Despite of fact that RE (i read that as Real earth) is proved (17 "ham radio"'s pages), i'll bring back to life the mirrors experiment - why won't you use laser for measuring the
distance ? the error for 50 meters will be relatively small, you just need to be sure that you are measuring distance between right parts of mirror. Furthermore - there will be exactly same error in measuring the distance between tops and bottoms of the mirrors, so they should cancel themsleves out.
If light were to travel in a curve, then it would be impossible to form a straight line in the experiment. It would keep increasing in height the further the light went. The rate at which it increases would increase with distance as well, if it were to create the illusion of a curved earth surface. You could angle the mirrors to make one segment between the mirrors straight, but you couldn't compensate for a growing height increase.
Even if there is 'bendy light' (that name makes me smile
), there is possibility of setting mirrors to reflect the ray within one height:
There's also one issue with bendy light - i think that image of distant objects would be distorted due to different bending of rays running at other angles. I would try to do some calculations about that, if there are any equations describing the hypotetical bendy light's path... Are they?
PS. Sorry for my english
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