81

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Does the Earth rest on a solid foundation or does it float in space?

« on: December 12, 2020, 10:25:41 PM »

Einstein said that nothing could go faster than the speed of light, but he also said that nothing could reach the speed of light. The equations in the Wiki are from Special Relativity, which says that a body can accelerate forever without reaching the speed of light. Relative frames of references, etc.

Alternatively, it may also be that there are no speed limits. I don't believe Einstein actually performed any experiments on that.

See these two articles:

https://wiki.tfes.org/Michelson-Morley_Experiment

Summary: "Our light experiments can't see the Earth moving around the Sun. Everything must be moving relative to each other. The only standard is the speed of light, which is consistent, and which everything moves relative to."

https://wiki.tfes.org/Sagnac_Experiment

Summary: "Nooooooo. Those experiments which show SR to be incorrect must be exceptions to the rule."

Tom, you are mixing up Special and General Relativity. Even if you don't believe gravity exists, the science examines Earth, Sun and the planets in terms of gravitational attraction, so only General Relativity describes their behaviour.

The theory of relativity usually encompasses two interrelated theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity.[1] Special relativity applies to all physical phenomena in the absence of gravity. General relativity explains the law of gravitation and its relation to other forces of nature.[2] It applies to the cosmological and astrophysical realm, including astronomy.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity

82

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Does the Earth rest on a solid foundation or does it float in space?

« on: December 11, 2020, 08:28:01 PM »

But you are still not accounting for the issue about the shape of the earth.  Since you agree the Earth is not set on a foundation, but is detached, thus whether floating or accelerating it still would take the shape of every other large mass and be a globe.  Blow a flat bubble and prove me wrong.

I’m not accounting for or agreeing with anything. I only told you what you’ll find in the wiki, not what I think about it, nor whether I’ll blow any bubbles. Read a few threads as well as the FAQ and you’ll get a better feel for this place and the characters who may be found, as well as the opinions voiced and argued over. Four days since you joined is not enough to understand what sort of forum this is. Good luck!

83

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Does the Earth rest on a solid foundation or does it float in space?

« on: December 11, 2020, 04:48:12 PM »

If you read the wiki here you’ll find this site maintains the Earth is not stationary but travelling upwards at by now immense speed, since it is claimed Earth is accelerating upwards at 9.8 ms^-2. Apparently everything else we see - sun, moon and stars - is also accelerating at the same rate with the Earth. This is called Universal Acceleration and is this site’s explanation of what the rest of the world calls gravity.

I’ll leave you to read for yourself and ponder the implications of the idea, but neither “resting on a foundation” nor “floating in space” apply to this notion. I’m making no comment at this time.

84

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Let's start with "Burden of Proof"

« on: December 11, 2020, 07:31:49 AM »

Magnetism, for example – there is still no complete explanation for that

I did not know that. What do you mean exactly? Very interesting.

no grand theory to explain the basics of forces exerted on a stationary body.

This is the debate about a "theory of everything" right? Or is it a more specific hole in our understanding of forces?

Some subjects are almost completely “done” in science, like chemistry: when an unknown form of carbon (buckminsterfullerine) was discovered some years ago, its bond energies, molecular size and other properties were rapidly calculated from theory by chemists who had not actually seen the stuff - and found to be accurate. Magnetism (and gravity), although understood quite well, lacks the “theory of everything” to fully explain it. There is no theory, however, for the basis of mechanics: things are as we observe, not as predicted by Klausowitzensky’s Principia Mecanica Universalis.

But if you want an example of something we really don’t fully understand, try to come up with a theoretical explanation of adhesion which allows predictions of which substance makes the best glue. Last I heard, that one was nowhere to be found, but the glues still work. Just as well for the ISS astronauts, eh, Mark?

85

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Let's start with "Burden of Proof"

« on: December 08, 2020, 10:24:17 PM »

Well, now the origin of the notorious photograph has been settled, we can each decide who the joke is on. Good grief!

You are applying extremely basic physics principles to a vacuum condition that we have no experience of. It's like saying things fall to earth because of gravity. 'Gravity' is just the name of a phenomenon that we have no scientific explanation for.

You may not know this, but science doesn't have a full and exhaustive explanation for every phenomenon under the sun. Magnetism, for example – there is still no complete explanation for that. On a more mundane level, ordinary mechanics doesn't have a full theoretical explanation: the lecturer facing another year's undergraduates made the point that there is no grand theory to explain the basics of forces exerted on a stationary body. The students are taught that the sum of all horizontal forces on a stationary body is zero, the sum of all vertical forces is also zero and all rotational forces on that same stationary body also sums to zero, but this is drawn from observations, not a grand theory.

Scientific vacuum chambers on earth require extremely complex processes to create. They need mechanical displacement pumps, ion pumps and often the chamber needs to be baked to 600+ degrees to remove any contaminants or moisture in the chamber.

And even after doing all this, the vacuums are so powerful that leaks through seals aren't the only problem, you have diffusion leaks through the steel itself! This is a quantum physics problem, not a school mechanics problem. You have to take molecular bonding and vibration into account. In the lowest vacuums in space you have 1 hydrogen atom per cubic meter but even this can become more unstable depending on the excitation/vibration of the proton.

Mark, you repeatedly state that these vacuums are "so powerful" and can supposedly do all sorts of things. What is your basis for these claims? What do you know about these phenomena that "we have no experience of"? Have you a book you have read? Maybe a web article? YouTube video? Other people have provided links and quotations to support their case – Tom Bishop usually posts tons of links, f'rinstance – but you just make unsupported claims about excitable vibrating protons and whatnot. Where's the beef, Mark?

86

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: The Sun is Local as seen with your own eyes !

« on: December 05, 2020, 11:59:07 AM »

Magnificent photos indeed, but what do they demonstrate? How are the captions in the video substantiated?

87

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Startrails in the southern hemisphere

« on: December 03, 2020, 07:15:10 PM »

All you need is a way of holding the camera still for a long exposure at night - think 30 minutes as a minimum or perhaps a couple of hours if there’s little light pollution. Even iPhones can do this now.

https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/01/31/star-trails-from-47˚s-72˚w/

88

Flat Earth Theory / Re: An inconvenient hemiplane.

« on: December 02, 2020, 06:57:10 AM »

The Wiki gives the following information under “Eratosthenes on diameter”:-

A circle with a diameter of 25,000 miles across is simply the area of land which the light of the sun affects, and represents the area of our known world.

25,000 miles is 40233.6km

The kilometre was originally defined as one ten thousandth of the meridional distance (through Paris) from north pole to the equator. Presumably that distance was known when the definition was declared by the French - pretty silly if they didn’t.

89

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Let's start with "Burden of Proof"

« on: December 01, 2020, 01:00:46 PM »

Whether you’re a physicist or not, @james38, that’s very close to the points I was making, but more elegantly put. @MarkAntony, the water boiling at room temperature in that vacuum chamber is not going to begin until about 17 torr of pressure is reached - a medium vacuum, by the standards of the table from Wikipedia we both have referred to. The water boiling freely implies the pressure is reduced to and sustained at a vacuum of at least that degree. The syringe still doesn’t suck any water up when activated in that regime.

90

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Let's start with "Burden of Proof"

« on: November 29, 2020, 10:03:51 PM »

I especially like the last bit of the demonstration when he lets the air back into the vacuum chamber. Air pressure does the work, not vacuum.

I've acknowledged already that it's still 1 atm outside the vessel. You can't apply simple pressure vessel mechanics to vacuum chambers that we have no experience of on earth. If there is very little difference between them, then how come we haven't recreated these vacuums? In the 50-60 years of space travel, how come an astronaut didn't think of bringing a sample of this vacuum back to earth for analysis?

For all the money spent on the space program, they really have done a poor job answering lots of basic questions... 

I don't think you have understood what has been written or demonstrated, possibly not even read or watched either. I have tried, but it seems oddly pointless. It has, however, been highly entertaining, especially the suggestion of "bringing a sample of this vacuum back to earth for analysis".    However, I don't want to break the strict conditions of these forums so I'm out.

Thank you for engaging. 

91

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Let's start with "Burden of Proof"

« on: November 28, 2020, 08:35:03 PM »

I am lost for words at these responses...

......



This table explicitly states that an "Extremely high vacuum" is 1000 to 1000 000 000 (1 billion) times stronger than a "High Vacuum". Are you saying that the figures in this image are wrong? If so, what are the true figures?

You're not the only one lost for words, you don't understand what that table says, but the oil is on a slow rolling boil – just tell me who taught you scientific notation for numbers and I'll collect the person and drop them in it myself. 

Mark, that table lists pressures for various degrees of vacuum. Look at it again:–



"Pressure ranges of each quality of vacuum" is the title and you've selected the column of torr values for your case. The pressures are listed, not the "power of vacuum".

The number 1x10³ is 1 multiplied by 10³ which is 1x10x10x10 = 1,000. However, the number 1x10^-3 (don't miss the minus sign!)  means 1 divided by 10³ which is 1/1000 or 0.001 and we call that a thousandth. A thousandth of a torr is a pretty small pressure.

Another number like 9.87x10^-7 means 9.87 divided by 10⁷ which is 9.87/10,000,000 or 0.000000987 and is just smaller than a millionth. A millionth of a torr is much smaller than our last example.

The table is not telling us that this, that or the other vacuum is a thousand or a billion times "more powerful" than another, but that the pressure in one is a thousandth or a billionth that of another. The table explicitly tells you that the pressure in an Extremely High Vacuum is a thousandth to a billionth that in a High Vacuum.

Someone told you the work is done by the vacuum pulling on the piston, the vacuum chamber wall or the spacesuit, but it's not. The work of keeping the piston in the syringe, fracturing the vacuum chamber or bursting the spacesuit is done by the external pressure withstood or internal pressure contained. There is space for another person in the boiling oil...

If it's the vacuum pulling, then that would even work in a vacuum chamber. I'm serious: by your reckoning, pulling water into a syringe should be possible even in a vacuum chamber, because pulling that piston will increase the "strength of vacuum" in the syringe. So does it? Watch for yourself:–



I especially like the last bit of the demonstration when he lets the air back into the vacuum chamber. Air pressure does the work, not vacuum.

92

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Let's start with "Burden of Proof"

« on: November 26, 2020, 09:05:21 PM »

The point I was making around 1psi and 0psi is that it is not a binary thing as NASA imply by saying there is a low pressure differential if you have 5psi inside the space suit and 0psi outside. The reality is that there is a massive pressure differential - we just don't have any experience of the strength of these vacuums on earth. We can get vacuums down very low but only on an extremely small scale (not infinite like in space). Or if we do scale it up in size we have to use very thick concrete walls or thick steel vessels. But why? Isn't it just a small pressure differential 

Yes it is a small pressure differential, but applied over a large surface it amounts to a very large force. Let’s take a vacuum chamber with one flat wall 10 feet square and assume it’s air at 5psi outside and 0psi inside. That’s a wall of 14,400 square inches and it will be bearing a pressure load of 72,000 pounds force on that wall alone.

Both you and Jack refer to an infinite vacuum of space - but what are you talking about? Do you think there are pressures below zero?

......... (suggested investigation).........

Do try this at home!

I appreciate the mathematical demonstration but you are making the very assumption I am saying is flawed, that there is a 5psi pressure differential no matter how powerful the vacuum. This is an absurd assumption with no disrespect. You really can't talk about these vacuums without taking energy or even wall stresses into account.

Lets say you have a syringe like below:



For arguments sake, the barrel is 20miles long and the plunger is pushed in as far as it can go so only a very small amount of air is in the tip. You plug the tip and get someone to pull the plunger as hard as they can. That person is only going to get so far before the strength of the vacuum is just too much to go any further. Lets say you then get a horse to pull it further. At some point the barrel will collapse so you will have to replace it with steel to withstand the vacuum. The horse can go no further so you get a 16 wheeler truck to pull the plunger. The truck pulls the plunger further but now the steel tube collapses so you have to replace it and reinforce with outer ribs for support. You then get an army tank that pulls the plunger further. Each foot of distance the plunger gets pulled will require an exponentially higher amount of energy to do so. It will get to a point where no vehicle or combination of vehicles will be powerful enough to pull the plunger further. You are also getting closer to material limitations where there simply won't be materials strong enough to maintain the volume of vacuum. There is still only 1atm outside but the differential is growing immensely.

Unlike the confined volume inside the syringe, space is sold to us as being a vacuum of immense magnitude but also at an infinite scale. There are no materials that exist that could cope with this vacuum, be it at 5psi, 1psi or 0.001psi inside - makes no difference. The wikipedia scale above tells us that a vacuum in outer space is 1000 to 1 000 0000+ times stronger than a "high vacuum". We have only ever recreated a high vacuum on a large scale on earth. These are unimaginably powerful vacuums we're dealing with, yet we have astronauts dancing around on the moon? I think not.

Mark, can I just say how much I'm enjoying this conversation, learning how you think. I think I see where the vacuum logic comes from: take a cylinder of gas and a piston and apply increasing force to the piston, directed towards the gas, and the pressure will climb and as the volume of gas decreases and its pressure increases, it takes ever-increasing force to move the piston further into the cylinder in ever-decreasing amounts. This analogy is extended to pulling a piston out of a cylinder containing a vacuum, implying ever-increasing force is needed to pull the piston further out of the cylinder against the vacuum.

There's just one problem, a vacuum is nothing. Compressing a gas by reducing its volume does indeed take greater and greater effort, because there's a gas in the cylinder, but increasing the volume of a vacuum means increasing the volume of nothing. The outside pressure is still 1 atm and the internal pressure, the vacuum, is still nothing, nada, zero, so the differential is the same whether the piston is pulled out by 1cm or 500 yards. The piston is still being pulled against a pressure of 1 atm on the piston, however far it is pulled.

Have you any example of that experiment having been done to back up the idea? Gas compression is not a thought experiment like the vacuum in a piston example, it's an everyday occurrence; but I shall be astonished if you can point to even one successful attempt to prove pulling on a vacuum results in an ever-increasing resistance to being pulled. I'm not being frivolous by suggesting this would be a scientific revelation.

93

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Let's start with "Burden of Proof"

« on: November 26, 2020, 08:29:14 AM »

The point I was making around 1psi and 0psi is that it is not a binary thing as NASA imply by saying there is a low pressure differential if you have 5psi inside the space suit and 0psi outside. The reality is that there is a massive pressure differential - we just don't have any experience of the strength of these vacuums on earth. We can get vacuums down very low but only on an extremely small scale (not infinite like in space). Or if we do scale it up in size we have to use very thick concrete walls or thick steel vessels. But why? Isn't it just a small pressure differential 

Yes it is a small pressure differential, but applied over a large surface it amounts to a very large force. Let’s take a vacuum chamber with one flat wall 10 feet square and assume it’s air at 5psi outside and 0psi inside. That’s a wall of 14,400 square inches and it will be bearing a pressure load of 72,000 pounds force on that wall alone.

Both you and Jack refer to an infinite vacuum of space - but what are you talking about? Do you think there are pressures below zero?

Here’s a simple investigation you can do into vacuums. Get a long length (more than 50 feet) of clear plastic hose, fill it with water and have it dunked in a large bucket of water. Seal one end to prevent air getting back in (use a bung or maybe a strong clamp) and lift the sealed end above the water, way up, 40 feet above the water in the bucket but make sure the other end stays under the water. Amazingly, the water in the hose will only rise about 34 feet above the water in the bucket and any hose above that height will be empty. What’s in that empty length of pipe between water and bung? A vacuum.

Think about that before trying the same investigation up in the mountains (if it’s within reach) at something like 10,000ft. Now the water will not rise higher in the pipe than about 23 feet. What has changed? The pipe, bung, bucket and water are the same, but the vacuum can only support a 23ft column of water. What has changed is the air pressure. The water in the pipe is not supported by the strength of the vacuum, but by the outside air pressure; 14.7psi at sea level and about 10psi at 10,000ft above sea level.

Do try this at home!

94

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Water is always level?

« on: November 25, 2020, 09:11:58 AM »

@longitube

Jack, I don’t mean to be rude and hope you won’t be offended

Excellent, I feel the same way! Rudeness is mostly about lack of courtesy/empathy.  In this case, the courtesy you are lacking is in properly understanding before criticizing and recommending diminutive remedial action/"coursework" of your enlightened choosing. 

I do not wish for you to misunderstand my tone, which is intended to be playful and somewhat scathingly sarcastic.  I am very difficult to offend, and encourage others (and myself) to speak their hearts and minds freely without censure.  I encourage the ruthless/vicious attack of all thoughts and though I do not condone ad hominem, I am most functionally impervious to it (as we all should be).

but air pollution where you live must be appalling.

Though air "quality" (composition, density, refractive index etc.) has everything to do with what we are discussing, you seem to be misunderstanding.  The reason we can't see beyond the few miles is to do with the air itself (and the intensity of the distant light source of course), and requires no added help from man made particulate/pollution.  When I say we can't see more than a few miles under normal weather conditions, I am talking about specifically towards the horizon - looking through the densest air.

Sorry to be blunt.

You spoke your heart and mind earnestly and to me that IS effective communication (or at least a necessary prerequisite).  No apologies necessary, though if you earnestly wish to avoid being rude (a worthy goal) you should try to make sure you fully understand what you are criticizing first before doing so and suggest courses of action / "coursework" earnestly (not for rhetorical ad hominem).

I don’t do ad hominem, I’m only interested in facts. I may be sharp with opinions I regard as nonsense, but never with the person - there’s far too much of that on the web already, people ridiculed and their convictions mocked without addressing whatever points are under discussion.

To return to how far we can see across level water: if the limit of our vision towards the horizon is just a few miles, how is it possible to see that mountain top on the horizon from the beach on a clear day, a mountain top which is 66 miles away across the water, through the densest air at the horizon?

95

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Let's start with "Burden of Proof"

« on: November 23, 2020, 02:05:36 PM »

Just think about it, the vacuum that is purportedly in space has never been recreated on earth.  Vacuums don't just go from 1psi to 0psi there is a huge scale of vacuum strength, each level being exponentially more difficult to achieve. Just look at the different types of vacuum given by the Wikipedia page:

@Mark Antony, I would like to take whoever taught you number systems and boil that person slowly in oil for doing such a rotten job. Vacuums don’t just go from 1psi to 0psi? Actually, that table from Wikipedia shows that vacuums do, but the numbers given could be easily misunderstood from the way they are expressed.

A extremely high vacuum, from that table, is < 1x10^-12 torr meaning less than a millionth of a millionth of a torr. But that’s still a higher pressure than zero. If it were < -1x10^-12 then that would be less than minus a millionth of a millionth of a torr - a negative pressure, less than zero - which doesn’t exist!

The very low pressures listed in that table are indeed extremely difficult to achieve on Earth, but all are larger, however slightly, than the bottom row of the table, the perfect vacuum, which is precisely zero pressure. If you already know and understand this, please feel free to ignore it and forgive my misunderstanding you.

96

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: An unedited clip of a weather balloon ascending to space, without fisheye.

« on: November 22, 2020, 07:59:42 PM »

We do? Please explain, since I missed that first time around. (I know, I know)

The video is shown to us in a 16:9 aspect ratio, without apparent squashing. The frame of the camera is not 16:9. Therefore, cropping likely occurred, either in a way transparent to the user, or by the user's choice.

This, combined with the countless observations we've made above, brings the obvious conclusion. The exact nature of the cropping, and how it was performed, will probably remain unknown.

I don't think I've heard a lamer excuse, at least this week. If the original video footage was shot in 4:3 (4K) instead of 16:9 (1080p), it would lose a little at the top of frame and an equal amount at the bottom of frame in conversion, but the centre of the 4:3 footage would still be the centre of the 16:9 conversion shown on the YouTube footage. If the person setting up the camera to make the video selected a resolution less than the highest the camera is capable of, there is currently no camera around which does that by cropping off, say, much of the top left, bottom left and top right to record in 1080p instead of 4K and therefore needs the camera repositioned to frame the footage correctly at the lower resolution and thus not properly use the centre of the lens. "Hey, we got a really cool feature on this camera: change resolution and ya gotta reframe! Much cooler than these squares who don't have to!!" That would sell like cold offal.

Here's a video of the different resolutions available on a GoPro Hero4 Black, shot from a tripod. Notice how the camera does not change its direction of view for each different resolution.

97

Flat Earth Community / Re: A Question From a Round-Earther

« on: November 22, 2020, 03:17:24 PM »

Boats at the horizon disappearing bottom up They're not really disappearing over the curve as you might think. Even if the earth was a globe and the size we're told it is, the curve wouldn't be noticeable only a few miles out to sea which is more or less the furthest our eyes can see looking across a large body of water. What is happening is the atmosphere is acting like a lens. This short video explains it:



Watch the whole thing if you've got the time, it's quite interesting. If you haven't the time the demonstration begins at around the 1:45 mark.

Okay, I watched the whole thing. So, if I dig a hole in the beach to get my eye below beach level, I won't be able to see the shoreline of the opposite coast. Did I get that right? And the unzoomed photo of Toronto, if I use a magnifying glass it should be possible to see kids playing on the Toronto shore and people sunbathing? Possibly there's something missing in the instructions, 'cos I'm not seeing them like in the Bishop experiment.

98

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Questions regarding gravity

« on: November 22, 2020, 10:13:02 AM »

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=16913.0

You might find this recent discussion interesting.

99

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: An unedited clip of a weather balloon ascending to space, without fisheye.

« on: November 21, 2020, 04:47:16 PM »

If this really is just "distortion" shouldn't the curve remain above the line?

Once again - you assume that the centre of the video is the centre of the camera's frame. We know that this isn't the case.

We do? Please explain, since I missed that first time around. (I know, I know)

100

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Water is always level?

« on: November 20, 2020, 06:42:24 PM »

@longitube

I meant an observer standing on the ground, not lying on the ground, sees just a few miles?

Yes.  That is, laterally towards the horizon through the densest air you can typically only see a few miles.

The top of everest is still the ground though!  I just think it is very interesting, and misunderstood by so many, that from the highest point on earth, under the best visibility conditions possible, you can only see a couple hundred miles (laterally, towards the horizon).  That is the max, though at sea level (the min) it's only a few miles directly through the densest air.

Jack, I don’t mean to be rude and hope you won’t be offended, but air pollution where you live must be appalling. I live by the ocean and can see cliffs and headlands twenty miles away while standing on the beach. I can see large hills inland more than thirty miles away from a roadside viewpoint that’s perhaps 150 ft above sea level. From the same beach on a clear day I can see on the horizon the top of a mountain which is 66 miles away. I know this because I’ve seen these things often with my own eyes, without using binoculars, a powerful zoom camera or Google Earth. Furthermore, at night I can watch the moon and stars setting on the horizon, and how far away are these? A few miles?

You need to do some real research, Jack, do some real investigations, before declaring how little we can see. Sorry to be blunt.