Ok I stand near a large mountain range with a pendulum. Does the pendulum point vertically down or does it move slightly towards the mountains?
No cheating and looking on google
What's vertically down?
What do you think it means?
It is not important. I was not the one using this term in a fictitious situation. It is up to the person who used it to clarify what he meant to the others. Now please stop the low-content posting.
Classic parsec
. I think when he says vertically down he means, well, down (towards the centre of the Earth in RET). I'll admit it was a bit redundant, but it should not have been too difficult for a rational person to understand what he meant. By saying vertically down, I think he just wanted to differentiate between a perfectly vertical pendulum and one that "hangs" slightly towards a nearby mountain.
Anyways, back to his question. The pendulum would (assuming there are no other factors in play) not be perfectly vertical, but would "point" ever so slightly towards the mountain. I'm not sure how FET explains this, but I'm sure there is an elaborate creative hypothesis to explain it.