1

Flat Earth Debate / What are the bright spots on Ceres?

« on: March 03, 2015, 02:43:12 PM »

What is the FE take on images coming back from the space probe Dawn?  It is approaching a dwarf planet Ceres and is seeing unusual bright spots on the surface:

Source: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

More NASA BS, or something of interest? 

2

Flat Earth Debate / Did NASA invent math?

« on: March 03, 2015, 12:56:58 PM »

I really don't get this idea that there is a big conspiracy to fake RET.  It is all open and explained with math and can be checked by anyone.  One can estimate sun rise / sun set times, dates and times of eclipses, etc. etc. and it is not a secret as to how it is done.  Anyone can come to the same calculations using first principles.  It is all described in the math, there is no voodo magic involved.  In order for RET to be wrong, math itself would have to be wrong.  FET on the other hand would require a massive and unsupportable conspiracy, because it has absolutely nothing going for it.  No map, no predictions, no logic, no consensus even among FET and certainly no sex appeal.  What exactly is wrong with RET Math?

3

Flat Earth Debate / Next eclipse

« on: March 02, 2015, 06:16:11 PM »

According to FE principles, when will the next solar and lunar eclipses be?  Now, you can't just go look at the RET prediction, you have to show how you came to your prediction.  Otherwise you are just confirming RET, and I'm sure you would not want to do that.

4

Flat Earth Debate / Where are we going, and why such the hurry?

« on: February 25, 2015, 09:26:59 PM »

So according to UA, we are accelerating at approximately 9.8 m/s^2.  After a year we would be going 309,264,480 m/s which is faster than the speed of light which is 299,792,458 m/s (interesting that they are close to each other... coincidence?).  Forget Einstein, why should we limit ourselves, we are free thinkers, are we not?  Since JC was lighting the world on fire and turning over tables at the temple, we have added 623,167,927,200 m/s to our velocity.  Considering the age of the earth is 4.5e9 years old, we are now moving 1,391,690,160,000,000,000 m/s.  That is a fair clip.  It sure don't feel like I'm moving that fast!

So you FEers are telling me that we are are screaming along at ~4.5e9 times the speed of light, but I don't feel a thing?  Wouldn't I get a nose bleed or something?  And if I jumped up in the air, wouldn't the earth come smack into me damn fast and flatten me like a pancake?  And wouldn't we smack into the moon in a damn hurry?  At that speed, hitting any object would be pretty disastrous, just an every day old pebble would put one heck of ding in the ice dome y'all have been going on about.  Just the other day a pebble hit my windshield and I was only doing like 27 m/s (~60mph) and by golly, I got a big spider crack in my windshield now and I gots to get me a new one. 

And just where in the heck are we going?  Seems like we are in an awful hurry to get there.  What kind of rocket engine do we have our behinds strapped to?  There must be one hell of a smoke trail behind us.  Well, at least it is UA and not some ridiculous gravity thing.

5

Flat Earth Debate / Einstein's Equivalence Principle is not correct.

« on: February 10, 2015, 04:50:51 PM »

Einstein's equivalence principle is only correct for an idealized point source of mass.  This is because a true gravitational system has a gradient as gravity weakens the further one gets from the center of the large mass.  This is not dramatic and virtually indistinguishable to a human standing on the surface of the earth, but there is a significant difference between acceleration and gravity even of 6 or so feet when one gets close enough to a black hole.  At some point the gravitational gradient becomes so strong that objects get ripped apart.  And the difference between gravity and acceleration can be detected in very large objects even on earth.  Take a mountain, lets say Mt Everest.  The gravitational force will be different at the base of the mountain than at the top. 

6

Flat Earth Debate / Proof that GPS is a satellite based system

« on: February 10, 2015, 04:41:14 PM »

FEers have admitted that GPS is a real thing.  The claim, however, that it is just some land based system or it uses weather balloons or some such nonsense.  But it can be easily shown that GPS is using Satellites.  All one needs is a cell phone and a program to show the GPS status.  For example, on Android there is a free program 'GPS Status' that will plot all SVs in the sky and the signal strength coming from each SV.  The positions of the SVs can be verified to match the orbital predictions on web sites such as http://www.n2yo.com.  The satellite positions repeat daily with a 4 minute delay and they follow a precise path and move much to fast to be a weather balloon.

So at this point the FEer will say something like "Hog wash, the phone can easily know where to plot the positions of the fake satellites".  But here is the problem for that argument.  If one looks at their phone, they can see what satellites are tracked and which ones are not.  And if one is standing in an open area, pretty much all SVs will be tracked.  Then they can walk up to the side of a building and see that they loose tracking of all satellites blocked by the building.  There is just no way for the phone to be able to fake that information.  The signals are coming from the location predicted by orbital parameters, and there is no way a balloon can make that kind of trajectory with that kind of speed and exact repeatability of the position in the sky from day to day.

If you like, I can make a video to show exactly that.  Game over, again.

7

Flat Earth Debate / What is your price?

« on: February 08, 2015, 09:11:47 AM »

How much would it cost to buy out an FEer?  Would it take money, fame, power, fear?  It seems like FEers would be a prime target for the RET hush money, has an FEer ever been approached about taking some money to keep quiet? 

8

Flat Earth Debate / Is Kansas flat?

« on: February 04, 2015, 04:38:20 PM »

If one was to drive I-70 across Kansas, would one expect it to be flat?  The elevation at the Colorado border is 1180m and the elevation at Kansas City is 280m so certainly it is not level.  Still, it could be 'flat', just sloped.  What if while driving I-70, one recorded their GPS position and at the same time took measurements from an aircraft altimeter.  Would the height position from GPS more or less match the height according to the altimeter?  If that is the case, could you say GPS altitude is real -- it is the same value obtained from air pressure after all.  And if all these heights just showed a gentle slope from east to west with no real curvature, would that mean that Kansas is actually flat?  Remember, GPS positions are in WGS-84.  Here it is broken down:

A: Does GPS height match altimeter height across Kansas (along I-70 running east/west)?
B: Would the height measurements show a gentle drop from 1180m to 280m?
C: Would no curvature in WGS-84 heights mean that Kansas is flat?

9

Flat Earth Debate / How many FET believers are there on this board?

« on: January 29, 2015, 12:37:09 PM »

I'm just wondering how many people here really believe FET.  If you just like to frustrate people, here is your chance to come clean anonymously (if these polls are anonymous)!

10

Flat Earth Debate / FET map actually proves RET

« on: January 28, 2015, 11:11:29 AM »

The only map I've seen from FET is an Azimuth Equidistant Map and people look at it and wonder how they can get the distances from cities in Australia correct (most obvious place to start).  You can get the distances correct using RET though.  You can estimate the latitude and longitude of any city based on the lat/long lines of the map.  Then using standard RET calculations you can calculate the arc length of the great circle that goes through both points.  It is an RET map after all!  Ask FET for a map and they will hand you a globe without realizing they just proved the earth is not flat!

11

Flat Earth Q&A / Can air pressure be used to determine height?

« on: January 27, 2015, 06:35:53 PM »

I hope this is the right place to put this.... In FET, do altimeters work?  I mean, can I use a barometric pressure altimeter to determine my height above sea level?  I assume that would work, but I would like to know if FET folks think it is possible.

12

Flat Earth Debate / Is FET fantasy by definition?

« on: January 25, 2015, 03:42:07 PM »

After poking around here for a few weeks it seems clear to me that FET will never accept a single piece of evidence.  Also, they will not propose a single experiment to help decide the matter.  Also, there is not a single prediction that can be tested from FET.  FET can't predict the time of sunrise, when the next eclipse will be, the direction to travel from Seattle to Japan, the travel path of seismic signals in the earths crust, and on and on.  There is no physical evidence of FET and no physical evidence can ever show FET to be wrong.  So then it seems to me this is the definition of fantasy.  And certainly many posts on this forum seem to come from a bunch of geeks that are in withdraw after binging on D&D games.  If one accepts that FET is true as the starting point, one is already an alternate universe divorced from reality, and then anything goes.  Zaratan sex games, moon shrimp, bendy light, dark energy, Harvey the 6 foot rabbit, etc...

So, FET, put up or shut up.  What physical evidence would you accept as proof or disproof of FET?

13

Flat Earth Debate / Earth light on the moon, is Canon in on the hoax?

« on: January 23, 2015, 09:04:46 AM »

Last night I took the following picture of the moon with my Canon camera.  It was about an hour after sunset.  I used the following settings:
Canon EOS Rebel SL1
ISO 12800
F6.3
1/50
300mm zoom

The adjusted the image as follows:
Crop the image
Adjust levels to increase contrast.

The image out of the camera is at:
http://45.56.70.28/IMG_4677.JPG

This is a consumer level camera and a cheap tamron zoom, a camera will within the budget of the poorest of photo buffs.  It clearly shows features of the moon in the shadow due to light reflecting off of the earth.  Doesn't this show that the moon is being partially lit from behind, and that the sun must be behind the moon?  It would be interesting to take an image of an eclipse with these settings to show that the sun is indeed being blocked by moon.  There will be a total eclipse in August 2017 in the US, I plan to be taking my telescope and cameras, I'll try to get an image of the surface of the moon in full eclipse.   

14

Flat Earth Debate / Use of FET can be a crime

« on: January 22, 2015, 10:52:28 AM »

If a pilot of an aircraft used FET to navigate rather than approved charts approved by the FAA in the US, it would be criminal.  Part of the conspiracy?  Would you be comfortable using FET navigation to fly from LAX to AKL?

15

Flat Earth Debate / The Sun, the moon.

« on: January 21, 2015, 07:23:45 AM »

There are many observations one can make with their own eyes to see that that the round earth model does fit with what we see from the moon and stars.  Forget that the distance to the Sun and Moon were first calculated in 200 BC and found to be much much further than 3,000 miles away.  Yes, it takes a little initiative and being a couch potato won't get the job done.  After all, if one does not want to believe anything they can't see, then to discover the world, they will have to see the world for themselves.

If one tracks the motion of the sun and moon in the sky, they will see that the full moon travels the same path as the sun with a 6 month lag.  In the northern hemisphere the summer full moon stays to the south and travels the path of the winter sun, and so forth.  If one watches the path of the moon as it wanes, they will see that the path across the sky catches up to the current path of the sun.  In the new moon phase, one can not see the position of the moon, but if you estimate it as being between the last waning path and first waxing path, it will nearly cross the sun.  And in fact, when there is an eclipse, it is exactly when the moon is projected to be near the sun.

Some basic things you can see:
The full moon rises at sunset.
The near new moon phases rise near dawn.
The path of the full moon follows the sun path from 6 months ago.

I'm sure there are many more observations that can be made.

 

16

Flat Earth Debate / Sun spots

« on: January 19, 2015, 12:12:39 PM »

What is the FET take on sunspots?  Does the movement of sunspots imply a rotating sun?

17

Flat Earth Debate / What is acceptable evidence?

« on: January 16, 2015, 02:20:12 PM »

I there any experiment that can be performed to test the validity of FET?  What evidence would an FEer accept that RET is correct?  I can think of lots of experiments to show RET, but what is the point if they would be discounted out of hand?  If the answer is that absolutely nothing would be accepted as confirmation of RET, then really it is silly do call this a debate forum.

18

Suggestions & Concerns / Links in flatearth FAQ are broken.

« on: January 16, 2015, 01:52:47 PM »

FYI, clicking on the FAQ links give a 404 not found page. 

19

Flat Earth Debate / Sunrise on the front range in Colorado

« on: January 15, 2015, 04:06:33 PM »

Another sunrise question.  I live in Boulder Colorado, and I love to do photography in the mornings just before sunrise.  One cool thing to watch is how the sun hits the flatirons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatirons) as it rises.  You can stand at the bottom of the rock formations in chautauqua park and look west to see the sun strike the very top of the flatirons, and slowly the light makes its way down.  One does not see the sun peak over the horizon in the east until the light reaches the ground.  It is one way that I can observer what someone at altitude would see while at the same time being witness to what an observer on the ground would see.  Maybe one day I'll video the effect and post it.  Anyway, the question is how is this explained with a flat earth model?  How is it possible that the horizon is casting a shadow on the mountains?

20

Flat Earth Debate / Evidence for FET and evidence for RET

« on: January 13, 2015, 06:16:00 PM »

I thought it would be interesting to make a list of all the arguments for FET and for RET just to have them in one place.  I know I have left of many, just tell me which arguments I have left off and I'll edit this post to add them.

Evidence for FET
1: The earth looks flat, so it must be flat.
2: It says so in the Bible
3: Bedford for flat-earth proofs

Evidence for RET

1: Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI).
2: Long distance surveys
3: How ships disappear as they go out to sea
4: Celestial navigation
5: Stars rotate counter clockwise north of the equator and clockwise south of the equator.
6: Sun stays the same size from sunrise to sunset
7: Shadow of the earth seen from tall mountains
8: Shadow of the earth seen on the moon (lunar eclipse)
9: Satellites (GPS and others)
10: Air mass behaves as if it is on a rotating globe (wind is not in the direction of pressure gradient)
11: Gravity gets weaker at higher elevations
12: Ocean tides
13: Eclipses
14: Images from space
    Obj: All images from space are fake.
15: Any gyroscope
16: Radar VHF UHF transmission
17: gravity is less at equator
18: transit of Venus
19: speed of light
20: orbital periods of outer planet satellites vary over a 12 month period
21: seismic records
22: true distance from South America to Australia.
23: over the horizon radar
24: Doppler shift
25: all space shots
26: Coriolis
27: inertial navigation, celestial navigation
28: 24 hour sunlight at poles.
29: the moon's orbit is an ellipse
30: gravity on other planets is more or less
31: Coriolis don't work at equator
32: the south pole is real
33: weather
34: stellar aberration
35: Earth magnetic field runs North/South, converges at both poles
36: Jupiter's moon transit shadows
37: Lunar libration
38: Time of sunset varies by altitude and dependent up latitude
39: Both poles are cold
40: Moon is 'upside-down' down under, appears on its 'side' at the equator
41: Two tides a day
42: offset center of gravity of the moon,
43: full moon changes size with orbital radius,
44: inverse square law and it's effect on gravity
45: light and all electromagnetic radiation
46: The fact that the sun is visible at both poles for 24 hours but only 12 at the equator at the equinox.

21

Flat Earth General / Free trip to the south pole

« on: January 12, 2015, 02:26:36 PM »

I don't know if I can make this happen, but maybe.  If I could sell the idea of a reality show that involves taking some ardent FET believers to the south pole, are there any FETers that would be willing to make the trip?  I have a few contacts I could make a pitch to, but if FETers are to afraid to make the journey it would be pointless.  Could be an interesting story.

22

Flat Earth Debate / Death of FET, next steps.

« on: January 11, 2015, 03:38:29 PM »

Moores law has accelerated the advancement of technology to such a pace that FET is really 100% dead.  Google Sky Map is the final nail.  Everyone over 15 years of age has access to this application and there is no way anyone will ever believe the earth is flat after playing around with this application.  Things are moving so fast now that I don’t even have the time to become proficient in the latest computer language before the next one comes along.  One thing ushered in by the iPhone and smartphone revolution is the increase in computer literacy of the average person.  There are now more people using applications than ever, even my wife who fought tooth and nail against getting an iphone is on it using applications all the time.  The death of FET is here.  My prediction is that this site will only exist on web.archive.org within the next five years.

There is one last hurrah that this website can make before it fades into darkness.  A press release can be made that the Flat Earth Society is throwing in the towel and disbanding.  Such a news release would be picked up by pretty much every major news outlet.  It is a narrow window of opportunity, I highly encourage the people that are running this site to start working on their concession press release now so that it may be released before there is no interest and thus will not be picked up.

And for the FET believer, there is the opportunity to step into the light and share their story of discovery with the world.  It is afterall a unique and interesting story.  There are other conspiracy sites to jump on if there is still the hunger to poke at the status-quo.  But your days are numbered here, this site will most assuredly disappear.  But not to worry, your world will not.  You will wake up tomorrow with things pretty much the same as they are now.  There are many kind souls that would be more than happy to help catch you up on what you missed while your head was mired in all this FET nonsense.

The end is nigh.

23

Flat Earth Debate / Google Sky Map

« on: January 11, 2015, 02:37:39 PM »

Google has a free Andriod application that anyone with and android smart phone can download and use for free.  The application reads the position of the user and computes the position of all stars and planets.  And for phones that include a magnetometer and accelerometers, the user can point the back of the phone into the sky and see on the front screen a map of the stars and planets in that direction.  It is a virtual window into the night sky.  If you are an FET believer, you must be utterly and completely blown away by this.  Either the earth actually is round, or Google is in on the conspiracy and has such a vast amount of knowledge of FET that they can compute all of these things and transform the night sky such that when the user starts to point the device into the ground it can seamlessly map an image of stars and planets below the horizon onto the screen.  How God like Google must be in order to do this?  If they are part of the cabal of conspirators that have been advancing FET in secret since the 1500s, they must have discovered some amazing technology.  To do this with RET is already remarkable, but to do this with FET and convert it to RET is simply beyond belief.

24

Flat Earth Debate / The earth is flat and I'm an idiot

« on: January 10, 2015, 08:29:37 AM »

A common ending to FET posts is that those that don’t agree with them are idiots.  First of all, calling someone an idiot doesn’t prove a thing.  Second, being an idiot doesn’t prove a thing. 

To be honest, I can’t prove to anyone else that the earth is round and it occurred to me that if the earth was indeed flat, I would indeed be an idiot.  It’s a simple logic tree:
    FACT: The earth is flat
        Person who believes the earth is flat: Genius
        Person who believes the earth is round: Idiot
    FACT: The earth is round
        Person who believes the earth is flat: Idiot
        Person who believes the earth is round: Genius

So, if the earth is flat, then I really am an idiot because I really can not get my head around that thought.  I can’t figure out how to explain what I see on a day to day basis in any comprehensive consistent way.   I can’t explain the phases of the moon or shadows I see on the moon in the waxing and waning phases.   I can not figure out how to write a computer program to predict the rise and set times of GPS satellites based on where I am on the earth without using a round earth model.  I’m a programmer at heart, and I can’t seem to be able to write a single line of code for processing GPS data without a round earth model.  In fact, I have not seen a single workable equation from FET that can be use to estimate anything, even something as simple as the time of sunrise.

I have a simple mind, I can only hold so much in it at once.  I really need a computer program to help me with somethings like how to navigate, predict the weather, show me where to point my telescope in the sky to see interesting celestial objects, how to measure the distance between two GPS antennas down to the millimeter.  The problem I have is that the round earth model is simple enough for me to grasp and it works down to the millimeter level.  I can setup one GPS receiver in Colorado and another in California and have the data streamed to me here in Colorado.  And then by using RET, I can estimate the position of the GPS antenna in California down to about 3-4mm.  That means, if someone moves the antenna in California by even one cm (that’s less than an inch) I can tell them when they moved it, by how much and in which direction. 

I can only do GPS data processing using RET.  As far as I can tell it is impossible to implement even a single line of code using FET.  You would think that if the earth is indeed flat that the FET scientist would have a huge advantage of the RET one because they would have true understanding of reality.  But it seems that FET has added nothing to the understanding of Universe since Copernicanism.  Therefore due to the limited capacity of the neural network in my brain I have had to truncate the statistical branch that leads to the possibility that the earth is flat because the probability is too close to zero.  I have had to do that with a lot of things in order to have enough working space to do my work.  I would be more than willing to reactivate that branch if someone could show me how to monitor a GPS antenna to an accuracy of better than 3mm using FET, for then I would become a rich man.

So yes, if the earth is flat, I am an idiot. 

25

Flat Earth Debate / GPS absolutely 100% proves the earth is a spheroid

« on: January 08, 2015, 02:23:50 PM »

GPS (Global Position System) or more accurately GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) proves with absolute certainty that the earth is a spheroid and that our current understanding of geodesy is correct.  This fact can be personally verified by anyone that cares to test the validity of GNSS for a few hundred dollars and a few hours of experimentation.

A GNSS receiver can be purchased for about $200 that will output the users position as well as the raw data used to compute that position.  It is common knowledge that such systems exist and function accurately as witnessed by anyone who has purchased a high end motor vehicle within the last decade.  FET believers explain this with the notion that GNSS is really just a ground based system and that the government or other conspirators have hidden this fact in complex designs of the GNSS chipsets to make the units appear to be using satellites for navigation.  Thus the suppose that the position results reported are based on some terrestrial navigation system.  However, it is also possible to capture the actual raw data from the receiver, and for the US GPS system (NavStar) these measurements include the Keplerian orbital elements (ephemeris) for each satellite (SV) along with a measurement of the distance between the user and all SVs that are currently being tracked.  The SV ephemeris is used to compute the position of each satellite tracked at the time of measurement, then the users position is computed from solving a simple set of equations that relate the users position to the position of each tracked SV (observation equation):

    range_to_sv = sqrt((Xuser-Xsv)^2+(Yuser-Ysv)^2+(Zuser-Zsv)^2)+CLKuser*Cvac

Where:
range_to_sv    this it the range measurement reported by the receiver
X,Y,Z sv          The position of the satellite in ECEF (Earth Centered Earth Fixed)
X,Y,Z user       The unknown position of the user
CLKuser          The unknown error in the GNSS receiver time.
Cvac               Speed of light in a vacuum

Since inexpensive GNSS receivers use simple quartz clocks, the internal time is not very accurate which is the reason the term CLKuser has to be included in the observation equation.  Since GNSS uses the time it takes for signals to travel from the satellite to the receiver to compute the distance, the range_to_sv value measured by the receiver will include this clock error.  So for the GNSS user, there are four unknowns, the X,Y,Z position of the user, and the error in the GNSS receiver clock.  If four or more satellites are tracked, then it is possible to solve the set of equations for the unknown values.  Note that the GNSS user not only computes it's position, but also an extremely accurate estimate of the current time.  In fact, some GNSS users are only interested in the time solution for the synchronization of clocks.

If a user collects this raw data along with the position results reported by the receiver they will see that all range measurements and SV ephemeris data are consistent with the user position.  FET believers may at this point try to explain this by saying that the SV ephemeris and range data is faked by the receiver to make things work.  The problem with this argument is that the user can only receive signals from satellites that are in clear view.  If there is any obstruction, such as a hill or a tall building, it is not possible to track a satellite blocked by that obstruction.  How would it be possible for a faked GNSS system to know when to discontinue providing data for a satellite due to obstructions?  It would require a real time 3d model of every hill, tree, building, bridge, tunnel etc. in order to create this faked data.  Also, the GNSS system is a receive only system, the transponders are only broadcasting information and only the users GNSS system actually knows where it is, so this real time model would have to be inside the GNSS system.  There simply is no possible way to fake the GNSS raw measurements, and the raw measurements show that the GNSS SVs are in an orbit around the earth.

Done, RET proved, solved period.

26

Flat Earth Debate / Why are more and more satellites visible in the night sky?

« on: January 06, 2015, 07:44:40 PM »

Why is it that there are many more visible satellites that can be viewed just after sunset and just before sunrise?  If they are not satellites, what are they?