1

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Aeroplanes

« on: January 16, 2016, 12:45:06 AM »

I have no bias in this discussion, I've always said that I KNOW nothing.  I only base my opinions on what I perceive within my own environment.  I do not for one moment profess to have the answers.  And I have the dignity to admit that your "fly example" has got me a little stumped.  I can see your point of view with regards to the environment moving with the 'object'.  But I'm not sure the inside of a car and the earth can be compared.  But I will again admit that you've given me food for thought there.  I will think about it and get back to you my friend.  And when I say think I don't mean look for a way out of it, I will do what I always do and look at both sides with an open mind

Your somewhat humble opinion and will to actually debate is the sole reason I botherd to actually reply to this post in the first place so for that part I salute you. I'm willing to debate anything, how stupid I still might find it on a personal level, as long as it's kept open minded, actual facts and logic arent ignored. I'm no physicist myself, but consider myself somewhat educated on the subject just from pure interest and curiousness as it effects us and everything around us on a daily basis. Maybe I could and should have went into more details on the aeroplane matter, considering my father actually was a pilot I'm quite familiar with planes. Though that question might actually be answerd now (with the train, fly etc)and its the followup on why the air is moving that's the issue to actually acknowledge the first question.

Also I appologize in advance for maybe not using the correct words and/or terms here, as well as spelling, cause english is not my native language. From my point of view I'm probably not the most suited to explain this either, as from experiance (regarding any possible subject) one can learn enough to understand something on a personal level, but to explain or teach something to someone in a good and easily understandable way you need to know it 10x deeper.

Doing my best to try and come up with analogies or examples that you could actually try for yourself, as I think that would be the way for you to actually feel sure about something, if you as you say base your understanding on what you percive.

You are the right the chalk line would not move.  Only because I would not be in the air long enough to lose speed.  If I could hover I would appear to move towards the back of the train as I slowly and steadily lost the momentum built up from being propelled by the FLOOR of the train.  If what you say is correct, that the air around the earth is spinning with it, what do you propose is propelling the air?  It must be a very clever force, one that can move heavy dense matter such as concrete, iron and rock and at the same time, light gaseous material at exactly the same rate whilst applying the same uniform force?  Physics denies you my friend

The chalk outline would not move even if you, and sadly we can't really test this as we as humans can't hoover, managed to hoover in the train for 1 hour. The fly in the car might actually be a better example. But there's a couple of other things you could try. Take a helium filled balloon onto the train (or maybe even better, in your car), that you just hold in a thing string, fishing line or the like. That balloon would essentially be hoovering in the car/train and you could see how it behaves. If what you said was correct the line your holding it in would not be vertical when the speed is constant, and the balloon would slightly pull towards the back of the train, it does not, I can assure you but feel free to try for yourself (asuming constant speed, no open windoes or other kind of forced airflows within the train/car due to say ventilation). You could see another cool thing if you do this properly with a helium ballon in your car as well, that when you accelerate the balloon would actually move forward instead of backwards, and move backwards when you brake (completly reverse to the way you feel or see any other objects behave in the car that have higher density then air).

You could try the same thing with one of thoose new popular small drones/queadcopters, if you somehow was allowed to fly it on a train

As a third thoughtexperiment: Say we could actually get a traincart the size of a hangar, big enough to fly a model RC airplane in it. Even if that train was moving at 200mph (constant speed) it would be no different flying the model RC plane in there, then in a stationary hangar (same as the fly in the car).

Regarding the air spinning. I'm not sure I know all the correct terms and principles in english words to explain this properly but I can give it a try. Its also hard to come up with (at least for me) a good analogy for this that you could just step outside your front door and try/see, as we're talking about things on such a big scale.

The short answer, gravity and inertia. You might have played with toys like this?
http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/10/09/10095f855a05759f17e9da5b5f0b840b.gif?itok=dSLvbtee
 
You spin it on a table either with you fingers or a string, and it will spin for quite a while before coming to rest (it also show the principles of angular momentum, but thats a different matter all thoghter and not really of any importance to this discussion (the reason why it doesn't fall over while spinning)). It could actually just as well be a marble that we set spinning on the table, for this purpose. Why does it slow down? Two main things, friction on the table where its spinning, and drag in the air. But if we put the marble inside a little glas sphere with vacuum in it, and managed to levitate the marble inside that glas sphere so the marble is just floating inside that vacuum. Now if you started spinning it, it would essentially spin forever, there's nothing slowing it down. This is where we have the earth, the marble beeing earth and the vacuum sphere space, as there's vacuum in space and earth isn't resting on anything there's nothing slowing us down, not even the air/atmosphere on earth however "light/thin" you consider air to be, there is no friction on the outside (space) effecting the air.

Thanks to gravity, that's pulling the air down towards earth however, there's quite the friction between just our air and the ground. How small this friction ever could be percived on a human level if you just go outside doesn't really matter, as there is none, nada, absolutly no friction on yhe outside of the earth towards space. Air does provide quite the friction/drag even if mostly think of it as "nothing", just put you hand out the window going 60mph, quite the force on your hand.

The friction between the actual earth/ground and our air/atmosphere is rather irrellevant for this point though, as they are allready spinning/moving at a constant speed. It would only come into play if we suddenly started to accelerate or decelerate the earth's spin (jumping in the train analogy). I would imagen that the key thing to wrap your head around here is that if we go back to the marble and earth analogy, if you think of the marble and the earth, its the entire earth with the air and our atmosphere that represent the marble, not just the "solid" part of earth that we walk on.

To try and answer your question more direct then regarding the "If what you say is correct, that the air around the earth is spinning with it, what do you propose is propelling the air?", There is no friction, no force slowing us/earth down (vacum, not resting on anything etc, like the marble levitating in the vacum glass sphere) so once we're spinning we don't need any additional force to keep spinning, we will essentially spin forever.

2

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Aeroplanes

« on: January 15, 2016, 03:37:09 PM »

Its not a "rapidly falling earth" in the sence that earth is huge, but of course its a factor. 


Your almost thinking right, regarding the train. Do the experiment again, but this time you jump INSIDE the train. Now, you jump of the floor of the train, if you did that in the middle aisle the doors to the next traincart would hit you quite quick and hard, if things weren't relative. You could hoover for as long as you want inside the train, but you would still be in the same place inside the train (asuming the train is keeping a constant speed).

As a second example: The train is moving at 50mph, you start running along (from say the last cart to the locomotive, for a sense of direction) the train at 10mph, relative to anyone inside the train, you'd run past them at 10mph right? But anyone watching you from the outside would see you run past them at 60mph. 


Now to translate that to the airplanes, they are all inside the train. To leave the train and "jump outside/on the roof of the train" like you suggest in your example, you would have to leave the earth's atmosphere, aka go out in space. And simply, planes don't fly that high/far out, so they're all still inside the train.

Sorry but it would exactly the same inside the train.  This can be felt as the train moves off and comes to a stop.  If you time a jump right (I've actually done this when no ones looking obviously lol) just as the train starts to move, you land a foot or so behind where you started.  If you could hover, you are no longer being propelled by the floor of the train and you will constantly lose speed and end up being pulled along by the inside of the door of the last carriage.

Did you simply ignore my line were it says "(asuming the train is keeping a constant speed)" ?   This would be the proper way to compare it, as the earth is spinning at a constant speed.

If you want to add in acceleration or deceleration in the mix, when trying this I'm sure you felt that when the train is accelerating you get pushed back in your seat, and when its decelerating you lean forward in your seat. Its even more evident in a car that can accelerate and stop at a faster rate then most trains. When accelerating, the train is accelerating up to speed, but you also need to start accelerate, and the seat your sitting in is pushing you forward brining you (along witht the train) up to speed, say the 50mph we talked about before. Now once up to speed, you will no longer feel pushed back in you seat, I asume you've experienced this as well? If not on a train so in a car. Whenever the speed is kept constant you don't feel any force pulling you forward or pushing you back in the seat, try it out for yourself.

Now stand in the aisle of the train again, and make chalk outline around your feet. If you jump in the aisle in the train now during the acceleration, when it start moving forward. The chalk outline would move. As when you jump, the only thing pushing you forward is the air inside the cart, and its not dense enough to accelerate/push you forward at the same acceleration as the train itself. You woulld actually accelerate even if you just hoverd in the aisle thanks to the air, but the traincart would have to be extremly long to bring you up to the same speed as the train. This you said you've tried yourself so I asume it makes sense.

But now try the same thing when the train has come up to speed and is moving at a constant and steady speed. The chalk outline will not move, you will be at the same place.

By this you can then see that the chalk outline is only moving when the train is accelerating or decelerating, and as the earth is not doing that (earth's speed is constant) you can't just take off up in the air and wait for the earth below you to move. The air you are up in, is spinning at the very same rate, same as the air inside the traincart (WHEN THE TRAIN IS AT A CONSTANT SPEED).

3

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Aeroplanes

« on: January 15, 2016, 12:11:22 AM »

....

Are you saying that a moderate breeze is more of a factor than curvature?  I can't believe that I'm afraid, curvature should have a constant affect on an airplanes journey.  At 500mph, the nose would have to be in a constant downward angle to keep up with the rapidly 'falling earth'. 

You speak of relativity.  I can imagine it like this.  If I'm standing atop a moving train travelling at 50mph, I too am travelling at 50mph.  If I was able to lift off from the roof of the train and hover, my speed would steadily decrease from 50mph from the moment my feet left the roof of the train.  If I hovered for several minutes, it's safe to say that when I returned to the ground the train would be long gone, but I can also say with some confidence that even if I stayed in hover for a year, I would still land in the same spot with regards to geography on the earth. 

Unfortunately, relativity does not work in this example, and I fail to see how a plane leaving a spinning runway is any different to me leaving a moving train

Its not a "rapidly falling earth" in the sence that earth is huge, but of course its a factor. 


Your almost thinking right, regarding the train. Do the experiment again, but this time you jump INSIDE the train. Now, you jump of the floor of the train, if you did that in the middle aisle the doors to the next traincart would hit you quite quick and hard, if things weren't relative. You could hoover for as long as you want inside the train, but you would still be in the same place inside the train (asuming the train is keeping a constant speed).

As a second example: The train is moving at 50mph, you start running along (from say the last cart to the locomotive, for a sense of direction) the train at 10mph, relative to anyone inside the train, you'd run past them at 10mph right? But anyone watching you from the outside would see you run past them at 60mph. 


Now to translate that to the airplanes, they are all inside the train. To leave the train and "jump outside/on the roof of the train" like you suggest in your example, you would have to leave the earth's atmosphere, aka go out in space. And simply, planes don't fly that high/far out, so they're all still inside the train.