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Flat Earth Debate / Re: DIY Experiment: Function of the sun's movement through the sky w/r to time

« on: February 07, 2009, 02:01:15 AM »

The rest of us are happy that the moon is in a stable but slightly decaying orbit.

Actually the radius of the moon's orbit is expanding by about 2" a year as a result of tidal forces. The moon will completely escape the Earth's gravitational well in ~50bn years time.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: aeroplanes

« on: February 04, 2009, 08:31:05 AM »

But the atmoplane is being accelerated upward by the earth as well.

This answered my quandry, thanks. I knew there must have been some part of it I was missing, but I just couldn't figure out what it was.

acceleration != velocity

In the UA model, the ground is moving upwards toward the plane. If the ground were moving at a constant rate, the plane would simply have to generate enough lift to match this to remain at a constant altitude.

Nope, the plane would not need to generate any lift. Remember, F=ma.

Can we possibly have a more detailed description of this in the FAQ? It seems every week some newcomer asks the same question.

PS: I'm RE.

Of course the plane would have to generate lift. If there were no force pulling the plane upwards, the ground would catch up with it (UA model) or gravity would drag it down. Regardless of the source of the downforce, in order for the plane to stay in the sky this must be overcome.

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Flat Earth Debate / aeroplanes

« on: February 02, 2009, 08:23:25 AM »

How do aeroplanes work with UA?

In the gravity model the plane has a constant force (gravity) tugging it to the ground which the lift provided by the wings overcomes, keeping it in the sky.

In the UA model, the ground is moving upwards toward the plane. If the ground were moving at a constant rate, the plane would simply have to generate enough lift to match this to remain at a constant altitude. But the ground is accelarating toward the plane so to remain at a constant altitude the plane must also be continuously accelarating upwards. In other words, the wings can provide infinite lift.

The only way around this I can think of is that at some point in the flight, the plane becomes another body subject to UA and begins to be propelled upward by the Dark Energy or whatever it is that causes UA. But if this were the case in order to land the plane would have to generate enough down force somehow to overcome UA upwards and move toward the ground.

Can someone explain this to me please.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: NASA given $400 million to study global warming

« on: January 23, 2009, 07:25:56 AM »

Of course you need to prove that NASA is lying.

Actually, I don't.

In a discussion on the existence of ghosts should the burden of proof be on the group mumbling "just because you can't see something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist," or should the burden of proof be on everyone else to prove that ghosts *don't* exist?

A company called Mollar International claims to have invented a flying car with safety comparable to a land vehicle, an outstanding performance of a 400 mile range, and sophisticated never before seen computer control. They claim that the Sky Car is ready to be mass produced if only they got a few more big investments. They've released a few videos of it hovering a short distance off the ground in test flights. Should the burden of proof be on the Moller proponents who are absolutely certain that all of Moller's claims are true, or should the burden of proof be on the skeptics who question the legitimacy of Moller's claims?

As we can see, the burden is proof is never on the skeptic. It's always on the claimant. If you claim something, the burden is on you to prove it.

In a debate the burden of proof is on both parties you fecking moron. One party makes a statement and provides evidence of some sort or another to back up that claim. Then the other side makes a rebuttal and provides evidence to back it up. This continues back and forth until the debate comes to a close. This process allows both sides, and any audience, to consider the merits of both positions and form their conclusions accordingly. If one side continually declares that there is no need for them to provide any sort of corroboration for anything they say then no theories are tested, no new evidence ever sought, no statements are ever discarded as invalid since they have not been scrutinised. In short, progress ceases.

The example of the flying car you offer (and I notice have offered several times when someone has boxed you into the corner of actually having to back up some of the fantastic statements you make) as evidence that there is never any need for Tom Bishop to support his statements is completely different to a debate. The manufacturers of the flying car are seeking investment for their product. The onus on them is to provide enough evidence for a would be investor to accept their claims. If somebody is happy to sign over their cash based on this single initial video, they have met their obligation. If an investor requires more evidence before giving money, the manufacturer must accede to his demand or go without his money. In no way shape or form can this be compared to the peer review process (which is essentially what scientific debate is) that allows us (well most of us) to progress as a race.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Seven Topics of Confusion

« on: January 22, 2009, 07:02:36 AM »

Why do you think all the air would freeze to the ice wall?  I don't know if you did your math right or not but for the sake of arguement I understand what you you mean about freezing near the icewall, but why everywhere?

Simply because gases will expand to fill the available space. As they condense on to the ice wall, the pressure there will drop slightly  and gases from the "high" pressure areas away from the ice wall will redistribute themselves to fill this void. These in turn will freeze and more gases will fill the void and so on and so on. Added to this that at some point air pressure would drop sufficiently to allow the oceans to boil at 20 C (about 40 Torr, or 1/20 of standard atmospheric pressure according to the nomograph from the lab), and this vapour in turn would freeze to the ice wall too. Once the oceans are gone, there is no mechanism for distributing the Sun's energy around the world so there would be no way of the atmospheric gasses defrosting from the ice wall. I have no idea how to do the sums to work out how long the whole process would take, but eventually most of the atmospheric gases and the oceans too would have condensed onto the ice wall. The Earth would look like a very dry rocky plain with a dirty great wall of frozen stuff round the outside, shaped such that the Sun's ray no part of it strongly enough to melt it.

Eventually it would reach equalibrium.  If you think all of the ocean would eventually freeze to the ice wall, by that logic it would also freeze to the north and south poles.

No. I said that the atmosphere would eventually freeze to the ice wall and in doing so reduce atmospheric pressure. In time, the pressure would become low enough to allow the ocean to boil at ambient temperature. When that happens, the water vapour generated would also freeze to the ice wall. If material from the Earth system is continually being removed by condensing on the ice wall never to return, it can not reach equilibrium until all the volatile materials have been removed.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Seven Topics of Confusion

« on: January 22, 2009, 06:04:26 AM »

Why do you think all the air would freeze to the ice wall?  I don't know if you did your math right or not but for the sake of arguement I understand what you you mean about freezing near the icewall, but why everywhere?

Simply because gases will expand to fill the available space. As they condense on to the ice wall, the pressure there will drop slightly  and gases from the "high" pressure areas away from the ice wall will redistribute themselves to fill this void. These in turn will freeze and more gases will fill the void and so on and so on. Added to this that at some point air pressure would drop sufficiently to allow the oceans to boil at 20 C (about 40 Torr, or 1/20 of standard atmospheric pressure according to the nomograph from the lab), and this vapour in turn would freeze to the ice wall too. Once the oceans are gone, there is no mechanism for distributing the Sun's energy around the world so there would be no way of the atmospheric gasses defrosting from the ice wall. I have no idea how to do the sums to work out how long the whole process would take, but eventually most of the atmospheric gases and the oceans too would have condensed onto the ice wall. The Earth would look like a very dry rocky plain with a dirty great wall of frozen stuff round the outside, shaped such that the Sun's ray no part of it strongly enough to melt it.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Seven Topics of Confusion

« on: January 22, 2009, 05:31:32 AM »

After 4.5 billion years of pretty much every gas in the atmosphere freezing or liquifying at the ice wall, what do we all breathe?

Air.

Where does this air come from though if it is continually freezing to the ice wall? Surely you're not suggesting there is mystical source that continually replenishes the atmosphere/layer are you?

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Seven Topics of Confusion

« on: January 22, 2009, 02:01:23 AM »

Perhaps, but if you agree there's a core in the Earth then wouldn't it need to be pretty big in order to prevent everyone from being scorched to death? Not only that, but if the Earth is really thin enough not to be a globe but hold a core, how come the ice cap at the top of the world exists? Wouldn't heat be more concentrated on the areas that are closer to the center of the Earth, and not on the Equator?

The ice cap and antarctic rim exist because the sun's light is coming in at a steep angle, heating up less land per square inch of sunlight.

I did some sums regarding this. Assuming an average temperature of 85 F at the equator where the Sun's rays are perpendicular to the Earth, at the angle the Sun's rays hit the Earth at the ice wall the same amount of energy would be spread out such that the average temperature would be about -360 F or 55 K. At this temperature nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide, methane, krypton, nitrous oxide, xenon, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, iodine, carbon monoxide, ammonia and water are all frozen solid. Oxygen melts at ~54 K, so on a cold day at the ice wall it'd be frozen solid, on a warm day it'd be kinda slushy. Neon, helium and hydrogen would all still be gaseous, but since these only represent 0.002379% of the atmosphere we can mostly ignore them. After 4.5 billion years of pretty much every gas in the atmosphere freezing or liquifying at the ice wall, what do we all breathe?

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Flat Earth Q&A / Re: Gravity- how does it work ?

« on: January 21, 2009, 07:49:40 AM »

What about the repelling of like charges?

That would be an equally undignified end. The strong nuclear force binds neutrons and protons in the nucleas, overcoming the repulsion of like and like charges. But again, gravity/gravitation is irrelevant at such scales.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Re: The Milky Way: Are We Riding the Arm?

« on: January 21, 2009, 02:16:38 AM »

"The Milky Way" is an absurd name for a galaxy.

Not nearly as ridiculous as "The Rocky Mountains". Whoever came up with that one was having a really bad day.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Re: Gravity- how does it work ?

« on: January 21, 2009, 02:14:39 AM »

The large gravitational wells of galaxies prevent them from expanding due to dark energy, just as EM forces keep you from collapsing due to gravitation.

Wrong. EM forces, the attraction of charges, would actually help your constituent atoms to collapse in on themselves rather than prevent such an undignified end. It is the quantised nature of energies within atoms and their orbitals, and in turn molecules and their orbitals, which maintains the structure of atoms/molecules. Besides which since gravitation is a product of mass, at the atomic/molecular level it is so weak as to be ignorable.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Re: Circumnavigation

« on: January 21, 2009, 02:10:15 AM »

What about this pole-to-pole circumnavigation?

http://www.ainonline.com/news/single-news-page/article/tag-global-claims-record-for-polar-circumnavigation/?no_cache=1

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Technology, Science & Alt Science / Re: How much Science Can Be Trusted?

« on: January 19, 2009, 07:54:53 AM »

What about the theory of particles orbiting the nucleus? Although it is said to be result not of gravity but charge, couldn't it be considered as a ruse to think that all things are round and orbit things? Plus most of FET's rejection of science is that none of us have been in space. None of us have seen an atom. We can at least see the cosmos with our naked eye from earth. Not true for atomic particles.

The orbits that electrons occupy within atoms are a consequence of energy levels and degeneracy predicted by quantum theory. The orbits of the planets about the Sun are a consequence of gravity. Theoretical physicists have thus far failed to marry quantum theory with theory of gravity. The two can not be compared.

Besides which, atomic orbitals are not defined paths along which an electron will be found at time, t, but rather a volume of space within which there is a probability of finding an electron if an observer chooses to search for one. Up until that observation is made, the electron occupies the whole orbital simultaneously. It's all very complicated, which is why I stopped doing quantum mechanics.

Furthermore the idea that bodies orbit other bodies, whether a geocentric or heliocentric view, dates back millenia. The modern model of the atom consisting of a central nucleas with electron orbiting it didn't arise till Rutherford did his experiments firing alpha-particles at gold foil about a hundred years ago. Prior to that we had the plum-pudding model of the atom and before that, people st didn't really like to ask such questions since the atom was considered the smallest particle of matter possible.

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Flat Earth Debate / A thought experiment as proof of RE

« on: January 19, 2009, 03:14:23 AM »

At an approximately flat location such as some of the Utah salt flats, the low-lands of Belgium/Netherlands, the Somerset levels in the UK, set up two towers as far apart as reasonable possible. Using all the modern devices available to the engineer, ensure that the towers are perfectly level, at the same elevation to each other and perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Now measure the distance between the tops of the two towers and the distance between the bases of the two. In a FE model, these distances will be the same. In a RE model, there will be a difference. The further the towers are apart and the taller they are, the more pronounced this effect will be.

There is an example of this I can think of off the top of my head, ie the Humber Suspension Bridge over the Humber estuary in the UK. The towers are not parallel, but rather about 1.5" further apart at the top as compared to the bottom to account for the Earth's curvature. How does FE explain away such an effect?

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Flat Earth Q&A / Re: "Cold light?"

« on: January 12, 2009, 02:26:15 PM »

Hope this isn't just something I missed, but in the FAQ, they mention the sun radiating warm light, which makes sense, and the moon radiating "cold light," which, in my mind, doesn't. What is this mysterious cold light? I'll welcome any explanation, from dark matter to witchcraft, but I'll try to believe any serious answers.

Light on a wavelength that doesn't transmit much heat.

So that would be what, EM radiation of sufficiently low energy that we cannot feel it as heat? That would be radio/microwaves which are invisible to our eyes.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Retroreflectors on the Moon

« on: January 09, 2009, 06:48:39 AM »

Can you please cite your source where they claim to be firing gigawatt lasers at the moon?

From http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Moons/TheMoon/Retroreflectors.html :

"The laser beam. How powerful does the light beam have to be? One laser generator in use with a 3.5-meter telescope operated by the Astrophysical Research Consortium at Apache Point, near Sunspot, New Mexico, generates a peak power of a one billion watts (1 gigawatt) for a short time, but just long enough to fire off a one-inch bullet of light aimed through the telescope at the lunar surface."

Tom: "One laser generator in use"

That is one of them, not all of them. You seem to keep getting "one" and "all" mixed up. They are not the same word, even though they ahve the same number of letters.

Not all laser range finders that use the retro reflectors on the Moon are that powerful. Many are much, much weaker. 1500mJ is much less powerful than 1MW, and that 1500mJ laser is used to range find to the Moon.

Tom, I can find the specs for a Car that has over 1000HP, does that mean that the scooter my nephew has (which has a motor on it) have 1000HP? no. Even you know that. You are just Strawmaninng again and thus weakening the position of any FEer. If I were a FEer, I'd be disowning any thing you say.

Actually, a laser that generates a 1500 mJ pulse for 200 ps is a 7.5 gigawatt laser. The sum is fairly simple: (1500x10^-3)J/(200x10^-12)s = 7.5x10^9 W or 7.5 gigawatts.

That being said, Tom's laser that generates a 1 gigawatt pulse 1 inch long is in fact only an 85 milliwatt laser. A 1 inch pulse of light takes 84.7 picoseconds to propagate [2.54x10^-2 m (length of pulse)/3x10^8 m/s (speed of light)]. Therefore the actually power output of the laser is 1x10^9 (the energy of the pulse) x 84.7x10^-12 (duration of the pulse) = 0.085 watts (the power of the pulse).

Kinda wierd how when you stop and do the sums, it turns out you're both arguing the wrong side of the argument.

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Flat Earth Q&A / What shape is the sun?

« on: January 09, 2009, 03:28:50 AM »

Apologies if this has been asked, but it's not in the FAQs and not on any of the threads I could see.

Is the sun:

a) a sphere 32 miles in diameter?
b) more like my bedside lamp, ie a point source of light with some kind of reflector 32 miles in diameter, directing the light/heat Earthwards?
c) a flattish disk 32 miles in diameter seen as a circle from Earth since that is the profile presented?

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Flat Earth Q&A / Re: Day & night duration at the Equator

« on: January 07, 2009, 03:33:27 PM »

Convexity of the atmolayer

Please elaborate. I don't believe convexity is even a word.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Re: Atmosphere

« on: January 07, 2009, 03:32:16 PM »

of course regular ice cant stick to a gas but ice wall ice can, being several hundred degrees colder than regular ice.
it has not been studied scientifically as the government prevents access to it

If nobody has been allowed to study the ice wall scientifically, how do you know that it is "several hundred degrees colder" than regular ice?

Several hundred degrees colder than regular ice is colder than absolute zero, a physical impossibilty. But even ignoring your imprecise use of language and assuming that the ice is just at absolute zero, all the principle gases of the atmosphere would freeze to the wall. After not very many years, the greater portion of the atmosphere would be locked up in the ice wall, rendering the Earth incapable of sustaining life.

Please clarify.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Re: Day & night duration at the Equator

« on: January 07, 2009, 09:07:11 AM »

ignore the approximately equal day/night hours at the equator, how does FE explain 6 months of daylight/6 months of darkness at the poles? something I have seen with my own eyes.