Undeniable Proof

If you have ever watched a ship, you know that the sail is the last thing to disappear when a ship goes below the horizon. Please explain.
Here is a picture of what I am talking about kinda:

http://www.project2061.org/publications/EducatorsGuide/online/Examples/Spherical_Earth/ship_horizon.jpg

Ocean swells in the answer. The ocean has massive swells that block the ship as it moves to sea.

Ocean swells in the answer. The ocean has massive swells that block the ship as it moves to sea.

Conveniently whenever a ship sails over the horizon? 

How about a day when the sea is calm?

The sea is calm to the observer at the shore, but after miles and miles at sea, statistics dictate that you will encounter a swell that will block the ship.  The sea is never, never ever, calm for miles and miles, it's a constantly moving thing that never calms to the point of perfect flatness.  Personally, I wish it did calm like you seem to think it does.  It would be one of the most undisputed proofs of a flat-earth available.  Sadly, it does not.

Well we're talking about a gradual drop off, over minutes and minutes, with the tip of the mast being the last thing you see. If swells were to blame, then we would see the ship rapidly disappearing, then the swell would fall after a little bit and we would see the whole ship again, and then it would be covered again, etc. (before it went out of sight)

Two different scenarios, and while the second one does happen, so does the first. And if the first one happens, well, you're observing earth's curvature.

Ocean swells in the answer. The ocean has massive swells that block the ship as it moves to sea.

This is called special pleading. Every person who has actually photographed an apparently sinking ship happened to be looking at a ship entering a swell, but nobody has been casually looking at a ship climbing out of a swell.

If there are lots of swells, so many that everyone who has actually looked has seen a "sinking ship", there has to be as many people who have seen the opposite effect, which is a ship that seems like placed on the side of a mountain.

If you want to plead the existence of swells, you should be able to find lots of photos like that.

Well we're talking about a gradual drop off, over minutes and minutes, with the tip of the mast being the last thing you see. If swells were to blame, then we would see the ship rapidly disappearing, then the swell would fall after a little bit and we would see the whole ship again, and then it would be covered again, etc. (before it went out of sight)

Two different scenarios, and while the second one does happen, so does the first. And if the first one happens, well, you're observing earth's curvature.

Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with rudimentary statistics and something known as a bell curve.  Any statistician will tell you that this is what you would expect to... sea.

RealScientist goes a little farther with what I was trying to say. A ship can't be hidden by a swell EVERY time it goes over the horizon.

Quote from: Pongo on January 29, 2013, 09:48:57 PM

Ocean swells in the answer. The ocean has massive swells that block the ship as it moves to sea.

Conveniently whenever a ship sails over the horizon? 

How about a day when the sea is calm?

Too convenient for me. For it to happen with every ship every time it goes far out enough doesn't add up, the reason has to be something else. Also ocean swells are detectable, if they really happen that often, they'd be spotted easily. Also you don't see the sandy beach, just the cliffs when out far enough, this would mean that swells between you and the shore must be constant.
So yeah, the lower part of the ship doesn't go out of view because of swells, it's because the earth is round. Duh! 

Perhaps Pongo should lurk moar and acquaint himself with this thread...
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php/topic,57031.msg1432041.html#msg1432041
In which the ocean swell theory is disproved.

On a round Earth, why the hell should water curve. I mean it's silly when you think about it.

Go and put a dent in a ping pong ball and fill the dent with water. The water will simply level off, (flat) and any excess poured in would simple cascade down the ping pong ball and off the bottom.

The only way it would go round and stay on is if it was immediately frozen as it moved.

On a round Earth, why the hell should water curve. I mean it's silly when you think about it.

Go and put a dent in a ping pong ball and fill the dent with water. The water will simply level off, (flat) and any excess poured in would simple cascade down the ping pong ball and off the bottom.

The only way it would go round and stay on is if it was immediately frozen as it moved.

Sceptimatic, if ever there was evidence that you don't understand anything about anything, this post is it.

The sea always has swells, at all times of day. See: On the Dimension of Ocean Waves

A wave doesn't necessarily need to be as large as the hull to obscure it. When waves are near the level of the eye at the horizon, a receding body can shrink behind the wave, obscured by it from the bottom up, just as a dime held out in front of you can obscure an elephant. See: Perspective on the Sea

The sea always has swells, at all times of day. See: On the Dimension of Ocean Waves

A wave doesn't necessarily need to be as large as the hull to obscure it. When waves are near the level of the eye at the horizon, a receding body can shrink behind the wave, obscured by it from the bottom up, just as a dime held out in front of you can obscure an elephant. See: Perspective on the Sea

Tom, read the link to the thread I posted. I disproved it. Just accept that.

Quote from: sceptimatic on January 30, 2013, 10:07:07 AM

On a round Earth, why the hell should water curve. I mean it's silly when you think about it.

Go and put a dent in a ping pong ball and fill the dent with water. The water will simply level off, (flat) and any excess poured in would simple cascade down the ping pong ball and off the bottom.

The only way it would go round and stay on is if it was immediately frozen as it moved.

Sceptimatic, if ever there was evidence that you don't understand anything about anything, this post is it.

How?

Quote from: sceptimatic on January 30, 2013, 10:07:07 AM

On a round Earth, why the hell should water curve. I mean it's silly when you think about it.

Go and put a dent in a ping pong ball and fill the dent with water. The water will simply level off, (flat) and any excess poured in would simple cascade down the ping pong ball and off the bottom.

The only way it would go round and stay on is if it was immediately frozen as it moved.

Sceptimatic, if ever there was evidence that you don't understand anything about anything, this post is it.

o.o

Quote from: Tom Bishop on January 30, 2013, 10:19:34 AM

The sea always has swells, at all times of day. See: On the Dimension of Ocean Waves

A wave doesn't necessarily need to be as large as the hull to obscure it. When waves are near the level of the eye at the horizon, a receding body can shrink behind the wave, obscured by it from the bottom up, just as a dime held out in front of you can obscure an elephant. See: Perspective on the Sea

Tom, read the link to the thread I posted. I disproved it. Just accept that.

Here the analogy you posted:

An analogy would be imagine you're standing on a flat field watching President Obama giving a speech at the other end of it. He's on a podium which raises the height of his head to 10 feet above the ground. If you're right at the back of the crowd, and standing on a box that raises your head to 12 feet above the ground, then no matter how many people are in the crowd or how big it is, if all the people in it are six feet tall you'll still be able to see President Obama.

But what if the crowd of people ascends on an upward incline to the horizon line in the distance? A person on the horizon line would be taller than eye level, which creates an area above eye level for President Obama to recede behind.

Perhaps Pongo should lurk moar and acquaint himself with this thread...
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php/topic,57031.msg1432041.html#msg1432041
In which the ocean swell theory is disproved.

The Sinking Ship Effect isn't disproven in that thread, it's simply misunderstood. I'm sorry I never responded to your post, but t's not because I couldn't. Rather, I either stopped posting in the forum for a while, forgot that this thread existed, or couldn't bring myself to care enough to write an essay trying futilely to explain a simple idea to you.

Quote from: Dinosaur Neil on January 30, 2013, 07:42:02 AM

Perhaps Pongo should lurk moar and acquaint himself with this thread...
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php/topic,57031.msg1432041.html#msg1432041
In which the ocean swell theory is disproved.

The Sinking Ship Effect isn't disproven in that thread, it's simply misunderstood. I'm sorry I never responded to your post, but t's not because I couldn't. Rather, I either stopped posting in the forum for a while, forgot that this thread existed, or couldn't bring myself to care enough to write an essay trying futilely to explain a simple idea to you.

It stands as a valid disproof until countered, for I can see no flaw with it. And until you or anyone else can specify a flaw, then claims that it does not disprove the Ocean Swell Theory (NOT the Sinking Ship Effect) are empty words.

Hey, guys,

Take a look at "Lack of Proportionality in the Sinking Ship Effect." http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php/topic,57502.0.html#.UQmt4OlQBPI

...?

Thanks!

Dinosaur Neil just owned all of you haha. And he is completely correct. Reread his logic a few times if you don't understand it.

Basically if you stand on a 60 foot cliff on the beach, you should be able to see the sinking ship effect no doubt, with ocean swells being ruled out. Unless there were 60 FOOT swells every time you tried to observe it...

Hey,

I'm a round-earth proponent, but there is actually a slight flaw in Neil's reasoning (though his argument still stands). That is, the wave does not have to be at eye level to block a "sinking" boat; however, if the person is elevated, it does have to be taller than the boat. Do draw a diagram, and notice that there is a triangle "shadowed" by the wave that we cannot see at 60 feet. However, everything falling inside that "shadow" is strictly shorter than the wave. Thus, we would have to have, say, 6 foot swells to cover up a motorboat.

However, more important is the issue that the height of the boat doesn't seem to matter! I've reiterated this a bunch of times, but under the "ocean swell" theory the amount of distance a boat must cover before it "sinks" must be proportional to the height of the boat so long as light travels in straight lines (in your wave diagram, look at the similar triangles). But most boats seem to "sink" at the same distance, including both motorboats and the ten-times-taller aircraft carrier.

Anyway, the ocean swell theory as posed doesn't correlate with observations. Of course, this doesn't refute FET outright, but we have to come up with a better explanation for the Sinking Ship phenomenon.

Thanks!

Hey,

I'm a round-earth proponent, but there is actually a slight flaw in Neil's reasoning (though his argument still stands). That is, the wave does not have to be at eye level to block a "sinking" boat; however, if the person is elevated, it does have to be taller than the boat. Do draw a diagram, and notice that there is a triangle "shadowed" by the wave that we cannot see at 60 feet. However, everything falling inside that "shadow" is strictly shorter than the wave. Thus, we would have to have, say, 6 foot swells to cover up a motorboat.

However, more important is the issue that the height of the boat doesn't seem to matter! I've reiterated this a bunch of times, but under the "ocean swell" theory the amount of distance a boat must cover before it "sinks" must be proportional to the height of the boat so long as light travels in straight lines (in your wave diagram, look at the similar triangles). But most boats seem to "sink" at the same distance, including both motorboats and the ten-times-taller aircraft carrier.

Anyway, the ocean swell theory as posed doesn't correlate with observations. Of course, this doesn't refute FET outright, but we have to come up with a better explanation for the Sinking Ship phenomenon.

Thanks!

Well, if the wave is shorter than the boat it will still obscure some of it. I didn't mean it has to be above eye level in order to obscure only part of the boat - that requirement is simply to obscure the whole thing. A wave shorter than the height of the boat can ONLY obscure the whole boat if its crest is above the eye level of the observer - otherwise you can simply see over the top of it. This assumes a flat plane, on a curved surface the geometry actually allows a shorter swell to obscure the boat as the boat itself is "lower" than the observer's eyeline (defined as a straight line between the eye and the top of the ship.)
To answer Tom's question regarding an incline, since you'd be looking up or down the incline one can simply rotate the entire scenario by the number of degrees of the incline and it becomes equivalent to the horizontal scenario again - as the person's eyeline is considered to be parallel to the ground, whether sloped or flat.

Right, exactly. I'm just saying that if you did have a wave taller than the boat, it would obscure it even if you were standing at 60 or 100 feet (the taller you're standing, the closer to the boat it has to be). Plus, there's no proportionality; even airplanes at 36,000 feet "sink" at the same distance, though they should be able to go 6,000 times farther than a motorboat under the "ocean swell" theory.

What do FET proponents think of this?

Thanks!

On a round Earth, why the hell should water curve. I mean it's silly when you think about it.

Go and put a dent in a ping pong ball and fill the dent with water. The water will simply level off, (flat) and any excess poured in would simple cascade down the ping pong ball and off the bottom.

The only way it would go round and stay on is if it was immediately frozen as it moved.

Because, in this scenario, we have constant gravity downwards.

In the FET, people in Antarctica don't fall off the Earth, they fall towards the Earth.  Assuming gravity has uniform magnitude on the surface of the Earth and always is directed towards the centre of the Earth (not entirely true, but close enough in this case,) any and all water should be uniformly flat and level locally at any point on the surface of the Earth.  The only way to do this (I imagine there's some differential equation for this, but I'm too lazy to figure it out) is if the surface of the water is spherical, or at least a portion of a sphere.

Unfortunately for you in the eye the lower part of the object is projected in the upper part of the retina and the upper part of the object is projected in the lower part of the retina.





Just the other way around as you said. Check it in your sixth grade science school book (you did attend the sixth grade, right?)

Anyway, i think you are the perfect F.E. believer. Keep on.

The end result is still the same Salviati.

What? Why would our vision be split into two parts? How?

Hey,

I'm not sure I entirely understood what you were trying to convey in your diagram, sceptimatic... do you think you might be able to explain it a bit more in detail?

Thanks.