[SimonC]

The first thing I found was a set of photos of a flat earth with the title 'EarthDisc' and not Earth Orb.

Yes, that's their term for a view in which you can see the full circumference, as opposed to detail shots which pick out small portions of the surface

You did notice that none of those full shots show all the countries of the world, didn't you?

Its ok for NASA to term it a disc. But not anyone else? Is that what you are saying?

[SimonC]

Nice images. But the pic I have been referring to is one of the 'edge' of the globe i.e. the line of the circumference as seen when viewing it from a front elevation as it sits with the north pole at the 'top' and south pole at the 'bottom'. Not from 'above' the mountains.

So you want a picture with the North Pole at the top and the South Pole at the bottom with Everest sticking out the side?

So the earth is 8000 statute miles 'tall', and Everest is 5.5 miles above mean sea level. Draw a ball of radius 4000 x any unit you like and then draw a spike sticking out of it that 5.5 of the same units. Tell me if you can see much of the spike.

Having just shown you photos of Everest taken from space at various ranges...why would there particular photo you seek prove anything to you? You're dismissing every other photo as fake, anyway, right?

So you claim to see the earths curvature at 8 inches per mile. That is 8/63360ths of a mile. Yet we won't see a mountain peak which is a 727th of the 4000 unit radius?
You can do anything with statistics.

I don’t claim that, no. I believe that is a rule of thumb, which you have slightly misquoted - it’s per mile squared.

Emphasis on rule of thumb though - it’s not accurate, and it gets less accurate the further away you go.

Let’s try this again. Draw a circle of 8 inches diameter on a piece of paper. That is earth. You can write N and S to indicate the poles, and a line across the middle to show the equator.

Now let’s try to draw the situation you describe. Get a protractor and measure 28 degrees around from the equator towards the North Pole - mark it off on the edge of circle. That’s Everest’s latitude. Now draw a mountain sticking out from the earth by 5.5 thousandths of an inch. Let me know how you get on, bearing in mind that your pen or pencil is probably making lines substantially thicker than Everest is high.

Yes but science is not based on miniscule scale models its based on fact. Of course I wont see anything at that scale. But on the total scale of the earth I expect to see something projecting from 'ground level'. Dont you?

[SimonC]

Nice images. But the pic I have been referring to is one of the 'edge' of the globe i.e. the line of the circumference as seen when viewing it from a front elevation as it sits with the north pole at the 'top' and south pole at the 'bottom'. Not from 'above' the mountains.

So you want a picture with the North Pole at the top and the South Pole at the bottom with Everest sticking out the side?

So the earth is 8000 statute miles 'tall', and Everest is 5.5 miles above mean sea level. Draw a ball of radius 4000 x any unit you like and then draw a spike sticking out of it that 5.5 of the same units. Tell me if you can see much of the spike.

Having just shown you photos of Everest taken from space at various ranges...why would there particular photo you seek prove anything to you? You're dismissing every other photo as fake, anyway, right?

So you claim to see the earths curvature at 8 inches per mile. That is 8/63360ths of a mile. Yet we won't see a mountain peak which is a 727th of the 4000 unit radius?
You can do anything with statistics.

I don’t claim that, no. I believe that is a rule of thumb, which you have slightly misquoted - it’s per mile squared.

Emphasis on rule of thumb though - it’s not accurate, and it gets less accurate the further away you go.

Let’s try this again. Draw a circle of 8 inches diameter on a piece of paper. That is earth. You can write N and S to indicate the poles, and a line across the middle to show the equator.

Now let’s try to draw the situation you describe. Get a protractor and measure 28 degrees around from the equator towards the North Pole - mark it off on the edge of circle. That’s Everest’s latitude. Now draw a mountain sticking out from the earth by 5.5 thousandths of an inch. Let me know how you get on, bearing in mind that your pen or pencil is probably making lines substantially thicker than Everest is high.

Its ok for you to tell me its a rule of thumb that I am using when you are using a rule of thumb for the diameter of the earth?

[SimonC]

So you claim to see the earths curvature at 8 inches per mile.

Back to reply #16 in this thread.

The water pictured CANNOT be flat, for the reasons I stated in reply #16 and those which follow. It cannot be concave, as that would exacerbate those reasons. So it must be convex. Curved.

Must be? Or is?

[SimonC]

And Simon, you understand that although Sagarmatha (Everest) is the highest mountain, it doesn't just rise up to 8848 metres directly from sea level, like the Eiffel Tower.  Its in a mountain range, its surrounded by other mountains; its like the tallest man standing in a crowd of very tall men.   

Also, its not symmetrical.  When you find such a photo how will you define whether it is perpendicular to the horizon?   

Everest is 8848 metres above sea level. It doesnt matter how high it is relative to the ground it rises from.

[stack]

I remember reading one time that if a snooker ball was the size of the earth then it would have bigger mountains than Everest. Point being, the Earth is very smooth for its side. So yes, any mountains, people or any other objects at the positions of those stick men would be angled as the stick men are. But unless they were at the size of those stick men you wouldn’t be able to see them at the distance where you can also see the whole globe earth. Optical resolution is a factor but so it just how far you’re looking through the atmosphere at that angle.
But why is any of this an issue. We have photos of the globe earth, unless you have good evidence they’re faked then that should be pretty definitive. Especially when you add things like the ISS, other technologies which we use daily and rely on satellites etc etc.

We have two dimensional, processed, spliced, enhanced photos of the earth. That's what they are.

But you could say that about any image, right? This is a pointless debate if your baseline assumption is that any image refuting your beliefs is false.

That then raises the question: what would it take to persuade you that you are wrong? If the answer is ‘nothing could do this’, then there is little point in debating anything with you. If you can explain what would persuade you, then we can help.

'We' can allegedly see stars and galaxies light years away. We can see craters on the moon from 250,000 miles away. But we cant see the top of a mountain (even better a person on top of that mountain) from a front elevation of the globe from a few miles up and capture that image as its peak projects horizontally away from the globe. That would stop in its tracks any further debate on this subject. It would prove a global earth. No formulas, equations, theories or experiments. Just a simple photograph. There has to be a reason that none exist.

I'm not sure I'm following "No formulas, equations, theories or experiments.". There are plenty.

For instance, in this FE/RE comparison calculator we have a 3000' mountain, 25 miles away with an observer height of about 6.5'.

In the RE model, the mountain bottom is obscured by the earth by about 319'. More importantly is the tilt, which I think is what you have been referencing - The tilt of the object away from the observer. As you can see, given the large size of the earth the "tilt", given all the parameters, is approximately 0.36°. Which is imperceptible to the human eye.

That is simply a model though based an a RE theory? It doesnt prove anything it shows what things would look like if the earth was round.

It's a model based upon both FE and RE. You seemed to have failed in seeing the entire left side of the image. And I never said it proved anything. The point being, for RE, it demonstrates how the "tilt" you've been referencing is essentially imperceptible. Why you think otherwise is simply manufactured by you due to your lack of understanding of what you are debating against.

[SteelyBob]

[
Yes but science is based on miniscule scale models its based on fact. Of course I wont see anything at that scale. But on the total scale of the earth I expect to see something projecting from 'ground level'. Dont you?

But you’ve asked for a picture of the mountain with the whole earth shown. That is what you asked for. I’m demonstrating to you that it won’t work, due to the relative size of the earth and the mountain. If I’ve misunderstood you, please sketch what you want the photo to look like.

[SteelyBob]

[
Its ok for you to tell me its a rule of thumb that I am using when you are using a rule of thumb for the diameter of the earth?

I’m using an approximation - the earth isn’t a perfect sphere, it’s an oblate spheroid - fat in the middle. 4000 miles is close enough.

I told you the other one is a rule of thumb because it is a rule of thumb. You then mangled it, misunderstood it and then produced some maths that was so wrong it’s hard to know where to start.

[stack]

And those full shots - how do you know what the countries of the world look like after having only seen them on a rectangular drawing on the school room walls?

They seem to look awfully similar...

[SimonC]

And those full shots - how do you know what the countries of the world look like after having only seen them on a rectangular drawing on the school room walls?

They seem to look awfully similar...
Yes one is copied from the other.

And those full shots - how do you know what the countries of the world look like after having only seen them on a rectangular drawing on the school room walls?

They seem to look awfully similar...

[Tumeni]

Its ok for NASA to term it a disc. But not anyone else? Is that what you are saying?

Since they only use the term for a small subset of the photos, they clearly don't mean to say it's a disc in actuality

[markjo]

Just out of curiosity, have you tried doing a Google search for commercial satellite imagery?  It's a multi-billion dollar industry and I'm thinking that their customers would be more than just a bit irate if all of that imagery turned out to be fake.

Just their customers? Wouldnt you be irate too?

Me irate?  Why?  I don't need satellite imagery in my day to day job or life.  However, there are any number of different industries that do rely on satellite imagery being accurate and informative.

Satellite images are one of the most powerful and important tools we have for monitoring the earth. They track the physical environment (water, air, land, vegetation) and the changing human footprint across the globe. Satellite imagery is used to measure, identify and track human activity.

Satellite images have many applications for instance in meteorology and weather forecasting,  fishing, oceanography, agriculture, conservation, forestry, landscape analysis, geology, mapping, regional planning, environmental assessment, intelligence, warfare and education.  In education, satellite images are present in textbooks and online as support for maps, graphs and text.

[SimonC]

It was soo brief, appears to be a swell covering the hull with perspective issues also.

FLAT EARTH

Interesting.  A "soo brief" 30 second swell that is covering the distant ship yet there are no swells around the ship in the foreground.

The rear of the foreground ship is covered too.

[DuncanDoenitz]

Everest is 8848 metres above sea level. It doesnt matter how high it is relative to the ground it rises from.

Of course it matters.  It only stands out in human consciousness because it is an absolute; humans are obsessed with "highest", "fastest", "biggest", and we use sea level as a universal datum.  Its only "the highest mountain in the world" because it sticks out a tiny bit more from a range of generally high terrain.  Its only 200 metres taller than its best mate, K2.  I live at sea level and I can see a 900 metre mountain (Skiddaw) from my living room window, 30 km away, and its really not that impressive (though pretty to look at). 

Everest is 8 km high and 700 km from the sea.  Why would you notice it from space?  Your seeming obsession with something that small demonstrates that human brains simply can't relate these tiny dimension to the sheer awesomeness of the size of Earth. 

And can I comment on the "map of Africa" thing?  Yes, one is a direct dopy of the other; the map is directly copied from the actual shape of Africa.  People have been sailing around it for millennia, trekking across it for centuries, and flying over it for decades, so I think we had a pretty good idea what shape it was before we ever saw it from space.  And most of the correspondents on this site don't just base their idea of the shape of Earth on "rectangular drawings on school room walls"; we've travelled enough to see them in reality and found that, yes, this map works. 

[Tumeni]

those full shots - how do you know what the countries of the world look like after having only seen them on a rectangular drawing on the school room walls?

The photos taken from other angles, such as from Himawari;



What reason do you have to doubt those who made the maps for the school wall, anyway?

on the total scale of the earth I expect to see something projecting from 'ground level'.

As long as you realise the ground level immediately adjacent to Everest is not the same as sea level. The ground level has, in the main, been climbing from the nearest coastal point, and when you reach the typical base camp for climbing Everest, you're already at over 5000 metres - with Everest topping out at 8848m, the base camps are already 5/8ths of the way there. So the peak of Everest will only be 3/8ths of the whole mountain, peeking up above the surroundings which have already taken up 5/8ths of the height.

[Tumeni]

The rear of the foreground ship is covered too.

No it isn't



Again, here's the full-frame photo



If the seas were flat, my sightline from 100 to 52m (the top of the yellow cranes) must meet the water beyond. The sightline is descending toward the water, so is non-parallel to the presumed flat surface. Non-parallel lines MUST meet. The picture has the sightline missing the water altogether. Connect the camera to the top of a crane with a straight line, continue it beyond the crane, and it meets the sky, not the water. So the water cannot be flat. If it were, we would see water behind and beyond the tops of the cranes

[existoid]

All I can suggest is, once again -

Find a vantage point to look out on the sea and note its height above sea level
Observe something out on the water which is of lower height, above its waterline or coastal line, than your observation position.
Let's say you're at 100m elevation, looking at a ship of 52m.
You must be looking downward at the topmost point of the ship.
You must be looking downward at any and every point on the water's surface.

If the water is truly flat, there can be no instance where you look downward at the topmost point of the ship and fail to see water behind and beyond it.

A descending line from 100 to 0 must pass through 52
A descending line from 100 to 52 must, if continued beyond the 52 point, reach 0. It cannot miss it.

If there is ANY instance where you see clear sky behind and beyond the ship which is lower than you, the sea CANNOT be flat.

100m observation point, 52m ship with twin yellow cranes at approx. 17km. Nothing but clear sky behind and beyond the topmost point. The sea cannot be flat.



Nothing to do with Tom's "sinking ship", no need to show ships "going over the horizon".

Proof found in near-field objects, well within clear viewing distance. Can show the same with observations of islands, lighthouses, other fixtures. Loads of examples.

In a thread filled with great explanations and answers regarding various phenomena, this is, in my humble opinion, the simplest and most succinct one.

I do suggest one modification to make it even stronger and more obvious that this image (and the accompanying explanation) proves an earth that cannot be flat:

Can you make a second image based on the first, of what we would expect to see, were the earth completely flat.  That is, color water "above" the horizon, as if the earth were flat and you were looking out on an expanse down TO that water.  The top of the two cranes on the ship thus still showing water above them.

I am terrible at math and geometry, but my instinct is that the sea, which stretches for hundreds (thousands?) of miles from this point, would intersect with the sky at exactly the height of the vision of the observer. Is that correct?  I.e., rather than a horizon line, a convergence of sea and sky always relative to your eyes.

Yes?