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Flat Earth Theory / Rowbotham Inaccuracies

« on: December 09, 2018, 03:29:40 PM »

A post by our good friend Tom Bishop got me wondering about this other book that much of flat earth doctrine is based on ; The Earth is not a Globe. by Samuel Birley Rowbotham Mr.

Incidentally Rowbotham is not a doctor nor does he have a PhD as has been claimed from Edinburgh University. I live in Edinburgh and I am an alumni and worked for the medical school for a couple of years. A few years ago in relation to an argument in another place I checked out the records of alumni and there is no mention of the name Rowbotham. They have a lot of records going back to the 1580s......I can categorically state he does not have a PhD from Edinburgh University Scool of medicine. A little known fact Charles Darwin did enrole as a medical student at Edinburgh, but only lasted a couple of months as he fainted at the sight of blood. I mention this as they were contemporaries Darwin being 7 years older.

Tom posted this on another thread that apparently comes straight from said book.

It does get darker. Look at the sun when it is directly overhead, and then look at the sun when it is near the horizon.

I went straight to; Section 6, Causes of Day and Night and the Seasons and straight away an error from Rowbotham leap off the page. One of his claims centres around Wellington in NZ being on a similar latitude to England.  Look this up if you will.  Like all of his claims its totally wrong. Wellington IS on a similar latitude to Barcelona in Spain around 41 degrees The latitude of London for example is around 51 degrees, a difference of 10 degrees from Wellington NZ.

Refer to pp 81.

Due to his error and false claim his whole chapter falls flat on its face. Why?  Because he maintained that London and Wellington should share the same length of daylight hours! ( which they don’t) as they shared a similar latitude (which they don’t) His argument for a flat earth in this section is based on a false premise. The interesting question is, how many more inaccuracies can be found?

 

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Flat Earth Theory / Based on what?

« on: December 05, 2018, 06:44:13 PM »

Being relatively new here and having spent quite some time looking through the flat earth wiki what I found slightly alarming was the lack of any real verifiable research data backing up the various claims made. Quite a few of the references were to works well over a hundred years old. The one area that  really stood out, as far as I was concerned, was dthe one on the Cosmos. The reason being, to conduct any really meaningful research on the heavens requires some quite sophisticated equipment. The bottom line would be at least earth bound telescopes that could look at the heavens using different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. I was unable to find any links to any such flat earth telescope facility.

The question therefore is, where did the flat earth society get the data on which their wiki was based? In the case of the wiki on the cosmos, what astronomical reasearch facility(s) were used to obtain the data for those conclusions?
While I think it’s totally valid for flat earth believers such as Mr. Bishop to  question main stream science, the reverse must also be true. While there are numerous sources for main stream science that can be interegated there are precious few if any for the underpinning details of flat earth belief.

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Flat Earth Theory / Flat Earth Wiki and the Sun.

« on: December 05, 2018, 08:49:20 AM »

To get to grips with flat earth theory, like most people, I read various sections of the wiki. The sections on the sun in particular caused me some concern in relation to the flat earth size of 32 miles in diameter. I am sure this must have been raised before.

The concern stems from how fusion is known to operate  and how this would be impossible on a star with such a tiny volume. Simple spectroscopy reveals via absobtion lines the main constituents of the sun, which are hydrogen and helium along with a cocktail of other heavier elements. The hydrogen fuel along with the resulting helium are both there but the size is a problem.

The physics of fusion are pretty well understood due to well over 30 years of experimenting with fusion power at various experimental facilities around the world as well as the developments of H bomb. All this experience in fusion points to it not being possible on such a small celestial body of only 32 in diameter. 

Given the age of the sun of over 4.5 billion years such a small sun could not have provided enough basic mass if fusion were even possible. The sums simply don’t add up. It strikes me that this 32 mile figure was arrived at before fusion power was even known about and was more a stab in the dark figure.

The small sun also size is also bad news for Mercury and Venus which would be tiny based on visual observation during transits, mere meters in diameter.

It strikes me the flat earth wiki ignores science completely in its estimation of the size of the sun, which must surely cast doubt on all its information in regards to our nearest star and it’s understanding of cosmology in general.

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Flat Earth Theory / Map Projections

« on: December 04, 2018, 06:43:56 AM »

There to my mind has always been some confusion over cartography and map projections in the flat earth world . At the last count there are well over 20 taking into account all the variations. The question is why so many? The answer is to do with the difficulty of mapping the surface of a spherical body on to a more convienient flat sheet of paper which induces different kinds of distortion depending upon the projection method used. Possibly the most accurate is the AuthaGraph system. But at the end of the day, world maps only really have pictorial value. If you were to do some serious navigation like trecking in a remote mountain range you would opt for a map such as a 1:25,000 scale, where every 4 cm on the map equals 1 km in the real world.

Somehow flat earth believers have seen all these various projections as some indication that there is some confusion about the shape of the world! This is of course false, so it’s important we put that one to rest right now. As I’ve previously said it’s just the old orange skin problem of how to best represent the curved surface of a sphere on a convienient flat sheet of paper you could stick on a classroom or government wall. For most practical uses these world maps find little use in real world navigation, where large scale maps that show more detail are more appropriate.

One of the things that has really astonished me are when flat earth believers talk about making an alternative world map! Which is of course an impossibility. The work and time required to map even a small area is immense the idea of an individual doing it is beyond even wishful thinking moving well into make believe. César-François Cassini de Thury The famous French cartographer spent his whole life trying to map France. He sadly died before it’s completion, this being eventually done by his son. You would be too late in any case as the world has been pretty well mapped. The shape, dimensions and relative position of all the land masses and main topographical features are known so no need for any alternative!

While I think there are reasons to be sceptical about the moon landings, maps and their validity is an entirely different matter.

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Flat Earth Theory / The physical impossibility of its creation.

« on: December 03, 2018, 08:07:23 AM »

I’m refering of course to a flat earth map that is an alternative to the current world map. According to my extensive research the production of a flat earth ‘alternative map’ is an impossibility rendering the flat earth also impossible.

(Let not get bogged down in discussing all the various projections used as these are just  convienient ways of pictorially representing the 3D globe  on a 2D sheet of paper, which is a tricky thing to do to avoid distortions. Most maps used for travelling deal with smaller sections of the earth’s surface rendering any distortions negligible.)

The main problem is that for a flat earth map to exist something would have to give, and by that I mean land masses including towns cities, mountains and rivers would have to be relocated, which as we all know is an impossibility.

If we start with the Americas, this continent is criss crossed with a vast and complex network of both road and rail with known and fixed start and end points. The 30,000 Km long Pan American Highway being a vast road network stretching from Alaska to Chile albeit with a smallish gap of 100Km. The upshot is the geography of this continent is known and fixed with the location of every town, mountain river and forest known. Using commercial maps you could drive anywhere on this continent, like I did driving Route 66 in the late 80s, and be confident about both distances covered and the exact location of your final destination.

The same could be said of all the other continental land masses. I could take trains, as you all could, from London in the West to Vladivostok in the East, a distance of over 8,500 Km. The track is fixed securely to the ground and passes through all the stop offs acording to published maps.

International communications by land sea and air where the exact locations of both start and end points are known make it impossible for the geography of the planet to be reinterpreted. With the layout of all the major land masses established the positional relationship of an island like Australia can be established by the intricate sea lane connections with major ports in Asia, Europe and the Americas. These sea lanes are travelled every day of the year by a vast armada of container ships carrying both finished goods and raw materials.

To reiterate. Given how the location of every point on earth is accurately known relative to many other points it’s just not possible for the geography of the earth to be reinterpreted rendering the production of a flat earth map alternative as an impossibility.