Flat Earth FAQ rebuttal (Earth in space section):If you can't be bothered to read the whole thing, the last point is probably te most important, because the FE model relies on their being no gravity.
If you haven't read the FAQ, then you won't know what a load of rubbish they have posted there. I have, and I do, so I've broken down the "Earth in space" section, point by point. The "Q" and "A" sections are copy-pasted straight from the FAQ, the "R" section was added by me, either raising questions posed by their answers, or telling them why they are foolish. Read on, and disbelieve...
NB: This is quite a long post, but it honsetly doesn't take too long to read.
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Q: "What is the circumference and diameter of the Earth?"
A: "Circumference: 78225 miles, Diameter: 24,900 miles.
R: Where do these figures come from? According to your site the government prevents people from getting close to the ice wall, so how could you measure across the Earth?----------
Q: "What about the stars, sun and moon and other planets? Are they flat too? What are they made of?"
A: The sun and moon, each 32 miles in diameter, circle Earth at a height of 3000 miles at its equator, located midway between the North Pole and the ice wall. Each functions similar to a "spotlight," with the sun radiating "hot light," the moon "cold light." As they are spotlights, they only give light out over a certain are which explains why some parts of the Earth are dark when others are light. Their apparent rising and setting are caused by optical illusions.
Some controversy exists as to whether the Sun and Moon are spherical or flat.
In the "accelerating upwards" model, the stars, sun and moon are also accelerating upwards as a result of Universal Acceleration.
In some models, the stars are about as far as San Francisco is from Boston (3100 miles). Others claim them to be much further away.
R: Again, how do you know? Also, what is "hot light" and "cold light", and why have neither of these been observed in experiments. Why is the light coming from the moon simply a subset of the light from the sun (in the RE model, this is because the moon reflects a portion of the sun's light)?----------
Q: "Please explain sunrises/sunsets."
A: It's a perspective effect. Really, the sun is just getting farther away; it looks like it disappears because everything gets smaller and eventually disappears as it gets farther away.
R: The sun can clearly be seen disappearing behind the horizon every day. The sun also remains the same size (~1 degree) throughout the day, which would only happen if it stayed almost exactly the same distance from everyone on Earth (consistent with a RE model, in which variations in distance caused by the rotation of the Earth are insignificant compared to the huge Earth-sun distance).----------
Q: "Why are other celestial bodies round but not the Earth?"
A: Some models argue for flat planets as well as a Flat Earth. Those who believe in spherical bodies but a Flat Earth argue that the Earth is not one of the other planets. The Earth is special and unlike the other bodies in numerous ways.
R: Another unsupported claim. Not much can be said about this other than it goes against the view accepted by ALL of the scientific community (who are known for checking their facts, unlike the philosophers of old).----------
Q: "What about satellites? How do they orbit the Earth?"
A: Since sustained spaceflight is not possible, satellites can't orbit the Earth. The signals we supposedly receive from them are either broadcast from towers or any number of possible pseudolites.
R: Why is sustained spaceflight impossible? In the RE model it is easy to demonstrate that sustanied spaceflight is indeed possible, and simple to achieve (conceptually, although in practise there are engineering challenges). I won't prove this here, but I can do if people want me to. At any rate, a high/secondary school knowledge of maths/physics is enough to understand it.----------
Q: "What's underneath the Earth?" aka "What's on the bottom?" aka "What's on the other side?"
A: This is unknown. Some believe it to be just rocks, others believe the Earth rests on the back of four elephants and a turtle.
R: Rebutal not needed. This statement does not attempt to prove or give evidence for the FE theory. ----------
Q: "What about gravity?"
A: The Earth is accelerating upwards at 1g (9.8m/s^2) along with every star, sun and moon in the universe. This produces the same effect as gravity.
R: What causes this acceleration? Why are we not affected by it but the Earth is? What stops every rock or clump of soil being affected by it (they aren't, because they clearly have weight)?----------
Q: "Isn't this version of gravity flawed? Wouldn't planes/helicopters/paragliders crash into the Earth as the Earth rises up to them?"
A: No. By the same argument, we could ask why planes/helicopters/paragliders don't crash into the Earth as they accelerate down towards them. The reason that planes do not crash is that their wings produce lift, which, when the rate of acceleration upwards equals that of gravity's pull downwards, causes them to remain at a constant altitude.
The same thing happens if the Earth is moving up. The plane is accelerating upwards at the same rate as the Earth, which means the distance between them does not change. Therefore, the plane stays at the same height and does not crash.
R: Surprisingly, this is a correct statement. Relativity (disliked by FE'ers) shows that gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable. In fact, they are both a consequence of the curvature of space-time.
This does not, however, provide any evidence for the FE model, although it doesn't contradict it.----------
Q: "Doesn't this mean we'd be traveling faster than the speed of light, which is impossible?"
A: The equations of Special Relativity prevent an object from accelerating to the speed of light. Due to this restriction, these equations prove that an object can accelerate at a constant rate forever, and never reach the speed of light. For an in depth explanation:
http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=3152.msg28574#msg28574.
R: This is also true, and requires an good understanding of relativity to grasp properly. Again, it is not evidence for the FE model.----------
Q: "If the world was really flat, what would happen if you jump off the disc's edge?"
A: Depending on which FE model is correct, you would either enter an inertial reference frame, moving at a constant velocity in the direction the Earth was moving before you jumped with the Earth continuing acceleration upwards past you at a rate of 1g, so it would appear to you that you were falling into space,
OR
You would become directly affected by Universal Acceleration as the Earth is, creating the illusion that you were standing next to the Earth.
R: These are unsupported claims. I suggest FE'ers test them by jumping off the edge themselves.----------
Q: "If the Earth was indeed a flat disc, wouldn't the whole planet crunch up into itself and eventually transform into a ball?"
A1: If the Earth generated a gravitational field, yes, it would eventually happen, after a billion years maybe. FE assumes that the Earth does not generate a gravitational field. What we know as 'gravity' is provided by the acceleration of the earth.
A2: There is a counter-mass which pulls the Earth back into a disc shape.
R1: If the Earth generates a gravitational field (and there is no reason it shouldn't, see last question), it would collapse. Not over billions of years either, but actually rather quickly, owing to the enormous forces involved.
R2: How could such a counter-mass be positioned? How would it help? They haven't provided any details, but I can't think of any way of positioning a counter-mass such that it doesn't speed up the process of collapse. As the Earth doesn't seem to have collapsed already, the evidence is against them. Also, quintillion-tonne counter-masses are surprisingly absent from maps.----------
Q: "Why does gravity vary with altitude?"
A: Some models claim that the moon and stars have a slight gravitational pull, but other models hold that gravity does not exist anywhere in the Universe, thus gravitational variation is either a myth or caused by another phenomenom.
R: Newton's law of gravitation explains not only this, but almost all observed gravitational phenomonen, very nicely. There are slight discrepencies (of as much as 3 parts in 10,000 in the case of the orbit of Mercury) that are explained by Einstein's General Relativity. It should be noted Newton's law is an approximation (albeit a very good one).----------
Q: Follow-up to previous question: How is it that the Earth does not have a gravitational pull, but stars and the moon do?
A: This argument is a non sequitur. You might as well ask, "How is it that snakes do not have legs, but dogs and cats do?" Snakes are not dogs or cats. The Earth is not a star or the moon. It doesn't follow that each must have exactly the properties of the others, and no more.
R: The questions are not analogous. Maybe if it was a fundamental property of the Universe that EVEYTHING had legs, the snake might present a problem to the accepted view of things, but this isn't true. It is true, however, that EVERYTHING in the Universe creates a gravitational field. Physicists in the 19th century performed experiments that measured the gravity produced by iron masses e.g. cannonballs, and found evidence agrees with Newton's formula. Rocks can also be measured to have gravity. So I put the question to FE'ers: Why does the Earth, which is made primarily from iron and other rocks (confirmed by a hundred times a day by ground-penetrating radar), NOT exhibit gravity?
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