A new Experiment to prove that the earth is flat

Hey Guys,
I´m new to the board!
Have to admit that yet I´m not quite convinced by Flat Earth Theory but since I´m an engineer and intrestes in science
I will never claim something proven wrong until there is no longer a reason to believe in it.

So heres an experiment which I wanted to recommend to the Globebusters (do they still exist?) maybe it already had been done, or maybe a team of three hobbyscientist would like to try it...

As we all know a Triangle has an ancle sum of 180 degree.
But a triangle painted on a globe or a sphere hast a bigger ancle sum depending on the radius of the sphere and the size of the triangle.

So If three people could 'construct' a triangle of themselves holding a distance of about half a mile to each other. Each one having a little table infront of him with the same center point on it.
Then each of them should aim his too collegues over the center point and mark a line from center to the colleague.

At the end take the ancles from each board an add them to prove the 180 degree...

Simple to make, no Laser or Gyro needed.

Please let me know about the result or if the experiment was already done.


excuse the not so bad english I´m from Germany

regards
Tim

This is a good suggestion in theory, but the problem is that it requires very accurate measurements of the difference of the angle for smaller distances or very, very accurate coordinates for  larger distances, where the angle would be bigger, but where it would be impossible to directl y measure it because the points would be out of sight.

For example to get a difference of one arc second, the sides of an equilateral triangle would have to be more than 20km long.

So it is not a proof method that can be easily applied by everyone.

What I find puzzling is that there are many much more obvious questions which I think are not properly addressed, most importantly: how is day and night and the movement of the sun supposed to work?
I cannot see any geometric explanation that would be able to explain what we see: if a spherical source of light is above a flat surface, the whole surface is getting illuminated, and the light source would be visible from everywhere. On the other hand, if the light source would not be spherical, then there is no way that it would look like a perfect circle from everywhere as long as it is visible above the horizan and as a partical disk when it is setting. This seems obvious if you have an understanding of very elementary geometry.

I have posted a question about this here https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=79979.0 but nobody did give an answer yet.

One could ask similar questions about other objects in the sky and how we observe their movements, which would immediately show more inconsistencies , however those inconsistencies would require a deeper understanding of maths.

I think the problem is that many peaoply are easily confused by astronomy or astrophysics.
You´re right in my opinion I can´t explain any other reason for day and night than a round earth orbitting a star.
But as it happens to be convinced Flat earthers tend to say the sund is a projection or the sun is only 56km in diameter and so on.
You know like even gravity seems no convenient enough so it is claimed to be non existent....

So i tried to figure something that can easily be done and be a good prove.

Have you calculated the triangle Problem ? Has it really be this big?

There is no experiment that can prove the earth is flat.  There are plenty of images taken from space the prove it is round.

Trying to prove the earth is flat is a fools errand.

There is no experiment that can prove the earth is flat.

Anyway it's good to think of experiments that can show it's shape.

But this experiment is too complicated, how do you keep the sides of the triangle straight? Much easier would be just to measure the height of an horizontal laser beam or light source, this has been done of course, I've seen 2 videos where flat earthers find out the earth is round, and one video where flat earthers do a bunch of modifications to try to show it's flat. You could try to do it yourself. For me the clearest evidence that the earth is round is that there are two celestial poles, I haven't seen nor can imagine any flat eart model that can explain that. I have asked in this forum that repeatedly, to no avail.

There is no experiment that can prove the earth is flat.  There are plenty of images taken from space the prove it is round.

Trying to prove the earth is flat is a fools errand.

I get your point and share your opinion but since observations from space aren´t enough for the believers in FE because actually noone was ever in space .... I tryed to convince people with this experiment.

my biggest question to the FE really is why would al this be a conspiracy. The Eustion that always should be asked is qui boni.. who takes profit from this.

While I can see who takes Profit from keeping people believing in Flat Earth (ex people taht sell FE Merchandise, people who are famous in this community, people who need the community because they don´t have anyone else etc.) I can´t understand who would have a profit by letting us believe that the Earth is round....

also I would like to hear the FE reason for the coriolis force...
Why are sea streams in the north counter and in the soutz in clockwise rotation?

why has a sniper to calculate in the coriolis force when taking a really long shot?

Why dows air in low Pressure areas circulate in the same way as above...

The angle sum of a triangle on a sphere is dependent upon the area covered. It ranges from 180 degrees when it covers no area, up to 540 when half the area is covered, and 900 when the entire surface is covered. i.e. if you take whatever fraction is covered and multiply it by 720 degrees, then add 180 degrees, that will give you the angle sum.

You suggest covering a distance of 0.8 km. Approximating this as a square that gives 0.64 km², compared to Earth's surface of ~510072000 km². That means your suggestion covers less than 1.25 billionths. This gives an additional angle of less than 900 billionths of a degree or 0.003 arc seconds.
That will require extremely accurate measuring. (to change it back to a triangle, you have roughly have half the value due to how small this is)

Lets say we want an angle difference of 1 degree (still quite small and other errors could cause issues). That is 1 720th of the maximum angular excess for a sphere, and thus needs 1 720th of the area of Earth. That means we need a triangle with an area of roughly 700 000 km². Again approximating it as a square, that means you need a length of roughly 850 km. (Again, as it is over such a small area, you can probably just double the required area to go from square->triangle, giving a required length of over 1000 km).

This can be done a lot easier with the help of the stars, at least on a qualitative level. At the equator we can observe 2 celestial poles. We start at one point and notice the poles are 180 degrees apart. This forms one line of our triangle. We now move along the equator for a decent distance (or have someone already there). The exact direction and distance isn't important (but it should be a significant distance, preferably thousands of km). We now observe the stars again, and measure the angle between the poles.
If Earth is flat, this angle needs to be less than 180 degrees, with the poles now appearing back towards where we came from. i.e. if we went east, the celestial poles should appear slightly to the west.

Instead we find them 180 degrees apart, always, clearly showing Earth is round.

You´re right in my opinion I can´t explain any other reason for day and night than a round earth orbitting a star.

All you need is a round Earth, a distant light, and some relative motion.
The main cause of day and night is Earth rotating. But the light orbiting us has the potential to explain it. But it then runs into issues with variations around the year which shows it isn't orbitting and instead circling in a complex pattern, meaning Earth would be rotating and either orbiting the light or having the light orbit us.

my biggest question to the FE really is why would al this be a conspiracy.

The only explanation that has any semblance of sense is Satan leading people away from God.

Hey Guys,
I´m new to the board!
Have to admit that yet I´m not quite convinced by Flat Earth Theory but since I´m an engineer and intrestes in science
I will never claim something proven wrong until there is no longer a reason to believe in it.

So heres an experiment which I wanted to recommend to the Globebusters (do they still exist?)

Good question: Flat Earth General / Re: Flat earth on netflix! EEEEEEEEEE! « Message by rabinoz on March 07, 2019, 04:57:40 PM »
And look at the Globebusters YouTube channel:

  GLOBEBUSTERS, Videos
                              This channel has no videos.

I'll let others investigate why.

maybe it already had been done, or maybe a team of three hobbyscientist would like to try it...

As we all know a Triangle has an angle sum of 180 degrees.
But a triangle painted on a globe or a sphere has a bigger angle sum depending on the radius of the sphere and the size of the triangle.

So If three people could 'construct' a triangle of themselves holding a distance of about half a mile to each other. Each one having a little table in front of him with the same center point on it.
Then each of them should aim his too colleagues over the center point and mark a line from center to the colleague.

At the end take the angle from each board an add them to prove the 180 degrees...

Simple to make, no Laser or Gyro needed.

Please let me know about the result or if the experiment was already done.

excuse the not so bad English I´m from Germany

regards
Tim

This simple in principle but, as JackBlack has explained it is not simple to do in practice.

You’re never going to get three groups to do a coordinated experiment like this. Their goal is to PROVE a round Earth. It’s not to do an objective experiment and accept the results.

Look at my “modified Eratosthenes experiment” thread.

Simple test where I humor their theory that the Sun is closer to the Earth and operates on that assumption.

They don’t like it, because it won’t conform to their silly believes, yet they won’t say that the experiment is misguided because it’s so simple and, once again, it’s an experiment that operates on their own underlying assumptions. Because it uses their own beliefs against them, they don’t like it.

Eventually, someone said that they’ll just likely say the results are like that due to some unexplained atmospheric effect.

Eventually, someone said that they’ll just likely say the results are like that due to some unexplained atmospheric effect.

Yep, I said that, because I realized that all this movement is no more than a sad cheap falsifiable religion, if not just a unfunny joke. I've been asking many times for the flat earth model to explain my questions in "Disproving strong Round Earth arguments", to no avail, in Q&A they keep dodging my direct question, event just throwing the link of the "search" button. WTF.

If you accept things like the euclidean metric of space and the laws of refraction as we know them from the lab you cannot possibly explain that there are 2 celestial poles or the "modified Eratosthenes experiment" mentioned. Even the simple fact of how day and night happens in a flat earth, that has been asked by many new members, makes absolutely no sense. You should always see the sun in a flat earth, always, any explanation to that relies on a magical unexplained unobserved atmospheric effect. Good, but even allowing that for pityness to their ignorance and delusions, they couldn't possibly explain why there are 2 celestial poles. Even in their magical realm, they would lose, and badly.

So heres an experiment which I wanted to recommend
...
As we all know a Triangle has an ancle sum of 180 degree.
But a triangle painted on a globe or a sphere hast a bigger ancle sum depending on the radius of the sphere and the size of the triangle.

So If three people could 'construct' a triangle of themselves holding a distance of about half a mile to each other. Each one having a little table infront of him with the same center point on it.
Then each of them should aim his too collegues over the center point and mark a line from center to the colleague.

At the end take the ancles from each board an add them to prove the 180 degree...

Simple to make, no Laser or Gyro needed.

Please let me know about the result or if the experiment was already done.

Hey Tim,

like others have said, I think the angular difference between such a small triangle would be inconclusive.

An ordinary theodolite often has a 10 arcsecond resolution. I really good one has a 1 arcsecond resolution.

The angular difference would probably be far under the detectable range of the theodolite.

You'd really need to have 3 guys on 3 mountain tops, a hundred miles apart each, each with a laser and a theodolite.
(Because you simply won't be able to see the other guy at 100 miles unless he's got a laser shining your way.)

But I like your thinking because trying to prove flat with sinking ships or dipping mountains gets tricky because we don't know how much is due to atmospheric affects so it's hard to say if any of it has to do with the shape of the earth.

But with a triangle,  the upward or downward light path is not part of the measurement.