41

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How to disprove Universal Acceleration with your bare eyes:

« on: October 25, 2018, 10:36:06 AM »

Objects on the earth's surface have weight because all sufficiently massive celestial bodies are accelerating upward at the rate of 9.8 m/s^2. The mass of the earth is thought to shield the objects atop it from the direct force of UA.

Wait... are you saying that Flat Earth has gravity AND is accelerating upwards?

2. If the stars were accelerating, we would measure stellar Synchrotron-radiation. If the stars were accelerating uniformly into one direction, we would measure stellar Synchrotron-radiation at the horizon but not from right above.

Only to an observer who's been external to UA for an extended period of time. In other words, your hypothesis is untestable.

It is only untestable if we assume the unproven existence of the UA.

42

Flat Earth Theory / Re: What is actually the definition of this "zetetic method" Flat-Earthers use?

« on: October 25, 2018, 10:29:25 AM »

The idea is to remove bias which they feel is inherent in the scientific method where a hypothesis is defined first. The thinking being that if you define that first it can prejudice the way you design your experiment. The trouble is you can see from some examples on here that the conclusion from experiment results are heavily biased towards a flat earth.

The problem goes deeper than bias.

The problem is that you can only make a statement with 100% certainty if you have 100% of all of the possible information. If you do a limited measurement, e.g. whether Earth is flat in a certain area, you cannot make a statement with 100% certainty that Earth is flat. That's basic statistical math.

The Flat-Earther-method of determining the shape of Earth by measuring it once in one place, that simply cannot work for fundamental mathematical reasons. Their whole research is doomed, useless and futile.

43

Flat Earth Theory / Re: What is actually the definition of this "zetetic method" Flat-Earthers use?

« on: October 25, 2018, 10:23:27 AM »

Fair comment. I meant an over-reliance on what we can perceive without instrumentation to help us.
So "the earth looks flat" and "the horizon looks like it's at eye level" are used as evidence that these things actually are the case.

That seems to be the Zetetic argument, as it throws out anything that the FE believer on the beach doesn't understand past their own eyesight.

Except I'd argue FE believers are not even Zeteticists as even simple observations are completely utterly ignored and replaced with fantastical magical celestial gears, UA, ether, extreme bendy light, spotlight sun, and the most massive conspiracy the world has ever seen.  Just making things up ("theorizing") isn't being Zetetic.  The early globularists 2500 years ago were Zetetics who mostly had only their observations.  They moved past Zetetics into actual science through experimentation which backed up and verified a spherical Earth. 

This is what frustrates me most about Flat-Earthers: Whenever I try to have a fact-based discussion with them, they come up with evidence-free "what if"-scenarios. No matter how hard you try to confine the discussion to reality, evidence and fact, he simply invents a "what if"-scenario where his explanation would work and declares victory.

Edit: For your model, this would go Hypothesis->Experiment->Hypothesis->Experiment (in a loop)
A theory cannot exist unless it is an absolute truth and no such thing exists beyond mathematics, and even then there is wiggle room.

That's not quite true. Scientific theories are ALWAYS handled with the caveat that they are the best-possible explanation AT THE MOMENT. This caveat of fallibility, that's a pillar of the scientific method.

44

Flat Earth Theory / What is actually the definition of this "zetetic method" Flat-Earthers use?

« on: October 24, 2018, 09:06:35 AM »

We know the "scientific method":
Theory -> Hypothesis -> Experiment -> Comparison of theoretical prediction and experimental data -> Decision whether to keep or to abandon the theory -> Repeat with a new theory

What exactly is this "zetetic method"? I have found a definition here:
http://rationaltheory.wikia.com/wiki/Zetetic_Method
Experiment -> Hypothesis -> Theory

Is this what Flat-Earthers are using?

45

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How to disprove Universal Acceleration with your bare eyes:

« on: October 24, 2018, 08:56:02 AM »

The stars are travelling at negligible velocities and independently from Flat Earth.

It's called Universal Acceleration, not "Earth's Disc Acceleration". The stars are accelerating, along with the rest of the universe.

1. This is not what your Wiki says what UAT is. https://wiki.tfes.org/Universal_Acceleration#Explanations_for_Universal_Acceleration
2. If the stars were accelerating, we would measure stellar Synchrotron-radiation. If the stars were accelerating uniformly into one direction, we would measure stellar Synchrotron-radiation at the horizon but not from right above.

That gives me an idea:
3. If Earth were flat, the angular intensity of Synchrotron-sources here on Earth would depend on how the particle-accelerator is oriented with respect to the up-down axis of FE. Guess what? Scientists use Synchrotron-radiation all the time to do EXAFS-spectroscopy of chemical samples. If something were wrong with the Synchrotron-radiation, we would know.





4. Can you prove anything you just said? I presented a hypothesis, what is to be expected if we were to do an experiment. Your counter depends on the existence of something nobody has ever seen.

46

Flat Earth Theory / How to disprove Universal Acceleration with your bare eyes:

« on: October 23, 2018, 01:40:46 PM »

According to UA,FE accelerates upwards at 9.81 m/s². That means, it would have reached relativistic velocity within less than a year and we are currently travelling very close to light-speed.

The stars are travelling at negligible velocities and independently from Flat Earth. That means, when the photons enter our moving frame of reference, they will get a blue-shift.
1. Element-specific spectral lines of the stars, of our Sun, of gas-lamps in the lamp, they would all be different from each other (bc blueshift) if UA were true. Except they are identical.
2. The blueshift would mean that starlight coming from directly above would be blue or violet. As we are moving close to light-speed, it is reasonable to assume, that the blue-shift has already shifted starlight beyond the visible range. Accordingly, if UA were true, there would be no starlight coming from directly above.



Could you please update your wiki? Thx.

47

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Questions about flat earth

« on: October 23, 2018, 12:26:36 PM »

Does anyone have proof definitive proof that the earth is accelerating upwards?

On the better: I can prove that Universal Acceleration is wrong. If Universal Acceleration were correct, the starlight coming from directly above would be blueshifted (pretty hard, since FE is moving at near-light-speed in the UA-model). It would be blueshifted so far, that it would be beyond the the visible for the range for the human eye.

Is there a reputable (Not Youtube) source to find peer reviewed scientific studies on the FE?

There are no peer-reviewed studies. However, there are non-peer-reviewed journals that are willing to print anything for money.

Please explain the anti moon and cold light given off by the moon.
Suppose the earth is flat why would governments that are at war with each other work to gather to deceive us?
How can i test the shape of the earth myself?
Is the dome around the earth a solid dome or some sort of electromagnetic/energy field? got mixed answers in this.
There is a treaty for Antartica. Does anyone have the this documentation i cannot find it online?
Someone tell me how GPS works W/O satellites. All GPS antennas are on top of airplanes ruling out ground stations?

The answers to all of these questions are long-winded speculations how Earth could totally be flat as long as you imagine this and that and this and that.

48

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Some honest questions from a Round Earth believer.

« on: October 23, 2018, 12:18:40 PM »

Someone needs to check the wiki and FAQ. I'll give you some links.
Sunsets: https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Setting_of_the_Sun

This explanation only works if the Sun has a diameter of zero.

timezones work like they do on a round earth. The difference is that it's a disc with the sun orbiting above the north pole. I'll just get you a link to that.
https://wiki.tfes.org/Sun

This explanation only works if you
a) put a lampshade on the Sun
b) ignore that you can actually see during sunrise/sunset that the sun-disc is partially obscured.

There ain't no gravity for the flat theory, just universal acceleration: https://wiki.tfes.org/Universal_Acceleration

If Universal Acceleration were real, the starlight coming from directly above would be blueshifted outside of the visible range to ultraviolet and beyond.

Sinking ship effect: https://wiki.tfes.org/Sinking_Ship_Effect

There is a shit-ton of actual photographies that disprove these wild claims.

As for the conspiracy, that part does not make monetary sense, but there is a wiki for it: https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Conspiracy

And this ignores that in order for conspiracy to work, everybody from NASA to ESA to the Russians to China to India to meteorologists to cartographers to oceanographers to sailors to pilots to artillery-men must be in on it, because all of these have first-hand evidence of the shape of Earth.
And we would have to beleive that an international conspiracy of millions of people can stay secret, with nobody ever infiltrating them and nobody ever coming forward and nobody ever leaking about it.





Huh, that was easy.

49

Flat Earth Theory / Re: A Zetetic Experiment

« on: October 17, 2018, 03:28:20 PM »

Rowbotham is correct. Science has always had a seemingly underlying goal to prove old religious knowledge to be wrong. Science characterizes ancient knowledge as mythical and ignorant.

It is not a mistatement in any manner to say that many members of the scientific community have been historically athiest and 'agnostic'.

That is absolutely incorrect.

If you look at the earliest members of the modern scientific tradition (Francis Bacon, John Dee, Isaac Newton, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Leibniz...) you will find that they were not atheist at all but ardent christian believers.

Science moved away from religious concepts and towards materialism at around 1800, when it became undeniable that experiments proved those religious concepts to be wrong.

50

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why do we accept the religious biases of FE-research?

« on: August 23, 2018, 12:11:03 PM »

Your interpretation of JRowe's post is extremely discourteous, and, dare I say, untrue to his intention. We can't have a debate if your objection is to straw men.

You also don't get to decide what is "obvious" about FET. Isn't it a bit strange that you're willing to dismiss my point on what we believe in favour of what you think we obviously believe?

He sets criteria for what foreign planets should look like without explaining why those should be criteria.

My point is as follows:
Flat-Earthers reserve the right to dismiss certain evidence as fake, based on the unproven hypothesis that someone has faked evidence.

A scientific discussion is not possible if one side can dismiss evidence at will. There should be an objective process for the admittal and dismissal of evidence.

51

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why do we accept the religious biases of FE-research?

« on: August 23, 2018, 08:31:53 AM »

An argument I see over and over again is "Earth/planets/sky/sun/nightsky do not like I expected them to look, therefore the observation must be false."

Have you seen that here verbatim, or is it your indirect interpretation of something someone said? That doesn't seem like something this community would support.

Why do we accept the premise that there is a RE-conspiracy? The only purpose of this conspiracy-theory is to serve as an excuse to dismiss measurements and data Flat-Earthers don't like.

There is no such thing as a RE conspiracy. There is some evidence of a space-travel conspiracy. It's not conclusive, but it does exist. In any case, a belief in the Conspiracy is not a pre-requisite for FET.

I was over in the other forum.

My condolences. The "other forum" has been all but abandoned by serious contributors and has mostly been used by people who wish to satirise us. I would have serious doubts about anything you've read there.

I will furthermore refuse to humor Flat-Earthers by engaging with them in a scientific debate that is premised on a religion that they invented for the purpose of tilting scientific debates in their favor. And neither should other Round-Earthers.

A brief pointer on how things work around here. If you don't want to talk to someone, don't. Nobody's forcing you to contribute. However, making vapid posts about how you refuse to contribute helps nobody, and only serves to make valuable content more difficult to find. If you want to complain about people you don't like (for whatever reason), please do so in Angry Ranting. I'm sure you made your post in good faith, but it technically doesn't belong in the FET board.

This OP right here, posted 3 days ago.
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=10490.0
He thinks that the photos of other planets must be fake because they are different from what he expects other planets to look like.



A believe in "some" unproven conspiracy is obviously necessary for FE.



And my point about refusing to humor Flat-Earthers means simply that a scientific discussion about evidence is meaningless if one side gets to cherry-pick (a priori and a posteriori) which evidence counts and which doesn't count.
How are we supposed to have a scientific debate if one side dismisses selected evidence as facsimiles created by a conspiracy without providing evidence that they indeed were facsimiles created by a conspiracy?

52

Flat Earth Theory / Why do we accept the religious biases of FE-research?

« on: August 23, 2018, 06:29:19 AM »

I have two major issues with Flat Earth-research:



1.
An argument I see over and over again is "Earth/planets/sky/sun/nightsky do not like I expected them to look, therefore the observation must be false."
This is literally a prescientific medieval mindset, where theory is given priority over experiment. How come nobody is calling this out?

How come that this community prides itself in not believing what they are told and only believing what you have measured, and then they turn around and dismiss a measurement because they don't like the result?



2.
Why do we accept the premise that there is a RE-conspiracy? The only purpose of this conspiracy-theory is to serve as an excuse to dismiss measurements and data Flat-Earthers don't like.
* The existence of this conspiracy has never been proven in any way, neither by objective evidence nor by witnesses. It is entirely hypothetical.
* The mere probability of such a conspiracy existing without getting revealed over time is astronomically low. (There is a scientific paper that can model how long different types of conspiracies can stay hidden before a whistleblower reveals them.)

Why do we shape our research around a premise that is 100% unproven and that is next to impossible to even exist?
Why do Flat-Earthers rather believe in something that is 100% unproven rather than accept the possibility that the photo is real and that their opinion is wrong?




I was over in the other forum. I have met people who literally believe in magic, I have met people who believe that ancient civilizations were technologically more advanced than we are, I have met people who claimed to have received visions from the future and that therefore their statements are the absolute truth and beyond doubt.



I will furthermore refuse to humor Flat-Earthers by engaging with them in a scientific debate that is premised on a religion that they invented for the purpose of tilting scientific debates in their favor. And neither should other Round-Earthers.

Religious bias has no place in scientific research.

If Flat-Earthers want to research the shape of Earth, first they must check whether the premises of their models are even valid.

53

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How to measure Universal Acceleration with a laserpointer.

« on: August 23, 2018, 05:57:30 AM »

While this also invalidates my experiment with the Doppler-Effect on light-bulbs, I don't think it would affect a Doppler-Effect between a Universally Accelerating Flat-Earth and starlight. Would it? Because the source of the photon and Earth are moving independently.

Doppler effect only occurs when light source is moving relative to the observer. But in the flat earth model the Universally Accelerating does not move the stars towards or from the earth.

There would be more blueshift above in the nightsky than near the horizon of the nightsky.

EDIT: To clarify: There would be more blue-shifted stellar objects in the upwards direction in the nightsky than in a sideways direction in the nightsky.

This has nothing to do with any blue-shift as a result of motion. What you are referring to here is the scattering effect of the atmosphere. Blue light is more scattered by the atmosphere than the wavelength of red light. That's why the sky is blue and the light of the sun turns to red when it has to travel a longer distance trough the atmosphere to reach our eye.

1. That depends on whether we use the model where the stars are out in the universe or whether we use a model where they are glued onto Earth's dome. If they are not glued to Earth, then their light is blueshifted due to Earth's movement.

2. I don't mean Rayleigh-scattering. I mean that that there is an angle between the vector-movement of Earth and the direction from which the light of a star reaches us. That means that the relative velocity between Earth and the star along the Earth-star axis depends on where the star is relative to Earth's movement. And if the relative velocity depends on the angle, then there is a different blueshift between angles.

Starlight in front of Earth is blueshifted, starlight behind Earth is redshifted. And the horizon is the angle where there is neither blueshift nor redshift.

54

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How to measure Universal Acceleration with a lightbulb.

« on: August 22, 2018, 06:15:52 PM »

EDIT:
After an argument here
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=10516.0
I have been convinced that the experiment wouldn't work with a lightbulb, because the lightbulb and the observer both move with the same velocity.

However that doesn't count for starlight. Stars and Earth are moving independently, which means there should be more blue-shifted stellar objects in the upwards direction of a Universally Accelerating Flat Earth than in a sideways direction.

55

Flat Earth Theory / Is there a FE-explanation for sunset/sunrise?

« on: August 22, 2018, 06:11:01 PM »

Is there a FE-explanation why the sun is partially obscured during sunrise/sunset?

This here assumes that the sun is a point-source of light.
https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Setting_of_the_Sun

56

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How to measure Universal Acceleration with a laserpointer.

« on: August 22, 2018, 05:52:28 PM »

Speed and velocity are not the same? What definitions are you using?

Ones that differentiate between scalars and vectors.

My claim is that the accelerating frame of reference moves upward while the photon moves sideways because it does not move upwards

This is in direct contradiction of Special Relativity. Within our frame of reference, the photon doesn't move downwards, because the speed of light is constant. Your error is mixing up different frames of reference, which is unacceptable in the context of SR. Your claim would result in an observer locally perceiving light as moving faster than c.

Okay, my bad.

Found this explanation.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/216807/why-light-moves-sideways



While this also invalidates my experiment with the Doppler-Effect on light-bulbs, I don't think it would affect a Doppler-Effect between a Universally Accelerating Flat-Earth and starlight. Would it? Because the source of the photon and Earth are moving independently. There would be more blueshift above in the nightsky than near the horizon of the nightsky.

EDIT: To clarify: There would be more blue-shifted stellar objects in the upwards direction in the nightsky than in a sideways direction in the nightsky.

57

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How to measure Universal Acceleration with a laserpointer.

« on: August 22, 2018, 04:49:56 PM »

The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of the motion of the light source.

Speed and velocity are not the same thing.

That was my claim.

Your claim directly contradicts your conclusion. The entire frame of reference is moving, thus light will not "drop" as you describe. This is because of Special Relativity.

Pete thinks that a moving source changes the speed of light.

I do not. If you're not going to engage your debate partners honestly, please take it to Angry Ranting.

Speed and velocity are not the same? What definitions are you using?

My claim is that the accelerating frame of reference moves upward while the photon moves sideways because it does not move upwards because the speed of light is a constant and you can't vector-add the velocity of the moving source to the velocity of the photon. Accordingly, the photon does not move upwards while the system within we measure the location of the photon does move upwards, thereby creating a trajectory within the system that looks as if the photon is moving downwards.



What exactly is your issue with that?

58

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How to measure Universal Acceleration with a laserpointer.

« on: August 22, 2018, 04:40:06 PM »

I'm with Pete here.  Within in a frame of reference, regardless of external speed, even if it's a significant percentage of the speed of light, light appears to travel at the speed of light inside that frame of reference.

Michael from VSauce explains this in his usual fun manner.

That was my claim. Pete thinks that a moving source changes the speed of light.

59

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How to measure Universal Acceleration with a laserpointer.

« on: August 22, 2018, 04:39:09 PM »

I see you don't have much of use to say. Unsurprising. So far, your proposed substantiation is "hehe I know physics" and "grab a book". You will find that the standards here are a bit higher than that.

This says that I'm correct and that you are wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity
The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of the motion of the light source.

What do you have?





And what standards??? You call me wrong and have nothing to back it up!

60

Flat Earth Community / Re: RE believers - why are you here?

« on: August 22, 2018, 04:33:02 PM »

Hi there,

Question for RE-ers... I'm curious about what motivates you to contribute here?

Personally, before joining this forum I would have dismissed FET as complete nonsense without any kind of consideration, but I find it fascinating the extent to which arguments are put forward and rebutted by people on either side.

Now I'm addicted to this forum just for the debate! I'm learning a lot.

How about you?

Pj1

I was in the other forum, but it was full of weirdos who believed in magic and claimed to be time-travellers.

I came to this forum in the hopes of a real intellectual challenge. So far I have encountered:
* The attitude "if my imagination says one thing and my observation says another thing, then my observation must be wrong."
* People who don't know physics trying to argue physics.