The case for Gravity and UA

@jackblack (part 2 of 2)

It doesn't matter what you want to call it, it is a replacement.

Somewhat fair, however I am not really suggesting a replacement.  Just criticizing and recommending discarding the purely mathematical fiction of mass and gravitation.  What is left after that discarding is the de facto replacement, but there need not be any at all. I am only stating/descibing what is left - not suggesting a replacement.

If it is pretty simple, why can't you explain it?
Why should mass make anything fall?

Matter doesn't make things fall.  The energy used to lift them does.  If matter is in equilibrium, then it doesn't move (much) at all. Wether matter will fall, rise, or neither when put in disequilibrium is described by archimedes principle and is experimentally validatable (in stark contrast to gravitation).

No, with the conviction of someone with understanding, dismissing wild claims.

Wild is good.  No understanding, conviction or otherwise, should preclude or otherwise avoid wild.  That's where all the good (and new/different) stuff is!  Dismissing is easy, why come to a site such as this to just dismiss some more? Why not consider earnestly instead?  You can still dismiss, but at the end you can do so whilst better informed and having actually evaluated first!

No, because I have seen and obtained evidence clearly showing gravity, and know that your attempt to replace it doesn't work as it fails to address so much.

As i keep clarifying, there is no replacement being discussed. We are talking about a demo job.  What will or should ultimately take its place (if anything) is a WAY premature topic of discussion currently. That said, I am VERY interested in any contrary/contradictory data and/or perspecitves! What evidence have you seen and obtained clearly showing "gravitation" to be a real, clearly defined, and measurable entity?

Once again, I must reiterate that gravty and gravitation are seperate and distinct, contrary to popular belief/understanding.  Gravity is easily observable and demonstrable.  That's why it is a law!  That's the only thing that CAN make/establish a scientific law, consistent and repeated observation (measurement).  The mathematical description of that law currently used by many include fictional/non-real/purely mathematical terms taken from the theory of gravitation - namely mass and gravity.  It is NOT coincidence that they anhilate one another and return to the same measured weight they began as.  Neither is in any way real, and yes - I am aware of how wild and heretical that statement is.

rather than attempting to show anything wrong with it, or provide a viable alternative, you just dismiss it as fake, with the typical certainty of the common religious zealot.

Now that would be zealotry! Thankfully I am not dismissing anything as fake, and I am attempting to (and will continue as long as you wish it in earnest) explain/show what is wrong with it right now!  One of the most fundamental issues with gravitation is that it is unvalidated speculation (at best) with no experimental or empirical support.  Newton understood that it was an unscientific idea that was never going to be experimentally validatable, but subsequent students weren't taught about it correctly/honestly/thoroughly.

Once again, I must reiterate that gravty and gravitation are seperate and distinct, contrary to popular belief/understanding

You still haven't answered where you are getting your definition of 'gravitation' from. What is your source?

You can't just redefine words and make up definitions to present as evidence for your ideas.

I hope you do not take offense, you provided me with a LOT to respond to.  I mean to respond in kind, though life gets in the way...

That's okay.
As long as you get around to responding. I didn't think you would, but you have shown I was wrong about that assumption.
I will try to be more patient next time.

Because it is an insane and unjustifiable leap to say that purely because gravity exists the earth must be spherical.  It just doesn't follow.

I have explained why it does follow. All that is left out is the exact math. But as that depends on material properties, if you wish to assert that Earth is made of some material which magical material properties, then that changes the math (by changing a value) and anything is possible.
It also depends on the matter distribution.

This is one of many paradoxes/holes in the nonsense of gravitation.  If everything pulls everything - where is the reference point?  If I am in the center of the earth, am I crushed by the weight of both sides, weightless because the forces balance, or torn apart by the massive gravity of each hemisphere?

That isn't' a paradox, nor a hole, nor does it show anything nonsensical about gravity.
I don't know exactly what you mean by reference point.
Each little bit of mass pulls things towards it.
If you want to look at a system of masses interacting, then the centre of mass is the reference point (as without an external force, the centre of mass must remain at a constant velocity). For example, for the Earth and Moon, the reference point is the Earth-Moon barycenter, which both orbit.

As for your example of a being in the centre of Earth, firstly, if you are in the direct centre of a spherically symmetric shell of mass, then the gravitational pull to each bit of mass on that shell is the same magnitude but in different directions. These all cancel each other out due to the spherical symmetry resulting in no net attraction, so there is no gravitational force acting on you.

However, there is gravitational force acting on all the matter above you (i.e. towards the outside of the sphere). This is trying to accelerate it towards the centre. To stop this, it needs a force applied to push it outwards. Without such a force it will compress the matter below it, this pressurises that matter, causing it to push in all directions, including down, compressing that below it and up, stopping the material above falling.
This means the material further out will presurise Earth and thus you will have all that force acting on you, pressurising you.
So you would be crushed by the weight of the Earth.

Just like if someone where to place a tank on top of you, or some other very heavy object, you are not crushed by your weight, by your gravitational attraction to Earth, but by that of the object with you needing to support it.

As for being ripped apart, that would be due to tidal forces, not the direct action of gravity. But at this scale they are insignificant, and more importantly, inside a spherically symetric hollow shell, regardless of wher eyou are, the net acceleration due to gravity fro that shell is 0.

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If you keep doing this, you will eventually reach a large enough pressure to cause the object to fail.

Right, and then it will crumple and fold.  No reason for spheres and that's probably a reason why we see so few of them in nature.

It will either crumple/fold/collapse into an object which is smaller than the limit, or it will continue to collapse until it is roughly spherical.

We see plenty of spheres in nature. We just also see lots of tiny object, well below the limit, being held together by electrostatic interactions which give the material compressive strength.

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This means that gravity will create a maximum size to any object, and it is only a question of what that size is.

Uh oh - that's black hole talk.

No, it wasn't meant as a discussion of black holes. It was a maximum size to any object before it necessarily be a roughly spherical shape.

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Find me an object in nature, hundreds to thousands of km wide, which is not roughly spherical.

Oceans, lakes, the sky, clouds, mountains, deserts, bedrock, valleys, hilltops... jeeze

All part of the same roughly spherical object, Earth.

What is in nature, hundreds to thousands of km wide, which IS roughly spherical?

Earth, the sun, the moon, the other planets in the solar system, the dwarf planets of the solar system, including large asteroids.
It seems plenty is large and roughly spherical.

But to find something that large, you can't be looking on Earth, you need to look off Earth.
Any sufficiently large object to be crushed by gravity that is on Earth, would become part of Earth.

It would depend on the material properties, spacing, and orientation.  A sphere - or sphere-ish is a possible outcome, I agree - but the initial shape and structure would likely need to be sphere-ish too to expect that outcome.

Nope, it doesn't matter what the initial shape is. If you have a final object that is larger than that size, it will be roughly spherical.
You can have it start larger and nothing like a sphere, and then collapse and end up smaller and still not a sphere, but that is then an object smaller than the size limit.
The only question is how spherical. If it spins it will be oblate, and if it spins fast enough you can make it squashed.

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So you should easily be able to provide one, rather than just telling me to use my imagination.

That's true! I could do that!  But why?

Because you asserted it is possible for a finite flat Earth to exist with the gravitational attraction that is observed.
And so far, you have done nothing to justify that assertion and instead just repeated it.

So if you think it is easy to do it, why not do it?

You misunderstand what models are and what they are for.  They are not for explanation (though occasionally they can be used for that), and they most certainly are not for determining the shape of any physical object with certainty.  Models are meta-scientific tools, nothing more.  All models are wrong, some are limitedly useful for a time.

Models are scientific tools.
They are used to make predictions from models to test/refine the model.
They are then also used as engineering tools to make things based upon these models.
And for other purposes, such as navigation.

It is also important scientifically to have models to develop an overall consistent view of the universe, rather than having a bunch of isolated ideas which work for what they were made up for, but cause massive problems/contradictions elsewhere.

But I do almost agree with 1 point.
All models that pass tests are approximations, which a limited range of usefulness.
And with that comes varying degrees of accuracy with the model, with the model chosen depending on the level of accuracy needed.

For example, you can model Earth as a sphere, an oblate spheroid, a geoid or following the surface topography, depending on what level of detail is needed.
But there is a big difference between an approximation, and it just being wrong.

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But a big issue with developing the model and it taking so long was new phenomenon being discovered and better measurements being able to more accurately determine things and being able to travel all over the world.

Again, no science of technology depends on the shape of the earth.

And that is not what I said. Instead a said that new things were discovered which had to be incorporated into the model, and that we have more accurate measurements now.

You misunderstand, there is no tool available to us now that lets us measure the sphericity of the entire world any more than there was then.

Sure there is. We have quite accurate surveying and mapping tools.
These allow us to make highly accurate maps of the world. Accurate to a few m or even better.
We can even map oceans.
But even mapping just continents and having a rough idea of the distances between them will allow one to show that Earth cannot be flat and instead must be roughly spherical.

Likewise, with solar filter and solar scopes, we can easily establish the sun must be very far away and quite large, from simultaneous observations of it from around Earth and throughout the day. Then using the angle to the sun we can quickly establish just how large this round Earth must be.
We can also measure things like the transit of Venus, or just the direct distance to Venus using radar to establish the size of orbits.

And if we still have satellites, or the technology to make them/go to space, we still have literal pictures from space showing us Earth and how all the continents are arranged.

Yes, it is still a large undertaking, but it is vastly easier to do now than it was to do through history.

No, hypotheses are hypotheses.  Models are models.  They are not synonyms nor interchangeable.

A hypothesis can be either an extremely simple and almost worthless statement, or an actual model. So models do have a big role in the scientific method.

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That is a very limited view.

It is an undeniable fact, bordering on tautology. There is no other method to determine the shape of physical objects with certainty.

It is a quite deniable, false assertion.
This is just an excuse to dismiss all that which isn't a direct measurement of Earth to pretend there is no justification for Earth being round.

Even mathematically it is completely unsound, where lots of questions/problems in math (at least in geometry) are about giving you some information (equivalent to a direct measurement), and using it to determine another piece of information.
And some things are defined by that.
For example, with a parabola, you don't need to directly measure it to determine it is a parabola. Instead by measuring the distance to a specific line and a specific point, from points along the parabola you can establish that it is a parabola.

Pictures make poor "measurements".  They are inferential at best and subject to many known sources of error.  Many times what is seen is not what is, and direct measurement is always required when good accuracy is as well.

The closest you have for a direct measurement of the entire Earth, are photos from space.
Direct measurement is not required for good accuracy. It depends upon what you are trying to accurately measure, and how accurately you are trying to.
In some cases, a direct measurement is more limited in accuracy than a non-direct measurement.

This is true for flat surfaces, which direct measurements of flatness is quite limited and instead optical flats using an indirect measurement of interference patterns provides a much more accurate measure.
Even the more "direct" methods still use a reference surface and measure relative to that.

the purely mathematical fiction of mass and gravitation.

You mean the evidence based gravity/gravitation that you don't like.

What is left after that discarding

Is that things just float as there is no reason for them to fall.

Matter doesn't make things fall.  The energy used to lift them does.

Already demonstrated that doesn't work as if it did, the energy used to push something to the right should cause it to move to the left.
You seemed to ignore that entirely.

Rather than conserving energy you are destroying it and creating it.

Wild is good.

Not when simply made as a claim with no justification or evidence at all.

As i keep clarifying, there is no replacement being discussed.

And as I keep pointing out, you are providing a replacement even if you don't want it to be one. Not providing a replacement would be saying we have no idea why things fall at all.
But regardless of if you want to replace it or simply reject that doesn't deal with the evidence for it.

What evidence have you seen and obtained clearly showing "gravitation" to be a real, clearly defined, and measurable entity?

The simplest is a setup akin to the cavendish experiment, which you can find all over youtube.
But less direct are all the satellites used for GPS.
And there is plenty more in the scientific literature. Unless you are planning on dismissing it all as fake?

However it isn't an entity, no more so than electomagnetism is an entity.
It doesn't need to be an entity to be real.

Once again, I must reiterate that gravty and gravitation are seperate and distinct

Pure semantics. An attempt to separate things falling from the universal attraction of mass, to pretend that one is real while the other is fake.
They are the same thing. Gravity is caused by gravitation, and gravity can also refer to gravitation in general.

Gravity is easily observable and demonstrable.  That's why it is a law!

You mean the universal law of gravitation?
A law is a mathematical relationship.
For gravity, that is either the simple F=GMm/r^2, or the much more complex GR.

Rejecting all that you just have "things fall", no constant rate (as it varies around Earth, another big thing falling being intrinsic can't explain), no explanation for the variation in rate.

And according to some, that law can be part of a hypothesis, not yet actually tested.
But to test it you need to make predictions based upon that law and then check if they match what is observed.

Thankfully I am not dismissing anything as fake

So you accept that gravity and gravitation are real? Because you sure seem to be dismissing them as fake and doing whatever you can to ignore the experimental evidence for it. You repeatedly dismiss that evidence for it when you claim it has no experimental or empirical support.

You aren't even showing anything wrong with it and instead are just trying to claim it isn't supported (by ignoring the evidence), and appealing to people not getting the history of it right and making allegedly false claims about it.

@stash

Sorry I missed your post in the shuffle!  Sadly, I owe many others responses as well...

How so?

As I've explained to timeisup, there are many configurations which could approximate the data we have for the "gravitational strength" over the known world and NOT be spherical.  This is especially true if the known bounds of the world are not the totality of it (perhaps even a minority).

Instead of working on the establishment of contrary/contradictory evidence, focus on a functional map. That is the Holy Grail for FET.

There is no reason to feel this way.  A perfect map is the "holy grail" of the cartographer.  The grail for flat earth researchers is to establish the true shape of the world and share the information with others.  Your feelings are purely your own on this one as far as I know. I know of no one, flat earth researcher or otherwise, who is actively involved with cartography (there are "geodicists" / gps geeks, but that is very different) - do you?

In any case, you cannot infer the shape of the world from a map.  Maps are not for the purpose of establishing the shape of things - unless they are topographical - and even in that case - water is not measured ( nor are most massively deep things beneath it ) for them.

As far as disposal is concerned, are you suggesting that engineers remove all gravity equations from their calculations when designing an airplane or a roller coaster and rely solely on the Archimedes Principle?

Yes to the disposal, no to relying solely on one relationship created over 2 millennia ago to build things.

Nothing like overstating the obvious in too many words. Science should focus on facts. Got it.

I am overly verbose at times, but I put some effort into choosing my words carefully.  Facts are merely what your authority tells you are facts (many of which are untrue) - science should focus on rigorous adherence to the scientific method.  The older I get, the more I side with newton and planck - experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal; all else is little more than poetry and imagination.

How is it stupid and unscientific when we apply his principles to almost everything that is engineered today? Yes, I understand this is an appeal to authority, but what isn't really? It's also an appeal to reality.

You're not really grasping my position, I'm sure not for the least of reasons that I have not yet fully conveyed it to you.  Regarding that verbosity - there is a lot to explain, and it takes time.

The equations work because weight is real.  It is NOT coincidence that when you multiply the 2 purely mathematical (non-real) entities of mass and gravity together they return to the real weight they were originally measured as by newton himself when establishing the relationships.  Do you follow?

Is there some hurdle that is preventing you from using the quote feature? When one does use it, it preserves some semblance of context and allows later readers to quickly click back to the original post to gather perhaps even more context.

The short answer is yes.  The longer answer is the quote buttons weren't displaying and I couldn't be bothered.  As for using the quote function on each and every post reply, that needlessly clutters threads and doesn't help focus the response the same way as individual lines quoted.

In any case, you cannot infer the shape of the world from a map.

Sure you can.
Maps show the locations of many points, and allows you to determine the distance between these points and the direction from one point to another. At least if you understand the type of map/projection used. This allows you to determine the shape of the object, or at least the mapped portion of it. Either with surface features if it is a topographic map, or without them and instead focusing on the underlying shape.

For example, if the multitude of globe maps are accurate, the only shape Earth can be is a shape which is roughly spherical. The accuracy of the map limits the accuracy of the shape.

And conversely, if Earth was not a globe, then the map could not be accurate all over. There would need to be massive areas which are incorrect.


As an example, consider the azimuthal equidistant projection centred on the north pole.
Based upon the properties of this map, i.e. how it works, we can know that the lines connecting the north pole to the southern "rim" which runs straight north-south, are all of equal length, and that all the circles are circles where every point is the same distance from the north pole.
Then based upon how the distance between 2 lines of longitude varies with latitude, i.e. how that scale varies, you can connect all the lines of longitude with circles placed the appropriate distance apart.
In doing so, you bend the lines of longitude into semi-circles, and end up creating a globe.

In order for it to not be a globe, the scale must be off.

Likewise, if it the same map, but as presented by FEers as a flat Earth map, which would thus have a constant scale, is correct, then the surface must be flat (by which I mean it has a Gaussian curvature of 0.
Sure, it could be one of a number of different overall shapes but they are all flat in that sense and are topologically equivalent to a flat surface.

the 2 purely mathematical (non-real) entities of mass and gravity

Why do you keep asserting that mass isn't real?
It is used in far more than just gravity.
One key thing is in the relationship F=ma.
If you apply a force to an object, you will accelerate it based upon its mass. This is used in many applications.

We also know this is not simply a scaled version of weight, because mass is the same even when gravity varies and thus weight varies.

So mass is without a doubt real.
Likewise, we can measure just how quickly objects will accelerate on Earth, so again, gravitational acceleration is without a doubt real.
And that acceleration and mass combine to give weight. Or alternatively, the mass and weight combine to give the acceleration.

But again, they are not entities, just like weight isn't an entity.

5. Weight is an intrinsic and inexorable property of all matter.  It is not imbued by fictional fields of any kind. It is a property of the matter itself, as archimedes understood and described.  Archimedes principle provides the backbone for the mathematical description and experimental proof of the cause of gravity (the law, not the theory of gravitation!).

I always thought that weight and mass are separate, and that's why in science, we always measure mass in kg and weight in Newtons.
The new definition of mass the 'kg' is calculated using the Planck's constant 'h', the speed of light 'c' and the frequency of the caesium-133 atom. It has nothing to do with weight. 

5. Weight is an intrinsic and inexorable property of all matter.  It is not imbued by fictional fields of any kind. It is a property of the matter itself, as archimedes understood and described.  Archimedes principle provides the backbone for the mathematical description and experimental proof of the cause of gravity (the law, not the theory of gravitation!).

You have it exactly wrong. Mass is a property of matter.  Weight is determined by the attraction of the earth. On the moon your weight is less than it is on earth; on Jupiter it would be much greater.  But your mass is the same in all three situations.

In any case, you cannot infer the shape of the world from a map.

Well you can definitely infer that the shape is not flat because when cartographers made measurements of distances between distant points and tried to lay them out on a flat sheet of paper, they couldn't.

@unconvinced

Sorry for the late response! Good things take time; hopefully that is your experience as well.

Mass is the intrinsic property, it’s a scalar quantity (ie has no direction).  Weight is the force on a mass due to gravity (the Newtonian version).  Forces are vector quantities and consist of both magnitude and direction.  That’s what’s missing from Flat Earther attempts to somehow just ignore gravity.  You’re missing a reason for down to be down.  At least the UA proponents understand that much.

This is a common misconception.  There is no "reason" supplied in any available conception.  It simply is - it is natural law, and that is how and what natural law is.  We accept it because we must, and nature provides no clear reason for anything.  What is the reason for matter, or spatial dimension, or the 2nd law of thermodynamics? We may never have satisfying answers to any of those questions (that is NOT to say we shouldn't try!), but we survive and science progresses anyhow.

Scientism is just a silly word used by people who want to arbitrarily dismiss any scientific findings they don’t like or don’t understand.

No, though it may be misused this way.  People use words incorrectly all the time, and it is more difficult with informal words like this because personal definitions can vary wildly.  Honestly, I am not sure who coined the term or what their particular definition was - I'll check into that and get back to you.

Scientism is the worship of science.  The veneration and idolization of a mundane technical process and its practitioners/acolytes/spokesmen. 

It manifests itself in many harmful ways, one of which is the national coercion/"peer pressure" to subject yourself to a bleeding edge experimental vaccine which well may not be effective and has serious permanent (death and worse) side effects for an unknown percentage of the participants of this mass vaccine trial (the likes of which the world has never seen and no sane doctor in history would ever support - even facing something truly horrible and scary - such as ebola for instance).

All for the worship of "science" and the trust in those that peddle it for personal profit.

And Newton proposed a few simple equations that near perfectly describe and explain the motions of all objects observed in the solar system, at the same time as explaining why things fall down in earth.  Two things Flat Earthers are unable to explain hundreds of years later. 

Again, you misunderstand.  The equations were created to describe, mathematically, the heavens.  It is not a coincidence, or somehow prophetic/significant as you are misrepresenting, that it is what it was intended to be.  You can mathematically describe the lights in the sky in many ways.  Newtons is one of many - and turned out to be wrong in many significant ways.

That on Earth, there is a downward force acting on all mass is absolutely fundamental to mechanical and structural engineering. 

It is laughable that you think this, but it is a commonly taught and held view.  It stupidly suggests that before the late 1700's (early 18's at least, in truth), people couldn't build anything mechanically and structurally complex/large/difficult.  Weight is what is acting on the structure, weight from the structure above it.  Ancient men were not fools, and had no need for fictional "gravitational fields" anymore than we do today.

So our technology is designed and built accounting for gravity.

Completely incorrect.  Nothing is.  Perhaps you could provide an example and your reasoning?  In the case of a mechanical accelerometer or scale - you may argue this (disingenuously/hollowly), but scales measure weight (even when they are very small and measure the weight in a novel way, like some mechanical accelerometers).

If you want to be objective and scientific, maybe you should learn about the concepts you claim can be disposed of?

Why do you presume that I haven't? Most all people are required to learn about these concepts in some depth (with truancy officers, one might say - at gunpoint), do you think it is ONLY possible to consider alternatives if you haven't learned the mainstream/consensus view (because of how OBVIOUSLY right consensus views undeniably always are?)

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If you want to be objective and scientific, maybe you should learn about the concepts you claim can be disposed of?

Why do you presume that I haven't?

Your entire post history?

Most all people are required to learn about these concepts in some depth (with truancy officers, one might say - at gunpoint), do you think it is ONLY possible to consider alternatives if you haven't learned the mainstream/consensus view (because of how OBVIOUSLY right consensus views undeniably always are?)

If you tell me 1+1=3 and you indeed learned the mainstream/consensus view at gunpoint (how dramatic!), but have an 'alternative' view... all you're proving is that you do not in fact understand math.

If you think the Earth is flat and science is all wrong and gravity is actually 'gravitation' then the only conclusion is that no you have not learned and understood these concepts.

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Mass is the intrinsic property, it’s a scalar quantity (ie has no direction).  Weight is the force on a mass due to gravity (the Newtonian version).  Forces are vector quantities and consist of both magnitude and direction.  That’s what’s missing from Flat Earther attempts to somehow just ignore gravity.  You’re missing a reason for down to be down.  At least the UA proponents understand that much.

This is a common misconception.

No, it is a fact due to the different ways mass manifests.
It is not simply a force to move the object down, i.e. weight.
Instead it is a resistance to motion.
And as pointed out already, the fact that resistance remains the same while weight varies shows it is not simply a manifestation of weight.

There is no "reason" supplied in any available conception.  It simply is - it is natural law, and that is how and what natural law is.  We accept it because we must, and nature provides no clear reason for anything.

No, it's not. This is because the rate of acceleration varies across Earth, even in a vacuum.

If it was a natural law, it would be the same everywhere.

Nature also provides a clear reason, or at least part of it, Earth is down.
We can also see this with other planets with moons, where we can observe the moons orbit the planets.

We may never have satisfying answers to any of those questions (that is NOT to say we shouldn't try!)

And we have tried with things falling and come up with a much better reason than "just because" which also matches other observations.

It manifests itself in many harmful ways, one of which is the national coercion/"peer pressure" to subject yourself to a bleeding edge experimental vaccine which well may not be effective and has serious permanent (death and worse) side effects for an unknown percentage of the participants of this mass vaccine trial (the likes of which the world has never seen and no sane doctor in history would ever support - even facing something truly horrible and scary - such as ebola for instance).

Except it has had trials which show it is effective. It's likely danger is minimal, much less than getting the virus.
And for an example from history, how about the smallpox vaccine, which was initial infecting people with cowpox?
It comes down to a cost/benefit analysis, which includes the risk of what happens with and without the vaccine, both to people and the economy.

Doctors, who understand the risks of not using a vaccine, understandably want a vaccine, and understand that the risks it presents are far less than those of the virus.
This also includes how contagious the virus is and how it spreads.
Ebola is relatively benign in that aspect as it requires direct contact with bodily fluids. It is not airborne. People with Ebola are unlikely to just casually transmit it to other people.
SARS-CoV-2 is much more transmissible as it is airborne. You can merely walk past someone who has it (who hasn't even started displaying symptoms yet), and have them breathe and you can catch it.

So a vaccine for Ebola is not a big concern as it is relatively easy to manage its transmission. But it is quite difficult to manage the transmission of SARS-CoV-2

My big concern is how effective the vaccines are against new strains.

Again, you misunderstand.  The equations were created to describe, mathematically, the heavens.

From what I have read, they were created to explain the motion, not merely describe the motion.
We already had Kepler's laws to describe the motion.
Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation could then be used to derive Kepler's laws.

turned out to be wrong in many significant ways.

Other than it being an approximation for the low energy limit (including how it ignores the influence of energy such as light), in what ways was it wrong?

but scales measure weight (even when they are very small and measure the weight in a novel way, like some mechanical accelerometers).

Accelerometers measure acceleration, due to the resistance of motion of a mass. They are not measuring weight due to the simple fact that it works in all directions.
The "weight" they do measure is due to an equivalence, at the local level, with gravitational attraction and acceleration.

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If you want to be objective and scientific, maybe you should learn about the concepts you claim can be disposed of?

Why do you presume that I haven't? Most all people are required to learn about these concepts in some depth (with truancy officers, one might say - at gunpoint), do you think it is ONLY possible to consider alternatives if you haven't learned the mainstream/consensus view (because of how OBVIOUSLY right consensus views undeniably always are?)

You can consider alternatives all the time. But that isn't what you are doing. You are not merely considering the alternatives. Instead you are outright declaring these mainstream concepts to be false beyond any doubt, with no rational justification at all.

And your claims further show this, with how you want to pretend gravity and gravitation and fundamentally different things, how you claim that gravity in its entirety can be replaced with acceleration, and all the evidence for gravity is thus evidence for UA; how you claim that gravity is entirely unsupported; how you claim that a map would be useless in determining the shape of Earth; how you claim an object at the centre of a planet is a paradox for gravity and act like no one knows what should happen to it; how you claim the only way to determine the shape of Earth is direct measurement of it; how you repeatedly claim weight is an intrinsic property and mass is fictional; and so on.

I could go on for some time with various things you have said which are completely false and show you either do not understand what you are talking about, or are knowing spouting fiction.

@jackblack

"You would still need an actual reason."

No, we would still WANT to understand a reason, there is a difference.

"Is there anything holding them down?"
 
Yes, the weight above them and that they are comprised of.

"You need an explanation for the directionality."

We want an explanation, not need.  Life and science continue to go on without such explanations currently.  Most natural laws do not have explanation.  They are effectively scientific bedrock.

"We clearly have examples of expending energy to move an object, yet it doesn't cause it to go back the other way."

Yes, no one is saying things always "go back the other way" when you put them in disequilibrium.

"Why does lifting an object take energy"

Because matter is heavy!  This is because matter has weight, which is an inexorable and intrinsic property that all known matter has.

"Just what is this energy in your "weight makes things go down"?"

The energy for falling comes directly from lifting, in accordance with the conservation of energy.

Belief is something you think is true, but cannot prove or demonstrate.

Knowledge is something you think is true, but can prove or demonstrate.

"What you are thinking of is faith."

Faith is when you are conditioned to believe that blind/unvalidated belief is a fine substitute for knowledge.  It isn't, regardless of context (classroom, church etc.)

"How wasn't he [newton, a scientist]?"

You mean OTHER than introducing the mathematical personification of the judeo-christian god into physics equation?  He was a scholar, not a scientist - though he did dabble in science.

"So whose [idea for gravity] was it?"

Epicurus.

"So what was the whole F=GMm/r^2 thing? That sure seems to be a hypothesis."

It is a mathematical relationship created long after newton's death.  It is also not a hypothesis - that has a definition.

"The 2 are not simply equivalent in the sense of you can just reject gravity and replace it entirely with UA."

Of course they are.  That's what convention reversals are - typically a simple change of sign (positive/negative) and nothing else.  The science and mathematics work identically.

"UA postulates that Earth accelerates upwards instead of gravity pulling us down. But with a round Earth this would be Earth accelerates outwards. This would mean that it would grow over time, drastically increasing its size and isolating parts of Earth from other parts in short order."

This is only one possible interpretation/rationalization, though I get your point.  One could do as the priests of astronomy/astrophysics do and simply claim that all of reality is doing this "expansion"/"acceleration" and there is no way to test this completely real thing that is definitely happening (trust me, wink wink

"It would also mean that a satellite wouldn't maintain an orbit."

Let's leave those out for the time being, unless you insist.  They are an exception, not the rule.  Once again, if all of space expands...

"Likewise it in no way addresses cavendish."

Cavendish is another kettle of fish, but well worth studying / discussing.  For a die hard UA, you might simply accept/rationalize/interpret that the apparent attraction is in fact caused by real repulsion (or is an unrelated phenomenon) - just like gravity appears to be a force pulling down.

"You cannot simply reject gravity and replace it with UA, it simply doesn't work."

Of course it does, it is mostly a simple sign change.

"This raises serious questions for how all that is achieved and makes UA extremely complicated."

I mostly agree. This is a failure/valid criticism of the current presumptive model as well.  It's all far too complicated to calculate (three body problem), and the universe couldn't calculate it any better than we could.  It is intractable, which is a strong indicator for illogical garbage having no reality.

"And they can all be ruled out."

I am not convinced, though steps can be taken to limit them - I agree.  One of the troubles here is the infinitesimal effect.  It is SO minuscule, many minor factors (which cannot be eliminated satisfactorily, as you suggest) could be the cause.  Experimentally, this has never been established as gravitation is unscientific fiction with no reality.  It cannot be measured or manipulated, so it cannot be shown to be real in any way.  It is not even defined rigorously enough to begin to do so, if one were so inclined.

"If Earth was flat, we would have a vastly different time setup."

There is no reason to think this.

If the earth is flat, then everything we experience/build/use occurs on a flat earth.  This tautology is tellingly difficult for the indoctrinated to grasp.

No, we would still WANT to understand a reason, there is a difference.

Semantics. The point is the "reason" you provided doesn't work.
But again, as it varies across Earth, there must be something causing it to vary, and thus there should be a reason. Likewise, there is a specific directionality which needs some reason.

Yes, the weight above them and that they are comprised of.

This is entirely circular. That weight is the very thing you are mean to be explaining.
You can't appeal to its weight to explain its weight.

"You need an explanation for the directionality."
We want an explanation, not need.  Life and science continue to go on without such explanations currently.  Most natural laws do not have explanation.

No, it doesn't.
Science operates under the assumption that the universe is isotropic, that three is no preferred direction.
Anytime something has a directionality, there is an explanation for it.
Things don't just fall down. They fall towards Earth (or towards whatever massive object that is nearby). Light bends due to a change in the refractive index of the mediums that it passes through.
Electrons are attracted towards positive charges.

In each case, there is a justification for the directionality.

And again, the natural laws you appeal to are the fundamental forces, which have a mathematical relation, and a clear directionality.

What you are proposing is nothing like that.

Yes, no one is saying things always "go back the other way" when you put them in disequilibrium.

That was a justification you provided for why things fall.
So you are arguing against yourself here.

"Why does lifting an object take energy"
Because matter is heavy!  This is because matter has weight

Circular reasoning yet again.

Belief is something you think is true, but cannot prove or demonstrate.

No, Belief is something you think is true. It doesn't matter if you can prove or demonstrate it.
Knowledge is justified, true belief.
You must believe something in order to know it.

Faith is when you are conditioned to believe

No, Faith is believing something without evidence.

You mean OTHER than introducing the mathematical personification of the judeo-christian god into physics equation?

And just why you do think it had anything to do with any god?
And was this also his laws of motion? Or just gravity?

Epicurus.

This seems to be the old idea of just things fall down. Nothing like what Newton had.

"F=GMm/r^2"
It is a mathematical relationship created long after newton's death. It is also not a hypothesis - that has a definition.

It is a key part of a hypothesis, and in context clearly is one. Gravity is a force which is proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them squared.
A very clear hypothesis.
And we can see the various parts in Principia Mathematica, a work BY NEWTON.
It may not be stated exactly as "F=GMm/r^2", but it is clearly there:
"reciprocally as the squares of the distances of the places of those planets from that centre."
"reciprocally as the square of the distance of places from the centre of the planet"
And the like repeated in several locations, clearly showing the 1/r^2 relationship.

"are proportional to the quantities of matter which they severally contain."
"that the gravity tending towards all the planets is proportional to the matter which they contain."
Showing the dependence on mass (which he called quantities of matter).

It sure seems like everything needed for F=GMm/r^2 is in there, with clear hypotheses which could be tested (at least hypothetically, you would need sufficient experimental accuracy to be able to).

"The 2 are not simply equivalent in the sense of you can just reject gravity and replace it entirely with UA."
Of course they are.

No, they aren't.
I have clearly explained why. This is why people say you have no idea what you are talking about.
How about instead of repeatedly asserting the same nonsense, you actually address the refutation of that nonsense?

Like I said before, they are only equivalent for a LOCAL reference frame.
This is a frame where g does not vary.
i.e. for a tiny portion of Earth's surface, where g is directly effectively parallel down with a magnitude of 9.8 m/s^2, they are equivalent.
But for Earth in its entirety, where the magnitude and directionality of g varies, THEY ARE NOT EQUIVALENT!

This is because if you take the entire reference frame and accelerate it to try to eliminate g in one location, you just make it worse for other locations.
For example, if the "top" and "bottom" both have a magnitude of 9.8 m/s^2, and the top has it pointing down while the bottom has it pointing up, so signed you have -9.8 m/s^2 and 9.8 m/s^2.

If you now try to use acceleration to make it equivalent, by accelerating the entire reference frame up, then at the top you are fine, and now viewing from the outside g=0. But for the bottom you now have g=19.6 m/s^2.

So no, the 2 are not equivalent.

claim that all of reality is doing this "expansion"/"acceleration"

Which would first mean you aren't simply replacing gravity with UA, and instead need to throw in more. And more importantly, if it is the expansion of space, we would still be able to measure an increase in size of Earth, and it wouldn't cause an apparent acceleration down towards Earth. If anything, the expansion of space would make us appear to accelerate away from Earth, as the space between us and Earth expands.

What you actually need is for the space around Earth to be contracting, at which point you basically have GR, not UA.

Either way, it means UA is not just a drop in replacement for gravity and thus the evidence for gravity is not evidence for UA.

"It would also mean that a satellite wouldn't maintain an orbit."
Let's leave those out for the time being, unless you insist.

No, lets not.
They are a key part of why UA is NOT EQUIVALENT to gravity.

you might simply accept/rationalize/interpret that the apparent attraction is in fact caused by real repulsion

And regardless of if that works or not, you still need something extra. Not simply UA.

Of course it does, it is mostly a simple sign change.

Again, I have clearly demonstrated that is not the case.

This is a failure/valid criticism of the current presumptive model as well.

No it isn't.
The current model has an explanation for why g varies.
There is variation in the density of Earth causing small local variations, there is the rotation of Earth which causes it to be oblate and cause larger variations, and there are tidal effects which also cause minor variations.

This is nothing like UA which has no real explanation at all for so many points.

It's all far too complicated to calculate (three body problem)

The 3 body problem is merely the fact that in general 3 bodies attracting each other via a simple inverse square law do not have a simple solution.
For 2 bodies there is the simple solution of them orbiting their common barycentre in ellipses.
It isn't too complicated to calculate. It is just no simple solution.

the universe couldn't calculate it any better than we could

Why not?
The universe seems to be quite good at integrating, even with complex equations with no simple solution.

It is intractable, which is a strong indicator for illogical garbage having no reality.

The only illogical garbage here is your dismissal of gravity with complete misrepresentation of it.

Experimentally, this has never been established as gravitation is unscientific fiction with no reality.  It cannot be measured or manipulated, so it cannot be shown to be real in any way.  It is not even defined rigorously enough to begin to do so, if one were so inclined.

You keep using this word 'gravitation' but have yet to explain or define it.

What exactly is the source for this 'gravitation' term of yours?   

Gravity is very well defined, explained and we can predict and work with it to an extremely precise degree. Well enough to send spacecraft to the far reaches of the solar system and predict the orbits of planets, asteroids and comets. I'm unaware of any theory of 'gravitation' that can do the same.

Also note that the 3 body problem applies to ALL forces of nature, not just gravity.
For example, while we can perfectly solve the Schrodinger equation for a simple hydrogen atom with a single proton and a single electron, we can't get a simple solution for anything else.
We can get a very good approximation if we only have 1 electron, regardless of what is in the nucleolus, but throw in a single second electron and all that goes out the window.

So do you discard all forces, or is it just gravity you hate so much due to its connection to the shape of Earth.

One of the troubles here is the infinitesimal effect.

It isn't infinitesimal.
We are talking about a variation in g of ~0.05 m/s^2. This is quite large compared to what we can measure. It is also quite significant.
After a day (86400 seconds) this variation would cause a variation in distance of ~187 Mm.

So this is a massive variation which would tear Earth apart in less than a day.

Buoyancy is insignificant, especially when you use a vacuum.
Remember, the buoyant force on an object is given by F=-g*rho(f)*v.
Meanwhile, the force due to gravity is given by F=g*rho(o)*v
So the total force is F=g*rho(f)*v-g*rho(o)*v = g*v*(rho(o)-rho(f)).
And the acceleration (what is actually measured) given by a=F/(rho(o)*v)
This means a=g*v*(rho(o)-rho(f))/F/(rho(o)*v)
=g*(rho(o)-rho(f))/rho(o).

And without the buoyant force we instead have a=g = g*rho(o)/rho(o)
This means the difference is:
Deltaa = g*rho(o)/rho(o) - g*(rho(o)-rho(f))/rho(o). = g*rho(f)/rho(o)

So even if you were using air, instead of a vacuum, with a density of roughly 1.2 kg/m^3, with a steel ball with a density of roughly 8000 kg/m^3, you are looking at a difference of 0.00147 m/s^2. Quite a lot smaller than the observed variation of 0.05 m/s^2.
But more importantly, that would be a difference between a perfect vacuum and air.
In order for this to explain the observed variations across Earth, you are looking for variations in that difference.
So what you actually need is a difference in density to give a difference.
And with that variation of 0.05 m/s^2, that would be a variation in density of roughly 40 kg/m^3, for steel. This would also vary with the material used.
If instead you used water, you only need a variation in density of 5 kg/m^3.

Meanwhile, if you use a vacuum at a very low pressure, say 1 mbar, then you cut that difference by a factor of 1 thousand, and there is no hope of having that explain it.

The error due to difference in the buoyant force is miniscule and has no chance of explaining the variation in g across Earth.

Seismic activity has a completely different reason.
This activity is not continuously up nor down. If it was, it would tear Earth apart.
Instead it varies. If this was the cause, then at times you would get larger values of g and at times you would get smaller.

So no, it doesn't explain it either.

Also note that unless you have a reason for these causes to vary systematically across Earth, you would expect it to fluctuate, such that some times the poles would appear to have stronger gravity and sometimes weaker gravity.

So how about instead of just asserting it can be explained, you actually try to.

Because we know that the air pressure isn't going to be an issue due to units sealed in a vacuum. We know it isn't seismic activity as that would tear Earth apart. There are also non-magnetic versions and versions which are shielded from magnetism. There is even temperature compensation or control.  They also have tilt sensors and that can be corrected for by levelling the instrument, or just by taking multiple measurements to correct for tilt.

Experimentally, this has never been established as gravitation is unscientific fiction with no reality.  It cannot be measured or manipulated, so it cannot be shown to be real in any way.  It is not even defined rigorously enough to begin to do so, if one were so inclined.

Youi discarding it and all the evidence in no way impacts reality.
It has been established quite conclusively, with plenty of evidence to support it.
It has been shown to be real beyond any sane doubt.
Just like mass, which you also dismiss.

Again, the fact that weight varies, while mass doesn't, shows weight is not the intrinsic property, mass is.

"If Earth was flat, we would have a vastly different time setup."
If the earth is flat

Notice the difference between what I said and what you said?
I said if Earth WAS flat, because we know it isn't.
You said if Earth IS flat.
You start with the baseless assumption that Earth is flat, and use it to conclude that whatever is seen is what you would expect on a flat Earth, to dismiss the things which show Earth isn't flat.

We grasp this circular reasoning quite easily, we just discard it as illogical garbage.
Instead, we accept that what is observed in reality is inconsistent with a flat Earth and use that to discard the idea of a flat Earth as not matching reality.

The fact that Earth is not flat makes your tautology unsound.

One such example is how time works, especially with sunrise and sun set.
The observation of sunrise and sunset shows that the sun would go below a flat Earth, just like in the ancient FE models which have more in common with todays RE model than todays horribly flawed FE models.
What this means is that the sun would rise for pretty much the entire Earth at once and set at once.
And the fact that it's apparent size does not vary throughout the day nor with location on Earth shows it must be quite far away from Earth, many times the size of Earth.
This means it would appear in roughly the same location for everyone on Earth.
This means there would be a single time zone for all of Earth.

Meanwhile, with a RE, only roughly half would be illuminated by the sun at any time, giving rise to time zones.
And the inclination of Earth w.r.t. its orbit means that the half which is illuminated will appear to rock back and forth, causing the time of sunrise and sunset to vary throughout the year, causing people to invent DST.

Now, some FEers try to get out of that by appealing to a spotlight sun, but that doesn't explain the observed patterns of illumination and darkness. For example, with the common NP centred map, and a simple spotlight sun, you cannot illuminate half the equator, without having also illuminating the north pole. That would mean the north pole would be perpetually in daylight never having any night.
It also fails to explain sunrise and sunset.
And during the equinox, you need a semi-circle for the spotlight pattern.
It also has no chance of explaining why the further south you go during the southern summer you have more hours of daylight, and the sun appears to rise from south of east.

You need so much extra convoluted BS to make it work (and this convoluted BS goes directly against other claimed evidence for a FE), when a RE explains it so simply.

So because Earth IS round, we have the time setup that we do.
If earth WAS flat, the time setup would be vastly different and much easier.

For such an example, consider the Minecraft overworld. The entire world has day at the same time, and night at the same time. The sun and moon have identical positions regardless of where in the world you are. That is the kind of time setup we could enjoy if Earth WAS flat.

And I see that there are still lots of points you haven't addressed, but I will give you time to do so.

@jackblack

"You would still need an actual reason."

No, we would still WANT to understand a reason, there is a difference.

"Is there anything holding them down?"
 
Yes, the weight above them and that they are comprised of.

"You need an explanation for the directionality."

We want an explanation, not need.  Life and science continue to go on without such explanations currently.  Most natural laws do not have explanation.  They are effectively scientific bedrock.

"We clearly have examples of expending energy to move an object, yet it doesn't cause it to go back the other way."

Yes, no one is saying things always "go back the other way" when you put them in disequilibrium.

"Why does lifting an object take energy"

Because matter is heavy!  This is because matter has weight, which is an inexorable and intrinsic property that all known matter has.

"Just what is this energy in your "weight makes things go down"?"

The energy for falling comes directly from lifting, in accordance with the conservation of energy.

Belief is something you think is true, but cannot prove or demonstrate.

Knowledge is something you think is true, but can prove or demonstrate.

"What you are thinking of is faith."

Faith is when you are conditioned to believe that blind/unvalidated belief is a fine substitute for knowledge.  It isn't, regardless of context (classroom, church etc.)

"How wasn't he [newton, a scientist]?"

You mean OTHER than introducing the mathematical personification of the judeo-christian god into physics equation?  He was a scholar, not a scientist - though he did dabble in science.

"So whose [idea for gravity] was it?"

Epicurus.

"So what was the whole F=GMm/r^2 thing? That sure seems to be a hypothesis."

It is a mathematical relationship created long after newton's death.  It is also not a hypothesis - that has a definition.

"The 2 are not simply equivalent in the sense of you can just reject gravity and replace it entirely with UA."

Of course they are.  That's what convention reversals are - typically a simple change of sign (positive/negative) and nothing else.  The science and mathematics work identically.

"UA postulates that Earth accelerates upwards instead of gravity pulling us down. But with a round Earth this would be Earth accelerates outwards. This would mean that it would grow over time, drastically increasing its size and isolating parts of Earth from other parts in short order."

This is only one possible interpretation/rationalization, though I get your point.  One could do as the priests of astronomy/astrophysics do and simply claim that all of reality is doing this "expansion"/"acceleration" and there is no way to test this completely real thing that is definitely happening (trust me, wink wink

"It would also mean that a satellite wouldn't maintain an orbit."

Let's leave those out for the time being, unless you insist.  They are an exception, not the rule.  Once again, if all of space expands...

"Likewise it in no way addresses cavendish."

Cavendish is another kettle of fish, but well worth studying / discussing.  For a die hard UA, you might simply accept/rationalize/interpret that the apparent attraction is in fact caused by real repulsion (or is an unrelated phenomenon) - just like gravity appears to be a force pulling down.

"You cannot simply reject gravity and replace it with UA, it simply doesn't work."

Of course it does, it is mostly a simple sign change.

"This raises serious questions for how all that is achieved and makes UA extremely complicated."

I mostly agree. This is a failure/valid criticism of the current presumptive model as well.  It's all far too complicated to calculate (three body problem), and the universe couldn't calculate it any better than we could.  It is intractable, which is a strong indicator for illogical garbage having no reality.

"And they can all be ruled out."

I am not convinced, though steps can be taken to limit them - I agree.  One of the troubles here is the infinitesimal effect.  It is SO minuscule, many minor factors (which cannot be eliminated satisfactorily, as you suggest) could be the cause.  Experimentally, this has never been established as gravitation is unscientific fiction with no reality.  It cannot be measured or manipulated, so it cannot be shown to be real in any way.  It is not even defined rigorously enough to begin to do so, if one were so inclined.

"If Earth was flat, we would have a vastly different time setup."

There is no reason to think this.

If the earth is flat, then everything we experience/build/use occurs on a flat earth.  This tautology is tellingly difficult for the indoctrinated to grasp.

That is most defiantly not the case.

The arguments you use are very narrow forgetting about how interconnected everything is. Take away the spherical shape of the earth then you have to invent a totally new physics regarding not only planetary formation but providing explanations as to how a flat earth would produce a magnetic field and why gravity is not constant across the surface of the earth but is variable dependant on altitude and location. Lets not forget plate tectonics, subduction, the shifting continents molten interior etc etc..... You would also have to provide explanations to the very existence and variability of the earth magnetic field, producing new laws for electro dynamics along the way, and explain how seismic research, sending sound waves through the planet all point to its inner structure being spherical. I don't see how the earth as we know and experience it could be flat.
How would you explain the difference between the lack of any other flat structure in the solar system, what forces would produce seven spherical planets along with hundreds of spherical moons and one flat planet! Why were the laws of physics out to lunch when the earth formed? Mars is good example of what happens when a planetary body looses most of its magnetic field, the solar wind strips away any atmosphere and any water boils off into space. According to what we know about magnetic field generation a flat stationary earth would simply not be capable of producing a magnetic field. Take away our magnetic field and all life on earth would be no more.

How do you explain the formation of a flat planet that is capable of generating a magnetic field? What are the mechanisms you are suggesting that are currently unknown to science?

@jja

Everyone who has been up there has seen it with their own eyes

So we are told on tv, yes.  Forget the fact that those liars can't even keep what they "saw" straight or consistent in any way.  Can you see stars in space? Even (perhaps especially) those that claim to have been can't seem to get their answer straight - for no less than half a century...

But not you.

Not US, brother or sister - not us.

So I'm sure you also dispute the existence of ... the Nile

No, that would just be de-nile. Yuk, yuk, yuk.

I mostly side with sagan on this one.  Outrageous claims require outrageous evidence, mundane ones can typically be satisfied with commensurately mundane ones.

There is (almost) no more outrageous claim being made in earnest than "I have broken the surly bonds of earth, and touched the face of god".

If you throw out every fact that you have not personally verified with your own eyes... then you live in a very tiny world where you know almost nothing.

Only if you live a lousy, boring, experience-less "virtual" life.  In any case, it is our personal responsibility to verify facts (a subjective and varied personal process) as true before accepting them.  Sadly we were not taught to do this in school (merely to believe, and to repeat), and come to websites like this to build those skills.

And if you don't know anything, you certainly aren't an authority on the shape of world which remains a mystery to you.

I don't know what the true shape of the world is, but I know LOTS of things!

You choosing to not believe any facts related to the Earth being round isn't proof of anything but your own opinion.

Belief is not welcome in this subject (and most others).  Facts are merely what your "authority" arbitrarily tells you are facts - though you have hit the nail on the head in that many/most of them require belief.  This requisite belief is unacceptable, and across purposes to knowledge and education.

A fact is either demonstrably correct/true/consistent with reality or it isn't.  Belief in a fact, one way (positive) or another (negative) is unwelcome and across purposes.

@jja

Quote

Everyone who has been up there has seen it with their own eyes

So we are told on tv, yes.  Forget the fact that those liars can't even keep what they "saw" straight or consistent in any way.  Can you see stars in space? Even (perhaps especially) those that claim to have been can't seem to get their answer straight - for no less than half a century...

So you think that every one of the over 400 people who say they have been to space are liars along with NASA and the government and a dozen other space agencies. All liars because you don't understand how human vision works. Or stars. Right.

I went over this worn out hoaxer trope on the other site, which never got a response, so not bothering to do with you it again.

Quote

So I'm sure you also dispute the existence of ... the Nile

No, that would just be de-nile. Yuk, yuk, yuk.

I mostly side with sagan on this one.  Outrageous claims require outrageous evidence, mundane ones can typically be satisfied with commensurately mundane ones.

There is (almost) no more outrageous claim being made in earnest than "I have broken the surly bonds of earth, and touched the face of god".

I'd say the claim that the Earth is flat despite all evidence to the contrary is farm more outrageous. 

So you are retreating back to the argument of incredulity. You just don't have the imagination to understand or believe we can go into space, therefore millions of people are perpetuating a massive hoax. All because it's beyond your ability to grasp the concept.

I see you also dodged my question. Do you believe in the Nile? Do you think it exists? Have you seen it with your own eyes?

Quote

If you throw out every fact that you have not personally verified with your own eyes... then you live in a very tiny world where you know almost nothing.

Only if you live a lousy, boring, experience-less "virtual" life.  In any case, it is our personal responsibility to verify facts (a subjective and varied personal process) as true before accepting them.  Sadly we were not taught to do this in school (merely to believe, and to repeat), and come to websites like this to build those skills.

So because I believe the Nile is real despite never having been there, I lead some kind of boring experience-less life?

My world extends beyond the four walls I can see, you seem to live in a dark, strange world where you can only understand what's right in front of you. How limited.

Quote

And if you don't know anything, you certainly aren't an authority on the shape of world which remains a mystery to you.

I don't know what the true shape of the world is, but I know LOTS of things!

I'm sure you know lots of things, all the best things, so many things. But only if you can lick them.

But being unable to figure out the shape of the planet you live on is pretty sad. How confusing the world must be, having no understanding of even the basic shape of it.

Luckily the rest of us are here to build your comfy home and computer for you to type on and teach us all the things you know. But wait... since we can't trust anything we don't see or touch, I guess everything you say is wrong.  Good to know there is nothing to learn from you.

Quote

You choosing to not believe any facts related to the Earth being round isn't proof of anything but your own opinion.

Belief is not welcome in this subject (and most others).  Facts are merely what your "authority" arbitrarily tells you are facts - though you have hit the nail on the head in that many/most of them require belief.  This requisite belief is unacceptable, and across purposes to knowledge and education.

A fact is either demonstrably correct/true/consistent with reality or it isn't.  Belief in a fact, one way (positive) or another (negative) is unwelcome and across purposes.

My authority is the combined knowledge, experience and records of the entire human race. There is no 'authority" telling me what to believe, no King of Science or Pope of Space that is controlling the world.

The Earth being round is consistent with reality. Sorry it rubs you the wrong way, or it just boggles your mind to the point it short circuits, but just because you can't grasp the sheer size and wonder of the world and universe we live in is your problem, not the universes.

Forget the fact that those liars can't even keep what they "saw" straight or consistent in any way.

And there you go with more baseless assertions.
What makes you think they are liars? Because they don't agree with you?

Can you see stars in space?

The answer to that is quite similar to the question "Can you see stars on Earth?"
The answer is that it depends.
In some circumstances you can, in some you can't.
If you have a bright light in your face, you can't. If you are surrounded by darkness you can.

That doesn't make it inconsistent.

Outrageous claims require outrageous evidence, mundane ones can typically be satisfied with commensurately mundane ones.

Yes, so an outrageous claim that there is a massive global conspiracy dedicated to hiding the real shape of Earth, with no motivation at all, certainly needs a lot of evidence.
Likewise, all the nonsense required to try to make the FE work, in contrast to the far simpler RE model, requires lots of evidence.

There is (almost) no more outrageous claim being made in earnest than "I have broken the surly bonds of earth, and touched the face of god".

Yes, because gods are most certainly fiction. Now who made that claim?

Meanwhile, the mere claim that people have left Earth and gone into space is a fairly minor claim to anyone who actually understands the physics involved. It isn't special or outrageous. Not really any more so than people claiming they are getting into large metal objects which then leave the ground. (i.e. planes). (And for added fun, the poem you are likely misquoting from, was about planes flying, just very high for their time, at roughly 10 km above the surface, not about space).

And there is plenty of evidence for things in space, such as the satellites which can observed, either as points of light, in particular locations which are quite distinct if you know what you are looking for, and at least 1 which is resolvable.
Then there is further support for satellites with the data they send back, including the use of GPS and plenty of photos from space.
And of course, all the people witnessing the rocket launches, and videos showing the launch from ground to space.
And of course the witness testimony.

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If you throw out every fact that you have not personally verified with your own eyes... then you live in a very tiny world where you know almost nothing.

Only if you live a lousy, boring, experience-less "virtual" life.

No, regardless of how you live.
There is so much you would need to do to verify so many facts, especially as some cannot be directly verified with the eyes. Compared to all that humanity knows, you would know virtually nothing, even if you spent your entire life trying to verify everything.

In any case, it is our personal responsibility to verify facts (a subjective and varied personal process) as true before accepting them.

No, not to conclusively verify them. That is only if your extremely paranoid.
Again, if you tried doing that, humanity would never progress.
Our knowledge is built upon the knowledge obtained by those who came before us.
Instead of each of us personally trying to verify everything, people choose specific things which interest them and work in that area to try to expand the knowledge of mankind.

Facts are merely what your "authority" arbitrarily tells you are facts

Like I said before, you ignoring all the evidence doesn't magically mean it isn't there.
There is plenty of evidence supporting these facts.

many/most of them require belief

Because knowledge is a subset of belief.
You can't know something if you don't believe it.
What they don't require is faith.

@jackblack

Do you accept that regardless of what material an object is made out of, if it is large enough gravity will be strong enough to crush into a sphere, and it is only a question of what size it is?

I understand the posit, yes.  It is conceivable in theory, but a lot more evidence is required for any "acceptance" of it in reality.

And because of that, do you accept that trying to compare Earth to a small object like a phone, to try to say because the phone isn't spherical Earth doesn't have to be, is a completely meaningless comparison, and that instead you should be comparing it to much larger objects, like other planets, the moon and stars (including the sun).

You assume that those things are larger objects without adequate validation/verification.  You believe it, as most others do, purely because you were told it was true.

Do you accept that UA is only equivalent to gravity in a small local frame, and that you cannot simply replace gravity with UA and expect everything to work the same outside of a small local frame (e.g. you can't replace gravity with UA for cavendish)?

I do recognize some of the problems with it for greater cosmology (some of which you raised), yes.  However cosmology is just mythology (not science) - so no one cares if it has to change because it doesn't affect our lives (so they believe).

And because of that, do you accept that the entire body of evidence for gravity is not evidence for UA?

I hear what you are saying, but the posit of UA is a straight convention flip.  Downstream impacts to cosmology and other repercussions are worthy to evaluate, and evidence of paradox / incongruity with other theory/conception (which could easily be evidence that UA is wrong) but don't change the fact that convention/sign changes are completely mathematically/scientifically consistent as long as you are.  If every time +9.8m/s/s you treated as -9.8m/s/s, at the end of the day you only have a sign change.

Do you accept that your explanation of why things fall due to weight is entirely inadequate, that without something like gravitational potential energy it violates the conservation of energy, and that it isn't simply a case of nothing holding it up, nor is it a simple case of you applied energy to push one way so it moves back?

I recognize that you are accustomed to a particular framework, and will likely need to discuss and evaluate any alternative ones a bit more before an objective analysis will become possible.

Let's try to break this down a little.  We are comparing 2 ideas

1.  Matter has weight because it is attracted by a theoretical and mysterious invisible "force" that can't be measured and has an unknown composition and mechanism.
2.  Matter has weight because it is intrinsic to the matter itself - simply another intrinsic property like color and size.

Why do you think 1 is obviously correct/adequate, and 2 simply couldn't be?  One is much more easily defended than the other (hint: it's the one that does NOT invoke unmeasurable fiction under the guise of empirical science...)

And you can provide a distribution of mass to produce the observed gravitational acceleration, but with a flat Earth?

Sure, there are many configurations that are conceivable.  Gravity doesn't prove/force the world spherical.

Again, even ignoring the other evidence and focusing primarily on gravity, it is not a case of gravity exists, therefore everything is a sphere.

Right, that's exactly what I was saying in my "strawman".

You would need to appeal to magical material, never heard of, with magical properties to prevent it.

We don't know much about what materials might/could exist, but I agree - some theoretical configurations may involve materials that are stronger than the ones we know of - other configurations could undoubtedly be created without doing so.  When you are blindly guessing, you can expect to come up with a LOT of wrong answers.

If you don't want to trust the results yourself, you can go into space yourself.
But most people aren't that paranoid.

Actually, no - you (one) can't.  That's the point.  Space exists nowhere except on tv.

The simple fact is that going into space is the only way to see Earth entirely in your FOV in any meaningful way. And even low orbits are not entirely useful.

So we are told, yes.

Would you try to judge the shape of any normal object like that?
Or would you instead stand away from it quite some distance?

There is nothing wrong with trying to get further away to fit everything in frame.  We know why that doesn't work with the earth, and only nasa claims it CAN work.

Glad you agree your position is dumb.

My position is evidence (historical and scientific) based, and is not that the world is flat (I have no idea what the shape of the entire world is) but rather that it is not, and most likely cannot be, spherical.

He didn't ask what degree you have, or what scientific institution you work at.

No, they oh-so-subtly intimated that without those things (degrees, scientific institutions, laboratories) no evaluation of claims nor discussion was required.  It was a shitty rhetorical attempt to discard rather than address - wether done consciously or not.

No it isn't.

Of course it is.  Don't play dumb.  This is a website about how the earth may be/is another shape than the one currently assumed.  No, there are not published journal articles nor science grants to fund such things. Pretending like there ought to be and you "just can't understand where all the evidence is" is disingenuous (and credential worshipping sycophantry).

There is nothing wrong with trying to safeguard your time, as there are many who seek to waste it.  However, this is a forum specifically to discuss this topic.  Coming here to demand scientific journal articles and laboratory data is stupid and disingenuous.

So nothing to actually refute gravity or the fact that Earth is round?

What my research shows is that gravitation (not gravity) is unscientific fiction with no demonstrable reality whatsoever.  It has been a persistent thorn in the side of physics (and physicists) since its introduction.  My research also shows that the notion the earth is spherical is merely an unvalidated assumption more than 2 millennia old, presented disingenuously and erroneously to children as "scientific fact" for most all of that time.

I understand the posit, yes.  It is conceivable in theory, but a lot more evidence is required for any "acceptance" of it in reality.

And just what extra validation is required.

You assume that those things are larger objects without adequate validation/verification.  You believe it, as most others do, purely because you were told it was true.

No, I know they are larger due to just how far away they need to be, combined with their angular size.
Even if you want to reject them being the distances they are in reality and instead want a FE model, they are still massive compared to any object on Earth, and thus the only things which would be even remote comparable to Earth.

However cosmology is just mythology (not science)

And there you go with denial of science again.
Just what makes you think it isn't science? The fact that it shows FE to be wrong?

I hear what you are saying, but the posit of UA is a straight convention flip.

Then you clearly aren't hearing what I am saying.
Like I have said many times, that is purely for "thing on Earth appear to fall towards Earth".
Not the entire body of evidence that supports gravity.

Downstream impacts to cosmology and other repercussions are worthy to evaluate

And clearly shows that it isn't just a straight convention flip.

If every time +9.8m/s/s you treated as -9.8m/s/s, at the end of the day you only have a sign change.

And that "only have a sign change" fails to match what is actually observed.
Like I said, the simple attraction to Earth shows that is not the case.

Let's try to break this down a little.  We are comparing 2 ideas
1.  Matter has weight because it is attracted by a theoretical and mysterious invisible "force" that can't be measured and has an unknown composition and mechanism.
2.  Matter has weight because it is intrinsic to the matter itself - simply another intrinsic property like color and size.

No, they are not the 2 ideas we are comparing.

As repeatedly explained your claims about option 1 are pure BS, and option 2 is not that simple.

What we are actually comparing:
1. Matter has weight because all matter is attracted to all other matter, through a "force" which is proportional to the product of the masses and inversely to the square of the distance between them (at least as a good approximation). This force has been measured repeatedly, both on Earth as things falling, and in other set ups such as the attraction between 2 small masses on Earth. The currently accepted mechanism is that matter bends spacetime such that motion through time is converted to motion through space. But like all fundamental forces, there are always more questions.

2. Matter has weight just because. It is not because it is an intrinsic property as shown by the fact that weight varies around Earth. This has no explanation for the directionality nor the magnitude of this force, nor why it is proportional to mass.

And no, colour and size are NOT intrinsic properties.
The colour of an object typically depends upon the electronic structure of the substance. The size depends upon the arrangement of atoms.

Why do you think 1 is obviously correct/adequate, and 2 simply couldn't be?  One is much more easily defended than the other

For exactly that reason, 1 is more easily defended than 2, at least when represented properly.
This is because 1 has mountains of evidence supporting it, actually makes sense, and provides an explanation for the directional and the variation in force.
2 on the other hand has no explanation at all and just asserts the useless tautology that things fall because they fall.

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And you can provide a distribution of mass to produce the observed gravitational acceleration, but with a flat Earth?

Sure, there are many configurations that are conceivable.  Gravity doesn't prove/force the world spherical.

Providing it isn't just saying one exists, it is actually providing it.
So can you provide one, or can you just claim that such configurations exist?

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Again, even ignoring the other evidence and focusing primarily on gravity, it is not a case of gravity exists, therefore everything is a sphere.

Right, that's exactly what I was saying in my "strawman".

And that is why it is a strawman.
You were not representing what people actually claim.
It is never simply a case of gravity exists thus Earth is round. There are other factors which when combined with gravity means Earth is round. For example, the size of Earth.

We don't know much about what materials might/could exist

No, we have a very good idea. This is based upon our understanding of chemistry, which tells us what kind of elements exist, and how they can arrange into different substances, with the strongest (at least in compressive loads) being those like diamond.

other configurations could undoubtedly be created without doing so

Yet you still can't provide any.

Actually, no - you (one) can't.  That's the point.  Space exists nowhere except on tv.

No, that's your baseless assertion.
An assertion refuted by plenty of evidence.

We know why that doesn't work with the earth

Why?
Because doing so shows it is clearly round and you don't like that?

My position is evidence (historical and scientific) based

No, it is based upon a wilful rejection of evidence, such as all the evidence for gravity you reject when you claim that it is not measurable, and all the evidence for Earth being roughly spherical that you reject when you claim Earth can't be a sphere.

rather that it is not, and most likely cannot be, spherical.

Yet all the available evidence shows that is wrong and you are yet to justify that outrageous claim of yours with anything.

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He didn't ask what degree you have, or what scientific institution you work at.

No, they oh-so-subtly intimated that without those things

No, they didn't.
They simply asked what equipment you had.
That is not credential worshipping.
That is merely pointing out that unless you tools you can't determine the shape of Earth and other similar things. And how good your tools are will determine how well you can determine the shape of Earth and other similar things.

Of course it is.  Don't play dumb.  This is a website about how the earth may be/is another shape than the one currently assumed.

No, the shape that it has been determine to be based upon plentiful evidence that you wish to ignore.
If there was actually evidence supporting this contrary idea and all your claims, it should be fine getting published.
The problem is that there is no evidence for it, so it can't get published.

The point is that the "research" you are doing is nothing like the scientific research that has been carried out and is being carried out regarding the shape of Earth and gravity.

What my research shows is that gravitation (not gravity) is unscientific fiction

As you have already admitted that your research is not scientific in any way and instead is trying to focus on history, it has no capability to do that.

If you had actually carried out proper research, even fairly simple stuff high schoolers manage to do, you would have evidence for gravity, or gravitation as you like to call it.

Your research is not scientific in any way and thus is incapable of determining that Earth is not round or that gravity isn't real.
It does nothing to negate the plentiful research and evidence supporting gravity and supporting the fact that Earth is round.

The best your "research" could do is show that you cannot find evidence to support it. That YOU haven't validated those facts. Not that no evidence/validation exists.

@jackblack (part 1 of 2)

Again, care to address the points I made? Or will you just ignore them as if your claims haven't been refuted?

I expect that by now you no longer feel this way, however - in case you still do - the best way to (possibly/potentially) get a specific answer is to ask a specific question.  I am definitely doing my utmost to address every point / question / thought, however oftentimes even this isn't enough.

Not primary scientific research.
That requires doing experiments to obtain data.

If only that were true . That is a significant part of the reason for this subject and this site!

The older I get, the more I too side with planck and newton. Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal; all else is poetry and imagination.

While that may have been the case for Newton, it is not now.

So we are taught.

There is plenty of experimental verification for gravity, and it is quite falsifiable (at the hypothetical level, i.e. being able to do an experiment and testing predictions from gravity, where if those predictions are false, then gravity is wrong).

There are no experimental verifications of GRAVITATION that exist or could possibly exist currently or historically (because the definition of gravitation is not rigorous enough to even begin to do so, if you wished to).  Again, newton knew that when he invoked it and when he explained that the mechanism was the judeo christian god.

And it is far more falsifiable than things just magically falling for no reason at all.

As I keep explaining, and you keep failing to grasp/appreciate, things do not fall for no reason.  They fall with and for the reasons described (and experimentally validatable) in archimedes principle.  The force of the weight is intrinsic to the matter and not imbued by an (fictional) external field.

Ignoring the mass-energy equivalence, mass is quite real as easily measured due to inertia.

Inertia is merely horizontal weight. Imagine an object you wish to weigh on a frictionless plane.  Taking a luggage scale and pulling until the object begins to move measures the weight - measured horizontally rather than vertically.  There is no magic to it, and because it is moving perpendicularly to the buoyant force, that greatly reduces an already minuscule source of error (for what i call "intrinsic weight" which is, roughly defined, an object's measured weight in a vacuum).

Likewise, the force, real or apparent, produced by gravity can cause an object to accelerate or can be measured as a force such as on a scale.

This is commonly taught, but wrong.  Scales only measure weight (with buoyancy - what I call "apparent" or "effective" weight).  Nothing can measure gravitation because it isn't even defined well enough to begin trying to measure.

You have no cause. You just claim things magically fall for no reason at all.

Of course I do.  It's weight, and more specifically - the relationship between the density of the object and the surrounding media.  As I said, it is all made very clear in archimedes principle.  What is magical is this invisible, unmanipuable, undefinable, weak but simultaneously omnipresent god of "gravitation", but again - newton understood all that.

Why should things just fall for no reason at all?

They fall in accordance and for the reasons described in archimedes' principle. Furthermore they fall as a result of being lifted, and with the exact same input energy used to lift them.  Things NEVER fall for no reason, or without energy input first.

So something even you call an experiment, you say is not an experiment.

I typically refer to it as the cavendish observation, but the misnomer is out there and it doesn't look to be going away any time soon.

Experiment has a rigorous and inflexible definition.  The cavendish apparatus is merely for making observations.  A mere observation is NEVER an experiment.

And the same could be said of all fundamental forces.

That's true, and to be sure they all hold mystery and are objectively magical - however gravitation is the clear exception - historically, scientifically, philosophically - you name it.  Today it is referred to as a force only colloquially, because a real physicist knows better than to classify something theoretical, unmeasured and unmeasurable with the rest of empirical science.

Gravitation is completely unfalsifiable.  In astronomy, it has been falsified through observational data for somewhere between decades and centuries - but they just keep plugging the holes with more fictional nonsense.  Black holes, supermassive black holes, dark matter, dark energy, inflation, zeus and other evidence-less fiction is preferred to science - sadly.

Ultimately you will reach a point where we simply don't know

Exactly!  This is why your issues with "reason"/"cause" for the cardinal directions of up and down and for the origin and nature of weight are ultimately non-sequitur / easily dismissed.  Most natural laws, like gravity and density separation / entropy laws for instance, do not have further "cause" or "reason" that is obvious to us today.  They are, and we deal with them as we must.

Does that mean you likewise reject all of science and instead just appeal to the magic of "innate properties"?

There is nothing magical and certainly nothing unscientific about accepting and recognizing innate characteristics.  It is a fundamental posit of aristotle that has become one of the foundational pillars in western thought.

Or is it only gravity you look at with such distain?

Despite appearances, I love science and chiefly have such disdain for scientism/pseudoscience misrepresented under its guise because of that love.  There is LOTS of pseudoscience around, but to discern real science from the rest you need to know the proper definitions/criteria first!

@jackblack (part 2 of 2)

They sure seem to be measuring them.
Could you explain why you think they cannot measure gravitational waves?

Sure!  My love of science and varied interest led me to an interest in interferometery.

I know a lot about interferometers, and I know both what they were designed to do and how they function.  There is no reason whatsoever to believe that they can or should be able to measure "gravitational waves" if such a thing can or does exist at all (there is ALSO no evidence that gravitational waves exist to find in the first order).  Gravitational waves and gravity waves are not the same thing, but that is the "hoax".  In the minds of the vast majority, "gravity was detected".

Interferometers measure motion, and I understand much better than most why and how they accomplish that.

You mean your history and language (or did you mean philosophy) research, which has absolutely no bearing on the shape of Earth and could not possibly indicate Earth cannot be spherical?

I mean the study of history and language showed that the spherical shape of the earth was nothing more than an unvalidated assumption misrepresented to gullible students for millennia.  The history of the science (and evaluation of that science) shows that the earth (most likely) is not and cannot be spherical, yes.

And again, stated with all the certainty of a religious zealot.

I'm not sure what you are referring to, but if it is the comment you quoted then I really don't understand your response.  All I was saying was that, without mass "education" to the contrary, the world obviously appears flat.  One of the ways we know this is by asking small children what they think the shape of the world is before they have "learned any better".

Plenty of people actually understand the evidence and have obtained at least some of the evidence themselves.

I have found that very few people understand or objectively and critically evaluate the evidence - and that everyone benefits from engaging in that process.

Then you aren't very good at history.

Lol.  This subject is deceptively simple.  It seems so unassuming and innocuous, just like its apparently central question, "What is the true shape of the earth?".  A child could get that question answered in a few heartbeats, but when we adults try in earnest often for the first time in our natural lives - we realize it isn't quite so simple.

If you know the answer to the question, PLEASE provide your answer!  Again, the question is : "Who first determined the world was spherical, when, and by what method?"

The Ancient Greeks new Earth was round. They were even capable of determining a way to measure the radius of Earth.

Yes.  They knew it was round because they were taught as children it was a fact - just like us today! They couldn't measure the world much better/differently than we can today, and what they came up with was a way to CALCULATE the radius IF the world were a sphere (which they took as a given, because they were erroneously taught it was a fact from childhood) and a half a dozen other unvalidated assumptions.

We likely wont know who first determined the world was roughly a sphere, nor exactly what their reasons for doing so were.

We won't, and we don't! That's why the question is sill open!

But we do know it was long before NASA.

No, we assume that and we should be chastised for doing so.  Nasa (around there anyhow, give or take a few decades) was the first time anyone had the capability (IF we believe everything we see on tv) to validate and confirm the shape of the earth in the history of humanity that I am aware of.

But thanks for showing you think RE is just a big NASA conspiracy.

You misunderstand.  NASA isn't faking RE - they are faking space, writ-large. They think the world is spherical, just like everyone else.  That's why they depict it that way in all the promotional propaganda they produce.  Of course, this has nothing to do with the shape of the earth - just a fun tangent.

It was an experiment. It tested a hypothesis and at the same time provided a measurement.

So we are mistaught.  No one, I repeat, no one involved with the cavendish observation EVER referred to it as an experiment.  That's because it isn't one, and it never was.

Experiment has a rigorous and inflexible definition.  MOST of the things that laypeople are taught are experiments (mr.wizard, bill nye and worse) are in no way experiments.  Most are simple observations.

An experiment is a procedure to validate or invalidate a hypothesis by establishing (ideally) a causal relationship between an IV/Independent Variable/hypothesized cause and a DV/Dependent Variable/hypothesized effect.

If this wasn't the case, they would not have been able to get a value of G out of the experiment, or it would be deemed to be below the experimental detection limit, with the latter potentially having serious implications for Earth and raising serious red flags for gravity.

There are those about that claim that that is precisely the case, and that the procedure is simply tweaked and repeated until values that seem to match expectation are found (or you are assumed to be incompetent / have screwed up the procedure somehow) Completely unfalsifiable....

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Why should things just fall for no reason at all?

They fall in accordance and for the reasons described in archimedes' principle. Furthermore they fall as a result of being lifted, and with the exact same input energy used to lift them.  Things NEVER fall for no reason, or without energy input first.

I'm not sure I follow this bit. If things simply fall because of the input energy used to lift them, why do two differently weighted objects fall at the same rate? Each would have a different input energy used to lift them, I'm assuming meaning they would have a different falling "energy" rate.

And what about something that falls that never had input energy used to lift it to begin with?

Let's try to break this down a little.  We are comparing 2 ideas

1.  Matter has weight because it is attracted by a theoretical and mysterious invisible "force" that can't be measured and has an unknown composition and mechanism.
2.  Matter has weight because it is intrinsic to the matter itself - simply another intrinsic property like color and size.

Ha. You don't even get the issues stated correctly.  The amount of attraction HAS been quite accurately measured:
https://www.npl.washington.edu/eotwash/sites/sand.npl.washington.edu.eotwash/files/documents/prl85-2869.pdf

And the "intrinsic" property of matter is its mass, not its weight.

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Not primary scientific research.
That requires doing experiments to obtain data.

If only that were true

That is true.
Primary scientific research requires doing experiments to obtain data.
You even seem to be in support of experiment being the only means of obtaining knowledge.

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While that may have been the case for Newton, it is not now.

So we are taught.

And again, you just dismiss reality.
If you want to show that all that research is fake and couldn't possibly have measured gravity, go ahead.
But simple rejection is just denying reality.

There are no experimental verifications of GRAVITATION

Again, you ignoring it doesn't magically mean it isn't real.
Other than you, most people are fine equating gravity and gravitation, as the difference is pure semantics.
Gravity is gravitation.
There is plenty of experimental evidence for it. Again, you just denying it doesn't magically make it go away.

because the definition of gravitation is not rigorous enough to even begin to do so, if you wished to

HOW?
You have both it being a simple force with F=GMm/r^2, and a more complex curvature of spacetime.
You can easily make predictions based upon this and test those predictions.

Again, newton knew that when he invoked it and when he explained that the mechanism was the judeo christian god.

The only person I have ever seen claim that is you. Just where are you getting this from?

As for Newton, he merely thought that there were not instruments that were sensitive enough to measure it.

As I keep explaining, and you keep failing to grasp/appreciate, things do not fall for no reason.

You are yet to provide a reason. Instead you just claim they fall.
Even saying it is intrinsic to things is not providing a reason.

archimedes principle.

Does not provide a reason.
It does not provide a justification for the directionality, nor does it provide a justification for the speed.
It doesn't even say things fall.
Instead it just says that an object will displace its own weight in a fluid.

Something easily shown with gravity.

The force of the weight is intrinsic

The fact that it varies shows that it is not an intrinsic property.
And again, that is still not a reason. That is still just saying things fall because things fall.

Inertia is merely horizontal weight

No it isn't.
If it was horizontal weight then things would just fall horizontally, and it would require a constant force to hold it in place.

Inertia has no preferred direction.
It is merely resistance to motion.

It is fundamentally different to weight. One big difference is that the mass is the same, regardless of where you are, while weight varies.

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Likewise, the force, real or apparent, produced by gravity can cause an object to accelerate or can be measured as a force such as on a scale.

This is commonly taught, but wrong.

You mean you dismiss it because you hate gravity.
Not for any actual justified reason, but just because you hate gravity and don't want to accept it.

Experiment has a rigorous and inflexible definition.

And care to provide this magical definition of yours you are using to dismiss all the evidence for gravity?
Because so far you are just dismissing with no justification.

As far as I can tell, the cavendish experiment was an experiment.

That's true, and to be sure they all hold mystery and are objectively magical - however gravitation is the clear exception

There are only 2 ways in which gravity is special.
1 is that it uses mass instead of charge or some other property.
The other is that likes attract.
Otherwise, it is the same in basically every manner to the other fundamental forces.
There is no explanation for exactly what causes all the necessary parts of the explanation, and even if you tried, all you would do is push the problem back.
There is plentiful experimental evidence justifying them and the law that the force obeys.

Today it is referred to as a force only colloquially

Because one of the best explanations, which actually explains why it uses mass instead of charge or something else, has it being an inertial force, due to the curvature of spacetime.
This makes it akin to the centrifugal force, which is a result of choosing a non-inertial reference frame.

This is due to the equivalence between an object at rest in a local (i.e. uniform) gravitational field, and that same object inside a container which is accelerating upwards.

In GR, the inertial reference frame is a tiny frame that is in free fall.

Gravitation is completely unfalsifiable.

It is quite falsifiable.
Mercury demonstrated that Newton's law is not perfect, but merely an approximation.

In astronomy, it has been falsified

No it hasn't, as the data is incomplete.
That is currently an open question in science.

All it is is a disagreement between 2 ways of trying to determine how much matter/energy is present.
Galactic rotation curves based upon gravity, and some other measurements based upon gravity, indicate that there is more matter present than observations base upon how much light is there and making assumptions about how much mass that light corresponds to.

The problem is that light is not intrinsically tied to how much matter is there. It is possible to have matter which is quite bright, and matter which is quite dark.

Exactly!  This is why your issues with "reason"/"cause" for the cardinal directions of up and down and for the origin and nature of weight are ultimately non-sequitur / easily dismissed.

No they aren't.
We have an explanation, supported by plenty of evidence, which can explain both the directionality and the variation in weight.

There is a very big difference between not knowing because we do not currently have any known means to find out, and wilfully rejecting an explanation supported by evidence because you don't like it.

You not liking the explanation doesn't mean there is none. You don't get to just discard it and expect people to follow along when you offer literally nothing in its place.

Most natural laws, like gravity and density separation / entropy laws for instance, do not have further "cause" or "reason" that is obvious to us today.

The fundamental forces don't, as do a few other ones, but most do.
For example, density separation is based upon gravity or another similar force. This can be observed to stop working in 0 g, and to work even better in a centrifuge.

Despite appearances, I love science

No you don't.
Your actions here clearly show a hatred for science, not a love for it.
You just try to label the science you hate as something else.

So the question is do you dismiss all of science, or just the parts you hate?

I know a lot about interferometers, and I know both what they were designed to do and how they function.  There is no reason whatsoever to believe that they can or should be able to measure "gravitational waves" if such a thing can or does exist at all (there is ALSO no evidence that gravitational waves exist to find in the first order).  Gravitational waves and gravity waves are not the same thing, but that is the "hoax".  In the minds of the vast majority, "gravity was detected".

Do you have an actual explanation or just a dismissal of gravitation?
Also, do you understand how nonsensical that is?
You are basically saying until we have evidence of something existing, there is no reason to think it exists and thus nothing should detect it.
By that complete absense of reason, nothing exists.

Back in reality, we did have reason to think they exist, and LIGO was about detecting to prove they exist.

Interferometers measure motion

Interferometers can measure more than just motion.
If you understood the principles of how they work, you would understand what they can measure, and that includes gravitational waves.

I mean the study of history and language showed that the spherical shape of the earth was nothing more than an unvalidated assumption misrepresented to gullible students for millennia.

Then you haven't done very good research, especially considering the plentiful evidence you can obtain yourself.

But still, nothing scientific to refute the shape of Earth.

The history of the science (and evaluation of that science) shows that the earth (most likely) is not and cannot be spherical, yes.

No, it doesn't.
Do you have anything at all to support that completley baseless claim of yours?

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And again, stated with all the certainty of a religious zealot.

I'm not sure what you are referring to

Your dismisal of gravity and the known shape of Earth, based upon a wilful rejection of the evidence.
You are dismissing reality with all the certainly of a religious zealot.
You appeal to what children will allegedly think the world is before they have been taught anything, or performed observations of their own, or even thought about what the shape is. This is making that claim with no evidence, yet with all the certainty of a religious zealot; and it also follows the exact same kind of thinking of a religious zealot, where you can just decide something with basically no evidence at all, and then conclude that must be true and anything to the contrary is wrong.
And likewise, you claim that Earth appears flat, when in reality it doesn't.
This is just something FEers like to tell themselves. When you look at Earth at the scale that humans typically do, it is not flat. It has a very rough surface at this level, with hills, montains, valleys, oceans, plateus, etc. So no, the world does not appear flat.
It is only when you don't think about what you would actually expect for a round vs flat Earth, or don't bother actually looking, that it appears to be roughly what one might expect if Earth was flat.

And even with that kind of thinking, it still doesn't seem to be flat if you actually know just how much world is out there.

Without that serious thinking the Earth appears to a tiny place, no more than a few 10s to 100s of km wide, where the horizon (at least at sea) is the edge of Earth, with no Earth beyond it.

Also note that any such study on children, even with it being entirely useless due to them not actually investigating the shape at all, needs to ensure the students don't have any information at all from others about the shape of Earth, including from religious books or games or pictures, and that they are not provided any options, such that it comes entirely from them.
And that will be quite difficult to do, as in very large portions of the world, children are taught religious nonsense from quite a young age. And if that religious nonsense directly or indirectly indicates things about the shape of Earth, that will entirely invalidate the study, as now they have been taught the religious view of the shape of Earth.

I have found that very few people understand or objectively and critically evaluate the evidence

And you not finding them doesn't mean they don't exist.
Or are you just saying this because they don't reach the same conclusion as you?

This subject is deceptively simple.

No, due to how vast it is, it can be quite difficult. Especially when you are trying to claim something didn't happen or didn't exist.
You need to understand the variety of different types of sources, and the fact that plenty of it will be lost.

"What is the true shape of the earth?".  A child could get that question answered in a few heartbeats

Yes, just like a religuos zealot could anwer "where did come from" in a few hearbeats by claiming their god created us.
Being able to produce a simple and wrong answer doesn't mean the question is simple.

If you know the answer to the question, PLEASE provide your answer!  Again, the question is : "Who first determined the world was spherical, when, and by what method?"

I already addressed that. We will never know.
That is because it would require a perfect historical record, listing everyone and what they thought Earth's shape was and why they thought that, including how that varied over time.
We would then need to look through this record and find out who the first person was.

Such a record simply doesn't exist, so unless we can make time machines, we wont ever be able to answer that question.

Instead we can ask a different question based upon the limited historical record, who are the earliest recorded people to have determined Earth is round and what method did they use?
And as you claim to have done so much research on history, that should be an easy question for you.

They knew it was round because they were taught as children it was a fact - just like us today!

You are aware this literally makes no sense?
You claim people only think Earth is round because they are taught that it is, and without being taught that they would think it is flat.
But if that was the case, everyone would think it is flat, because no one would have thought it was round and thus no one would teach that it is round.

Your argument defeats itself.
Someone at some point would have had to stop and question that assumption and see if it actually withstands scruitiny, and then finding that it didn't, they make a better model of Earth, and accept that it is round.

which they took as a given, because they were erroneously taught it was a fact from childhood) and a half a dozen other unvalidated assumptions.

No, which they took as given, due to the evidence supporting that fact. But you don't actually need to know Earth is round to determine the radius using that method. Instead another much simpler conclusion can be used, the fact that the sun is very far away.

Again, you not liking the conclusions and the evidence to support it doesn't make them unvalidated assumptions.

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But we do know it was long before NASA.

No, we assume that

No, we know that due to the historical record clealry showing plenty of people who knew Earth was round.

Nasa was the first time anyone had the capability to validate and confirm the shape of the earth

Only if you want to pretend that the only possible way to do so is to go into space and see.
Most people who have actually thought about it accept there are other ways to do so.

So we are mistaught.  No one, I repeat, no one involved with the cavendish observation EVER referred to it as an experiment.

Is that why the title of his paper started with "Experiments"? (The full title is "Experiments to Determine the Density of the Earth")
Sure seems like it was an experiment.
The common misconception was that it was an experiment to measure G, when it was an experiment to measure the density of Earth, using the fact that G is a constant.
Either way, it is an experiment to test the universal law of gravitation.

An experiment is a procedure to validate or invalidate a hypothesis by establishing (ideally) a causal relationship between an IV/Independent Variable/hypothesized cause and a DV/Dependent Variable/hypothesized effect.

Like how Cavendish's experiment validated the fact that mass is attracted to other mass. The IV is mass, the DV is an apparent attractive force.

Completely unfalsifiable....

No, completely falsifiable. Especially now with a known value of G.
The nonsense you said can be said or literally everything, so by that standard nothing is falsifiable.