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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why Rowbotham's Old Bedford River experiment proves the earth is round
« on: July 15, 2018, 11:37:27 PM »I apologize profusely as I realized the flaw in my logic on my own and meant to correct it before others do. Seldom on this site have I seen a person admit they were wrong and I was wrong. My gasket analogy is wrong because the edge would not be perpendicular to the plane of the face. I also thought of when I was near the north pole myself and realized east west is more on the face than the edge.Entirely accurate I would say. But I would add that the OP is an insightful point. The East/West bend on FE vs RE are different. You need to know your latitude to say how much it is, but it can be tested for.East-West roads curve on the globe Earth as well, except at the equator. Have you done the math to compare the two?
The roads do not curve left or right on a round earth. Think of a round gasket like you put between two flanges when you do pipefitting. Driving on a flat earth is like driving on the face of the gasket where you are driving in a circle around the middle. Driving on a round earth is like driving on the edge of the gasket. You do not have to turn the steering wheel to drive on the edge. Take a globe and slice it at the 49th parallel and again at the 48th parallel. Draw a road on this slice and imagine driving down that road. You keep the wheel straight. To slice the same part on a flat road you end up with a ring that you will have to drive with the wheel turned the whole time. I hope this helps demonstrate my point. East west roads are parallel to each other. Parallels of latitude.
What an observer would view as a 'straight' line on a sphere, is looking along a Great Circle; a circle with it's center at Earth's center. Circles following the same latitude will have their center above or below Earth's center. Or, the observer is oriented this way, that his z-axis goes through the center of Earth. The same way also the viewing line must follow a circle with it's center at Earth's center.
This way, your example, you would have to tilt your gasket, until it goes through both endpoints, keeping the center of the gasket exact at the same point (center of sphere); not lower or heighten your gasket.
Extreme example: Imagine two points near North Pole, same latitude, but on the opposite side of the North Pole (difference in longitude 180°).
Where does the 'straight line' go? Right over the Pole.
But as I have said many times here, things mostly fall apart once you are near the equator and south of the equator. Douglips is totally correct to challenge me and I was wrong. But in addition to his observation that it would only work at the equator, south of the equator the curvatures are in opposite directions. Since it seems that flat earthers refuse to travel, it is impossible to convince them that there is a south of the equator or a south pole. When north - south roads go through the midwest US, they have to put in correction lines so that the number of roads decreases as you go north to keep the farmland in square pieces. In Australia they have to decrease the roads as you go south. Or in other words, you turn right as you go west in the north hemisphere and left as you go west in the south hemisphere. But flat earthers do not acknowledge the differences between the north and south hemispheres (or at least have not in the past) and so I concede that my original point is flawed.