An Open Letter To Flat Earthers

Before you read the open letter, please know that this is not meant to offend, I would love to hear more reasons you all believe what you believe, and would love to hear your refutes.

An Open letter to Flat Earthers
It is a firmly established fact that the earth is round, yet according to Forbes, around 2% of people still firmly believe that the earth is flat despite the numerous amounts of evidence to the contrary. Despite what some people believe, most humans have known, and believed the earth is round since around 380 B.C (according to ESO), even people in Christopher Columbus's time believed the earth was round, they just thought that sailing to india by going the other way would take too long and everybody on board would starve, Columbus just got really lucky there was another continent in the way.
Gravity, as us “round earthers” call it, is caused by the tendency for larger masses to attract smaller masses, that is why we stay on the planet, but this gravity also causes the earth to maintain a spherical shape, because every part of the earth is being pulled towards the center. But how do flat earthers believe gravity is generated? Well, from my research on the Flat Earth Society Website, the two main theories for the cause of gravity are a giant molecular magnet-basically a magnet that attracts all matter, and the other theory is that the whole earth is constantly accelerating upwards at 9.8 meters per second per second. There is a few major problems with these theories, starting with the fact that a magnet that attracts all forms of matter is simply not possible, since magnets only attract materials with extra electrons, meaning that it would only be able attract certain metals, leaving all other things from water, to people, to most rocks, floating in the air. The other theory-that earth is constantly accelerating upwards at 9.8 m/s^2-is also incorrect. If the earth has really been accelerating for the last 4.5 billion years, the planet would be moving 1.4e+18 m/s. For context, the speed of light is 2.9e+8 m/s, and since it is impossible to go faster than the speed of light, then gravity by this method is impossible.
Another popular reason that some people believe the earth is flat is the fact that you can not see the curvature of the earth from a flat stand point, and the reason for this is that the size of the earth is so vast that it is impossible to see the curvature by standing on its surface. However, if you fly on a high altitude airplane, you can see the curvature of the earth, not to mention the countless images from satellites and people that have been in space.
The flat earth theory has been debunked for nearly 2500 years, yet there are still some lost people who look at all the evidence, all the satellites, space missions, math, logic, and science, and think it's all fake, or staged.  Only  spend a little bit of time looking at the evidence, and you will find the round shape of the earth at every turn.
In conclusion, despite its decently wide spread popularity, flat earthers are unfortunately mistaken in their beliefs. The earth is round, has always been round, and will continue to be so until the day the earth crashes into the sun.

The earth is flat.

I see you have copied this crap from somewhere else, given by the fact that you have the "modify message" part still there.

You have made several errors.
Firstly, gravity is not caused by "the tendency for larger masses to attract smaller masses".
It is a mutually attractive force, not magic.
That means the smaller mass is also attracting the larger mass.

There are plenty of other wild ideas from FEers about what makes things fall.

It is not "extra" electrons that make things magnetic. That would mean only charged species are magnetic and metals wouldn't be.
It is unpaired electrons which do, which means things like oxygen are magnetic.

Just what are you trying to measure the speed of Earth relative to?
An object can accelerate at a constant acceleration as measured by the observed inside, without ever exceeding the speed of light relative to any observer.
The far bigger issue is the variation in g across Earth which would tear it apart.

         I appreciate the fact that you believe I copied this from someone else, but I actually wrote this for a highschool project, But if gravity is a thing, what is keeping the gravity from forming the earth into a sphere, if gravity is evenly pressing on every part of the earth, what is keeping the earth in its flat shape.
With Respect,
Tsandwich
(also more questions to come, this is just the first one.)
((also, thanks for pointing out the modify message, I posted this in another part of the forum before realising I could create my own threads, but  I did fix it, thanks))

You might be confused. I'm not a flat Earther.
But I will point out claims by people that are false.

My Mistake, and thanks for pointing out those mistakes, I will adjust them on my essay before I turn it in.

Well-intentioned, Tsandwich - and of course there's no way you'll mistake me for one of the FE'ers! - but get your relativity right (or if you're still at high school, wait until you learn about it in higher education).

You can continue to accelerate at 1 gee (9.81 m/s²) as perceived by you, for as long as you like, and you'll never exceed the speed of light as measured by any other observer - no matter how fast you think you're going.

Did you know that, if two cars are approaching one another, each going at precisely 50mph*, their closing speed is very slightly less than 100mph, the discrepancy being due to relativity? Of course the difference is absolutely minute. So minute, in fact, that it can be demonstrated that the drivers' toenails are likely closing in on one another at slightly more than 100mph. I use this analogy to explain how slight the effects of relativity are, at any speed achievable on Earth.

But they still exist.

*Need to disregard Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle for now...

So if (hypothetically) the speed of light isn't an issue, would there be effects on our perception of time? and also, sorry if this is too much math, but if, hypothetically, the earth was accelerating at 9.8 m/s/s what would the speed be after 4.5 billion years with relativity?
Thanks, Tsandwich.
(P.S, I never thought I would be learning about physics from the Flat earth society forum) (:

So if (hypothetically) the speed of light isn't an issue, would there be effects on our perception of time? and also, sorry if this is too much math, but if, hypothetically, the earth was accelerating at 9.8 m/s/s what would the speed be after 4.5 billion years with relativity?
Thanks, Tsandwich.
(P.S, I never thought I would be learning about physics from the Flat earth society forum) (:

All of these depend upon a simple question: Relative to what?
Time dilation is only a problem when it is relative to something else.
e.g. the classic go at near the speed of light to Alpha Centuri and back, taking 9 years for the round trip to an observer on Earth, but much less than a year for you.
But if you take away Earth, you don't really have anything to compare it to, it is just that year.

If you were to take the hypothetical example of someone standing still outside Earth watching as it started to accelerate, then after all that time, to this observer Earth will be going at basically the speed of light (just a bit less, too lazy to do the math). Along with this they would also view people on Earth as basically frozen in time and accelerating incredibly slowly.

You might be confused. I'm not a flat Earther.
But I will point out claims by people that are false.

Same here, it is nice to have round earthers amongst the flat earthers to keep things interesting

So what is the main problem with the acceleration theory, (besides the fact that we have pictures of the earth from space), if this hypothetically was the way that gravity was generated, would we still have an atmosphere?

I would think that one of the most obvious problems is the source of the force that is causing the earth to accelerate.  Funny that no one bothers with that little detail.

So what is the main problem with the acceleration theory, (besides the fact that we have pictures of the earth from space), if this hypothetically was the way that gravity was generated, would we still have an atmosphere?

There are 2 main problems.
The atmosphere would depend upon what is at the side of Earth.
If you had a magic wall around the edge that can keep the atmosphere in, with the acceleration acting as a cap for the top then the atmosphere is kept in. It would also work with their magic dome.
It would only be an issue with nothing at the edge allowing the atmosphere to flow off the sides. And that is something to address regardless of what makes things go down, and is only eliminated by having Earth as a sphere or an infinite plane so there is no edge.
So I would say that part isn't the main problem for the idea of acceleration, but is an issue that needs to be addressed for a finite flat Earth.

The simple big problem to appeal to is "why/how?"
Just what is causing this acceleration?
Some flat Earthers call it universal, because not only is it accelerating Earth, it is also accelerating everything above Earth, like the sun and moon and stars, so they stay aligned with Earth so we can still see them; but for some reason not us if we jump above Earth.

The far bigger problem is the variation in g across Earth.
g is not constant. It is not 9.8 m/s^2 all over Earth.
It varies as you move around, with both latitude and altitude affecting it, as well as the distribution of matter inside Earth (because it is actually caused by gravity).
At the equator, it is lowest at ~9.78 m/s^2.
At the poles it is highest at roughly ~9.83 m/s^2.
Importantly, this is a difference of ~0.05 m/s^2.
And unlike the overall acceleration, there clearly is a reference here.
An observer at the equator would see the poles appear to rise at a rate of ~0.05 m/s^2. After 1 day (86400 s) this would result in the north pole rising to a height of 186624000 m, that is ~187 thousand km.

So if it was coming from Earth accelerating, the difference in acceleration over Earth would tear Earth apart in less than a day.
After 6 hours, it would reach over 11 thousand km, meaning the north pole would be higher than the distance from it to the equator.

Now you could ask about relativity and its effect on that, but after a day, the north pole would only be going at a speed of roughly 849 km/s, which is less than 0.3% of the speed of light; or ~4.3 km/s with the full relativistic equation giving 4319.96 instead of 4320. So this is not going to be a problem at all and the argument above holds.

What are some of the main reasons FE's point to to even prove that the earth is flat in the first place?

What are some of the main reasons FE's point to to even prove that the earth is flat in the first place?

Lurk moar.
Read the FAQ.
Lurk moar.
Read the Wiki.
Lurk moar.

So if (hypothetically) the speed of light isn't an issue, would there be effects on our perception of time? and also, sorry if this is too much math, but if, hypothetically, the earth was accelerating at 9.8 m/s/s what would the speed be after 4.5 billion years with relativity?
Thanks, Tsandwich.
(P.S, I never thought I would be learning about physics from the Flat earth society forum) (:

Well, if you try to learn all your physics from the FE'ers, you'll end up with a very strange version of physics, methinks! I wish you luck.

I'm afraid it's over half a century since I last did any physics, but ... (*blows dust off ancient relativity textbook*) ... the formula for resultant velocity after a period of constant acceleration from the spacecraft's - sorry, the earth's - frame of reference:
v = gt / √(1 + (gt/c)²)where g is the acceleration and t is the proper time elapsed.

Because in this case gt is much larger than c, we re-arrange the formula by multiplying both top and bottom by c/gt, to give:
v = c / √((c/gt)² + 1)and the first two terms of the binomial expansion come to:
v = c - ½c³/(gt)² + ...
Feeding in t = 4.5 * 10^9 years ~ 1.42 * 10^17 seconds, and g = 9.81 m/s², I get
c - v ~ 6.957 * 10^(-12) m/s
So you see that the velocity relative to an observer at the starting point is still less than c, the velocity of light, but only by an absolutely minute amount: a lot slower than the slowest snail on the planet! (back to the 'toenails' analogy?)

The light from any star above us, if it hasn't taken part in this acceleration, will be so blue-shifted that it will only be visible as gamma rays, I reckon. Surprising we can still see any stars at all, isn't it? 

I guess you'd better learn your physics from the RE'ers.

Thank you so much. I am presenting the edited letter tomorrow, hope I get an A

Gravity is stronger at the poles than at the equator.
This is because the Earth is not a perfect sphere;
it bulges at the equator due to its rotation, making
the poles closer to the Earth's center of mass.
Additionally, the centrifugal force from the Earth's
rotation counteracts gravity more significantly at
the equator, further reducing the effective
gravitational acceleration there.

The measured values are:

At the poles, it's approximately 9.832 m/s², while at the equator, it's around 9.780 m/s².

So, if the downward force is a result of an upward acceleration of Earth
then the North Pole and the Outer Rim are accelerating faster, bulging up,
and after a day or less they are taller than Mount Everest.

Very soon the Earth would look like a dish for baking Kugelhopf.

Thanks everyone, got 100% on my project thanks to you all. (: