1

Flat Earth Debate / Re: No gravity?

« on: December 31, 2019, 03:03:20 AM »

Ok, I see my mistake.  The universal accelerator that you imagine is sort of like a jet engine attached only to the earth, so it pushes the earth up.  So that's why we "feel" gravity.

How does the sun keep up?  The moon?  How do the fluids (water and atmosphere) stay in place? Have you ever watched water stream off the windshield of airplane?

How is the accelerator attached to the "bottom" of the earth?  What is giving it energy?  And by the way, what is the bottom of the earth?  How deep is the earth?  How far from sea level to the bottom?  What, besides the universal accelerator, is on the other side.
Why isn't the earth deformed by the acceleration? Boulders fall off mountains, rivers rush down, glaciers flow, trees topple all because of gravity, and all toward the center of the earth.  If the entire earth were actually being pushed from behind, what prevents it from also crumbling?  Instead of boulders falling toward the center of the sphere, why don't they fall off the edge.  Or from underneath?  And what about the fluid under the crust?  Acceleration of a flat earth would force the fluid to accumulate toward the bottom or even burst out of volcanos on the backside.

Explain all points.  They are easily explained by the spheroid earth model so let's hear a FE explanation.

2

Flat Earth Debate / Weather

« on: December 28, 2019, 07:15:21 PM »

I was reading the FAQs and noticed a short blurb about weather.  It mentioned local weather causes, like adiabatic effects and differential heating.  But it also mentioned that the prevailing wind flows from west to east, with no further explanation or discussion.  That seems like something which demands an explanation. 

First, I am sorry the author has never experienced the delights found in the tropics.  Because in the tropics, the prevailing winds are called the Trade Winds and they tend to blow east to west, not west to east.  But I digress.  The question is, why?  Well, look in your toilet bowl and flush.  See the winds in the temperate zones are trying to flow toward the poles, because of the differential heating and air pressure.  The winds in the tropics want to flow toward the equator for the same reason.  But the spinning of the spherical earth adds in the Coriolis effect.  This is another of those fun things that you can see with your own eyes, in the smoke rising from your joint to the stuff spinning down the drain in your toilet.  Dust devils, cyclones of all their various names, oceanic whirlpools...  none would exist on a flat earth.

3

Flat Earth Debate / Re: telescopes, radar and LIDAR

« on: December 28, 2019, 06:55:42 PM »

The question is, why don't any of our technologies known to operate primarily line of sight over thousands of miles allow us to  see beyond the horizon?  Obviously there is the issue of refraction, diffusion and power limits, but all of these obstacles can be overcome.  But not the horizon.  Why?

4

Flat Earth Debate / Re: No gravity?

« on: December 28, 2019, 06:48:14 PM »

Let's explore this "Universal Accelerator" idea some more.  Here is another dilemma.  If a person is seated in a jet and the jet accelerates for takeoff, the person feels the push against the seat back.  Why?  It is because the force causing the acceleration is operating on the structure of the jet, including the seat.  But it is not working upon the mass of the person, which wants to stay in place because of inertia.  The seat back then overcomes the person's inertia, which results in the push we feel.  But what happens in a zero gravity training flight or a falling elevator?  What happens when you free fall from a plane? 

If you are in an elevator that free falls, the "gravity" pulling the elevator down is also operating on you independently. Consequently, you float within the box of the elevator.  You don't experience any push from the elevator itself as you and it accelerate together.  The same effect is used in zero g training flights.  The aircraft dives (falls) at 32 feet per second squared, causing one to become weightless in the cabin.  You can watch videos to see this in action.

What does that have to do with a black matter universal accelerator?  Well, the effect would be the same.  Even if the earth were being pulled by some force at 32 feet per second squared, everything resting on the surface, including humans, would also be pulled at the exact same rate, making us, like the passengers in the zero g airplane, weightless with respect fo the surface of the earth and anything else being so pulled.  Another bad explanation.

5

Flat Earth Debate / telescopes, radar and LIDAR

« on: December 28, 2019, 03:57:58 AM »

Flat earthers love the six mile canal story, but ignore the day to day experience of the tens of thousands of individuals sailing the seas and flying the sky.

Why can I see Mars with a cheap telescope but not Mt. Everest?  Why isn't a ship's radar useful for hundreds, even thousands of miles?  Why can't a LIDAR beam from Mt. Rainier hit Mt Fuji?  On a flat earth I should be able to see Hawaii from San Fransisco.  But I can't.  On the other hand, I can count the rings on Saturn, even with a cheap Walmart device.

6

Flat Earth Debate / Re: No gravity?

« on: December 28, 2019, 03:42:13 AM »

The "universal accelerator" thread is nonsense.  The concept of dark matter is a controversial theory proposed by scientists who, to a person, accept the spherical earth paradigm.  No flat earth believer has contributed any research to the theory of dark matter, so it is disingenuous to take it out of context and use it as an explanation. You are essentially nit picking other scientist's work out of context.

It also seems disingenuous that one of the least understood and most controversial theories (dark matter0 is the one that flat earth believers would accept as verified truth, while disputing the one which is universally accepted, without controversy, by thousands of scientists from all nations, political systems and religions for at least five hundred years. 

7

Flat Earth Debate / Re: The Sun is a spotlight?

« on: December 28, 2019, 03:25:10 AM »

Ah, you are all very intelligent, but where are the flat earth believers?  Let's hear more from the other side. 

Here is one problem not mentioned.  Even if the sun somehow were focused like a spotlight (some explanation is needed as to how that would happen) there remains an intractable problem.  The sun is a source not only of light but also of heat.  Thus even if the light was focused on one small area of a flat earth, the orb would be visible in the infrared spectrum from every position on earth, at all times. Even the cheapest infrared camera would be able to photograph the sun at night.  Unless somehow it was so well insulated by angel feathers?

And then there is the problem of explaining the sunlight reflecting from the moon, Mercury, Mars, Venus, comets, astroids...  That is a lot of spillover from the spotlight in the sky.

Come on.  Don't be shy.

8

Flat Earth Debate / No gravity?

« on: December 27, 2019, 12:51:11 AM »

Ok, I love the no gravity argument.  This isn't the Einstein version involving space time, but a totally fabricated one with neither mathematical calculation nor evidence.  It does however reference "dark matter."  Now I personally am totally stumped how a belief which is supposed to be based solely on observed evidence (the earth looks flat, feels flat, so it must be flat...) can conjure up the idea of dark matter.  Surely dark matter is just another of the multitude of fabrications by the thousands of scientists from multiple countries, cultures and even religious backgrounds involved in this spherical earth conspiracy, right?  Or to put the sarcasm aside, how does a believer decide which scientific evidence to believe and which is just part of the conspiracy?

Here's something to chew on.  There are good historical records of humans going back at least 5000 years.  Even young earth believers acknowledge at least 5000 years.  Now if the earth was at 0 5000 years ago and just started accelerating at 32ft/second squared, how fast would it be going now?  Let's see 5000 years is 157,784,760,000 seconds times 32 feet per second squared equals... 3,461,300,860,246 miles per hour.  Ok, the speed of light is about 670,616,629 miles per hour.  Around 5100 times the speed of light.  Hmm.

9

Flat Earth Debate / Re: The Sun is a spotlight?

« on: December 27, 2019, 12:32:16 AM »

I see the illustration, but that is a cartoon.  Show us a real demonstration, on a real surface with a real light source at a distance and intensity matching that which corresponds in scale to the earth and sun.

Your illustration is dependent on a sun which is smaller in scale than the surface it is shining upon.  That and it depends on a sun which is much closer than our sun.  If you have a sun which is many times larger and much farther away, the energy, sun rays if you will, are essentially parallel when they arrive, which would illuminate the entire surface of a flat earth.  Plus, the energy would be the same everywhere, making the entire flat surface equivalent to an area along the equator in mid-summer. 
Thus, your argument is not only that the earth is flat, but that the sun is tiny and very close to the surface of the earth.  Then you also need to explain how the same tiny, narrowly focused sun also illuminates the moon and all our neighboring planets. 

10

Flat Earth Debate / The Sun is a spotlight?

« on: December 26, 2019, 08:59:55 PM »

This is possibly the nuttiest idea so far (next to "there is no gravity") so I had to start with this. 

First, how would the sun be focused into a spotlight?  What is the mechanism?  What is the evidence? 

Even if the sun were a "spotlight" it would still be visible from everywhere on the surface of a flat earth.  For example a spotlight pointed at a stage performer can still be seen by everyone in the audience, and by all others on the stage, even when they are not in the spotlight.  Even a laser, which is more focused than a spotlight, can be seen from positions outside the focal point. And even if we couldn't see the actual "light" we would be able to detect both the beam of light and the source.  Remember those WW2 movies of the spotlight beams crisscrossing the night sky above Berlin?  But we can't see the sun at night, nor the tell tail beam. 

The sun hitting a flat earth would illuminate every part simultaneously.  But that is not what happens on this earth.