1

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Magnetic Field

« on: May 04, 2019, 05:42:34 AM »

Hey, been a while. Unfortunately, our machine shop is so backed up they haven't gotten to my "government work." I am not sure if I should push more or just give it to someone outside the shop. I don't really know anyone though that has machining capabilities. Hopefully, you give me the benefit of the doubt here and believe the truth of my statements.

Oh I understand completely. I have machining capabilities but again I'm just too busy myself to do it, or I'd have offered. No CNC for me though, unfortunately, although working towards retrofitting to CNC.

2

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Magnetic Field

« on: May 03, 2019, 02:17:58 PM »

Nice. I got my lexan in yesterday. Gave the CAD file to my CNC guy. Hopefully will be done soon

Hey friend,
How is progress? I'm looking forward to the results of your working model of magnetic field.

3

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: On the Notion of Removing Attachments

« on: April 12, 2019, 03:14:40 PM »

I really like the ability to attach a diagram. It is easier than first uploading to imgur or whatever, and doesn't go away if imgur goes away.

But on the other hand I can imagine it's a nightmare for the forum admins from a security standpoint, and I suppose most users don't submit original content in their images but rather just link to someone else's pre-existing diagrams so I suspect attachments are sort of on the way out.

I support whatever the administration wants to do -- running a forum (and trying to keep it secure) is already a tedious thankless payless task - and  we should make it as easy as possible for the hard working volunteers.

4

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why isn't the sun visible all night?

« on: April 11, 2019, 04:33:04 AM »

notice how on some of the headlights which are futher away appear much larger light sources than ones up close?

Please folks, this one hurts FE. The more distant headlights look bigger in the photo because they also happen to be aimed more directly at the camera.
They are not flood lights like the sun, they are spot lights - especially if on high beam.
This means when they are pointing directly at the camera they will appear brighter because that's the directly most of their light is going.
They only look bigger because the camera exposure is set so high that imperfections in the lens and scattering in the air cause the bright spot to "bleed" onto nearby parts of the image sensor or film. If the exposure was reduced on the camera so it wasn't overexposed, the headlight would appear smaller if it was not as close.

Which is the exact same thing that causes the sun to look larger than life on camera -- because it's being over-exposed. If the exposure was set to where it wasn't overexposing, the size would be the correct size. Which is what people do with sun filters.

That also explains why the "oversized" headlights and sun is all blurry around the edges while a correctly exposed picture is not blurry - the extra sizes is not from the size of the sun but from the fuzzy region of over exposure.

If the headlights really were looking bigger from distance, wouldn't the whole cars also have to look bigger?

Please please go take pictures of a car in the distance but control the exposure so it's not overpowering the image sensor, and you'll see that the closer cars do have bigger headlights.

5

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Gravity

« on: April 11, 2019, 04:05:09 AM »

That depends on the FE model.

I have a question about Gravity as well.  On the wiki, it says you guys believe the earth is disc shaped and moves ‘upward’ at 9.8m/s.  According to this, if I threw a pingpong ball upwards at a speed less than 9.8 m/s, wouldnt it explode once the earth caught up to it?  Technically isnt jumping not possible?  What about a plane?  If a plane tries to take off and the earth catches up to it, wont it explode?

It's just like jumping in an accelerating elevator. Vertical acceleration up just feels like more gravity, and down feels like less gravity.

6

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: What's the best tool for measuring eye level?

« on: April 04, 2019, 06:20:43 AM »

In the case of the above device, it is questionable whether the front container is even level. There is a lip of lightness at the top, like we are looking down at it. In the case of the colored water, the upper surface might be entirely black, missing cues like this.

The thick meniscus in these devices cause the same issues as the colored water does. Questionable calibration and alignment. Steps to ensure accuracy are desired.

So, Mr. Bishop, what technique would you use to check whether the horizon rises to eyelevel of the observer?

7

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: What's the best tool for measuring eye level?

« on: April 03, 2019, 05:46:24 AM »

Regardless of whether the horizon is at eye level or not in all circumstances, the experiments used are not even methods that surveyors use. The people doing this experiment are basically just making up surveying science as they go along.

The tool needs to be calibrated. The experiment needs a control. Assuming that it is level or that it is an accurate method is not enough.

Well Dr. Bishop I am so glad to hear you say that. Yes. A method that surveyors use. I like the way you are thinking.
I recently purchased off of ebay a Pentax ETH-20F Digital Theodolite. I'm not talking about a silly cell phone app, I'm talking about a real surveyor's digital theodolite.
I've been learning how to use it off you tube, I calibrated it, and everything. It has a built in calibration routine. It has a resolution of 20 arcseconds.

Is that the kind of equipment you're thinking of?

I can measure all sorts of things with this, not only the dip of the horizon, but the dip of ships and mountains too! Ya?

I never mentioned too much about it because well I figured since you don't even think water seeks it's own level (even though you know how a water level works) I figured that you probably would inherently question my gizmo since you may not understand it's internal workings quite as well as you do a water level.

In any case, the experiment should be calibrated and controlled for validity.

How do you calibrate a water level, there Doc?
Just honestly curious as to how you might calibrate a water level if it wasn't reading level. Maybe add water to one end?

The device and underlying theory may be totally off in application. It's making a lot of assumptions about perspective, water tension, refraction, etc. The fact that it can't be calibrated shows the issue. We need a way to gauge how accurate it is.

Oh that's right. It's Dr. "450PPM is too much error to consider the reading valid." Even though the water level showed an internal error of less than a percent of the height of the horizon even at 100ft elevation, it can't be trusted because it's not exactly accurate to zero parts in thirty trillion.

Do you *really* think the water was an inch higher in one end as compared to the center?

This experiment has not been proven to be valid or accurate, or have any bearing on anything at all. It is not used in surveying or for any purpose. The principles need to be demonstrated.

Which experiment has not been proven valid? Oh, that water seeks it's own level? and the fact that water seeks its own level has no bearing on anything at all?
Oh, and I think it is used in primitive surveying, but someone already posted the video so I didn't.

Last year a caged water device was built by a member of our forums, which showed that the alignment of the liquid in the device is susceptible to error. It was seen that the liquid did not align and that water did not find its level.

The water levels did not line up to each other in relation to the plumb line.

Hmm. Looking closely, I see that the pictures were taken at a close distance with a wide angle lens. Notice how the left tube in some of the pictures appears so much thicker?
The camera lens quite likely distorted the picture and the cage may not have been level and the camera may have been adjusted to line up with the cage.

Rowbotham has a few correct ways to determine eye  level, which he describes in Earth Not a Globe

Excellent! Have you tried one of them? which one? Or which would you recommend as the best tool for measuring eye-level?

EDIT: Meant to include this one too:
Don't play the video, just look at the thumbnail: Methinks the open ended clear tubes are cut at different angles and catch the wind differently, creating pressure differences.
OK Fine play the video and hear the wind shearing turbulence across the mic. Sounds like it was a pretty constant steady wind.

The matter has already been impeached. The inability to calibrate the three chamber version of the device is direct evidence that the water is not level.

8

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: What's the best tool for measuring eye level?

« on: April 02, 2019, 03:09:25 AM »

I still think it's a pointless experiment to dtermin the shape of the earth either way.

Agree with this. And the reason for that is because the horizon would dip on a flat earth too.

I agree that on a flat earth, the apparent horizon should be anything but a distinct line, because you're not really looking at the horizon (i.e. the edge) but you're just looking out into so much air you can't see anything farther unless it's really bright like the sun and the moon, then you can see it 10,000 miles away. Which is odd that you can see both the sun and the moon the same distance away even though one's 400,000 times brighter.  On a day where the sun is visible for 12 hours, the moon should be visible for a much shorter period.

But I digress.

Anyway, I suppose we should mention the difference between horizon and apparent horizon.

The classical definition of horizon goes along the lines of "the line that divides all visible directions into two categories: those that intersect the Earth's surface, and those that do not..."

It's obviously a spherical-centric term.

Because on a flat earth, since we (usually) cannot see the real traditional horizon (i.e. the edge) since it may be thousands of miles away, all we see is a gradual gradient transition between the water's surface and the haze. There's no particular line that is the horizon, it is just a point where we can't really see the texture of the water, even though we're looking right at it.

And naturally, the distance (and hence dip) of this line varies drastically based on the clarity of the air that day.

The difficulty comes in when we look out to sea and we see a hard sharp horizon line.

Now as mentioned, on a flat earth, the true physical horizon (i.e the edge) if we could see it would dip increasingly with observer elevation. But very very small, depending on how far you were from the edge.
If you were near the equator, and about 6000 miles from the edge, even a rise of 100,000 feet would only be under 20 miles up, and compared to the 6000 miles distance to the horizon, it would still only be a 0.2 degree dip.
At levels like 35,000 feet, it would be only 0.065 degrees.

So the difficulty comes in when we realize that the horizon does show a hard sharp line, even at distances of a few miles if you're down near sea level, and that the horizon dips much much more drastically than a flat earth allows as the observer goes up in elevation.

In fact, if we make our water level 57.3 inches long then each degree will be one inch, so you can use an inch ruler to measure degrees above or below eye level. (At least for the first few degrees.)

For the metric folks, just make your water level 57.3cm long and use a cm ruler to measure degrees.

(Obviously if you wanted it accurate for more than a few degrees from eyelevel, you'd want to use a curved ruler, which was curved around the radious of 57.3.)

The horizon moves away very drastically with even small increases in elevation; specifically, it goes from around 3 miles standing on the beach to 8 miles at 50 ft elevation and 12 miles at 100ft elevation, to 39 miles at 1000ft elevation.

And all on the same day. How can going from observer eyelevel 6ft to observer eyelevel 50ft more than double the distance to the horizon?

Furthermore, things are often visible beyond the horizon, if they stick up enough. If the atmosphere only allows the water to be visible to 8 miles when I'm standing on the beach, then how is it possible for me to literally be seeing mountains 100 miles beyond that?

9

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: What's the best tool for measuring eye level?

« on: April 01, 2019, 05:19:48 AM »

The way the meniscus is shaped makes it easy for the meniscus to always be too high.



You are looking at the underside of the curve and trying to align something that is not level.

For an experiment like this we need some way to calibrate the tool, to ensure that it is actually accurate and valid.

The fact that a three container version of the device is unable to be calibrated tells us everything we need to know. There is nothing thing saying that the device is accurate or reliable for this purpose. That needs to be demonstrated.

Thanks Tom, are you suggesting that  the guy's variation in reading was due to viewing the different meniscii at different angles due to perspective?

Would it be better to have the sight glass part to be much larger in diameter to reduce the effects of the internal cohesion?

Or would it be better to use a liquid metal like mercury or Galinstan?

10

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Using airline flight data.

« on: April 01, 2019, 05:07:41 AM »

I completely agree.  I was exploring what would be necessary to have the FE claims match reality.  It's an interesting challenge.  How would you hide the reality of longer than claimed distances.  Someone would have to be have the true map and somehow translate the globe claimed navigation to flat navigation.  All in complete secrecy.  It would be a difficult thing to construct.  In the end I can see no way it could work, I have not seen anyone point out any navigation that is inconsistent with the globe claimed distances.

Indeed, and furthermore, this secret map would also need to tell GPS receivers what actual speed they were going and what fake speed to display, and these maps would also have to tell the jetliners how fast to fly for each flight in order to reach their destination in the correct time while going a secret wrong speed.

And many of these flights in the southern hemisphere would have to be way over the speed of sound. In jets that aren't designed to fly supersonic. And them Australians must be deaf because they don't seem to be reporting constant daily sonic booms.
(And since Australia spans 40 degrees it takes the sun 2:40 to pass from end to end, that makes it about 4000 miles long on a flat map, which means that airplanes flying the length of it in 5 hours are all going way over the speed of sound.)

Alternatively, Australia is much smaller and the flights become subsonic -- but the whole flat earth would have to be a lot smaller, which would mean that flights around Alaska would be flying below stall speed.
Which is a problem because while an aircraft might have a certain reasonable stall speed at low elevation, the stall speed is going to be much higher at 37,000ft.

The biggest problem for Flat Earth is the shape of the earth. Flat is just hard to excuse.

11

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: What's the best tool for measuring eye level?

« on: March 31, 2019, 05:47:23 AM »

The guy above was perhaps the first one to pioneer the use of these tubes - he's a flat earther, but usually only posts videos from sea level, so they don't really show anything. He has done it at least once from elevation though, and observed the dip of the horizon - but, for some reason, he doesn't talk about that.

Here's a shot I took from 1500 feet:

...

The mountains there are between 3500 and 5000 feet, around 70-80 miles away. So as we see, not only is the horizon below eye level, but much higher mountains, and the sun itself, which is supposed to be several thousand miles high.

It's an excellent and elegantly simple proof of the curve of the earth for those who are able to understand and see it.

Super nice Max.

But what do you think about the guy's center column being higher than the other two?

12

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: What's the best tool for measuring eye level?

« on: March 31, 2019, 04:11:31 AM »

Try using a control to determine if the water levels actually line up.



A three container water level device was created, and surprise surprise, the water levels did not align and the device was unable to be calibrated.

That's very interesting, Thanks! I'll have to try that!

So water doesn't seek it's own level?

Or perhaps the center one was slightly warmer? Or maybe it was surface tension? or clinging to the side of the tube?
I did notice the center one was the higher one, maybe the earth is curved.

I also noticed a strong relatively steady breeze creating turbulence around the microphone. Perhaps the tops of the tubes were at different angles and the center one had less pressure due to the wind?

I think I'll have to make mine to have large diameter chambers so as to reduce the affect of surface tension/sticking/capillary and have the tops all connected together so the water is free to seek level but the wind can't influence it.

Perhaps it was perspective that caused the center one to look higher.

I did have to chuckle - the guy asks people to leave comments at the end of the video - but then he has comments disabled.

I would love to see what his 3 pronger would do at let's say 100ft AMSL -- and see how the error compared to the horizon dip.

13

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: What's the best tool for measuring eye level?

« on: March 31, 2019, 01:39:37 AM »

Good luck!

Are you near the coast? Can you find some elevation?

Well my friend, you were right.

I did a water level test at 50ft elevation, and at around 2240ft elevation.
Even at 50ft the horizon appeared a little below the horizon.
At 2250 ft elevation, entire snow-capped mountain ranges were below the horizon.
I had to tredge through melting snow and mud to get up to the 2250 ft high site, but I took my water level tube, a theodolite, and a tripod. Oh and a DSLR camera.

I've seen it with my own eyes.

Maybe the real horizon was at eyelevel but obscured by the fog.
I guess I need to find a place where I can see the sun set so I know if it's the horizon I'm seeing or just a fading limit of vision.

14

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: People have been into space. How have they not discovered that the earth is flat

« on: March 14, 2019, 03:43:43 AM »

People have been into space. How have they not discovered that the earth is flat

They have. NASA gets in 2019 $19.5 billion. It pays to shut up.
Space starts at 50 miles.
Ends at the dome.
Then its called the heavens.

Watch these 7 rockets hit the dome. It gets real good at number 5.
US military tried to blow the dome in the 50's with project Fish Bowl. The highest bomb they set off had some interesting visual effects.

This better not be the yoyo despin.
Ugh, it is.

See this is what gives flat earth a bad rap. It's not just believing something that's obviously not true, it's making claims like that video.

I didn't finish watching the video, but I watched enough to see the yoyo-de-spin and I know where this is going.

Those rockets didn't hit the dome.

They have a mechanism, called a "yoyo de spin" mechanism which slows the spin so they can deploy their payload without sending it flying out of control.

For the astute, that is why the rocket stopped spinning but didn't go careening out of control or breaking into a million pieces - which is what would have happened if it'd hit anything at mach 6.

You can google all of this, there are videos explaining all that.

15

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: "Behind the Curve" experiments [looking for flat earther responses]

« on: March 14, 2019, 03:33:48 AM »

…..I'll have to try a bigger configuration which I can tilt up to match my latitude. Have you ever done this experiment?

I've worked on a university undergraduate project to build a ring laser interferometer, as well as spectrometers, lasers, and other optical instruments in industry and research.

but from what I (somewhat dimly) recall you will need a longish beam path - of tens of meters or more -  to detect the Earth's rotation with an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio, using an interferometer

Thank you for all the info! Always love to hear more hands-on reports of real experiments being performed!

I'd be very interested to see an image of your set up? For what it's worth a few thoughts off the top of my head, based on twelve years working on optical instruments and scientific instrumentation generally, are:

Here's a video that shows my setup with just the  Michelson–Morley configuration with two mirrors. But I have 3 such mirrors and I set it up the same way except with the light path taking two counter directed square paths and recombining.
Following that is a Michelson-Morley type setup except with the second mirror attached to a pendulum - goal was to count the interference bands to measure small sideways deflection of the hanging weight to measure side-force gravitational pull from a nearby lead weight. But the vibrations wouldn't ever settle down.

- How far away is the nearest road? I spent most of my undergraduate project trying to find ways of screening out vibrations from the nearby A-road. Floating the base in a water or oil bath is an option, but carries its own difficulties.

Yeah, the nearest road is 100 ft away.

- How stiff is the base? From working on spectrometers I know that it's possible to put a thumb heavily on one corner of the base and, without causing any visible misalignment, totally throw the alignment off.

Not stiff at all.

- How good is the mirror stability? I'd recommend, if you can, glueing it into a metal mount and bolting the mount down hard.

Mirrors were reasonably stable as long as the table wasn't bumped and nobody stamps their feet, otherwise they slide around, since they just sit there.
Hey, it was a budget operation.

-Have you got all the mirrors silvered sides facing the beam? I know that doing that seems silly obvious, but I've mucked that up on a mirror and spent days looking for more serious errors to explain the weird results, so I know it's easily missed.

Yes, all silver side out.

-I suggest setting it up and calibrating it in a basement, on a hard floor with no airspace underneath.

great idea.

- How well can you control the temperature, pressure, and humidity? If you cant you should be able to at least monitor them while working.

Can't control most of those very well.

-Bear in mind that all the electronics heats up, so I'd switch everything on and wait ten to fifteen minute to make sure it's warmed up whatever it's going to warm up and any thermal changes of dimensions are levelled off. Once you've got it set up don't use it until it's had a warm up period.

Of course I might be being a bit of pedant -  I'm assuming you want to go for max sensitivity, and these were just points that were impressed on me when working with optical instruments for that.

Thank you very much for any and all pointers!

We need more practical suggestions here. It's a hard life for an intellectually poor farmer like myself to make sense of the contrast of Sandokahn's walls of formula and Dr. Bishop's "I looked and it looked flat so it is flat."
I kind of needed to hear from someone a little bit between those two levels of information.

16

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Mount Everest?

« on: March 14, 2019, 03:02:45 AM »

I did not come up with the equation and can't speak on its history. It is supposed to be describing a pheonomenon which causes light to bend upwards as so:

I would still very much like to understand if it is just sheer coincidence that the globers claim a parabola for the first 1000 miles for earth curve and the UA theory also contains a parabolic component.

17

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Attempting to actually measure gravity

« on: March 14, 2019, 02:58:43 AM »

Thanks!

It seems like there is quite a change when you release the vacuum on the frequency, yes?

Yes and no.

There was constant change for the whole 3 days.

The frequency was in the middle of a downward trend when I released the vacuum.
Me touching the jar caused that spike where it says "released vacuum" but you can see that it continued on the exact same trend after that and continued to drop.
Then after several hours, it started going back up and eventually did set a new high for the 3 day period.

So if the air has an affect on the frequency, it increases the frequency, which makes no sense, the air should slow the frequency.
But the overall frequency during the air-filled day was higher than either of the previous two days.
And the trend of frequency change was not apparently affected by the loss of vacuum.

My guess is the variation we see is from something other than the vacuum or air-drag.

I'm really not sure what is going on, although I'm wondering if it has to do with the sun and moon and stuff.
Maybe even the mass of clouds? Beats me.

But I do hope to do a month long test so I can correlate to the sun/moon, local tides, and whatever.

18

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Attempting to actually measure gravity

« on: March 13, 2019, 05:11:38 PM »

Well, interesting but meaningless results after 3 days.

For clarification, days start around 9AM to 11AM.

After the first day, I inserted 23 pounds of lead weights.
After the second day I released the vacuum.

Neither had a significant effect compared to the other variations.
I have not yet figured out the cause of the other variations.

I think I'm going to have to run this thing for a month to see if maybe I'm picking up sun and moon gravitational pull.

Anyway, here's what I got so far.  If anyone wants the raw data I can send send it along.

 

19

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The effect FE has on me

« on: March 13, 2019, 03:55:11 AM »

Jim,

I don’t HAVE an argument. You do. I am asking for reliable evidence to support your argument, and I am trying to help you formulate it.

Is there any way you can think of to estimate the distance you are traveling in a plane? Imagine there are no clouds, and you are flying over farm country.

QED, We actually had a thread going a week ago or so where we discussed a number of ideas like reconstructing the scenery from a cell phone video taken out of the airplane window to measure distance.
Another was to test a portable GPS in an airplane on overland flight to see if it correctly reported the distance between passing over known landmarks on land at airplane speeds. The reasoning being that if a given GPS gave accurate speeds and distances in a plane at flying speeds over land that it should be good flying over water too. But then it was postulated that the GPS system may shift into an inaccurate skewed reading of speed and distance while the airplane simultanously slows down or speeds up (often flying at below it's stall speed or over the speed of sound) in order to reach it's flat-world location in the time that the globe model predicts, but in a way that is undetectable by the passengers.

Other ideas included chartering a single engine plane so the RPM of the engine could be recorded via microphone and so the would be no secret airplane speedup.

we kind of decided accurately measuring long distances was out of the reach of hobbyists which is a real problem because flat earthers don't trust any professional to measure if the results or globular.

 

20

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Attempting to actually measure gravity

« on: March 12, 2019, 07:57:29 PM »

The drag force is a function of speed, and will definitely not be constant, because the pendulum is undergoing continual acceleration in its trajectory. So it will affect the frequency. Like I said: solve the equations, you will see this.

I like your method, and am simply pointing out a concern you may want to check before interpreting your results.

This is why we make our engineers take physics courses

It's just too bad the physicists don't have to take engineering courses 

But I really look forward to seeing some of your experiments!

But seriously, just for you, I released the vacuum. Opened the bottle to atmospheric pressure. And let it run for several hours.
The pendulum is definitely not swinging as far, but the frequency did not deviate outside of it's normal variation over the past two days.

Regarding the graph below:

Vertical scale is Hz.
Horizontal scale is measurement count. Each measurement is an average of 250 swings.