Sunrise on the front range in Colorado

Another sunrise question.  I live in Boulder Colorado, and I love to do photography in the mornings just before sunrise.  One cool thing to watch is how the sun hits the flatirons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatirons) as it rises.  You can stand at the bottom of the rock formations in chautauqua park and look west to see the sun strike the very top of the flatirons, and slowly the light makes its way down.  One does not see the sun peak over the horizon in the east until the light reaches the ground.  It is one way that I can observer what someone at altitude would see while at the same time being witness to what an observer on the ground would see.  Maybe one day I'll video the effect and post it.  Anyway, the question is how is this explained with a flat earth model?  How is it possible that the horizon is casting a shadow on the mountains?

There is a place up rear Darwin where that happens at sunrise,think it is called Timber Creek.
Here some pic's from a plane that show a similar effect.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2911339/A-window-seat-world-stunning-pictures-pilots-really-best-view-house-35-000ft.html

I think it is something to do with "bendy light"

I think it is something to do with "bendy light"

Is it because the of the earth is acceleration through an extremely reflective atmosphere
 

I think it is something to do with "bendy light"

That is correct. Bendy light, or Electromagnetic Accelerator theory is the reason for this. Instead of summarizing it for you, read this.

This idea has been questioned a few times.

Recently a proposal for electromagnetic acceleration has surfaced:
"Since there has been such a long wait for a conclusive equation describing EA theory, here is an approximate formula for large-scale bending. To find this, I took the limit of a much longer and nastier expression as x approaches infinity, so this will only work when y is much greater than x - that is to say, when the vertical distance travelled is much greater than the horizontal distance travelled. Put another way, its accuracy will improve the closer the light ray is to vertical. Therefore, it is not valid for short-range experiments such as the one proposed by Sentient Pizza, but it can give an idea of how much sunlight would bend on its way to the Earth, for instance.
Definition of terms:
x, y - co-ordinates in the plane of the light ray, where y is increasing in the direction of fastest decreasing Dark Energy potential, and x is increasing in the direction of the component of propagation of the ray which is perpendicular to y.
c - the speed of light in a vacuum.
β - the Bishop constant, named in honour of the great Flat Earth zetetic Dr. Tom Bishop, which defines the magnitude of the acceleration on a horizontal light ray due to Dark Energy. When the theory is complete, attempts will be made to measure this experimentally.
The equation itself is:
Bendy.png
Where (0,0) is understood to be the point at which the light ray is horizontal (that is, the derivative of this function is zero)."


The Bishop Constant = 455


Looks like another fe idea of dubious honesty to me.

Quote from: JimmyTheCrab on January 16, 2015, 02:14:49 AM

I think it is something to do with "bendy light"

That is correct. Bendy light, or Electromagnetic Accelerator theory is the reason for this. Instead of summarizing it for you, read this.

So, the sun is always above the earths surface since the earth is flat.  So how is it that we are seeing horizontal rays, wouldn't they always be coming from some angle above the horizon?  I think in order for the sun rise to hit the top of the mountain first in the sunrise case, the light must be bending up as sun comes into view, and somehow the bending stops.  Is the Bishop Constant accepted to be 455?  The link says it is not known what the value is.  What are the units?

Quote from: JimmyTheCrab on January 16, 2015, 02:14:49 AM

I think it is something to do with "bendy light"

That is correct. Bendy light, or Electromagnetic Accelerator theory is the reason for this. Instead of summarizing it for you, read http://wiki.tfes.org/Bendy_Light [this].

That page is suspiciously similar to this one:

http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Electromagnetic%20Accelerator

Let me summarize them both for you:

Since there has been such a long wait for a conclusive equation describing EA theory, here is an approximate formula for large-scale bending. To find this, I took the limit of a much longer and nastier expression as x approaches infinity, so this will only work when y is much greater than x - that is to say, when the vertical distance travelled is much greater than the horizontal distance travelled. Put another way, its accuracy will improve the closer the light ray is to vertical. Therefore, it is not valid for short-range experiments such as the one proposed by Sentient Pizza, but it can give an idea of how much sunlight would bend on its way to the Earth, for instance.

<Definition of terms>

When the theory is complete, attempts will be made to measure this experimentally.

The equation itself is:

<equation and further definition>

Now, the wiki page on this site was apparently written before this forum thread started (by Oracle, on March 13, 2011), because the forum thread refers to the wiki article and uses the same tinypic.com .png image, which has a date of 18 Jul, 2009, of the formula.

So, whose work is this? Are they still working on it? It's been almost six years since the graphic showing the formula, which, presumably, postdates the work itself, was created. Any progress? Whoever created the original wiki entry says:

1) What he has so far is only a "high-angle" approximation (see the part highlighted above) that isn't useful in the general case.

2) The complete solution is really ugly. "... a much longer and nastier expression" are the exact words.

The principles that explain sunrise and sunset on the actual spherical earth are stump simple: earth is a sphere, light rays are straight, the Sun is far away. Works fine, lasts a long time. Are you sure a flat earth makes anything easier? You have to invoke "a much longer and nastier expression" - that nobody even knows - to even begin to explain everyday occurrences like sunrises all over the world. "Paging Dr. Occam!"

This little bit does a lot for bendy light.

At 23,000 feet, the line-of-sight distance between an aircraft and an observer on the ground (assuming flat terrain) is about 186 statute miles, and the aircraft is visible from an area of around 108,000 square miles. At this distance, though, the aircraft may not be visible to the naked eye, as even a large aircraft would visually be right at the limit of human vision (about 42 seconds of arc for a 200-foot aircraft). The distance over land would be practically the same

That is correct. Bendy light, or Electromagnetic Accelerator theory is the reason for this. Instead of summarizing it for you, read

Oh puhleeze.....!  Not this silly "bendy light" thing again.   

         

The so-called "Bishop Constant" ß is nothing more than some non-existent, imaginary figure that the flat earthers pull out of their hat whenever they can't explain some optical principle or other.  Not one of them can explain precisely what it's meant to be, or its units of measure, or even a numerical value. 
They use it like we round earthers use the Avogadro constant, which = 6.02214179×10²³.

So... can any flat earther please tell me what the numerical value of Bishop's Constant is?  And also how it was determined?  Neither of these things are addressed in the Flat Earth Wiki.

Bishop constant=455 not 42 as was earlier proposed. try it.