[shootingstar]

Going through FET Wiki I would like to ask a couple of questions...

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. The picture below illustrates how the sun moves and also how seasons work on a flat earth. The apparent effect of the sun rising and setting is usually explained as a perspective effect.

So firstly what makes the Sun move in a circle around the North Pole and why should the direction of sunlight be directed in any particular direction for something that is a sphere and emits light uniformly from all points on its 'surface'.  Thirdly what makes the Suns distance from the North Pole vary to create impression of seasons? 

The quoted statement from the FAQ page states what happens but not why.  RET on the other hand accounts very easily for all of this.

[Tom Bishop]

Going through FET Wiki I would like to ask a couple of questions...

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. The picture below illustrates how the sun moves and also how seasons work on a flat earth. The apparent effect of the sun rising and setting is usually explained as a perspective effect.

So firstly what makes the Sun move in a circle around the North Pole and why should the direction of sunlight be directed in any particular direction for something that is a sphere and emits light uniformly from all points on its 'surface'.  Thirdly what makes the Suns distance from the North Pole vary to create impression of seasons? 

The quoted statement from the FAQ page states what happens but not why.  RET on the other hand accounts very easily for all of this.

The mechanisms which move the sun are unknown.

Per RET: Actually, RET doesn't account for it at all. Newton never got his Solar System to work. You are being lied to that it is even physically possible to work. See: The Three Body Problem

[shootingstar]

Sorry Tom I don't agree. What you describe as 'being lied to' is simply your refusal to accept scientific explanation.  I understand why you don't accept scientific explanation but that is just the 'Zetetic way'.

The seasons that we have are caused by the axial tilt of the Earth at 23.5 degrees. That explains perfectly well and perfectly simply the behaviour in the Suns annual motion across the sky. This has been accurately measured using a number of different methods all of which have returned the same outcome. Why are these 'mechanisms unknown' in FET?


The FET interpretation is manufactured to explain observations but without being able to account for the cause of that interpretation. 

[shootingstar]

Newton never got his Solar System to work

That is because Newton hadn't worked out that the planetary orbits were ellipses and not circles. Even Kepler approached his solar system model with the assumption of circular orbits nearly a century later. He was trying to make his equations work with circular orbits and that frustrated him because he couldn't get his predicted planetary positions to match the observed data he obtained from Tycho.  Only when Kepler changed the planetary orbits to ellipses did his errors (small though they were) disappear.


You say I am being lied to... if that is true who is lying to me?

[Tom Bishop]

Newton never got his Solar System to work

That is because Newton hadn't worked out that the planetary orbits were ellipses and not circles. Even Kepler approached his solar system model with the assumption of circular orbits nearly a century later. He was trying to make his equations work with circular orbits and that frustrated him because he couldn't get his predicted planetary positions to match the observed data he obtained from Tycho.  Only when Kepler changed the planetary orbits to ellipses did his errors (small though they were) disappear.


You say I am being lied to... if that is true who is lying to me?

Kepler died in 1630, and Newton died in 1730. You must be thinking of Copernicus and Kepler.

Per who is lying to you, that would be depend on who you talk to.

If you talk to a mathematician who has had experience with the three body problem, they would admit that, yeah, they can't really create a Sun-Earth-Moon system as depicted in astronomy. Unless at least two of the bodies have the same mass, and are in a perfect, odd-looking loopy orbit, it always falls apart.

If you talk to a school teacher, they would tell you that, of course they have a working model, because that is what they were taught or at least what was implied to them in school. The educational system lied to them by misrepresenting the truth, who in turned lied to you.

When we look at the Round Earth models we are generally looking at cartoon diagrams and ancient pattern-based prediction models of the celestial bodies, and we try to point that out.

[shootingstar]

Although I am an amateur astronomer and make up my own decisions about what I believe and what I don't based on my own experience and research in the subject, I also work with school teachers and I know that none of my science colleagues would deliberately try to deceive me with misinformation. That is the definition of a lie. I am sorry that you feel they are teaching the next generation false information based on what they have been taught themselves.  Such as what may I ask?

Science is far from perfect of course and scientists get things wrong from time to time.  That is all part of the scientific method and once we realise that a theory, prediction, hypothesis or whatever you want to call it has not successfully predicted results obtained through experiment or observation we look into why. Invariably we recognise where we have gone wrong and make the necessary adjustments.

There are certain things we do now know from scientific research and one of those is the cause of the seasons. That you have a different view on it is a consequence of our chosen difference of perspective on it  You cannot accuse someone of lying to you just because you take a difference of view. Otherwise it suggests that you think you are always right.

Seems to me Tom that you simply regard science in general as being one big lie and that is a shame because there is far more to science than that. I am not sure what your background is that should have led you to that conclusion.

[ChrisTP]

When we look at the Round Earth models we are generally looking at cartoon diagrams and ancient pattern-based prediction models of the celestial bodies, and we try to point that out.

The same could be said about the visual representation of anything regarding a flat earth model so this point is unnecessary to make. Can you show us any diagram of the flat earth model that isn’t a ‘cartoon’ as you put it? Obviously not, so why bother bringing it up?

[shootingstar]

I am never sure if the FE side people genuinely don't believe anything that we have learned through science (and technology etc) or whether it is a kind of exercise in trying to put ourselves back to the position our ancestors were in during to days of antiquity and trying to explain what we see around us and above us simply from what we can see as observers.

So much of the FET 'evidence' seems to come from ancient texts and documents which is what leads me that conclusion. Almost like historians role playing.

[JCM]

In order for the Sun to move in and out it would have to significantly change velocities.  The Sun angular velocity as it moves through the sky is the same from year to year.  Tom will answer with something about it slowing down due to perspective as it sets, but that is a diversion from the issue.  The Sun would have to travel faster throughout 6 months of the year to make that trip as it approaches Tropic of Capricorn. The Sun would have to travel significantly slower as it approaches the Tropic of Cancer.   This is reality. Slow down, speed up, slow down, speed up, how is this happening, why is it happening, what force even works this way?   The Zeteticists method in action.  Observable evidence, and FET haz zero observable repeatable verifiable evidence this is happening, yet its wiki says that is exactly what occurs every day every year for millennia.

Tom complains that physics can’t perfectly start the 3 bodies and know exactly where they will be millions of years in the future, yet he has no problem accepting the Sun and Moon chase each other relying on literally magic and ignoring observable evidence from our back yards.  Tom will continue to divert from the topic and complain about the 3 body problem instead of addressing the giant issue that the Sun takes near 24 hours to complete a revolution every day of the year and doesn’t speed or slow down as his near Sun/Moon orbiting above model require.

How are there seasons resulting from a Sun AND Moon traveling vastly different distances in their orbits without observably changing velocities?  It is a simple question that must be answered or the FET with this Sun/Moon orbit is rubbish.

Edited for typo

[shootingstar]

Following on from what JCM has contributed, the Sun follows two motions across the sky. The first is the quickest and easiest to spot as it follows a daily path from east to west caused by the Earths rotation. It takes 24 hours for the Sun to complete two successive transits of the observers meridian.  The link below shows why. The same diagram shows why the stars take 3m 56s less than 24hrs to complete two successive transits and that is why the star patterns we see change with the seasons.  Over the course of a week a star rises 28minutes earlier.

http://stevekluge.com/geoscience/images/siderealdaysm.jpg

Meanwhile the Sun is also moving its position against the background stars. We can't see that of course because the bright blue background of the daytime sky overpowers the weak light from the background stars. But the Sun is moving east relative to the stars at an average rate of 360/365.25 = 0.98 degrees per day. There are an average of 30.4 days in a month so the Sun moves just short of 30 degrees or 60 times its own apparant angular diameter on the sky each month.

The ecliptic is the plane of the Earths orbit projected onto the sky. It is also the path that the Sun follows through the sky. This path takes the Sun through the 12 constellations of the zodiac. There is technically a 13th zodiac constellation because the ecliptic just clips through part of Ophiuchus.

The ecliptic is inclined at 23.5 degrees w.r.t to the celestial equator because that is the Earths axial tilt. This accounts perfectly for the Suns observed motion through the sky and the seasonal variations in altitude as seen from the observers position at local noon.  None of this relies on technology in any way. Just dedicated observations of the skies over the course of a year and basic interpretation as to the reasons for what we see. So it should be something that Tom can check out for himself.

To create an analogy between RET, FET and a car, RET feels like a car which runs smoothly and effortlessly with minimal input from the driver. You almost get the sense that the car is driving itself. FET on the other hand is like a car that badly needs servicing.  You have to battle to keep it going where you want it to go. The brakes, steering and gears feel all wrong.  The car kind of works but you just can't help but feel there must be another model out there that does it all without all the effort necessary to keep this one on the road!