Seeing the big picture

So since the earth is flat, why can't we see the entire earth at the highest points of elevation?

So since the earth is flat, why can't we see the entire earth at the highest points of elevation?

Flat earth answer from a stupid Round Earther :
You can't because of the thickness of the atmoplane.

So since the earth is flat, why can't we see the entire earth at the highest points of elevation?

You can not see for infinite amount of distance for several reasons. The most important being the air around us is filled with dust, water vapor and many other opaque things that eventually fog out your vision. Plus, the retina in the eye can only process light from so far away. Think of it this way a camera can only take a picture of what its lenses can capture. This is the basic  reasons regarding it. One last thing would be the law of perspective; anything beyond the vanishing point, cannot be processed by the eye as it lies beyond what our "Lenses" can capture or compute. Does this make sense ?

The most important being the air around us is filled with dust, water vapor and many other opaque things that eventually fog out your vision.

That is clearly not the limiting factor, as we typically see a nice clear horizon.
If the limited visibility through the atmosphere was going to be an issue, the "horizon" would look more like this:


So that excuse doesn't work.

Plus, the retina in the eye can only process light from so far away.

Yes, roughly a few micron at most.
This isn't an issue as the light is scattered by the distant object and then reaches our eye.
It doesn't matter how far the light has travelled, our eye can still process it.

I assume you are attempting to appeal to resolution; if so, yes things would look smaller, but still there.
You can be up high and clearly see the horizon relatively close (compared to the size of Earth), distinguishing features of nearby objects. If you do this inland, you can tell there is no water before the horizon.

Even being far away, continents would still appear quite significant.
For example, the US is roughly 4000 km across. From 40 000 km away, that would appear similar to a 1 m object from 10 m away. That is still clearly visible. So that excuse doesn't work either.

One last thing would be the law of perspective; anything beyond the vanishing point

doesn't exist, because the vanishing point is infinitely far away (in any direction).
Perspective doesn't make objects magically vanish at some close magical vanishing point. It simply makes them look smaller, eventually being too small to resolve.

So that excuse doesn't work either.

Does this make sense ?

No, as all your excuses are either completely wrong or fail to match reality.

Quote from: Jenkins on June 19, 2018, 06:10:33 AM

So since the earth is flat, why can't we see the entire earth at the highest points of elevation?

You can not see for infinite amount of distance for several reasons. The most important being the air around us is filled with dust, water vapor and many other opaque things that eventually fog out your vision.

The most important being the air around us is filled with " air ".

Even in the clearest air, Rayleigh scattering limits the visibility distance through air to a few hundred kilometres, depending on the contrast and brightness of the subject.

Plus, the retina in the eye can only process light from so far away.

No, there is no limit on distance. If the retina gets enough light it will register, though possibly as a single dot.

Think of it this way a camera can only take a picture of what its lenses can capture. This is the basic reasons regarding it.

No, there is no limit on distance even for a camera. If the sensor gets enough light it will register, though possibly as a single dot.

One last thing would be the law of perspective; anything beyond the vanishing point, cannot be processed by the eye as it lies beyond what our "Lenses" can capture or compute. Does this make sense ?

No, it doesn't make sense at all. There is a resolution limit for both the eye and the camera.
For the eye, this resolution limit means that the eye cannot see as separate two objects things that are closer than about 1 arcminute apart.

But a very bright object against a dark background would be visible even when its angular size is far below 1 arcminute.
MIT estimated the visibility distance for a candle flame at night in How Far Can the Human Eye See a Candle Flame? But with no claims as to precision - it's purely an estimate.
They claim that under dark conditions at about 1.6 miles it ought to equivalent to a just visible sixth magnitude star, but its angular size is only about 1 arcsecond.

My knowledge of physics is fairly rudimentary, and really want to tighten my understanding of how all of this would work. It is important that we all agree on what atmosphere is, down to it's components. Do we all agree that atmosphere is comprised of particles, we understand how it behaves, and that we can measure that behavior? Wouldn't the behavior of the atmosphere greatly differ between the different concepts of Flat Earth? Do we exist on a planar earth that extends infinitely beyond the outer Antarctic ring? Or is there a definite edge encircling the earth? Is the atmosphere evenly distributed across the entire surface of flat earth? What variation of gravity are we using in our Hypothesis? Do we have a definitive model that we can base our research on?