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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Problems with Flat Earth Hypothesis.

« on: June 01, 2010, 09:29:22 AM »

Birds fly at high altitudes for the same reason jetliners do. Let's say a bird can fly with a maximum 1 cubic meter of air passing over it per second (otherwise the air would blow the bird to bits). The bird wants to fly faster, and since the air is thinner, and therfore more spread out at higher altitudes, by flying higher up, the same amount of air passing over it can allow the bird to still fly faster, with the same amount of oxygen. Plus V-formations compensate for the extra energy required to maintain the speed of the bird.

Now the spoke hypothesis makes sense in both FE and RE theories. If the earth is round, the bird obviously cannot fly through the earth, and so flies over it. Same with flat earth theory. Sure, flying at higher altitudes in RE theory seems ridiculous, but why do you think jetliners fly so high? The speed benefits of high altitude far outweigh the slower speeds of the thicker air below.

Add to that that as birds fly and "lighten their load" through excretion, they're able to fly up higher. Once they get at the right altitude, they can glide for long periods of time before needing to exert much energy again. Or when going to land, can glide for considerable distances, especially if there's a tailwind or up drafts.

However, I still fail to see how any of this proves a flat Earth in any way shape or form. It doesn't matter which would be more efficient (flying at high altitudes on a flat surface or a curved one), the only thing that matters is the most efficient way of flying on that surface. For both round AND flat Earth models, flying at higher altitudes is more efficient for traveling long distances. It doesn't matter if flying at high altitudes on a flat Earth is more efficient than on a round Earth, because either way, that migratory path is more efficient than others for their respective models. You can't say the Earth is flat because it's (slightly) more efficient for a single variable, and completely disregard that a round Earth is far more efficient in many other ways.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: I'll test bendy light theory

« on: May 22, 2010, 11:23:17 PM »

Talking about merely the premise of the experiment, it should work. Really, you don't need to come up with predictions. You only need to come up with predictions if you are forming a hypothesis. However, the hypothesis is already formed (BLH). You are merely conducting an experiment to prove or disprove it. Which can be done with only moderately accurate equipment. If there is a change of luminosity when the laser is pointing vertically compared to it pointing horizontally (oriented to the surface of the Earth), then BLH has some support. To further this support, you would need to take accurate measurements at varying angles. However, if the luminosity is the same, then you do not need to collect so much data. Only enough data to clearly show that luminosity is not affected by the orientation of the laser in relation to the Earth.

If there is a variance in the luminosity, then you would need to use BLH to accurately predict the variance at the different angles. BLH would then be put to the test again, to see if the predictions are true. If BLH passes both tests, then it is further on the path to becoming an actual theory, and not a proposed hypothesis. If the FEer's say that this test will not work, then it is up to them to provide a way to properly test their hypothesis. If they can come up with no way to test it, then it is not a hypothesis, and thus, certainly cannot be a theory, as it will no longer fall within the scientific realm at all.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: How Evolution Proves a Flat Earth

« on: May 20, 2010, 08:50:01 AM »

First off, Pongo, did you simply ignore my post? I would like some explanation, with your reasoning, why there are several migratory paths east/west, one of which stretches from South America to Australia. Because, quite frankly, it goes completely against your reasoning.

Now I will point out that the longest of the migratory paths follows an ocean current, I believe. Making that path comparatively easier to travel, even given it's longer length. However, since you seem to be content with ignoring external factors of birds migratory paths, such as tail winds, I'm assuming you shall do the same for any migratory path. If you don't, then I'll head you off right now, and say you are being blatantly hypocritical. Either drop your point of the inefficiencies of the round Earth bird migratory paths, which has already been discredited several times, or admit to being hypocritical in scientific matters, and thus loose any credibility on such matters.

Secondly, I have another question. Why do you believe in the theory of evolution, and not a round Earth? You say that the conspiracy is everywhere, and that modern science can't be trusted because of it. And yet you're perfectly content to merrily use other scientific theories to support your own hypothesis. No, I will not call flat Earth a theory, it is not deserving of the title. What are your reasons for throwing out the findings of the scientific community, except where it's convenient or agrees with you? This must be addressed, or your scientific integrity is shot, and anything scientific in nature you say will be discredited by your utter lack of integrity of the field.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Subjective, Intersubjective Objective and proof the world can't be round.

« on: May 20, 2010, 12:22:19 AM »

You know, words do change meaning. Hell, they do so on a daily basis. There are people whose only job is to track the usage of words to determine how they're being used, and update their definitions in dictionaries. Linguistics is a very real field.

Besides, you're assuming the word was made when we knew exactly what the Earth was. The word, or to be more correct the ancient form of the word (Isn't it Gaea, or somesuch? I know that's the Greek goddess of the Earth, in any event), was made to describe what we knew, not exactly what it was. Because we didn't know exactly what it was, only the part of it we could observe. Hell, they used to think the Earth was the center of the universe, and that was proven wrong (Unless you take into consideration that we are, indeed, the center of the observable universe. But that's a different matter). They also used to think germs were evil spirits, or tainted blood that needed to be let out.

Your entire argument has no basis at all, really. Hell, you don't even use the right definition of Earth, nor do you bother to do the research to figure out what the Earth was first called, as that would be more pertinent to your point. Next time, do your research before making a thread.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: The appearance of Gravity

« on: May 18, 2010, 11:59:17 AM »

So Robosteve believes that jpgs move.
interesting. why don't you do a screen capture of the picture, then paste it.
see if it still moves

The Conspiracy tampers with screen capturing software, too.

Seems awfully convenient to blame everything on a conspiracy nobody can find any proof exists.

Here, there is a way that will make it impossible for the conspiracy to intervene, and to have a perfectly straight line as well as a perfect right triangle. Get a flat piece of lumber. If you want, you can even cut the tree yourself and sand it down so you have a nice flat disk of wood. Then, more on the left hand side, draw two dots 3" apart. Connect the dots with a straight line. Any two points connected with a single line is always a straight line. If you don't trust your handiwork at drawing straight lines, you can use a laser. Now, I know about bendy light. So, what you would need to do to avoid this, is to have the surface of your drawing plane parallel with the surface of the Earth. Thus, the bending light will not vary side to side, only up and down. Making it so that, on the plane you are drawing on, it is straight. Now, you need a compass, if you don't want to use protractors, which would be changed by the Conspiracy. Hell, you'd even say a compass is. So, you need to objects, anything will do, so long as one is 4 inches long, and the other is 5 inches long. Now, from the bottom of the line you drew, draw a circle around that point with the object that's 4 inches long. Place one end at the point you already drew, and place your writing utensil at the other end of said object, and spin it in a circle about the fixed point. Do the same thing with the upper point, but using the object that's 5 inches long. The circles will intersect at two points. It will be to the left and right of the bottom point previously drawn. Then, simply connect the dots, again using the laser guide oriented to not be affected by Bendy Light in our drawing plane. You can use any writing instrument you wish, and there are many ways you can make your own writing instrument. Heck, since you're doing it on wood you got yourself, you can even scratch the surface with a sharp rock. Unless you think the conspiracy has altered every tree and every rock on the entire planet?

A nice picture to go along with it. The dark black line is the first line you draw. The blue circle is the 4" circle, the magenta circle the 5" one. The two thinner black lines are the triangle, and the two light black lines are the triangle in other direction.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: There is no way for a round Earth to Exist. (Science & Philosophy)

« on: May 18, 2010, 10:59:36 AM »

There have been numerous flights over the south pole. A Pan Am 747Sp flew over the south pole in 1977 for Pan Am's 50th anniversary going from Sydney to Recife. And Bob Buck flew a Boeing 707 called "Polar Cat" over the south pole, deviating his course enough to fly directly over the pole, and it is written about in the book "North Star Over My Shoulder" or something like that.

Granted, these are but a couple examples. Though really, there is little need to fly over the south pole. The only times it makes distances shorter is flying from Australia to South America. But the flight is so treacherous due to there being no emergency landing fields and few weather observation centers, that it makes the trip not worth the risks involved. Do you want to risk emergency landings on uneven ice where there are near perpetual white-outs at ground level, and heavy ground winds? It's dangerous, and there is an ice wall (The ice on Antarctica is two miles thick, on average), but not one that's insurmountable, as planes can fly at 30,000 feet, or about 20,000 ft over the ice.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: How Evolution Proves a Flat Earth

« on: May 18, 2010, 10:41:27 AM »

While I am glad you aren't going against evolution, I am rather disappointed in your flow of logic.
You need to ask yourself why birds migrate the way they do. Most birds migrate seasonally. As it gets cold, or before it does so, with the onset of winter, the birds will migrate to a cooler southern climate. And as winter ends and that climate gets to be too hot for them, they move back up north for the cooler northern summers. Now, it is a bit more involved than this (namely, when they start migrating, the factors involved in when and where they migrate, the specific routes they take, and the timing between different species migrating to avoid niches being over filled, among others), but that's a good simple summary.

The point is, birds would not migrate east to west, because it has no or little effect on the climate. It's kindergarten logic to know that if you want to be warmer, you go south. Colder, you go north. East and west only have a notable difference in temperature across incredibly vast distances, or in special geographical areas, where west might be, say, Death Valley.


This is a nice image of sea turtle migration. A lot of it does go north and south. But, right there at the bottom, you see a long migration pattern from South America to (presumably) Australia. This would be the longest imaginable path on your Flat Earth model, and would be the most inefficient of any migration pattern. By your own logic, that shouldn't happen, being so incredibly inefficient. Evolution wouldn't allow it. Unless, of course, the distance around the bottom of the map is actually shorter, being at the bottom of a globe.

Now, to the altitude point. Higher altitudes actually prove to be more efficient thanks to tail winds. And the distance is actually not that much greater. We're talking very small scales. In reality, 500 feet up is not that high. Here is a nice quote from Standford.edu:
"Most birds fly below 500 feet except during migration. There is no reason to expend the energy to go higher -- and there may be dangers, such as exposure to higher winds or to the sharp vision of hawks. When migrating, however, birds often do climb to relatively great heights, possibly to avoid dehydration in the warmer air near the ground. Migrating birds in the Caribbean are mostly observed around 10,000 feet, although some are found half and some twice that high. Generally long-distance migrants seem to start out at about 5,000 feet and then progressively climb to around 20,000 feet. Just like jet aircraft, the optimum cruise altitude of migrants increases as their "fuel" is used up and their weight declines. Vultures sometimes rise over 10,000 feet in order to scan larger areas for food (and to watch the behavior of distant vultures for clues to the location of a feast). Perhaps the most impressive altitude record is that of a flock of Whooper Swans which was seen on radar arriving over Northern Ireland on migration and was visually identified by an airline pilot at 29,000 feet. Birds can fly at altitudes that would be impossible for bats, since bird lungs can extract a larger fraction of oxygen from the air than can mammal lungs."
I took the liberty to bold the line you would be most interested in. Remember, this is Stanford University. Unless you have a higher education than an Ivy college, I'm going to go with the ones who have studied this first hand much longer and mroe intensively than you have.

Birds are not the most evolved. In fact, that single statement shows you know extremely little about evolution at all, past the cliche phrases that are over used and misunderstood by many who use them. There is no such thing as "most evolved" or even "More evolved." That implies evolution has a goal, something it's trying to reach. It doesn't. If conditions change, species change. And the ones who evolved to better live in the environment will survive. This is not "more evolved" however, because if the conditions changed again, those "more evolved" organisms can suddenly be shit out of luck. You can't even say our ancestors were "less evolved" than we were, because we probably wouldn't have survived in those conditions as we are now. Besides, every species here on Earth is descendant of the dinosaurs. Species evolve from earlier species, so, all species evolved from that time frame. Just like all of the dinosaurs evolved from the species before them, so on and so forth.

Once again another thread that makes not one point that can't be explained or refuted, and, again, shows a profound misunderstanding of the sciences they are attempting to use.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: The appearance of Gravity

« on: May 17, 2010, 09:10:58 PM »

How can you be sure?

Because I am unable to detect a perfectly straight edge.

That's why we have sophisticated equipment that can do that for you, thousands of times more accurately than any person could hope to.  This can be done many ways, including ways that do not rely on the sensory equipment's positioning or orientation. If you were to take a laser distance measuring device, it could give you the distance within (I'm using a conservative estimate here) 1"/10,000". Have the laser mounted in a rotating joint, positioned so that the end of the laser remains fixed upon a central point. This can be accurately achieved with a second laser placed perpendicular to the first, to determine if the laser end movies in relation to the laser fixed upon it beyond one degree of freedom of motion. Place the straight edge so that it lies upon the same plane as the lasers degree of freedom. Then, measure the distance to the straight edge from the laser point, at set intervals of rotation. With trigonometry, and knowing the orientation of the laser and the distance provided, you will be able to mathematically prove that the edge is straight, with however much variance the edge has. The math is actually not that complicated, and you could easily make your own Excel spreadsheet (Or Open Office spreadsheet, which you can view source code) to do the math for you. if you think the gravity of the Earth (or any other celestial body you wish to proclaim would have an effect) has an effect on the laser technology by bending the light, simply re-do the experiment in a different orientation to said outside influence. If the numbers prove to be the same (within an acceptable error rating), it proves that other variable had no effect on the experiment.

According to this man, light bends, so that messes up your equipment.
Also the error of margin is an estimate, so if he doesn't detect variance, the error of margin must be greatly increased.
Welcome to Zeteticism

Which is why you would perform the experiment at different orientations to the factors which would cause light to bed. Which would be gravity (No other force bends light, other than reflection or refraction (Not bending, but we can simplify it as such). To avoid both, do this experiment in a vacuum where the only outside force acting on the light is the curvature of space, which could be accounted for if you want to get that involved with it, and throw in some higher level calculus as well). If the results are the same with a reasonable margin of error, regardless of the orientation to gravitational sources which would bend the light, it can be deemed that the light is not bending. At least, not to a measurable degree under these circumstances. It's a whole different ballgame to prove that light IS bending, and you need some calculus thrown in there.

And actually, if he doesn't detect a variance, then the margin of error would be incredibly small. Really, there would a slight difference, but the net result should be accurate within +-1"/10,000" (estimating a relatively cheap laser distance finder). Which is a rather low margin of error.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: The appearance of Gravity

« on: May 17, 2010, 08:24:50 PM »

How can you be sure?

Because I am unable to detect a perfectly straight edge.

That's why we have sophisticated equipment that can do that for you, thousands of times more accurately than any person could hope to.  This can be done many ways, including ways that do not rely on the sensory equipment's positioning or orientation. If you were to take a laser distance measuring device, it could give you the distance within (I'm using a conservative estimate here) 1"/10,000". Have the laser mounted in a rotating joint, positioned so that the end of the laser remains fixed upon a central point. This can be accurately achieved with a second laser placed perpendicular to the first, to determine if the laser end movies in relation to the laser fixed upon it beyond one degree of freedom of motion. Place the straight edge so that it lies upon the same plane as the lasers degree of freedom. Then, measure the distance to the straight edge from the laser point, at set intervals of rotation. With trigonometry, and knowing the orientation of the laser and the distance provided, you will be able to mathematically prove that the edge is straight, with however much variance the edge has. The math is actually not that complicated, and you could easily make your own Excel spreadsheet (Or Open Office spreadsheet, which you can view source code) to do the math for you. if you think the gravity of the Earth (or any other celestial body you wish to proclaim would have an effect) has an effect on the laser technology by bending the light, simply re-do the experiment in a different orientation to said outside influence. If the numbers prove to be the same (within an acceptable error rating), it proves that other variable had no effect on the experiment.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: There is no way for a round Earth to Exist. (Science & Philosophy)

« on: May 17, 2010, 08:00:05 PM »

So, the entirety of your argument relies on the 1 + 1 = 1 raindrop analogy. Disproving that invalidates your entire argument. I like a challenge in a debate, but lets get this settled.

Now, lets start with how the analogy starts; two raindrops are falling, side by side. So, we have two separate rain drops. At this point in time, we can say, with certainty, that 1 + 1 = 2. There are two of them, as they are separate, and falling side by side. Now, as they fall, they bump together and, thanks to the properties of water, form together into one rain drop. At this time, if we are to take another observation, there is merely one raindrop. We do not see two separate rain drops, we only see one. Which is as you said.

However, we would not say 1 + 1 = 1. Because, by observation, there is no second 1. There is only the one observed rain drop.

Now, we need to account for where that other rain drop went. We can't simply say it vanished, but the matter of the numerical accuracy still needs to be settled. So, our initial system of measurement must have been poorly chosen, as it doesn't give you a net result of zero (which every equation reaching equilibrium should supply). So, instead of numerically counting the individual drops, we need to quantify them in a different way. Since it's a fluid, we're use milliliters. Now, just to keep numbers simple, lets say the average rain drop is 1 mL. Lets start at the beginning again. We have two rain drops, each consisting of 1 mL of water, falling at the same rate. So it would be 1mL + 1mL = 2mL. Or you can express it 2(1mL) = 2mL. Now, as they fall, they form into 1 rain drop. So, add the fluid volume of the two rain drops, which now equal the single rain drop. We already have done so, twice. The formulas would look identical. These formulas apply for when they are separate and you are determining the total fluid volume of the two individual drops, and they would apply for the moment they are forming together into a single drop. After that moment, observation would only yield that there is a single rain drop, that is 2 mL in volume. It would simply be 2 mL = 2 mL. You can express '2mL' any way you would like, it is the same quantified value.

You should, perhaps, use a better example of Real World Science. It does have some basis. Newtons theory of gravity, for instance, doesn't hold true past the high school level, not taking into account several factors. Yet the current theory of gravity accounts for many more variables than simply distance and volume. This theory is also proving inadequate to explain certain astronomical anomalies (such as a galaxy approximately 8 times the size of our own, which is impossible in our current theories). So, it's being expanded upon again, taking into account even more variables. This is exactly how science works, and how it is meant to work. We explain what we can with what we know, and as we know more, we seek to find ways to explain more.

However, for the mathematical system we are using, the basics hold true. Why do they hold true? Because in order to use the system at all, they have to be true. If you come up with discrepancies such as you had, you simply are using the wrong units, or are neglecting a driving variable. yes, there are mathematical systems where 1 + 1 != 2, but we're talking higher level calculus, which is a completely different mathematical system then what we are using here, and thus, isn't applicable.