1

Flat Earth Q&A / Something I've Never Understood

« on: September 06, 2006, 08:20:08 PM »

Wouldn't the size of orbiting masses affect their distance too? I mean, if the moon were twice as big, it would need to travel at twice the distance from earth to stay in orbit, due to the increased force between it and the earth. In that case, the moon would look closer to the size it is now.

So I guess it's no suprise the sun and moon look the same size in the sky.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Questions without answers

« on: September 06, 2006, 03:05:25 PM »

Yes but you're forgetting that with acceleration comes speed. And don't give me any of that "only relative" nonsense. All scientific research in the history of humanity tells us this theory is complete garbage.

By the way, I find it sad you flat earthers find it fun to argue with teenagers and people with low IQ. It's like you get a mental boost knowing you won the argument over and over, you know it is a hollow victory, try arguing for a just cause instead of the world being flat. Use your 'intelligence' for something intelligent.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Let's visit the Ice Wall

« on: September 06, 2006, 01:05:59 PM »

The better experiment is a flight pattern around the North Pole.  FE postulates that, obviously, directions such as West and East must be circular to remain consistant with the RE.

dysfunction posed the thought that if directions were as such on the Flat Earth, then would it not be noticable that they are curved / circular when close to the North Pole?  I believe dysfunction even said that this could be done near Alaska.  In any case, this is much more reasonable than "flying around the world" or taking a trip to Antarctica.

Not really, on a round earth the trip would also be circular when flying close to the north pole.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Explain This Know it all FEers

« on: September 05, 2006, 01:51:33 AM »

Here's a question: Do you flat earthers believe half the earth is lit up by the sun?

Take the spherical earth, split it open at the bottom and stretch the bottom out to a wide circle. This is how flat earthers imagine the earth to be. The equator is now a circle. This also means the southern hemisphere is now a lot bigger than the northern hemisphere. Unless you shift the equator line out a lot, but that would require a lot more shifting of countries etc...

Now, the sun travels more or less around the equator, like a "spotlight" (says the faq), how can it light up half the planet? Well, the light would have to be shaped like a D to cover the same area it would if the earth was a sphere. If you say "who says it has to?", then I say, "we, as a people, observe the sun like this. The human race observes the sun lighting up half the planet". This is undisputable.

Now how can a spotlight create a giant D shape? Why does it have a sharp cutoff point through the north pole? How does it light up southern countries X miles from the south pole, equally and opposite the way it does northern countries X miles from the north pole, when in the Flat Earth diagram the north and south poles are shaped completely different?

Get in a plane and travel south. Pass the south pole, and begin heading north again. No, you didn't miraculously turn around because the government brainwashed you. What you did was fly around the bottom of the spherical earth.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Explain This Know it all FEers

« on: September 04, 2006, 07:38:41 PM »

No, it isn't explained in the FAQ. We all understand half the earth is lit up at a time by the sun, right, this is easy to understand with a round earth, but a flat earth? You would need a half-circle of light to be cast upon half the flat earth. More than that, you would need the edges of the half-circle to bend nearly 90 degrees, to give the appearance of sunset/sunrise. More than THAT, you would need the southernmost countries (closer to the icewall, such as New Zealand) to have a much larger stretch of sunlight to match the smaller area of northern countries, i.e britain etc.

A half circle of light. No.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Explain This Know it all FEers

« on: September 04, 2006, 07:24:43 PM »

Okay, if the earth is a big flat disc and north pole is in the middle, why is the south pole stretched around the outside? Does space-time bend as you approach the south pole? Does the light created by the "sun-spotlight thing" form a semicircle to light up half the planet? The answers quite clearly are no.
Everything we have learnt over these last hundred years, everything we know, everything we SEE tells us the world is a sphere. Why do you people choose to believe a flat earth? Nothing leads you to believe in it, not even your eyes.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Lots of questions (I read the FAQ)

« on: June 08, 2006, 07:38:50 PM »

Yeah but... the earth is round!

Anyway, I've had enough. It's elevated to beyond my level of thinking. Good luck with your cause, and nice arguing, it's been fun.  

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Flat Earth Q&A / Lots of questions (I read the FAQ)

« on: June 08, 2006, 04:41:49 PM »

If you read the whole text properly, you'd know I was talking about two things, Gravity and the Round Earth. We know gravity exists so we know the earth is round. I didn't say, we know the earth is round so we know the earth is round.

And all this mindless nitpicking on your side is wearing me out. Try defending your own flat earth next time instead of trying to find faults with what we type.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Lots of questions (I read the FAQ)

« on: June 08, 2006, 04:17:55 PM »

I said nothing about beliefs. We know gravity exists because we can prove it. That's what I meant. It doesn't matter what you THOUGHT I meant. I am the same person I was when I said that, so I can go into greater detail into what I meant by the statement.

By the way, I said we know gravity exists so we know the earth is round.
You said, you know triangular earth exists so the earth is triangular. You aren't making any sense man.

EDIT: Reply to 6strings: That was an example. You aren't meant to take it literally you DINGUS.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Lots of questions (I read the FAQ)

« on: June 08, 2006, 04:01:27 PM »

So I have to say it again huh? It's called gravity. What causes gravity? We don't know. Why are we here on earth? We don't know. What's outside the universe? We don't bloody know!

Picking on things we don't know doesn't help you win the argument.

And before you say "Well you do the same thing, you pick on things we cannot answer". Yes. But we pick on them for a good reason. They are unjustified.

Especially since we can prove they ARE there, whereas you can't.

EDIT: To TheEngineer: wtf? Can you prove there's a conspiracy? No? Didn't think so. You have no way of knowing if the conspiracy exists.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Lots of questions (I read the FAQ)

« on: June 08, 2006, 03:29:09 PM »

Wanting to know what causes gravity is like wanting to know the fabric of space. It's like growing 1 billion billion times bigger and observing the universe. Nice work backing me into a corner. Is that your only way out?

It's like me saying, the sky is blue, and you saying, "no it's red. If it is blue, explain why", after I do, you say "okay then, explain the origin of the universe. If you cannot, then we win, the sky is red".

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Flat Earth Q&A / Lots of questions (I read the FAQ)

« on: June 08, 2006, 03:16:13 PM »

The difference is, we have PROOF of gravity. We have so so so much proof of the round earth.

http://www.fourmilab.com/gravitation/foobar/ (thanks Deadlock for the link)

Theres an experiment you can perform yourself! See the mass attracted to mass? Can you do that with dark matter?

Do you have any proof? No! And you guys have the cheek to demand ABSOLUTE proof from the round-earthers, yet you flat-earthers never ever ever provide any spec of anything which can be remotely considered proof.

Ignoring proof? Just explanatory power? Okay. The earth is far far far more logical when you consider it is round. It's an undeniable fact. If you say it's flat you have to bend space-time to stretch the south pole around the world, in order to light the planet in the way we humans observe the sun in the sky.

EDIT: You want me to explain gravity? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity
Read up. We need no explanation of why it exists, we know fully that it DOES exist and that's enough to prove the earth is round.

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Flat Earth Q&A / seasons

« on: June 08, 2006, 02:56:47 PM »

Yeah, and please reply to my last post on the last page. Explain how the sun casts that shape light, and how us citizens living in the southern hemisphere see the sun no differently than the northern folks.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Lots of questions (I read the FAQ)

« on: June 08, 2006, 02:42:55 PM »

Try not to use big words just to act smart.

Round Earther: The earth is a sphere and we don't fall off because of a force called gravity which pulls everything towards the center of the earth. We can explain what causes gravity. We found that mass is attracted to mass.  It explains the earth, sun, moon, galaxy and universe. The origins of the universe, well, that's Copernicus_was_wrong trying to complicate the Round Earth scenario.

Flat Earther: The earth is flat and we don't fall off because it's being accelerated at a constant rate. We don't know what causes this, probably Dark Matter. We don't know why the sun hovers 3000 miles above the sky. Because we're constantly accelerating, the universe must be following us, and so we are the most important planet ever. It explains nothing.

Which sounds more ridiculous now?

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Flat Earth Q&A / Lots of questions (I read the FAQ)

« on: June 08, 2006, 04:06:26 AM »

Do they now? Gravity is caused by all mass being attracted to each other, a law of the universe. This can be proven if you want. You'd have to ignore that if you wanted to believe a flat earth. Ignore gravity and believe an unknown force pushing the flat earth up at a constant acceleration, for no reason, with no speck of anything which comes close to proof. I'm sold on gravity thank you.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Re: Lots of questions (I read the FAQ)

« on: June 08, 2006, 03:49:10 AM »

Why should flat Earthers not use dark energy to explain certain phenomena, if that is perfectly ok for the vast majority of cosmologists?

Because cosmologists rightly use it to describe things that they cannot otherwise explain. We can explain ourselves being attracted to the earth via gravity and the earth being round, rather than rely on dark matter and acceleration.

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Flat Earth Q&A / How would natural forces create a flat suspended object

« on: June 08, 2006, 03:25:39 AM »

But Flat Earthers also don't agree with gravity, which is what causes matter to clump together, at the earth-size level anyway.

18

Flat Earth Q&A / seasons

« on: June 08, 2006, 02:51:36 AM »

I see, so you took the round earth model and unwrapped it so the north pole is in the middle, and the south pole goes around the outside (the ice wall).

That seems to work fine until you see it on a diagram. See, for your design to work, the sun would have to light up the distance from the ice wall to the north pole.

This picture shows how the light would have to shine from the sun in order to light a flat earth so it would appear like ours. The center of the light follows the dotted line, and rotates around the north pole.

The problem with this model is, countries close to the north pole see the sun in the same way countries equally close to the south pole (ice wall) do. The only difference is the sun now is more toward the south than the north. If the flat sun DID exist casting this shape of light, the light would appear more distorted from the southern-most countries, or at least different, because of the distance at the edges.

You can only explain this by saying there's a change in air pressure, hence optics further south, or you could take the more risky road of saying there's a time/space phenomenon taking place further south, where all countries animals and people are stretched and become infinitely stretched at the ice wall. It's up to you. You'd make up anything to justify your beliefs.

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Flat Earth Q&A / seasons

« on: June 07, 2006, 11:35:51 PM »

Okay, you win that argument. 3000 miles seems a big enough distance to light half the world at a time, if you include the "spotlight effect". But I just can't wrap my head around the sun circling the earth like that. In order to create the effect of the sun rising in the east, moving across the sky leaning towards the north, then bending back toward the west, that must mean on a flat earth model, the sun is moving in a circle around new zealand.

Which means the east coast of australia will notice the strange pattern of the sun over NZ.

Unless you argue that the sun moves in a straight line, and it's strange optical effects causing this. Then the sun will move along the equator, more or less depending on the time of year. Then what? What happens as it reaches the end of the earth? Does it turn toward the east, and start moving back to the start?

It can't do that, if the light is bright enough to light half the earth at a time, someone will notice it. And it must move at lightning speed to reach the opposite side of the earth to begin lighting the countries again.

DISCLAIMER:
Keep in mind north, south, west and east are the "classical" format, applied to the flat earth too, if you are unhappy with this, replace the words north south west east with up down left right.

20

Flat Earth Q&A / seasons

« on: June 07, 2006, 11:02:11 PM »

I knew you'd take it too literally. Read my example again! Read every word. The sun, would rise, at 10 o'clock. It doesn't do that in Australia. Summertime! The light from the sun would shine in much more of a concentrated spot if the sun was only 3000 miles from the earth. The only way you could fix this is to move the sun further away from the earth. That or say someone lied about the distance between each land mass.

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Flat Earth Q&A / seasons

« on: June 07, 2006, 09:54:29 PM »

Yes, very good point. If the sun is shining high in the sky here in New Zealand, 1 pm it can't possibly be high in the sky in Australia, given it's only 3000 miles from the earth. Using your FE light refraction diagram, the sun would appear to be only just rising in Perth, Australia at 10 am, summer.

I would verify this by ringing up my friend in Perth.

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Flat Earth Q&A / I've ridden in the Concorde (FES related)

« on: June 07, 2006, 05:09:48 PM »

Place a ruler over a plate, and a ruler next to a ball, which leaves the suface quicker?

We are all too intelligent to point out tangents, thank you.

I understand your FE model, the one with north in the middle and south around the outside right? East is clockwise and West is counter-clockwise. This is the same as if you took the round earth, split it open and stretched it into a flat plate. Except the countries would be in different places. And compasses would read differently. And you would see forever. Etcetera.

Anyway, on to disproving your argument.

If you start in Japan and fly due east, you'll end up over New York.
If you start in Japan and fly due west, you'll end up over New York.

This may be true in a flat earth, but wouldn't it be more logical for airlines to fly in a straight line to reach New York? Instead of flying in a big circle for no reason, other than to waste fuel, time, and sell the idea that we live in a round earth?

You can't build a flat earth which meets both criteria, that being, in the case of flying from japan to new york:

1: Passing over specific countries
2: Flying east or west.

If you flew east or west, you would pass over different countries. People in the plane would notice this.

If you flew in a straight line, past the center "north pole", you would pass the correct countries, but you would no longer be flying due east/west.

You can't build a flat earth model which fits the plane travel patterns all over the world, eventually some plane routes which used to fly "south" will end up flying "east" or counter-clockwise on the flat earth in order to fly over the correct countries, or whatever.

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Flat Earth Q&A / A problem with your "gravity"

« on: June 06, 2006, 04:03:15 PM »

Mass is attracted to mass, you can even experiment yourself using this:

http://www.fourmilab.com/gravitation/foobar/ (thanks Deadlock for the link)

There are videos on there if you don't feel like performing the experiment yourself. So there you go, undeniable proof that mass is attracted to mass, and gravity exists.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Just when I thought it couldn't get funnier....

« on: June 04, 2006, 10:02:53 PM »

Did you read the post above yours? You need a mass far far bigger than anything you could hold in your hand in a home experiment. But if you really want one, pick up your computer screen, hold it high above your head, then drop. See? Gravity pulls the screen down towards your face.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Explain?

« on: June 04, 2006, 03:29:14 AM »

It's much easier to trick the audience into believing your picture is real if they don't know what a legitimate picture would look like.

True, except the picture is Earth, and the audience is the entire population of the planet. If they made up the spherical earth, they must have been geniuses because every single detail of the hoax is valid and one hundred percent believable.

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Flat Earth Q&A / are the sun and the moon flat as well?

« on: June 03, 2006, 07:09:58 PM »

I thought you'd say that, the thing about a spotlight is that it focuses its light in one concentrated area.

Considering what you said about it shining in all directions, not all at once. Okay so it shines in one place at a time.

If your sun is setting where I am, that means the sun is focused at me. That means it can't be focused straight down where it is actually over. They wouldn't get sun, they would look up and see a weird light shining toward the east, until the hill stopped it, then suddenly it would start shining straight down. That doesn't make sense.

If you dispute the above, that means the "spotlight" is actually a light, and the cone is very wide and can illuminate large areas of land and cast shadows sideways. So why can't it cast shadows on the other side of the world? Does our atmosphere prevent us from seeing the sun when it moves too far away?

What you are suggesting is the atmosphere bends light like thick glass would. Our atmosphere isn't made of thick glass. Air doesn't bend light that efficiently. If the flying planes and rockets all appear where they are meant to be, then the sun, moon and stars will too.

I can understand how you came to the conclusion that the sun is a spotlight. You envisioned a flat earth, then thought, "wait, how come sun only illuminates part of the earth at a time?", then thought of a spotlight. But that doesn't work, try again.

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Flat Earth Q&A / are the sun and the moon flat as well?

« on: June 03, 2006, 02:02:11 PM »

If the sun shines like a spotlight, how is it able to cast shadows on hills where  I live? Massive shadows, as if the "spotlight" has turned 90 degrees to face us when the sun is setting.

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Flat Earth Q&A / So teh windows on a plan might be curved....

« on: June 03, 2006, 01:33:01 AM »

Real life doesn't have clipping like computer games. You know you can see forever until something obstructs your view. But if you're suggesting a coincidental sloping ground for every angle of view off every high mountain in the world, the mind reels.

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Flat Earth Q&A / So teh windows on a plan might be curved....

« on: June 02, 2006, 10:40:03 PM »

If you see that plate curve, it means you must be quite near the edge of the earth. If you see the curve you must be able to see countries between you and the edge too. You can't.

The earth is 24,900 Miles diameter, and you are at maximum 6 Miles above the earth surface (Mount everest, highest summit in the world). You would not see that curved effect if you were that close to the flat earth. Okay, so in a passenger plane (8 miles) you still wouldn't see the curve. 8 miles is just too small in comparison to the 24,900 mile diameter of the earth. So you wouldn't see that "plate" effect Erasmus keeps going on about.

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Flat Earth Q&A / My reason(s) for the world being Round

« on: June 02, 2006, 10:01:38 PM »

So what you are saying is, people who circumnavigated the earth, flew in a big circle and landed where they took off? Did they fly around the outside of the earth circle? How big does the circle have to be to register as "around the whole world"?

Straight lines are straight lines, they have nothing to do with north/south/west/east. And we are only dealing with 2 axes here, not height. So don't say you will go off on a tangent into space in a spherical earth. Ignore height.

And say again, can you go around a flat world moving in a straight line? The answer: No! People have done it though. Why? Because the earth is round.