea to say the least.

Case in point. What is there to account for? They're not going to be standard candles in FET, stars are not going to function the same way. Just like the wiki, there's no ambiguity if you actually engage your brain.

[WellRoundedIndividual]

No, it is true of what is being said about Tom. I debated him about the use of phosphorus as a cure for diseases. I gave mounds of evidence that phosphorus is just a nerve tonic, similar in use as a pain reliever such as Tylenol or Advil. He cited 100 year old sources the he claimed proved it was a cure for diseases of neuralgia. I cited sources in modern medical references that state neuralgia is just nerve pain. It is not a disease. Yet, he refused to back down from his claim.

[iamcpc]

OK JRowe, you seem to be on the FE side so how do you account for Cepheid variables and Type1a supernovae as standard candles in distance measurement of stars?  FET seems to go by the belief that they are just a few thousand miles above the plane of a flat Earth.  Interesting idea to say the least.

And AllAroundTheWorld I would disagree with your claim that I am 'nit-picking'.  I think a lot of Wiki claims are a bit ambiguous and hardly clear in their wording.  Probably deliberately vague just like the wording of horoscopes.

I can give you several rebuttals.
1. The star measurement systems are created by round earth systems which will, by default, only provide evidence which supports a round earth.
2. There is no flat earth star measurement system. There has not been millions of dollars of research and testing to build and test a flat earth start distance measuring system.
3. You are talking about a flat earth model which claims they are thousands of miles away. That's just one of many models. There are models which claim they are billions of light years away which is corroborated by measurements you are talking about.
4. The measurements you are discussing are funded by NASA or part of the round earth system and are incorrect, inaccurate, or misleading.
5. If the stars are a thousand miles away or ten thousand miles away the earth is still flat.

[ChrisTP]

How would you go about measuring the Southern Hemisphere skies stars from the northern hemisphere? Since the earth is flat it should be visible.

[manicminer]

Case in point. What is there to account for? They're not going to be standard candles in FET, stars are not going to function the same way. Just like the wiki, there's no ambiguity if you actually engage your brain.

There is nothing wrong with my brain but thank you for your concern.

The accounts and descriptions of the stars and other factors of FET are just based on an ideology perceived by a minority.  You might even call it a fantasy of sorts.  Cepheid variables and Type 1a supernovae are real and their descriptions as standard candles are based on real data obtained through real observations.  In other words hard fact.  FET cannot offer any of that becuase of the reasons stated above.

You can imagine whatever you like and believe whatever you like but FET cannot compete with reality because it cannot provide real data and real evidence to support its claims.

How would you go about measuring the Southern Hemisphere skies stars from the northern hemisphere? Since the earth is flat it should be visible.

ChrisTP, FE people will use the good old perspective trick to explain this one.   You know.... the planes disappearing into the horizon thing.  I know it doesn't quite add up but that seems to be the best they can come up with.

[JRowe]

How would you go about measuring the Southern Hemisphere skies stars from the northern hemisphere? Since the earth is flat it should be visible.

Why on earth would they be visible? I can't see down my street on some days, you can never see from NY to Paris on any day, you can't see the Sun 24/7, you can only see stars within a certain distance of you.

Cepheid variables and Type 1a supernovae are real and their descriptions as standard candles are based on real data obtained through real observations.

And false assumptions. It's all speculation based on the assumption of RET.

[stack]

How would you go about measuring the Southern Hemisphere skies stars from the northern hemisphere? Since the earth is flat it should be visible.

Why on earth would they be visible? I can't see down my street on some days, you can never see from NY to Paris on any day, you can't see the Sun 24/7, you can only see stars within a certain distance of you.

They should be visible. I can see much farther than just NY to Paris. Because on a flat earth, at sunrise, I can see a 3000 mile high, 32 mile wide sun just above the horizon when it's directly overhead the eastern tip of Brazil, some 6000+ miles away.

[JRowe]

How would you go about measuring the Southern Hemisphere skies stars from the northern hemisphere? Since the earth is flat it should be visible.

Why on earth would they be visible? I can't see down my street on some days, you can never see from NY to Paris on any day, you can't see the Sun 24/7, you can only see stars within a certain distance of you.

They should be visible. I can see much farther than just NY to Paris. Because on a flat earth, at sunrise, I can see a 3000 mile high, 32 mile wide sun just above the horizon when it's directly overhead the eastern tip of Brazil, some 6000+ miles away.

Does night just not exist for you?

[stack]

How would you go about measuring the Southern Hemisphere skies stars from the northern hemisphere? Since the earth is flat it should be visible.

Why on earth would they be visible? I can't see down my street on some days, you can never see from NY to Paris on any day, you can't see the Sun 24/7, you can only see stars within a certain distance of you.

They should be visible. I can see much farther than just NY to Paris. Because on a flat earth, at sunrise, I can see a 3000 mile high, 32 mile wide sun just above the horizon when it's directly overhead the eastern tip of Brazil, some 6000+ miles away.

Does night just not exist for you?

Sure it does. So you're saying that I could see Paris from New York during the day?

[manicminer]

And false assumptions. It's all speculation based on the assumption of RET

Variable star observations have got nothing whatsoever to do with RET. Why should they? 

We are simply observing the brightness variation in certain stars and linking those with their intrinsic brightness. It was discovered that there was a link between the intrinsic brightness and the period or cycle duration of their variability. Since we can measure the observed brightness from Earth we have all the data we need to determine their distance.  Anyone could do that with the right equipment.  The fact is that all Cepheid variables are intrinsically very luminous, much more than the Sun is.  In the order of 10,000 times more luminous in some cases.  That means we can see them across very large distances.  So we have been able to measure very accurately the distances to globular clusters and other galaxies.

From those observations we are able to determine that the stars are a lot further away than any FE model has suggested.  So that leaves me to ask what data or measurements FE models are using to estimate the stated distance of the stars.