Flat Earth

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.

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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.

 

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

Picture I had in mind:

Does this look like arctan?

 

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.

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

'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.

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Please note that United Nations logo is Flat Earth map with some additional furnishings. Got no idea what they are up to...