UA questions: whence the concept?

I have a few questions about the "universal accelerator".

First, I have been nosing around in the FES library, and I haven't yet noticed an article which addresses the UA. I haven't read everything in there, however. Is there a document in the library (other than the wiki page) about UA?

Then, why don't I feel it? The concept states that "all sufficiently massive celestial bodies are accelerating upward". I take it that I am not sufficiently massive. I am shielded by the earth itself. But when I'm in a car, I feel its acceleration.

Another question is, why can't it just be a given speed? Wouldn't a given speed be enough to cause me to collide with earth if I step off of a chair (Tom's example)? Why must it accelerate? How could we zetetically know whether it is accelerating vs. moving at a given speed?

Another question is, the Bible says that the earth is immobile. Flat earth people up to at least the 1960s were very focused on the Bible. What happened theoretically or conceptually to make "universal acceleration" necessary since then?

The UA must absolutely be accelerating the Earth to match what is observed.  If you fall from 10 meters up, you would be travelling at approximately 9.8 m/s by the time you hit the ground.  If you fall from 20 meters up, you would be travelling approximately double that speed by the time you hit the ground.  As you fall, you are constantly picking up speed until the air resistance applies a force which equals the force applied by your fall (works in both FE and RE).

I don't accept UA but I don't accept gravity either, yet it appears you do and yet you accept a rotating earth and atmosphere spinning together and have no problem with it...not even questioning it and yet you question UA.
 

Thanks for the reply Scep! Actually in my mind gravity and UA feel equivalent, as concepts that sort of 'fill in' for the unknown.

The UA must absolutely be accelerating the Earth to match what is observed.  If you fall from 10 meters up, you would be travelling at approximately 9.8 m/s by the time you hit the ground.  If you fall from 20 meters up, you would be travelling approximately double that speed by the time you hit the ground.  As you fall, you are constantly picking up speed until the air resistance applies a force which equals the force applied by your fall (works in both FE and RE).

Thank you DuckD! Now I wonder: surely in the 1960s people like Shenton, who favor FE theory, would have had this acceleration in view. Did he write about UA? I haven't read everything in the Library yet. Who first conceptualized UA? Thanks for any pointers.

Quote from: DuckDodgers on April 27, 2013, 06:52:29 AM

The UA must absolutely be accelerating the Earth to match what is observed.  If you fall from 10 meters up, you would be travelling at approximately 9.8 m/s by the time you hit the ground.  If you fall from 20 meters up, you would be travelling approximately double that speed by the time you hit the ground.  As you fall, you are constantly picking up speed until the air resistance applies a force which equals the force applied by your fall (works in both FE and RE).

Thank you DuckD! Now I wonder: surely in the 1960s people like Shenton, who favor FE theory, would have had this acceleration in view. Did he write about UA? I haven't read everything in the Library yet. Who first conceptualized UA? Thanks for any pointers.

This I do not know as I am new to the site and have not yet had a chance to look through much of the writings related to FET.  But any theory postulated after Newton's Laws of Motion would need to have some form of acceleration in order to not be immediately debunked by physical observations.

Thank you very much DuckD, I see I really needed a reminder about that high school physics concept!!! Indeed, things accelerate as they fall.

I'll tell you right now, that if flat earth theory doesn't allow for an immovable earth, I am very unlikely to accept it. The idea that we're accelerating simply to account for downward acceleration, it's just one absurdity for another. In other words I am open to persuasion, I can see how in our world there is a great deal of manipulation and misrepresentation, and I can see how small circles of people can put into motion incorrect ideas that take on a seemingly valid life of their own: but, I'm not going to buy one pig in a poke instead of another pig in a poke.

Then, why don't I feel it? The concept states that "all sufficiently massive celestial bodies are accelerating upward". I take it that I am not sufficiently massive. I am shielded by the earth itself. But when I'm in a car, I feel its acceleration.

You do feel it. You're just pretty damn used to it. If UA (or, in RET, gravity) suddenly stopped affecting you, you'd feel something quite different - weightlessness.

Wouldn't a given speed be enough to cause me to collide with earth if I step off of a chair [...]?

No, it wouldn't. If you stepped off a chair, you would still have the momentum already given to you by the Earth. You would keep hovering above it.

How could we zetetically know whether it is accelerating vs. moving at a given speed?

We could jump.

Another question is, the Bible says that the earth is immobile. Flat earth people up to at least the 1960s were very focused on the Bible.

The Flat Earth Society is not affiliated with, nor explicitly disaffiliated from any religious movement. As such, we don't exactly care about what's in the Bible.

What happened theoretically or conceptually to make "universal acceleration" necessary since then?

My best guess is that someone noticed that things tend to fall down when thrown up.

Quote from: odes on April 26, 2013, 11:05:17 PM

What happened theoretically or conceptually to make "universal acceleration" necessary since then?

My best guess is that someone noticed that things tend to fall down when thrown up.

I'm pretty sure they noticed this in the 20th century, the 19th century, and prior to that.

Which of the older FE writers addressed this topic? Does anyone know?

Atmospheric pressure is a much more elegant and obvious solution to the problem.

Rowbotham posits fluctuations of atmospheric pressure as the cause of tides. General pressure should also be able to sustain us on the earth's surface.





Consider poor God, at the elementary school for the gods. His fifth grade project: "Okay well um I made these little beings, and a space for them, but to keep them in place I have to accelerate them constantly by say, oh, 9.8 meters a second. So I'll need a really big space for this, K?" And all the gods gave a little grin at the little 'un's effort.

UA is more outlandish than gravity.

Atmospheric pressure is a much more elegant and obvious solution to the problem.

Rowbotham posits fluctuations of atmospheric pressure as the cause of tides. General pressure should also be able to sustain us on the earth's surface.





Consider poor God, at the elementary school for the gods. His fifth grade project: "Okay well um I made these little beings, and a space for them, but to keep them in place I have to accelerate them constantly by say, oh, 9.8 meters a second. So I'll need a really big space for this, K?" And all the gods gave a little grin at the little 'un's effort.

UA is more outlandish than gravity.

While that is a concept I haven't heard before, I don't think that it could explain our observations.  For one, pressure is applied by a liquid or gas on all sides of an object, if pressure was keeping us rooted to the ground, then if you held a ball in the air and released it, pressure would apply a force to all sides, including the bottom, thus making it float.  Pressure is calculated as a force applied over area, P=F/A.  Now lets take 2 boxes, one full of packing peanuts with a mass of 2 kg and the other full of steel bearings with a mass of 10 kg, and lets assume that the boxes dimensions are the same.  If the boxes are side by side, the atmospheric pressure would be the same for both and their area is the same, therefore the force applied to both would be the same.  F=m*a, so if the force is the same then the acceleration for the packing peanuts box would be higher than the acceleration for the steel bearings box.

Thank you for your patience, DuckD. You must think you are talking to a fifth grader. And in a way, you are! 

(As in, "are you smarter than a fifth grader?" Answer: No, in my case.)

Anyway. I appreciate your formulation.

P = F/A
F = m*a

P = (m*a)/A

Assume a constant A

P = (m*a)/K

For P to have a constant value, a larger m must correspond to a smaller a (a larger mass must correspond to a smaller acceleration).

Obviously, a heavier object accelerates more slowly under a given pressure. QED! 


Pizza, anyone?

Perhaps the formulae work in a closed system. In an effectively infinite scenario, behaviors are other than described by the formulae.

It's actually refreshing to see someone who doesn't immediately disregard established formulae as indoctrinated.

Even in a non-closed system I would think the formulae would work.  If you apply a continually increasing, the pressure would increase continually.  This exists in diving.  As you go into deeper water, the pressure is continually increasing.  The cause of this pressure on RE is the physical weight of the medium (the water or air) pressing down.

I don't know, it just doesn't seem like pressure can explain the acceleration we observe.  For one, why would we see greater pressure in deeper water in this scenario, or less pressure at higher altitudes?

One experiment I thought of which might foil the argument that atmospheric pressure keeps us in place, is to knock an object off a pedestal within a bell jar vacuum. If it falls, then assuming the inability of the atmospheric pressure (or influence) to reach inside the bell jar, then the point is made.

My thought about atmospheric pressure was that where it is more dense, there is more pressure. Water would also be imbued with a similar pressurizing property. But perhaps this effectively admits gravity.

Your floating box reply, above, could be answered by the fact that there'd be more pressure above than below. In other words it's not quite pressure, per se. Perhaps atmospheric pressure could be unlike "pressure" as we ordinarily understand it, e.g. PSI in a bike tire. Maybe it behaves a bit like oil behaves in water. It likes to group itself together, and it pushes as best it can.

Given enough rhetorical space I could probably carve out a manner of special pleading for atmospheric pressure! But in the end, gravity is a kind of special pleading. Copernicus himself said that a hypothesis need not be true or even probable.

People have already done experiments similar to this.

" class="bbc_link" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">

Though they typically do this to show that absent air resistance, all objects fall at the same rate.

Eureka! I have solved the problem.

It seems that it is a requirement in this life to accept some theory or hypothesis that has outlandish aspects. Gravity is admittedly outlandish. Even Copernicus, who made large strides toward formalizing gravity, proposes that hypotheses (such as gravitation) needn't be true. Scientists have made a variety of unflattering observations about gravitation, such as these, quoted in Karl A. Smith:



UA is similarly absurd. It makes God look like a total idiot. His creation can only work if it is endlessly sped upward, ever increasing in acceleration at 9.8 meters per second. The other gods must be fuming at the energy waste. But more to the point, it is absurd, in se. Absurdity must be minimized, in my estimation. I don't even know how to calculate how much faster I must be going now, compared to when I was born a week ago, but the differences must be incredible. Accelerating 9.8 meters per second? Wow. No, I think absurdity must be minimized.

However the truth is that we really don't know why we stay put, and fall back to plane when our support fails (jumping etc.). So I have decided to invent a concept. I get full credit. I shall call it: Atmospheric Vigor. That's a nice spicy name that will provide entertainment value. The nature of Atmospheric Vigor is that it is an invisible but omnipresent influence, which permeates and influences all space, in proportion as the space has something in it. An isolated vacuum is no match for AV, which permeates that as well. AV is increased by materials that are obviously more dense. And the more of a material there is, the more strongly AV is able to operate. Where there is less atmosphere, AV is less of a force.

Atmospheric Vigor presses most strongly on the side where it is most located. It is designed that way, because God obviously intends to keep his creation together, not have it floating all over the place. I think AV makes sense, and feels like a true concept. I don't claim that we have, or even can have, a perfect understanding of AV, but we don't have a true or perfect understanding of gravity. And the scientists don't even expect to perfect their understanding of gravity, as you can see from this Onion article about the god particle. Scientists are obviously not taking this problem seriously! So that leaves it up to us, the fifth-graders.

QEA! (Quod erat asserandum).

You're theorized AV is, in all practical senses, gravity renamed

Gravity permeates throughout the universe, is invisible, influences space in proportion to the matter it contains (think planets having there own gravitational field), and is not effected by the medium the matter is in (any differences are related to resistive forces of the medium itself).  The only major difference is the fact that your AV is a pushing force and gravity is a pulling force.

As far as your document link, the first quote seems to be saying that astronomy is based upon the Law of Gravitation.  The second seems like a reasonable statement, especially given the time period it was quoted from, but doesn't make the stretch to say it is an unreasonable assumption.  The third has nothing to do with gravity, and probably is more of a statement of the enormous scale of the solar system.  The fourth is a very reasonable quote for someone who had categorically discovered the effects of a force which has an unknown source.  Today we know it originates from mass, but we still don't know WHY it originates from mass.  The fifth is more of a statement on the education system.  And the sixth is an incorrect assumption of the way gravity works.  Gravity doesn't "reach out and then reverse direction", instead it is ever present and constantly pulling objects towards more massive objects.  The further out you go, the less of an effect it has.

Dear DuckD, I've figured you out. Underneath that patience-of-a-saint demeanor, lurks a scientist's subtle ploy: you seek the Nobel for AV! By appearing to reject the idea, you gain the time required to develop it, hoping thereby to win an all-expense-paid trip to Stockholm and a free parking spot at your university for life.

Well, I'm only interested in the truth, so let me explain it further. If you steal it, steal it correctly!

Atmospheric Vigor applies only to the atmosphere, not to all matter. It only explains events under the cupola, and bears no relation to any putative matter between/among/within the celestial lights commonly mistaken for a vast infinite "universe". In other words, we establish that the earth is flat, and we surmise that it is unmoving. We begin to develop a sensible system for explaining what we see above us. The remaining question is, why don't we simply drift away? Since the mechanism by which we remain 'tethered' is hard to fathom, a certain amount of conceptual work will be necessary. But by this conceptual work we don't want to upset the truths already established. Nobels aren't awarded for imaginary concepts.

"Gravity" is long out of the closet as imaginary, since its inventors plainly acknowledge such, even proudly so. Gravity is furthermore faulted for being the underpinnings of a vast conspiracy aimed at inducing the sensation that there are countless millions of alternate worlds, a notion which leaves one feeling, as it were, without anchor. A sensation which we know to be groundless.

Shall there be a 'universal accelerator'? Is God a nutter? 'Nuf said. To be required forever to propel his creation in one absolutely straight infinite and endlessly accelerating vector would have meant a re-do of fifth grade for God. So that's out of the question.

Atmospheric Vigor tidily solves all these problems. There is something about the Atmosphere under the cupola which neatly and easily presses us down. It is perfectly operative under the cupola, within any space, no matter how defined or characterized, under the cupola. There is no way it can be fooled or foiled. God graduated with flying colors and his AV is absolutely perfect. When we go to our rewards, one extracurricular option will be to observe the formulation of this most brilliant aspect of his Creation.

You are correct about the various quotes, insofar as they don't all have perfect bearing on the question.

So this AV only works upon the surface of the Earth and the atmosphere above it.  Can this AV explain the fact that the Sun remains aloft day after day without it varying by a significant amount in its height?  I feel like this would be a very vital aspect of any theory which could explain the downward acceleration force we feel, as this force is naturally counter-intuitive of this fact about the Sun. 

I am not trying to steal your concept of AV for my own, just merely trying to help you in its formulation.  If the same kinks that UA has in explanation of a FE can be worked out through this AV, then maybe the world will finally see that the Earth is indeed flat.  However, if this theory succumbs to the same kinks, then either the true mechanism of the world has not yet been discovered or the Earth is truly round.  Personally I am of the later form of thinking, as I have a minor bit of scientific knowledge under my belt and my training as an auditor has taught me how to look for and examine evidence, and the evidence I've read about FET has some gaping holes in it.

golly odes.... you cracked the case you genius. Duck, you are far too nice.

golly odes.... you cracked the case you genius. Duck, you are far too nice.

Well when someone doesn't immediately shoot back some inane argument that makes no sense while at the same time calling you indoctrinated and a gullible bottom feeder sucking on the crap that the government feeds you, it warrants a calm discussion.

So this AV only works upon the surface of the Earth and the atmosphere above it.  Can this AV explain the fact that the Sun remains aloft day after day without it varying by a significant amount in its height?

My heavens, no. The solar celestial light is attached to the cupola or firmament, and therein runs his course.

The existence of a force doesn't imply its universal utility. I may crack a walnut in my bare hand but in no way am I responsible for the crack sound of lightning. I could go on with other examples.

If the same kinks that UA has in explanation of a FE can be worked out through this AV, then maybe the world will finally see that the Earth is indeed flat.

Some UA kinks may actually be problems within the overall model, in addition to the basic absurdity of a system only functioning if it accelerates forever.

golly odes.... you cracked the case you genius.

Ah, the first signs of the recognition I deserve. Not only have I scoped the problem correctly, but I have removed from FET a needless headache, replacing it with a great wave of relief in the form of an eminently logical concept which anyone can comprehend. The atmosphere presses upon the plane earth, in just the degree necessary to enable our normal functioning.

Quote from: DuckDodgers on April 28, 2013, 03:23:33 PM

So this AV only works upon the surface of the Earth and the atmosphere above it.  Can this AV explain the fact that the Sun remains aloft day after day without it varying by a significant amount in its height?

My heavens, no. The solar celestial light is attached to the cupola or firmament, and therein runs his course.

The existence of a force doesn't imply its universal utility. I may crack a walnut in my bare hand but in no way am I responsible for the crack sound of lightning. I could go on with other examples.

Quote

If the same kinks that UA has in explanation of a FE can be worked out through this AV, then maybe the world will finally see that the Earth is indeed flat.

Some UA kinks may actually be problems within the overall model, in addition to the basic absurdity of a system only functioning if it accelerates forever.

Quote from: rottingroom

golly odes.... you cracked the case you genius.

Ah, the first signs of the recognition I deserve. Not only have I scoped the problem correctly, but I have removed from FET a needless headache, replacing it with a great wave of relief in the form of an eminently logical concept which anyone can comprehend. The atmosphere presses upon the plane earth, in just the degree necessary to enable our normal functioning.

Your crack sound is not quite a proper analogy.  As the reason for this sound is the release of energy by the nut in the form of sound waves.  Lightning is due to heating the atmosphere to an extreme temperature.  It's more apt to say that lightning makes a sound on Earth, so logically it would also make a sound on Jupiter. 

Your crack sound is not quite a proper analogy.  As the reason for this sound is the release of energy by the nut in the form of sound waves.  Lightning is due to heating the atmosphere to an extreme temperature.  It's more apt to say that lightning makes a sound on Earth, so logically it would also make a sound on Jupiter.

You are absolutely correct. It also doubtful that I can crack a walnut with my bare hand!

However, if your aim is to tempt me into an admission that there are various orbs which one could theoretically visit, be my guest. For all I know, it is possible to direct a craft through the cupola and forever onwards. One can only hope that the ever-accelerating earth will not make such trajectories impossible to predict!  My only aim is to scope the problem meaningfully, and devise a concept that adequately displaces Gravitation, without introducing bizarre novelties. As for Einstein's theories of relativity, weren't they plagiarized? How can we trust a plagiarist? (UA is sometimes said to be necessary to account for Einstein's theories, a connection mentioned in this Be Reasonable episode.)