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21
Chapter 9

We return to the transits of Venus across the sun’s face, this time in 1874 and 1882. As the author says, 1874 was not a great success, in some cases because observers were clouded out. He then claims that of the many measurements in 1882, only two were deemed especially fit for purpose: those from Bermuda and from Sabrina Land.

The observations made from Bermuda by astronomer John Isaac Plummer are easily found, but Sabrina Land? This is a section of the Antarctic coast almost due south of Perth, Western Australia, and the author dismisses the site as being unable to see the 1882 transit properly. That may be, but where are these observations supposedly from Sabrina Land? Who made them? They are not to be found.
 
The reason none are to be found is because they never happened: Sir George Airey apparently advocated sending an expedition to Antarctica but dropped the idea before plans for expeditions were finalised: Proctor relates this in Old and New Astronomy p262 and following. Hickson’s shoddy case collapses.

The author spends the rest of the chapter recapping the methods and results he vainly hopes he has debunked, but he has no more proved his case than when he started, nor has he even explained how Hipparchus et al were mistaken about the stars. There remains only his proposition for a “new” astronomy – can he finally redeem himself with a solid alternative to the astronomers’ methods and theories?

22
Chapter 8

After revisiting refraction – and showing no more understanding of it than in chapter 5 – the author fully considers diurnal parallax, as used to measure the distance to Mars in 1877 and thence calculate the parallax of the Sun.

The author seems to think Gill the astronomer only measured angles from Mars to a star in the evening and morning on Ascension Island and thereby calculated his result. The author repeats his confused contention that no angle could be measured because of his muddled ideas about astronomical theory. He is again mistaken in a number of important ways.

Back in chapter 4, Hickson made the important point, repeated here, that in the time between evening and morning observations, Earth is presumed to be moving through space in its orbit, as is Mars, so angles from a presumed baseline are changing in that time. He illustrates this with diagram 20 (page 46) showing his presumed scenario: –



Notice how Mars (M) has moved further in its orbit than Earth, in accordance with Hickson’s argument, but he previously illustrated this same problem with diagram 6 (page 20): –



Which scenario does the author mean us to use? Is Mars moving across the sky faster or slower than Earth? They can’t both be right. This poses serious problems for his argument.

However, the author seems to have settled diagram 20 in his mind, because he goes on to explain why he thinks that scenario, with Mars moving further across the sky in a night than Earth, is correct, because Mars moves east across the sky in its orbit anyway, according to Mr Hickson. Here he displays his ignorance to the world.

The casual stargazer will notice planets like Mars generally drift east in the sky from night to night, but the observant stargazer will eventually notice the planets change this direction and drift west for a while: this is known as retrograde motion. This has fascinated astronomers for millennia: all the astronomers from the ancient Babylonians to the present day know about retrograde motion and Ptolemy’s epicycles were introduced to account for it. In the course of an orbit, Jupiter and Saturn will show retrograde motion several times and Mars only once, but this happens when Earth is closest to the planet in question.

Gill made his measurements when Mars was at opposition, which is when Earth is closest to Mars, which is also when Mars is seen in retrograde motion. Had the author bothered to check Gill’s detailed reports to the Royal Astronomical Society he would have discovered this and saved himself a great deal of embarrassment.
 
Gill includes a chart of Mars’s position in the sky during his observations. I say observations because Gill spent months at Mars Bay, Ascension, observing and recording the planet’s position. The observations detailed start on July 31 and the last is in early October: –



There are more than two dozen stars in that chart, used over the two months plus to measure the position of Mars in the sky, not the angle of Mars from a baseline on the ground. So many are used because, as the author says, Mars is in motion during the period of observations, but while he thinks this makes the diurnal parallax method invalid, the astronomer is actually gathering data on Mars’s orbital movement so as to separate the diurnal parallax from the orbital movement. This is standard practice in parallax measurements.

From the chart, you can clearly see Mars entering retrograde motion in early August. The scale of Right Ascension along the top and Declination on the right edge clearly show the chart top is North and right is West. When Gill made his last observation in October, Mars was about to end its retrograde motion and return to the more usual eastward drift until its next opposition, about two years later.

Gill’s report shows that the author is wrong to maintain no angles can be measured, wrong to complain the motion of Mars makes parallax measurements impossible and utterly wrong in his understanding of planetary motion. Far from “exploded” (page 44), the “theory of parallactic angles” is vindicated.

And the author’s cheap (and unsubstantiated) crack about there being only 7½ hours between the evening and morning observations also overlooks practical reality: there are less than 10 hours of full darkness for observations at Ascension in August, September and October, so if Mars rises later than the sun sets, there will be less than 10 hours available for two full sets of observations before the next day.

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/39/2/98/1018889

23
Chapter 7

Heading this chapter “A Galaxy of Blunders”, the author boldly states the following on page 32: –

I respectfully call the attention of the responsible authorities of astronomy to this chapter, for it is probable that I shall here shatter some of their most cherished theories, and complete the overthrow of the Copernican astronomy they represent.

Hickson has turned his attention to the discovery of stellar parallax and the measurement of the distance to “the star known as "61 Cygni"” by F.W. Bessel in 1838.

Before examining the author’s comments, it would help to know that astronomers had known about parallax for many hundreds of years: Hipparchus, Ptolemy and others observed and measured lunar parallax and attempted to measure that of the Sun and the planets Mars and Venus, but no naked-eye observations of stellar parallax were ever made. Astronomers including Tycho objected to a heliocentric universe because it implied the stars must be at huge distances if no stellar parallax could be seen from a moving Earth (how curious –supposedly Tycho “unquestioningly” believes the stars are “infinitely distant” but objects to them being enormously distant? Hickson doesn’t address this).  The arrival of the telescope began to change that: Bradley mistakenly thought he had found parallax, as previously discussed, but as telescopes and associated instruments got better, they greatly increased the precision of the measurements possible.

Bessel, among others, had been observing 61 Cygni (which Bradley discovered was a double star) from 1812 onwards. The reason for the interest? 61 Cygni moves across the background stars, indicating it is nearer to Earth than those background stars: astronomers nicknamed it the ‘Flying Star’. This isn’t some abstract theory; it’s been measured and photographed for many years. This animated image is a sequence of nine photographs of 61 Cygni at one-year intervals from 2012 to 2020: –




Various astronomers tried to measure its distance, including Bessel, who used a heliometer to measure 61 Cygni’s stellar parallax for some years, but when he received a more accurate instrument he made his best measurements to date in 1837 and 1838. This time the error range was smaller than the measurement made and the result was publicised. Shortly afterwards others published parallax measurements of Alpha Centauri and Vega.

The author introduces objections to these measurements in terms of theories he claims all astronomers believe: the “Theory of Parallax”, the “Theory of Perpendicularity” and the “Theory of Geocentric Parallax”. Parallax is described clearly (page 35) and he “leave(s) the reader to make his own comments upon it.” – in other words he can’t think of a reason to fault this.

The ”Theory of Perpendicularity” (page 35) on the other hand is an invention of the author, because no amount of searching textbooks, encyclopedias and general works on astronomy has shown a mention of any such theory in relation to astronomy. He then reckons geocentric (or diurnal) parallax theory says the line from the centre of the Earth to a star is absolutely parallel to the line of sight from an observer on the Earth to the same star (page 36). It does not: –

Quote
geocentric parallax: the difference in the apparent direction or position of a celestial body as observed from the centre of the earth and from a point on the surface of the earth    (Merriam-Webster dictionary)

The author maintains the imaginary “theory of perpendicularity” together with geocentric parallax (which he misunderstands) mean a parallax measurement is impossible, but if a measurement is possible then the theories must be wrong. Since one of these theories is the author’s invention his argument is groundless. He would also be wrong in supposing Bessel measured an angle between 61 Cygni and one other star: he actually measured between the Flying Star and six others.

The author then introduces an extraordinary argument in terms of sidereal time, apparently unaware that we have kept time by the heavens for hundreds of years. He thinks that if an astronomer waited until the exact moment Earth is at the opposite side of its orbit from a previous observation of parallax, then the line of sight will be exactly parallel to that of the previous observation and no parallax measurement will be possible (page 37). He is still thinking in terms of surveyors measuring horizontal angles, not astronomers observing a star actually changing position against the background stars and his argument is lost in theoretical confusion.

Although difficult to measure, astronomers contemporary with Hickson were already calculating stellar parallax by making photographic records to more easily measure it: the number of stars measured would shortly reach a couple of thousand. When the theories don’t fit the facts, it’s time to check the author actually understands the theories.

Unbelievably, Hickson now states, “my case is now really won…” and goes on to claim this silly theoretical puffery means Earth does not in fact orbit anything. Since his arguments have been found to be groundless, we can ignore this too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/61_Cygni#Parallax_measurement

24
Chapter 6

The author mocks ideas about the formation of the universe and atomic theory, but we’ll skip all that as irrelevant blather. Hopefully he didn’t live to see the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

He returns to facts and figures (page 29) discussing the work of Johann Franz Encke of the Berlin Observatory, who collected many observations of the 1761 and 1769 transits of Venus – where Venus crosses the face of the Sun as seen from Earth – to produce a calculation of the distance between Earth and Sun. The author claims Encke’s figures were accepted without question, but he is mistaken – there was a good deal of argument over his calculations and as a result the transits of 1874 and 1882 were eagerly anticipated for more rigorous measurements.

What the author does get right is that Halley proposed (in 1716) the method of observing the transit, and from places as far apart as possible, but because Hickson insists the observers must be placed at the poles (because he has seen diagrams apparently showing this) – and weren’t – there must be “allowances” made which make the measurements invalid in his eyes. This quibbling does not help his case: if the baseline for a measurement is 6,200 instead of 7,900 miles or so, that doesn’t make the measurement invalid. Halley himself didn’t insist on polar observations, but suggested observing from Hudson Bay, Canada and Pondicherry (Puducherry) in Tamil Nadu, India. We’ll return to this with discussion of the 19th century transits of Venus.

https://www.nature.com/articles/010027a0.pdf
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44860644?seq=1
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/transit/HalleyParallax.html

25
Chapter 5

The author is very keen on triangulation, used by surveyors, to measure how far away a distant object is: he spends chapter 5 dissecting the measurement of the distance from Earth to the Moon by “direct triangulation” as done by Lalande and Lacaille, a pair of French astronomers, in 1751-52.

He goes on: – “…in making the final computations they made "allowances" in order to conform to certain of the established false theories of astronomy.” These “allowances” are first for atmospheric refraction which Hickson claims doesn’t exist. Plainly the man has never seen a mirage.

The second “allowance” he decries is for equatorial parallax, but equatorial parallax is allowed for only after the distance from observer to moon has been calculated. Astronomers want to know the distance between the centre of the Earth and the centre of the Moon, not just between the Earth and Moon’s surfaces. Equatorial parallax is no “false theory”, even if Hickson is unfamiliar with its use and ignorant of its purpose.

The author’s biggest mistake here is his imagining what these two astronomers actually did. “The moon was at a low altitude away in the west, the two observers took the angles with extreme care, and at a later date they met, compared notes, and made the necessary calculations.” (page 23) This is nonsense, they did not take their observations with the Moon low in the west but on the meridian: at the Moon’s highest elevation from the horizon. A surveyor may make most of his measurements in horizontal angles – which is what the author has mistakenly assumed happened – but astronomers also look up and measure vertical angles. Direct triangulation has been used, but in the vertical plane.

The author tries to cover for himself with an illustration in his book, but advises us to ignore diagrams such as one in a well-known book on astronomy from his day: –

I have occasion to call the reader's attention to the fact that some books, Proctor's "Old and New Astronomy" for example, in describing the principle of how to measure to the moon, illustrate it by a diagram which differs from our diagram 8. Though the principle as it is explained in those books seems plausible enough, it would be impossible in practice, for the diagram they use clearly shows the moon to be near the zenith.” (pages 23-24)

Here's the diagram from page 23: you can see the presumed position of the Moon near the horizon in the west: –





Now compare the diagram from p246 of Proctor’s book showing the vertical angles actually measured: –





Lalande measured from Berlin, not Greenwich, but the method is the same. The vertical angle between the moon and a plumb-line is carefully measured at both locations and the distance to the Moon calculated. There’s nothing impossible involved: the author merely demonstrates ignorance. His claim “the distance of the moon is no more known to-day than it was at the time of the flood” (page 26) is only bluster.

He also seems to think this was the first time measuring the distance to the Moon had been attempted, but it wasn’t. It was tried, successfully, by none other than Hipparchus in the 2nd century BC.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hipparchus-Greek-astronomer

26
Chapter 4

The author spends some pages on gravity, but this has been argued over in these fora so often and Hickson has nothing new to say, so I’ll pass it by.

He then speaks of Edmond Halley “…it is to him that we owe nearly all the methods of measuring distance which are used in astronomy at the present day. So far no one had seriously considered the possibility of measuring the distance to the sun, planets or stars since Hipparchus had failed away back in the second century B.C. but now, since the science had made great strides, it occurred to Dr Halley that it might be possible at least to find the distance from the earth to the sun, or to the nearest planet.” (page 16)

Hickson is referring to the diurnal, or geocentric parallax method and claims Halley invented it. This is fiction: Halley’s predecessor, the first Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed had already used the method to measure the distance to Mars in October 1672, the year before a young Halley even started his studies at Oxford. Hickson freely criticises the method and says it will be dealt with in due course (in chapter 8 ). We’ll leave his points until then, but readers are asked to carefully note diagram 6 on page 20: –




The author concludes this chapter with comments on James Bradley’s theory of the aberration of light. “If Bradley intended to prove anything by this theory it was that the apparent movement of the stars proves that the earth is in motion; which surely is begging the question.” (page 21)

What is the aberration of light?

It was in 1727 that Bradley began the series of observations which resulted in his discovery and interpretation of the aberration of the fixed stars. The general law of aberration, to which the apparent annual motions of the stars are subjected, is this: Every star in the heavens … travels once a year in a minute ellipse, whose major axis is somewhat more than two-thirds of an arc-minute in length, while its minor axis depends on the position of the star with reference to that great circle on the heavens in which the sun seems annually to travel. A star close by the pole of this circle the ecliptic has an almost circular aberration-ellipse; one near the ecliptic itself has an aberration-ellipse so eccentric as to be almost a straight line. But every star has an aberration ellipse of the same major axis. And that major axis, though minute, belongs to the order of magnitudes which are obvious to the telescopist palpable, unmistakable, clear as the sun at noon, to the worker in a well-appointed observatory.” (Old and New Astronomy: Proctor & Ranyard, p237-8)

https://archive.org/details/oldnewastronomy00procuoft

As telescopes and other instruments were refined and observing techniques grew more precise, astronomers were searching the sky for signs of parallax among the stars and Bradley thought he had found it in a regular, predictable movement of every star in the course of each year. Unfortunately, that movement is at right angles to the hoped-for direction of stellar parallax. Bradley finally realised what he was seeing was due to the finite speed of light and the movement of Earth in its orbit. Hickson doesn’t like this and tries to dismiss it in theoretical terms, but the movement is real and measurable by astronomers each year.

Bradley’s discovery killed off the Tychonic system as a competitor to modern astronomy. Hickson’s objections are overruled.

27
Chapter 3

The author now gets to the meat of his case by first examining the observations of Ole Rømer the Danish astronomer.

Ole Romer [sic] observed that in the case of the eclipses of the satellites, or moons, of Jupiter, the period of time between them was not always the same, for they occurred 16½ minutes later on some occasions than on others. He therefore tried to account for this slight difference in time, and was led to some strange conclusions.

These eclipses occur at different seasons of the year, so that sometimes they can be seen when the earth is at A (see dia. 3), and at other times when the earth is at B, on the opposite side of the sun and the orbit, {according to Copernican Astronomy).
” (Hickson page 10)

Let’s get a few facts clear. As suggested by Galileo, Rømer was taking observations of Jupiter’s moon Io, which Galileo discovered in 1610. Its orbit around Jupiter takes about 42½ hours and it passes through the shadow of Jupiter every orbit, therefore it is eclipsed about every 42½ hours. Galileo’s idea was to accurately record the time of Io’s eclipses to be used by navigators as a reliable way to tell the time and thus find their longitude. For some months an observer will see Io disappear as it is eclipsed by Jupiter’s shadow, for some months Io is seen reappearing as it emerges from Jupiter’s shadow. In between these months either the sun hides both Jupiter and its moons or Io cannot be clearly seen entering or leaving eclipse because Jupiter’s bulk hides it.

At this time the speed of light was unknown and was often thought of as infinite. Rømer discovered the time of the eclipse varied by a small amount through the year and the differences accumulated. Over months the differences amounted to minutes, but while Io’s eclipse timing got slower over some months, for others it speeded up. Rømer realised this coincided with Earth moving away from and then moving towards Jupiter in the course of Earth’s annual orbit and deduced light therefore had a finite speed.

The author explains this difference by differences in angle of view of Io at different times (page 12), but he has forgotten an important detail: Io is seen either disappearing or reappearing as it moves into or out of Jupiter’s shadow, just as someone stepping into a spotlight’s lit area is seen at one time from across the street, or from two hundred yards along the street. Viewpoint has nothing to do with it.

The author also carelessly states Rømer measured the maximum difference in time as 16½ minutes and so claimed light would take 8¼ minutes to travel from the Sun to Earth. This is not true: Rømer estimated the maximum difference in eclipse time at about 22 minutes: Hickson has substituted the answer an astronomer might give nowadays. His dismissal of Rømer’s discovery is invalid and can be ignored.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B8mer%27s_determination_of_the_speed_of_light

28
Chapters 1 & 2

After describing triangulation, as used by surveyors and on which the author is particularly keen, he introduces the astronomers Hipparchus of Nicaea, Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria, Nicolas Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei. As astronomers, their opinions and theories formed the standard views of astronomy in their times and Copernicus and Kepler especially laid the foundations of modern astronomy, but the author believes they all made a fundamental mistake: beginning at Hipparchus they all held that “the heavenly bodies (the stars) are infinitely distant.” (page 3)

The author never says where this saying is recorded; he only insists it was Hipparchus’s conviction and that the others accepted it at face value. We can’t check Hipparchus’s own writings, they’re lost; we mostly know them from Ptolemy. So, if Ptolemy, author of the standard text on geocentric astronomy used for 1400 years (the famous Almagest), built his theory of the universe while accepting this, you’d expect to find it in his writings, but you’d be disappointed – the Almagest doesn’t mention it. In fact, Ptolemy claims the stars are just beyond the orbit of Saturn, 20,000 earth radii from Earth (from Ptolemy’s Planetary Hypotheses, Hamm, 2011, p202).

https://classicalliberalarts.com/resources/PTOLEMY_ALMAGEST_ENGLISH.pdf
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/32069/1/Hamm_Elizabeth_A_201111_PhD_Thesis.pdf

Perhaps Copernicus, whose De Revolutionibus changed astronomy’s view of the universe from geocentric to heliocentric (although Aristarchus of Samos held this opinion in the 3rd century BC), uses this infinitely-distant idea for the stars?   No: –

 “…the chief contention by which it is sought to prove that the universe is finite is its motion. Let us therefore leave the question whether the universe is finite or infinite to be discussed by the natural philosophers.” (Copernicus: De Revolutionibus Book 1, chapter 8 )

Disappointingly, this is just the first example of carelessness with both historical accounts and facts to be met throughout Hickson’s book.

Tycho Brahe “differed with some of the details of the Prussian doctor's theory (Copernicus), but accepted it in the main; and took no account whatever of the question of the distance of the stars.” So says our author on page 7, but Tycho in fact devised his own theory of the universe, with Sun and Moon orbiting the Earth, all the other planets orbiting the Sun and the stars on a sphere surrounding them all: this Tychonic theory was the main rival to Copernicus for around two hundred years. He gave no figure for the distance to the stars.

Kepler was a gifted mathematician who developed his laws of planetary motion to explain the planets’ behaviour better than Copernicus, Ptolemy or anyone else had. The ancient theory of epicycles and all the other compensations previously used were done away with, replaced by elliptical orbits, but he doesn’t mention the distance of the stars either.

The author says of Galileo: “In the year 1642 he invented the telescope, and so may be said to have founded the modern method of observing the heavens.” (page 8 ) Galileo died in 1642 and didn’t invent the telescope, but he did start the modern method of observing the heavens – in 1609. Through his self-built telescopes, he saw the craters on the Moon’s surface, was astonished to see far more stars than can be seen by the unaided eye, discovered Venus has phases like the Moon and discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter. After watching these moons for a long time, he came up with an idea for using one of them to accurately tell the time – the constant problem for ship’s navigators out of sight of land: we’ll look at this in Chapter 3.

From observing the stars by telescope, Galileo calculated the distance to the stars was from hundreds to thousands of times the earth-sun distance. (Galileo: Dialogue, p359-360)

https://rauterberg.employee.id.tue.nl/lecturenotes/DDM110%20CAS/Galilei-1632%20Dialogue%20Concerning%20the%20Two%20Chief%20World%20Systems.pdf
 
Instead of astronomers originally thinking the stars were infinitely distant or unthinkingly accepting the opinion of their predecessors, the impression from reading their works is a growing understanding of how much bigger they each realise the universe is than previously thought; but you’d never know this from Hickson’s book.

29
Flat Earth Community / Assessing "Kings Dethroned" by Gerrard Hickson
« on: June 16, 2022, 08:22:04 PM »
“Kings Dethroned” by Gerrard Hickson, first published in 1922, is listed in the wiki under FE Literature, and I’m grateful to the member who mentioned it recently, although slightly amused by the presumed globe Earth referred to throughout.

Hickson makes some bold claims for his book, especially to have made a “remarkable discovery” and found a “catalogue of blunders”, stemming from an ancient error, which will presumably ‘dethrone’ the ‘kings’ of astronomy; but a hundred years after publication, do his “new and startling theories” stack up? Does he have important contributions to understanding the cosmos?

Let’s have a look.

30
Flat Earth Theory / Re: ECHOSTAR (Private Satellite) Earth footage?
« on: March 29, 2022, 08:13:47 AM »
…. You were given a text to review, offering an explanation and further insight into the foundation of my view as to why flat earth exists and space (as pitched by world-wide con men), does not exist.

An interesting read in some ways, but it would have been more impressive if you’d read Kings Dethroned with a little of the questioning approach found on these forums. The author is less than rigorous with his “facts”, free with his unsubstantiated opinions and just plain wrong with his figures. He kicks off in chapter 2 with Ole Roemer, but gets Roemer’s measurements wrong and his calculated results wrong too. This lack of care is to be found throughout the book. I’ll mention one more for now: the measurements made during the 19th century transits of Venus. The author states that only those made in Bermuda and Sabrina Land were used in the end, but if you look hard enough you’ll find the British made observations from Bermuda, but you won’t find observations made from, or an expedition to, Sabrina Land. Many expeditions were made to observe the transit, some successfully and others stymied by cloudy weather, but there were many more observations made than KD’s author concedes.

I don’t expect to change your mind, but I do expect you to check others’ opinions.

31
Flat Earth Theory / Re: Is there anything that RET cannot explain?
« on: April 06, 2021, 02:22:20 PM »
The plotting boards did not need to have highly accurate measurements, any more than your travel atlas.

Get me within 10 or 20or even 50 miles and it will be just fine.

If you got back to within 10 miles of your carrier group you stand a chance of spotting them and landing back aboard. But at 20 or even 50 miles ;D you stand an excellent chance of missing them altogether at a 200+knot airspeed. They’re not going to talk you in either, strict radio silence is the order of the day lest others are listening too. Unless visibility is perfect and you have a peregrine falcon’s eyesight you’re due a long swim.

The ocean is a vast place, accurate navigation was essential and still is. FE maps are as useful as a jelly sandwich.

32
Flat Earth Theory / Re: Is there anything that RET cannot explain?
« on: March 21, 2021, 10:48:52 PM »
Tom, in your quest for mathematical completeness I would suggest you avoid travelling anywhere by aircraft. These machines are designed by engineers who lack a 100% complete mathematical solution to the design of the structures and instead use numerical solutions. This is obviously shoddy work, just like the lack of absolute precision in the problems you mention in the wiki.

For that matter, numerical solutions are also used in designing your car: better stop driving too. Even when a numerical solution approaches 99.95% accuracy it's not to be trusted? This is ridiculous, such ignorance of practical mathematics is embarassing.

33
Flat Earth Theory / Re: Simple Experiments
« on: March 16, 2021, 07:45:40 AM »
Last time I looked the Moon was still a sphere, not a cone. The foreshortening of perspective makes it possible for a uniformly lit cone pointing to the right and slightly towards you look much the same as one pointing to the right and slightly away from you, but a sphere is symmetrical and will always look the same however it is turned. Look at a sphere from above, below or from anywhere else and it still looks the same.

A light directed at a sphere will cast a shadow on the sphere which can be used to tell where the light is, which is the whole point of this debate, and it doesn’t matter how the sphere is turned because a sphere itself cannot point. Only the shadow on the sphere indicates where the light is.

Just how does this help in determining whether the earth is round or flat? Are we only arguing this in circles for the sake of argument?

34
Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Let's do ships again
« on: March 05, 2021, 11:00:51 PM »
@tumeni & longitube

How would you alter your understanding/description if you were given/took sufficient measurements to confirm that the ship WAS in fact beyond the visible horizon when this picture was taken?

It is my understanding that pictures like this are not unheard of and they are beyond the horizon.

It’s my opinion that the ship is nearer the observer than the horizon in the OP photo, that differing reflections in the water between ship and shore give rise in this case to the optical illusion where the ship appears to be floating in mid-air.

I too have seen examples of superior mirages where the subject of the mirage was beyond the horizon, but long experience leads me in Thork’s example to conclude this ship is relatively near to the photographer.

If someone has other information about this example I’ll happily re-evaluate that, so if you have then I’m all ears.

35
Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Let's do ships again
« on: March 05, 2021, 08:49:57 PM »
Apart from the BBC explanation (much repeated elsewhere) you might find the local explanation interesting:–

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/ship-floating-clouds-cornwall-leaves-5070329

And I'll tell you a secret – the BBC don't get it right every time! You may remember another small mistake by a well-known BBC meteorologist: you might call it the Fish Effect.

You might also have seen another similar report from a Scot in recent days, with a similar explanation:–

https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/viral-man-spots-ship-floating-across-sky-heres-what-happened-2383287

I've seen similar things myself in light wind conditions over the years and it always causes a double-take until looking around at other clues solves the puzzle.

36
Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Let's do ships again
« on: March 05, 2021, 02:43:06 PM »
What fun! Unfortunately it’s not a mirage, it’s flat calm out near the ship and breeze stirring the water nearer the shore. Look carefully at the ship area and you’ll just make out the faint horizon, the real horizon.

Sorry!   ;D

37
Flat Earth Theory / Re: Looking for curvature is a fool's errand.
« on: March 02, 2021, 01:32:32 PM »

The boat and building thing is a given. This was meant to address those who think curvature alone prove sphericalness.

Equally, standing at the water’s edge or sitting in a boat with a clear 360 degree horizon is no proof that the world is flat. I watched the sunlight striking the mountain tops 20 miles away and moving down to sea level over the course of 10 minutes after sunrise. That’s more of a pointer to curvature of the earth to my mind.

38
Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why is there no standard map of the earth?
« on: March 01, 2021, 06:05:20 PM »
I guess my ideas are so far out there that no one will even ....

It’s nothing to do with how far out there your ideas might be - you’re expected to produce evidence or references which back up those ideas. Perhaps lots of us would be interested in the map you “cannot describe” but if you can’t even tell where to find it then yawn, next please.  ::)

Try to back up what you’re saying first: the rest of us are expected to do it and so should you. There’s more than you with “out there” ideas.

39
Flat Earth Theory / Re: Height of the Sun
« on: March 01, 2021, 11:58:56 AM »
Ah, but you haven’t taken account of Electromagnetic Acceleration or EA, according to which light bends up over large distances. This means your ordinary trigonometry doesn’t work to calculate the height of the sun above a flat earth. You’ll find this discussed in the wiki, as well as other attempts to calculate the height of the sun above a flat earth: they don’t work too because for some reason they don’t take account of EA either.

There’s an equation for EA given in the wiki but it’s not complete: one of its terms doesn’t yet have a value, so you can’t calculate the effect of EA to correct the trigonometry.

40
Flat Earth Theory / Re: Height of the Sun
« on: February 28, 2021, 11:33:47 AM »
At the Equinox (coming soon) on the Equator, the Sun is vertically overhead. At the North Pole the Sun is at a constant angle of about 23.4 degrees above the horizon at the North Pole..

You should check that figure for the Pole, it’s wrong for the equinox. Probably correct for noon at the summer solstice.

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