Sorry, haven't been posting much in the debate forums lately. I'll try to respond to as many relevant posts as possible now.
I would say that for the oceans to behave the way they do, the centrifugal 'force' would have to have a magnitude appropriate to create the observed effect. If it were any greater, or less, a different effect would be observed.
I realise this is incredibly circular reasoning, but I don't know how else to word it.
It is circular reasoning, and for that reason you are actually saying nothing about the shape of the Earth. You're assuming RET, then claiming that because we observe things working a certain way, RET is true.
Well, if one weighed more overall, the weight of water in that part would push water into where it weighed less overall.
Think of a upright U-tube. If you pour a lot of water into one side, the weight of all the water on that side is going to push down until both sides are level.
Think of a mass balance. If you put a kilogram of mass on one side, and ten kilograms on the other, is the lighter side going to go down to try to push the heavy stuff up to where it weighs less, or is the heavy side going to go down?
And? Most of that rock is a fluid, and that's how you would expect a fluid to behave.
But if things were happening as you are suggesting,
g would be equal everywhere at sea level. Otherwise the gravitational field vectors at the surface would be angled towards the poles, from low
g to high
g, which should cause the water to flow towards the poles.
Sorry to intervene, but I find this to be a very interesting topic, and I think I can add something to it. I must say I never asked myself your question, Robosteve, so I had to wrap my head around this in order to be able to explain what's going on.
You say that the RET is faulty, because it says that gravity varies from place to place, which would lead to the ocean water flooding certain places and leave others dry. Well, in fact, the mean sea levels have quite a respectable difference in different places on the earth because of local differences in gravity. Thus, the sea level at places with higher gravity due to more mass within the earth, such as the indian ocean, actually is 85 meters higher than the worldwide average. In places with a less dense core, such as northeast of Australia (thinner magma => less mass => less gravity), the sea level is 100 meters lower than the worldwide average sea level.
Now, why doesn't the water flow from the indian ocean to above Australia then? Well, why does water level out anyway? It does because of gravity. Gravity states that a water plane has to be level, because it pulls the water towards the earth's surface equally. But if you have local differences in gravity, you will have local differences in the water plane as well. Therefore, the mean sea level is not entirely constant over the earth.
So why doesn't the large-scale variation in
g (that is, higher
g nearer the poles) have the same effect? The sea level should change until
g is equal everywhere at the surface.
Let's come back to Robosteve's actual argument then. He says that the oceans can not be following gravity, since that would lead to the water flowing away from certain places and flood others. The thing he ignores is that the oceans have always been following gravity and have adapted to it as soon as they evolved. Cities like Helsinki and Singapore don't drown, because they were founded on landmasses that had already been defined by the water level of the surrounding ocean, which in itself had been defined by local gravity.
Robosteve's argument is that water once was perfectly level, then such cities were built, then gravity was introduced, and now those cities should drown or dry out. Actually, gravity has always been there and has been affecting sea levels from the beginning, so the cities close to the seas were founded on solid conditions of a stable local mean sea level.
Nope, I'm saying that the land on which cities like Helsinki were built should have been flooded to begin with. Helsinki shouldn't exist at all, at least not in its present location.
But the water level is higher at places with higher attraction (= gravity), and lower where there's lower attraction. The mean sea level actually isn't level all over the world due to differences in local gravity. Where does RET state the opposite?
As I said in response to your other post, the large-scale variance in
g doesn't exhibit this behaviour.
if you find an error let me know, a change in the FOR should cause no problems here cause it's only classical mechanics. a change in g with growing height has been neglected. look up the shape of earth. water distributes the same way like the earth is bulged at the equator.
Your error is that
ΔU = mgh only works over small distances, and in a local frame of reference. You can't use it to describe the potential field around the entire Earth; for that, you need to use
the general equation for gravitational potential energy.
You don't explain anything, you only state that it isn't proven and ignore totally the current technological state.
In the same sense that Einstein ignored the evolution of giant tortoises when developing the theory of Special Relativity, yes.
Because your g factors doesn't include anything about distance from earth center. They include acceleration and pull from stars.
Wait, are we talking about FET or RET here?
You used phrase "celestial plane". I don't see much difference between gear or plane in FE context, so, you just play with words again to dodge actual explaining.
Please buy a new thesaurus. Whichever one you're using seems to have been written by somebody with little to no grasp of the English language.
Sorry, I suggested how you can make it better or improve it - Go to the physic professors(or whoever you have there) who you have by your side at school every day and ask from them. But you refuse to accept the advise and bother me instead. I wonder why.
Because you're the one claiming it is incorrect, not my professors. I'd like to know what exactly you think is wrong with it.