41

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why? To What End???

« on: September 28, 2020, 08:39:34 PM »

Also, the very concept of Big Bang was introduced by a Belgian catholic priest called Georges Lemaître. He was named a "Domestic prelate" by the Pope several decades later, so it seems he could cope with both his faith and his scientific career.

The religious views of Charles Darwin are the subject of a full Wikipedia article on their own. It's almost 100 kilobytes long, so it's not a trivial matter.

42

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Is there a flat Earth Jean Meeus?

« on: September 28, 2020, 06:36:08 AM »

"these properties accurately represent the properties of the reality. "

Wrong.  This is a logical error.  The model can be (and historically always is) completely wrong, and still be useful enough to last for centuries and beyond.  It is self-delusion/bias which the scientific method is designed to avoid.  Models are not a part of the scientific method.  Reality is not contained within them - it's out here!

"you prove that the Earth has (at least some of) the properties of an oblate spheroid."

More delusion.  There is only one way to prove the shape of things in reality.  Comparison with models isn't it.

You're not actually answering anything I said. That's strawmanning and cherrypicking at its finest.

"That was my question: is there a model based on a flat Earth that gives equally good results?"

Of course not.  The presumptive model you are discussing took millennia and is still incorrect and incomplete today (as it always has been).  It should be expected to take significant time to build models to replace it once discarded as the garbage it is.  It is not something that many flat earth researchers are working on because models were a big part of how we got into this mess and they will not be helping us to dig our way out.  Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal, all else is poetry and imagination.  The scientific method has no "model" or "compare with model" step.

The scientific method is about making conjectures, deriving predictions, and verifying these predictions. What gives you predictions you can verify, if not a model? Also, the current model seems very correct to me. It gives very good and accurate predictions. Can you prove otherwise?

43

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Is there a flat Earth Jean Meeus?

« on: September 26, 2020, 09:42:35 AM »

All models are wrong. Correct. Still, some are wronger than others.

A model is an abstraction, a simplification. A model has properties, and when it's good, these properties accurately represent the properties of the reality.

When you model the Earth as an oblate spheroid, and get correct results from that model's properties, you prove that the Earth has (at least some of) the properties of an oblate spheroid. Does it prove that the Earth is actually an oblate spheroid? Not formally, it could be anything else that has the same set of properties. But you can conclude that observation is consistent with the oblate spheroid model. That was my question: is there a model based on a flat Earth that gives equally good results? Obviously, it's a rhetorical question. If it existed, we would know by now. The implicit question is: why doesn't it exist?

Also, the model isn't the reality, but it cannot completely disconnected from reality either. If I have a field, and it's more or less shaped as a square, I'd better model it as a square rather than as a circle if I want to calculate its area and perimeter.

44

Flat Earth Theory / Is there a flat Earth Jean Meeus?

« on: September 20, 2020, 09:44:16 AM »

Jean Meeus is a Belgian astronomer. He published a book called Astronomical Formulae for Calculators and another called Astronomical Algorithms. As their name suggest, they detail ways to implement formulas and algorithms to calculate position of celestial bodies and other astronomy-related calculations.

His algorithms have been implemented in a variety of languages:

https://developer.aliyun.com/mirror/npm/package/meeusjs
https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=keywords:meeus
https://crates.io/crates/meealgi
https://pypi.org/project/PyMeeus/
http://libnova.sourceforge.net/

His formulas and algorithms use angular values: latitude and longitude for terrestrial location, declination and right ascension for positions of celestial bodies. They use values such as the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit or the obliquity of the ecliptic, that only make sense in a spherical Earth model. They are, most definitely, built on a round Earth model.

There is a live implementation here of the formulas for sunrise and sunset times: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/index.html and details here https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/calcdetails.html , you can even download a spreadsheet to run it on your computer with Excel or OpenOffice.

Anyone can check that the calculations are pretty accurate. The sunrise and sunset calculations are just a small subset of Meeus' algorithms and formulas, but they are an obvious example because everyone will know what they mean and will be able to check their accuracy.

Is there a flat Earth equivalent, that works equally well, based on EA or anything else?

45

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The elevation of Polaris. Yes, I read the Wiki

« on: September 06, 2020, 05:10:05 PM »

There isn't really such as a thing as a "straight" or "not straight" heading. Heading is not a line, it's a compass direction that can be measured as an angle.

Incorrect. It doesn't always mean in reference to a compass.

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/heading

heading

2. the direction or path along which something moves or along which it lies

Synonyms: aim, bearing

Types: tack

the heading or position of a vessel relative to the trim of its sails

Type of: direction, way

a line leading to a place or point

It does always mean a direction. And heading West or East is definitely a compass direction.

But anyway, that misses the point. Travel due East or due West, and Polaris will stay at the same elevation in the sky.

46

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The elevation of Polaris. Yes, I read the Wiki

« on: September 06, 2020, 12:16:31 PM »

My guess is that it could explain away Polaris as well.

Not sure about this. The observation that any model need to be account for is that sailors travelling in a straight line (presumably with some physical constraint, not only with a compass) see Polaris always at the same height. Same for planes.This cannot be explained by some FE maps, even adding a light bending effect.

Traveling East and West on an RE would only be a straight heading on the equator. Consider what occurs when traveling on a constant Eastward or Westward heading 100 feet from the North Pole.

There isn't really such as a thing as a "straight" or "not straight" heading. Heading is not a line, it's a compass direction that can be measured as an angle. If you travel with a constant East or West heading, you're not traveling along a great circle except in the special case of the Equator. If you travel due North or due South, you do travel on a great circle (a meridian). In other cases, you travel along a rhumb line.

Ships usually prefer to travel along rhumb lines - lines of constant bearing - because it's easier to keep a constant bearing than to travel along a great circle. The Mercator projection was designed to have rhumb lines appear as straight lines.

So, more accurately sailors have to travel along a parallel (a line of constant latitude) to see Polaris always at the same height. That's a special case of a rhumb line. But it's only "straight" on a Mercator map.

47

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: August 08, 2020, 07:53:16 PM »

I can't find the plain-text transcript of this, so ...

The original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/i0wj3v/what_a_tremendous_burden_it_must_be_for_you_to/fztjc0h/

I had no idea there were so many different kinds of awards.

48

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Are flights from and to French Polynesia a hoax?

« on: August 01, 2020, 08:02:29 AM »

I have not seen evidence that Web Mercator (Web-based WGS84 used in Google/Bing Maps) is based on a sphere. Various statements suggest otherwise -  https://wiki.tfes.org/World_Geodetic_System_1984

It absolutely is, or if you want to be precise, not exactly a sphere but a reference ellipsoid. Do you take the time to understand what you read? Once again, you quote sources that say verbatim that the Earth is "best modeled as an ellipsoid" and try to make them look like they say something else. I genuinely wonder if this cherrypicking is deliberate and just a form of trolling, or if you're really convinced that you've uncovered a discrepancy in the geodetic model. If it's the former - well, fine. If it's the latter, please take the time to understand what you read.

49

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Are flights from and to French Polynesia a hoax?

« on: July 31, 2020, 06:53:34 AM »

The Mercator projection is a 2D representation of a sphere. It has never been anything else since it was invented. If you think it's a correct representation, and if you agree that distances calculated with the haversine formula are correct, then you agree the Earth is a globe, that's all there is to it.

Looking at a Mercator projection and thinking the Earth is actually flat is a bit like looking at these representations of a dice and thinking a dice is actually flat:

50

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Are flights from and to French Polynesia a hoax?

« on: July 28, 2020, 06:45:17 PM »

Here is a model of the earth in which the earth is represented as a flat plane:
https://www.bing.com/maps

I will call this FE model 1

Oh no, not that again. The Mercator projection is not a flat Earth model. On a flat Earth, you can't go forever in a straight line and never reach an edge. The Mercator projection used by Bing, Google maps and pretty much every online map doesn't have a western or eastern edge, it just loops indefinitely.

51

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Joe Biden is winning by a landslide

« on: July 28, 2020, 05:35:48 AM »

What if the pandemic makes it impossible to hold elections in November? Is that possibility even considered?

52

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Are flights from and to French Polynesia a hoax?

« on: July 28, 2020, 05:06:49 AM »

The route will be different each day.

Can you find me one nonstop flight from SF to London  which flies over Brasil?

Why would it fly over Brazil? Why the route being different each day would imply it flew over Brazil even once? It doesn't mean it can be anything.

According to https://flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW6B/history the flight from SF to London never passed over Greenland. Even though the live tracker shows the flight over Greenland. Can you send me one link to a completed nonstop flight between SF to London in which the flight tracker shows the flight passing over Greenland?

Not just one but many:

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW6B/history/20200719/0245Z/KSFO/EGLL
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW6B/history/20200720/0245Z/KSFO/EGLL
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW6B/history/20200724/0245Z/KSFO/EGLL

and not exactly, over but close:

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW6B/history/20200718/0245Z/KSFO/EGLL
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW6B/history/20200717/0245Z/KSFO/EGLL

Next time, maybe try to actually click the links before claiming they "never" passed over Greenland? Because now, it looks like you checked two or maybe three that didn't and just assumed it was the same for the others.

Also:

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ba281#250ca071
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ba281#250a7525
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ba281#25085dac
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ba281#2505ffb7

It might be worth it to add these inconsistencies to the wiki because something is clearly off.

What inconsistencies? The fact that flights don't always take the shortest route but might change because of weather conditions or other considerations?

53

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: How does FET explain comets?

« on: July 25, 2020, 03:53:11 PM »

I see no inconsistency. In FET, all celestial bodies rotate around the Earth, creating their apparent rising and setting. It would be inconsistent to assume that your comet was the first body not to do that.

I'll agree with you on one point: the rising and setting of the comet works exactly the same way as the other celestial bodies. The comet does slowly move on the celestial sphere, unlike the fixed stars but like the Moon, the Sun and the planets. Over short periods, these celestial bodies can almost be considered as fixed.

But I still have to see a flat Earth model that explains how we see the celestial sphere spinning around the northern and southern celestial poles, the fixed stars forming perfect circles from any point on Earth. Even under EA, something that appears directly overhead is actually directly overhead, which means the fixed stars must travel along latitude lines. A fixed star will always be at zenith at the same latitude, that can be found with the formula 90-d where d is its declination. You can project the position of the stars on a Mercator map to easily see the apparent latitude of the fixed stars : http://astronomia.blog.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/AstronomiaBlogBr-carta-celeste-mercator.pdf . Depending on the flat Earth model, this leads to very strange trajectories and big questions on how we can see the stars the way we can see them.

What we see in the sky is exactly what we expect if we are on a spinning sphere with a fixed celestial sphere around us - or if we were on a fixed sphere with the celestial sphere spinning around us, as we thought for centuries, it doesn't make a difference to the observer. You might say it could be a spinning sphere around a flat Earth, but it doesn't explain how we can see the totality of the celestial sphere at the Equator, only half of it at the poles, and more generally why the angular elevation of the celestial poles and the stars we can or can not see depend only on one thing: latitude.

54

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Are flights from and to French Polynesia a hoax?

« on: July 19, 2020, 05:13:54 PM »

Would you mind being a little more specific? What flights, what latitude and longitude, documented by who, based on what evidence?

On every commercial flight I boarded, provided I had a window seat, I could get a GPS lock and position during the flights. Passengers on these flights can do it too.

55

Flat Earth Projects / Re: The Atlantic Split

« on: July 19, 2020, 07:14:39 AM »

The RAF and USAAF used Ascension Island, in the Mid-Atlantic, for operations in both Africa (US aviation during WW2) and South America (British aviation during the Falkland war).

https://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/amp/ascension-island-1982-falklands-conflict/

Ascension Island, in the Mid-Atlantic, would play a decisive role in the 1982 Falkland conflict and arguably, the operation ot retake the islands would have been impossible without it.

Ascension Island has played a unique and vital part in the war…Without the existence of Ascension, without its active facilitation of the movement of our airplanes, the indispensable aviation support for our troops in North Africa could not have been accomplished at the critical period when Rommel and his Afrika Corps were literally assaulting the gates of Cairo. That aviation passed through Ascension safely and surely played its decisive part in driving the German and Italian forces from North Africa

Anyway, wherever you try to put "the split", you'll run into this kind of problems. Oceans are not just bodies of water, there are a lot of islands out there, and many of them are populated. Here's a link to generate a map of all islands with a population of more than 10: https://w.wiki/XGm . Not all of them have a permanent settlement, sometimes it's for example a scientific station that's only active during certain months of the year - but humans do go and live there occasionally. Wherever you draw the line of the split, some of these islands will be split from places that are close to them on a round Earth map.

56

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Southern Celestial Rotation in the wiki

« on: July 16, 2020, 08:14:04 PM »

How do we demonstrate that if three people are standing looking south in South Africa, Argentina, and Australia at the same time they all are looking in the same direction to see the South Star?

At what time could this occur, regardless of which direction they would be looking?

Whenever it's dark in all three places simultaneously. Provided we agree on what the "South Star" is.

That's terrific!

Kindly let us all know when that is exactly, and for your benefit, I will also let you choose ANY supposed "South Star."

It doesn't happen often, but for example at this time : https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html?iso=20200620T2212 , the South of Argentina and the West coast of Australia are between nautical and astronomical twilight. Not the darkest hour of the night, but dark enough to see many stars.

We could try to find a star bright enough that would be visible from these three places with the naked eye, or basic equipment like a pair of binoculars. But why bother? Once again, there are simpler ways of verifying we can see the same celestial body simultaneously from all three places:
* The Sun https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html?iso=20201221T0852
* The Moon https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/moon/light.html?iso=20200731T1832

57

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Southern Celestial Rotation in the wiki

« on: July 16, 2020, 12:00:33 PM »

...But there is an even simpler way to check if we can see the same celestial body at the same time from Argentina and Australia. Just wait until the December solstice. See the Sun rising in Ushuaia and setting in Sydney, or even as far as Christchurch: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html?iso=20201221T0852 . You don't even need to go there or find someone who lives there, a live webcam will do the trick.

No offence, and it’s a good idea at face value, but to see Crux you need darkness - twilight can swamp the sky enough to obscure the constellations after sunset and before sunrise. The times given take account of this, they should be sufficiently dark to give a good view. Further, although Crux is shown as you say in the sky, from Perth it dips partially below the horizon at times - the declination figure is likely for the centre of the constellation and not all its stars. You also need a very clear horizon to see a body at, say, 2 degrees above it.

Absolutely, my point here is that you don't need to see Crux when you can see the Sun or the Moon at the same time from Ushuaia and Perth.

How do we demonstrate that if three people are standing looking south in South Africa, Argentina, and Australia at the same time they all are looking in the same direction to see the South Star?

At what time could this occur, regardless of which direction they would be looking?

Whenever it's dark in all three places simultaneously. Provided we agree on what the "South Star" is.

58

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Southern Celestial Rotation in the wiki

« on: July 15, 2020, 08:58:20 PM »

The sky chart is extremely well studied and can be found from many other sources than Stellarium. Countless websites and programs will give you that data, and all agree between them, so if the data were wrong I suppose we'd already know about it: it's very easily verified, you just have to look at the sky.

Crux has a declination of -60°. This means it's circumpolar for places south of 30th parallel south: it never sets under the horizon, so it's always visible at night in Ushuaia and Perth.

But there is an even simpler way to check if we can see the same celestial body at the same time from Argentina and Australia. Just wait until the December solstice. See the Sun rising in Ushuaia and setting in Sydney, or even as far as Christchurch: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html?iso=20201221T0852 . You don't even need to go there or find someone who lives there, a live webcam will do the trick.

If you're lucky enough to find webcams looking West in Australia and East in Patagonia, you could even try with the Moon just two weeks from now: https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/moon/light.html?iso=20200731T1832

Of course, you can also check Sun and Moon rise and set times in local media.

59

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: shoemaker-levi question.

« on: July 14, 2020, 08:34:28 AM »

You might want to check this thread on the same subject: https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=16272.0

(and a moderator will probably scold you for not searching by yourself first)

60

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: RE Lunar Phases With Extreme Perspective Changes

« on: July 13, 2020, 07:46:43 AM »

In my last diagram it was possible to angle the laser pointer even straight upwards and get it to match the scene.

The Sun and Moon aren't on random locations in the sky. The Sun and Moon follow the ecliptic. They follow near the same path. It's possible to get a string to point a Sun at a number of points on the ecliptic, just like the laser pointer can point in a large range of motion from my last diagram.



So really, this string stuff is really rather erroneous and does not demonstrate where the Moon is actually pointing.

I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to get at with this diagram (with the Moon and Sun at the same distance from Earth, which is absolutely not the RE model - but that's another question).

Let's take a triangle, A being the center of the Moon, B the center of the Sun, C your eye.

If you hold a string between any point on AC and any point on BC, this line will appear to your eye as a straight line between A and B. There are infinite possibilities but the end result is the same. You will see a projection of AB.

Why don't you try for yourself? Find the Moon, find the Sun, hold a string. Tell us if it works. Just don't stare at the Sun because of the possible eye damage.