Contrails

Could a FEer please explain how the contrails in this photo are possible on a flat earth?

http://tenderontheair.com/tim/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/contrail.jpg

Combustion results in warm water vapor -- when this water vapor meets sufficiently cold and moist air, the saturation point is reached and water droplets freeze -- a condensation trail or "contrail" is formed.

How are they not possible on FE?

This is also possible on FE. In fact, look outside your window and tell me if the ground is flat or curved?

This is also possible on FE.

Yeah, I don't really see why not. However...

In fact, look outside your window and tell me if the ground is flat or curved?

...tell me, how would a normal person be able to detect a curvature of 0.09° per kilometre with the naked eye?

Could a FEer please explain how the contrails in this photo are possible on a flat earth?

http://tenderontheair.com/tim/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/contrail.jpg

You have confused chemtrail for contrail. Contrails disappear within a few minutes, chemtrails last for hours. Their appearance is similar to train tracks that seem to converge in the distance.

Quote from: frozen_berries on August 24, 2013, 04:32:34 AM

This is also possible on FE.

Yeah, I don't really see why not. However...

Quote from: frozen_berries on August 24, 2013, 04:32:34 AM

In fact, look outside your window and tell me if the ground is flat or curved?

...tell me, how would a normal person be able to detect a curvature of 0.09° per kilometre with the naked eye?

A curvature of 0.09° per kilometre can't be recognized with the naked eye because there isn't one. It's as simple as that.

Quote from: Scintific Method on August 24, 2013, 05:26:24 AM

Quote from: frozen_berries on August 24, 2013, 04:32:34 AM

This is also possible on FE.

Yeah, I don't really see why not. However...

Quote from: frozen_berries on August 24, 2013, 04:32:34 AM

In fact, look outside your window and tell me if the ground is flat or curved?

...tell me, how would a normal person be able to detect a curvature of 0.09° per kilometre with the naked eye?

A curvature of 0.09° per kilometre can't be recognized with the naked eye because there isn't one. It's as simple as that.

Assuming it exists, would you be able to see it?

Quote from: frozen_berries on August 24, 2013, 06:06:48 AM

Quote from: Scintific Method on August 24, 2013, 05:26:24 AM

Quote from: frozen_berries on August 24, 2013, 04:32:34 AM

This is also possible on FE.

Yeah, I don't really see why not. However...

Quote from: frozen_berries on August 24, 2013, 04:32:34 AM

In fact, look outside your window and tell me if the ground is flat or curved?

...tell me, how would a normal person be able to detect a curvature of 0.09° per kilometre with the naked eye?

A curvature of 0.09° per kilometre can't be recognized with the naked eye because there isn't one. It's as simple as that.

Assuming it exists, would you be able to see it?

Can you prove that you can't see it?

A curvature of 0.09° per kilometre can't be recognized with the naked eye because there isn't one. It's as simple as that.

Wonderfully circular reasoning there, but...

Assuming it exists, would you be able to see it?

Further explanation may help: if you brought it down to smaller scale, that amount of curvature would be equivalent to putting a 1.6µm bend in a 1m ruler.

I have some great docs on how a camera makes curvature and why people think they can see curvature when they can't including lens issues and video compression. Below are some examples of it. Unfortunately its .pdf so I can't link it. Its just in my personal collection.


Fig. 1. The horizon from sea level (left) and from an elevation of
35; 000 ft (right). Note the sharpness of the sea-level horizon and
how indistinct the horizon from high elevation is. Also, note the
overall contrast reversal between the two images. From sea level
the sky is bright and the water is dark. But from high elevation the
sky is dark and the sea and clouds are bright.


Fig. 3. (Color online) Apparent curvature of the horizon. Top, horizon
placed near the top of the frame; middle, horizon placed in the
center of the frame; bottom, horizon placed near the bottom of the
frame. The apparent curvature is due to barrel distortion. These
three images are horizontally compressed in Fig. 4 to enhance the
visibility of the barrel distortion.


Fig. 4. (Color online) Apparent curvature of the horizon. On the
left, the full frames are shown. On the right are the horizon photos
cropped and compressed 10 : 1 horizontally to enhance the barrel
distortion.

Please note in fig 4. even by enhancing the barrel distortion to show off any slight curve in the earth, its absolutely flat.

This is also possible on FE. In fact, look outside your window and tell me if the ground is flat or curved?

I looked out my window, and I saw a hill leading down into a river, on the other side there's another hill that rises and then proceeds to fall into an area full of hills, which itself recedes into a hilly forest.  If I walk in the other direction, past some hedges, I see a sheer rock wall, which is somewhat curved itself.  No flatness, so it's rather obvious that Earth is a snub cube.

Sorry, I didn't think it was that cryptic.

The point being, contrails form at around 30'000 feet, yet we see the contrails trailing down over the horizon.

How is this possible on a FE?

Quote from: frozen_berries on August 24, 2013, 06:06:48 AM

A curvature of 0.09° per kilometre can't be recognized with the naked eye because there isn't one. It's as simple as that.

Wonderfully circular reasoning there, but...

Quote from: REphoenix on August 24, 2013, 06:10:19 AM

Assuming it exists, would you be able to see it?

Further explanation may help: if you brought it down to smaller scale, that amount of curvature would be equivalent to putting a 1.6µm bend in a 1m ruler.

This is one of the great failures of FE theory. All FEers cry that you wouldn't be able to see curvature from an airliner, even in RE, yet the main reason for their belief/argument is they can't see curvature from ground level. 

Sorry, I didn't think it was that cryptic.

The point being, contrails form at around 30'000 feet, yet we see the contrails trailing down over the horizon.

How is this possible on a FE?

Do you have any proof that contrails can only form on a round earth?

we see the contrails trailing down over the horizon.
How is this possible on a FE?

Perspective. We see tall telephones trailing down to the horizon in much the same way.

This is one of the great failures of FE theory. All FEers cry that you wouldn't be able to see curvature from an airliner, even in RE, yet the main reason for their belief/argument is they can't see curvature from ground level.

The main reason for my belief/argument is that I cannot see the curvature at all. :/

Quote from: preco on August 24, 2013, 01:27:13 PM

we see the contrails trailing down over the horizon.
How is this possible on a FE?

Perspective. We see tall telephones trailing down to the horizon in much the same way.

No, because if they were travelling a flat plane the vanishing point would be above the horizon.

This is one of the great failures of FE theory. All FEers cry that you wouldn't be able to see curvature from an airliner, even in RE, yet the main reason for their belief/argument is they can't see curvature from ground level.

The main reason for my belief/argument is that I cannot see the curvature at all. :/


Yes, but how can you only consider a flat earth from such a narrow point of view? Surely the fact that in the same frame of reference, you would not see curvature on a spherical earth, you would have to at least concede that the earth could be any shape, ie not just flat or spherical.

Surely the fact that in the same frame of reference, you would not see curvature on a spherical earth, you would have to at least concede that the earth could be any shape, ie not just flat or spherical.

Certainly, but why would one assume that the earth is a sphere or shaped like a hedgehog just because a lack of visible curvature is also consistent with those shapes?   Not seeing tiny pixies is entirely consistent with the existence of pixies too small to see, yet we do not assume they are there, do we?

Quote from: preco on August 24, 2013, 01:27:13 PM

we see the contrails trailing down over the horizon.
How is this possible on a FE?

Perspective. We see tall telephones trailing down to the horizon in much the same way.

According to Rowbotham's own laws of perspective (well, the first one at least, before he contradicted himself) those contrails would disappear before they reached the horizon line. It's simple enough if you think about it: the contrail is much narrower than it is high, so for it's distance above the horizon to be reduced to 1 minute of arc from the viewer's perspective, it's width would have long since fallen below this value, and so it would no longer be visible.

Quote from: preco on August 24, 2013, 01:41:28 PM

This is one of the great failures of FE theory. All FEers cry that you wouldn't be able to see curvature from an airliner, even in RE, yet the main reason for their belief/argument is they can't see curvature from ground level.

The main reason for my belief/argument is that I cannot see the curvature at all. :/

preco, my apologies for derailing onto the rate of curvature, but I think it's a rather interesting point, and as you said...

This is one of the great failures of FE theory. All FEers cry that you wouldn't be able to see curvature from an airliner, even in RE, yet the main reason for their belief/argument is they can't see curvature from ground level. 

It is such a small rate of curvature that the only way to detect it is to do things like the Wallace version of the Bedford Level experiment, or my own mountain measuring experiment, or simply observe ships sailing over the horizon (preferably through a high-powered telescope, so that it can be clearly seen that the ship is being progressively obscured, and not just 'blending' with the horizon).

Quote from: preco on August 24, 2013, 03:33:58 PM

Surely the fact that in the same frame of reference, you would not see curvature on a spherical earth, you would have to at least concede that the earth could be any shape, ie not just flat or spherical.

Certainly, but why would one assume that the earth is a sphere or shaped like a hedgehog just because a lack of visible curvature is also consistent with those shapes?   Not seeing tiny pixies is entirely consistent with the existence of pixies too small to see, yet we do not assume they are there, do we?

Who is assuming "just because a lack of visible curvature is also consistent those shapes"?  That is simply a counter to the FE notion that since no average curvature can be observed with the naked eye, the Earth must be flat.

Read about some of the differences between contrails, and chemtrails. This just a starting point.

http://www.plowedclouds.com/2011/03/difference-between-chemtrail-and.html

Read about some of the differences between contrails, and chemtrails. This just a starting point.

http://www.plowedclouds.com/2011/03/difference-between-chemtrail-and.html

Maybe you should before you embarrass yourself with such a ridiculous post.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_conspiracy_theory

according to the late great art bell, chemtrails are actually inoculating us against diseases, such as smallpox.

Read about some of the differences between contrails, and chemtrails. This just a starting point.

http://www.plowedclouds.com/2011/03/difference-between-chemtrail-and.html

This has nothing to do with what's being discussed in this thread.  Please take it elsewhere.

Sorry about that, forgot the "against".

I don't get how any flat earther could imagine that if you were standing on a large round object then you would SEE it curve. Why this logical mistake in thinking?

Every flat earther it would seem has started down this rabbit hole on the basic assumption that, "if it looks flat then it must be a plane" but the opposite is also entirely true in that, " if it looks flat then it must be a sphere". The more logical statement is "If it looks flat then it could be either a plane or a sphere!"

There is no need for the preconceived notion that apparent flatness must mean one thing just because you can't understand that apparent flatness could also mean roundness.

A straight horizon is exactly what you should expect on a spherical Earth. On a small sphere you would notice the curve but that is because the horizon is so much lower all the way around, but even then it is still straight... in other words (on a small sphere the horizon is still just as high behind you as it is in front of you). Same thing on a large spherical object but the horizon is so close to 90 degrees that your intuition can't tell you that it is round at first.

The more logical statement is "If it looks flat then it could be either a plane or a sphere!"

Or a giant bunny, perhaps a turtle, or a hedgehog. Any number of shapes are possible. Indeed a giant tortoise seems at least as likely as a globe to me.

There is no need for the preconceived notion that apparent flatness must mean one thing just because you can't understand that apparent flatness could also mean roundness. A straight horizon is exactly what you should expect on a spherical Earth.

Everyone understands that it could mean roundness. Not seeing pixies is entirely consistent with the existence of fairies too small to see. The question is why should we assume the fairies exist based on this consistency?

Quote from: Ski on August 24, 2013, 02:35:52 PM

Quote from: preco on August 24, 2013, 01:27:13 PM

we see the contrails trailing down over the horizon.
How is this possible on a FE?

Perspective. We see tall telephones trailing down to the horizon in much the same way.

According to Rowbotham's own laws of perspective (well, the first one at least, before he contradicted himself) those contrails would disappear before they reached the horizon line. It's simple enough if you think about it: the contrail is much narrower than it is high, so for it's distance above the horizon to be reduced to 1 minute of arc from the viewer's perspective, it's width would have long since fallen below this value, and so it would no longer be visible.

I would like to see this point addressed in some meaningful way. Anyone?

Do you have any evidence that the size of the contrail is sufficiently small to disappear before reaching the horizon? I don't see any.

Do you have any evidence that the size of the contrail is sufficiently small to disappear before reaching the horizon? I don't see any.

No, but its not hard to work out. Minimum width to be visible at the horizon would be 6-7 miles. This could easily be checked by viewing a contrail directly overhead, measuring its apparent width, and applying a little trig. More simply, a contrail would have to be >40° apparent width when overhead to be visible at the point it reaches the horizon.