I never claimed that perspective alone caused the sun to go below the horizon. The perspective angles merge in the distance, and photons from that area are increasingly trying to occupy the same space at once. Some of these photons are blocked out since the earth is not perfectly or mathematically flat and there are slight imperfections on the surface, as the perfect lines merge into the non-perfect earth.
Oh...my...god!
Oh...Tom - you're now proclaiming an entirely new FE theory! Squished-up photons fighting for space! How exciting!
I love new theories! So much more to debunk!
Previously you'd told us that light travels in straight lines. Just one month ago, in
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=6710.msg122642#msg122642 you said:
"
I have argued in favor of EA in the past when the theory was first proposed, but have since tended to prefer the theory that light travels in straight lines and that perspective is the explanation for why the view of the sun is limited..."
So...if the sun is up THERE...and the undersides of the clouds are lit...then the light cannot have followed the straight line path indicated by the blue line to get there. It can only have followed something like the orange curve...but Tom says that light travels in straight lines...so WTF?!
In that same thread ("Re: Disproof of FET using refraction." - in which I admitted my error in assuming you were claiming that "refraction" causes sunsets) this exchange took place:
From my understanding in his other threads, 'modified' perspective simply postulates that the vanishing point occurs closer than infinity. He makes this claim (his words, not mine) because - roughly - "The Ancient Greeks never studied perspective theory for long distances, so we have no idea how it works for longer distances or if there is a vanishing point closer than at infinity." Essentially from what I've seen, he claims the horizon is due to the point at which perspective makes all lines converge into one point, and going past that somehow can make the sun appear to go behind something it's above.
Yes, this is a general summary of the argument. The perspective lines meet at a finite distance, not an infinite distance as described by the Ancient Greeks. This describes why the sun appears to descent and meet the horizon a finite distance away, as opposed to an infinite distance away.
As for why the sun disappears from the bottom up, the explanation is that the perspective lines are perfect, but the surface of the earth is not perfect, and there will be an area upon which something can disappear behind. It is mentioned in Earth Not a Globe that the sunset takes longer when the seas are calm compared to when they are more disturbed.
Now you're saying "
I never claimed that perspective alone caused the sun to go below the horizon."...and reading CAREFULLY, you didn't say that perspective alone caused it to go BELOW the horizon...but you clearly are saying that there is also something about the earth being imperfect...um...OK...kinda.
But this phenomena of clouds being lit from below happens before the sun goes BELOW the horizon...so that's no excuse.
"
The perspective angles merge in the distance, and photons from that area are increasingly trying to occupy the same space at once."
Oh boy...this is premium-grade FE bullshit!
What happens with perspective? Well, light from widely separated points is focussed onto the retina of your eye. Those rays of light only "merge" in the back of your eyeball...they aren't merging out someplace on the horizon! You have that entirely backwards. (Which probably explains why you keep failing to understand to my "Pinhole camera" diagrams...)
So any "crowding of photons" (sorry - there are physicists rolling on the floor laughing at that one!) happens inside your eye...not on the underside of a cloud or someplace out at the horizon.
Really - you'd be able to understand how light works if you concentrated only on the paths that the rays of light take - from their source - to whatever they illuminate - and from there to our eyes.
The light from the sun (which is 30 degrees up in the sky in FE reality) - have to reach the UNDERSIDE of that cloud - without bending (because you agree that doesn't happen).
HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?