Poles cold, equator not: Why?

This may well have been answered before, but then half of the ideas around here get recycled from time to time, so why not this one?

Suppose the Earth is flat. For the sun to come up from East to West for everyone on the planet, it's got to rise over the circumference of the disk (assuming it's a disk, right?), fly overhead, and then "set" somewhere on more or less the opposite side of where it started.

Okay. So far, so good. We know that, in general, it's warmer when the sun's up (day) than when it's not (night), so the sun appears to have something to do with warmth. I think it's possibly even fair to say that the sun might well be where the heat comes from.

I'd be grateful for someone to explain, possibly by drawing a path on the flat Earth that the sun takes each day, which accounts for the fact that the North and South pole are cold (that is, don't get much sun) while the equator is warm (that is, gets quite a lot of it). Any theory needs to take account of the seaons that everywhere apart from the equator (that includes the poles) experiences.

The reason I'm asking? I've tried to figure it out for myself, and I can't. Intellectually superior flat Earthers (and I suppose this includes the traitorous EnragedPenguin and 6strings  :wink:) can help too.

And it had better be good this time: no bullshit!

"Itellectually superior"?  How very generous of you, Mundi.
"Traitorous"?  How very less generous of you...although apt, I suppose...

Right, so to the bread and butter of my response.  Here's how it works, the sum doesn't emit "energy", "heat" or "light" per se, instead it emits a much higher form of energy that is transformed into heat and light as it passes through the magnetic field of earth, as the magnetic field lowers its energy form.  Now, we know the magnetic pull is stronger near the poles, and weakest near the equator, so it follows that the heat would vary inversely.

"Itellectually superior"?  How very generous of you, Mundi.
"Traitorous"?  How very less generous of you...although apt, I suppose...

Right, so to the bread and butter of my response.  Here's how it works, the sum doesn't emit "energy", "heat" or "light" per se, instead it emits a much higher form of energy that is transformed into heat and light as it passes through the magnetic field of earth, as the magnetic field lowers its energy form.  Now, we know the magnetic pull is stronger near the poles, and weakest near the equator, so it follows that the heat would vary inversely.

Uh 6 stings do you have anything remotly approaching a basisi for that stament? And if magnetic fields lower the suns energy into heat wouldnt that mean that electro magnets put in a field on a sunny day would lkower the temperature? If so a simple experiment should shred that ridicoulous theory to pieces.
An incredelous
Cinlef

It's an uphill battle to be sure.  I'm just throwing the first thing that pops into my mind out to buy myself time to come up with an actually plausible explanation.  Arguing for the flat earth side means I have to avoid certain things...like facts.  Cut me some slack.

I have an answer! Not only that, but also another diagram and an explanation for timezones as well.

I found this, and I'm fairly certain that it is what is accepted as the flat map of the Earth.
LINK TO IMAGE

We can't deny that it is cold in the North "Pole" and the regions close to the "equator" are pretty freaking hot. Now, if you look at that map, it's pretty much the globe, all continents the relatively correct shape and position. However, the North Pole is at the hub and the contentents are sorta bent around it with the Southern-most points being closer to the rim. When you say "East" and "West", you are assuming that those are straight directions, and the sun goes around the disc from one edge to the other. That would not be the path. In "reality", the sun hangs above the Earth, most likely just above the atmos-dome ( ). It travels in a cirular "orbit" around the hub of the Earth going from East to West in a clock-wise turn. Or, if you don't like the Sun revolving around the Earth, it could go the other way, and stay still while the Earth sorta spins. It doesn't matter to me really. The sun however, is not quite as strong as it is thought to be and its rays only go a certain distance, creating a limited radius of light. As the sun travels, different areas of the Earth are hit by the light as it gradually gets closer and brighter. This explains timezones (after all, they aren't man-made, just observed to happen). As the sun travels, it remains about half the length of the radius away from the hub, thus making it closer to the parts of the world situated on the "equator". These parts of the world are therefore hotter. And so, since the North and South "Poles" are the farthest, they are the coldest.

And now, for the highly anticipated diagram:

The red circle is roughly the "equator", the yellow circle is the Sun (no shit!) and finally the green arrow is the direction of the path. I've also shadowed the world and included the estimated radius of light. I'm probably off, so it could be larger or smaller or whatever, but that's basically it.

This makes considerable more sense than that electromagnetic thing. But that link did not work? Is it the same diagram or something else and if its something else can you re-post the link
An enraged
Cinlef

It's just the original, which is why I didn't waste space putting it there. And what do you mean it doesn't work? it works fine for me... try the full URL
http://5flatearthsociety6.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/flatglobe.jpg

still doesn't work

The north-pole-at-center, sun-above hypothesis is full of holes.

1. The sun appears to disappear over the western horizon and rise over the eastern... so it can't just go around in circles overhead, even if the light that comes out of it only travels a finite distance.

2. Unless you claim that our sun is vastly different from other stars, there's no reason to suggest that the light that comes out of it travels a finite distance.  We know that those stars are very far away (using parallax), and they are chemically and physically similar to our own (using spectroscopy), yet we can still see them.  Of course, you may want to reject the claims I've made... I can't stop you.

3. The hypothesis implies that the south pole is a circle, whereas everybody who's every been to it insists that it's a single point.  Similarly, having the north pole as a hub creates serious distance issues... why are things not observed to be so far away from each other "south" (i.e. radially outward) of the equator?

In the spirit of don't-criticize-a-theory-unless-you-have-a-better-idea, I have a better idea.  Or two.

Assume the sun travels vaguely around the equator, wobbling throughout the seasons, as usual.

1. Inverse-square law.  Incident power on a surface a distance r from a light source drops according to 1/r^2.  The poles are farther from the sun than the equator.

2. Foreshortening.  The reason it's colder at the poles is primarily due to the following: a surface at a ninety-degree angle to light rays receives more energy per unit area than a surface at a lower or higher angle.  If you hold a piece of paper in the beam of a flashlight in an otherwise dark room, and tilt the paper at various angles, you can see this.  You can also see it in old photographs where the edges are very dim.  Since the sun is never directly overhead at the poles, the poles get less solar energy throughout the year and thus never get a chance to warm up.  By the way, this is the same explanation for seasons (in a spherical- or flat-earth cosmology): sometimes the sun is directly overhead in the north, sometimes in the south.

3. A friend of mine has just pointed out, "Isn't it that they're colder because there's snow there?  Snow is pretty cold, man."  And, "But also, the high albedo of the snow reflects sunlight, instead of absorbing it, so it receives less heat from the sun."

Sadly I have no nifty raytraced images to go along with my explanation.

-Erasmus

still doesn't work

I dunno... try copy/pasting the link manually. It works just fine for me.

2. Unless you claim that our sun is vastly different from other stars, there's no reason to suggest that the light that comes out of it travels a finite distance. We know that those stars are very far away (using parallax), and they are chemically and physically similar to our own (using spectroscopy), yet we can still see them. Of course, you may want to reject the claims I've made... I can't stop you.

Those starts don't light up the Earth with daylight though because they're too far away. The sun is like that, but much smaller than normally assumed and therefore much less powerful. Also, its distance is counted into that. I'm not saying that the light stops. That's just stupid.

3. The hypothesis implies that the south pole is a circle, whereas everybody who's every been to it insists that it's a single point. Similarly, having the north pole as a hub creates serious distance issues... why are things not observed to be so far away from each other "south" (i.e. radially outward) of the equator?

That would just so happen to be the flat Earth model. The flat Earth model says that the North Pole is at the hub of the Earth, and the circumference is lined with a large ice wall (or possibly a mountain range) that is perceived as being the South Pole. As for the distances, it's not necessarily the land masses who havea different size, but the oceans between them. An airplane can easily fly at different speeds to simulate the correct distance, as well as boats. And before recent years, boats didn't exactly have advanced chronometers to tell how long it takes to get somewhere.

Now to your other theories:

1. Inverse-square law. Incident power on a surface a distance r from a light source drops according to 1/r^2. The poles are farther from the sun than the equator.

All that does is say why mine could be RIGHT. That law states that a physical quantity or strength (in this case light and heat) is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity. Basically, how strong the light and heat are decreases when the source is farther away from the destination. I have found a nifty diagram to demonstrate this theory (I'm to tired too make my own right now):


As you can see, object B's coverage is much less dense.

Anyways, there's basically the same light and heat being produced fro mthe same source, but as it gets farther away, it has to be distributed over a larger surface. This is actually the same as the reason as to why the poles are cold in the round Earth theory, as demostrated by another diagram:


Ray B hits the Earth obliquely, thus covering a larger area, but delivering less power than ray A which hits perpendicularly and delivers the same amount of energy over a smaller space.

2. Foreshortening. The reason it's colder at the poles is primarily due to the following: a surface at a ninety-degree angle to light rays receives more energy per unit area than a surface at a lower or higher angle. If you hold a piece of paper in the beam of a flashlight in an otherwise dark room, and tilt the paper at various angles, you can see this. You can also see it in old photographs where the edges are very dim. Since the sun is never directly overhead at the poles, the poles get less solar energy throughout the year and thus never get a chance to warm up. By the way, this is the same explanation for seasons (in a spherical- or flat-earth cosmology): sometimes the sun is directly overhead in the north, sometimes in the south.

I'm fairly certain you have just re-stated your previous theory...

3. A friend of mine has just pointed out, "Isn't it that they're colder because there's snow there? Snow is pretty cold, man." And, "But also, the high albedo of the snow reflects sunlight, instead of absorbing it, so it receives less heat from the sun."

Tell your friend he's a moron. Places aren't cold because they have snow, they have snow because they're cold. Snow is basically itty bitty pieces of ice, therefore forzen water. Ask yourself this: is your freezer cold because of the ice, or is the ice there because the freezer froze it (as indicated by its name)? The answer may surprise you!


BTW, in case nobody's noticed, I've decided to use diagrams to help back up pretty much all of my point from here on.

I'm not saying that the light stops.

You are:

The sun however, is not quite as strong as it is thought to be and its rays only go a certain distance, creating a limited radius of light.

I'm fairly certain you have just re-stated your previous theory...

In fact, no, foreshoretening is distinct from inverse-square.  Do the paper-and-flashlight experiment in a dark room, really.  You'll see that as long as the paper is far from the flashlight, the whole piece of paper gets darker, even the bit that's getting closer to the light.  And to take advantage of one of your diagrams, consider the one with the red lines emanating radially from a point.  Imagine rotating one of the "A" cards so that its normal vector doesn't point radially anymore: now fewer of the red lines will intersect it.  Foreshortening and inverse-square are two different manifestations of the same physical law -- that incident energy in a given solid angle is constant.

For example,

Ray B hits the Earth obliquely, thus covering a larger area, but delivering less power than ray A which hits perpendicularly and delivers the same amount of energy over a smaller space.

is a statement about foreshortening, whereas "Mars receives less solar energy per unit area than the Earth because it's farther from the sun," is a statement about inverse-square.

is your freezer cold because of the ice?

No, not in this case.  But people used to use ice boxes, which were boxes that were cold because they had ice on top of them.  I know that when I jump naked into the snow I get cold.  It seems that cold things have a way of making things around them cold.

Also, the real point of his argument was the albedo issue: polar areas that are snowy absorb less solar energy than areas at the same latitude that are, for example, arboreal.

-Erasmus

According to the first diagram, and any other reproduction of a so-called flat earth, the north "pole" is located at the center of the disk or whatever shape the flat earth has, and the south "pole" is situated all around. Which means that whichever direction we are looking at we are either looking north or south, no more east or west... so let's just stop using these "west" and "east" references as they don't exist.

In fact, no, foreshoretening is distinct from inverse-square. Do the paper-and-flashlight experiment in a dark room, really. You'll see that as long as the paper is far from the flashlight, the whole piece of paper gets darker, even the bit that's getting closer to the light. And to take advantage of one of your diagrams, consider the one with the red lines emanating radially from a point. Imagine rotating one of the "A" cards so that its normal vector doesn't point radially anymore: now fewer of the red lines will intersect it. Foreshortening and inverse-square are two different manifestations of the same physical law -- that incident energy in a given solid angle is constant.

For example,

Quote

Ray B hits the Earth obliquely, thus covering a larger area, but delivering less power than ray A which hits perpendicularly and delivers the same amount of energy over a smaller space.

is a statement about foreshortening, whereas "Mars receives less solar energy per unit area than the Earth because it's farther from the sun," is a statement about inverse-square.

You obviously don't understand cause and effect. The two go hand-in hand. Foreshortening is the effect of the inverse-square law. It couldn't happen without the inverse-sqaure law, and the inverse-square law causes foreshortening to happen. They are therefore, grouped together within the same theory.

No, not in this case. But people used to use ice boxes, which were boxes that were cold because they had ice on top of them. I know that when I jump naked into the snow I get cold. It seems that cold things have a way of making things around them cold.

Here's how this works: the ice in an icebox doesn't stay frozen forever, it melts after some time, which is why the ice would need to be bought an replaced regularly. Since the ice is in an isolated environment, the melting takes more time. As the ice melts, what it is really doing is absorbing energy from the environment (the air around it and whatnot). So, it melts because it's gaining energy so it gets warm enough to melt, whereas the air is losing its energy to the ice, so its temperature is decreasing. When you walked into the icebox, it feels cold because the air is cold, and that is what you come in contact with. When people put food in it, the food would stay cold because the air would absorb its energy. All of this energy absorbtion occurs because when two things of different temperatures meet, the temperature will level out between them, causing one to get warmer, and one to get cooler. In this case, the cold ice and the warm air even out, and the warm food and the colder air will even out.

In cold places, it happens the other way around. The snow doesn't fall and then it gets cold, it's the opposite. Because of the drop in the environment's temperature (in this case, outside), when it would normally rain, the rain freezes and becomes snowflakes... or in the less enjoyable scenario, hail (which can really hurt btw). Also, the light reflecting off the white snow has little effect. I know this because it's winter here evry year, and every spring the snow manages to melt, despite its colour. What happens is the air absorbs more energy from the sun because of it being closer, and the snow absorbs energy from both the sun and the air around it. The snow then melts, and happy little squirrels romp the fields.

One final note: feeling cold is relative to your body's temperature. You're warm, so anything less so with feel cold to you. That's why people shiver when they have a fever; their body temperature increases, ans so everything is relatively colder than it was.

(No diagrams this time since the only real proof is math, and I don't feel like thinking up an example.)

[EDIT]So.. you think you can post while I'm in the middle of typing eh?

According to the first diagram, and any other reproduction of a so-called flat earth, the north "pole" is located at the center of the disk or whatever shape the flat earth has, and the south "pole" is situated all around. Which means that whichever direction we are looking at we are either looking north or south, no more east or west... so let's just stop using these "west" and "east" references as they don't exist.

They still exist, they just aren't the straight lines we assumed they were. They could be referred to as clockwise and counter-clockwise as well, but we've just given them different names.

so the "east" and "west" references in your model are totally arbitrary...

As arbitrary as they would have been when they were first created. North and South still point to the "poles", so if you were standing facing North, East would simply be to your right, and west to your left. It's just that if you try to go in a straight line, you'll actually be heading slighlty South-East or South-West.

You obviously don't understand cause and effect. The two go hand-in hand. Foreshortening is the effect of the inverse-square law. It couldn't happen without the inverse-sqaure law, and the inverse-square law causes foreshortening to happen. They are therefore, grouped together within the same theory.

Actually, I don't understand cause and effect, due to my confusion surrounding some phenomena in fluid dynamics.  I will hazard a guess that nobody else really understands it either, on anything but the most colloquial level.  However, this is probably a topic better suited to another thread.

Anyway, I will repeat only once more the example of the piece of paper in the flashlight beam.  When you turn the paper, one part (A) will get closer to the source, and the other part (B) will get farther.  If the inverse-square law were the only law that needed to be considered, then A should get brighter and B would get dimmer.  However, it is in fact the case that *both* A and B get dimmer.

Next, the amount by which the surface dims is still non-negligible, even when the change in distance due to rotation causes a negligible change in the 1/r^2 factor.  For example, if the surface is initially 5m away, and you rotate it so that part B is 5.1m away, the factor goes from 1/25 = 0.04 to 1/25.1001 = 0.0398404787

I assume you're still not convinced, so consider seasons in a round-Earth cosmology.  The Earth is closer to the sun in the winter than in the summer.  In particular, the northern hemisphere is closer to the sun in the winter than it is in the summer (i.e. you can't say what I'm calling foreshortening here is really inverse-square, since the surface in question is farther away when it's warmer).  So the inverse-square law does not explain seasons. The winter is colder because of foreshortening: since the sun hits the surface of the Earth at a lower angle, the ground receives less solar power per unit area.  Of course, you may wish to throw out this example entirely because it involves round-Earth assumptions, but the logic behind foreshortening is the same.

The other place you will see foreshortening a lot is in computer graphics, when determining the illumination of a surface.

The actual "primary law" from which dimming due to foreshortening and dimming due to inverse-square are both derived is that incident energy from a point source on a surface depends only on radiated energy and the solid angle that the surface occuppies.  When a planar section moves farther away from the source, the solid angle it subtends diminishes according to the square of its distance.  When a planar section rotates, the solid angle it subtends diminishes according to the cosine of the angle of rotation.

-Erasmus

Here's an explanation of cause and effect: Something happens, then something else happens because of it. You have two events. The first makes the second happen. The first is the cause, the second is the effect. The second cannot occur without the first.

   
PostPosted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 2:07 pm    Post subject:
Quote:
You obviously don't understand cause and effect. The two go hand-in hand. Foreshortening is the effect of the inverse-square law. It couldn't happen without the inverse-sqaure law, and the inverse-square law causes foreshortening to happen. They are therefore, grouped together within the same theory.


Actually, I don't understand cause and effect, due to my confusion surrounding some phenomena in fluid dynamics. I will hazard a guess that nobody else really understands it either, on anything but the most colloquial level. However, this is probably a topic better suited to another thread.

Anyway, I will repeat only once more the example of the piece of paper in the flashlight beam. When you turn the paper, one part (A) will get closer to the source, and the other part (B) will get farther. If the inverse-square law were the only law that needed to be considered, then A should get brighter and B would get dimmer. However, it is in fact the case that *both* A and B get dimmer.

So, you're basically saying that I was right and the two theories do go hand-in hand. The inverse-square theory says that the energy is affected by how far away the object is. That's not the only thing though. You have to ask WHY does the farther object receieve less energy. The amount of heat and light does not change as it gets farther, but they ARE emitted at angles. So, the farther they go, the larger area they cover. Since there is a larger are but the same energy, the energy that was able to adequately light up a close object is spread out over a large area, of which the farther object is only a small part of a much larger area. This is demonstrated in a diagram:



What you say about foreshortening is that when something is at an angle, the area increases, but the amount of light remains the same, so the light is distributed along the area, but less densely than it would in a small area. So basically, it's the same thing again, only the effect now has a name. The angle creates the same result as distance would in that the area is increased.

Cause: The distance is greater or there is an angle.

Effect: The area the energy must cover is greater, so the amount of energy given to any one place is decreased.

Cause -> Effect

[EDIT]Whoops... forgot my diagram :S There it was, made and uploaded and I forget to paste it into the post.

Your understanding is still quite flawed, esp. in

What you say about foreshortening is that when something is at an angle, the area increases, but the amount of light remains the same, so the light is distributed along the area, but less densely than it would in a small area. So basically, it's the same thing again, only the effect now has a name. The angle creates the same result as distance would in that the area is increased.

First of all, your explanation is too informal.  You should specify the shape of the object that is at an angle, and the reference against which we take the angle.  For example, I would say that "When a planar section whose normal points in the direction of the light source is rotated, it occuppies a smaller solid angle and thus receives less radiative energy over the same area."

As opposed to the area getting bigger and the radiative energy remaining the same, which implies that the light rays decrease in power in response to a change in orientation of the object, what's happening is the solid angle subtended by the object is decreasing.

In any case, your replies have essentially fixated on repeatedly explaining the inverse-square law to me -- which I assure you is unnecessary -- and not really addressing foreshortening at all, which the above quote demonstrates that you do not understand.  But this is probably due to the inferiority of my ability to commincate ideas, and speaks not at all about your ability to receive them.

However, it seems that maybe we agree that both foreshortening and inverse-square are causes for dimming, though we may disagree as to whether the mechanisms are the same.  I can only recommend that you seek literature on the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (Wikipedia has a sadly terse article), luminosity, and solid angles.

In any case, since we agree that things can get dimmer when you make certain changes to them w.r.t. the light source that irradiates them, I think we can just drop this issue.

Instead, I suggest we switch over to cause and effect.

First, "effect cannot occur without cause," formally referred to as "the cause is a necessary condition for the effect" is an untenable position.  There are all sorts of reasons that the same effect may have occurred in different circumstances.  Consider for example the Legionnaire's problem: a particular soldier in the Legion is not liked by his peers.  Independently, three set out to do away with him.  When he is ordered on a mission alone, they wait for cover of darkness.  Without knowledge of the others' activities, one poisons the water in his canteen, the next pours out the contents of his canteen and replaces it with sand, and the third punches holes in the canteen to drain the material inside.  The sorry Legionnaire dies the following day, when he's too far from camp to realize what happened.  Had any one or two of those acts of foul play not taken place, the other would have been sufficient to kill the Legionnaire, so none was necessary for the effect "Legionnaire dies."  Even had none of them taken place, he might have been attacked by bandits, bitten by a scorpion, or fallen into a ravine.  So his death might occur, in different circumstances, as a result of any number of different "causes".  Thus, necessity is not the sole feature of a cause.

It seems to me that to say that A causes B, A really has to describe the state of the entire universe (or at least, a cross-section of the light-cone in B's past).  This is because any slight deviation in the circumstances surrounding A (bu not in A itself) might change the outcome.  However, this is obviously a useless notion of cause and effect, since we could then never really describe even a single cause of anything.

Again, I offer to move this (very interesting to me) discussion of cause and effect to another thread.

-Erasmus