2741

Flat Earth Theory / Re: New to FE theories and have some questions

« on: February 28, 2019, 03:39:11 PM »

Again, we generally have very high standards and when we see someone screaming "illusion" we see that as a failing argument.

Like this dude did?

When the first photographs of the earth were published early in the early years of spaceflight, Shenton dismissed them as an optical illusion caused by a wide-angle lens which made the earth seem curved when it was not

https://wiki.tfes.org/Samuel_Shenton

And this page

https://wiki.tfes.org/Magnification_of_the_Sun_at_Sunset

Is basically one big "it's an illusion" that the sun appears the same size despite it's varying distance. We've been through that before, it's glare.
I notice that when you claimed "The celestial bodies are projections on the atmosphere and don't change size." you ignored my reply and manicminer's evidence that no, they don't:

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=13707.msg184167#msg184167

The planets do change angular size in a measurable way, if not a discernible one.

You claim to have high standards but it's notable how different those standards are depending on what's being claimed. If it's something Rowbotham said you accept it on faith and feel no need to repeat or verify any of his work despite calling yourself empiricists. If it's something which shows FE to be wrong you wriggle and wriggle and explain away the result and do anything other than accept you may be mistaken.

2742

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why is Nasa cheating us?

« on: February 28, 2019, 02:42:07 PM »

Show us how this sole tread of the Apollo boots:

Can make this footprint:

What do you think that photo IS?
Is it completely fake, a painting? If so then why the hell would they paint the lines in a way which apparently doesn't match the boot?
Which leaves us with the possibility that it is a real photo, just not really taken on the moon.
In which case do you think they randomly wore a boot different to the one they say they wore just for the photo?
Why would they do that? Just to give future conspiracy theorists a "clue"?
Or maybe, as others have suggested, the lines got twisted as they pivoted. That seems like the simplest explanation.

2743

Flat Earth Community / Re: Behind the Curve

« on: February 28, 2019, 09:24:28 AM »

I haven't seen it but really want to. I've seen clips. This one was quite funny:



I see Tom in S&C saying there should be some response as "The work depicts a poorly researched Flat Earth Theory", but that implies there's a well researched one and given the wild disagreements on here (one pole, two poles; UA, EA; there's a dome, there isn't a dome, etc) there's not much evidence of that. I've not seen any FE research going on. It's RE people coming on here and doing experiments which FE people then refuse to engage with or repeat.

2744

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Why is Nasa cheating us?

« on: February 26, 2019, 10:35:28 PM »

It's not possible to prove that someone didn't do something, as that inherently makes no sense or requires enormous amounts of circumstantial evidence. (e.g., prove that I haven't been in your home) Instead, the onus is on NASA to prove they actually went to the moon, which they have never done.

But you should be able to provide evidence that they did do something. The something here being that they faked the moon landings well enough that the missions have gone down as recorded history, unchallenged by the Russians and other 3rd parties who were tracking the craft.

All the “evidence” I’ve seen around this are vague assertions about shadow angles or flapping flags and so on, a lot of it is based on ignorance. It’s not compelling evidence but I can see how confirmation bias could make it seem so.

So it’s not prove you haven’t been in my home. You’re claiming you have been in my home and you have plenty of photographic and video evidence of the journey there and of you in my home. You also left things in my home and took some objects from it. In that circumstance if someone didn’t believe you had been in my home then they’d have to provide some evidence as to how you could have made it appear as though you had to the point where most people accept you have.

2745

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Shape of the Earth changes?

« on: February 25, 2019, 11:54:16 AM »

The celestial bodies are projections on the atmosphere and don't change size.

Some do. The planets do because as they orbit and we do the distance between us and them changes which means their apparent size does vary:

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

Note again that there's a difference between what we can perceive and what we can measure...

2746

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How is the Earth accelerating upward

« on: February 25, 2019, 11:51:04 AM »

This is where FE is a weird mish-mash of ideas.

Were the earth flat and gravity worked as it does in real life then it would act towards the centre of gravity so everything would be pulled towards the centre of the flat earth.
So clearly gravity as physics understands it can't exist.
So UA was suggested as a way to explain how things fall - they don't, earth accelerates towards them.
The power source required to create that much force to keep accelerating the earth is left as a mystery.

But then there's a problem because were UA a thing we'd soon be accelerating past the speed of light, which Einstein says is impossible. They resolve that by invoking his Special Relativity equations to show that we'd never actually get beyond the speed of light. Interestingly they ignore all Einstein's work which deals with gravity or declare it wrong. Only his ideas which conform with theirs are correct, conveniently.

But then there are other problems. The acceleration due to gravity, g, actually does vary with altitude and latitude because of earth's shape. Tides are caused by gravity from the moon.
So how is that explained?
Because things like the moon do exert a force on us, apparently. This is called gravitation, not gravity, although I'm unclear what the actual difference is.
And I guess this attraction is only one way (maybe that's the difference?), if the earth and things on it exerted a gravitation force on the celestial bodies then they'd fall on us.

Gravity is sneered at because we can't observe gravitons, but the mechanism behind celestial gravitation is equally unexplained.

On the Wiki page about this https://wiki.tfes.org/Universal_Acceleration
An alternative is provided to do with the infinite plane model but an infinite plane means an infinite mass so I'm not sure how that would work.

There is a sense that it's all being made up as they go along with no real method behind any of it.

2747

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Shape of the Earth changes?

« on: February 24, 2019, 06:32:38 PM »

Uh, you guys NEVER prove anything on this forum to contradict the sources given to you. It's like arguing with children who can't grasp the concept of evidence and the need to contradict it with equal or greater power.

Dude. In this thread:

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=13592.msg183526#msg183519

You asked why if gravity were a thing objects would accelerate at the same rate due to gravity regardless of mass. Your question shows your ignorance of physics. I replied explaining exactly why. Yes, objects of greater mass require greater force to accelerate them but the force of gravity exerted on an object is proportional to its mass

I proved that using classical mechanics the acceleration due to gravity is agnostic of mass and I even then plugged in the figures to derive the value of ‘g’. And that was the last we saw of you in that thread...

This is where real science wins. You can use it to explain observations and make predictions. It works.

Nothing can be proven to the level you demand simply because outside of the world of mathematics rigorous proof of anything is impossible. But it’s notable that you demand an impossible to meet standard of proof of anything which contradicts your world view and take on faith unquestioningly anything which confirms it.

2748

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Shape of the Earth changes?

« on: February 22, 2019, 05:32:28 PM »

As far as I'm concerned every REer does that too. REers love to caricature our answers the way you put it, and then twist any actual FE explanation to fit that narrative with no regard for what they actually said.

Every? I mean, I'm not denying some do, but I don't think I've done that.
The description of Tom above is exactly what he does. I have never, not once, cede any ground in any discussion.
But I've seen him walk away from discussions a bunch of times when he's lost the argument, only to pop up again in the next thread about the same topics with the exact same arguments. Just recently he questioned why objects fall at the same rate regardless of their mass. I did the maths for him to explain him and I used to result to calculate the value of g fairly accurately. He didn't respond, he just walked away from the thread.

The original post in this thread is nit-picking. I think what the Wiki is saying is pretty clear. Were the earth flat then you'd get a different result for the distance to the sun and it would be close (compared with the accepted 93 million mile value). But a close sun doesn't work for other reasons - if the earth were that close then its angular speed and size would vary over the course of the day but that isn't what we observe. FE uses some fudge about lights magnifying but the examples given in the Wiki show glare, filtered images of the sun eliminate this and show a consistent angular size and that means a consistent distance. RE doesn't need any of these fudges, the earth rotating and a distant sun explain all this perfectly.

2749

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Do most flat eathers believe in god?

« on: February 20, 2019, 03:42:56 PM »

Yeah, i agree they explain it but it just seems to be pulled out of thin air, just like the movement of the sun. Seems everything on the page they have come up with a conclusion before finding evidence then make but up the evidence to point to the conclusion.

Yes, I do find a lot of the reasoning quite circular.
So they make up a hypothesis to explain an effect and then when challenged to provide evidence for that hypothesis they use the effect as that evidence.
So one of the explanations for sunset is "converging perspective lines" (whatever that means), but the evidence for that is that the sun sets.

2750

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Do most flat eathers believe in god?

« on: February 20, 2019, 03:33:10 PM »

The FET doesnt seem to account for seasons, how would flat earth get Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter?

That is literally explained in the FAQ.
I mean, they don't have any explanation for how that works - what force makes the sun go in a circle or makes the diameter of that circle keep changing, what makes the sun speed up and slow down so that the day length remains constant (by 'day' I mean the day/night cycle, of course), if the diameter of the sun's circling keeps changing then the sun would have to be travelling faster when the diameter is biggest and slower when it's smallest.

They have no actual explanation for how any of that works, but that is their explanation.

2751

Flat Earth Theory / Re: New and something is bugging me

« on: February 20, 2019, 02:22:55 PM »

Regardless of form, the air is more dense at the surface of the earth [...]

I thought the sun was thousands of miles away at sunset? [...]

The Sun is also not on the surface of the Earth.

Fair point. But the light from it must be passing through quite a lot of the atmosphere near the surface of the earth.
I think you're an EA kinda guy, so the light is bending. But it must be doing so fairly gently so for quite a lot of the light's journey it must be going pretty much parallel to your eye at sunset.
I've no idea what path light takes in Tom's world of "perspective".

2752

Flat Earth Theory / Re: New and something is bugging me

« on: February 20, 2019, 12:52:13 PM »

New to this but something is bugging me. If for example, you put a giant sign on the west shore of New Zealand and a powerful telescope on the east coast of Argentina, if the earth is flat, would you be able to see if? Can someone explain to me why you can't or no one's tried?

Regardless of form, the air is more dense at the surface of the earth and makes it impossible to view beyond (roughly) 350 km.

I thought the sun was thousands of miles away at sunset? You seem to be able to see that OK.

2753

Flat Earth Community / Re: If a flat earth were proven - what then?

« on: February 19, 2019, 11:02:42 AM »

I get both your points entirely. The point of my original question is that I’m fascinated by the motivation for the FE belief in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Let’s face it - what we experience is exactly what we would experience living on an enormous sphere (and we can watch the Earth from space 24/7 on live-feed from the ISS). Why try to argue otherwise? I wonder what the value of the belief is?

I would encourage FEers to consider my original question seriously. Consider what life would be like not to have to argue for this belief (remember that in the thought experiment in the OP the question has been proven in your favour and universally accepted), what would life be like? In theory this thought experiment could lead you to realising its value to you now ie. the value to you holding the FE belief. Understanding that can open all sorts of mental doors...

Honestly, my feeling is if we lived on a flat earth - so ships didn't sink behind the horizon, the horizon was more of a fading out of the land/sea rather than a sharp line and so on - we would be currently be talking on the globe earth society board which would claim that the earth is really a globe. So their Wiki would have things like "Why don't ships sink below the horizon" and the answer would be some kind of optical effect about light bending round the curve of the globe to make it look like the earth is flat. They'd claim that all NASA's photos from space showing the flat disc have been faked, all the astronauts claiming to have seen it are liars. They would say that gravity is equivalent to UA so how do we know we're accelerating upwards when all our observations are of things falling to earth. And so on.

I do find the psychology of this interesting but it seems to be quite wrapped up in the conspiracy theory mindset, the idea that "they" are hiding things from us. Which they probably are, but this isn't one of them. And there's a section of FE believers who base their belief on the Bible and the (in my view misguided) belief that the Bible is trying to teach them science and they interpret certain verses as describing a geocentric flat earth. Ironically this FE belief comes across a religion with Rowbotham as their prophet.

2754

Flat Earth Community / Re: If a flat earth were proven - what then?

« on: February 18, 2019, 10:22:31 AM »

I'd be interested to know by which criteria they would claim it's proven. Given that, well, the globe earth has long since been proven. Were there any lingering doubt that would have gone when rocket technology got to the point where we could get into space and see the globe earth for ourselves.
Now, of course, it's possible that all that is fake but you could claim that about anything. I've talked on here before about the great kangaroo conspiracy - imagining a conversation where I deny all evidence of kangaroos existing, claiming photos and video of them are faked, people who claim to have seen are liars and so on. If you deny as fake all evidence of something you decide not to believe in then you can continue not to believe it and claim that it hasn't been proven.

2755

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Water spinning phenomenon

« on: February 16, 2019, 10:27:51 PM »

This thread is about the Coriolis effect. That effect is caused by the fact we're on a spinning globe.
Mentioning an experiment performed by flat earthers to show we are not living on a spinning globe but which showed instead that we actually are is completely relevant to this thread.

2756

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Water spinning phenomenon

« on: February 16, 2019, 10:21:24 PM »

Speaking of gyros, from the recent doc 'Behind the Curve'. Bob Knodel, part of the Globebusters team, takes us through their attempt to debunk a spinning earth with a pricey ring laser gyro. It didn't end well.

I saw SciManDan mention that documentary earlier, I'll have to have a look.
The two really telling parts in that clip are where he says that the results were as you'd expect on a globe earth and then says "but we weren't going to accept that". And then at the end where he says that the result is "confidential".
Surely the whole point of doing experiments is to learn from the results and publish them for peer review.

2757

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: February 16, 2019, 03:59:46 PM »

He’s a petulant giant toddler who couldn’t get his own way through the democratic process so has just thrown his toys out of the pram and circumvented that process by spuriously using powers which are meant to be used only at a time of genuine national emergency.
It’s all very “dictatory”. He fires people who don’t agree with him and attempts to delegitimise the press - the very people who are supposed to help hold him to account.
He is stupid and powerful, that’s a dangerous combination.

2758

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Water spinning phenomenon

« on: February 16, 2019, 09:29:41 AM »

In the 1960s a researcher named Ascher Shapiro claimed that bathtub vortex direction was due to the "Coriolis Effect"

So? In the 1880s someone claimed that the moon was translucent and emitted its own light which was cold. Strangely none of this won him a Nobel prize. People can claim what they like.

You are correct about the Coriolis effect not making your bath drain differently depending on the hemisphere you’re in, that is a myth.
But that doesn’t mean the Coriolis effect doesn’t exist. The effects can be seen on a more macro scale, particularly in the way hurricanes and tornadoes spin differently in the different hemispheres

Shapiro’s Bathtub

2759

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Definitive mathematical proof that the Earth is flat

« on: February 16, 2019, 08:46:23 AM »

You have to explain the attractive mechanism in order to claim that F=GMm/r^2.

No, you don’t.
You said this before, it was wrong then and it’s wrong now. I do NOT have to understand the mechanism behind an effect to observe that the effect exists.

Rainbows didn’t only start existing when we understood the way sunlight reflects and refracts through water drops to cause the effect. To understand the mechanism is desirable but it is not a prerequisite to understanding an effect exists.

2760

Flat Earth Theory / Re: An opportunity to prove NASA images are fake!

« on: February 15, 2019, 04:06:17 PM »

Your stating for the record you believe that CGI rendering (i.e., the movies Gravity, Avengers, Avatar, etc.) is done at once (i.e., all parts compiled for a singular shoot)?

I seriously doubt they sit there copying and pasting elements. If you were rendering the above you'd create the moon and earth parts as separate objects but when you rendered the final image you wouldn't render a moon part and an earth part and then copy and paste one on to the other. I'm no expert in this sort of thing, admittedly, but surely you'd get the computer to stitch things together for you.