[FLboy]

Hello Everyone!

I first heard about Flat Earth when Vice News went to the conference in 2017. Even though I am still a Round Earther, after reading news articles and exploring TFES forum and wiki, I began to wonder what made the shape of the Earth obvious. I am not sure why people, including myself, think (thought?) it was obvious that the Earth was round.

This year I decided to write a paper for class about this. I wanted to hear from the Flat Earth community. Since you made the jump from Round to Flat Earth, I would love to hear your perspective about what makes the shape of the Earth seem obvious to Round Earther types, and if that feeling of obviousness carries over to Round Earth. I'd also love to hear about how you felt or thought about this.

Thank you all for your thoughts!

[Tron]

Hey FLBoy, 

Welcome to Science!  Like you suggested, I was a "Round Earther" until about five years ago when I started looking into Flat Earth.  Ultimately, I had to draw my own conclusions on what the world looks like. 

In my view, it looks pretty flat from the surface, but as you go higher in the sky it looks rounder as seen from planes and satellites.  Why the earth doesn't look "flat" from space is a bit complicated, but I included a few pictures below to help explain:

In picture 1 (https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/goes-16-sends-first-images-to-earth) you see a satellite photo of earth . In picture 2, I tried to replicate this image by taking a flat earth map and putting a glass dome above it to represent the atmosphere and give it a spherical look.  Picture 3 illustrates what I think the earth looks like from far away at the time of this satellite photo.  I don't know if satellites are high enough to get this view or if the dark side of earth can be seen at all.  I suspect when people see earth from space, they assume darkness is caused by earth's curvature rather than the suns lighting effect.  Either way, everyone's shooting in the dark 



To get more fancy, here is another photo from space showing half the earth illuminated by the sun (https://www.met.ie/tracking-hurricane-lorenzo).  I posted my versions next to it.



And keep in mind the flat earth map I used needs to be edited in order to properly reflect all the land mass seen in the satellite images.

Here's a better view of the materials I used.  The map with a dome is on the left and without a dome on your right. 



Like you said, it may not be so obvious as to what the shape of the earth is from different perspectives.

[FLboy]

Hello MetaTron!

That's a neat experiment! I can clearly see how the dome "refracts" (I'm not a science expert, I think that's the term?) what part of the earth is visible from a high distance.

I also think it is very illuminating that you flipped my premise: what's intuitive is not the roundness of the earth but its flatness. This is because every day we encounter the earth as being flat. If I may put words in your mouth (please correct me if I'm wrong): a round earth is only intuitive because we are taught that by society, especially through pictures from space looking back down.

(I also noticed that your model takes Antarctica as the center of the disk. I think there is some internal debate within the community about what exactly the arrangement of the flat earth is? I still need to look into that particular set of threads.)

[Tron]

Yeah, you pretty much grasped the concepts..   There was a discussion here about distance and flight paths on a modified flat earth map I made which needs more revision..  https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=18429.msg255127#msg255127

[AATW]

But MetaTron. You're using a solid glass dome. That does not have the same refractive properties as our atmosphere.
And there's no evidence of a dome above us anyway, there's the infamous "Rocket Hits the Dome" video but that's just a yo-yo despinner being activated. If a rocket going at that speed had really hit a dome it would have been obliterated.

[Tron]

I understand your objection..  But the atmosphere is pretty dense - liquid almost  - and shares many if the refractive properties of glass..

[WTF_Seriously]

The other issue with all the dome pictures and videos you find out there is that the views being presented are always from outside the dome.  I may be wrong, but my understanding is that everything, sun, moon, stars, satellites all exist within the dome.  That makes any view from outside a dome pointless.

[Pete Svarrior]

I may be wrong, but my understanding is that everything, sun, moon, stars, satellites all exist within the dome.

This is one of those things that FE'ers massively disagree about. Not ideal, I know, but it is what it is.

[FLboy]

Hello AllAroundTheWorld and WTF_Seriously!

I would be curious to hear your thoughts about my original question: what makes the shape of the earth obvious, whether round or flat? I'm wondering if my statement "what's intuitive is not the roundness of the earth but its flatness" because "every day we encounter the earth as being flat" makes sense to you?

[AATW]

I don’t think the shape of the earth is obvious. I mean, we have enough satellites orbiting it taking photos of it and  enough astronauts have seen it to know what shape it is. But from the ground I’d say the intuitive thing is to think it’s flat, hence ancient civilisations believing that.

I’d suggest observations of the horizon are a good clue to the earth’s true shape though. Firstly, why is there a horizon at all? For an average height person it’s about 3 miles away. Why? Why is there an  arbitrary defined line beyond which you can’t see the ground? It isn’t the limit of your vision, you can see ships and other objects which are further than that but you can only see the top of them. Why are they sinking below the horizon? What are they sinking behind? Furthermore, as you ascend the distance to the horizon increases and the angle you have to look down to see the horizon does too. The latter effect is subtle, but is measurable.
All this is a clue to the shape of the earth, or can certainly be explained if you hypothesise we live on a ball. There’s a horizon because that’s the edge of the earth. The ground slopes away from you out of sight after that. Ships are going over the curve. And ascending means you can see further over the curve and have to look down further to do so.

FE has mechanisms to explain these observations but RE doesn’t need any mechanisms, these are all expected properties of living on a globe. So while I wouldn’t say the earth’s shape is obvious, you can make observations which give good clues as to what it is.

[Tom Bishop]

The Sinking Ship Effect might be a good argument for a RE if it was a consistent effect. However, it's not - https://wiki.tfes.org/Sinking_Ship_Effect

[Pete Svarrior]

The Sinking Ship Effect might be a good argument for a RE if it was a consistent effect. However, it's not - https://wiki.tfes.org/Sinking_Ship_Effect

Don't worry, they have an ad-hoc mechanism that explains this inconsistency. AATW likes ad-hoc mechanisms when they help him defend RET.

[AATW]

The Sinking Ship Effect might be a good argument for a RE if it was a consistent effect. However, it's not - https://wiki.tfes.org/Sinking_Ship_Effect

Incorrect, as you like to say.

We have an atmosphere which refracts light. The atmospheric conditions do change which affects the distance to the apparent horizon. And that does mean you can see further over the curve sometimes than you would if we didn’t have an atmosphere. But we always have a horizon, ships always sink below it, the bottoms of other distant objects are always hidden behind the curve. Maybe by not as much as they would be if we didn’t have an atmosphere, but we do. Ships always sink below the horizon, the distance to the horizon always increases with altitude, as does the angle of dip to the horizon. The only inconsistency is the distance to the apparent horizon. None of this would happen on a flat earth, which is why EA has been invented to explain it all.

[AATW]

The Sinking Ship Effect might be a good argument for a RE if it was a consistent effect. However, it's not - https://wiki.tfes.org/Sinking_Ship_Effect

Don't worry, they have an ad-hoc mechanism that explains this inconsistency. AATW likes ad-hoc mechanisms when they help him defend RET.

I’ll simply say the same thing I said the last time you said this. Refraction is a well understood phenomenon which at school you do experiments to demonstrate. EA is at best a hypothesis, the only thing which is a vague attempt at formalising it is the equation which has no derivation - or none shown on the Wiki - and which contains a constant with an unknown value. Compelling…

[Pete Svarrior]

I’ll simply say the same thing I said the last time you said this. Refraction is a well understood phenomenon which at school you do experiments to demonstrate.

The same experiments can be interpreted to prove EA, which is also well understood (despite your empty assertions to the contrary). Saying it again will only get you corrected again.

You choose the interpretation that makes you warm and fuzzy inside, ignoring any attempts at honest consideration.

Compelling…

Are you really incapable of having a discussion without bringing your fEeLiNgS into it? It undermines your position to the point of being laughable.

[AATW]

The same experiments can be interpreted to prove EA

Not the one I did. We used 2 pins to define a straight line then looked through a glass block so they lined up and put 2 more pins the other side so that the 4 pins apparently lined up. You can trace the path of the light through the block to show how it refracts through the block. That isn’t a prediction of EA which simply says that light bends upwards because reasons.

which is also well understood

Oh cool. So what causes it? Where’s the finished equation with the value of the Bishop constant? What predictions does it make which have been verified experimentally?

It’s not about my feelings. Refraction IS well understood, I did experiments at school which demonstrated it, and retraction is not just about atmospheric effects, those are just an example of it. EA is a placeholder which is used to explain why the observations better match a globe earth. Why would there be a horizon on a FE? Why a clear well defined line beyond which you can’t see? It’s not visibility, you can see things beyond the horizon, just not the bottoms of them. That is expected on a globe, on a FE a mechanism is needed to explain it.

[Pete Svarrior]

Oh cool. So what causes it? Where’s the finished equation with the value of the Bishop constant? What predictions does it make which have been verified experimentally?

I will not entertain your trolling. We've had this discussion many times before, and you've heard the answers. You're trying to stir shit for the sake of stirring shit. Again. Get tae fuck.

That is expected on a globe

Except when the observation contradicts RE's prediction, in which case an ad-hoc mechanism is needed to drag it out of its grave, and even then it's not particularly reliable. Sorry, buddy, stating the same lie twice rarely makes the second time successful.

[inquisitive]

The WGS84 model is the answer.

[AATW]

We've had this discussion many times before, and you've heard the answers.

I haven't heard any straight answers to the questions I posted above. Unless the answer is "we don't know".
Which is actually a pretty reasonable answer - that's still the answer from mainstream science for many things.
Just don't pretend that EA is "well understood". It is a hypothesis. And don't get me wrong, it works a million times better than the nonsense about perspective, but it's not a well formed theory which has any predictive power.

You're trying to stir shit for the sake of stirring shit. Again.

I am not. We have certainly had that discussion many times before...

Except when the observation contradicts RE's prediction, in which case an ad-hoc mechanism is needed to drag it out of its grave

Again, refraction is not an "ad-hoc mechanism" and is not equivalent to EA. I have outlined an experiment above which I clearly remember doing at school which was used to demonstrate the way light refracts through a glass block. That result would not be a prediction of EA.
And let's be careful what you mean by "RE's prediction". If you mean the prediction given by a simple mathematical model where the earth is a perfect sphere with no atmosphere then sure, observations generally don't match that model. But that isn't the RE model as you well know. We have an atmosphere, the exact refractive properties of which are difficult to account for and as Tom has noted above are not consistent. Which surely shows that it is refraction and not EA, wouldn't the latter be constant and therefore yield consistent results?

Sorry, buddy, stating the same lie twice rarely makes the second time successful.

And yet you keep referring to refraction as an "ad-hoc mechanism" when you know it isn't. As you said, repeating it doesn't make it true.

[Pete Svarrior]

I have outlined an experiment above which I clearly remember doing at school which was used to demonstrate the way light refracts through a glass block. That result would not be a prediction of EA.

It's also completely irrelevant here. Refraction as a wave (not necessarily light!) passes through different media does nothing to explain away the inconsistencies that you try to explain which occur within one medium. It's also noteworthy that this explanation contradicts reality on occasion.

That is that makes it an ad-hoc mechanism - and one that doesn't even fit. If RE'ers had the sincerity to admit they simply don't fully understand what's happening there, we'd all be in a much better place. Instead, you take such an admission as a weakness when others make it, so logically you choose to avoid it.

This messed-up way of thinking is why the world is in the shitty state it is.

Which surely shows that it is refraction and not EA, wouldn't the latter be constant and therefore yield consistent results?

You're doing the thing again. You're pretending that EA exists in a vacuum and no other factors could possibly be present. Don't do the thing.