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The Lounge / Engineers Rule The World

« on: September 14, 2013, 12:40:55 AM »

Hi Peeps,
Been a while since I've been on here. I remember many bendy light conversations with Parsec and Parsifal. Also, who can every forget their first interaction with Tom Bishop? I definitely enjoy the scientific discussions up top, but I figured I could come down here and say hi!

In a funny crossover of interests, my wife is pregnant. That got me thinking about fun science projects to get the little one interested in the world. Thinking about this reminded me of the old discussions on the FES. It has inspired me to keep my eye out for a cheap telescope on Craiglist, in case I feel the need to do my own level experiment. Also, I have been thinking about a cheap and easy way to repeat the Cavendish experiment. Where I am working now, I have the tools to easily measure the speed of light, although that doesn't seems to be a big point of contention around here at the moment.

Anyway, glad to see there are still people here hanging out, that enjoy a good conversation about science for fun.

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The Lounge / Will be away for a while

« on: March 08, 2010, 05:44:15 PM »

Got a SC2 beta key...
 

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Flat Earth Debate / Domed Earth Theory

« on: March 02, 2010, 12:32:56 AM »

Based on observations in the Beam Neutrinos thread, the Earth appears to be round with the expected RET curvature in both Japan (T2K and K2K) and the United States (MINOS). This seems to suggest that a Domed Earth Theory (DET) could more accurately describe what Flat Earth Theory tries to explain. These measurements of curvature are only made in North America, so existing FET representations of Earth could still be accurate, except with a large dome in place of the circle of the northern hemisphere.

DET could perhaps fit with the neutrino data, but produce other problems such as the transition between domed northern hemisphere and flatter southern hemisphere. Gravitational acceleration would be similarly affected by DET, however I am sure UA could be re-examined to consider this. DET would be very incompatible with the infinite plane model since plumb lines would point in the wrong direction further from the top of the dome.

Based on the current state of the Beam Neutrino thread I can only conclude that DET is closer to reality than FET. Discussion?

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Flat Earth Debate / FES doesn't want to know the shape of the Earth

« on: March 01, 2010, 11:45:07 PM »

I argue that the FES does not care to measure the overall shape of the Earth. Up against an information conspiracy, the FES is faced with the daunting moral obligation to free the world from scientific tyranny. The FES finds itself in an age of widespread international travel due to planes, trains, and automobiles. Each FES member has the opportunity to contribute to the most critical body of information the FES could ever produce, a map.

I don't pretend to imply that any one member of the FES should shoulder this burden, but instead share it among the members. No extra trips are necessary; one only needs to document the trips they make.

Accomplishing this feat for even a few major cities in the southern hemisphere would give the FES credibility, and would follow the Zetetic virtues that it supports. However, the lack of concerted effort towards accomplishing what I feel would be the most important focus of the FES leads to the conclusion that it does not want to know the shape of the Earth, only to discuss it.

I welcome explanations as to why nobody has organized a record of international travel between FES members. If one claims that cost is a major factor, I challenge that person to list other countries they have traveled to already. If one has never traveled from their home country then I understand why they may be more likely to accept the idea of a flat earth, having had no experience of the world at large.

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Flat Earth Debate / Flat Earth not a theory

« on: February 26, 2010, 06:28:23 PM »

I think an error was made in naming the idea this website supports Flat Earth Theory, or FET. I propose that the Flat Earth concept is more correctly a hypothesis (FEH). The main issue addressed by the FEH is the shape of the Earth on a large scale, outside of the easily observable human sight range. This idea has been supported by many other scientific ideas including: UA, Bendy Light, Sky Mirror, etc. This idea also requires the existence of the Conspiracy, a large organized attempt to hide the true shape of the Earth.

My argument is that without a testable model such as a large scale map, the idea of the Flat Earth remains a hypothesis, yet to be tested in the rigorous manner that science demands. Two attempts to test the FEH were made by Rowbotham and Lady Blout, but both are highly disputed and have not been reproduced by the modern FES (although Daniel attempted the BLE but in my opinion made a math error). Both of tests only look for local flatness, and have nothing to do with the real point of the FEH, the general shape of the Earth at large.

Until a testable model of the location of various major cities around the world is developed, I propose that idea of a Flat Earth remains a hypothesis. In this age with reliable wind speed measurements and relatively cheap access to commercial aviation, the ability of the FES to gather evidence has never been greater.

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Flat Earth Debate / Illumination of the Earth

« on: January 29, 2010, 10:34:01 AM »

I propose that roughly half the Earth is illuminated at any given time. If this is true it contradicts the FET position that the Sun is orbiting in a circle above the Earth, since this would naturally result in a circular area of illumination.

I propose a that each person state their location to the greatest level of accuracy they feel comfortable with, and we organize a mass posting of the current level of brightness, as well as a picture with some kind of time stamp.

If we are successful at getting a large coordinated posting we should have a better idea of the illumination of the Earth. Such observations would be help to distinguish between the various possible theories in FET such the sky mirror, the Jerusalem centered map, the height of the sun, and the existence or necessity of bendy light. Such a test could also add validity to the existing scientific norm, RET.

Discuss.

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Flat Earth Debate / Dino's Time Dilation

« on: December 27, 2009, 07:17:26 PM »

Dino has proposed a new hypothesis to explain airline flight times. My best understanding is that time travels slower in the southern continents, and faster at higher altitudes.
I will begin to address this idea with the simple though, as many people have mentioned:
How can clocks be synchronized in the North and South? If time travels slower in the South, would they not slowly fall behind in hours and days?
How can a real time conversation occur between the North and South if there is a difference in the passage of time? The voice of the person in the South would sound slower and visa versa. This speeding up and slowing down is because sound is interpreted by our ears as frequencies, and in a slowed down time sound frequencies will be observed at a lower frequency to an outside observer. If somehow the effect canceled out and the frequencies were normalized when transferred across the North/South boundary, there would be a constantly increasing phase lag in the conversation that would quickly become noticeable.
What could cause this time dilation? The known mechanisms for producing noticeable time dilation are intense gravitation and relativistic velocities. If gravitation, then how can the gravitational acceleration appear similar in the South? And how can there be a relative velocity between the North and South if the Earth is continuous and not spinning apart?
I know I have presented several points but all and more need to be discussed before the time dilation concept is anything more than a distraction.

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Flat Earth Debate / Neutrino Detection Hardware

« on: December 06, 2009, 03:02:24 PM »

Hi All,

I noticed a thread on Solar Neutrinos and a request for hardware design information. I personally worked to construct the data acquisition hardware for the T2K FGD, and so will post whatever details I can find. T2K is not a direct experiment on Solar Neutrinos, so I will endeavor to get information from SNOWLAB or Super K.

For now:

The fact is, no one has offered a way to reconstruct the experiments, so there is no evidence to support the solar neutrinos.

For anyone to understand the hardware documentation I provide in the following posts, they must first read this background report on the T2K FGD data readout:
http://t2k-information.googlegroups.com/web/T2KFGDDAQ_Presentation.pdf?hl=en

If you really want access to the C++ code I will ask my former supervisor on Monday and see if I can get you an account on the SVN.

I will ask around and see if I can get similar information from SNOLAB, since there are several people who worked there and are currently at TRIUMF. Super K might be a bit more difficult since I suspect much of the documentation is in Japanese. I will still look...

I think that previous people were unable to post such information because it is difficult to find, even if it is public. Free flow of the information between members of the collaboration is the primary focus of the IT department and accessibility to the public can sometimes be left on the back burner. This may be due to the fact that the average Joe is not going to be able to reproduce 5 years, $100 million dollars, and a half million man hours (thousands of physicists working for 3-5 years) of this experiment in his back yard.

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Flat Earth Debate / Pesky Neutrinos

« on: December 06, 2009, 01:52:03 PM »

Hi All,

I have tried my best to read through the previous 153 pages of threads on this forum, and found one thing repeated many times: A post should not be longer than three or four sentences.

I will open up this thread to discuss neutrinos and how they might affect a FET. I hope that in a year or two I will be able to post a picture from T2K of neutrinos passing 300km through the Earth from Tokai to Hida in Japan. I am providing some time for the development a theory of bendy neutrinos or something of that nature.

A presentation that I made about T2K that contains background information (reading past slide 12 may require knowledge of digital electronics):
http://t2k-information.googlegroups.com/web/T2KFGDDAQ_Presentation.pdf?hl=en&gsc=dpZkfBYAAABTl-BqToBP6YtkdhV4EunzxLvg5J8DkvikzuC_7TuOSg

For now here is a picture from the near detector (ND280) in Tokai (TPC detectors [in blue] are not currently present):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45321145@N03/4162595960/

PS: if the links are broken let me know, I am new to discussion forums