[yetitsflat]

Hello,

The sinking ship effect (ships disappearing from the bottom up when they are sufficiently far) only seems explainable in a simple way on a flat Earth by assuming that light follows a curved trajectory. The electromagnetic acceleration (https://wiki.tfes.org/Electromagnetic_Acceleration) hypothesis does this by assuming that light is attracted upwards, which I find explains the sinking ship effect neatly.

Atmospheric refraction doesn't seem to be a suitable explanation. The Wiki gives the Skunk Bay Timelapse as evidence (https://wiki.tfes.org/Sinking_Ship_Effect_Caused_by_Refraction), but you have to realize that there are big tides in that peninsula which mess with the observations (even if there is refraction involved).

So we are faced with two possibilities : either Earth is flat and light curves upwards, or Earth is round and light travels straight. We need an experiment that allows to distinguish between them.

Are you aware of any such experiment that has been carried out?

[BRrollin]

Hello,

The sinking ship effect (ships disappearing from the bottom up when they are sufficiently far) only seems explainable in a simple way on a flat Earth by assuming that light follows a curved trajetory. The electromagnetic acceleration (https://wiki.tfes.org/Electromagnetic_Acceleration) hypothesis does this by assuming that light is attracted upwards, which I find explains the sinking ship effect neatly.

Atmospheric refraction doesn't seem to be a suitable explanation. The Wiki gives the Skunk Bay Timelapse as evidence (https://wiki.tfes.org/Sinking_Ship_Effect_Caused_by_Refraction), but you have to realize that there are big tides in that peninsula which mess with the observations (even if there is refraction involved).

So we are faced with two possibilities : either Earth is flat and light curves upwards, or Earth is round and light travels straight. We need an experiment that allows to distinguish between them.

Are you aware of any such experiment that has been carried out?

Well, I do not, but I might be able to help a little bit.

If light is curving, then it is accelerating. That is, it’s velocity vector is changing direction so an acceleration must manifest.

If light is accelerating, then its energy must change. So the observable in an experiment might be a shift if the observed light spectrum. This should be predictable by a FE model, somehow - although I do not know of any FE mathematics that showcase it. FEers may be able to supply it for you (my knowledge of FE theory is quite limited).

[RonJ]

FET would also have to explain why microwave links have a limited range that's now perfectly explained by the curvature of the earth.  Microwaves are electro-magnetic radiation, but at a much lower frequency.  Companies that provide links would just love to have the ability to build fewer towers to cover the required distance between two points.  This would be especially useful in the Western USA.  On a flat earth microwave link distances could be 100's of miles.  You can get between 100 and 200 miles now but only if the two locations are on tops of mountains.  You can easily get a microwave signal from a satellite overhead down to a cell phone with a small antenna but that's direct line of sight.  If the earth is flat the same thing should be possible on the earth's surface, but you can't.  Any electromagnet acceleration theory would have to have a frequency dependent component, or it just wouldn't work. Experiments could be done with a small microwave system.  It wouldn't be as obvious as a laser but would be more expensive.

[JSS]

So we are faced with two possibilities : either Earth is flat and light curves upwards, or Earth is round and light travels straight. We need an experiment that allows to distinguish between them.

Are you aware of any such experiment that has been carried out?

I'm not aware of any but it should be possible to make one.  A laser measuring device that works on interference patterns to detect lateral motion is pretty common and are super sensitive. I made one myself once with a laser pointer, reflector and sensor. It could sense the shift in the wall of my house as I leaned back and forth from the other side of the room. Professional systems can measure at the scale of nanometers easily.

What you need is a rotating frame so you can measure any differences between horizontal and vertical orientations. Something like a very solid metal ring that can be spun around freely with the laser and target on the inside pointing at each other.

If light bends upward, you would see a change when you spin it as the light gets bent upwards by EA.  You could also repeat the experiment by changing the altitude of your measurements.

You would also need a working theory and equation to test it against, but I'm unaware of any EA math that can predict anything, so that's going to be a problem.

[yetitsflat]

Thanks for the replies, I'll think about it, but a suitable experiment may not be obvious at all.

A laser measuring device that works on interference patterns to detect lateral motion is pretty common and are super sensitive. Professional systems can measure at the scale of nanometers easily.

What you need is a rotating frame so you can measure any differences between horizontal and vertical orientations. Something like a very solid metal ring that can be spun around freely with the laser and target on the inside pointing at each other.

If light bends upward, you would see a change when you spin it as the light gets bent upwards by EA.

For instance let's say we have a solid ring with a diameter of 20 cm. On this length the curve of a sphere of radius 6371 km goes down by about 3 nanometers (if my calculations are correct). So if we assume that light is deflected in the same way then we would have to detect a 3 nanometers difference.

You're saying professional systems can do that, but could that accuracy really be reached with such a set-up? How would that work exactly? I'm not picturing exactly what you have in mind.

Does the ring have to be spinning while the measurement is made? If so the rotation of the ring itself would cause a deflection, even if light isn't deflected by electromagnetic acceleration, because the laser doesn't reach the target instantaneously, and the ring would be rotating while the laser is traveling from the source towards the target.

If the experiment doesn't require the ring to rotate while the measurements are made, there is still another issue : the round Earth framework predicts that light is deflected by gravitation. Over a distance of 20 cm parallel to the surface of the Earth, I believe the predicted deflection amounts to a few nanometers as well. Now obviously this is a downward deflection, while electromagnetic acceleration predicts an upward deflection, but would your experiment distinguish between the two or would it only detect the absolute value of the deflection and not the direction?

Also now that I'm saying this I am not aware of experiments conducted on the surface of the Earth that show the gravitational deflection of light traveling horizontally. While such an experiment would show whether light is deflected downwards or upwards.

[JSS]

Thanks for the replies, I'll think about it, but a suitable experiment may not be obvious at all.

A laser measuring device that works on interference patterns to detect lateral motion is pretty common and are super sensitive. Professional systems can measure at the scale of nanometers easily.

What you need is a rotating frame so you can measure any differences between horizontal and vertical orientations. Something like a very solid metal ring that can be spun around freely with the laser and target on the inside pointing at each other.

If light bends upward, you would see a change when you spin it as the light gets bent upwards by EA.

For instance let's say we have a solid ring with a diameter of 20 cm. On this length the curve of a sphere of radius 6371 km goes down by about 3 nanometers (if my calculations are correct). So if we assume that light is deflected in the same way then we would have to detect a 3 nanometers difference.

I don't think your calculations are correct. There currently aren't any EA formulas that say how much light should be bending up, so we don't have any way of knowing. Certainly there is no way a Flat Earth calculation would include the diameter of a spherical Earth. But if light bends upwards at all in the experiment, then that would be some very interesting evidence.

You're saying professional systems can do that, but could that accuracy really be reached with such a set-up? How would that work exactly? I'm not picturing exactly what you have in mind.

Does the ring have to be spinning while the measurement is made? If so the rotation of the ring itself would cause a deflection, even if light isn't deflected by electromagnetic acceleration, because the laser doesn't reach the target instantaneously, and the ring would be rotating while the laser is traveling from the source towards the target.

Using Interferometry you can fairly easily measure at the nanometer scale, I have no doubt we can measure very small deviations in light paths and lengths.  But I'd build something larger than 20cm, maybe a ring a meter across. You place the equipment to measure from one side of the ring to the other.

The ring is stationary while you do your measurement., so no need to take rotation or motion into account.

The way it works is you position the ring so the devices are horizontal, stop it and take your measurements.  Then you rotate it 90 degrees, lock it in place and take new measurements.  If light is being deflected upwards, you should see a difference.

Remember that if light is bending, it is also taking a longer path, and also the time traveled will change too. So there are many ways to measure this. distance using the speed of light is also extremely accurate, as is measuring the speed.  All of these should show changes based on orientations.

If the experiment doesn't require the ring to rotate while the measurements are made, there is still another issue : the round Earth framework predicts that light is deflected by gravitation. Over a distance of 20 cm parallel to the surface of the Earth, I believe the predicted deflection amounts to a few nanometers as well. Now obviously this is a downward deflection, while electromagnetic acceleration predicts an upward deflection, but would your experiment distinguish between the two or would it only detect the absolute value of the deflection and not the direction?

There will be no measured deflection of light due to Earths gravity. Remember that in Einstein's universe, it is space-time itself that is bending. All light travels in a straight path, but that path can look bent to an outside observer.

So any light traveling in that ring will not show a bend, because the ring itself will be bent as well.  It's like drawing a straight line on paper. No matter how much you bend the paper, the line will always bend with it.

If EA is correct and light is bending significantly enough to adjust the position of the entire sky, I'd expect we should be able to measure it fairly easily with current technology. I'm very confident we could construct an experiment for this.

Also now that I'm saying this I am not aware of experiments conducted on the surface of the Earth that show the gravitational deflection of light traveling horizontally. While such an experiment would show whether light is deflected downwards or upwards.

As far as I am aware, no measurements of light traveling from one point to another on the Earths surface have ever shown any curve or bending, or difference in speed or length in any orientation. And these experiments are done a lot, by the hundreds if not thousands of times at this point.

[yetitsflat]

For instance let's say we have a solid ring with a diameter of 20 cm. On this length the curve of a sphere of radius 6371 km goes down by about 3 nanometers (if my calculations are correct). So if we assume that light is deflected in the same way then we would have to detect a 3 nanometers difference.

I don't think your calculations are correct. There currently aren't any EA formulas that say how much light should be bending up, so we don't have any way of knowing. Certainly there is no way a Flat Earth calculation would include the diameter of a spherical Earth. But if light bends upwards at all in the experiment, then that would be some very interesting evidence.

Well I'm thinking if the observed sinking ship effect matches the supposed curvature of a spherical Earth, then the effect of electromagnetic acceleration should match it too, which is why I calculated the bending in that way. 3 nanometers is the curvature of a spherical Earth over a length of 20 cm, I'm pretty sure this is correct. I think it should be the same with EA, but I'll have to think more about it.

Using Interferometry you can fairly easily measure at the nanometer scale, I have no doubt we can measure very small deviations in light paths and lengths.  But I'd build something larger than 20cm, maybe a ring a meter across. You place the equipment to measure from one side of the ring to the other.

The ring is stationary while you do your measurement., so no need to take rotation or motion into account.

The way it works is you position the ring so the devices are horizontal, stop it and take your measurements.  Then you rotate it 90 degrees, lock it in place and take new measurements.  If light is being deflected upwards, you should see a difference.

Remember that if light is bending, it is also taking a longer path, and also the time traveled will change too. So there are many ways to measure this. distance using the speed of light is also extremely accurate, as is measuring the speed.  All of these should show changes based on orientations.

Thanks for the clarification. But what are you measuring exactly? The distance between the center of the target and the spot where the light hits? Can this really be measured at nanometer accuracy? I think that won't be as easy as it sounds. I believe the width of the laser beam itself would be much larger than a few nanometers.

Or if you're measuring the length of the light path across the ring, I'm not sure nanometer accuracy can be achieved. For instance this device (http://www.madcitylabs.com/nanogaugeseries.html) claims to provide a 1.5 nanometer accuracy but only over a range of 25 millimeters, so on a ring a meter across I would think the accuracy would be much less.

But over one meter the curvature of a spherical Earth is about 78 nanometers, so if EA deflects in a similar way that might be detectable. Not easy though.

There will be no measured deflection of light due to Earths gravity. Remember that in Einstein's universe, it is space-time itself that is bending. All light travels in a straight path, but that path can look bent to an outside observer.

So any light traveling in that ring will not show a bend, because the ring itself will be bent as well.  It's like drawing a straight line on paper. No matter how much you bend the paper, the line will always bend with it.

I think it's wrong to say that the ring would be bent as much as the light path in Einstein's universe, because there are electromagnetic forces holding the ring together, not just gravitation, and these forces make the ring deviate from a gravitationally straight path.

Light does get deflected by massive bodies in Einstein's universe. In principle I'm pretty sure it should be possible to detect the deflection of light around a massive body from the surface of that body itself. For instance if light is sent parallel to a spherical surface, it won't move away from the surface at the same rate depending on whether it is deflected or not, so in principle one could measure how far from the surface the light is after it has traveled a given distance.

Also now that I'm saying this I am not aware of experiments conducted on the surface of the Earth that show the gravitational deflection of light traveling horizontally. While such an experiment would show whether light is deflected downwards or upwards.

As far as I am aware, no measurements of light traveling from one point to another on the Earths surface have ever shown any curve or bending, or difference in speed or length in any orientation. And these experiments are done a lot, by the hundreds if not thousands of times at this point.

Well according to this paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/0801.0060) there is a deflection but it is too small to detect on Earth's surface : "The high speed of light in vacuo together with the weakness of Earth gravity rules out any experimental detection of gravitational deflection of light on the laboratory length scale"

[JSS]

For instance let's say we have a solid ring with a diameter of 20 cm. On this length the curve of a sphere of radius 6371 km goes down by about 3 nanometers (if my calculations are correct). So if we assume that light is deflected in the same way then we would have to detect a 3 nanometers difference.

I don't think your calculations are correct. There currently aren't any EA formulas that say how much light should be bending up, so we don't have any way of knowing. Certainly there is no way a Flat Earth calculation would include the diameter of a spherical Earth. But if light bends upwards at all in the experiment, then that would be some very interesting evidence.

Well I'm thinking if the observed sinking ship effect matches the supposed curvature of a spherical Earth, then the effect of electromagnetic acceleration should match it too, which is why I calculated the bending in that way. 3 nanometers is the curvature of a spherical Earth over a length of 20 cm, I'm pretty sure this is correct. I think it should be the same with EA, but I'll have to think more about it.

I think light would have to curve much more than you calculate, for us to see the sun on the horizon it would have to bend a full 90 degrees upward over a few thousand miles at most. But it doesn't matter too much, as the equipment should be able to detect any upward drift, even a tiny one.

I don't think we can use EA to solve the sinking ship/building visuals. If upwardly bending light was the case, then tall buildings would stretch more in one direction than the other and we don't see that.  We see the bottoms of buildings cut off but we don't see them getting consistently compressed or stretched as they get further away.

Using Interferometry you can fairly easily measure at the nanometer scale, I have no doubt we can measure very small deviations in light paths and lengths.  But I'd build something larger than 20cm, maybe a ring a meter across. You place the equipment to measure from one side of the ring to the other.

The ring is stationary while you do your measurement., so no need to take rotation or motion into account.

The way it works is you position the ring so the devices are horizontal, stop it and take your measurements.  Then you rotate it 90 degrees, lock it in place and take new measurements.  If light is being deflected upwards, you should see a difference. And for night to happen the light would have to bend more than 90 degrees. That's enough we should be able to measure it easily.

Remember that if light is bending, it is also taking a longer path, and also the time traveled will change too. So there are many ways to measure this. distance using the speed of light is also extremely accurate, as is measuring the speed.  All of these should show changes based on orientations.

Thanks for the clarification. But what are you measuring exactly? The distance between the center of the target and the spot where the light hits? Can this really be measured at nanometer accuracy? I think that won't be as easy as it sounds. I believe the width of the laser beam itself would be much larger than a few nanometers.

Or if you're measuring the length of the light path across the ring, I'm not sure nanometer accuracy can be achieved. For instance this device (http://www.madcitylabs.com/nanogaugeseries.html) claims to provide a 1.5 nanometer accuracy but only over a range of 25 millimeters, so on a ring a meter across I would think the accuracy would be much less.

But over one meter the curvature of a spherical Earth is about 78 nanometers, so if EA deflects in a similar way that might be detectable. Not easy though.

Laser Interferometer's don't care about the width of the beam or position, they work by bouncing the light off a surface an detecting the wavelength of light interfering with itself. Extremely tiny movements cause the interference pattern to change and that can be used to calculate distances with extreme precision. We would measure the distance from one side of the ring to the other.

The most sensitive systems can measure distances 1/10,000th the width of a proton and that is not a typo, they can be that accurate. That's not anything we could get access to, but cheaper ones would still be far more accurate than we would need. These devices are almost mindbogglingly accurate to insanely small distances.

There will be no measured deflection of light due to Earths gravity. Remember that in Einstein's universe, it is space-time itself that is bending. All light travels in a straight path, but that path can look bent to an outside observer.

So any light traveling in that ring will not show a bend, because the ring itself will be bent as well.  It's like drawing a straight line on paper. No matter how much you bend the paper, the line will always bend with it.

I think it's wrong to say that the ring would be bent as much as the light path in Einstein's universe, because there are electromagnetic forces holding the ring together, not just gravitation, and these forces make the ring deviate from a gravitationally straight path.

Light does get deflected by massive bodies in Einstein's universe. In principle I'm pretty sure it should be possible to detect the deflection of light around a massive body from the surface of that body itself. For instance if light is sent parallel to a spherical surface, it won't move away from the surface at the same rate depending on whether it is deflected or not, so in principle one could measure how far from the surface the light is after it has traveled a given distance.

That is true, I forgot to take that into account. Yes, light would be bent by the Earth's gravity, but also yes, it would be such a small amount it likely wouldn't make a difference.

Also now that I'm saying this I am not aware of experiments conducted on the surface of the Earth that show the gravitational deflection of light traveling horizontally. While such an experiment would show whether light is deflected downwards or upwards.

As far as I am aware, no measurements of light traveling from one point to another on the Earths surface have ever shown any curve or bending, or difference in speed or length in any orientation. And these experiments are done a lot, by the hundreds if not thousands of times at this point.

Well according to this paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/0801.0060) there is a deflection but it is too small to detect on Earth's surface : "The high speed of light in vacuo together with the weakness of Earth gravity rules out any experimental detection of gravitational deflection of light on the laboratory length scale"

Right, so we can eliminate Earths gravity bending light as a source of error.