How does the sun and moon move upwards?

OK lets assume the earth is flat and is moving upwards giving us 'gravity'. What makes the sun and the moon also move upwards so they appear at a constant distance from us? We can see the moon fairly clearly and from what I've read on other threads it is only 15 miles up, and I can't see anything on the bottom of the moon that's pushing it up.

I think the question should be: Why do they stay up at all?  And I'm pretty sure even FE thinks they are further out than 15 miles.  After all, they are supposed to have a diameter of 32 miles.  15 miles is still within their radius.

I also don't think you'll get a proper answer.  AFAIK, there's no mechanism in place to explain how the FE stars/planets/sun/moon stays above the flat earth, much less two discs hanging under it.

Wait, maybe that's it.  Hanging from the ceiling.  On some kind of tracks.

I think 15 miles is supposed to be the distance to the surface of the moon, not to its center.

-Erasmus

I'm sure they believe it's rushing up as a result of the same force pushing the earth.

Right.  And sometimes the forces pushes a little bit sideways, resulting in a closed orbit around the Earth.  Epicycles, my friends, epicycles!

-Erasmus

I think 15 miles is supposed to be the distance to the surface of the moon, not to its center.

-Erasmus

Ah.  I stand corrected.  My assumptions were somewhat incorrect anyway since they are not supposed to be spherical, and therefore the radius would not be in the way.

However, would not a 32-mile wide disc, 15 miles up in the sky, occupy about  a quarter of the sky?  If I recall correctly, both the sun and the moon occupy less than a 5 degree arc of the visual field.

However, would not a 32-mile wide disc, 15 miles up in the sky, occupy about  a quarter of the sky?  If I recall correctly, both the sun and the moon occupy less than a 5 degree arc of the visual field.

Please hold while we compute....

We care about 2t, the angle the moon occuppies in the sky.  Making a right triangle from {me, center-of-moon, edge-of-moon}, we see that tan(t) = 32/15 = 2.1333.  Thus 2t is about 130 degrees.

The solid angle subtended by a cone with apex angle 2t is 2*pi*(1 - cos(t)) steradians -- thanks Wikipedia.  So that's 2*pi*0.58, approximately, and the whole sky above the horizon is 2pi steradians.  So the moon should, in this model, take up about 58% of the sky -- just over twice your estimate :)

-Erasmus

Erasmus, remember, you can't use maths to disprove the Flat Earth theory, only to prove it.

Erasmus, remember, you can't use maths to disprove the Flat Earth theory, only to prove it.

Doh!

Erasmus, remember, you can't use maths to disprove the Flat Earth theory, only to prove it.

thats a sham lol

Actually, according to the Johnson article, they're 3000 miles away? Maybe the Johnson model is different from the one mentioned in this thread.