21

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How does the sun get bigger if it's setting because of "laws of perspective"

« on: May 08, 2017, 06:51:23 PM »

I also have never seen a valid explanation for why the sun acts like a spotlight, especially since the light from a spotlight does not stay completely focused. If I turn on a recessed ceiling light at one end of my house during the night, I can still see the light from that lightbulb when standing outside my house at the opposite end from where the single light is iluminated. And that is true even if there is a half closed door between me and the ceiling light blocking my direct view of the ceiling light. So how does the sun shine just on the area underneath it without still being visible from far off to the side of that brightly illuminated area?

In addition, the round ceiling light appears oval from a distance as I move away from standing directly under it, but the sun stays nice and round. Does the atmosphere also magically change the appearance of the sun to maintain its round shape when viewed from a distance?

Finally, there is simply no aspect of the phenomenon of perspective that would hide a distance object beneath the ground if that object was still located above the ground. Perspective is something that only happens inside the eye or camera. When it appears to the eye or camera that the ground is rising up to eye level, that is an optical illusion caused by the lens of the eye or camera. The actual ground outside our eyes does not rise up in both the flat earth and the round earth theories. It either stays level or curves away as predicted by the respective theory. The ground (or the sea) that is not actually rising up outside our eyes cannot hide the sun.

For a more complete explanation of why this concept is completely mistaken see this video:

22

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How does the sun get bigger if it's setting because of "laws of perspective"

« on: May 08, 2017, 06:34:33 PM »

And besides, how utterly convenient that this new heretofore undiscovered and unproven property of the atmosphere has the exact effect of magnifying the receding sun just enough throughout every moment of the day that it appears exactly the same size in the sky all day long as the sunlight travels through ever changing amounts of atmosphere.

About as much as RE proposition that the Sun and the Moon only appear to be the same size because they just happen to be the exact size and distance from Earth to do so. Also pretty much every other happy convenience used to rectify the improbability of a big bang origin of life and common sense and logic.

Except that they are not always exactly the same size as the size of the sun varies in the course of the year due to the elliptical path of the earth's orbit. Hence the occasional occurence of an annular solar eclipse where the moon does not block out the entire sun:



How does the flat earth theory explain an annular eclipse?

And the original point still stands. Accusing the round earth theory of having some aspects that seem remarkably convenient does not explain away the same phenomenon in the flat earth theory. Not to mention that the sun and moon being the same size in the sky does not violate any known principles of the behavior of light, unlike the flat earth theory of magnification which is based on a physical effect that has never been proven to exist.

23

Flat Earth Community / Re: Expedition

« on: May 06, 2017, 05:29:41 PM »

Does it look like I am replying to the yacht race?

My mistake, as most of the post you replied to was about the race. But similar rough calculations apply to the scientific expedition. To travel even 50,000 miles in three months would mean traveling at an average of 23 mph 24 hours a day for 90 days. That is an incredibly fast pace and would still require huge amounts of fuel for a ship that large.

In fact, the ship they used has a top speed of 18 mph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Tryoshnikov , so it could only have covered about 39,000 miles if it was underway at top speed for 90 days continuously. The specs for the ship say it can only cover 17,000 miles before refueling, so even that would have been impossible as they would have had to make at least two stops to refuel. Their planned itinerary shows a distance covered of roughly 14,000 miles: https://documents.epfl.ch/groups/e/ep/epflmedia/www/20161220_ACEexpedition/Travel%20plan%20ACE.pdf

If you look at their itinerary, it is clear that they spent a lot of time in port and also onshore doing their scientific experiments. These videos show how they spent much of the time at anchor or traveling at slower speeds doing their research:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87TvkL0meGU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUHk-jAe2Gw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt_Euo08O9I

Of the Monopole proponents a theory is becoming increasingly popular that South America, Africa, and Australia are actually closer together than depicted in the common Monopole maps and the Pacific Ocean is larger.

Under such a map it is certainly possible to travel from Africa -> Australia -> Antarctica -> South America -> Africa without having to go around the entire Antarctic rim. The directions of travel would not reflect the map on their site, but if you are just trying to set sail with your instruments from the middle of nowhere it is easy to not pay too much attention to directions.

I do not think you can just say that Africa, Australia and South America are closer together without showing how that actually could possibly work on a map. But you claim it is beyond your capacity to draw out even a rough sketch of what that would look like, so I guess your theory is just that....a theory with no evidence to back it up. I can say I have a theory that Australia is in the northern hemisphere, but so what? It does not make it a viable theory. And the Pacific Ocean is already shown as much larger than it really is on the unipolar map. How would making the ocean larger bring the continents closer together? That is a ridiculous assertion. You even say, "Under such a map it is certainly possible...". Well clearly there is no such map, so to claim that something is possible "under such a map" is a meaningless statement.

As for the idea that this large ship full of scientists from all around the world just set sail with their instruments from the middle of nowhere, that does not even make sense. What are you suggesting? That they just took off with no idea where they were going? No ship captain would last a day on their job if they ever did not know exactly where they were and exactly where they were going at all times. They had several planned stops on specific remote islands in the extreme southern latitudes where they had experiments and observations ready to perform, so I am sure they did not want to waste time just "setting sail". Again, this was a ship with 80 passengers and 60 crew members. They also most certainly always knew what direction they were headed. Have you never heard of a thing called a "compass"?

As usual, you are either trolling or simply incredibly uniformed about what you are claiming.

24

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How does the sun get bigger if it's setting because of "laws of perspective"

« on: May 06, 2017, 01:27:37 AM »

The sun looks larger on the horizon due to an optical illusion: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/52-our-solar-system/the-sun/observing-the-sun/190-why-does-the-sun-appear-larger-on-the-horizon-than-overhead-intermediate

In fact the sun is the same size when it is setting as when it is overhead.

In the flat earth theory there is no valid explanation for why it does not get smaller as it supposedly moves away from us like every other object we see receding into the distance. The best they can come up with is it supposed to be due to some magical new property of the atmosphere that magnifies objects emitting light. There are several threads on here about this bogus theory, but in essence, it does not really happen. And besides, how utterly convenient that this new heretofore undiscovered and unproven property of the atmosphere has the exact effect of magnifying the receding sun just enough throughout every moment of the day that it appears exactly the same size in the sky all day long as the sunlight travels through ever changing amounts of atmosphere. When it is close there is little or no magnification. When it is a medium distance there is a medium amount of magnification. When it is setting there is the maximum amount and again, always the exact amount to make the sun appear the same size throughout the entire day. That all strains credulity to the breaking point.

These kinds of explanations remind me of the Harry Potter books where whenever the main characters get into a jam, they stumble upon a piece of magic that is just what they need to solve their situation. The flat earthers can't explain something, so they invent a new unbelievable phenomenon to explain it.

25

Flat Earth Community / Re: Expedition

« on: May 05, 2017, 09:55:07 PM »

Does it look like I am replying to the yacht race?

My mistake, as most of the post you replied to was about the race. But similar rough calculations apply to the scientific expedition. To travel even 50,000 miles in three months would mean traveling at an average of 23 mph 24 hours a day for 90 days. That is an incredibly fast pace and would still require huge amounts of fuel for a ship that large.

In fact, the ship they used has a top speed of 18 mph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Tryoshnikov , so it could only have covered about 39,000 miles if it was underway at top speed for 90 days continuously. The specs for the ship say it can only cover 17,000 miles before refueling, so even that would have been impossible as they would have had to make at least two stops to refuel. Their planned itinerary shows a distance covered of roughly 14,000 miles: https://documents.epfl.ch/groups/e/ep/epflmedia/www/20161220_ACEexpedition/Travel%20plan%20ACE.pdf

If you look at their itinerary, it is clear that they spent a lot of time in port and also onshore doing their scientific experiments. These videos show how they spent much of the time at anchor or traveling at slower speeds doing their research:

26

Flat Earth Theory / Re: sun rising below the clouds

« on: May 05, 2017, 06:54:18 PM »

Here is a video showing the sun reappear after sunset when the camera is raised up 1000 feet by a drone. So we must add to the amazing feats of this hypothetical veil that it can block the sun at ground level while allowing it to shine at higher locations (without moving the camera closer to the sun...just higher):

Everyone knows if you move higher above ground you are getting closer to things that are above you in the sky.

Really? If I go 1000 feet up, I am not moving much closer to an object that in the flat earth model would be roughly 5,000 miles (26,400,000 feet) away from me and roughly 3000 miles (15,840,000 feet) above the surface when it was appearing to set. And why do mountains that are much further away to the east from the sun still catch the light of the setting sun after it has set where I am standing? What is blocking the view of the sun where I am standing, but not blocking the sun 1000 feet up, or on the tops of mountains several miles to the east of me? Like our good friend, Mt Rainier:

27

Flat Earth Community / Re: Expedition

« on: May 05, 2017, 06:21:09 PM »

You seem to live in a world filled with unreliable sources. But if they are actually reporting their route and the distance traveled which is quite easy to do in this day and age of gps, then the distance they traveled would make the ice ring impossible, and also would prove that the continent is smaller than the average diameter of the route they traveled. So actually viewing the coastline they circled would not be necessary to set an upper limit on how big Antarctica could be. Also, any ocean race like this has checkpoints along the route that every yacht must pass in the correct sequence in order to prevent the kind of shortcuts and cheating you suggest might have occurred.

As for a more reputable source, there is the one that involved teams of scientists from all over the world, also with several stops and ports along the way that they visited in sequence, including stops on the actual continent: http://spi-ace-expedition.ch/

It appears that it took 3 months for those people to make that journey. How do we know that they didn't go around the Antarctic Rim?

The winner made it in 74 days. The greatest distance covered in any 24 hour period was 537 nautical miles which was a new record for this race. The winner averaged more like 330 nautical miles per day ( 13.75 knots) over the entire race. And all of this includes the travel time and distance from France to the latitudes at which they circumnavigated and back up to France.

So sure if they cheated and turned on their motors (which they did not have as that would slow down a competitive ocean racing yacht) then maybe they could have traveled more like the 70-75,000 nautical miles down to and around the ice rim on the unipolar map in 74 days. However, the yachts in this race could not ever make a pit stop as that was against the rules, so there is no way they could have carried enough fuel to make it that far. A large motor boat could easily burn 2 gallons or more of fuel for every nautical mile at the necessary speeds to cover that much distance....so say a minimum of 150,000 gallons of fuel weighing 900,000 pounds (the yachts in this race weighed more like a total of 15-20,000 pounds). Yeah, that would not really work. These yachts relied on the wind and there is no way they could average such high speeds 24 hours a day for 3 months. Their top speed is around 30-35 knots, so even with extreme wind conditions 24 hours a day for months on end, they still could not cover the distance.

Either the entire race and all of the participants in the eight races that have been run are all part of this big, dumb and pointless conspiracy to fool us all into thinking the world is round, or else they simply sailed around Antarctica. Here is the winner's yacht under sail:



These yachts are amazing feats of engineering and are going so fast already that it is pretty much torture to ride one for weeks on end:
http://www.yachtingworld.com/extraordinary-boats/close-look-hugo-boss-alex-thomsons-vendee-globe-2016-92713

28

Flat Earth Community / Re: Expedition

« on: May 05, 2017, 12:05:02 AM »

I don't get it Tom Bishop. You say you believe that Antarctica is a continent and yet in this thread you argue against the veracity of all of the evidence of people circumnavigating that continent, which should be quite possible on a bipolar flat earth. Furthermore, in other threads, you have posted links to info in the Wiki based on the unipolar model when it seems you believe in the bipolar model of the flat earth. Do you even know what you believe?

I believe Antarctica to be a continent, but I would not blindly follow the Antarctic coast, in the case it were not one.

The people who claimed to have circumnavigated it may not me the most reliable sources. I believe that when we last looked at this subject those circumnavigations are done out in the open ocean in high latitudes far away from Antarctica. Those racers don't see any landmass at all.

You seem to live in a world filled with unreliable sources. But if they are actually reporting their route and the distance traveled which is quite easy to do in this day and age of gps, then the distance they traveled would make the ice ring impossible, and also would prove that the continent is smaller than the average diameter of the route they traveled. So actually viewing the coastline they circled would not be necessary to set an upper limit on how big Antarctica could be. Also, any ocean race like this has checkpoints along the route that every yacht must pass in the correct sequence in order to prevent the kind of shortcuts and cheating you suggest might have occurred.

As for a more reputable source, there is the one that involved teams of scientists from all over the world, also with several stops and ports along the way that they visited in sequence, including stops on the actual continent: http://spi-ace-expedition.ch/

And here is a group that is trying to prove the flat earth with high altitude balloons instead of a circumnavigation: https://www.facebook.com/copernicusproject1/
Of course they are doomed to fail if the flat earth is bipolar.

PS: The most recent winner of the Vendee Globe race covered 24,500 nautical miles from start to finish. Not enough for a circumnavigation at that latitude on the unipolar flat earth map (and that total includes the travel to and from France in the Northern Hemisphere). http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/ranking-and-race-data

29

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Half-sunken ships Restored by simply looking at them through a Telescope

« on: May 04, 2017, 09:05:35 PM »

Here is an excellent explanation of what perspective really is and why the flat earth notion that perspective makes something disappear behind the horizon is completely bogus:



Short version: Perspective is a phenomenon inside the eye or camera, but does not represent the actual size or spatial relationships of what is perceived. Ships do not get smaller as they move away from us. The actual ships stay the same size, but the image that forms on the retina or camera's recording surface gets smaller. Furthermore, the surface of the earth does not rise up on either a flat earth or a round earth. The only place the horizon rises is inside the eye or camera of the perceiver. In the actual earth, the surface either stays flat or curves as predicted by the two models. Since the actual surface never rises up, it can never hide an object that is above it.

30

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Half-sunken ships Restored by simply looking at them through a Telescope

« on: May 04, 2017, 08:51:31 PM »

The hull of the smaller boat seems to be obscured behind some water too. Look how close the waves get to the deck line:



It's not really that much more depth needed before the little house structure is sticking out of the water like with the big boat.

Correct. The waves do hide some of the small boat, but they would still hide less of the big boat. And the thing about boats is that they float on top of the waves. so if the waves were big enough to hide either boat, it would be intermittent as the boat itself would be rising and falling with the waves. You can see a little of this happening with the small boat, but the waves still never hide the hull of the small boat. Moving the small boat further away on a supposedly flat earth would make the waves and the boat both appear smaller, but it would not change the percentage of the boat appearing above the water (unless of course some other mechanism came into play and hid the hull....such as the curvature of the earth).

Waves that are too small to hide the small boat are way too small to hide the big boat. What is so hard to understand about that?

It is one of the most ridiculous claims of flat earthers that perspective can hide the bottom half of an object before it hides the upper half. Photons of light do not behave in such a ridiculous manner. If there is a line of sight between our eyes and an object, then moving further away does not change that fact. Any object that is above the plane of a flat earth would remain within our line of sight indefinitely up to the point where our eyes can no longer distinguish it from its surroundings, which is not even close to being the case with the larger ship.  And even then it would be within our line of sight, so a telescope could bring it back into view. This does not happen as clearly shown in the video I posted earlier in this thread:



Distance does make an object appear smaller, but it does so equally in all directions, so if the bottom half of a ship is in our line of sight, it will still be in our line of site as it moves further away on a flat surface. And as the ship gradually appeared to be smaller, the waves would also gradually appear to be smaller also. Again they would both shrink by the same amount, so if waves cannot hide the smaller, closer ship, then those same waves which would appear smaller at the distance of the larger ship, would not be able to hide such a large portion of the larger ship.

The only explanation that makes sense for why the bottom half of the more distant ship is hidden is that the surface of the water is curved as predicted in a round earth model.

31

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Half-sunken ships Restored by simply looking at them through a Telescope

« on: May 04, 2017, 07:15:50 PM »

And even though the bigger boat is farther away, it still appears larger than the smaller boat, so if there was wave action, it would only have the effect of hiding more of the smaller boat.

Again, it is clear that it is a much bigger boat, and yes the further distance of the bigger boat naturally makes it appear smaller than it would appear if it was closer. And yet the bigger boat is still hidden even though it is much bigger than the smaller boat. So waves could not hide the much bigger boat without also hiding the smaller boat.

So yes the variables are not the same, but they work against the possibility that the bigger boat is being hidden by waves when the smaller boat is still clearly visible.

32

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Half-sunken ships Restored by simply looking at them through a Telescope

« on: May 04, 2017, 05:44:12 PM »

Interesting, would reading that book make him or the telescope able to see through the horizon?

Reading the book would tell us that the restoration experiments were carried out on calm bodies of water and was not able to be replicated on a consistent basis at sea. It is therefore not a proof against the work to find an observation of a half sunken ship or object at sea that was not restorable with a telescope.

I'd agree with you if it was a 20 foot fishing vessel or something but when its a tanker over 100 feet tall that's over half obscured you can't use that logic.  The waves would have to be at least 50 feet in height in order to do that and we can clearly see in the foreground that the sea state is at MAXIMUM 5 foot waves (and I'm being very generous with that number.)

That is not true. The waves do not need to be as tall as something it obscures. If you hold a dime out in front of you, you can obscure an elephant. Is your dime as big as the elephant?

Then why aren't the waves obscuring the much smaller boat shown earlier in the video (from about 0:15 to 0:30 in the video)? Either waves are a factor or they are not. You can't say waves are obscuring a bigger boat while leaving a much smaller boat in plain view.

33

Flat Earth Community / Re: Expedition

« on: May 04, 2017, 12:27:34 AM »

I don't get it Tom Bishop. You say you believe that Antarctica is a continent and yet in this thread you argue against the veracity of all of the evidence of people circumnavigating that continent, which should be quite possible on a bipolar flat earth. Furthermore, in other threads, you have posted links to info in the Wiki based on the unipolar model when it seems you believe in the bipolar model of the flat earth. Do you even know what you believe?

34

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Half-sunken ships Restored by simply looking at them through a Telescope

« on: May 02, 2017, 09:16:28 PM »

Here is a recent video showing a ship that is partially hidden behind the horizon. Zooming in does not bring the hull back into view. The relevant portion starts at about 0:40:



Further on there is a ship where the hull is visible both before and after zooming starting at about 4:10.

35

Flat Earth Community / Re: Boy, NASA sure has a lot of pics

« on: May 02, 2017, 03:59:06 AM »

An odd choice, to put a 1980's digital camera onto a 3 billion dollar spacecraft.

Not odd at all considering that the spacecraft left the earth 20 years ago, and the camera was built in the early 90's. It is not like they could have sent a 2016 camera up there. Besides, there were not many digital cameras at all in the 1980s. The first commercially available digital camera came out in 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_photography

Here is more info about the camera they did use: https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/imaging-science-subsystem/

And here are the "hall of fame" pictures: https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/hall-of-fame/
including the two attached to this post.

36

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why does the moon appear upside down in the south?

« on: May 01, 2017, 05:27:14 PM »

Of course another possibility is that we only ever see the underside of the moon (i.e. the green or white part of the ball), but for that to be true on a flat earth, the moon would have to be a very far distance away....like say about 238,000 miles, and not rotating at all.

Otherwise if the moon was just 3000 miles up, we would see the upper red half of the ball from most locations other than right under the ball, because of the angle at which we would be looking at the moon.

37

Flat Earth Community / Re: Feeling the rotation of the moon?

« on: May 01, 2017, 05:25:00 PM »

Forget feeling the rotation, it would be awesome if we could ever actually see the rotation of the moon.

Alas, we just have to accept that it is rotating just ever so perfectly as to not appear to rotate at all from the perspective of a person on any point on earth at any given time.

And for this to be true on a flat earth, the moon would have to be very far away from us and not rotating at all: https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=6149.0

38

Flat Earth Community / Re: Expedition

« on: May 01, 2017, 05:23:39 PM »

Yes, let's stay in our basement and let other people circumnavigate Antarctica......and quite often in fact:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vend%C3%A9e_Globe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Sanders
http://yachtpals.com/boating/antarctica-boats
http://spi-ace-expedition.ch/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-22/sailor-attempts-world-record-to-circumnavigate-antarctica/8201750
http://www.acronautic.com/antartica-cup-ocean-race/

Or we could let someone else do a polar circumnavigation for us:
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-circumnavigation-via-both-poles-surface

39

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How do flat earthers explain travel with cardinal directions?

« on: April 30, 2017, 09:14:34 PM »

If it makes it easier, try imagining following a compass due east when you are just twenty feet from the north pole.

Did you travel in a straight line or in a circle?

It's hardly a moot point from your position because the straight lines paths due east in the southern hemisphere in reality trend northward rather than southward.

That is an entirely different point from the one he was trying to make.

That's exactly my point.  When you are 20 feet from the north pole  the distance between you and the north pole is effectively flat and you see what would happen to your compass if the world was flat rather than round.  Its only with curvature that compasses can actually perform like they do in real life.  Its only with curvature that a compass will continue to point east if you travel in a straight line.

You are wrong on this one. I believe the earth is round.  I also know that the only place on a globe where you can travel a heading of true  east or west and have it be a straight line is at the equator.  Every other path with an east or west heading will result in a curved line.

And even at the equator, in three dimensions your path is curved along with the surface of the earth itself, but so gradually that you would not notice.

40

Flat Earth Community / Re: Feeling the rotation of the moon?

« on: April 30, 2017, 03:04:00 PM »

It has nothing to do with gravity and the atmosphere.  Take a look at the thresholds found in this study and compare the acceleration of a rotating earth or moon.
https://bmcearnosethroatdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6815-5-5

Also, the speed of the moon's rotation and travel around the earth would be fairly constant, so doesn't that mean there would be little or no acceleration? It is not speeding up or slowing down, although I guess it is changing direction, so maybe the question is why we do not feel the centrifugal force due to rotation.