121

Flat Earth Q&A / Intelligent discussion

« on: May 22, 2006, 02:50:05 PM »

What do you think would happen when you are going slightly slower than light and still accelerating?  Suddenly you'd just stop accelerating?  Furthermore, do you think that no part of the ship (such as a passenger) would be able to accelerate further?

As long as a constant force is applied, a constant force will be felt.  The effect will be different to outside observers, but the same to you on the ship.
-Erasmus

Actually, according to Einstein, your last conjecture is wrong.  While the warping of the dimensions would cause those inside the ship to not notice most of the effects, the amount of force needed to accelerate an object increases dramatically because it's mass increases as you approach light speed.   This is proven by the energy curve required as they increase the maximum speed particles can be acceleterated in particle accelerators.

So if a constant force is applied, eventually the effect will , not just consistant with Einstein, but thermodynamics too.

as for

Furthermore, do you think that no part of the ship (such as a passenger) would be able to accelerate further?

I'm researching that one.  Since time and spacial distortion is only significant at speed a small fraction below light, the question of a light inside the ship shining forward while the ship travels at anyspeed becomes a paradox.  So far the only physicist I have on tap has given me a cop out answer...that since there is no way to determine the speed that does not rely on measurements occuring at the speed of light or less, there's not way to prove that there is indeed a paradox...not a satisfactory answer to me, just because it is not observed directly, does not mean it does not exist.

122

Flat Earth Q&A / Intelligent discussion

« on: May 16, 2006, 08:31:44 PM »

But I never said the Earth was travelling faster than light.  Or at any particular speed at all.  I don't know what it means for an object to be travelling at a certain speed, actually.

-Erasmus

OK, if I understand you, speed is a relative concept.  Therefore, ignoring light for a moment, it is impossible to establish your absolute speed, infact relativity basically states that there is not "Absolute Zero" when it comes to motion.

However, within the model of a constantly accelerating system, you can pick any arbitrary point of time from which you can calculate your relative speed to a theoretical location that is not accelerating.  I used ten thousand years,  in a similar vein one of the other posters used his own birth.  

Under both frames of reference the speed of light must be exceeded if the flat earth is maintaining a rate of acceleration the is equivalent to gravity.

123

Flat Earth Q&A / Re: How come when I am flying in an airplane, I can see a cu

« on: May 16, 2006, 07:17:51 PM »

How come when I am flying in an airplane, I can see a curve in the Earth? Or even standing on a tall mountain. How come when I am in one state, I can't look up and see my own state? :?:  :roll:

the current FE explanation is that the governemnt puts curved glass in the windows. doesnt account for personal jets tho :roll:

Or those of us who have jumped out of a plane, and seen the world from 10,000 feet.

124

Flat Earth Q&A / Intelligent discussion

« on: May 16, 2006, 10:32:49 AM »

(b) that the justification is erroneous, via a well-reasoned, clear refutation of the justification based in the principles of relativity

O.K I will attempt to demonstrate under you (b) clause:

If you want nice math and diagrams then go to:
http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/FOUNDATIONS/01/found01.html#s7

I would start with the fact that it has been shown that light propagates from it's source without the momentum of it's source.  In other words, the speed of light within a specific medium is a set speed, you can't speed it up by speeding up the source.  This leads to the "Red Shift" that you mentioned as distant object move away from the earth, consistent to the expending universe theories.  In simple terms, the Doppler Effect.

Just a pilot of a jet plane that exceeds the speed of sound can not hear his engines through the air, any object traveling at the speed of light or faster could not see light reflected off of itself, as the light could not keep up.  You would see the entire star field as point towards which you are traveling, and any stars on the horizon would seem to vanish.

In almost every section of the link I provided, there is proof of why we can not be hurdling through space faster than light.

125

Flat Earth Q&A / About gravity

« on: May 16, 2006, 07:59:19 AM »

How is it possible that gravity is exactly the same over the world? That proves the Earth is flat.

Who says that it is?  And another Proof of the round earth, let me see someone explain this with acceleration (and yes it has been proven by teams measuring the change of gravity at the top of Everest).

gravity does change across the surface of the Earth and throughout its atmosphere, due to several effects.

First, there is the variation of gravity with latitude that you alluded to: you weigh about 0.5% more at the poles than on the equator. There are two effects that contribute to this, and they are discussed in more detail in a previous question. (It should be noted, however, that only one of these effects is due to an actual difference in the gravitational force between the equator and poles - the other effect is due to the fact that the Earth is spinning, which affects the weight you would see when you stepped on a scale but does not actually represent a change in the value of the gravitational force.)

Second, gravity does indeed change with altitude. The gravitational force above the Earth's surface is proportional to 1/R2, where R is your distance from the center of the Earth. The radius of the Earth at the equator is 6,378 kilometers, so let's say you were on a mountain at the equator that was 5 kilometers high (around 16,400 feet). You would then be 6,383 kilometers from the Earth's center, and the gravitational force would have decreased by a factor of (6,378 / 6,383)2 = 0.9984. So the difference is less than 0.2%.

Finally, there are very small differences (on the order of 0.01% or less) in gravity due to differences in the local geology. For example, changes in the density of rock underneath you or the presence of mountains nearby can have a slight effect on the gravitational force.

February 2003, Dave Rothstein

126

Flat Earth Q&A / Intelligent discussion

« on: May 15, 2006, 07:52:52 PM »

The reason everyone is so terse in answering this question is because it's been done to death, avail yourself of the search function to save yourself further embarassment, because no one here feels like endlessly reiterating why the speed of light is not a "speed limit" to someone who is overly confident in that "B" they got as a grade in their grade 10 physics course.

maybe it's done to death because the counter-arguments ignore most of the practicle experiments, as well as theory involved.

Einstein's theories include temporal as well as physical distortion as you approach light speeds.  The temporal distortion was proven in partical accelarators, using radioactive particles with a known half life.  The increase of energy required to achieve near light speed also supports Einstein's theories and is ignored by most of your posters.  

To use the spaceship example sited elsewhere, at lightspeed minus 1, you appear to travel from point a on the ship, foward to point b at a set speed.  Relative to your frame of referance you move at your normal rate.  Relative to someone standing on planet, it may take you centuries to complete your walk.  

If you want to avoid the faster than light arguments, change your paradigm.  Why bother with linear acceleration?  Circular acceleration, with centrifical force providing the psuedo gravity would work, not require near infinite energy, and with a couple of adjustments to offset tidal forces,  almost work, but any acceleration based model also has to explain how the atmosphere can extend beyond the "Ice Barrier".   The air must be trapped here, or we would be accelerating through it.  The earth, sun, moon, and planets would have to be part of a single unit accelerating together, with some form of ether holding it all in place.

127

Flat Earth Q&A / Intelligent discussion

« on: May 15, 2006, 03:36:08 PM »

Wrong.

Cute...Wrong where?

That the earth has existed for at least 315,576,000,000 seconds?

That if there was a constant rate of acceleration of 9 meters per second squared for a third of a trillion seconds we would be at many times the speed of light (299,792,458 m / s).

Or is Einstein wrong, all of the particle accelerator experiments faked, and the speed of light is not a limit to acceleration regardless of the reason?  

Perhaps you are using the term "Linear Acceleration" in a way other than it's normal definition?  If not, than the idea of the Earth Accelerating at a rate of 9M^s past the speed of light would seem to be a problem.

Or am Iwrong that my computer does not calculate to that many digits?
(O.K. it can, that was just hyperbole.  The answer comes out to 2,989,714,657,811,705 times the speed of light in the past 10,000 years of acceleration)

128

Flat Earth Q&A / Intelligent discussion

« on: May 12, 2006, 03:49:18 PM »

Sure there is. Why, just yesterday I dropped something and the floor accelerated upwards to hit it.

[Stellar argument. Although it usually works better when the person you're arguing against is, you know, wrong about something. Since when has linear acceleration become a non-issue?

LEt's see if we look at the past 10000 years that most societies have agreed people have been around for, and have a speed of 9 meters per second per second, that puts us at 315,576,000,000 seconds squared ....Darn, my computer doesn't calculate that many digits.....How many times the speed of light? linear acceleration is a big problem.

129

Flat Earth Q&A / Photo of earth's edge?

« on: May 10, 2006, 10:29:55 AM »

So you've seen photographic evidence yet you still doubt the Earth is flat? And you criticise flat-Earther's for disbelieving photographic evidence that the Earth is round?

But even your Photos show the curvature of the earth.  The distortion of the "Spotlight" shining on the earth in your first photo, and the distortion of area of the land masses to near the north and south ends.  Your "Photo's" show that the landmass of Iceland and the area of Alask are nearly the same as the continental United States.  Nor does a flat earth explain why a compass will point to a point in the North Hudson Bay, the "Flat Earth" projection of the compass's line would require a curved line, with increasing arc the further east or west of the Hudson.

There is also the matter of the North star, which also requires some interesting curves and bending of light to justify it appearing to stay in one spot, while all of the earth spins under it, yet from a flat earth perspective it is several points at the same time.

130

Flat Earth Q&A / Satellites?

« on: May 10, 2006, 08:20:01 AM »

As a linguistic term, "verbatim" means an exact reproduction of a sentence, phrase, quote or other sequence of text from one source into another. The same words appear in exactly the same order, with no paraphrasing, substitution, or abbreviation of any kind, not even any trivial changes that wouldn't have affected the meaning in any way.

I don't see where I've done that.

But, The proof of the distance of a near object like the moon is easy.  I have a brother in California, about 2000 miles away.  If the moon was 30 miles away, at a time when the moon is about halfway between us, it should be roughtly on the horizon, at an angle of about 3 degrees above for either of us.  Simple geometry, a right triangle with a side of 30 miles, and the other roughtly 1000 miles.  Since the moon is realy about 250,000 miles away, even adjusting for the 45 degrees of arc difference between us, the angle is much greater.

131

Flat Earth Q&A / The travelling / accelerating argument!

« on: May 02, 2006, 07:42:34 PM »

Ahh, true that. Se la ve. At least you used cookie

It's a good cookie though.  Are those chocolate chips I see?  

132

Flat Earth Q&A / Photo of earth's edge?

« on: May 02, 2006, 07:25:20 PM »

Picture of the Earth with the ice wall.

So if the Earth is flat, why does the light flare out in a curve near the poles?  Andthe curve increases as it moves closer to the poles.  Your own picture shows the curve of the earth.

133

Flat Earth Q&A / Moon issues...

« on: May 02, 2006, 07:19:46 PM »

I'm gonna throw out the obvious bone here...

The moon isn't a flat disc, but a convex one?

And the extreem of a convex shape is what?  A Sphere.

But if you look at the moon with a good telescope, you can see the shadows of the mountains and other features near the dark side of the moon.  You can also see part of the dark sided on anytime but a full moon.

Therefore the moon can not glow of it's own light, as is stated by the FAQ's

134

Flat Earth Q&A / lol erasmus

« on: May 02, 2006, 07:02:07 PM »

That would make no sense, seeing that if we were to jump while the Earth is accelerating, we would technically 'land' before we could even lift ourselves off the ground, seeing as how the Earth is constantly accelerating. And following Chal's assumption that the Earth is moving at a high rate of speed (higher by the second), we'd have to jump faster than the Earth accelerates, meaning we'd have to jump at a moment when the Earth is NOT accelerating to actually lift ourselves off the ground, an impossibility by your statement. Likewise, planes, helicopters, and any other aerial object would not be able to lift themselves from the ground.

Supposing that we jump from an elevated distance in a parabola-like direction, the Earth would reach us before we are able to complete said jump. In fact, we would need immense strength to even push ourselves higher and faster than the Earth is moving. And that leads us back to I.

Unless you are talking about impossible speeds,  near the speed of light (which we would have hit long ago if this was really true)  the it would take no more strength to push off of an accelerating earth than it does to push off of one with gravity, your jump adds to the speed at which you are travelling, and you can accelerate faster than 32 feet per second per second for a very brief time.

135

Flat Earth Q&A / Satellites?

« on: May 02, 2006, 06:08:56 PM »

Unfortunately, from one telescope, you aren't going to convince me that you can tell whether what you're looking at is 50 miles away or 30,000. Only observing from one location, you can't.

All you need are two observers at a know distance communicating with each other.

Works with the stars, the moon, the sun, or satilites.

136

Flat Earth Q&A / Ships then

« on: May 02, 2006, 06:02:36 PM »

Hmm, maybe you're right. Maybe the mountains are in a valley.

Hmmm, the rivers flow AWAY from the mountains, and the doesn't explain the air pressure.

137

Flat Earth Q&A / Satellites?

« on: May 02, 2006, 03:51:47 PM »

If you are refering to the sun and moon, they've always been there.

If you are refering to man-made objects "orbiting" the earth, common FE theory says they aren't there. Period, end of story.

I think satellites are there, and I don't think their existance disproves FE. Satellites are up in space helping us with communication and stuff, but any RE-supporting photographs the government claims they have taken with them are fake.

Since you can see satilites from the ground, and with a really good telescope make out details, they are pretty hard to ignore.  The ones that travel east-west really make it rough to disprove a round earth as they would seem to appear on one side immediatle after they disappeared from the other.  And some are in Geo-sync orbits, which would need to be accelerating away form the earth at the same rate as the earth does, as our ships can not accelerate at the kinds of rates needed, for the time that they have been observable, it kind of interferes with your theory.

138

Flat Earth Q&A / Ships then

« on: May 02, 2006, 03:46:12 PM »

RE's have approached the "horizon" matter almost exclusively from the standpoint of the ocean because otherwise you simple cant prove you aren't just looking at a hill. The ocean is uniformly "flat", whether the earth is a sphere or a disc.

If you fundamentally understand what produces a mirage, then the apparent recession of the horizon as altitude increases makes perfect sense. A mirage appears when you view the interface at a certain angle. At ground level (say 6' because you're standing up), your line of sight intersects that interface, at that angle, a certain distance away. If you get on top of your house and look at the same point, the angle of intersection will be greater, and the mirage effect won't occur. In order to achieve the necessary angle, you have to look further out to sea. The higher you go, the further you can see.

The why does the ship's mast not waver as an mirage does?  

And your falicy that you can not prove if a hill comes between you and another object is laughable.  

If you drive from the East across Colorado towards the Rokies, you have the peaks of the Rockies appearing first.  Now are you theorizing that there is a hill, higher than the Rockies, occuring in the middle of the eastern half of Colorado?  One that bothe the Colorado River and the Arkansas River Flow up?  (look at a map, they travel across the state)  Driving a long route 50, you have the river flowing beside you.  Now a gradual enough hill you might not feel, but that would not effect the flow of water.  there is also a metter of the air pressure, which does not significantly decrease as you cross, but does when you start up the mountains.

139

Flat Earth Q&A / Ships then

« on: May 01, 2006, 07:18:40 PM »

You're misunderstanding. The thicker air is closer to the ground, or in this case the surface of the water. I'm fairly certain this is consistant with RE atmospheric observations.

If you observe this phenomenon on land, it's a hill.

You must have never been to Kansas ( or Colorado, east of the Rockies, or seen a salt flat) How convient that hills seem to spring up out of nowhere, and move in tricky way to keep the illusion constant.  And you haven't explained why your altitue affects the apparent distance to the horizon.

140

Flat Earth Q&A / Ships then

« on: May 01, 2006, 07:08:52 PM »

No, there is a portion of air above the surface of the water that is for denser than the "regular old air". Maybe it's because of a higher water content above the ocean, maybe it's an increased oxygen concentration put off by algae, anything. Point is there is a denser medium near the surface of the water than there is higher above the water, and at the interface between the two mediums a mirage occurs.

But the affecct occurs over land also.

And having flown, parachuted, moutain climbed, and in otherways penetraited where your "Thicker" layer would need to be, I know the air get's thinner, not thicker (another disprover of the Ice walls, if air was just pooled between the walls, and not held by gravity,  why does the pressure gradually drop off the higher you go.).

141

Flat Earth Q&A / The earth is round (proof)

« on: May 01, 2006, 07:01:17 PM »

Air isn't visible, but light is. You also forgot about dust in the air, moisture, pollution, heat disturbing the air. All of those added together make the atmosphere pretty much unseethrough over long distances.

But the amount of "impurities" in the air vary greatly, the horizon limit does not, unless there are unusual amounts of stuff(Like Smog,  or fog).

Under your assumption, then much like the difference from seeing the night sky near a city, or looking up from Death Valley, the optical horizon should vary greatly.  It does not, it reaches a certain limit, and after that, no changes.

Actually, I lie, but that even more disproves you.  In some instances, mosture in the atmosphere creates a mirror that allows an object beyond the horizon to be seen.  The same works for radio waves.  If your way was right, it is in the driest, and most still air that you should see the furtherest.  And there should be no limit to a radio waves range, nor a laser beam.  We have been able to shine a laser on the moon, and detect it's light, if the moon is 3000 miles away,  we should be able to shine a laser across the USA, or atleast from the smokey mountains to the Rockies.  The telecom companies would love it if you could,  they would save a fotune on satilites and cable.

142

Flat Earth Q&A / The travelling / accelerating argument!

« on: May 01, 2006, 03:57:47 PM »

Think about this. You have a thick cylinder - the flat earth. You can think of it as being in the shape of a film canister or a chocolate chip cookie, it doesn't matter (as long as it's one of those two, no exceptions). All the laws of gravity as we understand them are the same. A person standing on the edge of the disk would feel a gravitational force acting tangential to the surface of the cylinder. The magnitude of this force would depend entirely on the dimensions of the cylinder; for a very tall cylinder, there would be less of a pull towards the center. A person standing directly in the center of the cylinder (on the top) would be pulled directly down towards the center of gravity. If the cylinder were rotating at just the right rate, the centripetal forces would balance the pull towards the center of the disk, so a person standing at the edge would only feel a downward pull. However, that same person would weigh less than a person standing in the center.

I think I posted this same thought in another thread, but it's cool to think about. I'd like to be able to head south and lose some weight at the same time =)

Nope.  Centrifical force is calculated by speed and distance from the center of rotation.  Gravitational force is calculated by an inverse square from the point of center mass.  The cookie's center mass would be almost horizontal to the surface, the canister at an angle below the surface.  Regarless since the force of gravity is based on the square of the distance and the centrifical force is on linear distance, there is only a single band on a disk where the two would be equal, object inside that band would be drawn to the middle, beyond they would be spun off of the disk.

143

Flat Earth Q&A / The travelling / accelerating argument!

« on: May 01, 2006, 03:47:47 PM »

Are the FE'rs trying to discount gravity all together?  Gravity is shown by using a very large heavy object and a small light one.  The small one will be measurably drawn towards the large heavy one.

Then again gravity kills flat earth, it would act like a record on a turntable in reverse.  The further out on the edge the stronger you would be drawn to the center, and it would be at an angle that is not perpendicular to the surface of the planet. Ouch!

144

Flat Earth Q&A / The earth is round (proof)

« on: May 01, 2006, 03:39:51 PM »

The edge of your visibility appears to be a curve, since your sight is the radius.  The 'curvature of the earth' you are seeing is actually the curve of this circle under you.  Although the ground is still there past this 'curve', you simply can't see it past where your visibility falls off, and are mistaking it for the curve of a sphere or a horizon.

Hello?  My sight is a curve and limited to a circular view at the distance of the horizon?  Now we can't see the stars? or are they at the same distance as the horizon?  Why does height affect the range to the horizon?

FYI: The formula to calculate the horizon is (1.17 times the square root of your height of eye = Distance to the horizon in nautical miles)  

Standing on shore youcan see out about 3 miles, so if that is the limit to my sight, why can I see much further from an altitude?  Why can I see the sme stars as my brother in California when I live in PA? We are more than 6 miles apart.

145

Flat Earth Q&A / Biggest contradiction of all...

« on: May 01, 2006, 03:18:30 PM »

Ofcourse this explanation is ridiculous because it doesn't say how these 'optical illusions' come about. I'd say apart from all the baseless conspiracy theory that this seems to be the biggest hole in the FE model.

Nor does it explain why we can not see the light when it is not shining on us.  I don't need a flash light shining in my face to see that it is on.

146

Flat Earth Q&A / Re: The travelling / accelerating argument!

« on: May 01, 2006, 03:14:24 PM »

Ok,

Lets take the Flat earth travelling / accelerating upwards (direction not important)

You take a ball and throw it up, in a no gravity world like this and the ball would continue to travel “upwards” at the same velocity as it was released and therefore never comeback down to earth.

So you say the planet is accelerating, so then would the ball be accelerating with the same magnitude as  the planet and therefore never come back to earth, due to the fact that there would be no drag in the atmosphere because the air around the ball would be accelerating at the same rate as the rest of the planet.

So we really cant have an one-sided flat planet travelling or accelerating in one direction can we.

Jump up and see for yourself, you come back to earth. In the travelling/accelerating world we would never come back to earth.

Sorry but you can argue with the physics. Well you can but you would be wrong!

Actually you are wrong.  You are describing the effect of traveling at a constant motion.  If the planet is accelerating and you through the ball up, it would travel at a fixed speed, and you would accelerate towards it.

Now, if we are accelerating, why are most space objects red-shifted?

147

Flat Earth Q&A / Ice Wall questions

« on: May 01, 2006, 02:34:29 PM »

yes

not sure

youd fall off the earth[/b]

So if the earth has always been flat, and it's edges are formed of ice that holds back the oceans, what held them in place before the ice walls formed, when the earth was cooling from it's molten phase and it was too hot for ice to have formed?

And what holds the Air in place?  Those Ice walls must dwarf Everest.  And if they do, how did they get so high?  It can't be from rain and snow, because the atmosphere can't reach above the walls (think "Ring World").

148

Flat Earth Q&A / Ships then

« on: May 01, 2006, 01:41:45 PM »

I've contended that the way a ship disappears over the horizon can be attributed to a mirage effect, and no one has really taken the time to refute it. If the height of the denser medium above the water is proportional to how far out to sea you go, it explains the disappearance quite well.

If your contention was true, then the effect would be the opposite (The Ships would appear to Fly) when traveling to shore, when seen from further off shore.  Also, what would explain the uniform density increase regardless of weather conditions, that makes the disappearance predictable using simple geometry.

And on the subject of ships, and travel in general, what allows me to travel along a line of latitude and cross longitude in a distance that is inversely proportional to the latitude.  Then there's the curvature of the earth, observable from aircraft, and moving along the horizon as you travel.  Going back to your original idea, you do not explain why in land based occurrences, such as driving west across Colorado towards the Rocky Mountains, you can observe the peaks of the mountains over the horizon, and as you approach more of the slope is revealed, just like the ship passing over the horizon.

And how on the flat earth does one travel east from the Orient to arrive in America, yet travel west from Europe to arrive in America, and east to the Orient?

As for all extra terrestrial objects being 3000 miles above the surface, I suggest you learn about a simple concept called "Parallax".  Stellar distances are so great that the difference in angles make Parallax measurement useless, while for Lunar observations, a difference of a hundred miles makes a difference.


The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church. ---Ferdinand Magellan