[douglips]

I'm hoping to understand how flat earth theory treats longitude and latitude. I'm not looking for a debate, just an understanding of what flat earth theorists think of these concepts.

In round earth theory, latitude is the angle from vertical the sun is at local noon on the equinox. At the equator (latitude 0) the sun is directly overhead at noon. At the tropic, the sun is 23.5 degrees from overhead, and at the arctic circle its 66.5 degrees from overhead. Do flat earth theorists agree that you could measure these angles with a protractor or a sextant and agree with these figures?

Longitude is the angle from overhead that the sun is at noon GMT. If you are on the prime meridian, the sun is overhead at noon, if you are 15 degrees west, the sun is 15 degrees from overhead at noon GMT. Do flat earth theorists agree with this to any extent? In Europe at least, it should be possible to measure the angle of the sun exactly at noon GMT.

[3DGeek]

Trouble is the Flat Earthers seem to have started to claim that they have NO IDEA what a map of the Flat Earth would be like.

This seems to be a cunning debate tactic in which saying "We Don't Know" stops us round-earthers from proving that the maps are nonsense.

Here are the two maps they've offered up in the past:



The one on the left is the "unipolar" map.  Lines of latitude and longitude kinda/sorta make sense in the Northern hemisphere (er "Hemiplane") - but south of the equator, things go to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly.    Where is the "Southern Cross" in the sky?   In the real world, it's vertically above the south pole at all times.   But in this crazy map - there is no south pole.    Your compass needle's "N" points into the middle of the map - so the "S" points outwards...which means it can't always point toward the Southern Cross.

So that map is CLEARLY not right.

So we're left with the new and improved "bipolar" map - which has all of these swirly lines of latitude and longitude - and the requirement that a ship, starting in Borneo and following a compass due East across the Pacific Ocean, will never arrive in South America as it undoubtedly does in the real world.

Worse still, if the meridian lines aren't straight - what does that mean for a compass?   Does the compass follow curved magnetic field lines as you follow it North?   If so, the magnetic North and the direction to the Pole Star (which is always vertically above the North Pole)...will be in wildly different directions!   That doesn't happen in the real world either.

So that map's obviously junk too.

Basically, ANY FE map that has straight meridians will have problems with where the Southern Cross star clusters are - and ANY FE map that has non-straight meridians will have problems with the compass agreeing with the direction to the pole star and/or the southern cross.

It's rather fundamental when you think about it.    If the N pole of your compass ALWAYS points to one point on the FE map (where the pole star is...with a bit of variance for the magnetic pole being offset) - and the S pole of your compass ALWAYS points towards another point on the FE map - then either your compass needle needs to bend quite a lot - or you can only EVER be on a straight line between those two places...at any other place - something has to break.

This is an interesting train of thought.

[mtnman]

Wow, that's the first time I've seen the bi-polar map. Even stranger than the uni-polar map. It doesn't have an ice wall holding the ocean in? Lol

It also stands out to me that the equator line is the only normal looking, straight latitude line. It appears that if you sailed/flew west along the equator from South America, you would hit the edge of the world. I've heard no reports of anyone seeing the edge of the world, which must be that anyone who saw it fell off and was unable to report back, right?

[3DGeek]

Wow, that's the first time I've seen the bi-polar map. Even stranger than the uni-polar map. It doesn't have an ice wall holding the ocean in? Lol

It also stands out to me that the equator line is the only normal looking, straight latitude line. It appears that if you sailed/flew west along the equator from South America, you would hit the edge of the world. I've heard no reports of anyone seeing the edge of the world, which must be that anyone who saw it fell off and was unable to report back, right?

I think it's supposed to have an ice wall too...but whoever drew it didn't seem to have drawn it in.

But yes - the equator is dead straight...which is kinda what I was getting at with sailing due East from Borneo to get to S.America...you kinda need teleportation to get from one side of the map to the other.

[mtnman]

I think it's supposed to have an ice wall too...but whoever drew it didn't seem to have drawn it in.

But yes - the equator is dead straight...which is kinda what I was getting at with sailing due East from Borneo to get to S.America...you kinda need teleportation to get from one side of the map to the other.

So have they ever tried to explain how they think the sun would would rotate on the bi-polar model? I can't imagine what kind of zig zag path it would have to take to explain seasons and ice in the arctic/antartic areas.

[Curious Squirrel]

I think it's supposed to have an ice wall too...but whoever drew it didn't seem to have drawn it in.

But yes - the equator is dead straight...which is kinda what I was getting at with sailing due East from Borneo to get to S.America...you kinda need teleportation to get from one side of the map to the other.

So have they ever tried to explain how they think the sun would would rotate on the bi-polar model? I can't imagine what kind of zig zag path it would have to take to explain seasons and ice in the arctic/antartic areas.

It does a vague sort of figure 8. Rotating around the North pole during their summer and 'shifting gears' to the South pole at the equinoxes. I don't remember the reference material, but one of their suggestions for how it does so was literally just 'magic' so.

[devils advocate]

It does a vague sort of figure 8. Rotating around the North pole during their summer and 'shifting gears' to the South pole at the equinoxes......one of their suggestions for how it does so was literally just 'magic' so.

Of course, that makes sense Curious S  Why would the sun NOT act that way...................About as likely as it appearing to "set" below the horizon bottom first whilst maintaining the same size when it is actually still 3,000 miles up in the sky...........I'm sure Tom can assign his powerful "Perspective" argument somehow here haha

[mtnman]

It does a vague sort of figure 8. Rotating around the North pole during their summer and 'shifting gears' to the South pole at the equinoxes. I don't remember the reference material, but one of their suggestions for how it does so was literally just 'magic' so.

What? I mean, what?

So in bi-polar it orbits the north pole during the north's summer, then moves to orbit the south pole during north's winter. Is that they say? Is there an animation of this?

So when the sun orbits the north pole, we see darkness when it's over the other part of the flat Earth because of spot light sun. If it was orbiting the south pole, wouldn't it always be to far away for the north to get any light?

[3DGeek]

I think it's supposed to have an ice wall too...but whoever drew it didn't seem to have drawn it in.

But yes - the equator is dead straight...which is kinda what I was getting at with sailing due East from Borneo to get to S.America...you kinda need teleportation to get from one side of the map to the other.

So have they ever tried to explain how they think the sun would would rotate on the bi-polar model? I can't imagine what kind of zig zag path it would have to take to explain seasons and ice in the arctic/antartic areas.

It does a vague sort of figure 8. Rotating around the North pole during their summer and 'shifting gears' to the South pole at the equinoxes. I don't remember the reference material, but one of their suggestions for how it does so was literally just 'magic' so.

That kinda works with the unipolar map - but with the bipolar map, the sun has to instantaneously teleport from the western end of the equator to the eastern end around the solstice...and if you think about that too hard, you end up realising that it actually has to be in two places at once in order to reproduce the sun setting in the west in South America while it's simultaneously rising in the East in Japan.

Basically, FE'ers don't think too hard before posting their maps.

[Curious Squirrel]

I think it's supposed to have an ice wall too...but whoever drew it didn't seem to have drawn it in.

But yes - the equator is dead straight...which is kinda what I was getting at with sailing due East from Borneo to get to S.America...you kinda need teleportation to get from one side of the map to the other.

So have they ever tried to explain how they think the sun would would rotate on the bi-polar model? I can't imagine what kind of zig zag path it would have to take to explain seasons and ice in the arctic/antartic areas.

It does a vague sort of figure 8. Rotating around the North pole during their summer and 'shifting gears' to the South pole at the equinoxes. I don't remember the reference material, but one of their suggestions for how it does so was literally just 'magic' so.

That kinda works with the unipolar map - but with the bipolar map, the sun has to instantaneously teleport from the western end of the equator to the eastern end around the solstice...and if you think about that too hard, you end up realising that it actually has to be in two places at once in order to reproduce the sun setting in the west in South America while it's simultaneously rising in the East in Japan.

Basically, FE'ers don't think too hard before posting their maps.

I'm not sure what it does on the equinox, but this is a (very) crude showing of the two paths and how they intersect at the equator changing over at the equinox.


Yeah, it doesn't help it make any more sense, but it at least show's the two paths it's supposed to take. Sorry for the non-circles, I can never remember where to find the circle tool in any of my rarely used editing programs.

[mtnman]

Thanks Squirrel, that's about what I was imagining. So according to that, where I live in Georgia, I should see probably 2-3 hours of sunlight per day in the winter since most of the sun's south pole orbit is further away from me than it is at night during the north pole orbit.

[3DGeek]

I think it's supposed to have an ice wall too...but whoever drew it didn't seem to have drawn it in.

But yes - the equator is dead straight...which is kinda what I was getting at with sailing due East from Borneo to get to S.America...you kinda need teleportation to get from one side of the map to the other.

So have they ever tried to explain how they think the sun would would rotate on the bi-polar model? I can't imagine what kind of zig zag path it would have to take to explain seasons and ice in the arctic/antartic areas.

It does a vague sort of figure 8. Rotating around the North pole during their summer and 'shifting gears' to the South pole at the equinoxes. I don't remember the reference material, but one of their suggestions for how it does so was literally just 'magic' so.

That kinda works with the unipolar map - but with the bipolar map, the sun has to instantaneously teleport from the western end of the equator to the eastern end around the solstice...and if you think about that too hard, you end up realising that it actually has to be in two places at once in order to reproduce the sun setting in the west in South America while it's simultaneously rising in the East in Japan.

Basically, FE'ers don't think too hard before posting their maps.

I'm not sure what it does on the equinox, but this is a (very) crude showing of the two paths and how they intersect at the equator changing over at the equinox.


Yeah, it doesn't help it make any more sense, but it at least show's the two paths it's supposed to take. Sorry for the non-circles, I can never remember where to find the circle tool in any of my rarely used editing programs.

Ah - so during the winter, in the Northern hemisphere, the sun sets in the South.   Weird that I never saw that happening...like EVER.

Also, we know that the sun is vertically overhead all along the equator around the Equinox...you can't explain how the sun teleports from the western edge to the east - or how it can simultanously be daylight in the eastern and western pacific.

You can't explain where a compass points to when you're in Japan - or Australia...where it appears it'll point West.  And at the equator, where you can just barely see the Pole Star and the Southern cross - why they aren't on the opposite sides of the sky from each other - but rather at some other angle.

You also can't explain why airline flights from Sydney Australia to Santiago Chile fly EAST from Australia and not WEST over Africa as your map suggests.

How come the NewZealanders (who's poor little country has been stretched until it's wider than the whole of Europe) see the sun in the winter when it's perpetual night in antarctica.

I could keep this up all day.  This map is UTTERLY useless.   It's crap even by FE standards (and that's saying a lot).

The one skill EVERYONE here needs is "Critical Thinking" - when you come up with an idea, don't be satisfied that it make one thing right (Hooray!  We have an antarctica!) - you have to look at everything that's going on everywhere and ask yourself "Does this map explain EVERYTHING we know to be true?" - if it doesn't, then it should never leave your desk.
 

[Tom Bishop]

Ah - so during the winter, in the Northern hemisphere, the sun sets in the South.   Weird that I never saw that happening...like EVER.

Actually, the sunset ranges from the North-West to the South-West throughout the year.

Also, we now that the sun is vertically overhead all along the equator around the Equinox...you can't explain how the sun teleports from the western edge to the east - or how it can simultanously be daylight in the eastern and western pacific.

Why would it teleport? You are assuming that it must match perfectly with the globe earth model.

What observations can you quote showing that the sun is over the equator at all times during the equinox?

You also can't explain why airline flights from Sydney Australia to Santiago Chile fly EAST from Australia and not WEST over Africa as your map suggests.

How come the NewZealanders (who's poor little country has been stretched until it's wider than the whole of Europe) see the sun in the winter when it's perpetual night in antarctica.

I could keep this up all day.  This map is UTTERLY useless.   It's crap even by FE standards (and that's saying a lot).

The one skill EVERYONE here needs is "Critical Thinking" - when you come up with an idea, don't be satisfied that it make one thing right (Hooray!  We have an antarctica!) - you have to look at everything that's going on everywhere and ask yourself "Does this map explain EVERYTHING we know to be true?" - if it doesn't, then it should never leave your desk.

The problem is that your "everything we know to be true" demands that we assume that the earth is round; and you have not provided any data to show why we should accept the various assumptions you have presented to be correct.

[3DGeek]

Ah - so during the winter, in the Northern hemisphere, the sun sets in the South.   Weird that I never saw that happening...like EVER.

Actually, the sunset ranges from the North-West to the South-West throughout the year.

Also, we now that the sun is vertically overhead all along the equator around the Equinox...you can't explain how the sun teleports from the western edge to the east - or how it can simultanously be daylight in the eastern and western pacific.

Why would it teleport? You are assuming that it must match perfectly with the globe earth model.

What observations can you quote showing that the sun is over the equator at all times during the equinox?

You also can't explain why airline flights from Sydney Australia to Santiago Chile fly EAST from Australia and not WEST over Africa as your map suggests.

How come the NewZealanders (who's poor little country has been stretched until it's wider than the whole of Europe) see the sun in the winter when it's perpetual night in antarctica.

I could keep this up all day.  This map is UTTERLY useless.   It's crap even by FE standards (and that's saying a lot).

The one skill EVERYONE here needs is "Critical Thinking" - when you come up with an idea, don't be satisfied that it make one thing right (Hooray!  We have an antarctica!) - you have to look at everything that's going on everywhere and ask yourself "Does this map explain EVERYTHING we know to be true?" - if it doesn't, then it should never leave your desk.

The problem is that your "everything we know to be true" demands that we assume that the earth is round; and you have not provided any data to show why we should accept the various assumptions you have presented to be correct.

No - I precisely do NOT mean that.   I mean that when YOU come up with an idea about how something works in FE (like...I dunno...let's just pick: How Universal Acceleration works as an FET replacement for "gravity") - then you need to stop and think about how it works with other things that you've said about the FE - AND with common experiences that we all agree on...things like tides.

UA certainly seems plausible for it's initial goal of explaining why things fall to the ground when you drop them in an infinite flat world.  So you check the box and move on.

What you SHOULD do is to say to yourself..."Hmmm - this is an interesting idea - but let's think about it 'critically'.   What does it mean for other effects that would normally be attributed to gravity?"...then you'd say "Hmmm....Why do stars not fall down?"...and you'd add another theory "Because they are also being accelerated by UA"...and "Why to apples fall off trees?"..."Because they are 'shielded' from UA"...."Why do asteroids sometimes fall down (but not every single one of them at once)?"....and...urgh...well...UA doesn't really have a way to make that work.   Then think about how tides might work with UA...and again, you can look at tide data from around the world and see that there are two high tides per day - and UA needs help to make that work - but lunar and stellar gravity can't explain the timing or the second tide....argh.

But you don't do that...you take the FIRST idea and go with it without doing the "critical thinking" part.   That's why FET is all so very superficial...nobody is critically challenging their own ideas.

Same deal with the bipolar map - you see a flat map - it has BOTH poles and lines of latitude and longitude...and at the first glance, I have to say it looks plausible.  But you don't take that next critical thinking step and ask things like "Where would a compass point if I were at various points on the map?"  ("below" antarctica gets interesting because both South and North are in the same direction!)...then "Where would the pole star be in the sky at various places on the Earth?" - and you'd find places around the edges of the map where things happen that nobody has ever seen.  You never bother to even try to check things like airline flight times - to see if it's possible for an airplane to fly from Sydney Australia to Santiago Chile in 13 hours without having to go at impossible speeds.

It doesn't take much to realize that this map is a total turkey...its  even more ridiculous than the unipolar map.   In this case, you've been forced to abandon maps altogether because you can't find one that works.

Same deal with the sunset argument.  You have a quick superficial idea that this might all work out just right if the laws of perspective were different - and that's your theory.   You never stop to ask what other consequences these weird perspective laws would have (eg if you stood on your head and watched a sunset).    You stop at the first thought - and NEVER go the extra step of doing a little "what if" critical thinking.

Then someone like me comes along who just LOVES to imagine what this or that would be like if these ideas were true - and suddenly everything in your superficially designed universe falls apart...and every day people come along and think about it in ways that you never did...and more and more holes appear - patchworks of additional superficial explanations appear like band aids around the holes - but more and more holes show up and the bandaids peel off faster than you can stick them back down again.

THAT'S why critical thinking is important - and you need to do it BEFORE you start publishing a theory - not afterwards.

[inquisitive]

Ah - so during the winter, in the Northern hemisphere, the sun sets in the South.   Weird that I never saw that happening...like EVER.

Actually, the sunset ranges from the North-West to the South-West throughout the year.

Also, we now that the sun is vertically overhead all along the equator around the Equinox...you can't explain how the sun teleports from the western edge to the east - or how it can simultanously be daylight in the eastern and western pacific.

Why would it teleport? You are assuming that it must match perfectly with the globe earth model.

What observations can you quote showing that the sun is over the equator at all times during the equinox?

You also can't explain why airline flights from Sydney Australia to Santiago Chile fly EAST from Australia and not WEST over Africa as your map suggests.

How come the NewZealanders (who's poor little country has been stretched until it's wider than the whole of Europe) see the sun in the winter when it's perpetual night in antarctica.

I could keep this up all day.  This map is UTTERLY useless.   It's crap even by FE standards (and that's saying a lot).

The one skill EVERYONE here needs is "Critical Thinking" - when you come up with an idea, don't be satisfied that it make one thing right (Hooray!  We have an antarctica!) - you have to look at everything that's going on everywhere and ask yourself "Does this map explain EVERYTHING we know to be true?" - if it doesn't, then it should never leave your desk.

The problem is that your "everything we know to be true" demands that we assume that the earth is round; and you have not provided any data to show why we should accept the various assumptions you have presented to be correct.

timeanddate.com will help you find the position of the sun during the equinox. Try it.

[Curious Squirrel]

UA certainly seems plausible for it's initial goal of explaining why things fall to the ground when you drop them in an infinite flat world.  So you check the box and move on.

Just wanna point out once more here quick 3DG, the UA explanation and the infinite plane are mutually exclusive. UA has a finite plane that's being accelerated, the infinite plane Earth just has gravity that is normalized to 'down' by the nature of an infinite plane.

[Tom Bishop]

No - I precisely do NOT mean that.   I mean that when YOU come up with an idea about how something works in FE (like...I dunno...let's just pick: How Universal Acceleration works as an FET replacement for "gravity") - then you need to stop and think about how it works with other things that you've said about the FE - AND with common experiences that we all agree on...things like tides.

We don't agree on those experiences. I asked for observational reports about the sun, showing an example of where it would need to be in "two places at once" as you argued. You did not reply to my query, insisting that we need to "think critically" and assume the earth is a globe in all discussions, and that the need for observational reports should be dismissed and are not actually required.

[inquisitive]

No - I precisely do NOT mean that.   I mean that when YOU come up with an idea about how something works in FE (like...I dunno...let's just pick: How Universal Acceleration works as an FET replacement for "gravity") - then you need to stop and think about how it works with other things that you've said about the FE - AND with common experiences that we all agree on...things like tides.

We don't agree on those experiences. I asked for observational reports about the sun, showing an example of where it would need to be in "two places at once" as you argued. You did not reply to my query, insisting that we need to "think critically" and assume the earth is a globe in all discussions, and that the need for observational reports should be dismissed and are not actually required.

You have failed to produce a diagram of the location of the sun as seen from multiple locations at the same time and to confirm that timeanddate.com is correct for your location.

This would help you determine the shape of the earth.

[3DGeek]

No - I precisely do NOT mean that.   I mean that when YOU come up with an idea about how something works in FE (like...I dunno...let's just pick: How Universal Acceleration works as an FET replacement for "gravity") - then you need to stop and think about how it works with other things that you've said about the FE - AND with common experiences that we all agree on...things like tides.

We don't agree on those experiences. I asked for observational reports about the sun, showing an example of where it would need to be in "two places at once" as you argued. You did not reply to my query, insisting that we need to "think critically" and assume the earth is a globe in all discussions, and that the need for observational reports should be dismissed and are not actually required.

Since you have STILL failed to answer the question of how photons travel from the physical location of the sun to my eye at sunset (Remember you said you'd start that thread?), it's hard to debate any of this with you.

Right now - anything you cannot explain gets dumped into the "magic perspective" bucket.   You currently (IIRC) are claiming that the fact that we can't see all sides of the moon from different places on Earth (which would involve photons spiralling around in a helix) is due to magic perspective...that magic perspective explains how the sun seems to be at the horizon at sunset...that magic perspective explains why the sun doesn't get smaller as it moves across to some other part of the Earth AND why the moon, stars and planets do the same thing (but by some other mechanism...bizarrely)...and all of this while light is travelling in straight lines.

All of these claims have to be reconciled together - and that seems very tricky to me.

So let's get onto a solid footing about how photons get from physical location of sun to eyeball at sunset - then discussion can proceed in an orderly manner.

You DID promise to start a thread to explain that...you said that you didn't have time to do it right now (fair enough) - but you've made about a dozen posts since then - and I think that a clear understanding of how FET perspective works would clarify a LOT of arguments here.

[douglips]

What observations can you quote showing that the sun is over the equator at all times during the equinox?

That is literally the definition of the equator. At every point along the equator you can go there and observe that at noon shadows are directly under objects, showing the sun is directly overhead.

Here's the story of one guy who did that:
https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/05/educator-spotlight-use-shadow-geography-to-find-your-place/

You can find hundreds of photos of similar observations from around the world. You could travel to the equator at the equinox and observe it.

This boils down to my original question- do you or other flat earth theorists accept the definition of latitude and longitude or not? For hundreds of years people have observed the following:
- Latitude is the angle from vertical the sun makes at noon on the equinox.
- Longitude is based on time offsets from GMT, and is the east/west angle the sun makes at GMT. I would understand if you can't accept this definition for anywhere that the sun is not visible at noon GMT, but that still would allow us to talk about longitude over about half of the planet.

Here's an article on how to measure latitude and longitude:
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/society/politics-policy-people/geography/diy-measuring-latitude-and-longitude

If you measure the latitude as navigators have done for hundreds of years, or longitude as they have measured for a lower number of hundreds of years, even if it doesn't mean the Earth is round, do you agree that latitude and longitude lines (of whatever shape) exist?