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Flat Earth Theory / Wiki on aviation

« on: March 08, 2022, 09:49:25 PM »

The wiki has a small section on 'aviation', in which it quotes from, amongst other things, a flight dynamics book which lists a set of assumptions:



The wiki introduces this by saying:

Discussion on this topic revolves around the assertion that aircraft instrumentation are built to assume, and pilots are taught to fly, over a flat, non-rotating earth.

...and concludes it by saying:

Note: The document does not go on to "unsimplify," to give its students accurate dynamics. The word 'coriolis', for instance, appears a single time.

Is anybody actually seriously holding this up as proof of a FE? If you are an ardent FE believer then the first two assumptions are clearly something you believe to be true anyway, but the second two are demonstrably false. Aircraft are not of constant mass (they burn fuel and become lighter) and they are not rigid (as anybody who has observed the wings on an airliner bending will know). The list is therefore quite clearly, as it says itself, simplifying reality for the purposes of building a useful mathematical model of flight - mass changes can be neglected because they are relatively slow with respect to time and therefore don't effect the dynamics of flight. The earth can be treated as flat because, from a short-term modelling perspective, it makes very little difference.

Introduce navigation, and things get very different, just as if you want to discuss aerodynamic flutter, for example, then the rigidity assumption goes out the window. The assertion that instruments are built to assume a flat earth is demonstrably false - gyro based nav systems, for example, have to correct for transport and rotation errors. Likewise pilots are taught about globe navigation, great circles etc at an early stage in training.

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Flat Earth Theory / Shape of the lit area on the FE map vs EA

« on: December 13, 2021, 02:33:23 PM »

During a recent thread in FE Investigations (see https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=18734.msg252400#msg252400) we ended up in a conversation about the shape of the 'lit area' (ie the portion of the earth that is in sunlight at any one time).

Since we moved into more 'Theory' territory, and since the thread dried up a bit, I thought I'd pose the question here so we can continue the discussion if that's ok with the mods?

The issue at hand is that the wiki explanation of EA would suggest that the area of earth being illuminated would form a circle, the edge of which would be the locus of all points at which EA had curved the light from the sun to 0 degrees elevation, ie parallel with the earth's surface - beyond that point there would be darkness. Moving towards the sun from the edge of the circle the light would arrive at the observer at an elevation angle related to their distance from the point under the sun - 1 degree of elevation change for every 60 nautical miles. This all follows from TB's explanation that the sun and the stars etc are all at the same height, around 6500 miles, above the FE.

The problem with that explanation is that the observed lit area of the earth does not conform to anything like a circle - see earlier in the above thread. To explain this, TB invoked some kind of lens type distortion caused by the dome above the FE.

But the problem with that is that, in fixing one problem, it just creates another. The reason the EA explanation worked the way it does is to explain the observed changes in elevation of the stars, amongst other things - we know, for example, that the north star's elevation angle is equal to the observer's latitude in degrees north. If the dome is then distorting the sunlight to enable it to reach far-flung parts of the FE (whilst the sun itself remains remarkably round!) , then the same must be true for the stars, residing as they do at the same height as the sun according to the wiki / TB. And yet we know that the stars we can see at night are very much driven by our latitude - you can't see Polaris in the Southern Hemisphere, for example. So my question to the FE community is how do you resolve this paradox?

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Flat Earth Investigations / Ring laser gyros

« on: September 07, 2021, 08:13:31 PM »

I noticed that wiki is somewhat brief in its look into RLGs - the data comes from an experiment conducted in the early 20th century, a very early commercial RLG in the the early 1990s, and a MEMs gyro (like the one you would find in a phone, which work on coriolis and not lasers).

I thought people might be interested in this one: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/723/1/012061/pdf, which is a large, ultra precise RLG capable of measuring tiny variations in the rotation, as well as the rotation itself.

Given that the wiki rejects the notion of a grand-scale conspiracy (in favour of a smaller space-travel one), are the scientists who wrote this paper and who worked on the device wrong?

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Suggestions & Concerns / Personal attack?

« on: January 31, 2021, 10:49:28 AM »

In this thread in FE Investigations - https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=17660.60

...Tom says of JSS:

You've come here to lie before. You had previously claimed that you were a computer programmer who has programmed gravity simulations and knew that Numerical Solutions accurately simulated gravity. You lied to us

The forum rules say:

1. No personal attacks

Keep your posts civil and to the point, and don't insult others. If you have run out of valid contributions, simply do not post. The exception to this rule is in Complete Nonsense and Angry Ranting, where personal attacks are par for the course. If you do not like this, then don't post in those fora.

Anyone seen personally attacking another member will be immediately warned. After two warnings, a ban with length determined by moderator discretion will be issued.

Can you confirm whether this is acceptable or not? It looks very much like a personal attack. I don't see much FE debate in there, just ad hominem accusations of lying.

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Flat Earth Theory / Behaviour of water under FET

« on: January 23, 2021, 09:21:10 AM »

[n.b. this has been split off from Questions about Flat Earth Theory by young students by SteelyBob's request. ~pete]

The natural behavior of water, and the laws of hydrostatics, unchallenged for centuries to today, that establish it cannot (due to its fundamental properties) and does not curve in the sustained convex curvature the globe model requires.  Water's surface is only ever flat, level, and horizontal at rest (of non miniscule quantity/surface area) and the believed sphericity of water is in no way a part of empirical science (in fact it would contradict it, and violate many laws - like these in hydrostatics for instance). 

One of FET's more strange facets. If the world is flat, and I'm by the sea somewhere where the tide is in, and you're by the sea somewhere where the tide is out, then there must be a difference of several metres between our respective sea levels. But it's one continuous body of water, so somehow the two levels have to resolve. Which means the water can't be flat, level and horizontal. Which means the above 'fundamental property' isn't really a fundamental property as such, but rather something that's been made up.

There is nothing about the properties of water, or indeed any other liquid, that would preclude it from adhering to the surface of the earth under the force of gravity.

Does Earth´s rotation exit?

No.  This is a common misconception.  In fact, the gyroscope was invented to convince people that the world was spherical and rotating.  There is LOT's to discuss on this one - as there are many reasons we came to the wrong conclusion regarding this and the incorrectly interpreted phenomena that appear to support it.

And yet directional gyros in aircraft have a 'drift nut', adjustable for latitude (because the error gets worse with the sine of your latitude), to compensate for the earth's rotation. If the earth wasn't rotating, this would induce an error in the instrument. These have been in use for 80+ years, and yet no complaints from angry pilots wondering why their DGs are wandering off heading more than they should.

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Suggestions & Concerns / Moderation question

« on: January 10, 2021, 07:59:05 PM »

Hello all

I recently posted in the FE Theory forum in response to a new OP (https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=17558.0). My post was removed for some reason, and I was banned for a week.

I'd really like to better understand why this was. The OP asked a question about an idea for a new map. I came up with a particular problem I could see with the map. I'm at a complete loss as what is wrong with this, especially given what was said in some of the subsequent posts - it certainly doesn't seem to be 'off-topic', as my ban message says.

Here's the post that got me banned, containing the tail end of the OP's question:

What do you guys think about this map ? Is it in any way realistic ?

Aside from the stuff beyond the ice wall which I'll leave for others to discuss, like most FET maps, I would ask how two people, one in South Africa and the other in Western Australia could be looking at the night sky at the same time, observing the same southern pole star, Sigma Octantis, looking due south from both of their positions, despite 'south' being roughly 90 degrees apart according to that map. How would that work, exactly?

I'd be really grateful if @Pete, or whoever it was who decided to ban me, could explain why my post was 'off topic' in a little more detail. I genuinely want to add to the discussion here, and I'd clearly like to avoid being banned.

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Flat Earth Theory / Stars, latitude, elevation angle and perspective

« on: December 07, 2020, 10:11:56 PM »

Hello all,

I'd consider myself to be a strong RE proponent - for me the FE theory simply lacks credibility. There is, from what I can see, simply no credible FE model that adequately explains the observations that we can easily make - it seems to have no meaningful predictive power.

One example of this, that I'd really like an FE view on, is the relationship between celestial bodies and navigation. For many centuries now sailors have been using the stars to determine latitude (longitude took a lot longer to crack, as it requires accurate timekeeping). At its simplest, in the northern hemisphere, we can pretty accurately determine our latitude by measuring the elevation angle of the north star, Polaris. As this sits almost perfectly in line with the earth's rotational axis above the north pole (declination angle of over 89 degrees), its elevation angle is directly related to our latitude - directly above us at the north pole, reducing to being barely visible around the horizon at the equator. The same would be true in the southern hemisphere, although there isn't a clearly visible star that aligns with the south pole. For this reason most people use the Southern Cross, although this has a declination angle of about -60 degrees, which is why it is visible in large parts of the northern hemisphere, and you have to do a bit of extrapolation to find true south using it.

These things are observable without sophisticated instruments. Go out in your garden with a protractor and a weight on a string and try it - the angle will roughly equate to your latitude. You can go further too - you can measure the elevation of Polaris, then drive 60 nautical miles north and observe a one degree change.

The response to this in the wiki here (https://wiki.tfes.org/Shifting_Constellations) is simply not plausible. It tries to explain the disappearance of, for example, Polaris as you move into the southern hemisphere, as being caused by perspective - the star is getting further away and therefore lowers to the horizon and vanishes at some distance from the observer. Aside from this not being how perspective actually works, the fundamental flaw with this argument is that, if it were true, the stars close to the horizon would appear to get progressively closer together, just as the observed angle between equally spaced street lamps reduces as they get towards the 'vanishing point' that the wiki author mentions. But this doesn't happen - the angle between the stars remains exactly the same whether they are overhead or 'setting' at the horizon.

Furthermore, if you accept that there are 60 nautical miles in a degree of latitude, and therefore 5400nm from the equator to the north pole, then the FE model, with a distance of only some thousands of miles from the earth to the stars, doesn't work, because that distance, as calculated by intersecting any two observed elevation angles from points a known distance apart would change depending on which latitudes you chose for your observations.

These things seem pretty fundamental to me. Interested in your replies. Thanks