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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Universal Acceleration - Power Source discussion

« on: January 22, 2019, 02:00:05 PM »

The earth is accelerating upwards

Accelerating upwards would seem to suggest that direction is not changing so it can only be speed that is changing.  If that is the case then the effect of 'gravity' on a flat Earth would be different to what we experience in the real world where speed remains the same but direction changes.

In Round Earth (and Flat Earth) theory, acceleration due to gravity is completely indistinguishable from constant acceleration.  If you were sealed in a box, there would be no way you could conduct an experiment to determine if you were on earth's surface or in a rocket far from earth that was accelerating at 9.8 m/s^2.  You are correct that objects on opposite sides of Round Earth fall in different directions, but both experience the same magnitude of acceleration.  Acceleration (like velocity) is a vector quantity and has both a magnitude and a direction.

Round earth theory does not derive gravitational acceleration from a change in direction, either.  Objects always accelerate in the same direction: toward the center of the planet.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Seeing the curvature of the Earth directly

« on: January 22, 2019, 01:29:20 PM »

The onus is with FE.  It is their responsibility to prove the earth is flat, not the other way around.  The reason is that mainstream scientific opinion-- a theory you must admit was successful in its own right-- was well established for centuries before the FE community dissented.  There is no "default assumption" about the shape of the earth; various indigenous cultures also assumed the earth was infinite, round, in the branches of a giant tree, hatched from an egg laid by a giant primordial bird, one world of many, sentient and good, sentient and evil, etc.  If you think the world is flat you must provide evidence toward that end; the globe-earthers already did that for their theory.  The FE community obviously thinks that evidence isn't very good, but objectively they have no analogous model which matches the predictive power and real-world fidelity of the globe earth theory.  GE theory is robust, ancient, and supported by copious evidence-- you can't just dismiss it out of hand.  Build a better theory and I'll listen.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Universal Acceleration - Power Source discussion

« on: January 22, 2019, 01:03:22 PM »

So, if I'm understanding you correctly, the earth, the people on it, and the heavenly bodies are all attracted to one another gravitationally, by the virtue of them all having mass.  You yourself (and many FE folks) have acknowledged this.  So, what keeps the earth from colliding with these celestial bodies?  The earth is accelerating upward toward them after all.  Are they also subject to UA?  In fact, the celestial bodies must actually be experiencing greater UA since they are able to outrun the earth's gravitational pull.  And if they're accelerating faster, they are bound to move away over time.

This brings me to a point I forgot to mention earlier: if all observed gravitational acceleration on earth was the result of UA, the earth absolutely would rip itself apart as it rose.  You said that you see no reason why this would occur, but this is a basic property of acceleration.  Different acceleration by definition means that over time points on the surface will achieve unequal velocities, and unequal velocities implies that the two points will not stay near each other as time advances, ergo the earth would need to tear apart to accomodate all these differently accelerating points.

As for the final matter, I greatly respect and admire your desire to discover the truth.  The relationship between scientific inquiry and truth has a long and messy history, and is probably best left to minds greater than ours.  The greatest quagmire seems to be that no amount of positive evidence can ever, with certainty, prove a theory true.  Of course, it is comparably easy to disprove a theory-- all that's needed is a counterexample.  Hence the scientific method: the aim is always to disprove a null hypothesis, rather than to prove a true one.  There is confirmatory and contrary evidence for both FE and GE, and depending on who you ask, both theories are capable of dealing with the contrary evidence (I'm granting you a huge concession here by the way).  The only real difference is that GE is a very simple explanation, and has amazing predictive power, and FE theory is extremely complicated and has not yet advanced to having the capabilities to make solid predictions (of the sort made by GR).  Most conversations I've had with flat earthers that got this far resulted in a stunning rejection of the premise that FE theory was "extremely complicated," but this is exactly the case.  At first, it seems much simpler, but then you have to factor in something that explains the movement of the stars, and gravity, and the ether, and jovian moon orbits, and seasons, and whatever science discovers next year, etc.  And you can do it, don't get me wrong.  It's possible to believe in a model that just adds another entity to explain any stray phenomena, and you can do this ad infinitum and still have a valid theory.  The theory wouldn't be "wrong" in any way.  My question to you is: does that theory look like truth?

I had a philosophy professor who used to insist that he believed that instead of gravity, matter in the universe was pushed around by invisible gremlins.  It is, as we learned, impossible to disprove this, especially when the interlocutor is free to speculatively invent new pieces to the theory (ie, something that explains gravitational waves) as he goes.  It's pretty clear to me that although this model "works," it is almost certainly not true, simply because it is equally as likely as any other model for gravity which lacks evidence (UA).  In the end, we're free to believe whatever we want, but know that Globe theorists have the unique advantage of (copious) evidence.  I'm unclear why you would bet on any other horse if you were looking for truth.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: A shape question about the FE

« on: January 22, 2019, 12:02:21 PM »

As I said, it's beside the point, Pete.  The edge of the flat earth is a conversation better left to a separate thread.  Would you care to comment on the seismic thing?

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Universal Acceleration - Power Source discussion

« on: January 22, 2019, 11:58:46 AM »

A quick question for you Pete:

Earth has inconsistent gravitational acceleration over its surface area, something exhaustively tested and acknowledged by many members of the FE community.  (Interestingly, most of the discrepancy is that gravity is stronger near the poles and weaker at the equator, something which no Flat earther has ever explained to me satisfactorily).  In Globe Earth theory, these discrepancies are explained by the earth not being a perfect sphere (GE theory does acknowledge that there are multiple sources of gravity on earth's surface, but they are all negligible compared to the earth itself, because the earth is much larger and closer than anything else).  In Flat Earth theory, these discrepancies are explained (if I'm understanding you correctly) by gravity (or gravitation, since you make a distinction) is coming from various sources.  I was wondering if you might speculate why we observe certain trends in the distribution of gravitational acceleration:

greater near the poles, less at the equator
greater at sea level, less at elevation
greater on continents, less on oceans

Globe Earth Theory addresses all these points easily and elegantly, with a single law.  The law of gravitation-- of which the standard is general relativity-- is a universal principle.  It does not "source" from anything, as you said.  It is a formula which explains how energy (including the energy of mass) bends spacetime.  Flat Earth theory does not have a law analogous to GR, and there is no consensus on why planets behave the way they do, or why earth's gravitational acceleration is so distributed.  Because of this, at the current moment, Globe Earth must be considered the superior scientific model for planetary motion and all things gravity.  This is not because it is true; it is because GR works very well (again, observationally confirmed exhaustively and acknowledged by many  flat earthers), and nothing the FE community has come up with comes close (so far).  There is no unified FE theory of gravitation, and until there is one that explains observed phenomena as good or better than GR, the better scientific model is GR.  Again, not because it's true, but because it's predictive power is so much more useful.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: A shape question about the FE

« on: January 22, 2019, 11:24:45 AM »

I simply don't believe that the true shape of Flat Earth is unknowable.

We have seismic data which shows that the rate of propagation of seismic waves through the earth is not constant, but is deflected and delayed in various patterns.  The Round Earthers have interpreted this to mean there's a big, dense chunk of metal at the earth's core.  What does the FE community have to say about this?

Then, of course, there's the idea that you could just go out to the edge and launch a probe off or something, but I'm assuming that's off the table for now.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Star coordinate systems

« on: January 22, 2019, 10:27:15 AM »

After reading Bishop's response, I'm left with more questions than answers.  It's unclear how two celestial poles would ever be seen from the surface of Flat Earth.  Personally I would love a more clear/explicit explanation of the forces governing apparent stellar movement in the Flat Earth model, because this is something about Flat Earth theory that has never been entirely clear to me.

A more simplistic way to put the question might be "Why is Polaris not visible in the southern hemi-"sphere?"  This is a well-documented phenomenon which seems impossible on Flat Earth; no matter where you are, you ought to have line-of-sight to Polaris.  I assume the Flat Earth explanation involves light "bending" in some way, but 1) that seems pretty well dismissed by this thread: https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=6692.msg122178#msg122178 , and 2) I have as of yet seen no well-formulated mechanism from the FE community which would explain why the light bends, how much it bends, etc in such a way that it can be reconciled with what is observed.  On the Globe Earth, there is such a comprehensive theory, which involves the earth being spherical, stars being relatively stationary and distant, and not much else.  Because at this point in time GE theory is vastly more useful in explaining the motions of stars, it is obviously the superior scientific model with respect to stellar movement (not to say anything of "truth").

Anyone from the FE community want to offer up a comparable explanation for stellar motion?  I understand the FE camp does not have a "unified" theory in the same way the GE camp does, so it's totally possible a good explanation exists that I haven't come across yet.