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Offline jomples

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The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« on: March 19, 2022, 04:59:19 PM »
In my experience with the Flat Earth Models, I've most frequently come across 3 models- Monopole North-Centered seems to be the most common, and then Monopole South-Centered and Bipolar crop up sometimes. This trifold nature presents a certain difficulty- many Round Earth arguments only address Monopole North-Centered. As such, argument for each model is used interchangeably. I think it would be valuable to address each of these one at a time.

I'm starting with Bipolar because it presents the most immediate problem. The wiki itself says "The continental layout is unknown and has yet to be fully researched due to ambiguities of jet streams, flight routing, and non-direct flights". Any single attempt at finding a hole in one continental layout can be addressed with another layout. So lets knock them out all at once.

All arguments will reference "splits". These are simply divisions in the bipolar model which are not present in the globe model. I'm coming at this from a Globe point of view because that's the predominant model, and thus the frame of reference the average person would expect.  For example, in this model,

there is a "split" in the Pacific.

The first layout which can be discarded is any layout which splits populated landmasses. I don't expect this to be a point of contention- if there was a split through North America, people would notice. Even if there was a split through Siberia, people would notice, because of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

The second layout which can be discarded is any split through the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic has been regularly traversed by ships since the late 15th to early 16th century, and trade routes are well documented. It also is the shortest route between North America and Europe, and is regularly traversed by planes and ships. This discards maps such as this:


The third layout is the predominant one for bipolar models. This places the split somewhere in the Pacific ocean, and is most common likely due to the size of the Pacific Ocean. Because of the this, civilians do not traverse the Pacific ocean as often as they do the Atlantic. These images have the split in the Pacific ocean:



However, there are a multitude of problems with this configuration of the bipolar model.

First of all, there is yours truly. I have flown from Brisbane, Australia, to Dallas, Texas, probably 8 to 10 times. The flight took approximately 17 hours. After a while, Qantas stopped running the Brisbane to Dallas route, and since then I've taken the Brisbane to Los Angeles route. This is an extremely long flight in either of these, passing over either Asia, or Africa. I'm one of many who have flown from Australia to America.

Additonally, many other flights exist which cross the Pacific. These include Auckland to Santiago, Manila to Los Angeles, and Tokyo to Mexico City, to name but a few. https://www.flightconnections.com/flights-from-tokyo-nrt allows anybody to see almost every flight route in existence, just by clicking on a departure airport. I'm aware of the Issues in Flight Analysis article- but that deals mainly with using flight time to analyze distance, not with the existence of a flight route that would pass off the edge of the earth in a certain model.

Finally there's the existence of shipping lanes. Living in America, many goods will come from China, and they are brought on cargo ships. The Pacific might see fewer civilian crossings than the Atlantic, but it sees a great deal of commercial traffic. https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:135.9/centery:16.8/zoom:2 shows the amount of traffic crossing the Pacific at every latitude.

This discards splits in the Pacific. So what's left? Where could the split possibly be drawn other than the Pacific, Atlantic, or somewhere it bisects populated land?

Looking forwards to debating this.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2022, 05:34:01 PM by jomples »

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2022, 05:31:15 PM »
The second layout which can be discarded is any split through the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic has been regularly traversed by ships since the late 15th to early 16th century, and trade routes are well documented. It also is the shortest route between North America and Europe, and is regularly traversed by planes and ships. This discards maps such as this:



See this thread: https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=16645.0

There are Atlantic Ocean anomalies referenced there:

A testimonial of someone who sailed from Cape Verdes islands off of Africa (near the north western corner) to Brazil (north eastern corner), took 20 days:

https://www.yachtmollymawk.com/2011/11/atlantic-crossing-brazil/

Some interesting quotes:

Quote
The passage from the Cape Verdes across the Atlantic to the north-eastern corner of Brazil is pretty much the shortest ocean crossing that one can possibly make – it’s less than half the distance of the passage between the Canary Islands and the Caribbean – but although the miles are far fewer, weather conditions on this route are apt to be somewhat less favourable. Somehow or other you have to get through that infamous belt of calms which girdles the centre of the world. At best, things are slow; at worst you might sit around for days on end, “a painted ship upon a painted ocean”.

Quote
We dropped the main and furled the genny, but even under mizzen alone we were still travelling through the water at 7 knots. However, according to the GPS we were only actually making up at 2 knots…!

Bad Reputation

Apparently sailing along areas near the equator in the Atlantic Ocean has a bad reputation in maritime history, attributed to the odd "weather patterns":

https://archive.theoceanrace.com/en/news/10308_Seven-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-Doldrums.html

Quote
The infamous area around the Equator has frustrated and puzzled sailors for centuries

~

It has a bit of a reputation. In fact, a pretty bad one. The Doldrums holds a distinct place in maritime history, having developed a reputation as a potentially deadly zone which could strand ships for weeks on end, causing them to run out of food and drinking water. In those days, with supplies running low, and scurvy setting in, delerium, starvation and cabin fever could all set in – and getting through this mysterious patch of Atlantic Ocean quickly wasn’t just a matter of first or last place, but life and death.

If it has a bad reputation and is referred to as a "mysterious patch of Atlantic Ocean" in maritime history, I'm not sure that those assumptions about shipping from the 15th and 16th century really hold up.

I am also not sure that there are that many flights between South America and Africa. I did find people discussing the route in 2018 and suggesting that flights don't exist.

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-no-airplane-fly-directly-from-South-America-to-South-Africa-if-its-shorter-distance-and-cheaper/answer/Lachie-Smith-3?comment_id=79717141&comment_type=2



If you do put in some flight routes between countries into a flight tool, you get some pretty odd results:

https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Brazil/Liberia

« Last Edit: March 19, 2022, 07:30:02 PM by Tom Bishop »

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Offline jomples

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2022, 05:50:32 PM »
The doldrums have an infamous reputation primarily for becalming ships- if you look at a map of trade winds, you can see that areas where trade winds intersect have little or no winds. You even included that in your quote "that infamous belt of calms"


If you look just a little bit further than skin deep, you can see why the doldrums are dangerous- with sailing ships as the primary method of transportation, entering an area with very little wind was deadly. For example, if you check the NOAA website: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/doldrums.html

Now that ships with engines are primarily used, the doldrums have become much less of a threat and are just as frequently traveled as the many other routes between Africa and South America: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:15.9/centery:-27.2/zoom:3

As for that GPS measurement- again, the answer to this is referenced in the blog post. The ship is traveling through the water at 7 knots- but with a back current. It's like a headwind in a plane, which is why their speed relative to the earth (on the GPS) is only 2 knots. The post explains this-
Quote
If you are only doing 5 knots through the water and are tacking along, zig-zagging your way down the coast, then a 2 knot current is a considerable hindrance; but it is not the end of the world.  However, as we drew closer to the coast it became clear that the current was actually flowing at far more than the rate advertised.

As for my shipping references from the 15th and 16th century- I was merely referring to the amount of time humans have been crossing the Atlantic regularly- since Christopher Columbus. I'm aware Vikings and Portuguese fishermen crossed it first. Since then, shipping activities have greatly intensified.

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #3 on: March 19, 2022, 05:52:39 PM »
Quote from: jomples
The doldrums have an infamous reputation primarily for becalming ships- if you look at a map of trade winds, you can see that areas where trade winds intersect have little or no winds. You even included that in your quote "that infamous belt of calms"

Yes, and it contradicts the assumption that ships from the 15th and 16th centuries have traversed areas between Africa and South America without issue.

Quote from: jomples
Now that ships with engines are primarily used, the doldrums have become much less of a threat and are just as frequently traveled as the many other routes between Africa and South America: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:15.9/centery:-27.2/zoom:3

You linked us to a Mercator map with multicolored ships on it, not any sort of ship logs or verification. You are posting a source which does not specifically state what is experienced and you are making sweeping assumptions of what is experienced.

You had originally wanted to talk about ships from the 15th and 16th century in your post, which you claimed debunked it, and now suddenly you want to talk about something else now, which we must now make a list of assumptions about in your favor.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2022, 06:15:13 PM by Tom Bishop »

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Offline jomples

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #4 on: March 19, 2022, 07:06:23 PM »
I understand the source of confusion now. What I said in my post was:
The Atlantic has been regularly traversed by ships since the late 15th to early 16th century, and trade routes are well documented.
I never said that ships regularly traveled from Africa to Sourh America. That was you. However, the doldrums are a fairly thin area, and although that region was dangerous, other regions weren't.

Sorry for not saying what the source I linked was, I was relying on context. This: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:41.0/centery:-17.3/zoom:2 is marinetraffic.com, an opensource shiptracking site. It shows the realtime location of thousands of maritime vessels. I merely wanted to show you that shipping occurs throughout the Atlantic. It's actually pretty cool, you can find all sorts of things through the clusters of ships, like trade routes or what I assume to be military convoys: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-20.9/centery:-29.2/zoom:11. Take a look.

As far as actual trade routes- this map https://www.shipmap.org/ shows individual ships as well, but moving a bit quicker.

Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #5 on: March 19, 2022, 07:10:47 PM »
Jomple's "multicolored ships" are real, steel ships, with crews and commercial cargo on them; real things getting transported places.  Its a Mercator projection because that's what fits conveniently on a computer screen.  It obviously isn't to scale, because its a projection. 

I invite you to look again at Marine Traffic.  Lets take the container ship Hundai Jakarta.  (hint; its a green ship).  It is currently about 300km south east of its destination, the port of Santos, Sao Paolo, Brazil, where it anticipates arriving in the early hours of tomorrow (Brazil time), having transited the South Atlantic.  It left Kattupalli, Chennai, India at 18.06 local time on 26 Feb 2022.  Its current speed over ground is 13.6 kts on a course of 296 deg.  If that were its average speed, it would travel 326 NM per day, or 605 km per day.  I just measured the global distances for a typical great-circle journey down the east coast of India, around Sri Lanka, around the cape of Good Hope to Santos as slightly over 15000 km.  At 605 km per day that would give a voyage time of 24 days.  Actual voyage time seems to be around 22 days, which I think is pretty close, considering that we only did the math based on its current speed.  Someone like RonJ could probably advise us better. 

So; what have we got.  Real ship, actual speed, actual distance, voyage time seem to marry up.  Alternatives we could explore:

1.   Ship doesn't exist. 
2.   Ship did not leave India on the date stated. 
3.   The "Winds That Must Not Be Named".  (Note that the South Atlantic is actually bursting at the seams with red and green ships sailing both East and West.  Some wind). 
4.   Disc World; of course, for this to work, we would need know the distance on a flat map. 

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #6 on: March 19, 2022, 07:17:53 PM »
Quote from: jomples
I never said that ships regularly traveled from Africa to Sourh America. That was you.

In the first post when you discarded the model you said "The Atlantic has been regularly traversed by ships since the late 15th to early 16th century"

But you were not talking about ships traveling between Africa and South America. Okay.  ::)

Quote from: DuncanDoenitz
Real ship, actual speed, actual distance, voyage time seem to marry up

Really, where is this analysis?

You are making assumptions without demonstration.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2022, 07:25:40 PM by Tom Bishop »

Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #7 on: March 19, 2022, 07:32:39 PM »
Read what I wrote,, and dispute the facts. 

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #8 on: March 19, 2022, 07:38:19 PM »
Read what I wrote,, and dispute the facts.

What facts? You provided no sources or links for which we can get log information from.

Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #9 on: March 19, 2022, 08:02:08 PM »
If you've got to be spoon fed, you could start by opening the open-source Marinetraffic.com (Jomples gave you a link if you have problems with the internet) and search the vessel Hyundai Jakarta.  A data window will open, giving its alleged voyage details.  Then do some maths. 

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Offline stack

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #10 on: March 19, 2022, 08:07:01 PM »
Read what I wrote,, and dispute the facts.

What facts? You provided no sources or links for which we can get log information from.

All of the log data is available if you have an account.

Hundai Jakarta






SteelyBob

Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #11 on: March 19, 2022, 08:21:59 PM »

I am also not sure that there are that many flights between South America and Africa. I did find people discussing the route in 2018 and suggesting that flights don't exist.

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-no-airplane-fly-directly-from-South-America-to-South-Africa-if-its-shorter-distance-and-cheaper/answer/Lachie-Smith-3?comment_id=79717141&comment_type=2



If you do put in some flight routes between countries into a flight tool, you get some pretty odd results:

https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Brazil/Liberia



Ethiopian airlines does a regular flight to São Paulo. Takes about 12 hours. How many flights do you need to happen before you believe it to be possible?

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/et506



(Edited to fix quote error)
« Last Edit: March 19, 2022, 08:38:46 PM by SteelyBob »

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Offline stack

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #12 on: March 19, 2022, 08:36:25 PM »
I'm guessing that considering Monrovia has a population of 939,524 versus Addis Ababa, population 5,227,794, that airlines would have a direct to Sao Paulo out of Ethiopia rather than Liberia. In totality, Liberia's population is 5,000,000. Same as just the capital of Ethiopia. Ethiopia's total population, 120,000,000.

Here's the flight:


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Offline jomples

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #13 on: March 19, 2022, 08:50:14 PM »
Read what I wrote,, and dispute the facts.

What facts? You provided no sources or links for which we can get log information from.

Tom- go into the mapping tool provided and click on one of the ships. If you hover your cursor over one near the coast and it has a name, it's within range of Coastal AIS and you can see some details about it. If it's out of range, then satellite tracking is used, and you have to pay for that. That's what Duncan's telling you to do.

Again, the reason I included MarineTraffic was to show the density of ships that are currently in the Atlantic. It's a live map, so either someone's faking ship location data, commercial vessels are taking some pretty wacky routes, or (my personal favorite) there's no giant split in the Atlantic.

You wanted to see ship routes, so I included https://www.shipmap.org/, which has a timelapse of 2012 shipping routes. I'm still working on finding a repositorie of manifests.

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #14 on: March 19, 2022, 08:52:59 PM »
If you've got to be spoon fed, you could start by opening the open-source Marinetraffic.com (Jomples gave you a link if you have problems with the internet) and search the vessel Hyundai Jakarta.  A data window will open, giving its alleged voyage details.  Then do some maths.

So you just assumed a bunch of things and claimed it to be fact, and don't actually have data for us. I see.

Read what I wrote,, and dispute the facts.

What facts? You provided no sources or links for which we can get log information from.

All of the log data is available if you have an account.

Hundai Jakarta





A path across a few degrees proves this? Where are the full logs?
« Last Edit: March 19, 2022, 09:28:08 PM by Tom Bishop »

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Offline jomples

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #15 on: March 19, 2022, 09:04:08 PM »
If you've got to be spoon fed, you could start by opening the open-source Marinetraffic.com (Jomples gave you a link if you have problems with the internet) and search the vessel Hyundai Jakarta.  A data window will open, giving its alleged voyage details.  Then do some maths.

So you just assumed a bunch of things and claimed it to be fact, and don't actually have data for us. I see.

Read what I wrote,, and dispute the facts.

What facts? You provided no sources or links for which we can get log information from.

All of the log data is available if you have an account.

Hundai Jakarta





So a path across three degrees proves this? Where are the full logs?

I believe you have to pay to access the full datasets. I'm working on figuring out how to get logs.

[Edit: You do need to pay- but you can get a 7 day free trial, after which it's 1300 dollars a year. So probably cancel before then. If you sign up at all.]
« Last Edit: March 19, 2022, 09:08:05 PM by jomples »

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Offline stack

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #16 on: March 19, 2022, 09:08:42 PM »
If you've got to be spoon fed, you could start by opening the open-source Marinetraffic.com (Jomples gave you a link if you have problems with the internet) and search the vessel Hyundai Jakarta.  A data window will open, giving its alleged voyage details.  Then do some maths.

So you just assumed a bunch of things and claimed it to be fact, and don't actually have data for us. I see.

Read what I wrote,, and dispute the facts.

What facts? You provided no sources or links for which we can get log information from.

All of the log data is available if you have an account.

Hundai Jakarta





A path across three degrees proves this? Where are the full logs?

I didn't say anything proves anything. You were asking about data. If your purchase a standard account, $50 or so, you can can see the logs for a ship's complete journey. I'm sure you're able to figure how to pay for an online service.

In short, the data is there, you just need to pay to access all of it. I'm not sure why I have to explain this to you.

Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #17 on: March 19, 2022, 09:12:43 PM »
If you've got to be spoon fed, you could start by opening the open-source Marinetraffic.com (Jomples gave you a link if you have problems with the internet) and search the vessel Hyundai Jakarta.  A data window will open, giving its alleged voyage details.  Then do some maths.

So you just assumed a bunch of things and claimed it to be fact, and don't actually have data for us. I see.

Read what I wrote,, and dispute the facts.

What facts? You provided no sources or links for which we can get log information from.

All of the log data is available if you have an account.

Hundai Jakarta





A path across three degrees proves this? Where are the full logs?


You have me sunk, Tom.  I assumed that the ship exists, that it sailed from Chennai and will arrive in Sao Paolo tomorrow.  Naivety on my part. 

As a counter argument, how do you propose that the containers are getting to South America?

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #18 on: March 19, 2022, 10:37:35 PM »
In other words you claim to know that you're right about the shipping data, but don't have the data and have been assuming that it exists in your favor.  ::)

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Offline jomples

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Re: The Bipolar Model- An Investigation.
« Reply #19 on: March 19, 2022, 10:38:19 PM »

I am also not sure that there are that many flights between South America and Africa. I did find people discussing the route in 2018 and suggesting that flights don't exist.

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-no-airplane-fly-directly-from-South-America-to-South-Africa-if-its-shorter-distance-and-cheaper/answer/Lachie-Smith-3?comment_id=79717141&comment_type=2



If you do put in some flight routes between countries into a flight tool, you get some pretty odd results:

https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Brazil/Liberia


It's worth noting that even the Fortaleza to Portugal route still makes zero sense on a map with the split in the Atlantic.