1

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Rowbotham experiment #9

« on: January 19, 2019, 02:59:07 PM »

The comment about causation and correlation is another example of “heads I win, tails you lose” reasoning.
The globe model can predict how far one should be able to see objects from if we know their height above sea level. Now, in real life there may be refraction effects which make it harder to predict exactly but some correlation between the maximum distance an object can be seen and the prediction from the model would build confidence in the model.

Rowbotham casts doubt on the model by claiming that there are lots of sightings from much further than predicted by the model. The counter argument presented was that the non-UK data seems to be unreliable and from a different source to UK data and the UK data does actually correlate quite well with the globe earth model.
Then Pete swings in with “correlation doesn’t imply causation”. Now, he’s right but here we are testing a model which claims a correlation. The criticism is that the correlation doesn’t exist, ergo the model is wrong. If someone shows that a correlation does exist for a section of the data and that other data had a different, possibly less reliable source, then that can’t just be dismissed as meaningless

2

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Dark side of Globe Earth?

« on: January 19, 2019, 01:23:44 PM »

I actually did what you said and i get your point, the ball is dark from this point of view. But I also see tons of light behind the ball and around it, so why is everything around the earth pitch black on the picture?

Because in your room the light is bouncing off the walls. In space there’s not much to bounce off.

And even with your point taken, what is supposed to prove to me that this is a ball we're talking of?
I did the exact same experiment with a round piece of paper and the result is the same.

Yes, from a single image a flat circle and a globe can be difficult to distinguish, but the top right of that image shows signs of globularity. That image clearly isn’t the whole earth, it can’t be night everywhere and where are the America’s?

God created this earth just for us, it's not part of a bigger universe, read the bible!

“The bible shows us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go”
Don’t read the Bible and expect it to teach you science, that is not what it is for.

3

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Dark side of Globe Earth?

« on: January 19, 2019, 11:36:39 AM »

*sigh*

Go into a dark room.
Turn on a lamp ideally one bulb.
Hold a basketball or other similarly shaped ball in between the light bulb and your eye so you can’t see the light bulb.

What do you see?

4

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Evidence for Universal Accelerator force

« on: January 19, 2019, 07:35:29 AM »

There is no evidence for UA. But if the earth is flat then gravity is a problem so something has to be made up to replace it. This is a bit like lunar eclipses. In the real world it’s the earth’s shadow which causes them. Obviously if the earth is flat and the sun and moon are circling above it then that can’t be the explanation so they make up the “shadow object”. There’s no evidence it exists, it has never been detected, but lunar eclipses happen so it’s another fudge used to explain something.

The reasoning is always
The earth is flat
This phenomenon doesn’t make sense with a flat earth.
We’ll make up a mechanism which we have no evidence for to explain it.

There’s a bit of circular reasoning in there because when you say there’s no evidence for the mechanism they use the phenomenon the mechanism has been invented to explain as the evidence.

It’s like me saying that magnetism doesn’t exist and when people point out that certain bits of metal attract or repel claiming that there are invisible pixies that pull them together or push them apart. When the people point out I have no evidence for the pixies I can say “but the pieces of metal attract or repel...”

Celestial gravitation is another example as is EA.

What is never done is to consider that a phenomenon which doesn’t make sense on a flat earth may indicate that the earth isn’t flat...

5

Flat Earth Community / Re: Samuel Birley aka Rowbotham

« on: January 18, 2019, 11:11:51 PM »

Even if we concede that Rowbotham was a competent doctor (at the time he was working, we wouldn’t necessarily use his methods now), I’m not sure how that adds any credibility to his scientific ideas. There’s no evidence as far as I know that he worked professionally as a scientist and his ideas are clearly motivated by a misguided attempt to use the Bible as a science book. His ideas have been shown wrong and he has been largely forgotten by history.
I’m not clear how his competency as a doctor is relevant.

6

Flat Earth Community / Re: Samuel Birley aka Rowbotham

« on: January 18, 2019, 04:06:35 PM »

Placebos don't cure chronic diseases overnight. Please point out a placebo that cured a disease.

Nor do medicines. You again show in this post you don't understand what a double blind medical trial is and why it's important.

7

Flat Earth Community / Re: Samuel Birley aka Rowbotham

« on: January 18, 2019, 03:37:51 PM »

I'll add this to the list of things Tom doesn't understand.

A controlled double-blind study is always preferable as it eliminates factors such as the placebo effect which can be quite powerful - if people are told that they're being given something which will make them feel better then they often do even if the medicine itself has no effect. That's pretty much how homeopathy works. A double blind study with a control eliminates that factor.

8

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: the ISS light in the sky is fake, right?

« on: January 18, 2019, 03:31:43 PM »

I went into a bit more detail, I assumed that the person got a measurement of 76 degrees from 100km and then did the maths as though that 100km was on a flat earth from the person who saw the ISS directly overhead. I then did the maths for what the height actually was given the same measurement if you accounted for a curve of 1 degree.
I was expecting the discrepancy to be quite small but it was actually much larger than I'd imagined.
I've explained my reasoning above, I may well have made a mistake somewhere (I did the first time!)

9

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: the ISS light in the sky is fake, right?

« on: January 18, 2019, 03:20:09 PM »

That was my gut instinct too but when I did the maths it did end up making more of a difference to the height calculation than I had anticipated.
Not orders of magnitude difference, it's not like a 93,000,000 mile away sun is suddenly 3,000 miles but it's about an 8% error
Unless I've got my maths or reasoning wrong which is entirely possible.

10

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: the ISS light in the sky is fake, right?

« on: January 18, 2019, 02:20:21 PM »

Right. Made a right balls up of the above, I've had another go...

So, A and B are 100km apart. The ISS is directly above A, B measures an angle of 76 degrees from the ground to the ISS. They assume that the ground between them is flat which forms a triangle. A-B is the base, 100km. The side of the triangle is going straight up from A to the ISS so it's a right angled triangle. The internal angle of the triangle A-B-ISS is 76 degrees which makes the other internal angle 14 degrees. Putting the known values into a triangle calculator you get a height of 401km



Actually though, A and B are on a sphere and although they are 100km apart they are 1 degree apart on the circumference of the sphere. So the total circumference is 36000km
(360 degrees in a circle, 100km is 1 degree)

Find the radius:

C = 2 pi r
so r = C / 2 pi
36000 / 2 pi = 5729.58km



Chord length is given by 2r sin (a/2) - where r is the radus of the circle, a is the angle at the centre of the circle (angle ACB above). That is 1 degree, so:

2 x 5729.58 x sin(0.5) = 99.998

So this is the straight line length between A and B through the curve of the circle.
The triangle ABC is isosoles so if the angle ACB is 1 degree then CAB and CBA must both be 89.5 degrees. That means there is 0.5 degrees between the chord and the tangent to the circle at both ends which we must adjust for. So:

A observes the ISS directly above him but adding the adjustment makes the angle
ISS-A-B 90.5 degrees

B measures an angle of 76 degrees, adding the adjustment that makes the angle
A-B-ISS 76.5 degrees.

The straight line AB is 99.998 so now we cancalculate the other sides of the triangle.



So...I'll be honest, this isn't what I was expectint but now the calculated height is 432km. I'll admit this is a much bigger error than I was expecting.

Have I done something wrong or is this just how it is?

11

Flat Earth Community / Re: Newbie

« on: January 18, 2019, 10:04:46 AM »

if you're scrutinising a video with the intentions of looking for anything that could be dubious then chances are you're going to see whatever you want to see.

What you have described in a lot of your post is confirmation bias, a well known phenomenon which Tom et al are extremely prone to but don't realise they are even when it's pointed out to them.

12

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: The Dark Side of the Moon

« on: January 18, 2019, 09:34:24 AM »

How many people died trying to go 300 mph in a quarter mile? Then how many trying to go 320 mph. It is relevant. No one dies because its all fakery.

18 people have died

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents#During_spaceflight

I don't know why above you are arbitrarily deciding not to count certain incidents.
As for why there haven't been more fatalities, there have been a lot of failures over the years but before putting people in rockets they did a lot of unmanned tests.
An argument from incredulity is not an argument at all.

13

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: The Dark Side of the Moon

« on: January 18, 2019, 09:23:21 AM »

This forum isn't about questioning any of those topics. Pete is asking you for items that can be verified in regards to the subject of the website. It is apparent that you are at a lack of answers and are just asking people to blindly believe.

Which brings us back to this article:

http://theconversation.com/how-to-reason-with-flat-earthers-it-may-not-help-though-95160

With regards to the flat earth you operate in the sceptical context
How do we know the earth is a globe? Lots of reasons, but one big one of course is we have plenty of film and photos from space.
So you claim that's all fake.
OK, but there are now hundreds of people who have been to space.
So you claim they are all liars, they are all paid by NASA and are thus "in on it".
OK, but 7 of those are private citizens who paid for the privilege.
They're liars too, they're just doing it for publicity.

And then you claim that the globe earth hasn't been proven. Well, not by those standards it hasn't but by those standards you can't prove anything. I'm not going to type out the whole kangaroo nonsense again but if I keep on declaring your evidence of kangaroos existing as fake and the people who have seen them as liars then I can claim you haven't proven they exist. It would be a ridiculous claim but it's logically equivalent to what you do with the globe earth.

And the point is no-one operates this way in real life. If they did they wouldn't get out of bed in the morning until they'd personally tested the strength of the floorboards to confirm they will hold your weight. Sure, the people who built your house say they will but have you personally verified it for yourself? No-one lives this way, you only do very selectively when it comes to the shape of the earth.
The only reason you do that is it's the only way to cling to your belief. It's logically inconsistent with the way you live the rest of your life.

14

Flat Earth Community / Re: Newbie

« on: January 17, 2019, 10:07:49 PM »

Another misguided loon who uses the Bible as his basis for scientific fact. Solid evidence there.

Can you show us where you have debunked every point and clip used in the video?

Unless you've debunked all evidence it remains as evidence.

I’ll bear that mind next time you dismiss videos which show FE to be wrong.
Like all videos of this kind, it’s supposition rather than evidence but your confirmation bias is going into overdrive.
What I always find puzzling is you simultaneously think space agencies have the budget to fake space travel and yet do it so badly that people with no training in image/video analysis can easily spot the errors.

Obviously the fact those people have a FE/conspiracy agenda is purely coincidental...

15

Flat Earth Community / Re: Newbie

« on: January 17, 2019, 09:12:19 PM »

There is plenty of discussion on this topic. Search YouTube for some opinions on the matter.

Another misguided loon who uses the Bible as his basis for scientific fact. Solid evidence there.

16

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: the ISS light in the sky is fake, right?

« on: January 17, 2019, 07:56:52 PM »

I made a bunch of assumptions but if you’re 100km apart and the ISS was right overhead one person and the other person got an angle of 76 degrees then if you assume the earth is flat you’d get a height of 400km.

If the earth is actually a sphere and you were 100km apart and 1 degree round the circle (actually you’d be less on the earth, but for simplicity) then the radius of that globe earth would be 5729km.

The chord length (given by 2r sin A/2 - the angle here is 1 degree) is 92.13

So that’s the distance between the two people in a straight line through the curve of the earth.

The angle of the other two sides of the triangle formed by the centre of the earth and the two points on the earth where the angle at the centre is 1 degree is 89.3 degrees.

So that means the reading of 76 is 0.7 degrees off from the straight line chord through the circle.

So we now have a triangle where the base is 92.13 (the chord length) and the angles are actually 90.7 degrees and 76.7 degrees (adding the 0.7 degree correction).

That gives an actual height of 411.01km.

I may have got some of this wrong. Apologies for the lack of diagrams. Will try and add those if none of you know what I’m going on about!

17

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: the ISS light in the sky is fake, right?

« on: January 17, 2019, 06:34:03 PM »

I have explained it. I haven’t done the maths for you. Are you not able to maths? If not I will have a go for you later.

18

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: the ISS light in the sky is fake, right?

« on: January 17, 2019, 06:27:35 PM »

The base of the triangle is the earth. To do the calculations you are using the maths of a triangle. That maths only works if the base is flat. If the earth isn’t flat then you have to use different maths.
But, and I don’t know how else to explain this, over fairly short distances like 100km (which is less than 1% of the earth’s circumference) the error is fairly small. Ergo it doesn’t invalidate the experiment outlined in the OP.

19

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Flat Earth Map

« on: January 17, 2019, 01:54:17 PM »

Still struggling with the screen resolution and monitor settings uh...still unable to comprehend how different resolutions render pixelation.

Totallackey, to clear things up for you, resolution doesn't matter. Think of a raster image as a set grid of squares with each square being a 'pixel'. In the image, no matter the resolution of your screen or however you see the image in different sizes based on zooming in or screen resolutions, the raster image will still have a consistent grid of squares which does not change. Each square in the grid is assigned a hex value which you will see represented visually as a colour. So for example a 300x300 grid of coloured squares will still be exactly that regardless of screen resolution. 

Correct. All resolution does is change the size you see the image.
And lackey is welcome to repeat my method and do his own drawing. If doing it on a computer is confusing him because of resolution red herrings he can do it on a piece of paper with a pencil and a pair of compasses.

20

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: the ISS light in the sky is fake, right?

« on: January 17, 2019, 01:33:34 PM »

All you need is the distance as measured on the ground to a point directly under the base of the object. And an object of known height. Position the object of known height so that it obscures all but the very top of the object having unknown height. Do the ratios and you have the altitude of the unknown object.

Correct. You can do the experiment in different ways. But all of those ways assume a flat earth, otherwise the base isn't a straight line and it isn't really a triangle.
My point was, and remains, that over distances of around 100km this doesn't actually introduce that much error into the method. But accounting for it will get you a more accurate result.