[spoonbow]

I'm puzzled as to why there is any significance attached to the Bishop Experiment. My confusion arises from the fact that the Bishop Experiment is essentially a repeat of the Bedford Level Experiment of 1838, yet there is no new methodology or evidence put forward to address the flaws in the original highlighted by the subsequent work of Alfred Russel Wallace. Indeed, everything points to a perfect replication of atmospheric distortion that was well known to surveyors in 1838 and is even better understood by science today. If anything, these experiments help to prove the RE model, for if you raise the height of eye above the level of the atmospheric lens as Wallace did (a matter of elevating the observation instrument 12' 4"), or conduct the experiment outside of the narrow physical conditions required, then everything behaves exactly as the RE model predicts.

Am I missing something?

[AATW]

I did a thread about this, not just about this but I touched on the Bishop Experiment in a slightly different way to your angle.

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=8448.0

There was no FE response.

[spoonbow]

I did a thread about this, not just about this but I touched on the Bishop Experiment in a slightly different way to your angle.

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=8448.0

There was no FE response.

That's unfortunate. Perhaps Mr. Bishop's schedule prevents him from taking the time required to respond to serious queries?

I gather from other posts that I have read that Mr Bishop has been unable to photodocument his experiment. I'm wondering others have been able to replicate it? Of greater interest would be if Mr Bishop has made any attempt to replicate Wallace's work on the original experiment, ie raising the height of the observing instrument significantly and seeing if the effect was still observed. It would seem a simple way to negate any question of diffraction being the cause. In a FE model, the height of the observer should make no difference in distance to the visible horizon on the small scale of tens of feet in altitude, correct?

[HorstFue]

The Bishop Experiment:
1) There are no witnesses, no repeated measurements, just a fairytale from Tom Bishop.
2) The observers hight is lower than the waves. "Waves" are often put on the table as alternate explanation for claims of other RE arguments. But not for his own experiment. At several threads Tom explained "waves" hiding objects including the sun and "the sinking ship", which cannot be restored in turbulent weather, so why would the beach be not obscured.
Monterey Bay has a wide opening to the Pacific Ocean: There are almost anytime "waves", the swell from the ocean, and would this be a well known surf spot, if wave hight nearly never exceeds 40 inches?
3) The mere distance: I highly doubt, that even without refraction, curvature etc. you can see such crisp details, Tom is presenting in his fairytale. The distance comes near "nominal range" for very good viewing conditions.
This never could be

... The same result comes up over and over throughout the year under a plethora of different atmospheric conditions.

4) The Lighthouse: There's a lighthouse near the beach. Why is there no repetition of the experiment at night? This lighthouse would be a perfect target, as it is clearly identifiable by the "characteristics" of it's light, the repetition of it's "blinks". Ok, it's nominal range is a bit to small, but with very good conditions, it might be visible over that distance sometimes.
Why are there no rumors in this area, that you could sometimes in clear nights see this lighthouse from lovers point?   

[AATW]

They must be Schrödinger's Waves.
Ones which are capable of hiding a tall building on a distant shoreline but not able to obscure people playing on a distant beach...

[JohnAdams1145]

We shouldn't be so quick to judge. It's very possible that Tom believes what he saw and made a simple navigation mistake when trying to find out how far the other beach was.

[Rounder]

We shouldn't be so quick to judge. It's very possible that Tom believes what he saw and made a simple navigation mistake when trying to find out how far the other beach was.

Shouldn't have done, he repeated the experiment over and over:

Whenever I have doubts about the shape of the earth I simply walk outside my home, down to the beach, and perform this simple test. The same result comes up over and over throughout the year under a plethora of different atmospheric conditions.
—Tom Bishop

And given the pride of place accorded to this experiment, one would think they would be diligent with the accuracy.

[Astronautilus]

Hiya…

I’m new to TFES and confess to being a Flat Earth sceptic.

I was interested in Tom Bishop’s experiment done across Monterey Bay, which clearly lacks the scientific rigour to be called a proof.

Why for example is he talking about the ‘drop’ due to curvature, and using a right-angle triangle (and Pythagoras) from the position of the observer? Surely the salient point is how big is the bulge due to curvature, and the maximum bulge would be halfway between the two points?

So using Pythagoras on 11.5 miles instead of 23 miles, you get…

37632 – 11.52 = 14160036.75

Sqrt of 14160036.75 = 3762.9824275

3763 – 3762.9824275 = 0.0175725

0.0175725 x 5280 = 92.78 feet

That’s a long way from “Hence after 23 miles the earth drops approximately 352 feet”. Am I missing something?

Furthermore, we don’t have any evidence that he was 20” above sea level, nor of height of the people and objects he was viewing 23 miles away. And that they were indeed 23 miles away. Also, he doesn’t factor in atmospheric refraction which over these distances would be significant.

I read elsewhere that he was using a 500x telescope. It must be quite a beast... I have a Skywatcher 6” Newtonian for astronomy, and I couldn’t get close to 500x!

So I remain a sceptic!

[AATW]

We shouldn't be so quick to judge. It's very possible that Tom believes what he saw and made a simple navigation mistake when trying to find out how far the other beach was.

I'm always loathe to call someone a flat out liar, I did see another thread about this "experiment" where someone asked for more information about exactly where he was looking from and which direction he was looking at. There was some suggestion there he may have been mistaken but Tom was quite vague about the details.
He does seem to model himself on Rowbotham whose level of proof was basically "This is what I saw".

It's the "heads I win, tails you lose" debating style that rankles.
A video is produced where someone diligently shows where he is as he zooms in to a distant tall building from different locations. It is clear that more and more of the building is occluded by the curve of the earth and he is also significantly more than 20 inches off the ground when he takes the video.
The water is a narrow channel and the sea is clearly calm. Tom's explanation? Waves...
But in his Bishop Experiment which he says is across a bay and therefore as much if not more prone to waves than the narrow channel and he claims to be able to repeat his observation whenever he chooses. Why aren't waves an issue there?
He's either mistaken or lying