61

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: RE Lunar Phases With Extreme Perspective Changes

« on: July 12, 2020, 06:57:50 PM »

It is also possible that those lamps in a line with us from my last illustration are actually of different increasing heights as they approach, and that the line of lamps coming towards us actually does point upwards. The laser/string experiment cannot distinguish between that. AATW would still use a perspective effect to make a earth-parallel laser pointer appear to point upwards, and he would still declare that the earth-parallel laser pointer proves that the lamps are parallel.

It's not so much of what is possible. People keep insisting that this string experiment demonstrates something.

The string experiment shows that the "tilt" is exactly what you would expect because of perspective. Just like if you hold the string along the streetlights line.

If the string aligns, there are two possibilities: either it is actually caused by perspective, either by a coincidence, it exactly matches that. In the case of the streetlights, either they are actually aligned and the same height, and the perspective causes the perceived angle, either they are of different height and positioned in such a way they appear exactly as if they were the same height. This is what they do to create perspective illusions such as the ones found on this link: https://gizmodo.com/these-super-fun-illusions-really-messes-with-your-persp-1725059895 , but it only works from a certain angle.

62

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: RE Lunar Phases With Extreme Perspective Changes

« on: July 12, 2020, 09:39:56 AM »

Can you hold a string to be perfectly aligned with the streetlights?

Can you see the line of streetlights pointing upwards, when you know it's actually horizontal?

If you answer yes to both questions, why do you expect the Moon terminator to point at the direction of the Sun in the sky?

63

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: RE Lunar Phases With Extreme Perspective Changes

« on: July 12, 2020, 07:13:31 AM »

Let's see if this helps. Here's a row of streetlights.



Because of perspective they get taller as they get nearer to you and so the line made by the light bulbs angles upwards from left to right, yes?

Aha! The line shoots right into space! Those streetlights makers have been lying to us all along!

Tom, why do you even expect the lunar terminator to point at the position of the Sun in the sky? Think of the streetlights and watch this 5 seconds video:

64

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Latitude and longitude - please enlighten me

« on: July 11, 2020, 12:37:32 PM »

Take it as a thought experiment: for one moment, forget the geometrical definitions of latitude and longitude, just consider them as coordinates of a location on Earth.

The point is that we can determine latitude and longitude through observation of celestial objects and measurements of time. And conversely, knowing latitude and longitude allows us to know for example at what time the Sun rises and sets on a given date.

Of course, the mere fact that we can use angles as coordinates should tell us something about the shape of the Earth. But let's start with the basics, and let's see if someone denies the reality of the concept of latitude and longitude.

65

Flat Earth Media / Re: International Shipping Agent

« on: July 11, 2020, 09:29:23 AM »

I have to admit I didn't have the patience to watch the whole video. Did he come up with a thorough statistical analysis of shipping routes? Can we see the data anywhere? Or maybe he just mentioned a few anecdotal examples?

66

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Latitude and longitude - please enlighten me

« on: July 11, 2020, 09:18:02 AM »

My statements don't actually mention "straight lines", just North-South and East-West lines. On a globe Earth, meridians are great circles that converge at the poles, parallels are rhumb lines perpendicular to the meridians. Parallels are not great circles, except in the special case of the Equator. Being circles at the surface of a sphere, they obviously are not "straight" in a 3D sense like a laser beam.

On a flat Earth, what parallels and meridians look like highly depends on the model. None of the flat Earth models I've seen are compatible with my list of statements.

67

Flat Earth Projects / Re: The Atlantic Split

« on: July 10, 2020, 08:35:02 PM »

When trying to book this flight through a booking company on various dates, the flights I've found seem to want to take me from Sao Paulo to Dubai and then to Johannesburg:

Can you try again with flights from Sao Paulo to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia? Filter for non-stop flights and you should see results from Ethiopian airlines (ET506 and ET507).

68

Flat Earth Media / Re: International Shipping Agent

« on: July 10, 2020, 08:31:55 PM »

For an overview of shipping routes across the world just 8 years ago, the interactive map at https://www.shipmap.org/ is fascinating. Once the voiceover has finished, you can play with the settings to display routes by container as well as other ships. There's very little of the world's oceans not covered by shipping routes, despite what the shipping agent has to say.

(caution: Mercator-like projection of Round Earth model used)

Even better, https://www.marinetraffic.com/ tracks 200k vessels live. They sell some of their data, if you think it's fake maybe you'd want to call out the fraud.

69

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Latitude and longitude - please enlighten me

« on: July 10, 2020, 06:40:23 PM »

I do mean location. At a given location, the elevation of the celestial pole is constant, it doesn't change over time.

That makes sense. Some comments. The statements can be divided into those which are simply definitions, and those which would have to be verified empirically. Of the latter, these could be divided into those which have no implication for the shape of the earth, and those (if any) which do.

Some of the definitions are covert. You say “At solar noon, the Sun appears due South or due North”, but you haven’t defined ‘North’ or ‘South’. Clearly magnetic poles are not meant. Perhaps you might define N and S in terms of the axis of apparent celestial rotation. 

Actually, it can also be used as a definition of North and South. South is were the Sun is at solar noon if you're north of the tropic of Capricorn. North is the opposite direction, West is due left if you face North. Most common definitions of North and South imply a round Earth, so I prefer not to include them. Maybe someone will come up with a different definition. The point is to see if any of these statements could be refuted.
 

As for ‘Latitude’, you could define it by the elevation of Polaris, or the Southern pole star.

As there is no southern equivalent of Polaris, I prefer the term "celestial pole": the point in the sky around which the stars seem to be spinning. The direction you have to point an equatorial mount at to cancel out the apparent movement of the stars. Also, Polaris is not exactly at the celestial pole, but it's probably close enough for our purpose.

Do any of these imply the shape of the earth? We have “Locations with the same longitude will see the Sun at its highest at the same time”. That implies (there is a geometrical proof) that a line of longitude is the shortest distance between any two points on that line, meaning that if the earth is flat, they must be straight. But then there is a problem with “Meridians converge as you get further away from the Equator, either South or North”.

That's part of the point, none of these statements alone directly implies a shape of the Earth. But all of them should be verifiable without requiring space travel or anything out of reach. And all together, I guess they're hard to fit in a flat Earth model.

70

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Latitude and longitude - please enlighten me

« on: July 10, 2020, 10:15:03 AM »

I'll make a list of statements related to longitude and latitude. Hopefully each statement is simple enough to make it easy to find out possible disagreements.
* The elevation of the celestial pole is constant for any given location

Location? Did you mean latitude?

There probably was a better way to phrase that. I do mean location. At a given location, the elevation of the celestial pole is constant, it doesn't change over time. This is required if you want to determine a unique, constant latitude from that measurement.

71

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Latitude and longitude - please enlighten me

« on: July 09, 2020, 08:12:25 PM »

I'll make a list of statements related to longitude and latitude. Hopefully each statement is simple enough to make it easy to find out possible disagreements.

* The elevation of the celestial pole is constant for any given location
* We can calculate the latitude of a location using the elevation of the celestial pole
* Solar noon is the time of the day when the Sun is at its highest in the sky, casting the shortest shadows
* At solar noon, the Sun appears due South or due North, except in the special case when it's directly overhead
* The difference between solar noon at a reference location (eg Greenwich) and solar noon at any given location is constant
* We can calculate the longitude from the difference between solar noon at Greenwich and local solar noon, 15 degrees of longitude being equivalent to 1 hour
* Any place on Earth is uniquely identified by a latitude and longitude
* Locations with the same longitude will see the Sun at its highest at the same time
* Locations with the same latitude will have the same variation of day length all through the year
* At the equinoxes, the elevation of the Sun at solar noon is 90 - current latitude (0 at the poles, 90 at the Equator)
* At any other time of the year, the elevation of the Sun at solar noon is 90 - current latitude + declination of the Sun
* The subsolar point at the June solstice is 23.5 degrees North, on the tropic of Cancer
* The subsolar point at the December solstice is 23.5 degrees South, on the tropic of Capricorn
* Latitude lines are east-west lines, called parallels
* Longitude lines are north-south lines, called meridians
* Meridians and parallels always cross at a right angle
* One degree of latitude along a meridian is approximately 111.3 km
* One degree of longitude along the Equator is approximately 111.3 km
* The borders of the state of Colorado were defined with meridians and parallels
* The eastern and western borders of Colorado are the same length, approximately 445 km
* The northern border of Colorado is significantly shorter than the southern border
* Meridians converge as you get further away from the Equator, either South or North

72

Flat Earth Projects / Re: The Atlantic Split

« on: July 07, 2020, 09:08:13 PM »

Anomalies

There is a flight website called https://www.rome2rio.com/ which provides an easy way to find flight routes. Type in Venezuela to Liberia.

Venezuela to Liberia:

https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Venezuela/Liberia



Venezuela to Nigeria:

https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Venezuela/Nigeria



Curious. Why do Venezuelans have to go to Europe to go to countries near the African equator? If you click on the flight alternatives on the left hand menu, they all make odd flight detours through Europe.

Is it really curious? Are there strong commercial or cultural ties between Venezuela and Nigeria? How many passengers every year would take a direct flight from Caracas to Lagos? Would it be enough for an airline to make money?

On the Atlantic Split:

Interesting map. On such a map, how did the triangular trade ever take place?

Now, if you are in Brazil and want to go to Liberia, you apparently have to make a weird trip to Europe and then backtrack towards Africa:

https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Brazil/Liberia



Quite curious.

When trying to book this flight through a booking company on various dates, the flights I've found seem to want to take me from Sao Paulo to Dubai and then to Johannesburg:

You may not have heard or read about it, but there's been that global pandemic thing lately, that slightly disrupted global air traffic. It might not be completely surprising that you can't book a given route, especially if it's not one of the busiest.

But if you check http://www.taag.com/, you can already book direct flights from Sao Paulo to Luanda, Angola later this year.

And another one, showing that Africa and South America are huge compared to other areas:



Of course, it is not specified how "true size" was determined. Astonomical methods may produce bias in the spacing between the lat/long coordinates if the globe assumptions are incorrect.

Yes, the Mercator projection distorts sizes. It's been common knowledge since it was invented in the 16th century. It's not a conspiracy to make some continents look bigger than others, it's because it was meant to be useful to 16th century navigators.

Now, why do we even need map projections?

73

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: June 21, 2020, 10:10:05 PM »

Silent majority? Trump voters weren't even a majority, and they certainly are far from being silent.

74

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: June 21, 2020, 01:44:04 PM »

https://twitter.com/DeAnna4Congress/status/1274522762502160386

Apparently being able to drink water with one hand is now the sign of a great president, and even the greatest president ever.

I thought that was a parody but it's from the official Twitter account of a Republican candidate. Poe's law...

75

Flat Earth Community / Re: What pushed you in the direction of belief in Flat Earth Theory?

« on: June 20, 2020, 07:48:08 AM »

Another telling trait is that if you look closely, much of the 'phenomena' cited for Round Earth Theory are actually of an inconsistent nature, as documented in the FE Wiki.

But if you look even closer, absolutely none of these "inconsistencies" really are inconsistent. Things can be counter-intuitive, or hard to understand, like the apparent "Moon tilt illusion" or the n-body problem.

Which means it's much easier to dismiss them as "inconsistent" or "not working" than to properly understand and explain them.

What interested me was not so much FET as a "potentially true scenario". What interested me was that if you put aside photography/videography, and try to prove the earth is round - it becomes a daunting task. What we've been taught our whole lives as "truths" are hardly provable. The more you discuss it, the more apparent this becomes.

It's almost a tautology: if you put aside the best proofs, it becomes harder to prove something . But, yes, it's much less obvious than you'd think, that's also what interested me.

76

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Latitude and longitude - please enlighten me

« on: June 18, 2020, 09:21:19 PM »

As far as the southern hemisphere goes, I'd rather stick to the north for now as that's a lot simpler to think about with just Polaris to deal with. Apologies to anyone down south.

Anyway, it's not really different, it just takes a little more effort to determine the latitude since there is no bright star at the southern celestial pole.

I suspect that two issues are commonly being lumped together: 1) Does latitude/longitude give you a unique and unchanging position (irrespective of shape)? 2) Are distances calculated between two points expressed as latitude/longitude correct?

When you lump these together, it's not surprising that FEers will dismiss latitude/longitude as globe based, because it's hard to accept 2) without accepting a globe, but I don't see 1) as being anywhere near as contentious. Somerled has given an opinion, but I'm having to read between the lines a bit to figure out exactly where he (gender based assumption there) stands on 1). I'm really hoping we'll hear from a few more FEers, I'm genuinely interested to understand their position(s) on this and reasoning.

Actually, I don't see how 1) could be rebutted. As you said, latitude can be determined with the position of the celestial pole in the sky, and longitude can be determined by calculating the difference between solar noon in Greenwich and local solar noon. Travel west and solar noon will happen later, travel east and it will happen sooner. Travel north and Polaris will appear higher in the sky until you reach the north pole and you see it directly overhead. Travel south and Polaris will appear lower until you reach the Equator and it appears on the horizon, and if you keep on travelling south you can repeat with the southern celestial pole. Latitude and longitude are not just arbitrary values, they have a meaning that can be easily verified by anybody: this fact alone is already a strong argument for a spherical Earth, both latitude and longitude being angular measurements.

Then comes 2). As seen in another thread, values given by online maps are generally accepted as accurate - or at least, no one has proved them wrong. And we've seen they're based on formulas such as haversine or Vincenty's.

Conclusion: we can determine a latitude and longitude of any point on Earth, and we can determine the distance between any two points on Earth knowing their latitude and longitude using a formula that calculates distances on a sphere or an oblate spheroid. It would be a very intriguing coincidence if this worked without the Earth being a globe.

77

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: June 08, 2020, 06:12:32 AM »

Just being a big stupid baby as usual it seems.

And now being mad that Colin Powell is going to vote for someone other than him.

Is he really mad at that? That's the fourth time in a row Powell will not vote for the republican candidate. Makes me wonder why he choses to remain a member of that party. Maybe it's more about the two-party system of the  USA than about Powell and Trump, reminds me how earlier this year, AOC said that 'In any other country, Joe Biden and [her] would not be in the same party'.

78

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Some question that I think could be interesting

« on: June 06, 2020, 09:13:36 PM »

Psychiatrists (and other professions) used to say that homosexuality was an abmormality, and thought of ways to treat the condition, for those who wanted to be treated (and which was never forced in the US - Bill of Rights)

That is pretty taboo to say now, however, and would get you ostricized from those professions. Homosexuality was taken off of medical diagnosis charts as a medical condition.

It's no longer an abnormality because society decided homosexuality was okay. If you don't twist to what society thinks is good and bad at present time, you don't get funded and are scolded and tarnished. Simple to see that this applies to all science.

All science? Society doesn't care about most science. Medicine and especially psychiatry are obvious exceptions: they deal with what define us as human beings, and with definitions of what is a normal behavior. I guess it would also globally apply to social sciences. But in most other fields, society just doesn't have an opinion on what is good or bad. Is matter made of atoms? Are these atoms made of things that are not waves nor particles but have the properties of both? Do we live in a galaxy, are there other galaxies, are there millions or billions or more of them? As science answered these questions, our everyday lives went on unchanged and society didn't really have anything to say. In the times of Galileo and Copernicus, when the church was much more powerful, saying the Earth is not the center of the Universe could get you scolded, but that ended long ago. Even Darwin didn't run into too many problems. And no one is going to get scolded by society for proving a mathematical theorem or for a new finding in physics, however revolutionary. If tomorrow, say, string theory is proven or disproven, it would be very big news for the scientific community, but apart from that it would barely make the headlines.

79

Flat Earth Community / Re: Did Rowbotham use Conspiracy Theories?

« on: June 06, 2020, 02:56:18 PM »

OK then what about this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#Criticism_and_condemnation

European leaders have also voiced their opposition to the internment center. On 13 January 2006, German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized the U.S. detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay: "An institution like Guantánamo, in its present form, cannot and must not exist in the long term. We must find different ways of dealing with prisoners. As far as I'm concerned, there's no question about that," she declared in a 9 January interview to Der Spiegel. Meanwhile, in the UK, Peter Hain, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, stated during a live broadcast of Question Time (16 February 2006) that: "I would prefer that it wasn't there and I would prefer it was closed." His cabinet colleague and Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, declared the following day that the center was "an anomaly and sooner or later it's got to be dealt with."

Germany and the UK are NATO allies, right?

80

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: June 06, 2020, 08:18:29 AM »

but gary, what about other stuff that the police do?
lol like what?

Traffic police? Reckless driving and DUI are already all too common, I wouldn't like to imagine how it would be without cops to enforce these rules.