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Flat Earth Theory / Why Rowbotham's Old Bedford River experiment proves the earth is round

« on: July 15, 2018, 03:41:51 PM »

When I woke up this morning I realized that in a flat earth, a road running east and west is  curved where the driver would have to circle the north pole.  On a round earth, the person could drive straight.  Looking at the map of the Old Bedford River, which is surveyed to be in a certain constant south east direction, I calculated that for a flat earth three stakes in the middle of channel would be 52 cm out of linear looking down the channel as Rowbotham did.  He claimed they were in a straight line. 
Similarly, if you drive straight west from Seneca to Marysville KY on highway 36, if the earth is flat you will have to drive 1 mile to the right of the direction you started out in to reach Marysville. On a round earth, you can get there by driving straight.  Try it out and see if you think the road curves to the right or not.

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Flat Earth Theory / Flights to Antarctica

« on: March 08, 2018, 06:20:33 AM »

There was a post that I cannot find that stated that no commercial flights are allowed to fly over Antarctic Air Space.
1. Who owns this Antarctic Air Space?  Is it a governmental body like US and Russian Air Space?  Which country regulates this?
2. Which makes me wonder why would NASA have a team of people patrolling Antarctica when the US is like 5% of the world's population and is not particularly close to the ring?
3. Does Donald Trump know about NASA's expenditures?  Does this fit his America and Antarctica first policy?
4. Who patrols the wall?  I mean like the actual individuals. Everyone has relatives.  There was a daycare here that the operators were charged with child abuse.  One of the kids testified in court that they cut off one of the kid's finger.  The defense asked "which kid exactly?" "One of the kids." Just like Flat Earthers in their basements, the kid did not realize that everyone at the daycare has a family.  If you cut off a finger, one of the parents will notice.  If you hire an army of people to patrol the ice ring, their relatives will notice their absence.  Do these people get to retire off of Antarctica?  How does it work? What about the infrastructure to feed them?  As anyone in the military knows, the number of people not actively involved in operations greatly outnumber those doing the fighting.
5. What do we make of flights to Antarctica? Like this one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/passenger-jet-antarctica-travel_us_56605d06e4b079b2818d6196
It sort of flies in the face of the claim that no flights are allowed in Antarctic "airspace."  What exactly defines this airspace and who sends fighters to buzz the aircraft entering it?
6. Is there really anyone here who believes the earth is flat?

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Flat Earth Theory / Could the Ice Wall be a Hoax?

« on: March 06, 2018, 02:41:32 AM »

I think a great hoax would be to claim the earth is flat and that I need a trillion dollars (see estimate in other threads) to bribe academics and man an army of people to circle the Antarctic ring to prevent anyone from getting too far south to find out the ice ring does not actually exist.  What evidence is there to prove the wall actually exists and is not a hoax to get money?  Why can't the army of people be patrolling the south to prevent people from finding out the wall is not there?
Similarly about why not the south pole being the centre and the north pole is actually a ring with an ice wall?  What proof is there to tell me the opposite is not the truth?

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Flat Earth Theory / Have flat earthers considered using a Zetetic approach to this?

« on: February 20, 2018, 02:13:36 PM »

I am now growing tired of this site as it seems some discussion goes on in certain areas and then abruptly end at certain sticky points. I am wondering if any flat earther would start with an open mind and look at stuff and see what they think is going on.  I think this is called a Zetetic approach.  I am as big a skeptic as they come.
So has any flat earther spent time near the equator?  Watched the sun come up due east and set due west?  Commercial flights are not that expensive compared to living in a world where you are deceived by any conspiracies about anything.
Look at how the moon always looks the same, whether near the horizon or straight overhead.  If it is moving towards and away from you, should it not look different, just like a racecar would (headlights, then taillights)? Same with the sun.
Then go somewhere south.  Why does it look like the earth circles the south pole when you are south?  And then, what is south?  Do lines of latitude really get wider the farther south you go?  Is everyone living south of the equator mistaken about how far they are from other places?  Are all airlines faking flight times with none of the economy airlines giving in and providing faster flights rather than going broke?
Watch the sun, moon and planets, and the stars of the zodiac.  Just watch them.  How can they all follow the same basic path but be directly overhead certain places on a daily, monthly or yearly pattern? 
Why are sunsets and sunrises of different length at different latitudes?  And why do the areas at a certain southern latitude mirror the northern equivalent?
If we believe due to what we see, why believe in ice walls, universal acceleration, air that stops in regions of low pressure, government agents and scientists that would cost a lot to employ for the sake of continuing a conspiracy supposedly motivated by money?
Why believe in bending light and doubt GPS?
Why believe that farmers are ignorant about the land they own?  Why would someone work a field and get a certain yield per acre and carefully calculate all this for the sake of trying not to go broke and yet miss that the land they own is different than what their deed says?
Why not take a Zetetic approach?

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Flat Earth Theory / how do things not flow from high pressure to low pressure?

« on: February 19, 2018, 05:23:46 PM »

from the wiki:

"The atmosphere may very well exist as a lip upon the surface of the earth, held in by vast gradients of declining pressure."

Fluids flow from high pressure to low pressure.  With the roundness of the earth and its rotation, this makes hurricanes in the northern hemisphere rotate counter clockwise and southern hurricanes rotate clockwise.

A gradient of declining pressure is what you get in your garden hose which causes the water to flow from the house to your garden.  How would this principle keep the atmosphere in place?

It may very well exist that way, unless you think about it a bit.

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Flat Earth Theory / Flat Earth Moon

« on: January 16, 2018, 05:04:47 AM »

I have to credit Macarios for the excellent diagram in "walking a straight line" to show how the angles of the rising sun and setting sun during the equinox do not correspond to what is observed if the world was indeed flat.

But now here is what I think is a further kicker.  The moon is more complicated by a further degree.  A full moon travels over the tropic of Capricorn and a new moon over the tropic of Cancer during the June solstice and the full moon travels over the tropic of Cancer and the new moon over the tropic of Capricorn during the December soltice.  And the other phases of the moon move between them. 

Anyway, if you are a Zenetic researcher like Rowbotham and you never leave England you could argue that the same side of the moon always faces England (it turns as it travels so the "man in the moon" is always facing England).  However, if he would have left England and traveled to say Moscow or Beijing, he would have noticed that the same side of the moon always faces those cities as well.  And if he would have traveled to Sydney, he would have seen the same moon.  And on any given night it always looks to be the same diameter regardless of if it is rising, setting, in Australia or in Paraguay.

So how can a flat earth model explain the appearance of the moon with the same face always towards us, plus all the arguments made about the flat earth sun?  If you looked at the sun with a telescope & filter or those screen projectors, you would see it looks the same in the morning and when setting as well (the sun spots are in the same place for example) , but everyone knows what the moon looks like so it is easier to use it as the example. When I see a car coming I see the headlights, when it is across from me I see the doors and when it leaves I see the tail lights.  I do not always see the headlights.  And if you are at NASCAR, not everyone sees only the headlights regardless of where the car is or where in the stands you are sitting.

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Flat Earth Theory / Chapter III of Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not A Globe 2015 Ravenio edition - again

« on: January 09, 2018, 02:35:28 AM »

So as is often pointed out in ENaG, some things that exist on a moving earth do not prove it is moving since the same thing would happen if the earth stood still.  Like dropping a cobbler's hammer from a ship's crows nest and having it fall at the base. 

So I fail to see how winds at various stata prove the earth does not move.  If the earth cannot be moving constantly otherwise the air would match its speed and we would have no wind relative to us, how can there be wind on an earth that does not move?  Defeated by his own logic.  The existence of wind neither proves nor disproves a moving earth.
However counterclockwise hurricanes in the northern hemisphere and clockwise hurricanes in the south certainly support the idea of a globe more than they do a disk and even less so a stationary disk.

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Flat Earth Theory / Coal in Antarctica

« on: January 08, 2018, 03:38:31 PM »

How do we account for the presence of coal beds of marginally economical quantities in Antarctica?  What parts of what we hear of do we believe and what do we not?
Is the Australian coal industry that looked into mining coal in Antarctica mistaken or part of a conspiracy to promote the notion of a Round Earth?  When they did the geological survey did they not notice a huge wall of ice or that Antartica is something like 70,000 miles around not a small continent?
I am angry if the New South Wales Department of Mineral Resources is actually a sham.

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Flat Earth Theory / Evidence The Flat Disc Earth Spins

« on: January 04, 2018, 03:36:34 PM »

Rowbotham died before Elvis was born but we can do this experiment.  Dig out your turntable and Heartbreak Hotel.  Put the record down and get it spinning.  Roll a marble starting from the middle outward toward the H in Heartbreak.  As the marble moves out radially, the spinning record is moving faster than the marble.  If you were standing at the H in Heartbreak, you would see the marble move towards the H in Hotel. It is a harder experiment but if you could launch a marble from the edge of the record towards the middle at the rotating speed of the record you would see the marble veer from the H in Hotel to the H in Heartbreak.  You can confirm this by giving a kid a ball on a merry go round and have them roll it towards the middle.

Now if there was a low pressure system at New York, air would flow from the north (Montreal) and the south (Virginia Beach).  As the air comes down from Montreal it will veer towards Los Angeles and the air from Virginia Beach will veer towards London, UK.  This results in a counter clockwise rotation for air moving around a low pressure system.  A static earth should not have such consistent air predictions (opposite for high pressure systems).
Now the kicker is that for a person on the B side of the record "I Was The One" such as an Australian (down under) would see the marble (if the record was one of those fancy transparent ones produced after the king stopped recording) move from the O to the I. Low pressure systems in Australia have clockwise rotating air.
Explain to someone whose house has been ripped apart by a tornado that the spinning disc is actually not true.
A spinning disc sure helps to explain why the stars, sun, moon, planets, etc move around on a daily schedule all the same instead of different speeds of orbit a kid with a yo yo would predict.
Most of Rowbotham's arguments stem from the beginning point that the disc is not spinning, such as the lunar eclipse cannot be the shadow of the earth since the earth is stationary. If Elvis is king, maybe the disc spins and Rowbotham should have been born at a time that he could have owned that 45.
Counter arguments?

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Flat Earth Theory / Chapter XI of Rowbotham

« on: January 04, 2018, 03:42:29 AM »

So solar eclipses are a result of the moon blocking the sun.  It is good this is admitted because we can actually see where the moon is and see that it blocks the sun. We watch the sun and moon throughout history and track where they are.
However, it seems weird that lunar eclipses are always when the moon is opposite to where the sun is, unless the earth is now getting in the way of the sunlight.  Rowbotham rambles on a lot to explain lunar eclipses and part of the argument includes the observation that if you put a thermometer in sunlight, the temperature goes up. But if you put the same thermometer in moonlight, the temperature will go down.  I want someone to verify this.  Really?  Moonlight cools off things it hits?  Cloudless nights are generally colder than cloudy skies but the cold is not limited to just the areas the moonlight hits. 
Rowbotham also talks about how shadows bend in the opposite direction to light beams through things like prisms.  So because the earth is between the sun and moon, the shadow of the earth would bend away from the moon and therefore cannot cause lunar eclipses.  After I saw Peter Pan, my grade 3 teacher told me shadows are not real things that you can sew to your feet, but are simply darker areas where there is less light. 
Considering the moon being red-hot red sometimes, I have noticed that this often happens when there are forest fires in the area.  I have talked to people on the phone hundreds of miles from me and they looked out and the moon was white for them.  I suspect the smoke from the nearby fire made the moon look red like wearing sunglasses, not that the moon itself was giving off red light.  If a dark moon that gives off no light causes eclipses, we should not be able to see stars on either side of the known moon during the onset of a lunar eclipse.  Go out at the next lunar eclipse and see if stars disappear because of being blocked by this dark moon.   
I think Chapter XI is debunked. 

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Flat Earth Theory / Chapter III of Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not A Globe 2015 Ravenio edition

« on: January 04, 2018, 03:08:03 AM »

I started reading Chapter III about the evidence that the earth is not moving and I am not sure why a ball dropped from a ship's mast has forward momentum but if it is thrown straight up it stops having forward momentum.  The fact that the ball goes straight up and down relative to the moving ship whether dropped or thrown straight up does not convince me that the earth cannot be moving. 
But the things that confuses me the most is this "gravity" that Rowbotham talks about.  I thought there is no gravity.  If there is no gravity, how can these experiments prove the earth is not moving anyway.
And then chapter 10 talking about why the sun and moon are larger when they are on the horizon than when high in the sky.  Go out and use your finger at arms length as a reference to the size of the moon (or sun) at the horizon and when up in the sky.  They are the same size.  This is often taught in kindergarten explaining what is going on. When you watch football on TV and they zoom in, the players in the back look huge compared to the close players.  This is because your brain expects the players farther away to look smaller.  Because of the zoom lens they are pretty much the same size, so your brain thinks the guys in the back must be giants in order to look as big.  This is what is happening when the sun or moon are on the horizon.  Nothing to do with anything Rowbotham talks about glare and whatnot with light shining through a dense medium.  If the FE theory is correct, the sun and moon on the horizon would be much farther away than at noon and therefore would look a lot smaller.  Again, this is something everyone can do.  Get something that exactly covers the sun or moon at a certain distance (like your finger at arm's length).  Check the size of the sun or moon at the horizon and up in the sky.  Same size.  Chapter X debunked.

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Flat Earth Theory / Distance from New York to Paris

« on: December 22, 2017, 04:44:35 PM »

About 130 years ago, you could send a telegram from New York to Paris using the cable installed by the Compagnie Francaise du Telegragraphe de Paris a New York.  Installing a cable between New York and Paris requires ordering the cable.  The first question the salesman would have asked is "how much cable do you need?"  They linked the two cities with a continuous cable and so they know the distance exactly. 

I think I will stop trying to engage in debate here, because the only replies I get are from Round Earthers.  It would be nice to hear from FEs that have explanations for my posts.

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Flat Earth Theory / An experiment FEs and REs can both do

« on: December 18, 2017, 04:38:17 AM »

So some people will not like that I am using the zodiac in this experiment because of its ties to astrology.  Anyway ancient peoples saw constellations in the sky as a way to categorize stars.  They called twelve constellations that appear over the equator at the spring and autumn equinox, the zodiac.  The sun and the moon are always in one of the signs of the zodiac all the time.  Go out and look and see it is true. 
So the sun is in Pisces at the spring equinox (Mar 21) north spring that is.  It then moves to the next sign of the zodiac a month at a time (on average because the constellations are not all exactly the same size).  So it moves into Aries and then Taurus etc. On Sep 21 when all the zodiac constellations and the sun and the moon are all directly above the equator at all locations, the sun is moving from Leo into Virgo. 
In June it is in Taurus and on Dec 21 it is in Sagittarius.  We can all see this (well you can see what constellation is coming up just before dawn so you know what constellation the sun is in). 
So we all agree that the sun follows the tropic of Cancer on June 21 and it follows the Tropic of Capricorn on Dec 21.  Since the sun and moon are always in one of the signs of the zodiac (or rather they follow the line through the constellations that make up the zodiac), Taurus is directly overhead at noon on June 21 if you live on the Tropic of Cancer. (and you can actually verify this on those rare solar eclipse opportunities).  Sagittarius is directly overhead at midnight for people that live on the Tropic of Capricorn. Easy to verify this one since it is dark and you can just look straight up.  Taurus is directly overhead at midnight for people who live on the Tropic of Capricorn on Dec 21.  Look up and see it.
So we have the sun following the tropic of Cancer at the summer solstice, Tropic of Capricorn at the winter solstice (opposite seasons for the southern hemispher). The sun follows the equator at the equinoxes (is that a word?).  The signs of the zodiac that the sun is in follow it between the two Tropics.  The signs of the zodiac that are 6 signs away follow the opposite routine between Cancer and Capricorn.  If you live on the equator, Pisces will be directly overhead at 6 am and Virgo will be directly overhead at 6 pm on June 21. 
So there are elaborate paths taken by the sun and the constellations that follow a yearly cycle.  The zodiac constellations move back and forth between the two Tropics like the sun and travel across the sky at almost the same speed as the sun. It takes a month for the sun to catch up to the constellation.  Okay. I think we can all agree that this is complicated but can be explained by some annual expansion or contraction of the path of the sun.
What about the moon?  What does it do?  Just go outside and watch it for a month.  At this time of year, the full moon is over the tropic of Cancer at midnight.  As the phases change it moves closer to the sun so that the new moon is over the tropic of Capricorn.  For some reason the sun and the moon are always in one of the zodiac signs.  The sun oscillates between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn slowly over the year.  The constellations of the zodiac are overhead between the two tropics and the equator depending on the time of day.  The moon shuffles between the two tropics on a roughly monthly basis.  Go out at the next full moon at see how high it is in the north and low in the south, the opposite of the sun.  See how the near new moon is the opposite. Watch this for a year.  Everyone here can do this. 

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Flat Earth Theory / What I have seen

« on: December 15, 2017, 09:01:09 PM »

I think I have a rather unique viewpoint that is going to be hard to argue with. I was born with a weak sense of being able to tell where north is. My grandfather had a definite strong ability. When I was young my father, grandfather and I were driving at night. There was no way to tell direction and this was time when cars did not have seatbelts let alone built in compasses. My grandfather was sleeping. This was out in the great prairies on a gravel road that looks like every other gravel road. Many roads now have identifiers at corners but there were none at this time. My grandfather wakes up and says "you are driving the wrong way." My dad calls him an old fool. At the first road sign, my father realizes he is going the wrong way. Rather than admit it, he turns into the next town and makes a bunch of random turns. He then gets going the right way. My grandfather had been silent for most of this time, but then he says "now you are going the right way." If someone told me that they can sense north and I could not, I would not believe them. I will also mention one time I was lost in the woods with my dad when I was young and he remembered to ask me to point to north. We were not lost for long.
So I do have a sense of north, but not as strong as my grandfather. In my life I have driven more than 1 million miles. I have been to 22 countries on all continents except Africa, South America, and Antarctica. I have flown places and driven to them both. I have calibrated my odometer on my car many times with those signs they have on the road. I have driven a lot of clunkers so they break down and I am forced to walk along highways. I have no doubt thet the distances I pace out (when you are walking for miles what else do you have to do) match the miles I have driven. I have no doubt that the distances I have driven match the distances trains claim to go and the speeds they go. I look at my watch a lot. I have no doubt that the airplanes I have flown in are going the speeds they claim. If it takes me 3 hours to drive somewhere and 25 minutes to fly, I have a pretty good trust that the speed the plane claims to be going is true.

I have a bad habit of leaving my watch in my home town time zone. So I know when the sun is overhead compared to where I came from. I have walked on the Artic Ocean (frozen) in the winter. I have seen 24 hour night. I have seen the light from the sun on a hill when it was noon on Jan 22nd but it was still 24 hr night where I was. I took a snowmobile up the hill and the sun was as big and normal looking just above the horizon when I was up the hill. I have dipped my toe in every ocean (6 by my count). I am always shocked at how fast the sun sets near the equator. I am used to long northern sunsets. I have been on the 17th hole on the golf course when the sun goes down in the north and still be able to finish the game (it was a little dark putting on the 18th green). I was driving in Panama and the person I was with wanted to catch a picture of the setting sun. It was still all above the horizon. I quickly pulled over at the next first safe place to park and the sun was already down, so no picture.

I have seen all these things. I have a sense of where north is. I know where the sun is at noon in 22 different countries (Australia and Fiji are south of the equator). I believe that when I fly somewhere and drive somewhere I am arriving at the same place. I do not believe it is some elaborate trick. Oh I have taken cruises too to places I have flown to. I have never felt that north was not where people were claiming it was (remember I can sense north).

I have a map on my wall with all the places I have been. I cannot see how a flat earth could explain what I have seen with my own eyes and get me to where I went in the time I took whether driving, flying, ship or train. How the sun is in the north in Sydney and the south in New York and everyone gets half sun and half dark over the year. I have driven at night with no lights because of the Aurora Borealis. I have seen the Aurora Australis. I don't need any book to tell me anything about the shape of the earth.
Another thing I just remembered.  Every farmer in the western US knows that the earth gets narrower as you go north.  Farms are divided along direction lines put there by surveyors.  In older areas, land is more random shaped.  So farmers know that there are less square miles of farm land as you get north (northern lines are not parallel they get narrower as you go north).  I saw that in Australia, the same thing happens except the earth gets smaller as you go south.  Farmers do not fall for conspiracies that defy what they can see.