[Tom Bishop]

Stars are so distant that they are pretty much a point light source, so no.

The article quoted on the page I linked says that this is false. In one example the angular diameter of Sirius is given as over one-tenth the visible diameter of the Moon.

I'd also suggest that the constant angular size fits better with the RE model than a FE one. Your explanation is to invent a mechanism rather than accept the simplest explanation - that the consistent angular size is because of a consistent distance.

Yet the articles cited in page above explains that the sizes of stars do not represent their distance from the observer, and that they are not point light sources.

This system depends on a spherical earth and the positions wouldn’t be accurate if it were not.

Not sure about that one.

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog862/book/export/html/1644

“ Welcome to Lesson Six of this GPS course. And this time, we'll be talking about two coordinate systems. And I have a little bit of discussion concerning heights. We've touched on that a little bit. Now these coordinate systems that we're going to discuss are plane coordinate systems based upon the fiction that the earth is flat, which, of course, immediately introduces distortion. However, much of GIS work—and GPS work as well—is done based upon this presumption. ”

[RonJ]

Stars are so distant that they are pretty much a point light source, so no.

The article quoted on the page I linked says that this is false and that the angular diameter of Sirius is over one-tenth the visible diameter of the Moon, for example.

I'd also suggest that the constant angular size fits better with the RE model than a FE one. Your explanation is to invent a mechanism rather than accept the simplest explanation - that the consistent angular size is because of a consistent distance.

Yet the articles cited in page above explains that the sizes of stars do not represent their distance from the observer, and that they are not point light sources.

This system depends on a spherical earth and the positions wouldn’t be accurate if it were not.

Not sure about that one.

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog862/book/export/html/1644

• “ Welcome to Lesson Six of this GPS course. And this time, we'll be talking about two coordinate systems. And I have a little bit of discussion concerning heights. We've touched on that a little bit. Now these coordinate systems that we're going to discuss are plane coordinate systems based upon the fiction that the earth is flat, which, of course, immediately introduces distortion. However, much of GIS work—and GPS work as well—is done based upon this presumption. ”

It’s not unusual for some concessions to be given to the guys in the field who can’t spend hours & hours making detailed calculations to be accurate to within an inch when it usually doesn’t matter much.  I would sometimes log the exact GPS position of the ship when we were at the dock in Japan and compare that figure with the one I logged months previously.  The readings were usually very close and usually plus or minus 10 feet.  Did this really matter that much on a ship that was 1000 feet long?  Many years ago when I was first experimenting with my sextant and learning navigation I started checking my work by using the known survey markers on my land.  I couldn’t get everything to correlate and spent an inordinate number of hours working out the details.  The results were that the survey markers were incorrect and the coordinates on my property deed were incorrect.  Eventually I went to my lawyer to get everything fixed.  We have known each other for 40 years and the other day he said “yea, you cost me $200 to get your deed fixed, with a smile”.  The geodetic system is an invention by man and as long as accurate maps can be made detailing arbitrary boundaries that everyone can agree with everything should work out OK.  If there’s a seamount in the middle of the ocean its precise position is good to know.  You wouldn’t want to run your ship aground and damage the hull costing the shipping company millions and the captain and navigator their jobs.   

[ichoosereality]

Signal based navigation which gives your coordinates is also based on the stars. Whatever the signal is coming from gets its coordinates from land based stations, which themselves have a known coordinate which was based on a survey of the sky at some point. The LORAN broadcasting towers had to know their own coordinates to be able to provide ships their coordinates via radio wave, which was ultimately derived in the traditional manner from celestial bodies.

I specifically stated GPS as the navigation system.

Also, the stars get dimmer near the horizon as the atmosphere builds up. The assertion that they don't get dim is incorrect.

But then why do they wink out at/past the horizon rather then just continue to get dimmer?  (I'm guessing it will be "bendy light" to the rescue).

[ichoosereality]

Stars are so distant that they are pretty much a point light source, so no.

The article quoted on the page I linked says that this is false and that the angular diameter of Sirius is over one-tenth the visible diameter of the Moon, for example.

I see two referenced articles and neither say that.
The Scientific American article explores the thinking in the early 1600's, when Kepler made this claim, but ends with:
"By Hooke’s time [1674] a growing majority of scientists accepted Copernicanism, although, to a degree, they still did so in the face of scientific difficulties. Nobody convincingly recorded the annual stellar parallax until Friedrich Bessel did it in 1838. Around that same time, George Airy produced the first full theoretical explanation for why stars appear to be wider than they are, and Ferdinand Reich first successfully detected the deflection of falling bodies induced by Earth’s rotation. Also, of course, Isaac Newton’s physics—which did not work with Brahe’s system—had long since provided an explanation of how Brahe’s “hulking, lazy” Earth could move."

Likewise the Natuilus article ends with
"But the story of the Copernican Revolution shows that science was, from its birth, a dynamic process, with good points and bad points on both sides of the debate. Not until decades after Kepler’s On the New Star and Locher and Scheiner’s Mathematical Disquisitions did astronomers begin to come upon evidence suggesting that the star sizes they were measuring, either with the eye or with early telescopes, were a spurious optical effect, and that stars did not need to be so large in a Copernican universe."

So unless you want to rely on 1600's thinking as your authoritative source, the claim that angular measurement of stars supports FE is simply wrong.  We well understand this issue today and the stars are indeed very very far away and not vastly bigger than our sun.

[stack]

This system depends on a spherical earth and the positions wouldn’t be accurate if it were not.

Not sure about that one.

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog862/book/export/html/1644

“ Welcome to Lesson Six of this GPS course. And this time, we'll be talking about two coordinate systems. And I have a little bit of discussion concerning heights. We've touched on that a little bit. Now these coordinate systems that we're going to discuss are plane coordinate systems based upon the fiction that the earth is flat, which, of course, immediately introduces distortion. However, much of GIS work—and GPS work as well—is done based upon this presumption. ”

Your article is specific to State Plane Coordinates and Heights, that’s actually the title of the article. The entire lesson/article is about how to account for a spherical earth in regard to plane maps while surveying. I’m not sure why you picked this article. It’s all about a projections of a globe earth.

In the United States, State Plane systems based on the Transverse Mercator projection, an Oblique Mercator projection, and the Lambert Conic map projection, grid every state, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands into their own plane rectangular coordinate system…

State Plane Coordinates rely on an imaginary flat reference surface with Cartesian axes…

Despite the fact that the assumption of a flat Earth is fundamentally wrong, calculation of areas, angles and lengths using latitude and longitude can be complicated, so plane coordinates persist because they are convenient. The calculations can be done with plane trigonometry…

Therefore, the projection of points from the Earth’s surface onto a reference ellipsoid and finally onto flat maps is still viable.

How State plane maps are created:



How GIS surveyors handle elevation factors when converting from a state plane map to the ellipsoid:

[Tom Bishop]

So unless you want to rely on 1600's thinking as your authoritative source, the claim that angular measurement of stars supports FE is simply wrong.  We well understand this issue today and the stars are indeed very very far away and not vastly bigger than our sun.

The author of the cited articles is clearly indicating that the diameter of the stars we see are spurious and illusions:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200402225228/https://www.vofoundation.org/blog/strange-tales-galileo-proving-splitting-stars/

You see, the disk-like appearance of stars that Galileo saw through his telescope was completely spurious. Telescopes have limitations, brought on by the fact that light is a wave. They cannot concentrate light waves down into a small enough spot to show a star truly (the scientific term for this issue is diffraction). Very small telescopes are particularly limited in this regard. That disk-like appearance of 5 arc seconds in diameter that Galileo writes about is entirely a product of his telescope. That disk is formed inside the telescope. It does not exist outside the telescope. And since it does not exist outside the telescope, it cannot be cut in half by anything outside the telescope. But Galileo did not know this.

This is, in fact, how astronomers first began to figure out that the star disks were spurious. They watched the moon pass in front of stars. They noticed (to their surprise) that the moon did not cut into a star and gradually cover up the star’s disk. Rather, the moon had no effect on the star at all for a while, and then suddenly the star winked out all at once (when the moon finally covered the true body of the star, which is just a vanishingly small point as measured from Earth). But at the time of Galileo and the Dialogue, no one had realized this.

The author is a professor of physics and astronomy:

The Scientific American article explores the thinking in the early 1600's, when Kepler made this claim, but ends with:
"By Hooke’s time [1674] a growing majority of scientists accepted Copernicanism, although, to a degree, they still did so in the face of scientific difficulties. Nobody convincingly recorded the annual stellar parallax until Friedrich Bessel did it in 1838. Around that same time, George Airy produced the first full theoretical explanation for why stars appear to be wider than they are, and Ferdinand Reich first successfully detected the deflection of falling bodies induced by Earth’s rotation. Also, of course, Isaac Newton’s physics—which did not work with Brahe’s system—had long since provided an explanation of how Brahe’s “hulking, lazy” Earth could move."

This is not on the topic of the angular size of the stars. There is a different page for that - https://wiki.tfes.org/Stellar_Parallax

Your article is specific to State Plane Coordinates and Heights, that’s actually the title of the article. The entire lesson/article is about how to account for a spherical earth in regard to plane maps while surveying. I’m not sure why you picked this article. It’s all about a projections of a globe earth.

In the United States, State Plane systems based on the Transverse Mercator projection, an Oblique Mercator projection, and the Lambert Conic map projection, grid every state, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands into their own plane rectangular coordinate system…

State Plane Coordinates rely on an imaginary flat reference surface with Cartesian axes…

Despite the fact that the assumption of a flat Earth is fundamentally wrong, calculation of areas, angles and lengths using latitude and longitude can be complicated, so plane coordinates persist because they are convenient. The calculations can be done with plane trigonometry…

Therefore, the projection of points from the Earth’s surface onto a reference ellipsoid and finally onto flat maps is still viable.

Actually your quote here implies that they use FE assumptions.

[stack]

Your article is specific to State Plane Coordinates and Heights, that’s actually the title of the article. The entire lesson/article is about how to account for a spherical earth in regard to plane maps while surveying. I’m not sure why you picked this article. It’s all about a projections of a globe earth.

In the United States, State Plane systems based on the Transverse Mercator projection, an Oblique Mercator projection, and the Lambert Conic map projection, grid every state, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands into their own plane rectangular coordinate system…

State Plane Coordinates rely on an imaginary flat reference surface with Cartesian axes…

Despite the fact that the assumption of a flat Earth is fundamentally wrong, calculation of areas, angles and lengths using latitude and longitude can be complicated, so plane coordinates persist because they are convenient. The calculations can be done with plane trigonometry…

Therefore, the projection of points from the Earth’s surface onto a reference ellipsoid and finally onto flat maps is still viable.

Actually your quote here implies that they use FE assumptions.

I'm not sure how this, "Despite the fact that the assumption of a flat Earth is fundamentally wrong" in any way supports FE. Using State Plane maps, which are based on an ellipsoid, are just simpler to use for these distances. But the whole article is all about how you get to proper elevation data based upon the ellipsoid whilst using a State Plane map. As seen by this, "Therefore, the projection of points from the Earth’s surface onto a reference ellipsoid and finally onto flat maps is still viable."

This is why State Plane coordinate systems in the United States use secant projections. In the case of Lambert projection, there are two parallels of latitude where the mapping plane cuts the Earth. In the case of Transverse Mercator, there are two approximately north-south lines that are not meridian of longitude. In both cases, these are lines of exact scale.


Tangent Case
Source: GPS for Land Surveyors


Secant Case
Source: GPS for Land Surveyors

Lambert & Mercator Projections:



This is all from the article you cited.

[Tom Bishop]

I'm not sure how this, "Despite the fact that the assumption of a flat Earth is fundamentally wrong" in any way supports FE.

The key word there is "despite". Despite that it's wrong (allegedly), it's used.

Using State Plane maps, which are based on an ellipsoid

It's the other way around. The spherical coordinates are approximated from plane surveying - https://wiki.tfes.org/World_Geodetic_System_1984

[ichoosereality]

So unless you want to rely on 1600's thinking as your authoritative source, the claim that angular measurement of stars supports FE is simply wrong.  We well understand this issue today and the stars are indeed very very far away and not vastly bigger than our sun.

The author of the cited articles is clearly indicating that the diameter of the stars we see are spurious and illusions:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200402225228/https://www.vofoundation.org/blog/strange-tales-galileo-proving-splitting-stars/

You see, the disk-like appearance of stars that Galileo saw through his telescope was completely spurious. Telescopes have limitations, brought on by the fact that light is a wave. They cannot concentrate light waves down into a small enough spot to show a star truly (the scientific term for this issue is diffraction). Very small telescopes are particularly limited in this regard. That disk-like appearance of 5 arc seconds in diameter that Galileo writes about is entirely a product of his telescope. That disk is formed inside the telescope. It does not exist outside the telescope. And since it does not exist outside the telescope, it cannot be cut in half by anything outside the telescope. But Galileo did not know this.

This is, in fact, how astronomers first began to figure out that the star disks were spurious. They watched the moon pass in front of stars. They noticed (to their surprise) that the moon did not cut into a star and gradually cover up the star’s disk. Rather, the moon had no effect on the star at all for a while, and then suddenly the star winked out all at once (when the moon finally covered the true body of the star, which is just a vanishingly small point as measured from Earth). But at the time of Galileo and the Dialogue, no one had realized this.

The Scientific American articles that is referenced from the fe wiki page you offered DOES specially deal with stellar angular sizes, but no matter.
So we are all agreed that the method of estimating the size of a distant star by measuring the size of the disk one sees in a telescope is spurious.  I thought you were arguing FOR this technique when you said

The article quoted on the page I linked says that this is false and that the angular diameter of Sirius is over one-tenth the visible diameter of the Moon, for example.

apologies if I got that wrong.

The distance to "nearby" stars like Proxima Centauri (4.24 ly == 4.88 trillion miles) that appear to move (as the earth orbits the sun) against the background of stars that do not appear to move can be estimated via parallax from opposed sides of the earth's orbit (see https://www.britannica.com/story/how-do-we-know-how-far-away-the-stars-are).  Much more distant stars present much more of a challenge, but even Proxima Centauri is vastly further away that allowed for in the FE model, isn't it?

[stack]

I'm not sure how this, "Despite the fact that the assumption of a flat Earth is fundamentally wrong" in any way supports FE.

The key word there is "despite". Despite that it's wrong (allegedly), it's used.

It's used because, as your article states, "Despite the fact that the assumption of a flat Earth is fundamentally wrong, calculation of areas, angles and lengths using latitude and longitude can be complicated, so plane coordinates persist because they are convenient. The calculations can be done with plane trigonometry…"

Using State Plane maps, which are based on an ellipsoid

It's the other way around. The spherical coordinates are approximated from plane surveying - https://wiki.tfes.org/World_Geodetic_System_1984

Not according to your article, "Therefore, the projection of points from the Earth’s surface onto a reference ellipsoid and finally onto flat maps is still viable."

You realize that "State Plane" maps refer to the United States only, hence the name. And you realize that GPS stands for Global Positioning System. And GPS is based on the WGS84 ellipsoid standard. I guess GPS only works in the US?

The State Plane Coordinate System (SPCS), which is only used in the United States, is a plane coordinate system (north-south and east-west lines are perpendicular) in which each individual state has between one to six zones, depending on the state's size and shape. This coordinate system’s high level of accuracy is achieved through the use of relatively small zones.
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-state-plane-coordinate-system-can-gps-provide-coordinates-these-values

Outside a specific state plane zone accuracy rapidly declines, thus the system is not useful for regional or national mapping.
http://wiki.gis.com/wiki/index.php/State_Plane_Coordinate_System

[Tom Bishop]

The Scientific American articles that is referenced from the fe wiki page you offered DOES specially deal with stellar angular sizes, but no matter.
So we are all agreed that the method of estimating the size of a distant star by measuring the size of the disk one sees in a telescope is spurious.  I thought you were arguing FOR this technique when you said

Apparently the sizes of the galaxies are also an illusion.

If something is causing the stars and galaxies to enlarge, and the perspective rules don't apply to them, the argument that the Sun would shrink becomes less powerful. Since it is difficult to conduct controlled experimentation on the celestial bodies this argument of what "should" happen exists as an exercise of assumptions.

Recall the quote on this page by Edgar Zilsel - "Natural events are usually compounds of numerous effects produced by different causes, and these can hardly be separately investigated until most of them are eliminated by artificial means. There is, therefore, in all empirical sciences a distinct trend toward experimentation."

Since it is difficult to do experimental work with the stars, and astronomy exists nearly entirely of fallible human assumption and attempt at logic, we can see that we don't know much.

The distance to "nearby" stars like Proxima Centauri (4.24 ly == 4.88 trillion miles) that appear to move (as the earth orbits the sun) against the background of stars that do not appear to move can be estimated via parallax from opposed sides of the earth's orbit (see https://www.britannica.com/story/how-do-we-know-how-far-away-the-stars-are).  Much more distant stars present much more of a challenge, but even Proxima Centauri is vastly further away that allowed for in the FE model, isn't it?

This is contradicted by the negative parallax that occurs.

[ichoosereality]

The Scientific American articles that is referenced from the fe wiki page you offered DOES specially deal with stellar angular sizes, but no matter.
So we are all agreed that the method of estimating the size of a distant star by measuring the size of the disk one sees in a telescope is spurious.  I thought you were arguing FOR this technique when you said

Apparently the sizes of the galaxies are also an illusion.

If something is causing the stars and galaxies to enlarge, and the perspective rules don't apply to them, the argument that the Sun would shrink becomes less powerful. Since it is difficult to conduct controlled experimentation on the celestial bodies this argument of what "should" happen exists as an exercise of assumptions.

Recall the quote on this page by Edgar Zilsel - "Natural events are usually compounds of numerous effects produced by different causes, and these can hardly be separately investigated until most of them are eliminated by artificial means. There is, therefore, in all empirical sciences a distinct trend toward experimentation."

Since it is difficult to do experimental work with the stars, and astronomy exists nearly entirely of fallible human assumption and attempt at logic, we can see that we don't know much.

I'd say that the consensus of astronomers/cosmologists is that in the last 20-30 years we have seen the birth of a new era of astronomy clearly departing from the era of assumptions and grounded in observations.  Not merely Hubble and Gaia but the vast number of space telescopes has revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos and that will continue with Kepler.   Since Zilsel died in 1944 we don't know his view.

The distance to "nearby" stars like Proxima Centauri (4.24 ly == 4.88 trillion miles) that appear to move (as the earth orbits the sun) against the background of stars that do not appear to move can be estimated via parallax from opposed sides of the earth's orbit (see https://www.britannica.com/story/how-do-we-know-how-far-away-the-stars-are).  Much more distant stars present much more of a challenge, but even Proxima Centauri is vastly further away that allowed for in the FE model, isn't it?

This is contradicted by the negative parallax that occurs.

Referencing your own wiki as authoritative  come on.

[Tom Bishop]

Apparently the sizes of the galaxies are also an illusion.

If something is causing the stars and galaxies to enlarge, and the perspective rules don't apply to them, the argument that the Sun would shrink becomes less powerful. Since it is difficult to conduct controlled experimentation on the celestial bodies this argument of what "should" happen exists as an exercise of assumptions.

Recall the quote on this page by Edgar Zilsel - "Natural events are usually compounds of numerous effects produced by different causes, and these can hardly be separately investigated until most of them are eliminated by artificial means. There is, therefore, in all empirical sciences a distinct trend toward experimentation."

Since it is difficult to do experimental work with the stars, and astronomy exists nearly entirely of fallible human assumption and attempt at logic, we can see that we don't know much.

I'd say that the consensus of astronomers/cosmologists is that in the last 20-30 years we have seen the birth of a new era of astronomy clearly departing from the era of assumptions and grounded in observations.  Not merely Hubble and Gaia but the vast number of space telescopes has revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos and that will continue with Kepler.   Since Zilsel died in 1944 we don't know his view.

Even under those claims, the spacecraft are still just observing, and not experimenting, on the stars to know their true nature.

It's also not only his claim that experimentation is required for quality science. See: The Scientific Method, The Scientific Renaissance, Roger Bacon, the Astronomy is a Pseudoscience page

The distance to "nearby" stars like Proxima Centauri (4.24 ly == 4.88 trillion miles) that appear to move (as the earth orbits the sun) against the background of stars that do not appear to move can be estimated via parallax from opposed sides of the earth's orbit (see https://www.britannica.com/story/how-do-we-know-how-far-away-the-stars-are).  Much more distant stars present much more of a challenge, but even Proxima Centauri is vastly further away that allowed for in the FE model, isn't it?

This is contradicted by the negative parallax that occurs.

Referencing your own wiki as authoritative  come on.

In many cases the Wiki does not provide content of its own, and its pages are references of sources. I could simply just spam it all here; but I am kind enough to allow you to go there to organized pages with organized sections and see that you are incorrect.

Avoiding addressing the content linked to you is a very weak debate tactic.

[Tom Bishop]

It's used because, as your article states, "Despite the fact that the assumption of a flat Earth is fundamentally wrong, calculation of areas, angles and lengths using latitude and longitude can be complicated, so plane coordinates persist because they are convenient. The calculations can be done with plane trigonometry…"

The reason why they think or assert they are using it is rather irrelevant compared to the main point that they are using it.

It's the other way around. The spherical coordinates are approximated from plane surveying - https://wiki.tfes.org/World_Geodetic_System_1984

Not according to your article, "Therefore, the projection of points from the Earth’s surface onto a reference ellipsoid and finally onto flat maps is still viable."

Actually your quote was not about plane surveying. The page I link chronicles how the maps are flat, plane surveying is flat, and that the idealized spherical world model is based upon those flat maps.

You realize that "State Plane" maps refer to the United States only, hence the name. And you realize that GPS stands for Global Positioning System. And GPS is based on the WGS84 ellipsoid standard. I guess GPS only works in the US?

The State Plane Coordinate System (SPCS), which is only used in the United States, is a plane coordinate system (north-south and east-west lines are perpendicular) in which each individual state has between one to six zones, depending on the state's size and shape. This coordinate system’s high level of accuracy is achieved through the use of relatively small zones.

Other countries have their own mapping systems, and they are flat. Again, it's explained in the page I linked.

The point is that the supposedly "round" systems use flat systems for presenting data to users. Utah Geographic Reference Center wrote an article about it: The Earth is Not Round! Utah, NAD83 and WebMercator Projections

The spherical models are getting data from flat datasets. When you claim that the systems are inaccurate because they are using flat data you are betraying your own proof of using these systems as evidence for a spherical model.

[AATW]

If something is causing the stars and galaxies to enlarge, and the perspective rules don't apply to them, the argument that the Sun would shrink becomes less powerful. Since it is difficult to conduct controlled experimentation on the celestial bodies this argument of what "should" happen exists as an exercise of assumptions.

Your arguments are all over the place. I said:

Stars are so distant that they are pretty much a point light source, so no.

You replied:

The article quoted on [my own wiki which I wrote and everything] says that this is false. In one example the angular diameter of Sirius is given as over one-tenth the visible diameter of the Moon.

And then literally in the same page you say:

The author of the cited articles is clearly indicating that the diameter of the stars we see are spurious and illusions

And quote this article, by someone you hold up as an authority. The article you quoted says:

the true body of the star, which is just a vanishingly small point as measured from Earth). But at the time of Galileo and the Dialogue, no one had realized this.

My emphasis. So you've started off by disagreeing with a point I made and then almost immediately quoted someone you hold as an authority who says pretty much the same as what I did

And this issue, which is now well understood, does not apply to the sun and moon which are a lot closer than other celestial objects like other stars and galaxies. It's nothing to do with "celestial objects" being special in any way, it's an issue with diffraction of point light sources. So you still need to explain why the sun and moon don't vary in angular size throughout the day and night. You have some explanation on the Wiki, I've explained why it doesn't work.

You keep trying to derail this thread, which is about maps.
Can you explain how the technology which you concede can tell us accurately our co-ordinates can work unless it has accurate maps which tell it where those co-ordinates are and how far apart they are from other co-ordinates?

[ichoosereality]

Even under those claims, the spacecraft are still just observing, and not experimenting, on the stars to know their true nature.

Experiments are of course good, but observations alone are very useful as at least those tell us what exists and whether or not they match predictions.   Gravity probe B was designed specifically to directly observe the curvature of space and it was successful and confirmed General Relativey on this point as well as Frame Dragging (which I would likely not try to explain even if I understood it, which I do not).

The actual paper by Maxim Sukharev about pseudoscience does not insist on an experiment where all conditions can be controlled but only experimentally testable (i.e. observable) results as to whether or not they match prediction (in his example that our cave got dark at the predicted time or in a more modern example that Gravity Probe B would detect a particular curvature, which it did).

1. Observe – sometimes it is dark in our cave and sometimes we see the light.
2. Question – we then question these observations as to why we see periodic changes.
3. Hypothesis – we need a possible explanation based on our previously acquired knowledge.
At early stage any hypothesis would work (but remember that it is better to propose simple
and logical hypotheses because they are easier to verify experimentally).
4. Predict – this is where it gets really interesting! In order to test our hypothesis, however mystical and crazy it may look, we need to make an experimentally testable prediction: in
10 hours it is going to be dark again.
5. Test predictions – well, is it dark? It is vital in this method that a given test must be done
objectively and could be independently repeated. This is where the scientific method truly distinguishes between what is real (objective) and what is just a figure of our imagination (or fraudulent attempt).
6. Draw a conclusion – if our prediction was successfully verified, we keep our hypothesis for now and come up with another possible test until we either disprove it or promote it to the level of theory.

Clearly FE theory falls very flat (pun intended) on this score.

• FET predicts some sort of atmospheric containment mechanism (all encompassing dome, 70 mile high ice wall, infinite plane, or ...) at the rim of the claimed flat disk yet despite centuries of travel no such thing has ever been observed.
• FET predicts distances and hence travel times that are significantly different from RET times particularly from the equator to the "rim" (which ever hemisphere your favored FE model uses), yet again after centuries of travel the FET times are not observed while RET times and distances fit perfectly.
• FET can not deal with sunrise and sunset (or star rise and set) without "bendy light" which is not even specified sufficiently to make a testable prediction.

Does not the methodology laid out by Sukharev clearly show FET to be false?

It's also not only his claim that experimentation is required for quality science. See: The Scientific Method, The Scientific Renaissance, Roger Bacon, the Astronomy is a Pseudoscience page

Interesting that none of these references call out modern astronomy as a pseudoscience.  Stanford University doesn't seem to have an issue with the observational nature of astronomy https://physics.stanford.edu/research/experimental-and-observational-astrophysics-and-cosmology.

The distance to "nearby" stars like Proxima Centauri (4.24 ly == 4.88 trillion miles) that appear to move (as the earth orbits the sun) against the background of stars that do not appear to move can be estimated via parallax from opposed sides of the earth's orbit (see https://www.britannica.com/story/how-do-we-know-how-far-away-the-stars-are).  Much more distant stars present much more of a challenge, but even Proxima Centauri is vastly further away that allowed for in the FE model, isn't it?

This is contradicted by the negative parallax that occurs.

This appears to be self published.  Further it is about the claim that stellar parallax proves the earth orbits the sun, which is not at issue here.  This is a classic technique of the FE crowed.  Find some snippet in some paper that you think supports your case.  But its the scientific consensus that we lay folks need to pay attention too.

In many cases the Wiki does not provide content of its own, and its pages are references of sources. I could simply just spam it all here; but I am kind enough to allow you to go there to organized pages with organized sections and see that you are incorrect.

Avoiding addressing the content linked to you is a very weak debate tactic.

Offering quotes from people who died centuries ago (Bacon for example) as support for your claims (particularly around things like modern astronomy that Bacon could not have dreamed of) is hardly a strong debate tactic.

[stack]

It's used because, as your article states, "Despite the fact that the assumption of a flat Earth is fundamentally wrong, calculation of areas, angles and lengths using latitude and longitude can be complicated, so plane coordinates persist because they are convenient. The calculations can be done with plane trigonometry…"

The reason why they think or assert they are using it is rather irrelevant compared to the main point that they are using it.

Why would the reason for using something be irrelevant to using something?

It's the other way around. The spherical coordinates are approximated from plane surveying - https://wiki.tfes.org/World_Geodetic_System_1984

Not according to your article, "Therefore, the projection of points from the Earth’s surface onto a reference ellipsoid and finally onto flat maps is still viable."

Actually your quote was not about plane surveying. The page I link chronicles how the maps are flat, plane surveying is flat, and that the idealized spherical world model is based upon those flat maps.

Where does it say in the article that "the idealized spherical world model is based upon those flat maps."? I can't find that anywhere.

You realize that "State Plane" maps refer to the United States only, hence the name. And you realize that GPS stands for Global Positioning System. And GPS is based on the WGS84 ellipsoid standard. I guess GPS only works in the US?

The State Plane Coordinate System (SPCS), which is only used in the United States, is a plane coordinate system (north-south and east-west lines are perpendicular) in which each individual state has between one to six zones, depending on the state's size and shape. This coordinate system’s high level of accuracy is achieved through the use of relatively small zones.

Other countries have their own mapping systems, and they are flat. Again, it's explained in the page I linked.

What mapping systems are those. Other than UTM, I couldn't find any in the article.

The point is that the supposedly "round" systems use flat systems for presenting data to users. Utah Geographic Reference Center wrote an article about it: The Earth is Not Round! Utah, NAD83 and WebMercator Projections

The spherical models are getting data from flat datasets. When you claim that the systems are inaccurate because they are using flat data you are betraying your own proof of using these systems as evidence for a spherical model.

You are wrong. The State Plane mapping system was developed in the 1930's. It uses two globe projections, both spherical, Lambert Conformal & Transverse Mercator, depending on the State shape.

This coordinate system is referred to here as the State Plane Coordinate System of 1927 (SPCS 27). It is based on a network of geodetic control points referred to as the North American Datum of 1927 (NAD 1927 or NAD27).
https://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/10.3/guide-books/map-projections/state-plane-coordinate-system.htm#GUID-6233DDDC-9ABF-48AB-AE30-04DC268229C9

Originally, the state plane coordinate systems were based on the North American Datum of 1927 (NAD27)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Plane_Coordinate_System

The North American Datum (NAD) is the horizontal datum now used to define the geodetic network in North America. A datum is a formal description of the shape of the Earth along with an "anchor" point for the coordinate system.

n 1887 the English surveyor Colonel Alexander Ross Clarke CB FRS RE was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Society for his work in determining the figure of the Earth. The international ellipsoid was developed by John Fillmore Hayford in 1910 and adopted by the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) in 1924, which recommended it for international use.

In 1901 the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey adopted a national horizontal datum called the United States Standard Datum, based on the Clarke Ellipsoid of 1866

As more data were gathered, discrepancies appeared, so the datum was recomputed in 1927, using the same spheroid and origin as its predecessor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Datum

From NOAA's 'Manual NOS NGS5' titled, "State Plane Coordinate System 1983", dated 1990:

Not only will the published geodetic position of each control point change, but the State plane coordinates will change for the following reasons:

- The plane coordinates are mathematically derived (using "mapping equations") from Geodetic coordinates:.

Geodetic Coordinates

Geodetic coordinates are a type of curvilinear orthogonal coordinate system used in geodesy based on a reference ellipsoid.

So you see, sorry, you are wrong. The Ellipsoid datums and spherical projections are what were (are) used as the underlying structure of the State Plane map system. Not the other way around as you contend. Not to mention the original reference ellipsoid used pre-dates State Plan map creation by 60+ years.

[Tom Bishop]

I said:

Stars are so distant that they are pretty much a point light source, so no.

You replied:

The article quoted on [my own wiki which I wrote and everything] says that this is false. In one example the angular diameter of Sirius is given as over one-tenth the visible diameter of the Moon.

And then literally in the same page you say:

The author of the cited articles is clearly indicating that the diameter of the stars we see are spurious and illusions

And quote this article, by someone you hold up as an authority. The article you quoted says:

the true body of the star, which is just a vanishingly small point as measured from Earth). But at the time of Galileo and the Dialogue, no one had realized this.

My emphasis. So you've started off by disagreeing with a point I made and then almost immediately quoted someone you hold as an authority who says pretty much the same as what I did

Actually he says that the stars appear as measurable disks in telescopes:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200402225228/https://www.vofoundation.org/blog/strange-tales-galileo-proving-splitting-stars/

You see, the disk-like appearance of stars that Galileo saw through his telescope was completely spurious. Telescopes have limitations, brought on by the fact that light is a wave. They cannot concentrate light waves down into a small enough spot to show a star truly (the scientific term for this issue is diffraction). Very small telescopes are particularly limited in this regard. That disk-like appearance of 5 arc seconds in diameter that Galileo writes about is entirely a product of his telescope. That disk is formed inside the telescope. It does not exist outside the telescope. And since it does not exist outside the telescope, it cannot be cut in half by anything outside the telescope. But Galileo did not know this.

This is, in fact, how astronomers first began to figure out that the star disks were spurious. They watched the moon pass in front of stars. They noticed (to their surprise) that the moon did not cut into a star and gradually cover up the star’s disk. Rather, the moon had no effect on the star at all for a while, and then suddenly the star winked out all at once (when the moon finally covered the true body of the star, which is just a vanishingly small point as measured from Earth). But at the time of Galileo and the Dialogue, no one had realized this.

The "true body of the star" is not the visible star that we see; but is something which is supposedly the "real star".

And this issue, which is now well understood, does not apply to the sun and moon which are a lot closer than other celestial objects like other stars and galaxies. It's nothing to do with "celestial objects" being special in any way, it's an issue with diffraction of point light sources. So you still need to explain why the sun and moon don't vary in angular size throughout the day and night. You have some explanation on the Wiki, I've explained why it doesn't work.

You are assuming now that the Sun we see is the real sun as it appears to perspective. Considering that you lied to make an argument, by ignoring that there is a difference between the stars we see and their "true" forum, we can see how dishonest you are.

No, actually, you need to explain why the stars and galaxies are illusions but nothing else is in the sky.

[Tom Bishop]

Experiments are of course good, but observations alone are very useful as at least those tell us what exists and whether or not they match predictions.

Observational science is defined as pseudoscience. Science must follow the scientific method.

Clearly FE theory falls very flat (pun intended) on this score.

• FET predicts some sort of atmospheric containment mechanism (all encompassing dome, 70 mile high ice wall, infinite plane, or ...) at the rim of the claimed flat disk yet despite centuries of travel no such thing has ever been observed.
• FET predicts distances and hence travel times that are significantly different from RET times particularly from the equator to the "rim" (which ever hemisphere your favored FE model uses), yet again after centuries of travel the FET times are not observed while RET times and distances fit perfectly.
• FET can not deal with sunrise and sunset (or star rise and set) without "bendy light" which is not even specified sufficiently to make a testable prediction.

Does not the methodology laid out by Sukharev clearly show FET to be false?

Some elements in FE are pseudoscience, and some of it is not. Anything astronomy is pseudoscience, like in RE astronomy is largely pseudoscience, since it cannot be directly tested.

Travel in the South can be tested, and there are various anomalies which are of interest: https://wiki.tfes.org/Flight_Anomalies

Interesting that none of these references call out modern astronomy as a pseudoscience.  Stanford University doesn't seem to have an issue with the observational nature of astronomy https://physics.stanford.edu/research/experimental-and-observational-astrophysics-and-cosmology.

Scientific American has a problem with the cosmology professed on websites like that:

This appears to be self published.  Further it is about the claim that stellar parallax proves the earth orbits the sun, which is not at issue here.  This is a classic technique of the FE crowed.  Find some snippet in some paper that you think supports your case.  But its the scientific consensus that we lay folks need to pay attention too.

Refusal to appropriately address the argument provided means that you lost it.

Offering quotes from people who died centuries ago (Bacon for example) as support for your claims (particularly around things like modern astronomy that Bacon could not have dreamed of) is hardly a strong debate tactic.

Actually it's easy to find that the Scientific Method is still the standard for science, and has nothing to do with only applying to Roger Bacon's time.

https://wiki.tfes.org/Astronomy_is_a_Pseudoscience

Phys.org

Science website phys.org says:

How scientists can learn what distinguishes science from pseudoscience (Archive)

  “ Pseudoscience mimics aspects of science while fundamentally denying the scientific method. A useful definition of the scientific method is:

principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

A key phrase is "testing of hypotheses". We test hypotheses because they can be wrong. ”

Livescience

According to What is Science? (Archive) on livescience.com we read:

  “ When conducting research, scientists use the scientific method to collect measurable, empirical evidence in an experiment related to a hypothesis (often in the form of an if/then statement), the results aiming to support or contradict a theory. ”

US Supreme Court

The US Supreme Court (1993) in Daubert v. Merrell made a determination (Archive) of what qualifies as "scientific knowledge":

  “ [I]n order to qualify as ‘scientific knowledge,’ an inference or assertion must be derived by the scientific method. ”

[Tom Bishop]

It's used because, as your article states, "Despite the fact that the assumption of a flat Earth is fundamentally wrong, calculation of areas, angles and lengths using latitude and longitude can be complicated, so plane coordinates persist because they are convenient. The calculations can be done with plane trigonometry…"

The reason why they think or assert they are using it is rather irrelevant compared to the main point that they are using it.

Why would the reason for using something be irrelevant to using something?

Because the main point is that they are using them. The question of why it is in use compared to the statement that they are in use is a different line of inquiry entirely and does nothing to contradict it.

Where does it say in the article that "the idealized spherical world model is based upon those flat maps."? I can't find that anywhere.

Right here:

http://www.boshamlife.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PrimeMeridian.pdf

  “ By 1911, the Greenwich meridian had been accepted as the prime meridian for the whole world. However, relating the maps of an individual country or region to a standard system of latitude and longitude is not only difficult, it is nearly impossible. The earth is approximately spherical, but maps are flat. They are fitted as closely as possible to the surface of the earth in one region, but when fitting them to a standard system of latitude and longitude, there are bound to be slight discrepancies. The differences between the coordinate systems used by different maps really didn’t matter until recently. When the GPS system was introduced in the 1980s, it was realised that having dozens of ‘local’ systems of latitude and longitude for different countries wasn’t going to work. A single coordinate system had to be devised, which would give the best results for every part of the world. It is known as WGS 84 (World Geodetic System 1984). ”

The spherical earth is based on "flat maps".

You are wrong. The State Plane mapping system was developed in the 1930's. It uses two globe projections, both spherical, Lambert Conformal & Transverse Mercator, depending on the State shape.

Incorrect.

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

  “ The State Plane Coordinate System (SPS or SPCS) is a set of 124 geographic zones or coordinate systems designed for specific regions of the United States. Each state contains one or more state plane zones, the boundaries of which usually follow county lines. There are 110 zones in the contiguous US, with 10 more in Alaska, 5 in Hawaii, and one for Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands. The system is widely used for geographic data by state and local governments. Its popularity is due to at least two factors. First, it uses a simple Cartesian coordinate system to specify locations rather than a more complex spherical coordinate system (the geographic coordinate system of latitude and longitude). By using the Cartesian coordinate system's simple XY coordinates, "plane surveying" methods can be used, speeding up and simplifying calculations. ”

It literally has the word "plane" in the name. 

The North American Datum (NAD) is the horizontal datum now used to define the geodetic network in North America. A datum is a formal description of the shape of the Earth along with an "anchor" point for the coordinate system.

Lower down in the above article we read that the State Plane Coordinate Systems are associated with the North American Datum of 1983:

  “ Originally, the state plane coordinate systems were based on the North American Datum of 1927 (NAD27). Later, the more accurate North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83) became the standard (a geodetic datum is the way a coordinate system is linked to the physical Earth). More recently there has been an effort to increase the accuracy of the NAD83 datum using technology that was not available in 1983. ”

The United States Government echoes the same association:

https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/united-states-stateplane-zones-nad83

  “ United States Stateplane Zones - NAD83 Metadata Updated: August 11, 2016

U.S. State Plane Zones (NAD 1983) represents the State Plane Coordinate System (SPCS) Zones for the 1983 North American Datum within United States. ”

These systems involve flat coordinate systems. There may be a backend element which uses an ellipsoid to connect to other systems for converting coordinates between geographic models, but the data is flat. Utah's page The Earth is Not Round! Utah, NAD83 and WebMercator Projections says that the spherical models are getting data from the flat ones.