3901

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: China's 9.5 ton space station, Tiangong-1, will come falling from space.

« on: March 08, 2018, 12:48:48 PM »

Voyager has been travelling for 41 years.
The ISS has been orbiting for 18.

I reckon that's pretty sustained.

3902

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: China's 9.5 ton space station, Tiangong-1, will come falling from space.

« on: March 08, 2018, 11:18:28 AM »

I suspect Pete is on the wind up. It's a FE deflection. It will be yet another proof that there really are satellites orbiting our globe.

3903

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: China's 9.5 ton space station, Tiangong-1, will come falling from space.

« on: March 08, 2018, 10:49:52 AM »

Define "sustained".
The ISS has been in orbit since 2000

3904

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Planar Warming

« on: March 07, 2018, 09:13:00 PM »

Ah. The old “shout fake at everything which doesn’t fit my world view” gambit.

I’m not sure if global warming would be affected were we to live on a flat earth but unless there were a physical dome (I know some flat earth models claim this) the atmosphere would have leaked out into space anyway.

3905

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Proof the moon landings happened.

« on: March 07, 2018, 03:35:48 PM »

There is a "spare" Saturn V in the Kennedy Space Centre.
It's not a replica, it was left over from one of the later missions which was cancelled

3906

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Proof the moon landings happened.

« on: March 07, 2018, 12:58:30 PM »

Your analogy fails as the plane is clearly visible and size is clearly not a hindrance in regard to flight.

Well, if I were to follow the FE/conspiracy theory mindset I'd simply declare all photos and video of an A380 fake and call all the people who claim to have seen or travelled on one liars.
I think that's how this works?

If you think that light leaves the sun, bounces off the moon and that's why we see the moon then you believe the basic idea that light can bounce off the moon with enough power to be observed on earth.
So why the idea that a powerful laser can do the same with a specially placed reflector is ludicrous remains a mystery.
But again, you thinking it so is not an argument.

3907

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why is there no flat earth map?

« on: March 07, 2018, 11:09:57 AM »

Once again you're attempting to derail the thread. I don't think the idea that maps have got better and more accurate over time and older maps have more inaccuracies is controversial.
The point being made is all modern maps of the earth are projections because a globe has to be mapped onto a rectangle. There is no way of doing this without some distortion.
A true flat earth map wouldn't need to do this if the earth really were flat. So why do modern cartographers persist with these projections? Because the earth isn't flat.
And why can't you lot get your act together and produce a flat earth map which actually matches observations? Because it isn't possible.

3908

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Proof the moon landings happened.

« on: March 07, 2018, 10:04:34 AM »

This is quite a good site which addresses most of the common conspiracy theory claims

https://spacecentre.co.uk/blog-post/know-moon-landing-really-happened/

3909

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Proof the moon landings happened.

« on: March 07, 2018, 09:49:21 AM »

No, my argument is the claim is absolutely ludicrous and anyone who believes that claim will buy the Brooklyn Bridge if approached by a salesman.

But that isn't an argument at all.
Your personal incredulity about something is not a valid argument against it.

As I said elsewhere, I could pour scorn on the idea that an aircraft weighing over 500 tonnes could get off the ground, much less transport people thousands of miles in comfort.
I could declare it ludicrous.
But the plain fact is the A380 is in daily operation. And the laser reflectors are used regularly to measure the moon's distance. Why not do some research (no, not on YouTube) before declaring something ludicrous without any basis.
Yes, it's complicated. Aircraft design is complicated but that doesn't stop the A380 getting off the ground.

3910

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Proof the moon landings happened.

« on: March 06, 2018, 10:47:19 PM »

Oh, the reflectors on the moon...

Been watching a little too much of TBBT...

How are you realistically going to fire a laser at the moon, hit these reflectors and then target receptors back here on Earth?

that is the biggest pile of BS I have ever read offered as "proof."

So your argument is basically “that sounds hard, I don’t understand how that could work, therefore it doesn’t”

That really isn’t an argument.

There’s a load of detail here about how it works

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment

3911

Flat Earth Theory / Re: I'm confused: How have we gotten it wrong for so long?

« on: March 06, 2018, 04:03:37 PM »

The flip side of that is the feeling that we are the most important thing in the universe, we are set apart and special.
Which actually, I think we are. But I happen to believe that Genesis is telling me deeper truths than the exact age of the universe or the shape of the earth.
I don't believe the Bible is to be read like a science book.

Eh. The chance that we're the only life in the universe is essentially nothing. 200 billion stars in our galaxy, and 200 billion galaxies in the universe that we're able to see (meaning there is probably more). Nearly all stars have at least 1 planet and, if I recall correctly, 1-in-5 have an earth-like planet in their habitable zone. That leaves a lot of opportunity for other intelligent life out there.

The unknown in all that, and it's quite a big unknown, is how probable is:
1) Life starting
2) Given the above, life developing to the point of intelligence.

You just said 'life' so let's just consider the first of those...honestly, we have no real way of knowing this. We know it has happened at least once in the universe, but given a planet in the Goldilocks zone does life start every time? One in 100? One in a million? Or is it so improbable that even it happening once is pretty lucky?

I don't think we have any way of determining this and thus we don't know how likely it is we're alone.

3912

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Proof the moon landings happened.

« on: March 06, 2018, 02:39:56 PM »

Well, not to mention it couldn't have been faked, as there are retro-reflectors on the surface of the moon. How would those get there without humans
shooting a rocket up into space and placing them? Do you think they just grew out of the ground?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment

I think we're done here.

This was brought up before and there was some ludicrous suggestion that these could be naturally occurring. How we would discover these and know where to point our lasers at were this the case remains to be explained.

3913

Flat Earth Theory / Re: I'm confused: How have we gotten it wrong for so long?

« on: March 06, 2018, 02:36:47 PM »

The flip side of that is the feeling that we are the most important thing in the universe, we are set apart and special.
Which actually, I think we are. But I happen to believe that Genesis is telling me deeper truths than the exact age of the universe or the shape of the earth.
I don't believe the Bible is to be read like a science book.

3914

Flat Earth Theory / Re: I'm confused: How have we gotten it wrong for so long?

« on: March 06, 2018, 02:04:31 PM »

Actually agree, what is unusual and notable is us realising we were wrong about the earth being flat thousands of years ago and THEN reverting.

Our model has evolved from geocentric to heliocentric based on observations of movements of celestial bodies.
Then as telescopes improved we realised that ours is only one of many galaxies and more recently we've been able to detect planets going round distant stars.
And we've entered the space age so any lingering doubt about the shape of the earth has long since gone.

Over the last couple of millennia we have gone from thinking we lived on a flat earth which was the centre of the universe and everything went around to us to realising that we live on a fairly unremarkable planet orbiting a fairly unremarkable star in a fairly unremarkable galaxy.

What IS unusual and notable is that some people want to cling to that belief that we are special and that we live on a flat earth and everything goes around us. Even though it doesn't match any observations. Maybe some psychological thing going on about wanting to feel special. Any significance we have can only come from religious beliefs, not cosmology or astronomy.

3915

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Problem with Empiricism

« on: March 06, 2018, 11:32:57 AM »

The problem is not just illusion. The horizon DOES appear flat because a large enough curve and a straight line are not distinguishable. That is simply a limit of our visual acuity.
So looking at the horizon is not a sufficient observation to determine the shape of the earth, any more than observing the sun going round the sky is sufficient to determine that the sun is going round us as this is indistinguishable from the earth rotating.

I have yet to understand what empirical observations other than "the horizon looks flat" (flawed for the reasons I have outlined) have led to the conclusion of a flat earth.

3916

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Very simple question for flat earthers

« on: March 05, 2018, 10:54:17 AM »

FES members talk about using principles like the Zetetic method which is an empirical and scientific question and answer approach, but then they subscribe to believing in hoaxes which is the total opposite approach as the Zetetic method intended.

Sure, if we just claimed a hoax and cited nothing to support it, you might have a point. But that is not what we have been doing.

You kinda have. You have a few links in the Wiki to some conspiracy nonsense, but when Elon Musk shot a car into space I saw no-one offer any evidence that it was faked.
Rather you seem to fall back on this reasoning

https://wiki.tfes.org/Place_of_the_Conspiracy_in_FET


P1) If personally unverifiable evidence contradicts an obvious truth then the evidence is fabricated
P2) The Flat Earth is an obvious truth

So, according to you it's obvious the earth is flat ergo Musk's launch must have been fake. No evidence provided or required.
This is not rational thinking, one should always be prepared to alter one's opinions in the light of new evidence.

If I see David Copperfield flying in a magic show then I might not be able to see a wire but my experience is that
a) Magic shows are about being tricked and
b) People can't fly
So I can fairly confidently assume that there is a wire or something supporting him. I don't change my views on whether people can fly or not. If someone shoots a car into space then if I believe that space travel is not possible then my immediate reaction may be that it's fake. But if that person has a history of customers who have paid him to shoot other things into space, and has a queue of other customers waiting for him to do so. If I notice that my GPS and satellite TV work, I'm shown evidence that the ISS can be seen from earth. As more and more evidence builds that actually we do now have the technology to shoot stuff into space it becomes more and more irrational to dig my heels in and claim it's all fake with no basis.

How you arrive at P2 remains a mystery to me. A flat earth is arguably the simplest conclusion if you understood nothing about the way the world works, just look out to sea and observe a horizon which appears flat (note the "appears" and consider the limits in our visual accuity). But as someone else noted, even the ancients wouldn't have thought that the sun was circling above a flat plane. The simplest conclusion would be that the sun is circling above and below a flat plane, they probably thought that when it was night it was dark everywhere on earth. Now we know better.

Your circling sun with its change in orbit to create the seasons and change in height to create moon phases is all rationalisation. It's a fudge which you try to use to explain observations but it fails on many levels. It cannot explain the observations of sunlight hours in the southern hemisphere, much less 24 hour sunlight in Antarctica. It cannot explain the consistent size of the sun (so you rationalise again and make up another fudge, some magnification thing). It cannot explain sunset (so you rationalise again and make up some new rule of perspective which attempts to explain how a the gap between a sun THREE THOUSAND MILES above the earth cannot be seen and the disc is observed to sink slowly behind the horizon). It cannot explain the consistent angular speed of the sun over the course of the day - I haven't heard a response to that one yet. Your model fails, it does not match empirical observations - something you claim to think important. And yet you don't change your model or opinion. Odd.

3917

Flat Earth Theory / Re: No flat earth model can explain this case

« on: March 04, 2018, 08:33:53 AM »

So, once again, Tom has basically avoided the question.
And the difference between his thought experiment and the one in the OP is that what would happen in his scenario can be answered and has been answered.
The OP one cannot by a flat earth model.

A consistent angular speed of the sun over the day and the long shadows at sunset prove that the sun is not simply rotating above a plane of the earth.
Both of these things are observable and prove their model incorrect. I never understand why the FE community don't try and engage with this sort of thing.

3918

Flat Earth Theory / Re: No flat earth model can explain this case

« on: March 03, 2018, 06:30:57 PM »

And evidence that this actually happens?

If you guys are unwilling to explain the results of my thought experiment -- which clearly shows your model to be wrong, then I am unwilling to explain the results of yours.

You have stated without any backup what would happen in your thought experiment and then declared that because that would happen (which it wouldn't) that the RE model is wrong.

Someone above linked to the maths which explains why you wouldn't simply fall through the whole earth and into space. In brief, once you're past the centre of the earth the gravitatizonal force would then be working as a brake.

3919

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How does the "spotlight" sun FE model explain long summer days in Australia?

« on: March 03, 2018, 01:39:23 PM »

So what we have is a very strange phenomenon. We have, as individuals, enough personal knowledge to know that the FE model doesn't, can't work. And yet, we have many thousands of people who subscribe to it. This is what I'm interested in - the capacity of people to ignore what they can actually see, and suppress their own reason.

I'm also fascinated by this.
I read a good book ("Black Box Thinking") which talks a lot with Cognitive Dissonance.
There's a lot of this going on here with people who have wrapped themselves up so tightly with a FE belief.
Quite a large slice of confirmation bias too.
It is interesting how people can claim to be basing their beliefs on empirical observations when their model so clearly fails to conform to observations around the globe.

3920

Flat Earth Theory / Re: No flat earth model can explain this case

« on: March 03, 2018, 08:38:15 AM »

Are you challenging me to show that a light source located at 90 degrees to Zenith would create a shadow pointing 180 degrees in the opposite direction?

I am suggesting that if you are as bothered about empirical evidence as you claim, doing some experiments and observations about how shadows work would be a good idea as you have shown a few times you don't understand it.

I've given more details here:

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=8672.msg140197#msg140197

There was no flat earth response to that at all.
The only way you can produce long shadows is to have a light source PHYSICALLY on the horizon.
Note, physically. Not "appearing to be by perspective".