1

Flat Earth Debate / Re: the pop scientist Sabine H. has some sympathy for flat earthers

« on: May 14, 2024, 08:02:17 PM »

Pop physicist Sabine H. needs to learn about the basics of science before making these embarrassing videos.

At the 5:40 mark she says:

"It isn't hard to convince yourself that someone, somehow, did manage to actually calculate when the sun arises and when the solar eclipse occurs. And those are not the people who believe that the earth is flat. Why do Flat Earthers realize this? I suspect what's going on is that Flat Earthers don't have the faintest clue how modern science works."

The people who first made predictions in astronomy were Flat Earthers. Even many of the RE'ers here know this. It was done by the Ancient Babylonians long before the Greeks came up with the Round Earth Theory in classical antiquity. Prediction was done through equations which could predict patterns and trends. They could predict celestial events with surprising accuracy, and came up with the Saros Cycle which is still used for eclipse predictions.

This is apparently her big point in this video; that we should just assume a bunch of stuff about the history of science, and then go on to assume how some of those online calculators work.

2

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Flat earth solar eclipse sun/moon data

« on: April 12, 2024, 03:31:01 AM »

Feel free to spend a few hours searching online for an explanation to what I posted about the odd eclipse shapes and locations. You won't find one, or at least one that isn't some kind of hand-wavey dismissal sentence like "the earth is titled that's why", which we know is insufficient.

In RET where the Sun is directly over the Earth have long been defined as within the Tropics. If the Moon is in line with the Sun, then the shadow of Total Solar Eclipse should also appear within the Tropics. This is a simple geometric expectation.

We have geometry on one side, and "there must be an explanation somewhere..." on the other.

3

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Flat earth solar eclipse sun/moon data

« on: April 11, 2024, 10:04:48 PM »

Those wild eclipse shadow shapes do not make sense on a globe. In Round Earth Theory, during the Total Solar Eclipse the Moon is in alignment with the Sun and Earth, on the Ecliptic, so the shadow should to appear on the line of the Ecliptic upon the Earth -- the plane of the Sun-Earth system.

I would expect the Total Solar Eclipse shadow to appear here on this path upon the Earth, pointed out with red arrows and red text:



The Total Solar Eclipse occurs when the Moon is aligned with the Ecliptic and the Sun:

https://socratic.org/questions/why-don-t-we-have-eclipses-every-month



"The lunar orbit around Earth is tilted 5.8 degrees to ecliptic apparent path of Sun. Moon goes round the Earth once in 27 days 8 hours. But full moon to full moon is 29.5 days. Eclipses happen only at the point of intersection of both these orbits called nodes."

Here is a Partial Eclipse, as seen from Earth:

https://rwoconne.github.io/rwoclass/astr1230/4.2-eclipses.html

"Viewed on the celestial sphere from the Earth, the node is where the Moon's celestial path crosses the ecliptic. See the diagram below (click for enlargement). Only if the Sun and Moon are both near the node at the same time can a solar eclipse occur. If the Sun and Moon are both near enough to the node but the alignment is not perfect, a partial eclipse will occur, as in the figure"



So, during Total Solar Eclipse, the Moon is on the Ecliptic over the Sun.

The highest apex above the Equator the Ecliptic touches on the Earth's surface is the Tropic of Cancer. The Tropic of Cancer clearly cuts through Mexico, at a lower latitude than the USA:



Why is the Moon's shadow at the time of the Total Solar Eclipse placed elsewhere other than the plane of the ecliptic upon the earth? The Total Eclipse should be Ecliptic intersects the Earth, as both the Moon and Sun are on the Ecliptic.

The "Path of Totality", where the Moon completely completely covers the Sun in Total Solar Eclipse, and the point where the Moon crosses the Ecliptic in the sky to the observer, is often visible to observers from a very odd shape upon the Earth. All of the observers on this darkened path see the Moon completely covering the sun in complete totality:

https://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse/2024-total-solar-eclipse-guide



There is something not explained here.

In the recent April 2024 eclipse, the Path of Totality where observers could see the Total Solar Eclipse looked like this. The people in these areas beneath the path saw a Total Solar Eclipse:



For some reason the Path of Totality was above the Tropic of Cancer, and was angled northward towards Maine. Why is this?

4

Flat Earth Debate / Re: What about the Solar eclipse?

« on: April 09, 2024, 10:02:44 PM »

You don't need to know the size of the Moon to know that the shadow's path reflects the path of the Moon over the Earth. It makes symmetrical arcs in the Flat Earth version. I am waiting to see from you guys how all the odd shapes work in the Round Earth version. So far it appears that you are having difficulty in explaining it.

5

Flat Earth General / Re: Healthy Skeptical View of Science and Conspiracy theory

« on: April 09, 2024, 04:14:33 PM »

https://theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Motive+of+the+Conspiracy

Motive of the Conspiracy

The motive for 'The Conspiracy' is unknown (unlike the existence of 'The Conspiracy', no specific motive necessarily follows from the FET) and as such it is open to speculation. However, financial profit is the most commonly assumed motive.

'Profit'

Usually considered to be the most likely motive, this suggests that NASA is primarily an embezzlement front. The conspiracy spends millions of dollars in bribing astronauts, faking photographs, and other ways of faking space exploration, but NASA's budget is in the billions, so the conspirators still receive a large profit yearly.

'Not hiding anything at all'

It is also possible that NASA does not actually know that the earth is flat and since its inception has simply been faking the concept of space travel, never bothering (or unable) to go any farther than the edge of the atmosphere. The earth is portrayed as round in NASA media because the general public already believes that it is round.

NASA is mistaken about the earth's shape, just like many others are, and reflect that mistake when putting together its fake space missions.

'Military dominance'

The US Government and its European allies have a large interest in investing untold millions of dollars into hoaxing space travel because it gives a superior image to the rest of the world. Once a country has the technology to reach orbit it can also scare off aggressors and send ICBMs raining down on its enemies at the push of a button. Creating the illusion of space travel is critical to national security of a first-world nation, whether it is actually possible or not.

6

Flat Earth Debate / Re: What about the Solar eclipse?

« on: April 09, 2024, 12:06:25 PM »

Physicist and computer scientist Stephen Wolfram, creator of Wolfram Alpha, says in regards to today's eclipse prediction methods that "strangely" it is predicted by the epicycle method of prediction like with the Antikythera device, "despite all the theoretical science that's been done":

https://www.wired.com/story/when-exactly-will-the-eclipse-happen/

  “ But computing eclipses is not exactly a new business. In fact, the Antikythera device from 2000 years ago even tried to do it—using 37 metal gears to approximate the motion of the Sun and Moon....Of course the results are a lot more accurate today. Though, strangely, despite all the theoretical science that’s been done, the way we actually compute the position of the Sun and Moon is conceptually very much like the gears—and effectively epicycles—of the Antikythera device. It’s just that now we have the digital equivalent of hundreds of thousands of gears. ”

7

Flat Earth Debate / Re: What about the Solar eclipse?

« on: April 09, 2024, 04:44:00 AM »

That meme is wrong, the Saros can and does predict down to the second.

Flat Earth explains the Solar Eclipse paths much better than the Round Earth. Consider those paths on a Round Earth. On the maps the Moon is making quite sharp North-South movements over the course of a few hours. The Moon does not orbit the earth in a South-West to North-East angle.

In RE Moon's orbit only deviates by 5 degrees from the plane of the ecliptic, the Sun-Earth plane. It is also only moving slightly slower in the Sun in the sky, setting 50 minutes later each day

https://web.archive.org/web/20190211123505/http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/Astr2016/lectures/skyappearance.htm



Consider how the above, with a Moon that moves slowly across the sky in comparison to the Sun, can make all of these wild shapes:

http://eclipse-maps.com/Eclipse-Maps/Welcome.html



Curiously, on a Northern Azimuthal FE map, the paths of the Solar Eclipse make symmetrical arcs:

From A Text-Book of Astronomy by George C. Comstock

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34834/34834-h/34834-h.htm

Fig. 36.—Central eclipses for the first two decades of the twentieth century. Oppolzer.

Future eclipses.—An eclipse map of a different kind is shown in Fig. 36, which represents the shadow paths of [pg. 114] all the central eclipses of the sun, visible during the period 1900-1918 A. D., in those parts of the earth north of the south temperate zone. Each continuous black line shows the path of the shadow in a total eclipse, from its beginning, at sunrise, at the western end of the line to its end, sunset, at the eastern end, the little circle near the middle of the line showing the place at which the eclipse was total at noon. The broken lines represent similar data for the annular eclipses. This map is one of a series prepared by the Austrian astronomer, Oppolzer, showing the path of every such eclipse from the year 1200 B. C. [pg. 115] to 2160 A. D., a period of more than three thousand years.

Also see this image:

8

Flat Earth General / Re: Healthy Skeptical View of Science and Conspiracy theory

« on: April 09, 2024, 04:19:00 AM »

"All" pilots are regularly cited. See below:

But let's look at the pilots who all definitely would have to know about a flat earth.

It's basically a long running meme on this forum for people to come here and shout about all the pilots, ship navigators, physicists, bridge engineers, etc., often citing big numbers and even millions of people, who would need to be in on the conspiracy.

Seventeen years of Flat Earth investigation on this forum have looked a lot of those assumptions. See this post in response to the claim that the pylons of the Humber Bridge deviate due to the curvature of the earth, for instance. The Humber Bridge authority was emailed to get an answer on that:

Unfortunately not.  I once tried to champion this cause, and in the interests of getting a definitive answer, I emailed the Humber Bridge Authority to ask whether the figure was measured or purely theoretical.  Here's the reply:

Thank you for your recent email.
 
The two towers are build vertical to a tangent to the earth, i.e. radial to the centre of the earth, thus, theoretically, the shape between the two towers is an inverted trapesium rather than a rectangle with the length between the bottom of the towers being 36mm less than the length at the top of the towers.
 
The gap at the base is, of course, the one that was actually "measured" with the apparent increase being a result of building the towers "vertically".
 
Regards
 
Peter Hill
General Manager & Bridgemaster

So there you have it, straight from the horse's bridgemaster's mouth.  I'm man enough to admit I backed a wrong 'un, so can we let this one go now?

Suddenly your assumption is put into question, and is insufficient. Even claiming that this person is a liar isn't enough to save your assumption, since you have no real and specific data in favor of it except for the tribal knowledge and generalized claims that the pylons deviate.

9

Flat Earth General / Re: Healthy Skeptical View of Science and Conspiracy theory

« on: April 08, 2024, 03:06:50 PM »

If there are pilots who become "crazy" people who think that the earth is flat, then it nullifies the premise given that all pilots know that the earth is a globe.

The claim is clearly debunked there.

10

Flat Earth General / Re: Healthy Skeptical View of Science and Conspiracy theory

« on: April 07, 2024, 05:54:39 AM »

And my point is simply that you cannot make those claims that are based on your own assumption. There are plenty of interviews with merchant marines, military sailors, and shipping industry experts on Mark Sargent's channel and a few similar channels from the wider Flat Earth movement, which detail that the reality is different than what you assume, and I am happy to spam those out for you.

When you make a claim that is based on your opinion I am just going to dismiss you, since you have done nothing to show your assumption to be accurate and have provided no specific evidence except for common dogma and media hype.

This Flat Earth subject is basically an ongoing television series and you are asking me plot questions while refusing to take the time to catch up yourself by watching the FE channels, or reading the tfes.org wiki, or any of the other things you should logically be doing if you were interested in FE.

11

Flat Earth General / Re: Healthy Skeptical View of Science and Conspiracy theory

« on: April 06, 2024, 02:41:20 PM »

I don't see any evidence that these people are not pilots.

I don't see any evidence other than a claim that they are.

This isn't a case of anyone disagreeing with me being a liar.
It is a known FE liar, someone who is known to repeatedly lie.

But again, this is deflecting from the issue.
What motivation is there to pretend Earth is round such that so many systems operate based upon that?

There is more than one person in those videos. I don't see any evidence that they are lying. You have provided none. Once you can provide evidence for your claims we can consider your opinion.

12

Flat Earth General / Re: Healthy Skeptical View of Science and Conspiracy theory

« on: April 06, 2024, 01:49:59 PM »

There are several YouTube channels which collect these interviews and videos. See Mark Sargent's channel, for instance:

You mean one which tries to hide as much information as possible?
Where they basically just say his name is Thomas, with no indication of who he is.
What evidence is that that he is actually a former air force navigator?

Especially from someone like Mark Sargent, who has shown he is happy to lie to prop up his fantasy?

I don't see any evidence that these people are not pilots. There are numerous interviews which go into a lot of detail. If you want to deny them all and claim that everyone disagreeing with you is a liar then I will happily await your evidence.

13

Flat Earth General / Re: Healthy Skeptical View of Science and Conspiracy theory

« on: April 06, 2024, 10:57:18 AM »

There are several YouTube channels which collect these interviews and videos. See Mark Sargent's channel, for instance:

Mark Sargent Channel

Retired US Air Force Navigator talks about Flat Earth - SW39 - Mark Sargent




United States Air Force SR-71 pilot proves Flat Earth



Flat Earth & Air Traffic Control - SW123 - Mark Sargent



Flat Earth talks to US Army air traffic controller - SW137 - Mark Sargent



KLM pilot talks about Flat Earth and plane gyro



Veteran 737 Pilot grounded for Flat Earth comments



The Gyro System is rigged says Mack a Commercial Airline Pilot



Pilot with 40 years experience talks about his Flat Earth journey SW212



Flat Earth talks to 40 year pilot & media rant SW253



Commercial Airline Pilot talks about Flat Earth - Interview by Adams Truth Journey



Flight Instructor: We all fly over a FLAT EARTH - SW24 - Mark Sargent



U.S. Army Aviation & Ground Training Combat Expert talks Flat Earth - SW48 - Mark Sargent



Commercial Airline Captain: The plane gyros are rigged - SW58 Flat Earth - Mark Sargent



Air Traffic Controller meets Flight Instructor on a Flat Earth - SW43 - Mark Sargent

14

Flat Earth General / Re: Healthy Skeptical View of Science and Conspiracy theory

« on: April 06, 2024, 10:28:29 AM »

If you're going to tell me that all pilots have undeniable evidence that the earth is round then you should make the effort to prove that. Among the wider YouTube Flat Earth Community there have been many interviews with private pilots, commercial airliner pilots, and military pilots who have concerns that the earth seems flat according to high tech instrumentation and flight routines.

When I am inevitably questioned on these interviews and videos you will find that I will be able to pull this up while you still won't have much of anything, proving that this opinion is based on assumptions.

15

Flat Earth General / Re: Total solar ecplise

« on: March 26, 2024, 09:33:04 AM »

There is a difference between a model whose goal is to predict the position of bodies in the sky, and a model whose goal is to show that Universal Gravitation can simulate the orbit of 3+ bodies in a Star-Planet-Moon or Solar System configuration without falling apart. They do not have the same goals. The JPE DE is the former kind of model, which you are trying to use as proof of the later.

As described in the paper above, in the development of Celestial Mechanics Newton had to resort to using epicycles for his model of gravitation. It did not naturally work. This was largely known by the scientists in the post-Newton eras.

Here is a 1846 quote from Historian of Science William Whewell in his History of the Inductive Sciences --

“ 3.— The Epicyclical Hypothesis was found capable of accommodating itself to such new discoveries. These new inequalities could be represented by new combinations of eccentrics and epicycles: all the realand imaginary discoveries by astronomers, up to Copernicus, were actually embodied in these hypotheses; Copernicus, as we have said, did not reject such hypotheses; the lunar inequalities which Tycho etected might have boen similarly exhibited; and even Newton represents the motion of the moon’s apogee by means of an epicycle. As a mode of expressing the law of the irregularity, and of calculating its results in particular cases, the epicyclical theory was capable of continuing to render great service to astronomy, however extensive the progress of the science might be. It was, in fact, as we have already said, the modern process of representing the motion by means of a series of circular functions. ”

Epicycles are essentially just modifications which can represent nearly any design and pattern. The Ancient Greeks started with the assumption that all bodies were revolving around the Earth in perfect circles and added in epicycles until they were able to create the shape they wanted, which could predict the pattern and recurrence and position of bodies as they appear in the sky.

Here, we see an example of epicycles which turn a circle into an image of Homer Simpson:



Here is a quote about about the state of astronomy in a 1895 edition of University of Toronto Quarterly, which was published long after Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton made their contributions to astronomy:

Of the modern employment of the Ptolemaic epicycles, De Morgan, secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society of London, wrote in 1844: “ The common notion is that the theory of epicycles was a cumbrous and useless apparatus, thrown away by the moderns and originating in the Ptolemaic or rather Platonic notion that all celestial motions must either be circular and uniform motions or compounded of them. But, on the contrary, it was an elegant and most efficient mathematical instrument which enabled Hipparchus and Ptolemy to represent and predict much better than their predecessors had done; and it was probably at least as good a theory as their instruments and capabilities of observation required or deserved. And many readers will be surprised to hear that the modern astronomer to this day resolves the same motions into epicyclic ones. When the latter expresses a result by series of sines and cosines (especially when the angle is a mean motion or a multiple of it) he uses epicycles; and for one which Ptolemy scribbled on the, heavens, to use Milton’s phrase, he scribbles twenty. The difference is that the ancient believed in the necessity of these instruments, the modern only in their convenience; the former used those which do not sufficiently represent actual phenomena, the latter knows how to choose better; the former taking the instruments to be the actual contrivances of nature was obliged to make one set explain everything, the latter will adapt one set to latitude, another to longitude, another to distance. Difference enough no doubt, but not the sort of difference which the common notion supposes.”

Such was the state of affairs fifty years ago; today epicycles may be said to possess the heavens above and the earth beneath and the waters and the air between, nor has the all-pervading ether escaped them. In analytic guise they dominate the mathematics of hydrokinetics and sound, of heat, light and electricity; in fact, wherever there is either periodic or irregular motion, there the mathematician “ scribbles ” his epicycles, and not content like Ptolemy to wheel them on simple circles he rolls epicycle on epicycle to the third, the fourth or the fifth degree. Nor does their influence end here. Machines have been made to record for a sufficient length of time any motions for the character of which a working theory has to be found; other machines analyse the records into epicyclic movements, smoothing out or rejecting accidental irregularities, and still other machines recombine the epicycles to predict the motions as they will occur at a future time or under given changes of condition. Thus we have mechanical tide-predictors, harmonic analyzers of meteorological phenomena, epicyclic tracers of deviation curves for the compasses in iron ships, and a fast increasing array of other such machines.

16

Flat Earth General / Re: Total solar ecplise

« on: March 24, 2024, 07:07:40 PM »

Those models you are talking about are all cheats. The Three Body Problem has not been solved. Those models use epicycles and other cheats introduced into the scheme to make a wrong model predict things, like Ptolemy and the Ancient Greeks did for their Round Earth Geocentric model, and which Copernicus also adopted for his circular orbit model.

As a quick recap on the Ancient Greek model of epicycles:

https://books.google.com/books?id=aXU2AAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT38&ots=zNE0nJr1Qw&pg=PT37#v=onepage&q&f=false

The circle is the geometric figure possessing perfect symmetry, so Ptolemy and earlier Greek astronomers began with the intuition that celestial bodies orbit in circles at uniform speed. Observations then determined the deviations from the ideal, which Ptolemy modeled using mathematical contrivances unrelated to physical principles (deferents, epicycles, and equants).

...Ptolemy’s science was superficially anti-Platonic in that he emphasized the role of careful observation. However, at a deeper level, his science was a logical application of Platonism; in astronomy and in optics, he started with the “perfect” model and then merely described without explanation the inherently unintelligible deviations from it.

In a 2017 paper Replacing the Foundations of Astronomy its author Dr. Gopi Krishna Vijaya gives us a historic overview of the foundations of Modern Astronomy and its progress up to present. He describes that perturbations are epicycles, and that they are used in astronomy to 'make the observations fit' the theory:

Epicycles Once More

Following the Newtonian era, in the 18th century there were a series of mathematicians – Bernoulli, Clairaut, Euler, D’Alembert, Lagrange, Laplace, Leverrier – who basically picked up where Newton left off and ran with it. There were no descendants to the wholistic viewpoints of Tycho and Kepler, but only those who made several improvements of a mathematical nature to Newtonian theory. Calculus became a powerful tool in calculating the effects of gravitation of all the planets upon each other, due to their assumed masses. The motion of the nearest neighbor – the Moon – was a surprisingly hard nut to crack even for Newton, and several new mathematical techniques had to be invented just to tackle that.

In the process, a new form of theory became popular: Perturbation theory. In this approach, a small approximate deviation from Newton's law is assumed, based on empirical data, and then a rigorous calculation of differential equation is used to nail down the actual value of the deviation. It does not take much to recognize that this was simply the approach taken before Kepler by Copernicus and others for over a thousand years – adding epicycles to make the observations fit. It is the same concept, but now dressed up in gravitational disguise:



In other words, the entire thought process took several steps backwards, to redo the same process as the Ptolemaic - Copernican epicycle theory, only with different variables. The more logical way of approach would have been to redirect the focus of the improved mathematical techniques to the assumptions in Newton’s theory, but instead the same equations were re-derived with calculus, without examining the assumptions. Hence any modern day textbook gives the same derivation for circular and elliptical motion that Newton first derived in his Principia. The equivalence of the epicycle theory and gravitational theory has not been realized, and any new discovery that fits in with the mathematical framework of Newtonian gravity is lauded as a “triumph of the theory of gravitation.” In reality, it is simply the triumph of fitting curves to the data or minor linear extrapolations – something that had already been done at least since 2nd century AD. Yet the situation is conceptually identical.

~

The Dead End

In the late 19th century, one of the French mathematicians – Henri Poincaré – had already discovered that many of the terms being used in the “perturbation” series by mathematicians like Laplace and Lagrange were becoming infinite for long periods of time, making the system unstable. In simple words, the solutions ‘blow up’ fairly quickly. He also showed that the general problem of 3 mutually gravitating bodies was insoluble through any mathematical analysis! Many physicists and mathematicians built up modern “Chaos theory” based on these ideas, to show simply that one cannot calculate the movements of the planets accurately. Thus began the field of non-linear dynamics.

In the middle of the 20th century, with computers entering the field, the mathematicians pretty much gave up on calculating the orbits by themselves and programmed the computer to do it, even though it was mathematically shown that these orbits were incalculable. They had to be satisfied with approximations or numerical methods (or “brute force” methods.) The result of it all was that after 300 years, Newtonian/Einsteinian thought lands in the same spot that Kepler ended: the orbits point to a living or chaotic system. Only now, there is the additional baggage of all the wrong concepts introduced with regard to “inverse-square law”, “gravitational attraction”, “gravitational mass” and “curved space-time” along with uncountable number of minor assumptions. In this process, an enormous amount of human effort was put to derive thousands of terms in equations over centuries. The entire enterprise has been a wild goose chase

From the JPL DE wiki page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_Propulsion_Laboratory_Development_Ephemeris

Each ephemeris was produced by numerical integration of the equations of motion, starting from a set of initial conditions. Due to the precision of modern observational data, the analytical method of general perturbations could no longer be applied to a high enough accuracy to adequately reproduce the observations. The method of special perturbations was applied, using numerical integration

17

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Light examination of idea that the earth is flat, sky spherical, pic included

« on: March 23, 2024, 08:08:54 PM »

https://flatearth.ws/toronto

Flat-Earthers like to focus themselves on the visibility of the brightly colored Rogers Center on the left side of the CN Tower and ignore the rest of the buildings. From its upside-down shape, it is clearly a superior mirage. Atmospheric refraction causes the rays of light coming from the Rogers Center to reach the observer. However, these rays of light become irregular as they reach the observer and no longer resemble the actual shape of the Rogers Center.

https://flatearth.ws/toronto

Why is Rogers Center upside down? 

You should be more concerned about why it is floating in the air at the exact height it would need to be at to be on the horizon to the observer, in accord with his specific distance away from it, for a Round Earth. When you think about this Round Earth situation for this to occur, it is obvious nonsense.

18

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Light examination of idea that the earth is flat, sky spherical, pic included

« on: March 23, 2024, 07:36:50 PM »

  it's squished.

If portions of buildings that are physically blocked from view because of earth’s curvature is what you want to call “squished”, how do you un-squish.  Because it’s not by zoom.

And you have no explanation why the amount of the Turning Torso blocked didn’t change while “zooming”

Actually it has been demonstrated that the Turning Torso video is also experiencing a compression effect.

In the following video pause at the 4:28 mark:

" class="bbc_link" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">



See the "## px" overlaid red text on the image. At further distances from the tower, the more compression occurs. This is not a scene with straight line light geometry. There are multiple optical effects occurring here.

The compression at the bottom of the tower exhibits some similarity to the Skunkbay scene with the sunken peninsula. The sunken version of the peninsula is vertically compressed just above the line:



Source: 9/7/12 Skunkbay Timelapse Video - " class="bbc_link" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">

It also matches up with what this Youtube investigator saw. A man observes a "sinking ship" on a ship with clearly distinguishable white text and designs on the side. When the ship is sunken it is vertically compressed.

Runtime: 10 Minutes



In the above video see the far and near views of the ship at the 5:00 minute mark:

19

Flat Earth General / Re: Total solar ecplise

« on: March 23, 2024, 03:56:03 PM »

I don't see any sources in response here. If you have no source, you have diddly.

Here is another paper: The Numerical Solution of the N-Body Problem

From the introduction of the paper:

 “In the last few years, a group of algorithms has been developed in the astrophysics community which have come to be known as "tree codes" or "hierarchical codes." They are due to Appel, Barnes and Hut, and others. They are designed to work well in a variety of settings, including ones where there is a high degree of clustering. The basic idea is to replace groups of distant particles by their centers of mass, and to compute the interactions between groups via this approximation.”

Looking up 'Barnes Hut' we find: https://beltoforion.de/en/barnes-hut-galaxy-simulator/

The Barnes-Hut Galaxy Simulator

 “The Barnes-Hut Algorithm describes an effective method for solving n-body problems. It was originally published in 1986 by Josh Barnes and Piet Hut [1]. Instead of directly summing up all forces, it is using a tree based approximation scheme which reduces the computational complexity of the problem from O(N2) to O(N log N).

It works by reducing the number of force calculations by grouping particles. The basic idea behind the algorithm is that the force which a particle group excerts on a single particle can be approximated by the force of a pseudo particle located at the groups center of mass. For instance, the force which the Andromeda galaxy excerts on the milky way can be approximated by a point mass located at the centre of the Andromeda galaxy. There is no need to integrate over all stars in the Andromeda galaxy provided the distance between the two galaxies is large enough. This approximation is valid as long as the distance from a point group to a particle is large and the radius of the group is small in relation to the distance between the group and the particle.”

The above shows that there could be a numerical solution that doesn't use gravity fully, discrediting the "numerical solutions exist" idea. Like with the previous quotes and examples, numerical solutions are not a true simulation of the laws involved.

20

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Light examination of idea that the earth is flat, sky spherical, pic included

« on: March 23, 2024, 03:49:54 PM »

This image actually disproves your claim.

There should be no physical blocking of the buildings if the earth is flat.

If the scene was being sunken by the curvature of the earth and there was only standard straight line light geometry going on here, then the overlaid image shows that the buildings to the left of the tower should be below the horizon.

However, the buildings to the left of the tower are not below the horizon, showing your claim of what is occurring to be wrong.

How are large potions of the buildings not physically blocked from view?  Which would be impossible on a flat earth.  And confirms the dip of the horizon which would not occur for a flat earth.


https://flatearth.ws/toronto

Look at the images. The overlay shows that the buildings to the left of the tower should be below the horizon. They are not. It proves that the scene is not sunken, it's squished. You are mistaking vertical compression with a sinking effect.

21

Flat Earth Debate / Re: Light examination of idea that the earth is flat, sky spherical, pic included

« on: March 23, 2024, 01:53:41 PM »

So, is what we see at ground level usually more close to flat or the theorized curvature?

Shrugs…


https://flatearth.ws/toronto

This image actually disproves your claim. If the scene was being sunken by the curvature of the earth and there was only standard straight line light geometry going on here, then the overlaid image shows that the buildings to the left of the tower should be below the horizon.

However, the buildings to the left of the tower are not below the horizon, showing your claim of what is occurring to be wrong.

Please refrain from blindly posting this random Anti-FE stuff you find from the internet. Come up with your own material. The stuff you are looking at is often wrong and has glaring holes, as demonstrated above.

22

Flat Earth General / Re: Total solar ecplise

« on: March 23, 2024, 12:51:19 PM »

The existence of "numerical solutions" for the Three Body Problem are actually referencing cheats which do not provide full simulation of the problem.

From a question posted on researchgate.net:

  “ Q. What kind of problem solutions do you rate higher: analytical or numerical? More problems can be solved numerically, using computers. But some of the same problems can be solved analytically. What would your preference be? ”

Mohammad Firoz Khan, Ph.D. responds:

  “ A researcher would like to solve it analytically so that it is clear what are premises, assumptions and mathematical rules behind the problem. As such problem is clearly understood. Numerical solution using computers give solution, not the understanding of the problem. It is quite blind. However, in emergency one may resort to this option. ”

From a University of Pittsburgh graduate course, MATH2071 - Numerical Methods in Scientific Computing II:

  “ With rare exceptions, a numerical solution is always wrong; the important question is, how wrong is it? ”

From p.89 of Atmospheric and Space Flight Dynamics: Modeling and Simulation with MATLAB by Professor Ashish Tewari we read:

  “ In the next section, it will be shown that two additional integrals can be obtained when N = 2 from the considerations of relative motion of the two bodies. Hence, a two-body problem is analytically solvable. However, with N > 2, the number of unknown motion variables exceeds the total number of integrals; thus, no analytical solution exists for the N-body problem when N > 2. Due to this reason, we cannot mathematically prove certain observed facts (such as the stability of the solar system) concerning N-body motion. The best we can do is to approximate the solution to the N-body problem either by a set of two-body solutions or by numerical solutions. ”

From various models which break down the n-body problem into two-body problems:

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/440/1/719/1747624

We developed a Keplerian-based Hamiltonian splitting for solving the gravitational N-body problem. This splitting allows us to approximate the solution of a general N-body problem by a composition of multiple, independently evolved two-body problems. While the Hamiltonian splitting is exact, we show that the composition of independent two-body problems results in a non-symplectic non-time-symmetric first-order map. A time-symmetric second-order map is then constructed by composing this basic first-order map with its self-adjoint. The resulting method is precise for each individual two-body solution and produces quick and accurate results for near-Keplerian N-body systems, like planetary systems or a cluster of stars that orbit a supermassive black hole.

https://hanspeterschaub.info/Papers/UnderGradStudents/ConicReport.pdf

The patched-conic approximation has thus been developed as a more accurate solution to interplanetary transfer description. It involves partitioning the overall transfer into distinct conic solutions. For instance, as a spacecraft travels from Earth to Mars, its orbit is approximated as a hyperbolic departure, an elliptic transfer, and a hyperbolic arrival. The patched-conic approximation breaks the entire orbit down into several two-body problems. In other words, only one celestial body’s influence is considered to be acting upon the spacecraft at all times.

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/452/2/1934/1069988

In this paper, we present a new symplectic integrator for collisional gravitational N-body dynamics. The integrator is inspired by the non-symplectic and non-reversible integrator in Gonçalves Ferrari et al. (2014), SAKURA, and makes use of Kepler solvers. Like SAKURA we decompose the N-body problem into two-body problems. In contrast to SAKURA, our two-body problems are not independent. The integrator is reversible and symplectic and conserves nine integrals of motion of the N-body problem to machine precision.

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/440/1/719/1747624

It seems that a truly rigorous and elegant solution will be achieved only by finding a mathematical transformation that reduces the many-body problem to a one-body problem. In such a formulation each atom, nucleus or electron can be treated alone with the contributions of all the others summed together. In Alder's opinion such a development will really allow working on the deep-lying problems of the quantum-mechanical structure of matter. Physics has a long history of reducing many-body problems to one-or two-body problems in order to find more powerful solutions, and Alder and his colleagues have high hopes of doing it for this one.

23

Flat Earth General / Re: Total solar ecplise

« on: March 23, 2024, 12:43:28 PM »

There are a lot of claims without sources here, so allow me to correct this.

By design, you were born ignorant and educated stupid. The Three Body Problem is a crazy failing of basic astronomical science. You were taught that it was possible for a star to have a planet which had a moon. That was wrong. They never got that to work.

Just ask a mathematician:

https://www.askamathematician.com/2011/10/q-what-is-the-three-body-problem/

Q: What is the three body problem?

Physicist: The three body problem is to exactly solve for the motions of three (or more) bodies interacting through an inverse square force (which includes gravitational and electrical attraction).

The problem with the 3-body problem is that it can’t be done, except in a very small set of frankly goofy scenarios (like identical planets following identical orbits).

Ask Caltech physicist Sean Carrol:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180816124720/http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2006/07/23/n-bodies/

The N-body problem is one of the most famous, and easily stated, problems in mathematical physics: find exact solutions to point masses moving under their mutual Newtonian gravitational forces (i.e. the inverse-square law). For N=2 the complete set of solutions is straightforward and has been known for a long time — each body moves in a conic section (circle, ellipse, parabola or hyperbola) around the center of mass. In fact, Kepler found the solution even before Newton came up with the problem!

But let N=3 and chaos breaks loose, quite literally. For a long time people recognized that the motion of three gravitating bodies would be a difficult problem, but there were hopes to at least characterize the kinds of solutions that might exist (even if we couldn’t write down the solutions explicitly). It became a celebrated goal for mathematical physicists, and the very amusing story behind how it was resolved is related in Peter Galison’s book Einstein’s Clocks and Poincare’s Maps. In 1885, a mathematical competition was announced in honor of the 60th birthday of King Oscar II of Sweden, and the three-body problem was one of the questions. (Feel free to muse about the likelihood of the birthday of any contemporary world leader being celebrated by mathematical competitions.) Henri Poincare was a favorite to win the prize, and he submitted an essay that demonstrated the stability of planetary motions in the three-body problem (actually the “restricted” problem, in which one test body moves in the gravitational field generated by two others). In other words, without knowing the exact solutions, we could at least be confident that the orbits wouldn’t go crazy; more technically, solutions starting with very similar initial conditions would give very similar orbits. Poincare’s work was hailed as brilliant, and he was awarded the prize.

But as his essay was being prepared for publication in Acta Mathematica, a couple of tiny problems were pointed out by Edvard Phragmen, a Swedish mathematician who was an assistant editor at the journal. Gosta Mittag-Leffler, chief editor, forwarded Phragmen’s questions to Poincare, asking him to fix up these nagging issues before the prize essay appeared in print. Poincare went to work, but discovered to his consternation that one of the tiny problems was in fact a profoundly devastating possibility that he hadn’t really taken seriously. What he ended up proving was the opposite of his original claim — three-body orbits were not stable at all. Not only were orbits not periodic, they didn’t even approach some sort of asymptotic fixed points.

Now that we have computers to run simulations, this kind of behavior is less surprising (example here) from Steve McMillan — note how the final “binary” is not made of the same “stars” as the original one), but at the time it came as an utter shock. In his attempt to prove the stability of planetary orbits, Poincare ended up inventing chaos theory.

But the story doesn’t quite end there. Mittag-Leffler, convinced that Poincare would be able to tie up the loose threads in his prize essay, went ahead and printed it. By the time he heard from Poincare that no such tying-up would be forthcoming, the journal had already been mailed to mathematicians throughout Europe. Mittag-Leffler swung into action, telegraphing Berlin and Paris in an attempt to have all copies of the journal destroyed. He basically succeeded, but not without creating a minor scandal in elite mathematical circles across the Continent. (The Wikipedia entry on Poincare tells a much less interesting, and less accurate, version of the story.)

However, just because the general solution to the three-body (and more-body) problem is chaotic, doesn’t mean we can’t find special exact solutions in highly-symmetric conditions, and that’s just what Cris Moore and Michael Nauenberg have recently been doing. The image at the top really is an exact solution to twenty-one equal-mass objects moving in a figure-eight under their mutual gravitational attraction. They’re moving in a plane, of course, but that’s not strictly necessary; here’s a close relative of the figure-8, perturbed outside the plane.



“ From there you can just go nuts; here’s an example with twelve objects orbiting with cubic symmetry — four distinct periodic paths with three particles each. ”

Sean Carrol describes the three body problem orbits as chaotic and classifies the special orbits which were discovered as "highly-symmetric." Dr. Carrol proceeds to give animations of figure eight configurations and other special symmetrical orbits which have been discovered.

24

Flat Earth General / Re: Proof that the Earth isn't round?

« on: March 23, 2024, 10:29:13 AM »

No, this curving effect is also seen in the stars, not just in the Moon. The Milky Way is thought to be a straight line entity which we are viewing from the side. Yet it has been asserted that the Milky Way is sometimes seen to be creating an arch in the sky.



Above: Matt Rohlader Photography | Caption: "The arch of the Milky Way as seen from Split Rock Lighthouse State Park near Two Harbors, MN."

A Google Image Search for 'Milky Way Arch' will provide many images of the Milky Way arching in the sky.

Photographs of the Milky Way Arch from Google Image Search have been described as being affected by wide-angle, fish-eye, composite, or other effects. While true that many images of the Milky Way Arch are affected by such distortion, sources tell us that the arch can be seen with the naked eye as well. Astronomer and Associate Editor Alison Klesman, Ph.D., at Astronomy Magazine informs us that sometimes cameras can produce distortion, and ends with the statement that the arc can also be seen with the naked eye. It is said that both the Milky Way and the ecliptic (the planar path of the Sun) project as a great circle onto the celestial sphere, which create straight lines overhead, and at lower altitudes create arcs in the sky:

http://www.astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2018/09/seeing-a-curved-milky-way

[Discussing photo distortion]...Each individual image captures only a portion of the sky (and landscape), and in each single shot, the Milky Way does appear straight. But when these images are stitched together, the photographer must introduce distortion to turn them into a single square or rectangular photo. This is because the final photo is a flat projection of a curved sphere, which introduces distortion that ultimately makes the Milky Way appear curved in order to make the horizon appear flat. Alternatively, some images are taken with a fisheye lens, which itself produces distortion in order to image an extremely wide field in one shot.

There is one caveat: The Milky Way appears straightest when it is most directly overhead. Astronomy senior editor Rich Talcott points out, "The plane of the Milky Way projects as a great circle onto the celestial sphere (as does the ecliptic, which we are also in). So both the Milky Way and the ecliptic appear as large circles in the sky (which, if they happen to pass overhead, will appear as straight lines). But if the circles reach a peak altitude of only, say, 30°, they’re going to look like arcs to the naked eye."

Our naked eyesight is rectilinear, meaning that straight lines appear as straight lines.

If our naked eye is seeing a curved milky way, then it is not our eyesight doing it.

25

Flat Earth General / Re: Proof that the Earth isn't round?

« on: March 23, 2024, 09:54:23 AM »

There absolutely is wild distortion in the sky. The Southern Cross may be too small of a constellation to readily identify it within the constellation, but it is demonstrated on larger objects such as the Milky Way Arch or in the Moon Tilt Illusion.

See the following by Professor Myers at the University of Pennsylvania, who describes the Moon Tilt Illusion as "counter intuitive and magical":

https://web.archive.org/web/20190516183015/http://www.upenn.edu/emeritus/essays/MyersMoon.html

I was not one of those kids fascinated early by space, the ones who know Norton's Star Atlas inside out by the age of ten, who save up their allowance to buy a telescope advertised on the back pages of a popular science magazine. Outside my bedroom window, the Cincinnati night sky was obscured by a partnership of buildings, trees, bright lights and clouds. I could follow the counterclockwise rotation of the Big Dipper around the North Star and spot Orion rising in the southeast in the winter sky, but I was 18 years old before I got my first unimpeded view of the stars and the Milky Way one clear night in the Arizona desert.

Today, an app called StarWalk changes all that. One can point an iPad at the sky day or night, in clear or cloudy weather, and fix the locations of the planets, nearby stars, and constellations. Technology has simplified but not replaced the wonderment and pleasure of stargazing and following the motions of the planets along the ecliptic.

One evening several years ago, I took this picture of the misty glow of an almost full moon shining between pine trees in my backyard. The moon was beautifully illuminated and dominated the dark sky. Yet something was disturbing about the atmospheric night scene: the illumination of the moon seemed to be coming from the wrong direction! In this photograph of a waxing moon in the southern sky, its illumination appears to be coming from above to the right. But the sun---which had set an hour earlier---was already below the western horizon to the right when this photo was taken. If the sun is below the horizon, I thought, shouldn't its illumination of the moon appear to be coming from below the horizon? Intrigued, I made further observations when both the sun and the moon occupied the evening sky at the same time, and it certainly seemed that light rays from the sun would have to follow a curved path to shine on the moon at the observed angle. The sketch drawn below may help to explain the difference between what I expected to see and what I actually saw.

I asked everyone willing to listen if they were familiar with this illusion: why does a light ray from the sun to the moon appear to follow a curved path? No one had seen or heard of it. Several imaginative explanations were offered: "The light rays are bent by the earth's atmosphere." Or, "Gravitational lensing as predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity is responsible." I was surprised not to find the illusion described in astronomy textbooks. I googled "moon illusion" but the articles were about an entirely different illusion: the apparent magnification of the full moon when it's close to the horizon.

Finally, help came from my daughter, who located published papers by googling "moon tilt illusion". The scientific explanation is based on the projection of a straight line onto the surface of a sphere. A simpler explanation was provided in a conversation with Benjamin Shen, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Penn, who said that light appears to follow a great circle route from the sun to the moon. That's why the moon's lit face appears to us not to face the sun squarely, regardless of whether the sun is above or below the horizon.

The moon tilt illusion is counter-intuitive and magical---look for it the next time you are under a night sky.

26

Flat Earth General / Re: Proof that the Earth isn't round?

« on: March 23, 2024, 09:21:26 AM »

In the Bi-Polar model this is explainedby the existence of two poles.

However, the Monopole model persists, and it would be interesting to try to debunk the explanation for it.

There might be a time when South America and Africa see the night stars at the same time, but never South America, Africa and Australia at the same time.

https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html

Here is summer on June 21, 2021 with added green marker for "a star":



Translating it to a Flat Earth Monopole map, with relative location:



The star is close enough to those two locations to be in range so that the star could be visible at the same time from both locations.

As seen above, it is possible in some situations for two locations to see the same star at the same time. If the star is encircling the Earth like the Sun, then different observers will observe that star when it is night for that observer.

When each observer in the above diagram looks to the south, they see the that star swirling around a southern celestial pole. The star is displaces from due South for each observer, but this could be shifted through a number of means.

Logically it makes more sense that there is only one mechanism for multiple multiple phenomena, rather than multiple mechanisms for multiple phenomena. In the Monopole model the appearance of the South Celestial Pole could be related to the seasons. On a Monopole Model the seasonal daylight patterns, where wide extents of the Earth receive daylight when the Sun moves to the South, can be explained with a magnifying dome model where the light creates broad shapes at different positions. Since we do not live in a perfect world, it does not necessarily follow that the Sun's area of light will make a circular shape at all times, or that the light of the Sun will necessarily engulf all of the Earth at once. If the light is shining through imperfect affecting phenomena it may widen into a non-circular shape.



In the above, the seasonal daylight patterns of the Flat Earth Monopole Model are satisfactorily, and coincidentally, simulated with a magnifying dome.

If light behaves as if it were coming through a dome magnifying glass, another interesting aspect is that it is seen that the view from the underside of the dome can create an effect which could create a southern celestial system.




The Southern Celestial system is artificial, and only encompasses the stars around the true area of stars.

Since the stars are spinning and the night sky is over South America and Australia at different times, observers in those areas will see the same stars spinning around their observed South Celestial Pole. In the case of Africa and South America, they may be close enough together that the stars they see are the same stars, except located on one end of the circle than the other.

27

Flat Earth General / Re: Proof that the Earth isn't round?

« on: March 23, 2024, 09:15:29 AM »

The argument in the illustration was that three different observers could observe the stars at the same time, which is false.

There might be a time during the year where two of the locations might have night sky at the same time, but never three.

https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html

Here is summer on June 21, 2021 with added green marker for "a star":



Translating it to a Flat Earth Monopole map, with relative location:



The star is close enough to those two locations to be in range so that the star could be visible at the same time from both locations.

28

Flat Earth General / Re: Proof that the Earth isn't round?

« on: March 22, 2024, 09:33:55 PM »

Considering navigation and celestial observation points to this…



And not this..

Please stop posting this. I would encourage you not to blindly post the stupid things you see from Professor Dave on the internet. Just because he is a real professor at a university, it doesn't mean that he is not an embarrassment to basic astronomy.

When it is night in one of those locations it is day or twilight in the other. Those three observers do not see the stars at the same time.

There might be different arguments you could come up with, but this one should not be used. The illustration assumes that it is night at all times through the day, which is clearly false. The night sky is opposite of the Sun, and exists to be over different observers at different times, whether FE or RE.

29

Flat Earth General / Re: Total solar ecplise

« on: March 19, 2024, 07:15:37 PM »

I did check out their resources. NASA's eclipse website, https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov, mentions the word "saros" 14,500 times.

https://www.google.com/search?&q=%22saros%22+site:https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov

No. of Results: 14,500

Under Round Earth physics the solution to predict the eclipse would be through an understanding of the Three Body Problem in regards to the conventional heliocentric Sun-Earth-Moon system. Searching NASA's eclipse website on "three body" gives us:

https://www.google.com/search?&q=%22three+body%22+site:https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov

No. of Results: 2 (duplicate text)

From the result:   “ The distance of apogee does not vary by much month to month although the value of perigee can change quite a bit. Minimum vs. maximum apogee is a 0.6% spread and minimum vs. maximum perigee is a 3.9% spread. If Newton couldn't solve the three-body problem I certainly can't ”

The Three Body Problem refers to the greatest problem in the history of astronomy. It is the inability of science to simulate or recreate a model of the Sun-Earth-Moon system. It is a quite an embarrassing problem. It is for this reason that pattern-based methods like the Saros Cycle must be used for prediction in astronomy.

See this article "The Physics Problem that Isaac Newton Couldn't Solve" by Vanderbilt University physics and astronomy professor Robert Scherrer --

http://www.cosmicyarns.com/2017/07/the-physics-problem-that-isaac-newton.html

There's a physics problem so difficult, so intractable, that even Isaac Newton, undoubtedly the greatest physicist who ever lived, couldn't solve it. And it's defied everyone else's attempts ever since then.

This is the famous three-body problem. When Newton invented his theory of gravity, he immediately set to work applying it to the motions of the planets in the solar system. If you have a planet orbiting a much larger body, like the sun, and the orbit is circular, then the problem is easy to solve -- it's something that's done in a high school physics class.

But a circular orbit isn't the most general possibility, and sometimes one body isn't much smaller than the object it orbits (think of the Moon going around the Earth). This more complicated case can still be solved -- Newton showed that the two bodies orbit their common center of mass in elliptical orbits. In fact, this prediction of elliptical orbits really cemented the case for Newton's theory of gravity. The calculation is a lot trickier than for circular orbits, but we still throw it at undergraduate physics majors in their second or third year.

Now add a third body, and everything falls apart. The problem goes from one that a smart undergraduate can tackle to one that has defied solution for 400 years.

A Nova documentary, The Strange New Science of Chaos, states that mathematicians were unable to extend Newton's model beyond two bodies. Scroll to the segment between 9:40 to 13:20 (4 minutes):

30

Flat Earth General / Re: Total solar ecplise

« on: March 19, 2024, 06:08:11 PM »

There is no eclipse prediction based on Round Earth physics. Ironically, NASA stole their eclipse prediction method from the Ancient Babylonians, a society of people who believed that the earth was flat.

According to NASA's Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses they describe that they are using the Saros Cycle method. The Saros can predict the annular (ring eclipse), total, and hybrid types of solar eclipses. From p.40 we read:

  “ All Saros series begin and end with a number of partial eclipses. Among the 204 Saros series with members falling within the scope of this Canon, the number of partial eclipses in the initial phase ranges from 6 to 25. Similarly, the number of partial eclipses in the final phase varies from 6 to 24. The middle life of a Saros series is composed of umbral/antumbral eclipses (i.e., annular, total, or hybrid), which range in number from 39 to 59. Table 4-3 presents the statistical distribution in the number of umbral/antumbral eclipses in the Saros series represented in the Canon. ”

Babylonians discovered the Saros Cycle:

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/how-did-the-ancients-predicted-eclipses-the-saros-cycle/

"THE SAROS AND THE ANCIENTS -- Babylonian astronomers discovered the saros cycle around the 7th or 8th century B.C. They were keen observers and kept meticulous records of astronomical events for hundreds of years on clay tablets. This allowed them to recognize the saros pattern in both solar and lunar eclipses. They used the saros to predict future eclipses, which they also recorded on clay tablets."

Babylonians believed in a flat earth:

https://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/ebooks/PlaneTruth/pages/Prologue.html

"The Babylonians believed that the universe consists of a reasonably flat earth surrounded by water, with the whole covered by a huge dome.  According to their cosmology, water is above the dome and below the earth."