101

Flat Earth Theory / Surface area comparison

« on: November 22, 2020, 06:09:27 PM »

The surface area of a round earth is about 510 million square kms. A flat earth, with a radius of 20,000 kms (north pole to southern edge), is about 1.256 billion square kms. That would make the area of a flat earth about 2.46 times more than that of a round earth. I'm pretty sure we all know that simply isn't so. Distances from one side of the southern hemisphere to the other as well as the size of continents would be completely out of whack if that were true. Thoughts?

Area of a sphere = 4 x pi x radius squared (radius of a round earth = 6371 km.)
Area of a circle = 2 x pi x radius squared (radius of a flat earth = 20,000 km.)

102

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why the round earth hoax?

« on: November 22, 2020, 03:53:22 PM »

I'm still waiting for an FE believer to explain the purpose of this massive lie that the earth is round.

103

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Questions regarding gravity

« on: November 22, 2020, 03:51:29 PM »

They don't believe in gravity. They believe in 'gravitation' cause by the earth accelerating 'upward'.

Lord, give me patience. If you're going to make statements like these, please try not to state the exact opposite of what's the case.

Once more, for those in the back row:

gravitation - a hypothetical attractive force between bodies with mass, a Round Earther favourite
gravity - the largely undisputed phenomenon of things falling down to Earth

Explained in more detail and in a RE context: https://byjus.com/physics/difference-between-gravitation-and-gravity/

Apologies if I misnamed it. Let me try again. FET does explain the effect known as gravity by the fact that the flat earth is acclerating upward. Correct?

104

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Questions regarding gravity

« on: November 22, 2020, 12:45:33 AM »

They don't believe in gravity. They believe in 'gravitation' cause by the earth accelerating 'upward'. They even have an explanation for not exceeding the speed of light. It's convenient that the direction of this acceleration is perpendicular to the 'plane' of the earth. Otherwise it would like the entire world was built on a hill. I'm not sure how they explain that the atmosphere (atomsplane?) doesn't get swept away, but I do know they will have an explanation.

105

Flat Earth Theory / How far is it from Vancouver to Sydney?

« on: November 22, 2020, 12:19:47 AM »

The round earth distance, the one used successfully by Air Canada to plot direction and distance, says 12,500 km. What is the flat earth distance?

106

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why the round earth hoax?

« on: November 21, 2020, 07:10:56 PM »

For over 300 years, from the early 1500's to the mid 1800's, cartographers depicted California as an island off the coast of the United States. So I wouldn't be keen to bring up the ancient perfect practice of cartography if I were you.

What makes you think that between the mid 1800's and 1900 everyone in the world decided to stop plagiarizing and actually conduct an accurate exploration of the earth?



From the 1500's to the 1800's California was depicted as an island:

18 Maps From When the World Thought California Was an Island

GLEN MCLAUGHLIN WANDERED into a London map shop in 1971 and discovered something strange. On a map from 1663 he noticed something he’d never seen before: California was floating like a big green carrot, untethered to the west coast of North America.

He bought the map and hung it in his entryway, where it quickly became a conversation piece. It soon grew into an obsession. McLaughlin began to collect other maps showing California as an island.

“At first we stored them under the bed, but then we were concerned that the cat would pee on them,” he said. Ultimately he bought two cases like the ones architects use to store blueprints, and over the next 40 years filled them up with more than 700 maps, mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries. In 2011, he partly sold and partly donated his collection to Stanford University, which has digitized the maps and created an online exhibition.

The old maps represent an epic cartographic blunder, but they also contain a kernel of truth, the writer Rebecca Solnit argued in a recent essay. “An island is anything surrounded by difference,” she wrote. And California has always been different — isolated by high mountains in the east and north, desert in the south, and the ocean to the west, it has a unique climate and ecology. It’s often seemed like a place apart in other ways too, from the Gold Rush, to the hippies, to the tech booms of modern times.

The idea of California as an island existed in myth even before the region had been explored and mapped. “Around the year 1500 California made its appearance as a fictional island, blessed with an abundance of gold and populated by black, Amazon-like women, whose trained griffins dined on surplus males,” Philip Hoehn, then-map librarian at UC Berkley wrote in the foreword to a catalog of the maps that McLaughlin wrote.

Maps in the 1500s depicted California as a peninsula, which is closer to the truth (the Baja peninsula extends roughly a 1,000 miles south from the present-day Golden State). Spanish expeditions in the early 1600s concluded, however, that California was cut off from the mainland. Maps in those days were carefully guarded state secrets, McLaughlin says. “The story is, the Dutch raided a Spanish ship and found a secret Spanish map and brought it back to Amsterdam and circulated it from there,” he said.

In 1622, the British mathematician Henry Briggs published an influential article accompanied by a map that clearly showed California as an island. Briggs’ map was widely copied by European cartographers for more than a century.

The beginning of the end of California’s island phase came when a Jesuit priest, Eusebio Kino, led an overland expedition across the top of the Sea of Cortez. He wrote a report accompanied by a map in 1705 that cast serious doubt on the idea of California as an island. It took more exploration, but by 1747 King Ferdinand VI of Spain was convinced. He issued a decree stating that California was — once and for all — not an island. It took another century for cartographers to completely abandon the notion.

McLaughlin, who’s now 80, spent most of his career as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. He says the maps dominated his home decor for much of the past four decades. But no more. “I do miss them, but it’s time to let them go,” he said. “I’ve had a good long run with them.”

The vast majority of which were depicted on a round earth (I assume there are exceptions). The point of mentioning cartographers of old is that they plotted routes based on a round earth. Fast forward to now, and every single word-wide route be it by air, land, or water, is plotted on a round earth, and every single trip based on those routes accurately predicts distance and direction from any A on earth to any B.

Anyway, the question still remains - Why the hoax if the earth really is flat?

107

Flat Earth Theory / Line of sight question

« on: November 21, 2020, 07:02:25 PM »

My understanding is that the sun 'appears' to set because sighting tangentially along the curved ray caused by EA would cause such an optical illusion. If that's wrong then this question doesn't apply.

Assuming I'm right about sighting along the EA-caused tangent, then a person in an airplane over California who's flying just under the red cloud would see the sun setting INTO Texas. How is this explained by FET?

108

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why the round earth hoax?

« on: November 21, 2020, 06:37:45 PM »

Has anyone explained the purpose of saying the earth is round if it's really flat. What is achieved by perpetuating the lie?

It's all a great conspiracy so governments all over the world can continue to fund all kinds of different  endeavors and keep the cash coming in or something like that.

Also, every cartographer in the last 400 years has been in on the hoax. However, it would have been harder to fund expeditions 400 years ago if flat earth distances were given (the surface area of a flat earth is about 2.5 times that of a round earth), so that makes no sense.

109

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why the round earth hoax?

« on: November 21, 2020, 06:35:03 PM »

Has anyone explained the purpose of saying the earth is round if it's really flat. What is achieved by perpetuating the lie?

It's all a great conspiracy so governments all over the world can continue to fund all kinds of different  endeavors and keep the cash coming in or something like that.

Right, I thought so. But, of course, that leads me ask how a round earth brings in money where a flat one doesn't.

110

Flat Earth Theory / Why the round earth hoax?

« on: November 21, 2020, 05:31:20 PM »

Has anyone explained the purpose of saying the earth is round if it's really flat. What is achieved by perpetuating the lie?

111

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Water is always level?

« on: November 20, 2020, 06:09:37 PM »

@WTF_seriously

So the limit of our vision is variable depending upon altitude.

Correct!

There are two main reasons for that.  One is the angular resolution limits of the human eye, and the other is the "standard"/"normal" density gradient within our air.

So how far can we see at ground level?

I live in Calgary where we can see the mountains that start 40 miles away (as the crow flies) as clear as a bell.

112

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Water is always level?

« on: November 15, 2020, 11:55:20 PM »

@stevecanuck, I think I get what you are saying, and yes, from our perspective as being tiny specs on a huge surface, we literally cannot observe curvature directly with our own two eyes.

I think you missed my point, so I'm going to try again.

Imagine being in a row boat in the middle of the ocean. Now look in any direction and you will be able to see approximately 2 miles from a sitting position with your eye level at 2'6".

If you turn in a full circle you will therefore be the center of a circle with a radius of 2 miles. Every spot on the horizon will look the same to you and will therefore appear to be flat.

Or, hold a hula hoop over you so it's parallel to the ground and at eye level. As you turn 360 degrees you will see the edge of the hula hoop at exactly the same level above the ground and at eye level height, it will be a flat plane.

So, we ARE seeing curvature. It's just on a horizontal plane and NOT down to the left and right. You're looking at the hula hoop from the middle of it looking outward, and NOT from the side with it being held vertically.

I hope that explains it. Bottom line is that it's physically impossible to see left to right curvature because, you would have to see farther to the left and right than you would have to see in the middle.

113

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Water is always level?

« on: November 15, 2020, 05:51:38 PM »

...Those same people looked out to sea and saw that the horizon was also flat ...

As I stood looking out to sea last year admiring the cut-edge look of the horizon, and trying my best to see curvature, it struck me that I was looking for it in the wrong direction, and I'm sure that's the direction you're speaking of. I was looking for the horizon to be lower to my right and left, and to be slightly higher straight ahead. But, for that to be the case, it would mean I was seeing farther out to sea on my left and right than I was in the middle, and all of a sudden I realized my error.

I WAS seeing curvature, but on the wrong plane, which is at a perspective that is imperceivable. The curvature of the earth causes you to see the same distance out to sea regardless of direction, therefore the curvature is at eye level (parallel to the ground, not up and down), and there's no way you can perceive that. Imagine holding a pole out from your body at eye level and then turning in a circle. The pole end stays the same distance from you, but is describing an arc AROUND you. That's what you see when you look out at the ocean, and why it looks flat.

I haven't been on this forum long enough to know if this has been discussed before.

114

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon wax and wane direction

« on: November 12, 2020, 09:09:37 PM »

Hi mate, and welcome!  Full transparency, I'm in the round Earth camp, and I would advise you to read the Wiki before asking any more pointed questions like this.  Having read it myself now, it answers a lot of how flat Earth theory (FET) addresses some of the observations we see.  In this case, anything to do with the Moon and inversion is pretty much accounted for by the following:

https://wiki.tfes.org/Electromagnetic_Acceleration

In a nutshell, this "bendy light" due to an as-yet unexplained force accounts for a number of phenomenon, including why the Sun behaves like a spotlight on Earth, and also why the Moon appears inverted in different hemispheres.

Ok, thanks for that. I see they have a formula, so it must be right. Btw, do they ever say why this 'hoax' is being perpetrated, and why it started over 400 years ago with every cartographer in the world?

115

Flat Earth Theory / Moon wax and wane direction

« on: November 11, 2020, 11:58:29 PM »

Hello, I'm new here. I have a million questions, but I'll start with just one:

When I'm in Canada at the start of a new moon, it waxes from right to left. When I'm in Australia it waxes from left to right. This is consistent with a round earth as you're 'up side down' when in Australia.

How does FE explain this?