Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #60 on: November 11, 2021, 09:48:19 PM »
Its common in science for there to be differing views or competing theories on things.  String theory for example is not universally accepted but its getting there.  Likewise for the multiverse.   (I am not an expert in physics, just an interested layman).  The same happened for climate change which was viewed somewhat skeptically back when it was proposed in the 70s, but is essentially universally accepted now (mostly by the 90s).  The same could be said decades ago for continental drift.  But for the globe earth there are no such differing views.  The entirety of industry, science, engineering, and academia agree on the globe earth.  The FE believers are all layman.  Why is that?
« Last Edit: November 11, 2021, 09:52:04 PM by ichoosereality »
The contents of the GPS NAV message is the time of transmission and the orbital location of the transmitter at that time. If the transmitters are not where they claim to be GPS would not work.  Since it does work the transmitters must in fact be in orbit, which means the earth is round.

SteelyBob

Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #61 on: November 11, 2021, 10:44:50 PM »

When coming in at a lower angle the apparent angles are different. Elevated angles look differently from the observer's vantage point and are height dependent. You assume that it would always equal, but this is not so.

This doesn't make any sense. We know what angle to the horizontal the light rays are arriving at the observer's eyes, because we know their latitude, so we have a good idea, in your model, of what the end result of the curvature is, even if you can't say for sure how far away the stars are. If they are at 30 degrees North, then light from a star over the North Pole will arrive at an angle of 30 degrees to the horizontal. It has to. But that arrival angle is all we need to know - it doesn't matter whether the light rays are straight, bendy, wiggly or whatever. We know they aren't curving laterally - viewed from above they trace a straight line. If you have two light rays arriving at your eyes from two equidistant objects at the same height, then they can move up and down all day long, but as long as they move together, the angle you see between them won't change.

The only way to get anything looking like a circle facing the observer in the video on page one is if there was compensation inherent in the geometry of this.

The earth could be globe-shaped, and the stars could be a long, long way from us. That would work, would it not?

Trillion

Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #62 on: November 11, 2021, 11:26:04 PM »
What I don't get is that given all the fascinating and ground breaking investigations that science in general and modern astronomy is now working on, there are people in this world who would rather spend their time role playing as if they are people who lived generations ago by arguing about what shape the Earth is. Something that we actually worked out a long, long time ago.  Time to move on!

Offline scomato

  • *
  • Posts: 175
    • View Profile
Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #63 on: November 12, 2021, 02:33:44 AM »
What I don't get is that given all the fascinating and ground breaking investigations that science in general and modern astronomy is now working on, there are people in this world who would rather spend their time role playing as if they are people who lived generations ago by arguing about what shape the Earth is. Something that we actually worked out a long, long time ago.  Time to move on!

It's people who think they are much more clever than career scientists and academics, ironically despite knowing less than a learning impaired child. 

Plus, believing that the world is flat gives you the chance to feel persecuted for your beliefs every time someone calls you an idiot. A victim-complex can paradoxically feel empowering, fringe conspiracy beliefs are perfectly situated to exploit this funny part of our psychology.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2021, 02:35:17 AM by scomato »

*

Offline Tom Bishop

  • Zetetic Council Member
  • **
  • Posts: 10637
  • Flat Earth Believer
    • View Profile
Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #64 on: November 12, 2021, 02:47:46 AM »
Quote from: SteelyBob
If you have two light rays arriving at your eyes from two equidistant objects at the same height, then they can move up and down all day long, but as long as they move together, the angle you see between them won't change.

Incorrect. If you have two golf balls, two inches apart from each other side by side, located at a distance of one foot away from your face horizontally and then increase their vertical height by two feet they are no longer one foot away from your face and the two golf balls will not maintain the same angular distance from each other.

Quote from: SteelyBob
The earth could be globe-shaped, and the stars could be a long, long way from us. That would work, would it not?

Considering that a circular startrail can be made elsewise this apparently is not the only conclusion possible.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2021, 02:53:32 AM by Tom Bishop »

Trillion

Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #65 on: November 12, 2021, 08:48:11 AM »
Quote
Considering that a circular startrail can be made elsewise this apparently is not the only conclusion possible.
It is when we have data that conclusively shows that the stars are a long, long way off. You may not like or accept that data but that doesn't change the validity of it. As I said if the stars were as near as you seem to believe they are then they would have to be very small physically. So that introduces (not resolves) the problem of what powers them.  What makes them shine?

As passionate as you obviously are about your beliefs, you can only seem to think about all this from a particular point of view.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2021, 08:50:32 AM by Trillion »

*

Offline AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #66 on: November 12, 2021, 09:36:43 AM »
If you have two golf balls, two inches apart from each other side by side, located at a distance of one foot away from your face horizontally and then increase their vertical height by two feet they are no longer one foot away from your face and the two golf balls will not maintain the same angular distance from each other.
So you do understand why your model doesn't match observations then, a sun circling above us wouldn't maintain a consistent angular size or velocity
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

SteelyBob

Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #67 on: November 12, 2021, 12:34:13 PM »
Incorrect. If you have two golf balls, two inches apart from each other side by side, located at a distance of one foot away from your face horizontally and then increase their vertical height by two feet they are no longer one foot away from your face and the two golf balls will not maintain the same angular distance from each other.

If that's the principle you're relying on here, it's working in the wrong sense. If you consider somebody viewing a pair of stars over the North Pole from, say, 60 degrees north, and consider what happens as they change their position to, say, 30 degrees north. We both agree, albeit for different reasons, that the elevation angle will reduce from 60 to 30 degrees. Given that the stars are now significantly more distant, according to your model, one would expect them to appear closer together - a reduced angular separation. Can you explain how exactly the compensation would work? By your golf ball analogy, objects moving lower would appear to get closer together, not further apart, which is the correction your model needs to work. 




*

Offline AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #68 on: November 12, 2021, 01:14:27 PM »
They would surely also change in luminosity and angular size with the varying distance. We are talking about the distance varying by a factor of 3 or 4 but there is no measurable change.
The reason of course is that the distance to the stars is so large that the difference in distance on the globe is too small to measure. That wouldn’t be true in FET. You should be able to measure the difference but you can’t.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

Trillion

Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #69 on: November 12, 2021, 03:14:48 PM »
My experience of Tom Bishop is that he spends a disproportionate amount of time thinking about and trying to prove something is true which so obviously isn't true to everyone else.  OK make that most people.  There are one or two others who believe the Earth is flat as well.

What can you tell people with that kind of mindset?  Nothing probably!
« Last Edit: November 12, 2021, 04:55:43 PM by Trillion »

SteelyBob

Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #70 on: November 12, 2021, 04:34:57 PM »
They would surely also change in luminosity and angular size with the varying distance.

Yep.

Trillion

Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #71 on: November 12, 2021, 04:58:22 PM »
The apparent brightness of stars obey an inverse square law.

http://burro.cwru.edu/Academics/Astr221/Light/invsq.html

So even clearly even a small change in distance would result in a large change in apparent brightness.

Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #72 on: November 12, 2021, 05:29:52 PM »
My experience of Tom Bishop is that he spends a disproportionate amount of time thinking about and trying to prove something is true which so obviously isn't true to everyone else.  OK make that most people.  There are one or two others who believe the Earth is flat as well.

What can you tell people with that kind of mindset?  Nothing probably!
Right, I don't think you can tell them anything.  I think the person has to be willing to question their own (way of) thinking.  I thought Tom might be up for that, but maybe not.  It's not an easy thing to do.
The contents of the GPS NAV message is the time of transmission and the orbital location of the transmitter at that time. If the transmitters are not where they claim to be GPS would not work.  Since it does work the transmitters must in fact be in orbit, which means the earth is round.

Trillion

Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #73 on: November 12, 2021, 05:51:20 PM »
After all has been said, FE theory is a conspiracy theory and not a scientific theory. Therefore presenting evidence which counters a belief (no matter how compelling it is) is essentially a waste of time. Because those who 'believe' will simply dismiss that evidence, or at least those who present it as being part of the conspiracy themselves.

A conspiracy theorist will only ever identify with one 'truth' which is the truth they are trying to prove of course. I'm not sure exactly why anyone in this day and age would even entertain the idea that the Earth is flat, other than the simple observation from ground level that you cannot detect a curvature. That alone perhaps means to a FE believer that anyone who says the Earth is a sphere must therefore be lying.

Of course conformation biasing does the rest.  Science naturally challenges FE belief, in particular astronomy. So it is hardly surprising that FEers like to describe astronomy as a 'pseudoscience'. To my mind nothing could be further from the truth!

Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #74 on: November 12, 2021, 07:00:04 PM »
I completely agree.  The question becomes how to get someone to examine their thinking / methodology?
With ever more sources actively exploiting this common human phenomenon for partisan purposes, it's ever more important to figure out how to encourage such self examination.

Reading about folks who have left "cults" and those that helped them do so, a few things seem common.
* It takes a personal connection (so that will be hard just over the net)
* It takes time
* It takes empathy, no one likes to be made to feel wrong or stupid etc.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2021, 07:32:26 PM by ichoosereality »
The contents of the GPS NAV message is the time of transmission and the orbital location of the transmitter at that time. If the transmitters are not where they claim to be GPS would not work.  Since it does work the transmitters must in fact be in orbit, which means the earth is round.

*

Offline WTF_Seriously

  • *
  • Posts: 1331
  • Nobody Important
    • View Profile
Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #75 on: November 12, 2021, 08:41:13 PM »
You don't need multiple stars to evidence the flaw in FE theory.  You only need one, the sun, and the easiest day to demonstrate the problem, the equinox.

FE theory dictates that everyone at an equal distance from the sun would see the sun appear at the same altitude.  This is true whether you consider bendy light or not.  This means that if you locate the sun above the plane and then draw a circle with the sun as center, everyone at the edge of the circle will view the sun at the same altitude.

Now let's look at the equinox as it is the simplest say to compare what is observed, that zetetic thing, with what should be observed.  If we place the sun at 0 lat, 0 lon. 4 observers placed at 0 lat.-45E, 0 lat.-45W, 45N-0 lon., 45S-0 lon. will each observe the sun at an altitude of 45 degrees.  However, if you place the sun above the plane at 0,0 and draw a circle that touches 45N and 45S you will notice that the circle does not reach 45E and 45W.  On FE, the observers at 45E and 45W should view the sun at an altitude of less than 45 deg.
Flat-Earthers seem to have a very low standard of evidence for what they want to believe but an impossibly high standard of evidence for what they don’t want to believe.

Lee McIntyre, Boston University

SteelyBob

Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #76 on: November 13, 2021, 04:25:19 PM »
You don't need multiple stars to evidence the flaw in FE theory.  You only need one, the sun, and the easiest day to demonstrate the problem, the equinox.

FE theory dictates that everyone at an equal distance from the sun would see the sun appear at the same altitude.  This is true whether you consider bendy light or not.  This means that if you locate the sun above the plane and then draw a circle with the sun as center, everyone at the edge of the circle will view the sun at the same altitude.

Now let's look at the equinox as it is the simplest say to compare what is observed, that zetetic thing, with what should be observed.  If we place the sun at 0 lat, 0 lon. 4 observers placed at 0 lat.-45E, 0 lat.-45W, 45N-0 lon., 45S-0 lon. will each observe the sun at an altitude of 45 degrees.  However, if you place the sun above the plane at 0,0 and draw a circle that touches 45N and 45S you will notice that the circle does not reach 45E and 45W.  On FE, the observers at 45E and 45W should view the sun at an altitude of less than 45 deg.

That’s a really elegant, simple problem - much neater than my idea, so thank you. It all stems, I suppose, from the fact that the monopole FE map holds north-south distances equal to those on the globe, but allows east-west distances to differ, with the difference becoming progressively more marked as you journey south. Hence the locus of points observing the sun in your example at 45 degrees elevation would not be a circle, despite another aspect of FET requiring it to be just that.

Very interested in a FE response to this - Tom, thoughts? I’m guessing the response will be that east-west distances are somehow unknown, which seems to be the get-out-of-jail option for problems of this nature. Amazing how those poor Aussies don’t know the size of their own country…

*

Offline WTF_Seriously

  • *
  • Posts: 1331
  • Nobody Important
    • View Profile
Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #77 on: November 13, 2021, 06:43:08 PM »
It all stems, I suppose, from the fact that the monopole FE map holds north-south distances equal to those on the globe, but allows east-west distances to differ, with the difference becoming progressively more marked as you journey south. Hence the locus of points observing the sun in your example at 45 degrees elevation would not be a circle, despite another aspect of FET requiring it to be just that.

The bi-polar model is a little more difficult to try to examine but still has the same problem.
Flat-Earthers seem to have a very low standard of evidence for what they want to believe but an impossibly high standard of evidence for what they don’t want to believe.

Lee McIntyre, Boston University

SteelyBob

Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #78 on: November 13, 2021, 07:03:02 PM »
It all stems, I suppose, from the fact that the monopole FE map holds north-south distances equal to those on the globe, but allows east-west distances to differ, with the difference becoming progressively more marked as you journey south. Hence the locus of points observing the sun in your example at 45 degrees elevation would not be a circle, despite another aspect of FET requiring it to be just that.

The bi-polar model is a little more difficult to try to examine but still has the same problem.

The bi-polar model is so ridiculous I think it can almost be dismissed ‘by inspection’. There’s hundreds of problems, my personal favourite being the challenge of re-telling the pacific campaign of WW2 using that map…it makes no sense at all.

*

Offline AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Experiment to prove or disprove certain fact of FE theory
« Reply #79 on: November 13, 2021, 08:30:26 PM »
The only reason the standard FE model places the North Pole at the center is that Rowbotham lived in the UK - the northern hemisphere. The model sort of works for the northern hemisphere. I mean, you have to invent things like UA and EA to replace gravity and explain the sinking ship effect respectively, but it kinda works. EA is a recent invention, Rowbotham used some nonsense perspective explanation which is demonstrably false.
But anyway, there are still a bunch of problems but for the northern hemisphere it’s not completely ridiculous. For the southern hemisphere  though it’s a complete mess. Distances don’t even close to match reality, the entire continent of Antarctica has to be denied to even exist despite the fact you can literally go there. And there’s the whole issue of star trails.
The bi-polar model might fix some of that but it creates a whole bunch of other problems. How does the sun move in that model in any way that matches observations.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"