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Flat Earth

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by tochatihu, Feb 5, 2018.

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  1. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    I apologise for this firstly. It just stands high among misconceptions requiring great effort in ignoring evidence.

    A fella in California intends to launch himself in self-made rocket to have his own look at this situation. He got a bit banged up in a previous attempt but it did not go high enough. Current launch attempt was postponed by mechanical issues.

    In any case I hope he survives his own enthusiasm and sees interesting things.

    ==
    Many forms of of evidence have been proposed for Earth being (very nearly) round. One I have not seen is the trail of any old rocket being launched. You have probably seen pictures. First it goes up and then 'appears' to go down. actually what you are seeing is the beginning of going around the ball.

    Over flat earth such a trajectory would indicate tragedy is coming.
     
    #1 tochatihu, Feb 5, 2018
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  2. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    While not the intended audience, let me test a likely response from doubters.

    I also haven't seen such a launch, so don't know how far they are visible. But how much of that apparent 'down' is really from going around the ball, vs. simply moving rapidly away faster than it is climbing (or even leveling out)? When 'x' is increasing much faster than 'y' (or 'y' even stops increasing), arctan (y/x) keeps going down, both numerically and visually.

    This argument won't change many minds if the visible range of the exhaust trail, from the launch pad, doesn't reach close enough to the horizon.
     
    #2 fuzzy1, Feb 5, 2018
  3. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    What you call intended audience are not here I think. But evidence for Earth's rotundity is worth appreciating.

    Picture I had in mind:
    Rocket launch curves down.jpg
    Does this look like arctan?
     
    #3 tochatihu, Feb 5, 2018
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  4. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    I don't see enough in that picture to force a doubter / denier into seeing something that contradicts their world view. They could easily rationalize it as a perspective view of a horizontally-facing parabola as viewed from just behind the apex. Or a curve asymptotically reaching a fixed elevation over flat land.

    Personally, I find sunrise & sunset views from aloft much more convincing. E.g. look at Image #17 in that "Pilot's spectacular photos ..." article you linked a few days ago:
    Pilot's spectacular photos taken from an airplane cockpit | CNN Travel

    I've never seen anything from the cockpit, but have watched numerous sunrises and sunsets from passenger windows. At the moment the earth directly below is experiencing sunrise or set, I can see the sun already several solar diameters above the dayside horizon, while the ground in the nightside direction is still dark, with the purple curtain of dusk still well above its horizon. I.e. I am directly seeing the Earth's curvature.
     
    #4 fuzzy1, Feb 5, 2018
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  5. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    if the earth isn't round(ish) why is there a horizon?
     
    #5 bisco, Feb 5, 2018
  6. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    We have also discussed clever schoolchildren sending cameras really high with helium balloons. Distant locations are not visible because, you know, it's a ball.

    A high balloon over a flat Earth would see amazing things.
     
    #6 tochatihu, Feb 5, 2018
  7. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Horizon@5. I believe the Flat-Earth Society website 'explains' that. But you'd have to click in to read it. That's what they want you to do. Bwahaha
     
    #7 tochatihu, Feb 5, 2018
  8. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Why wouldn't a flat Earth have a horizon?

    Perspective drawing, with parallel lines converging to a vanishing point on the horizon, is generally based in flat-land Euclidean geometry. There is no need to introduce spherical geometry to get this appearance.
     
    #8 fuzzy1, Feb 5, 2018
  9. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    who said it wouldn't?
     
    #9 bisco, Feb 5, 2018
  10. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    In some distant directions there would be clouds blocking views. But if you were high enough you could see all the way to freaking Antarctica. In all directions. It would be weird.

    If you are on the ground, hills and such in distance would block your view. But at sea, distant ships would not not 'sink' such that only tops of masts remain visible. Whole thing would remain visible and just get smaller.

    It is (faintly) possible that ships no longer have tall masts because of this inconvenient proof of rotundity. But I do not claim expertise in Flat Earthly matters.
     
    #10 tochatihu, Feb 5, 2018
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  11. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    thanks, that is exactly what i was thinking.
     
    #11 bisco, Feb 5, 2018
  12. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Human perception works nicely at some scales of time and space, but not at others. This is where SCIENCE lends a hand. You construct a variety of 'models' of things beyond comfort zone of direct perception. Your observations will be inconsistent with some models, that can then be discarded.

    Yo, science.

    See I'm not really interested in who likes flat, or why. I'm shilling for science. Limited observations get powerful force extenders from critical analyses. Testing. Modeling. Whatever you want to call it. Makes people superhuman to extend observations to larger and smaller; faster and slower.

    Still can't 'fly' though. Need a rocket for that. Build your own rocket and I can only wish you the best of luck.
     
    #12 tochatihu, Feb 5, 2018
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2018
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  13. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    As an interior landlubber (even on Puget Sound, the Olympic Peninsula mountains obscure the open Pacific), nearby hills always block any view of very far away mountains. Even natural haze, when not augmented by human-made hazes, eventually fogs and extinguishes extreme distance views. From dad's rural farm, it is possible but uncommon to be able to see mountain peaks very far away across the state line. (Lower viewing angles through higher density air closer to surface dust and emission sources suffer greater haze.). But numerous of people in population centers no longer get to experience such clean air, so can never see such distances regardless of geometry.

    I simply don't have enough oceanside experience to have noticed tall masts on hidden ships. The common low-lying salt-spray haze tends to hide far away ships, and I haven't spent enough time there to witness much super clear visibility.
     
    #13 fuzzy1, Feb 5, 2018
  14. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    When you see only peaks of distant mountains, that's a clue.

    One of these days, Virgin Galactic will start throwing rich people very high in the air. Will provide great viewing angles. Maybe crush this ball conspiracy once and for all :)
     
    #14 tochatihu, Feb 5, 2018
  15. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    The lower elevations of those distant mountains are obscured by closer hills and lesser mountain ranges, even by standard non-spherical geometry. And by the thicker hazes closer to surface level.
     
    #15 fuzzy1, Feb 5, 2018
  16. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Such tourist excursions will be beyond the resources of much of the population for a long time to come. I'm not expecting many such tourists to come from the population of concern of this thread.
     
    #16 fuzzy1, Feb 5, 2018
  17. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    ???
     
    #17 fuzzy1, Feb 5, 2018
  18. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Those rockets will have several possible pathways to removing the opposition to a round earth. :):rolleyes:
     
    #18 fuzzy1, Feb 5, 2018
  19. RRxing

    RRxing Senior Member

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    BUT WHAT IF HE'S RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)
     
    #19 RRxing, Feb 6, 2018
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  20. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    'Kay, if the earth is actually flat, we could save oodles of money by not launching really expensive satellites. Stopping pretending that they do things, because the hush money to (oh I do not know) millions of people involved must be oodles as well.

    If earth is flat and billions of people still need to live here, all those oodles might be spent differently. Better.

    ==
    Please note that United Nations logo is Flat Earth map with some additional furnishings. Got no idea what they are up to...
     
    #20 tochatihu, Feb 6, 2018
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