401

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Increased gravity at the poles?

« on: November 14, 2018, 07:32:35 PM »

Besides that, if the earth were under a constant acceleration (UA) Kern wouldn't have to compensate their equipment for different locations.  I'm thinking that this isn't another government conspiracy.  I think the bigger worry would be that when I buy the next batch of unobtainium at the hardware store I'll have to watch that the salesman doesn't have his thumb on the scale.

402

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Increased gravity at the poles?

« on: November 14, 2018, 07:21:00 PM »

There is some confusion here.  The 4 micrograms difference was just my estimation of the compensation needed due to the changes of atmospheric pressures.  The 6% variation in weights were due to the differences in the gravitational attraction of the standardized mass of the Gnome.  Probably 6% is a bit too high, it's probably closer to 5%, but it's still significant and still implies that the earth is not under a worldwide constant acceleration of 9.81 meters per second squared.  It also implies that the earth is not perfectly spherical and was the whole idea behind the experiment in the first place. 

403

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Increased gravity at the poles?

« on: November 14, 2018, 07:01:15 PM »

The link you gave was for Arlyn Scales.  Of course, the Gnome was measured with a Kern scale.  The superior Kern scales can be compensated for your local conditions either at the factory before your item is shipped, or you can do it yourself.  All of that is irrelevant in this case anyway.  You are confusing the idea of mass and weight.  A mass standard is universal, at least on the planet earth, and is the resistance of that mass to being accelerated by a force.  There is an international standard for mass here on the earth.  Weight on the other hand is a measurement of the gravitational force on a given mass by the mass of the earth (usually).  The Kern scales can be compensated for your individual location before it’s shipped.  The whole idea of the Gnome exercise would be to explain that the earth’s gravitational force is different in different locations and is the reason that Kern should be paid extra to compensate your precision scale to your exact location.  Mass is much more difficult to measure than is weight.  If you have a compensated scale, then your weight and mass should be the same anywhere you measure it.  Shocking.

404

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Increased gravity at the poles?

« on: November 14, 2018, 03:28:13 PM »

I did some quick calculations.  I SWAGed it (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) and said that the volume of the Gnome was about 61.6 cm cubed.  I could have had Archeimedes give it a bath, but he isn't around anymore.  That means that the difference in weight due to the buoyancy of air at different densities due to change in atmospheric pressure would be about 4 millionths of a gram.  You wouldn't be able to see it on the Kern scale as good as it is.  Now the weight difference due to the measured difference in gravity at the poles and at the equator is a different story.  You can also apply the Somigliana equation to compensate for the effect of centrifugal force at different latitudes and you still come out with around a half percent difference in weight between the poles and the equator.  That's close to the measured difference in the weight observed in the traveling Gnome.  I suppose you could try to say that the flat earth is tumbling, but that doesn't even work.  As much as I hate to do it I'll give Tom a huge box of ammunition with the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow.  I just thought that it applies to this situation.   

405

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Increased gravity at the poles?

« on: November 13, 2018, 10:35:27 PM »

Maybe I can lend you some kryptonite.
The problems with a flat earth are even worse that that.  If you have UA, then you also have to find a way of accelerating the sun and moon as well.  They also need to be rotating which will require another energy source to keep everything moving in a circle (or maybe a pole with a cable).  That is, unless you want to forget Newton altogether.     

406

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Increased gravity at the poles?

« on: November 13, 2018, 10:23:02 PM »

Yea, my predictions would be a variation in the micro-grams category, assuming you used a kg of gold as your weight.  Where did you say you lived?

407

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Free Will disproved

« on: November 13, 2018, 08:53:51 PM »

I believe that your thoughts are like the software running in a computer.  It would be nice to take all my thoughts and load them into a new body because the one I'm in is old and has been in way too many wrecks.  Maybe someday that will be possible.  You probably do have 'free will' but everything is probabilistic.  Just because you want to do something doesn't guarantee that it will immediately happen.  However, if you keep trying the odds will favor your eventual success.  You probably know about Tom Campbell and 'My Big Toe'.  The older I get the more I can actually believe that we are just avatars in a video game being played by unknown entities.  That thought doesn't shock me too much and means that everything will get more interesting later on. 

408

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Increased gravity at the poles?

« on: November 13, 2018, 06:53:54 PM »

You are indeed 100% correct.  An object's mass (it's resistance to acceleration) wouldn't change (my bad).  It's weight, the force of attraction between 2 masses would change in this case.  If you believe in the universal law of gravitation you would expect an object of any mass to weigh a bit more at the earth's poles because they are just a bit closer to the center of the earth's mass.  That was the whole idea of the original Clairaut experiment to show that the earth's shape wasn't quite a perfect sphere.  Modern day equipment has been used to verify that theory countless times.   

409

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Increased gravity at the poles?

« on: November 13, 2018, 03:22:03 PM »

Take a look at the Kern Precision Scales website.  They show the Gnome and the precision scale in a nice case.  These folks make scales for a living and you can be sure that the experiment left very little to chance.  They ship scales from scientist to scientist worldwide.  The whole idea was to show the differences of gravity due to the location on the earth.  My quick, back of the envelope, calculations of the differences of weight due to changes in atmospheric pressures and temperatures at the various places in the world would be very, very small.  Forget everything about the weather corrections.  Think the differences in weight (mass) due to the variations in the gravity on the earth.  Clairaut is probably rolling over in glee as the results come in.

410

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Increased gravity at the poles?

« on: November 13, 2018, 02:54:27 PM »

I love the Gnome experiment.  If anything, the colder, high pressure, more dense air would actually make the Gnome weigh very slightly less.  That would actually be in favor of FE.  Please consult a text book on fluid mechanics to see just why this would be true. 

411

Flat Earth Community / Re: Can Globe believers prove Earth has curvature by their own Curvature Charts?

« on: November 13, 2018, 02:46:15 PM »

Yes, the basic distance to the earth's center is based upon sea level.  Well it's actually Mean Sea Level, because sea level itself has minor variations due to tides, winds, storms, or sometimes earth quakes.  You usually see the height of something quoted in MSL (mean sea level).  Airplanes fly above the earth in height above MSL as well.  When we came into port and went under a bridge you can bet that we knew exactly what the height of the tides were.  Otherwise the ship might hit the bottom of the bridge if our calculations were wrong.  Usually there were calibration marks on the bridge support structures to give us an 'up to the second' report on the local sea level at that time.  We could then look at the water marks on the hull of the ship to know how far the ship was immersed in water (its draft) and then knowing that could calculate how far the top (highest point) of the ship was above water (the air draft).  All of this stuff was nice to know before going under a bridge.  There have been rare occasions when the local MSL was just too high because of heavy rains upstream on a river and our air draft was just a bit too high to fit under a bridge.  We just had to anchor out until things settled down before going the short distance up river into the port. 

412

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Increased gravity at the poles?

« on: November 13, 2018, 02:23:44 PM »

Of course the OP was about the subject of Clairaut's Theorem.  The idea was that you could show that the earth had a bit shorter distance to the center at the poles than at the equator.  The arguments about the air pressures and water pressures pretty much just cloud the main argument (which is a standard tactic).  At one time you might have needed to know the air pressure to use as a correction factor (because of buoyancy) but all that is irrelevant now.  You have a different weight at different latitudes and because of local anomalies due to the fact that the earth is not perfectly spherical or homogeneous throughout.  A large number of people from many countries  spend countless hours surveying and mapping these gravitational fields just like they do with a standard topographical map of the earths surface.  Of course FE doesn't do gravity or spherical so the whole argument is moot here anyway.   

413

Flat Earth Community / Re: Can Globe believers prove Earth has curvature by their own Curvature Charts?

« on: November 13, 2018, 04:38:28 AM »

The top diagram that has a nice curve between A and B may illustrate something interesting.  Consider if the earth between A and B were polished very smooth and was a perfect sphere.  What would you expect to happen to a bunch of water if you let it go in the center of the bulge?  Would it flow downhill to A or B?  No.  What's the real technical definition of downhill?  It always towards the center of gravity.  The center of gravity at the center between point A and point B would be towards the center of the earth.  Therefore the water wouldn't head for A or B but would tend to just spread out towards the middle.  In fact if you dug a canal that was at Sea Level at both ends (A and B) and rose up the bulge 191 miles, you wouldn't expect any water to flow at all even if the gates of the canal were open at A and B.  Why?  Because the water everywhere between A and B would be at an equal distance to the center of the earth and would experience an equal pull of gravity everywhere.  What makes water flow is the difference in gravity between one point and another.  Now if you go to the bottom diagram and dug the same canal and opened up the gates, I would expect the sea at A and B to flow in, overflow the canal and mostly fill in the bulge up to the 191 miles.  That probably wouldn't happen in actual practice because the sea level would fall a lot at A and B due to the amount of water needed, but at the end you would expect that the water levels would equalize until the top of the water was at an equal distance to the enter of the earth everywhere on the oceans and between A and B.  So you would then have maybe 191 miles of ocean water at the center, except there wouldn't be enough water in the oceans, so it would be some lower. 

414

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Increased gravity at the poles?

« on: November 13, 2018, 03:59:08 AM »

For many years there have been many different entities that have been surveying and mapping the gravity field of the earth.  There has been established a reference gravity field called the 'Geodetic Reference System' and that reference is being constantly updated with corrections as conditions change on the earth.  Gravity is a force and is a vector quantity.  Things inside the earth and on top of the earths surface can change the gravity force vector.  You can be sure that with all the volcanic activity in Hawaii a short time ago there has been changes to the local gravitational field in that area as a bunch of lava flowed out of the earth onto the earth's surface.  The Geodetic Survey folks call the earth an ellipsoid and have detailed equations that show the nominal variation of the gravity vector at different latitudes.  You would expect that as the distance to the earth's center is a bit further at the equator than at the poles.  It is interesting to note that as part of the measurement system a correction is made for the buoyancy due to air.  The answer to the original question on this thread is yes, you can expect a difference in weight the further North you go.  The survey folks have well calibrated instruments that are used on land, at sea and in the air to map the gravity field of the earth.  Unfortunately, since 'gravity' on the earth isn't an "FE belief" I don't know what else to say.  There are countless scientists and engineers working for universities and governments, worldwide, that study, survey, and chart the gravity of the earth.  Are they all just wasting time & money?

415

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Increased gravity at the poles?

« on: November 12, 2018, 10:06:00 PM »

You guys are a bit off.  Take a look at some back of the envelope calculations.  Forget water for now.  It's mostly considered to be non-compressible, but it slightly is.  Now consider AIR.  At an air pressure of 1018 hPa the density of air is about 1.2260 kg/cubic meter.  If you increase air pressure the density of air increases because air IS highly compressible.  Air at a pressure of 3000 hPa is 3.622 kg/cubic meter.  Now if you were to take a cubic meter block of balsa wood to the north pole and assumed it was in a vacuum it would weigh about 160 kg.  Now if you took that block of balsa wood out of the vacuum and put it in the air at 1018 hPa the effect of buoyancy would lighten the block by 1.226 kg.  Now the starting weight of the block would be about 158.774 kg.  If you INCREASE the air pressure to an unreasonable 3000 hPa then the same block would actually weigh less because the more dense area would 'float' a little more of the balsa block and it would then weigh 156.378 kg.  Of course the density of the air depends on the temperature and the dew point as well, but you get the point.  An increase in air pressure will actually cause something to weigh a little LESS because air compresses leading to a higher density and a little more buoyant effect.  As far as the argument that air doesn't have any mass, I better tell all the wind farm folks in the area that fact.  They seem to think that the horizontal flow of air decelerating against the fan blades produces a force that can be turned into electrical power.  Newton was kind enough to give us the equation F=MA.  Of course that also means that water has mass as well, otherwise a ship's propeller just wouldn't work either.  Shall we argue that the whole earth must have mass? 

416

Flat Earth Community / Re: Can Globe believers prove Earth has curvature by their own Curvature Charts?

« on: November 12, 2018, 04:10:49 PM »

I dug out my 'Handbook of Mathematics' and it does have a nice section on spherical trigonometry in it.  The bottom line is that it gives you all the relationships of distances between points on a sphere.  It absolutely works on the earth each and every time it's tried.  Yes, you need a few modifications when the equations are applied to the earth because the earth is not a perfect sphere, but the differences are small.  Of course there is a 'price of entry' for understanding all this, but if you are willing to 'pay the price' the proof that the earth is a sphere is at your disposal. What is really crazy is that all the knowledge described in my handbook goes back 100s of years.  I started to mess with a sextant and celestial navigation years before I started working as a professional seaman.  At that time I owned a bit of farm ground on a gravel road in Midwestern USA.  The property came with a deed and abstract. That paperwork described in detail the survey of the property complete with the latitude and longitude of the points that defined my property lines.  Since I was 'up to speed' on all that kind of stuff I decided to verify all the survey points of my property outlined in the abstract.  I fully expected it to be just an exercise to verify my understanding of all the principles I had learned.  To my surprise I did find an error of about 50 feet in one of the lines.  I took those concerns to my attorney who dismissed all my efforts 'out of hand' but said he would look into it.  A couple of months later he came back and stated that I was correct in my calculations and had my abstract updated.  That's been more than 25 years ago and that same attorney still is 'giving my a bunch of crap' about that episode costing him a couple hundred bucks.  As a practical thing the lot lines would have been the same if the earth were flat or round, because those small differences won't matter.  At larger distances the differences starts to add up.  If the airlines or shipping companies were not using the right methods things would get ugly.  If today's engineers who are designing certain things don't take the curvature of the earth into account they would probably be fired.     

417

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Green Flash

« on: November 12, 2018, 05:04:56 AM »

Yes, the green flash is real.  I've personally witnessed it on a couple occasions far out to sea.  You can see it at sun set and also at sun rise.  Sun rise is more difficult because you have to have access to something like a Nautical Almanac so you can see the exact time and azimuth that the sun will rise for your position and then be watching very carefully at that point on the horizon because you will only see the green flash for an instant and it will then go away, replaced by just the tip of the rising sun.  At sunset it's a lot easier as all you have to do is watch as the sun goes down over the horizon and you will sometimes see a flash just when the last little bit is going under.  The weather conditions have to be favorable for you to see something and you will only see it for an instant. 

418

Flat Earth Community / Re: Can Globe believers prove Earth has curvature by their own Curvature Charts?

« on: November 12, 2018, 03:31:10 AM »

Yes, you are starting to get closer.  The landmasses essentially ARE just plateaus sticking out of the water.  A lot of islands, Hawaii, for instance are essentially just the tops of mountains that extend far below the sea. Mauna Kea is actually taller than Mt Everest, but it doesn't count because some of Mauna Kea is below the water.  Guam is another example.  It is a bit mountainous but is adjacent to the lowest point in the ocean, the Marianas Trench thats about 7 miles deep.  You have to understand that about 71% of the earth is covered in water.  Most people don't really appreciate this fact because their only view of the sea is an occasional trip to the beach or maybe a trip on a cruise ship for a week.  I can tell you from personal experience that the trip distances at sea are long.  When we left Yokohama, Japan for the Panama Canal it usually took us about 20 to 21 days to get there.  That's running about 500 miles/day.  A ship is slower than a truck but it doesn't have to stop.  It runs 24 hours a day for as long as it takes to get there.  We could hold about 25000 miles worth of fuel in our tanks.  That's one complete circle around the earth.  It has also been claimed that less than 10% of the bottom of the sea has been explored.  That's because the area is so vast and hard to get to.  I worked on research ships for about 5 years and there's some huge mountains and deep valleys, all underwater, that are largely unseen by most humans.  I didn't make or design the earth.  All I'm trying to do is describe what I've personally witnessed and learned about while going to the merchant marine academy and witnessing much of what the scientist saw on the research ships.  If you actually saw some of the underwater topographic maps you would probably be surprised. This doesn't really prove or disprove the globe earth, but a lot of the things I've personally witnessed do.

419

Flat Earth Community / Re: Can Globe believers prove Earth has curvature by their own Curvature Charts?

« on: November 12, 2018, 02:26:52 AM »

Maybe if you thought of the earth like this; start with a perfectly smooth round sphere with a radius of something like 3957 miles.  Now on top of that sphere add the land masses and oceans. Everything sticks because every little bit is pulled toward the center of the sphere by gravity.  Now you have all your land masses and oceans.  You could see if you were on a road somewhere in the middle of a landmass you really couldn't tell that there was any curvature at all.  You would always be standing vertical no matter where you were on the land, in any part of the earth.  Now consider a perfectly round cactus with a bunch of long spines sticking out.  Are all the spines parallel?  No, but each individual spine could be perfectly vertical relative to the surrounding surface of the round cactus.  Spines on the opposite sides would actually point in a completely different direction.  Now, if you took a couple of 1000 foot towers that were separated by 10 miles, you could measure a difference in the distance between the top of the tower and the bottom.  That's because, just like a cactus, the towers wouldn't be exactly parallel.  Wouldn't this prove that there is curvature in the earth?  Would there be much difference in the top VS bottom distances?  Very careful measurements like this have been made in certain structures because the curvature of the earth was important and had to be factored in.     

420

Flat Earth Community / Re: Question for research paper: What convinced you that the earth is flat?

« on: November 12, 2018, 12:43:16 AM »

OK, take a bucket of water down to the lake you see.  Throw that bucket of water into the lake.  You know for sure that the level of the lake just got a little higher, Right?  Can you measure the difference?  Trying to directly see that the earth is actually round is about as difficult but it is possible.  Just exactly how much work are you willing to do to convince yourself that the earth is a globe?  If you only want to spend 5 minutes, then forget it.  If 'inquiring minds' really want to know then you will have to knuckle down and put some time in looking at some books on the subject.  There is no way anyone can teach you what you really don't want to know.