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Flat Earth General / Man Snaps Stunning Space Photos Using Balloon, Duct Tape

« on: March 25, 2010, 10:07:46 AM »

This photo was taken from a device (made by a British man) attached to a weather balloon made from a digital camera, GPS device, duct tape, and home insulation. It was taken from 22 miles up.

I realize that FEs are immediately going to claim that this image is doctored, or that there's some distortion of his device's lens which creates the effect of a round Earth, but come on. What more do you want? Full story: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7074839.ece.

Here he is with the device.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Poles cold, equator not: Why?

« on: January 14, 2006, 04:46:28 PM »

This may well have been answered before, but then half of the ideas around here get recycled from time to time, so why not this one?

Suppose the Earth is flat. For the sun to come up from East to West for everyone on the planet, it's got to rise over the circumference of the disk (assuming it's a disk, right?), fly overhead, and then "set" somewhere on more or less the opposite side of where it started.

Okay. So far, so good. We know that, in general, it's warmer when the sun's up (day) than when it's not (night), so the sun appears to have something to do with warmth. I think it's possibly even fair to say that the sun might well be where the heat comes from.

I'd be grateful for someone to explain, possibly by drawing a path on the flat Earth that the sun takes each day, which accounts for the fact that the North and South pole are cold (that is, don't get much sun) while the equator is warm (that is, gets quite a lot of it). Any theory needs to take account of the seaons that everywhere apart from the equator (that includes the poles) experiences.

The reason I'm asking? I've tried to figure it out for myself, and I can't. Intellectually superior flat Earthers (and I suppose this includes the traitorous EnragedPenguin and 6strings  :wink:) can help too.

And it had better be good this time: no bullshit!

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Flat Earth Q&A / Well, this would do it for me

« on: December 27, 2005, 05:27:20 PM »

I shall just quote:

The photograph below was taken by the crew on board the Columbia during its last mission, on a cloudless day.

The picture is of Europe and Africa when the sun is setting. Half of the  picture is in night. The bright dots you see are the cities lights. The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert. Note that the lights are  already on in Holland, Paris, and Barcelona, and that's it's still daylight in  Dublin, London, Lisbon, and Madrid.

The sun is still shining on the Strait of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean  Sea is already in darkness. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the  Azores Islands; below them to the right are the Madeira Islands; a bit below are  the Canary Islands; and further South, close to the farthest western point of  Africa, are the Cape Verde islands.

Note that the Sahara is huge and can be seen clearly both during Daytime  and night time.

To  the left, on top, is Greenland, totally frozen.

It's kind of breathtaking. I know what the flat-Earthers will say anyway: faked, Photoshopped, space programme conspiracy, etc, blah, blah, (insert inane ridiculous comment here), blah. I don't care. It's still great. Flat Earth? I don't think so.

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Flat Earth Q&A / The days of this site are numbered

« on: December 22, 2005, 09:23:26 AM »

With the advent of space travel for more people than just astronauts, such as the recent venture announced by Virgin, for example, I think that ordinary people being able to go up to space and take a look at the Earth from there is probably going to make this site irrelevant, at least in the sense that it's a discussion forum for people who want to talk about the shape of the Earth.

In the not too distant future, we will have someone on this site who will say, "I saw the Earth from space. It's round."

In the eventuality that this happens, is this going to be enough to convince a flat-Earther that the Earth is in fact round?

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Flat Earth Q&A / We're travelling faster than light: did you notice?

« on: December 11, 2005, 07:32:39 PM »

According to one theory seen elsewhere on the boards, the flat Earth, not having gravity (a flat Earth probably wouldn't produce enough gravity to match what we observe) is accelerating "upwards" at exactly the acceleration required to produce the 9.81 meters per second per second observed on the Earth.

And, for that matter, the rest of the universe would have to be accelerating "upwards" at this speed as well, since the position of the stars doesn't seem to change much in relation to the position of the Earth.

At this rate of acceleration, we on the Earth's surface would be travelling faster than the speed of light (roughly 3 x 10^8 meters per second) in a little less than one year. We should be travelling faster than the speed of light after this, since the acceleration must be kept constant. In fact, there is no limit to the speed we would achieve in accelerating upwards at a constant rate.

This would, according to special relativity, require more than all the energy of the universe to achieve, and would make every person on Earth as heavy as, or heavier than, a black hole.

Since we do not seem to observe this, I am wondering how we can possibly be accelerating "upwards" at 9.81 meters per second per second.

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Flat Earth Q&A / If the Earth is flat, what's on the other side?

« on: December 08, 2005, 05:13:37 PM »

This may have been answered elsewhere.

So, if you're a flat-earther, the Earth is a disk, right? What's on the other side? It's certainly not any of the continents that we know of: they are all supposedly on the same side (like the UN map). The ice wall is at the edge; if we were able to get over the ice wall, we'd be . . . on the other side. Which is made up of what, exactly?