121

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: A flaw with the Flat Earth model?

« on: May 17, 2020, 08:35:19 PM »

If this were not directional, but with bending lights, as it says on the EA page, then we would not have night time.  We would see  the sun from all the way across the FE, as the light bends up towards us.

This is not the case. What makes you think that light would not be directional under EA?

Once again: Is there something about the first few paragraphs and diagrams in the EA page that you disagree with? They seem to illustrate this exact scenario quite well.

I meant to write "uni-directional" in that sentence, and I've edited it to reflect that.

No, as I've said a few times, I'm not arguing against the explanation of EA on that section of the Wiki.  Rather, I'm saying that that section is consistent conceptually (I've said this in a few of my posts on this thread). 

I'm not trying to disprove EA or something (because, again, I can't do the maths anyway). 

But given EA, we then have a problem with the explanation for night, which requires the sunlight to illuminate only a portion of the FE directly below, and to not bend upwards in order to illuminate the entire FE plane. That must be why the explanation on the introduction/FAQ uses the word "spotlight" as an analogy for how the sun works. Because spotlights shine pretty directly at a single spot. In this case, half the FE.

Let me ask about this logical contradiction using different words to perhaps break it down better:

Why is the moon not a spotlight, but the sun is? 

I'm not going to respond to the other parts of our conversation, because really, the size of the sun/moon as they travel is a separate discussion, and it's going nowhere on this thread.

122

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: A flaw with the Flat Earth model?

« on: May 17, 2020, 08:18:19 PM »

I'm saying that the Wiki's explanations REQUIRE light to BOTH bend AND go straight, in order to be consistent with itself.

Right. Now, instead of just stating it with a wondrous mix of bold italic and CAPITALS with no qualification, explain why you believe this to be the case.

However, if light does not travel in a straight line, then how do you explain night, which requires light traveling uni-directionally to illuminate only one half of the FE?

Is there something about the first few paragraphs and diagrams in the EA page that you disagree with? They seem to illustrate this exact scenario quite well.

I've asked this several times now, and you've never provided an answer.  The burden is on you to respond to the logical contradiction that your Wiki creates. And you haven't.

In order to respond to the supposed contradiction, I need to know what it is. My reading of your posts here so far goes along the lines of "This must both be bending and not bending? How COME? This is a massive contradiction!!!!" Until you clarify your reasoning, I can't really tell you where you went wrong. I'm no mind reader.

I'm not trying to waste your time.  I've tried searching several times. There are long pages about the moon tilt illusion, and plenty of related things, but there is no discrete section about why the sun and moon do not change sizes every hour that I can find.

Sigh. Let's see.

I want to learn about why the Sun doesn't change its size. I would expect that effect to be most pronounced at sunrise and sunset. Let's look at https://wiki.tfes.org/Sunrise_and_Sunset

Wow, that's a short page. Let's have a quick scan. Oh, look: "Magnification of the Sun at Sunset describes why the Sun does not shrink as it recedes"

That wasn't so hard. Let's try again! This time, I'm going to use Google. Don't we all just love Google?

I'll copy the exact phrasing of your question as you used it now: "why the sun and moon do not change sizes every hour". I'll throw in a "site:wiki.tfes.org", because we're looking for our wiki pages.



Not bad, second result.

This really is not that hard.

Did you not read my analogy with the field?  In that analogy I showed how we would see different parts of the moon from different parts of the earth.  But we don't.  The EA answers this by showing how the moonlight bends so that we all see the "nearside" of the moon at once.  So far so good.

But the explanation for night in the Wiki (on a different page than EA, because the EA page doesn't not discuss day/night), it says that there is night  because on the other half of the FE, the sun is acting like a spotlight.  If this were not uni-directional, but with bending lights, as it says on the EA page, then we would not have night time.  We would see  the sun from all the way across the FE, as the light bends up towards us.

Hence, the explanation on the EA page about bending light, and the explanation about why night exists on a differents page of the Wiki contradict each other.

I am using no bold or italics or some wondrous mix of words without qualification.  I am summarizing the same point I've been making that you have yet to directly address. In the most simplest, basic form:

In the FE model as explained on the Wiki, why does the explanation for why the nearside of the moon is seen from different points require bending light, whereas the explanation for night existing require uni-directional light?  How can light both bend and not bend?

....

As far as the size of the sun - I totally did read the "magnification of the sun at sunset" portion of the Wiki already. But I'm not talking about sunset - I never once used that term in this thread so far. I'm talking about the size of the sun and moon while they travel across the sky at all hours of the day, and in particular when it nears just above us in the sky. In my analogy, I explained that we would be seeing the drone change sizes as it nears us, then it would be the largest as it passes overhead, and then would get smaller. This is not about the drone's relative position of where it would be "at sunset" relative to the FE model.  This is more about noon.

EDIT:
Your search results are the same as mine, and hilariously, those are the things I read over previously.  First, I find it funny that it suggests you add "sides" in the result, implying the question itself hasn't been much discussed.  Secondly, the moon tilt article says nothing about the sizes of the objects - I've read it twice now.  And the third one, about magnification, again, doesn't address why it isn't always changing sizes throughout the day, as it would.











 

123

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: A flaw with the Flat Earth model?

« on: May 17, 2020, 07:35:35 PM »

PART 1 – Substantiating and Explaining the OP’s Question

Right, so I was correct in stating that your failure was in assuming that light travels in a straight line, then?

I'm not saying anything about whether light bends or does not bend. I'm being agnostic about that. Just re-read my posts. I'm saying that the Wiki's explanations REQUIRE light to BOTH bend AND go straight, in order to be consistent with itself.

I wrote that I cannot mathematically dispute the Wiki's explanation of EA, and said it conceptually makes sense. 

However, if light does not travel in a straight line, then how do you explain night, which requires light traveling uni-directionally to illuminate only one half of the FE? 

I've asked this several times now, and you've never provided an answer.  The burden is on you to respond to the logical contradiction that your Wiki creates. And you haven't. 

Why don't the sun and moon change size as they cross the sky?  I have yet to find an answer in the Wiki on this thread that addresses that problem in the context of the other contradiction that EA brings us.

What is it with this new wave of RE'ers, their complete and utter inability to find pages on the Internet, and assuming that if they can't find it, it must not be there? I'm really not here to teach you how to use search engines. If you're going to waste my time, don't expect it to work.

I'm not trying to waste your time.  I've tried searching several times. There are long pages about the moon tilt illusion, and plenty of related things, but there is no discrete section about why the sun and moon do not change sizes every hour that I can find.

Rather than being glib, perhaps you can either provide a one sentence summary, or even just a link to the part of the wiki that explains it? 

You don't have to, of course.  You can continue to be belligerent in your responses to my sincere and thoughtful posts, I can handle it.  But it would be nice if you at least addressed the major logical contradiction that is the focus of my posts.

124

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: A flaw with the Flat Earth model?

« on: May 17, 2020, 07:00:04 PM »

I would potentially observe the "back side" or "bottom side" of the globe Moon.

Are you going to start substantiating it, or is the thread dead?

All it requires is simple spatial reasoning. It's quite simple, but I can only conclude from reading this thread one of two possibilities regarding your posts
A) You are intentionally deflecting because you have no answer
B) You misunderstand your own FE model as put forward in the Wiki and/or cannot grasp its spatial implications.

I'm going to elaborate as best I can on the OP's question and why it requires an explanation from the FET.  I'll do my best to explain the Wiki's explanation (which has been elaborated on not one bit in this thread, despite specific questions about it that are not clarified in the Wiki).  I’ll then fully describe how the Wiki’s explanation then creates a contradiction with the Wiki’s explanation of why there is night on a FE. 

PART 1 – Substantiating and Explaining the OP’s Question
Imagine you are standing in a circular field 2 miles in diameter (Edit, previously wrote "1 mile" but the example needs it to be 2).  Imagine you are standing about halfway along the radius. Imagine further that there is a drone flying in a concentric circle to the field that is about half the field’s size. This would mean that it is flying in a circle that passes directly over your head (since you’re halfway along the radius of the field). When the drone flies in its circle directly over your head, you see the very bottom of the drone. So far, so good, right?

I am standing at a point slightly closer to the center of the field from you. Say, another quarter mile in. And a third person is standing a quarter mile out from where you are. All of us are standing along the same radius to the center of the field itself.

When the drone flies over your head, I do not see the exact same parts of the drone as  you do. You see the direct bottom of it. I see it at an angle from where I’m standing, closer to the center  of the field. I see part of the bottom, but not directly. And the third person standing further out from you sees the other side of the drone, which I  do not see.

All three of us see different parts of the drone at different angles.

The FE model depicts and describes a scenario like this, in which the drone is the moon, and we three are standing hundreds or thousands of miles apart in S. America, Central America, and N. America. And yet, what is actually observed is the SAME EXACT face of the moon at the same time. (Something which is easily explained in the RET by the fact that the moon is very far away).

PART 2 – How the Wiki Answers it
To explain why this is, the Wiki on this website claims the “EA” phenomenon. And it provides a helpful diagram (with the concept of it attributed to you!). It shows that light from the moon bends upward in all directions such that all observers on the FE see the same “bottom” part of the moon ("nearside" in the wiki), no matter where they are.

Okay, so far the Wiki has an explanation. I don’t know physics or math very well, so I can’t easily go deep into arguing about the proofs for electromagnetic acceleration.  The diagram shows the answer, and it conceptually makes sense.

PART 3 – We therefore need a new explanation for why night exists
The Wiki in the introduction/FAQ states  “Day and night cycles are easily explained on a Flat Earth. The Sun moves in circles around the North Pole. When it is over your head, it's day. When it's not, it's night. The light of the sun is confined to a limited area and its light acts like a spotlight upon the Earth.” [emphasis added].

How is this possible if light actually “bends upward” per the electromagnetic acceleration claim?  (And the section on EA also uses EA to explain time zones, so it clearly is claiming that EA applies to sunlight as well as moonlight).

This is a massive logical contradiction. Are the sun’s rays bending or not bending? They can’t be doing both.

Going back to the three people standing in the field, this leads us to yet another problem with the FE model.

All three of us are standing in the same half of the circle (at ¼ mile from the center, half a mile, and ¾ of a mile all along the same radius). Suppose it is night, and the drone we’re observing has a spotlight directly below it that shines directly down, illuminating about half of the field at once. This would be very similar to how the sun is described as working in the FE model on the wiki. When the drone is in the other half of the circular field such that its spotlight does not illuminate any of the three people standing there, those three people should still easily be able to see the light on the ground across the field. And, looking up at an angle, they would see the spotlight itself!

But we do NOT see the sun from a great distance when it is night. In the field analogy, there are no mountains or ground structures inhibited our view of the rest of the field. But what about a plane ride at night? If you are thousands of feet in the air, higher than any mountain, when flying at night you might still be lower than the sun, but high enough to look over  and see where the sun is illuminating the other half of the FE, even if the features are not discernable due to the distance, why not see a great patch of light in the vast distance?

EDIT:
And I didn't even get to the fact that the drone, as it nears where we are overhead, it would get bigger, and then get smaller as it goes past us.  Why don't the sun and moon change size as they cross the sky?  I have yet to find an answer in the Wiki on this thread that addresses that problem in the context of the other contradiction that EA brings us.

125

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: A flaw with the Flat Earth model?

« on: May 17, 2020, 04:06:26 PM »

I am reacting to the flat Earth animation on the Wiki. The top view of the animation model depicts a moon that moves within the perimeter of the flat earth.

I'm afraid just looking at pretty pictures won't work here. I can't tell for sure (because you said nothing more than "I looked at a GIF", thus forcing me to guess), but I suspect you failed to take EA into account. Others seem to agree, but somehow that made you angry.

Instead of saying "I looked at this image and this phenomenon doesn't work", navigate us through your logic. Go through each step between the assumptions and conclusion. It's very difficult to help you identify your error without that.

I did navigate through the logic several times during this thread pointing  out the exact logical flaw more than once. It has not yet been responded to on this thread or in the Wiki.  I read the explanation for EA on the wiki thoroughly twice.  It is certainly possible I missed some other section on the wiki that accounts for the logical inconsistency between observation and the explanation provided for FET via EA, but I could not find it.  To wit:

Why does EA make moonlight bend in the exact proper way so that two people in very different parts of the earth see the same part of the moon BUT the sun's light doesn't bend at all, and instead shines quite directionally so that night happens?  Furthermore, how does EA also cause the sun and moon to not change their size constantly as they draw near and far from the observer's place on the FE? 

How can EA account for all of these contradictory phenomena?
  Logically you need separate explanations rather than simply "It's EA."  Sorry, doesn't work. 



 

126

Flat Earth Theory / Re: International Space Station

« on: May 16, 2020, 05:04:32 PM »

One complete orbit every 90 mins tells you how far away it is.

Okay, so with some quick Google searches, I'm thinking this has something to do with parallax?  You measure the distance it is traveling in an amount of time and somehow calculate angles with trigonometry or something?  I'm really extra dumb when it comes to math and physics.  But at a basic level, knowing how fast it travels is really all you need to calculate its distance?

No parallax. Hard to explain without math.

Gravitational force keeps ISS in centripetal acceleration. You can express that in terms of its speed. Speed can be expressed in terms of the time period.

Then by knowing the radius of the earth, that’s gives you the altitude.

You did a great job of explaining without math!   I had to read it twice, but I think I get it.  Thanks!

So, the elements needed would be to know how much gravitational force there is (I guess the gravitational constant?), how fast the satellite is going, the size of the earth, and with all of these elements, there's basically only one altitude it could be at?

127

Flat Earth Theory / Re: International Space Station

« on: May 16, 2020, 04:38:27 PM »

One complete orbit every 90 mins tells you how far away it is.

Okay, so with some quick Google searches, I'm thinking this has something to do with parallax?  You measure the distance it is traveling in an amount of time and somehow calculate angles with trigonometry or something?  I'm really extra dumb when it comes to math and physics.  But at a basic level, knowing how fast it travels is really all you need to calculate its distance? 

128

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: A flaw with the Flat Earth model?

« on: May 16, 2020, 03:05:26 AM »

thought I'd be even more concise, here's the issue I  still have  in different words, in case my really wordy prior post is too much to weed through:

Q: Why do we see the same face of the moon from all over?
A: Light bends, it’s not going in a straight line from the moon

Q: Why doesn’t the light from the sun illuminate the full FE at once?
A: It’s a directional spotlight that only illuminates a particular portion of the earth below

It illuminates the Earth like a spotlight (spot of light) but I don't believe that we ever wrote that it's a directional spotlight.

It's possible the Wiki doesn't out right state that it's "directional."  But...that's kind of what a spotlight is - it doesn't shine in all directions.  I'm not trying to get into semantics about the definition of directional or spotlight, though.   My point is that for the FE model to make sense it HAS to be directional, otherwise there would be no night (hence "spotlight"). 

But you're saying it's NOT directional like that?  Are you saying that so as not to contradict the explanation for the moon question?  If so, then why does night exist?  You can't have it both ways (without creating a logical fallacy, which has kind of been my point all along in this thread).

129

Flat Earth Community / Re: Rocket Propulsion

« on: May 15, 2020, 11:44:21 PM »

Rockets move because the inside pressure is greater than the outside pressure. Stuff comes out, rocket goes forward. If stuff can't come out as fast, less movement.

Curious about this statement. I thought the force of the thrust is what pushes it forward, not the fact that it has greater pressure on the inside? 

130

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Around-the-World Sailing Races? - Part 2

« on: May 15, 2020, 08:09:58 PM »

AS an experienced sailor, and knowing my beloved sailboat, Serenity, very well, I can tell without looking at the knotmeter a one knot difference in speed through the water.  And as others who have replied to my original post, looking at the common FE models would require distances that are at least 2 times farther than on a RE, and likely closer to three times farther to circumnavigate.  Please believe me that even ignoring GPS data, anyone with enough sailing experience to be doing a round-the-world race would be aware of the massively increased distance involved.  And monohull sailboats have a "hull speed" past which they cannot reasonably go faster.  This is based on the well-known physics of water itself and wave generation.  The oversimplified explanation is that as you push a displacement boat hull faster and faster it starts sinking deeper into the water, which greatly increases the drag until you reach a limit = the hull speed.  You just cannot make up that degree of distance increase.

I've never heard of hull speed, but it is interesting.  So basically, if you go TOO fast for a particular vessel (whatever its hull speed is), it will take on water and just sink?

131

Flat Earth Theory / Re: 3 Body Analytical Analyses

« on: May 15, 2020, 08:03:17 PM »

Once again, so good at explaining!   Okay, so, after the first sentence that there's no friction in space, my brain went "oh, cool, so maybe we COULD have a perpetual motion machine...IN SPACE? Friction is the problem!"  But after reading everything, this is not the case. 

I do love the idea that an alien civilization with a timespan measured in trillions of years, can accidentally come to the point of sending a planet in their solar system out of orbit by using it countless times to fling spacecraft into deeper space, thereby reducing its kinetic(?) energy until it can't sustain its orbit.   by the way, what is actually happening there, in terms of its change in course?  Is its orbit getting infinitesimally smaller? Or bigger? Or it depends?

Thanks, I do try.

An orbit will get larger if you add energy to it, and smaller if you take it away. So if Jupiter looses a bit of speed with each spacecraft boost, it will eventually fall into the sun.

I may have vastly underestimated the amount of time it would take to do this however.  Reading up, the Voyager 1 spacecraft stole enough speed from Jupiter to slow the planet down by one foot per trillion years.  So a trillion years from now, it will be one foot behind in it's orbit. That's not much!

To drop it into the Sun that way would likely take longer than I care to calculate, by a lot. Of course, if they start launching small moons, that would speed things up.

Ah, yes.  So, as with lots of things in the universe, it's really hard to grasp.  A trillion years is like two hundred times longer than the age of the earth, so it's functionally the same as saying "Jupiter will NEVER fall into the sun."  It goes to the same thing you or someone said earlier (I think) that the sun will die before the earth's orbit will decay into it.

132

Flat Earth Theory / Re: 3 Body Analytical Analyses

« on: May 15, 2020, 04:25:12 PM »

Yes, it is making a LOT of sense to me conceptually (which is all that can happen, because there's no way I'll understand the maths), thanks to you and BRollin. 

Also, this tracks with reality, IMO.  I don't know much about inertia, gravity, momentum, etc., but I can grasp them in my everyday life enough to suspect that it would NOT make sense for the solar system to NEVER become "unstable" and change.  Just like a car when you take your foot off the gas, you will have inertia or momentum that carries you for some time, even on a totally flat road, but eventually other forces (gravity?  friction?) work on the car and it will stop even on an endless flat road.

I have no idea if I'm super conflating something in saying this, but it's like the idea that "you can't have a perpetual motion machine" and so, the solar system, at a certain point, can't be sustained forever stably - otherwise it WOULD be a "perpetual motion machine" in the big picture.   Or are those two things tooooootally different?

They are quite different actually.

There is no friction in space. If you had just the Earth and the Sun, the Earth would continue orbiting forever with no changes. It takes no power to keep Earth in it's orbit, as far as the Earth is concerned it's moving in a straight line. It's just that line is bent into a closed circle by the Suns gravity. It's not a "perpetual motion machine" because it doesn't produce or consume energy, it is just stable.

With multiple bodies it's more complex, but energy is still conserved.  If a small asteroid gets too close to Jupiter, it can get pulled in and flung out at high speeds, but Jupiter will also lose a tiny fraction of it's momentum. So you have one object going faster and one going slower, but that asteroid could loop back and hit Jupiter and give it's kinetic energy back too. So humans can use Jupiter to fling spacecraft into deep space and it is effectively an infinite source of gravitational energy, but if we used it enough we could drop Jupiter into the sun by stealing it all. If we keep doing it for, oh, a trillion years.

So the Earth won't stop, but if other bodies get close it can be nudged into other orbits, possibly out of the solar system or into the sun.  But not for a LOOOOOOONG time, If ever.

Once again, so good at explaining!   Okay, so, after the first sentence that there's no friction in space, my brain went "oh, cool, so maybe we COULD have a perpetual motion machine...IN SPACE? Friction is the problem!"  But after reading everything, this is not the case. 

I do love the idea that an alien civilization with a timespan measured in trillions of years, can accidentally come to the point of sending a planet in their solar system out of orbit by using it countless times to fling spacecraft into deeper space, thereby reducing its kinetic(?) energy until it can't sustain its orbit.   by the way, what is actually happening there, in terms of its change in course?  Is its orbit getting infinitesimally smaller? Or bigger? Or it depends?

133

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: A flaw with the Flat Earth model?

« on: May 15, 2020, 04:16:38 PM »

Tom, I don't think you read his post very carefully.  He's not showing a diagram of what RET predicts, but what FET predicts, and stating that it doesn't match observation.

What observation would that be? His imagined observation which contradicts Round Earth Theory's prediction that observers in the North would have to look South and observers in the South would have to look North?

You've also failed to respond to the ORIGINAL question from the OP despite multiple posts, as well as the two addenda questions I've repeated a few times now.  Care to respond to those?

Those were discussed. You were directed to the FE's celestial model of EA Theory - https://wiki.tfes.org/Electromagnetic_Acceleration

I don't even know how to have a meaningful debate anymore with a flat Earth proponent.

The Electromagnetic Accelerator theory is one of the most ridiculous things I've recently come across as a rationale explanation. I don't even know what to say. It's like the Flux Capacitor on Back to the Future.

I was just thinking how difficult it must be defending FE theory, because one would have to constantly keep on their toes and keep up with and create these tangled spider-webs of theories to try and rationalize the FE model.

The RE model works so seamlessly beautiful. And, yes, people have been to space and have also observed the Earth as round.

Totally. 

When I first got to this site in the past few days, I loved reading all about the scienc-y proofs and explanations.  The FET cannot account for so much, whereas the RET does it without effort.  But even aside from physics and math, there is an inherent illogic amongst the FET claims. They are so self-contradictory that you don't even really need to know the math to grasp that it is unworkable.

I'm trying to discuss it through logic alone, without resort to calculations, physics, math, and it's ridiculously simple to discover fallacy.

134

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: A flaw with the Flat Earth model?

« on: May 15, 2020, 03:59:15 PM »

Tom, I don't think you read his post very carefully.  He's not showing a diagram of what RET predicts, but what FET predicts, and stating that it doesn't match observation.

What observation would that be? His imagined observation which contradicts Round Earth Theory's prediction that observers in the North would have to look South and observers in the South would have to look North?

You've also failed to respond to the ORIGINAL question from the OP despite multiple posts, as well as the two addenda questions I've repeated a few times now.  Care to respond to those?

Those were discussed. You were directed to the FE's celestial model of EA Theory - https://wiki.tfes.org/Electromagnetic_Acceleration

I thought I'd be even more concise, here's the issue I  still have  in different words, in case my really wordy prior post is too much to weed through:

Q: Why do we see the same face of the moon from all over?
A: Light bends, it’s not going in a straight line from the moon

Q: Why doesn’t the light from the sun illuminate the full FE at once?
A: It’s a directional spotlight that only illuminates a particular portion of the earth below

Q: How do you reconcile those two answers which directly contradict each other?
A:

EDIT:
and that other question that's also always dodged, and not at all addressed in the Wiki:
Q: Why do the earth and sun not get bigger as they near your position, and get smaller as they go away, like we would expect?
A: ??

135

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: A flaw with the Flat Earth model?

« on: May 15, 2020, 03:32:41 PM »

Tom, I don't think you read his post very carefully.  He's not showing a diagram of what RET predicts, but what FET predicts, and stating that it doesn't match observation.

What observation would that be? His imagined observation which contradicts Rount Earth Theory's prediction that observers in the North would have to look South and observers in the South would have to look North?

You've also failed to respond to the ORIGINAL question from the OP despite multiple posts, as well as the two addenda questions I've repeated a few times now.  Care to respond to those?

Those were discussed. You were directed to the FE's celestial model of EA Theory - https://wiki.tfes.org/Electromagnetic_Acceleration

Yes, I've read that part of the Wiki (thanks to JSS I believe pointing it out in this thread).  It totally doesn't answer the three questions - ESPECIALLY not when combined.  Once again, the RET has a consistent, coherent explanation for all three simultaneously, but the answers from the Wiki create contradictions. 

Let me explain what I mean. The three questions summarized were:

1. Why do we see the same face on the moon all over the earth [this is the only one of the three questions actually addressed by the Wiki]
2. What is stopping the sun's light from reaching the entire FE?  How can it possibly be a spotlight?
3. Why do the sun and moon not change their size all the time throughout the day and night, as it travels nearer and farther from where you stand?


There IS an answer in the Wiki page you linked (which I've now read for the second time in its entirety). It's in the "Nearside Always Seen" section with a helpful diagram showing how two people on different places see the same part of the moon because the light is bending. Okay, so far so good. I can accept that, because I can't fully understand the maths involved with the bending of the light. But here's where we get a massive contradiction. This contradicts the "spotlight" explanation for why the sun's light doesn't illuminate the entire FE at once.    In other words, if the light is bending down to curve all over the earth for the moon, why is it NOT doing that for the sun, but instead showing a laser-like direction downward that, contrary to all other observations of light, doesn't even let you see it from a distance from a non-directly illuminated area? 

And finally - there's NO explanation for the fact that the sun and moon don't change their size virtually every hour (the third question).  The explanations for bending light don't seem to account for this at all - they are all about "where" you are positioned as to "what" you see (except as it concerns sunset/sunrise, apparently).  Imagine you are standing in a circular field one mile in diameter. And there is a remote controlled drone flying in a circle that is about half the size of the field, concentrically inside (basically, like where the sun/moon path is on the FE model).  If I were standing directly below that path in the field, I would see the drone get smaller after it passes overhead and bigger as it nears me from the other direction after traveling around.  Why don't the sun and moon change sizes throughout the day, therefore?

See what I mean?  I'm sorry, but your Wiki doesn't address all three questions, and certainly doesn't address their implications all together.  The one explanation it has, for the first question, cannot account for the second.   

136

Flat Earth Theory / Re: 3 Body Analytical Analyses

« on: May 15, 2020, 03:12:55 PM »

What's up with the idea that it says in the Wiki on this site that 3+ bodies become inherently unstable over time?  Is that a red herring?  Is it a "given zillions of years" issue?  The 3 body problem section of the Wiki here devotes quite a bit of space to it, so I'd like to understand a  bit more.

Thanks!!!!

(EDIT: also, and I say this with complete sincerity, I am thrilled that I am learning tidbits of actual science on a website where I expected to be informed of none).

I'll focus on this question and add I've learned a lot here too, both from having things explained and being forced to look stuff up in detail to try and argue.

Any complex orbital system is going to be unstable. We found some stable 3-body solutions that work in pure math, but once you throw things into the real world stuff goes haywire eventually.

But yes, it's a matter of zillions of years.  The moons of Jupiter and Saturn are unstable. That's why they have rings, former moons that were literally torn apart. But they won't fly apart tomorrow. But in a billion years? Sure, they will have likely changed.

In the long term, Earth could be ejected from the solar system or moved to another orbit eventually. But we call it stable because that would likely take billions or tens of billions of years. Hard to tell.  But that's reality. Like with the pool table, i can't tell you exactly how a break will turn out, but if someone claims they will all end up stacked and balanced on each other up to the ceiling, i can say NO.

Just because we don't know EVERYTHING doesn't mean we don't know ANYTHING.

Yes, it is making a LOT of sense to me conceptually (which is all that can happen, because there's no way I'll understand the maths), thanks to you and BRollin. 

Also, this tracks with reality, IMO.  I don't know much about inertia, gravity, momentum, etc., but I can grasp them in my everyday life enough to suspect that it would NOT make sense for the solar system to NEVER become "unstable" and change.  Just like a car when you take your foot off the gas, you will have inertia or momentum that carries you for some time, even on a totally flat road, but eventually other forces (gravity?  friction?) work on the car and it will stop even on an endless flat road.

I have no idea if I'm super conflating something in saying this, but it's like the idea that "you can't have a perpetual motion machine" and so, the solar system, at a certain point, can't be sustained forever stably - otherwise it WOULD be a "perpetual motion machine" in the big picture.   Or are those two things tooooootally different?


   

137

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: A flaw with the Flat Earth model?

« on: May 15, 2020, 03:01:06 PM »

But they'd all see it in different directions. People in the South would have to look North, people in the North would have to look South (South being the perimeter of the big circle, which represents the earth, North being at the centre).

Does that in any way match what we observe?

This reads as ignorance of your own model. That is what is predicted by RE.



Observers in the South would have to look North and observers in the North would have to look South. This occurs regardless of the Moon's distance from the Earth.

Not surprising that you wouldn't know how your model works.

Tom, I don't think you read his post very carefully.  He's not showing a diagram of what RET predicts, but what FET predicts, and stating that it doesn't match observation.   I admit to not fully understanding these diagrams, but I can read and understand the point of the posts.  You might need to re-read his.

You've also failed to respond to the ORIGINAL question from the OP despite multiple posts, as well as the two addenda questions I've repeated a few times now.  Care to respond to those?

138

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: A flaw with the Flat Earth model?

« on: May 15, 2020, 01:33:25 PM »

Oh dear, you've all been Bishoped...
Try not to let him derail threads like this. I don't know if he really doesn't understand about the 3 body problem or is just pretending not to but either way it's not what the thread is about.

We were talking about EA. That is the FE solution to why we all see the same face of the earth but I'm not convinced it works - and there's no actual evidence for the effect existing, it has been invented to explain why observations don't fit what they would on a FE with a close moon. It's also the explanation for sunrise and sunset.

Honestly, I don't see how it matches observations. Let's say the light bends such that it is horizontal at 'x' miles.
If the moon is in the position of the small circle and the dotted line has radius x then that means anyone on the perimeter of the circle sees the moon on the horizon.



But they'd all see it in different directions. People in the South would have to look North, people in the North would have to look South (South being the perimeter of the big circle, which represents the earth, North being at the centre).

Does that in any way match what we observe?

To the extent that I understand you, it doesn't at all seem to match what is observed.  Also, beyond needing to account for how we see the moon, it seems there needs to be an additional part of EA to account for how the sun only shines on a PORTION of a flat earth.  The spotlight idea seems seriously flawed - anyone who's ever seen a spotlight knows that you don't have to be immediately inside its area of direct illumination to know it can be seen from elsewhere, even in a very dark area. Just look towards the patch that IS illuminated!  Right?   

Seems like an amazing oversight in the FE model...

139

Flat Earth Theory / Re: 3 Body Analytical Analyses

« on: May 15, 2020, 01:26:00 PM »

Thank you, both. All that REALLY helps clarify a few things.

As I wrote in other threads, I'm NOT a math guy. But I am a logic guy.

And doesn't this argument of Tom/FEers completely destroy their own FET?

Let me rephrase it to see what I mean (although I'm sure you already do, but for the sake of others who read this thread) -

The argument goes:
"Since this one thing [3 body problem] cannot be fully mathematically described, it must therefore mean physics is wrong, so we cannot rely on it to determine that gravity and the solar system operate the way science says it does." 

The exact same reasoning would immediately lead anyone to conclude that FET is wrong.       There's almost nothing in FET that is mathematically described in a consistent/coherent way. Almost everything follows a short road, then ends with "well, beyond this point we aren't sure."  Examples are endless (what's the size of any celestial body we see? What's the actual path that even ONE of them take that also accounts for every single phenomena that all humans observe?).

From a non-scientist's standpoint, it seems like the more they push this argument while failing to fully mathematically describe basically all parts of their theory, the more it's clear they're missing the galaxy for the trees (so to speak  ).

BUT, I do have one question -

What's up with the idea that it says in the Wiki on this site that 3+ bodies become inherently unstable over time?  Is that a red herring?  Is it a "given zillions of years" issue?  The 3 body problem section of the Wiki here devotes quite a bit of space to it, so I'd like to understand a  bit more.

Thanks!!!!

(EDIT: also, and I say this with complete sincerity, I am thrilled that I am learning tidbits of actual science on a website where I expected to be informed of none).






 

140

Flat Earth Theory / Re: 3 Body Analytical Analyses

« on: May 15, 2020, 01:26:49 AM »

A fairly recent published scientific article is provided below, which analyzes possible bounded orbits using Newtonian central force in the case of 3 bodies.

The analysis demonstrates evidence that:

1. Closed bounded orbits arise from central force considerations

2. The bounded orbits identified have also been verified using numerical computations (see references therein)

3. There is a demonstrably mathematical distinction between analytical solutions, the application in numerical methods, and the application to chaotic dynamics.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0410149.pdf

I'm very new to this site, and this seems to represent a neat opportunity for me to learn some cool physics. 

I have no personal background in science, but I do love to learn - to wit, can you help elaborate, in simple terms, the "3 body problem" ?  Regularly Wikipedia is too dense for me. And in reading the Wiki on this site, I'm still pretty confused about certain things.  What makes it a "problem"?  And what are its implications for astrophysics?  And why is it such a hangup for the FET? 

Here's an example of why it's hard for a laymen like me to wrap my head around:  I get that it's referring to three bodies in orbit with each other, but how does that exactly matter for the solar system anyway?  The moon isn't directly orbiting the sun, it's orbiting the earth, right? So, my very limited understanding of physics makes me think that in terms of gravitational forces it's really just "two" bodies we're dealing with - the sun, and the earth/moon as if it were ONE body.  "3 bodies in orbit with each other" sounds like a system that has three stars all orbiting each other or something odd? 

I'd love to understand - but with as little actual math as possible