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Flat Earth Theory / Re: New idea on observing Sigma Octantis from multiple locations

« Last post by jimster on April 15, 2024, 11:16:03 PM »

Where is Sigma Octantus?

If the earth is a spheroid. light travels straight in a vacuum, and Sigma Octantus is a star 294 light years away and 1 degree off a line extended from the south pole, then all over the southern hemisphere it will be visible at any point in the southern hemisphere almost directly south and at an angle above the horizon equal to the latitude of the observer's location. This is explained in textbooks, web sites, videos, etc, consistently and unambiguously. Navigators have used this and observers have confirmed this. In this respect, the earth appears round and the geometry is consistent. Any RE will tell the exact same story. In this respect, the earth appears to be round.

If the earth is flat, we know the light is bending but do not know why or how. The bending can only be determined by what bending needs to occur for the round appearance to actually be flat. We don't know whether there is one pole or two. We don't know why at the same time people in the north see entirely different stars than people in the south. Since we don't know how the light bends, we don't know where Sigma Octantus actually is.

It is not just the azimuth of Sigma Octantus but also elevation (angle above the horizon). It is stated above (hypothesized? speculated?) that SIgma Octantus is directly above the south pole in the bi-polar model. Since Sigma Octantus is on the horizon when viewed from the equator, that makes it appear to be directly on the south pole while far to the south it appears to be far above it. So the light bends vertically as well as horizontally.

In the monopole disc model Sigma Octantus is in every direction, always directly opposite to the north pole. Seems like it would be visible from the northern hemisphere. It has the same elevation problem as bi-polar model.

So that leaves us with: RE has an explanation that is known, consistent with observations, and identical in all RE info sources. FE does not know which model and has no equations, explanations, or verification experiments to explain observations. Yet some believe the earth is flat. Sure would like to hear the details of EA, but so far the definition is "whatever it has to be to make the appearance of RE be actually FE".

Interestingly, if we know the light bends in various directions but do not know exactly how, Sigma Octantus could be anywhere. I claim that to know where Sigma Octantus is, we have to know the forces and equations of how the light bends. If it does not bend, the earth is round.

I hope we can all agree with everything I said above. Please advise if I said anything that isn't true.

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: I am wondering why I do not see...

« Last post by Longtitube on April 15, 2024, 08:11:13 PM »

Quite by chance I came across this short explanation of the path of an eclipse on a round earth:



You might find it answers some of the above questions.

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Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General

« Last post by Roundy on April 15, 2024, 06:57:36 PM »

This just in: most of Paw Patrol's audience is young children!

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: New idea on observing Sigma Octantis from multiple locations

« Last post by WTF_Seriously on April 15, 2024, 06:37:37 PM »

Both of Tom's videos are nonsense.

First, if all of the celestial bodies are inside the dome then shining lights on the dome from outside is meaningless.  That's neither here nor there though to their problems.

The first video is simply magician's sleight of hand and optics.  What we want to see is not what the top of the dome looks like but what the map looks like.  The video never shows this.  To see what is really going on the camera should be either able to view the map underneath or be viewing the bottom of the glass.  Optically, the shadow on the exterior of the dome is due to the fact that the light angle is causing all of the light to be reflected back in.  It's how a fiber optic cable works.  At the proper angle, light is reflected back into the core off the cladding as it propagates down the fiber.  All we are seeing is this optical property of the light angle causing all the light to be reflected back into the dome which causes the outer shell of the dome to be dark. You can see this by being able to slightly view the map and times when the magician is causing a shadow as well as you can see a bright outline on the paper, opposite the light, where the light would be shining at a nearly 90 degree angle to the edge of the dome and passing out.

In the second video, the lights should be directly above the camera circling like a clock not off to the side to match the FE model.

Neither video is in any way an valid representation of what is happening on a flat earth.

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Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General

« Last post by Rushy on April 15, 2024, 05:04:19 PM »

It would actually explain a lot if the bulk of the movie's fanbase were teenagers.

Well it certainly makes perfect sense that the primary component of a movie's fanbase is the demographic that the entire genre is built around. It's sort of like being surprised that Transformer films are mostly viewed by teenagers as well.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: New idea on observing Sigma Octantis from multiple locations

« Last post by AATW on April 15, 2024, 10:04:49 AM »

The star is close enough to those two locations to be in range so that the star could be visible at the same time from both locations.

As seen above, it is possible in some situations for two locations to see the same star at the same time. If the star is encircling the Earth like the Sun, then different observers will observe that star when it is night for that observer.

When each observer South America and Africa in the above diagram looks in a general sense to the south, they see the that star swirling around a southern celestial pole. The true star is displaced from due South for each observer, but it could be shifted to be more due South for the observer through the below light mechanism.

General sense to the south? In South America they'd be looking East to see that star, in Africa they'd be looking West.



And as the stars rotate the star would move west to east, it wouldn't be a static star above the pole as it would be on a globe. The bi-polar model may solve some of this but then I've no idea how the sun is supposed to move in that model.

Logically it makes more sense that there is only one mechanism for multiple phenomena, rather than multiple mechanisms for multiple phenomena.

Well, I agree. This is where the simplicity of the globe model is quite elegant. It explains day and night, the seasons, the consistent angular size of the sun, etc, etc. In FE you need multiple mechanisms to explain all this - you need some magnification effect to explain the consistent angular size, you need EA to explain sunset. The way the radius of the sun's orbit keeps changing, and the corresponding speed changing to maintain a consistent 24 hour day/night cycle, why the radius is increasing for 6 months and then starts decreasing. All those things  need other mechanisms which have no real explanation.

When Andrew Wiles solved Fermat's Last Theorum his initial version had a problem in which I doubt many people in the world understand. I saw a documentary in which he described his efforts to fix it, he said it was like trying to fit a carpet in a room it's too big for - every time you flatten down one corner, it pops up in the other corner. He eventually sorted it out, but FE feels a bit like that. Overall the monopole model seems the one which works best, certainly in the northern hemisphere. But it causes problems in the south - the lines of longitude should keep increasing, but they don't. Antarctica has been explored and circumnavigated. Flights in the southern hemisphere which you can track in real time make no sense on the FE map. The Bi-Polar model may solve some of these issues, but then you get into a whole world of other problems about how the sun and stars move.

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Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General

« Last post by honk on April 15, 2024, 03:40:09 AM »

I don't mean to keep picking on Momoa like I have it out for the guy or anything, but he gave an interview before the release of Lost Kingdom where he talked about a couple of interesting subjects. I know that directors sometimes offer actors roles that they didn't audition for, but Momoa's account of how he auditioned for Batman and didn't think much of it until he was inexplicably offered the role of Aquaman makes me even more sure that Snyder cast Momoa more for PR reasons than artistic ones. Bear in mind that this was all long before Momoa became a star in his own right and developed his onscreen chill-dudebro persona. Back then, he was best known for playing fierce, intimidating characters, and most famously Khal Drogo on GoT. It's true that Aquaman has been portrayed in the comics as a brawny badass type as well, like Roundy pointed out, but that's hardly conditional on the actor cast in the role, is it? Very few lead actors in capeshit movies are already known for being especially big or tough beforehand. No, I'm pretty sure that Snyder was worried that people would mock Aquaman for being lame long before they ever saw him on screen, and so he prioritized casting someone he thought would nip those jokes in the bud. To me, that's a very silly and overly defensive attitude to take, but hey, I'm not the in-demand blockbuster auteur who continues to receive huge budgets and full creative freedom to deliver dud after dud, Snyder is. What do I know?

Momoa also talks about Lobo, and I think at this point we can pretty much say it's confirmed he'll be playing him at some point in the new universe. This is not how actors respond when asked about mere rumors. Anyway, as was mentioned in this thread earlier, Momoa would actually be perfect as Lobo. He looks the part without needing to be turned into a CGI monster, and he wouldn't need to leave his laid-back comfort zone of acting. My main concern is that with Momoa in the role, they'll very likely try to turn Lobo into the hero of the movie who has to save the day, blah blah blah, and that's just not his character. I could see Lobo as the protagonist of an irreverent, low-stakes MAX series where he travels around the galaxy and gets into hijinks, but for a big mainstream AAA movie, Lobo should absolutely be a supporting character, not a hero. Put him in a Superman or Green Lantern movie where he's a wild card who complicates the plot - maybe the villain hires him to take out the hero, and they get into a few fights, but at the end of the movie Lobo respects the hero enough to show up and help him defeat the villain. Something like that, as opposed to a movie like Lobo: Dawn of Capeshit.

Also, the teaser for Joker: Folie à Deux dropped a few days ago. I'm already exhausted by the discourse around it, just like I was for the first Joker. It's not even the movie itself that I dislike so much as it is its most enthusiastic fans; the people who praise it endlessly for simply going through the motions of being a serious movie and focusing on psychology and character rather than action and explosions. I'm not saying that anyone who liked the movie is dumb or easily impressed, but I think I can say with some confidence that anyone who truly thinks that Joker was brilliant and revolutionary probably never watches movies that aren't blockbusters. Like one infamous Letterboxd review said:



Anyway, here's the new teaser:



I actually think this looks way more intriguing than the first one. I think they did a much better job at translating the costume and makeup for Harley into a gritty, grounded setting than they did for Joker himself. The idea that this is going to be a musical is easily the most interesting thing going on here, but I have to say that I won't be fully convinced that this will really be a proper the-characters-sing musical until I see footage of the characters actually singing. Maybe I'm being a bit too cynical, but producers and directors lie about upcoming movies a lot as a general rule, and they never face any consequences for it. I think it's very possible that this movie might just have a lot of songs that play in the background, or music itself will simply be a big theme in the movie, and then the people who claimed that this would be a musical will shrug and say "Yeah, that's what we meant by a musical." I'm not saying that's what I think will happen, just that it's a possibility that I think a lot of people aren't even taking into account. Also, because this franchise is this franchise and has the fans it has, I just can't get over the people creaming themselves at the closing shot of Arthur smiling through the lipstick on the glass. It's neat, sure, but it's nowhere near as ingenious as people are making it out to be. (Check the comments and I guarantee you'll see at least a few people raving about it.) It's not even original. This is obviously where they got the idea:



I have no problem believing that virtually all of Joker's most devoted fans have never seen Taxi Driver or The King of Comedy (and if they had, I strongly suspect that they'd be far less enthusiastic about Joker), but is The Dark Knight, of all movies, really outside of their reference pools? This poster was everywhere when the movie came out. Maybe Joker's biggest fans aren't old enough to remember TDK's release. It would actually explain a lot if the bulk of the movie's fanbase were teenagers.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: New idea on observing Sigma Octantis from multiple locations

« Last post by foobar on April 15, 2024, 03:02:46 AM »

Unlike user Mahogany, I'm willing to accept the glass-dome as a hypothetical desktop-sized analogy to reality.

However, the first video shows the dome centered over the north pole, and the second video shows the dome centered over the equator.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: New idea on observing Sigma Octantis from multiple locations

« Last post by Tom Bishop on April 15, 2024, 02:54:13 AM »

It does not matter that the model is made out of glass or if it is made out of mathematical equations for how the light behaves. It's a model - a representation of a scheme. If it were a mathematical equation, would you be asking where the equations are in the universe? That would obviously be very silly to do that. Hence, it does not matter if it is made of glass or not.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: New idea on observing Sigma Octantis from multiple locations

« Last post by mahogany on April 14, 2024, 07:24:04 PM »

Since our atmosphere is not made of solid magnifying glass material and the local Sun is only about 30 miles in diameter (per FET), what would your prediction be if the model was updated to not consist of a solid piece of magnifying glass and the local Sun was more accurately represented as about 1:266 scale to that of the Flat Earth plane?

In this question of "more accurately represented" you are making assumptions about how the light from the celestial bodies behave. This is the very thing in question. Hence, no scheme can be discarded because of what you are assuming in your head.

"More accurately represented" simply means not using solid magnifying glass to simulate our atmosphere and updating the scale of the small spotlight Sun to be consistent with FET and not be a large spotlight Sun that is 1:1 scale to the flat Earth plane.

If there is an opportunity to have a better model... than such opportunities to pursue and use a better model should be done. I think you and I would both agree on this.

In terms of how light from celestial bodies behaves, I haven't made any assumptions... my question to you was: if the model was updated to be consistent with a small spotlight Sun (as per FET) and an atmosphere that is not made of solid magnifying glass material (as you and I both agree on) than what would be your prediction in terms of light patterns?