An In Depth Discussion on the Sinking Ship Effect

All right, I want so clarification on the FE sinking effect.

I see a couple of possibilities:

1. The Waves Theory
2. "Light Bends" Theory
3. Rowbotham's Perspective Laws
4. Atmospheric Distortion

So what exactly causes the sinking ship effect?

There is no such thing. IS what Tom will say no doubt.

On the sinking ship, Rowbotham describes a mechanism by which the hull is hidden by the angular limits of the human eye - the ship will appear to intersect with the vanishing point and become lost to human perception as the hull's increasingly shallow path creates a tangent beyond the resolution of the human eye. The vanishing point is created when the perspective lines are angled less than one minute of a degree. Hence, this effectively places the vanishing point a finite distance away from the observer.

The hull is simply hidden because it is appearing at an angle too shallow for the human eye to resolve.

Usually it is taught in art schools that the vanishing point is an infinite distance away from the observer, as so:



However, since man cannot perceive infinity due to his human limitations, the perspective lines are modified and placed a finite distance away from the observer as so:



This finite distance to the vanishing point is what allows ships to ascend into horizon and disappear as their hulls intersect with the vanishing point. Every receding star and celestial body in the night sky likewise disappears after intersecting with the vanishing point.

We know that this explanation is true because it's a fact that a half sunken ship can be restored by the aid of a telescope.

As a ship recedes into the ocean's horizon, distant from the observer, it will appear to the naked eye to sink from the bottom up into the sea after it touches the horizon line. It has been found that this effect is purely perceptual, that a good telescope with sufficient zoom will change the observer's perspective and bring the ship's hull back in full view. This is not possible if the ship were really behind a "hill of water." Hence, the effect which is usually thought to prove the earth as a globe really proves it to be a plane.

It's one of the first and primary proofs of a Flat Earth. The fact that a telescope can restore a half-sunken ship demonstrates that the ship is not traveling behind a convex sea.

On the sinking ship, Rowbotham describes a mechanism by which the hull is hidden by the angular limits of the human eye - the ship will appear to intersect with the vanishing point and become lost to human perception as the hull's increasingly shallow path creates a tangent beyond the resolution of the human eye. The vanishing point is created when the perspective lines are angled less than one minute of a degree. Hence, this effectively places the vanishing point a finite distance away from the observer.

The hull is simply hidden because it is appearing at an angle too shallow for the human eye to resolve.

Usually it is taught in art schools that the vanishing point is an infinite distance away from the observer, as so:



However, since man cannot perceive infinity due to his human limitations, the perspective lines are modified and placed a finite distance away from the observer as so:



This finite distance to the vanishing point is what allows ships to ascend into horizon and disappear as their hulls intersect with the vanishing point. Every receding star and celestial body in the night sky likewise disappears after intersecting with the vanishing point.

We know that this explanation is true because it's a fact that a half sunken ship can be restored by the aid of a telescope.

As a ship recedes into the ocean's horizon, distant from the observer, it will appear to the naked eye to sink from the bottom up into the sea after it touches the horizon line. It has been found that this effect is purely perceptual, that a good telescope with sufficient zoom will change the observer's perspective and bring the ship's hull back in full view. This is not possible if the ship were really behind a "hill of water." Hence, the effect which is usually thought to prove the earth as a globe really proves it to be a plane.

It's one of the first and primary proofs of a Flat Earth. The fact that a telescope can restore a half-sunken ship demonstrates that the ship is not traveling behind a convex sea.

Just out of curiosity Tom, are you ever going to quantify the term "sufficient zoom"?  What focal length is required to restore the missing hull at a given distance?  Opinions are not facts until you give some verifiable numbers to back them up.

It has been found that this effect is purely perceptual, that a good telescope with sufficient zoom will change the observer's perspective and bring the ship's hull back in full view.

This is just flat-out untrue.

It's one of the first and primary proofs of a Flat Earth. The fact that a telescope can restore a half-sunken ship demonstrates that the ship is not traveling behind a convex sea.

What a pity, then, that it's not a proof, not an observable fact, and not actually connected to reality in any way. Telescopes can't restore those parts of ships which have sunk below the horizon.

Quote from: Tom Bishop on April 21, 2008, 06:22:15 PM

It has been found that this effect is purely perceptual, that a good telescope with sufficient zoom will change the observer's perspective and bring the ship's hull back in full view.

This is just flat-out untrue.

You know it is cause Tom said it. That, and he has no pictures.

This is just flat-out untrue.

From Zetetic Cosmogony by Thomas Winship we read:











How does your model of the earth explain away these multiple detailed first-hand accounts?

Just out of curiosity Tom, are you ever going to quantify the term "sufficient zoom"?  What focal length is required to restore the missing hull at a given distance?  Opinions are not facts until you give some verifiable numbers to back them up.

We do not have the funding to rent a ship, get the permits, and buy a number of different telescopes to gauge precisely what observer-ship distances and focal lengths are necessary to restore the hull of a ship. But if you would like to make a personal grant to the Flat Earth Society's research division, we'll gladly make those arrangements.

I've spent a considerable amount of time at sea in the Navy, and have used a large number of different optics, from EOSS to enormous binoculars, and have been able to resolve pennant numbers on partially-sunken ships without restoring the missing portions of their hulls.

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Just out of curiosity Tom, are you ever going to quantify the term "sufficient zoom"?  What focal length is required to restore the missing hull at a given distance?  Opinions are not facts until you give some verifiable numbers to back them up.

We do not have the funding to rent a ship, get the permits, and buy a number of different telescopes to gauge precisely what observer-ship distances and focal lengths are necessary to restore the hull of a ship. But if you would like to make a personal grant to the Flat Earth Society's research division, we'll gladly make those arrangements.

Borrow a telescope and go to the beach? Take a cruise, maybe relax that poor little mind of yours? We spent all this effort proving the earth is round, least you could do is quantify SOMETHING.

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Just out of curiosity Tom, are you ever going to quantify the term "sufficient zoom"?  What focal length is required to restore the missing hull at a given distance?  Opinions are not facts until you give some verifiable numbers to back them up.

We do not have the funding to rent a ship, get the permits, and buy a number of different telescopes to gauge precisely what observer-ship distances and focal lengths are necessary to restore the hull of a ship. But if you would like to make a personal grant to the Flat Earth Society's research division, we'll gladly make those arrangements.

So, in other words, you are admitting that you can not prove your assertion "that a good telescope with sufficient zoom will change the observer's perspective and bring the ship's hull back in full view".  That's what I thought.

I find it faintly amusing that Tom puts such faith in the "multiple detailed first-hand accounts" of the people quoted in order to get his "first and primary proofs" of FE theory, while simultaneously rejecting first-hand accounts from people who have gone into space or to extreme altitudes, those who have explored the antarctic, etc.

Oh, and he'd rather believe a miscellaneous collection of unverified testimony rather than photographs... because photographs are clearly easier to fake than paragraphs full of words. Hahahaha, good one Tom

Who was that guy who was here a while ago that did this experiment, and supplied pictures?

Who was that guy who was here a while ago that did this experiment, and supplied pictures?

Definitely not Tom.

Aha!  It was cpt bthimes!

He took several pictures of ships with different zooms, with no appearance of the disappeared hull.

Borrow a telescope and go to the beach? Take a cruise, maybe relax that poor little mind of yours? We spent all this effort proving the earth is round, least you could do is quantify SOMETHING.

Why do I need to use my time and money to go out and prove anything when I already know that the earth is flat?

If you want additional scientific research done on the subject you'll have to pay for it or do it yourself.

So, in other words, you are admitting that you can not prove your assertion "that a good telescope with sufficient zoom will change the observer's perspective and bring the ship's hull back in full view".  That's what I thought.

I've already provided plenty of evidence from first hand accounts. That's all we need.

If you don't like the results you can always repreform the experiments.

Aha!  It was cpt bthimes!

He took several pictures of ships with different zooms, with no appearance of the disappeared hull.

Cpt Bthimes did not use a telescope. He zoomed in on the ship with the 6x zoom of his camera lens. He may as well have been looking at the ship through a pane of glass.

I've spent a considerable amount of time at sea in the Navy, and have used a large number of different optics, from EOSS to enormous binoculars, and have been able to resolve pennant numbers on partially-sunken ships without restoring the missing portions of their hulls.

Are binoculars as good at resolving distant bodies as telescopes? Nope.

I've already provided plenty of evidence from first hand accounts. That's all we need.

If you don't like the results you can always repreform the experiments.

Haha, you keep getting funnier. So first-hand accounts are now sufficient evidence for you, Tom? (It's funny to note that first-hand accounts, in this case, largely amount to random people writing to magazines with their dubious anecdotes, and even "a good many years ago, someone once reported" stories). I guess you're utterly convinced of the reality of alien abductions, then? And the yeti? And the Loch Ness monster?

It's great that you don't feel the need to personally confirm the truth of the foundation of your faith in a flat earth, even when it is so simple to do. It's beautiful that you'd rather ignore photographic evidence of a round earth, and first-hand accounts from accountable, identified, alive, people over the supposed first-hand accounts of "John Smith".

Anyway, as I've already said, the "experiments" (which are hardly very experimentally sound) do not in actuality match up at all with the real world. Whoops!

I've already provided plenty of evidence from first hand accounts. That's all we need.

Wrong, that's all you need.

All the people in your written accounts are conveniently dead, and we don't know what kind of telescopes, what kinds of ships, and what the atmospheric conditions exactly were.  Also, there is no mathematical basis to support the FE sinking phenomenon.

If that keeps you happy, then you more than entitled to carry on believing.

Are binoculars as good at resolving distant bodies as telescopes? Nope.

I would expect binoculars to be better at resolving distant bodies than telescopes, given the situation.

Besides, which of the two used should have no effect on the end result. A set of binoculars would zoom just as well as a telescope of equal power.

Also, why does the hull of a ship fall out of the ability of the human eye to resolve it, but the sails don't? They are just as far away, so they should also vanish, shouldn't they?

Who was that guy who was here a while ago that did this experiment, and supplied pictures?

That was from my thread on it. Located here:

http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=18560.msg335406;topicseen#msg335406

As stated, the sinking ship effect is the result of the atmosphere's gradient.

"The mechanism for why the gradient makes objects become increasingly less visible?

Elevation (obviously not with water), atmospheric density, refraction and other effects, pollution, etc..."

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Borrow a telescope and go to the beach? Take a cruise, maybe relax that poor little mind of yours? We spent all this effort proving the earth is round, least you could do is quantify SOMETHING.

Why do I need to use my time and money to go out and prove anything when I already know that the earth is flat?

Because we've spent all these centuries establishing that the earth is round. You do the legwork from now on. We're done.

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Borrow a telescope and go to the beach? Take a cruise, maybe relax that poor little mind of yours? We spent all this effort proving the earth is round, least you could do is quantify SOMETHING.

Why do I need to use my time and money to go out and prove anything when I already know that the earth is flat?

If you want additional scientific research done on the subject you'll have to pay for it or do it yourself.

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So, in other words, you are admitting that you can not prove your assertion "that a good telescope with sufficient zoom will change the observer's perspective and bring the ship's hull back in full view".  That's what I thought.

I've already provided plenty of evidence from first hand accounts. That's all we need.

If you don't like the results you can always repreform the experiments.

I'm not asking you to do the research.  I'm asking you to supply us with enough specific data so that anyone can reproduce your "experiments" and achieve similar results.  Whenever someone has tried and gotten different results, you simply dismiss those results saying that the magnification/resolution is insufficient.  You need to provide some real, testable parameters.  If you can't or won't, then you need to drop this argument.

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Aha!  It was cpt bthimes!

He took several pictures of ships with different zooms, with no appearance of the disappeared hull.

Cpt Bthimes did not use a telescope. He zoomed in on the ship with the 6x zoom of his camera lens. He may as well have been looking at the ship through a pane of glass.

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I've spent a considerable amount of time at sea in the Navy, and have used a large number of different optics, from EOSS to enormous binoculars, and have been able to resolve pennant numbers on partially-sunken ships without restoring the missing portions of their hulls.

Are binoculars as good at resolving distant bodies as telescopes? Nope.

See what I mean.   

And in any event, naval binoculars, what we call "big eyes" are very much as powerful as any telescopes outside of those restricted for astronomy. They are ship-mounted, extremely powerful, and in some cases gyro-stabilised. Ditto EOSS.

In any event, exactly how powerful they are is beside the point, because they are powerful enough to resolve fine details of the ships in question (ie pennant numbers) without recovering any of the ship that has sunk below the horizon.

You need to provide some real, testable parameters.  If you can't or won't, then you need to drop this argument.

No I don't. We can clearly read in the literature that researchers have been able to restore half sunken ships with a telescope.

If the ship's hull is supposed to be behind a hill of water, how does your model explain their observations?

And in any event, naval binoculars, what we call "big eyes" are very much as powerful as any telescopes outside of those restricted for astronomy. They are ship-mounted, extremely powerful, and in some cases gyro-stabilised. Ditto EOSS.

In the texts the researchers specifically use astronomy telescopes in the experiments. A pair of 'pretty good' binoculars doesn't cut it.

In any event, exactly how powerful they are is beside the point, because they are powerful enough to resolve fine details of the ships in question (ie pennant numbers) without recovering any of the ship that has sunk below the horizon.

It's not that the human eye cannot resolve fine details, its just that at that distance the hull is so close to the sea due to perspective that the two appear to merge into one another. It's the angular distance between the sea and the vessel which is important. Perspective causes all receding bodies to approach the horizon line as they recede. As a body recedes farther from the observer it will approach an acute angle to the sea until they are so close together that it appears that the two have merged together.

The point where receding bodies merge with the sea is called the vanishing point. All receding bodies approach the vanishing point from the bottom up. A flock of birds receding overhead will approach the horizon line from the bottom up. As a plane recedes from the observer it will approach the horizon line from the bottom up. As a ship recedes its hull will intersect the vanishing point from the bottom up.

We clearly can clearly read in the literature...

There are a lot of things that you can clearly read in literature, that doesn't make them true. Plus, this test is from back in the what, 1890's? Hardly a convincing argument.

I'm still wondering how you can believe something so blindly, yet not even try to prove it to yourself, let alone other people.

In the texts the researchers specifically use astronomy telescopes in the experiments. A pair of 'pretty good' binoculars doesn't cut it.

Where does it say they use astronomy telescopes?  Also, would the astronomy telescopes of that day and age be comparable to the ones we have access to today?

Tom, you should face facts.  Cpt. bthimes beat you already when he took all of those pictures.  His camera lens (And he used a telephoto lens by the way not just his zoom function) is the same as the magnification of a telescope.  Bthimes didn't show any restoration of the ship or the island he took pictures of.

He performed forty hours of collective legwork taking photographs and submitted them.  We still have yet to see any pictures you may have taken that disprove this.

Our arguments have been presented Tom Bishop, the burden is on you to provide first hand evidence that can disprove them.  Rowbotham's book and the accounts in it are not valid for this.  The words of those in the book have never been verified by a legitimate modern scientist or even any amateur photographers.  Please show perform Rowbotham's experiments yourself and provide photographs that disprove the evidence Cpt. Bthimes presented.

No more ridiculous claims.

No more trying to throw the burden on us.

No more quoting Rowbotham and tossing his book in our face (amusing though it is every time you try).

The only thing you could provide with real staying power is a photograph that disproves bthime's photos.

So let's see it.

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You need to provide some real, testable parameters.  If you can't or won't, then you need to drop this argument.

No I don't. We clearly can clearly read in the literature that researchers have been able to restore half sunken ships with a telescope.

Yes you do.  I don't want to take your word or Rowbotham's word for it.  I want to know exactly what equipment I need to recreate his experiments and get his results.  That is how science works Tom.  Put up or shut up.

Are binoculars as good at resolving distant bodies as telescopes? Nope.

Your own "researcher" used "a binocular" in your very own example, Tom. Whoops. Clearly your binocular/telescope distinction is spurious.

In the texts the researchers specifically use astronomy telescopes in the experiments. A pair of 'pretty good' binoculars doesn't cut it.

I never said naval binoculars are merely "pretty good". They're excellent, and certainly a lot better than any binoculars your researchers could have had access to. If in the ship-borne examples your researchers had been using anything near as powerful an optic as Big Eyes, in anything more than dead-still water, even at anchor, they would have been unable to keep them stable enough to make any useful observations. Big Eyes is gyro-stabilised for a reason.

Also, it's funny you say "pretty good" doesn't cut it, since the only specifications your quoted text gives is "a good telescope". Unless of course by "good" they mean "magic".

In the texts the researchers specifically use astronomy telescopes in the experiments. A pair of 'pretty good' binoculars doesn't cut it.

Astronomy telescopes? That's possibly the worst device they could use. Such telescopes are designed for maximizing the amount of light captured, not for increasing the size of a visible object. Binoculars are designed to magnify distant objects; They are the best choice for such an experiment. Astronomical telescopes are designed to make faint objects appear brighter; They aren't much use for ground based observations.