# The Flat Earth society



## parsifal (Jun 2, 2017)

A friend at work sent me this link


http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space/the-flat-earth-theory-has-seen-a-resurgence-with-people-trying-to-prove-our-planet-is-not-a-sphere/news-story/0bd1226fbe2e2bc819ec12733591e8c9


My comment is that there are some people who work exceptionally hard at stupid.

Thought you guys might get a laugh at least.

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## pbehn (Jun 2, 2017)

It says that the ancient Greeks believed the world was flat, that is not what I read. Only people who live far from water believed the world was flat, possibly because they didnt really think about it much.


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## Marcel (Jun 2, 2017)

I love this:


> Gravity as a theory is false. Objects simply fall.


 

On the danger of starting a nasty debate, this sounds very similar to what some of the global warming skeptics said when I discussed with them:


> In fact, these people will have you believe everything you think you know about the world is wrong and you *should blame it on a global conspiracy involving NASA, governments and scientists.*

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## stona (Jun 2, 2017)

parsifal said:


> My comment is that there are some people who work exceptionally hard at stupid.



Exactly

Steve


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## fubar57 (Jun 2, 2017)



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## stona (Jun 2, 2017)

Marcel said:


> On the danger of starting a nasty debate, this sounds very similar to what some of the global warming skeptics said when I discussed with them:



The problem is that proper scientific debate is being curtailed by both sides, who take positions not dissimilar to religious articles of faith. The earth is warming, nobody seriously disbelieves that, but the debate about why and what is causing it, and how much is due to human activity is not taking place. This leaves plenty of space for those talking out of their arses on both sides to be heard and not properly challenged. As an ex-scientist myself I find it deeply depressing.
Cheers
Steve

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## Capt. Vick (Jun 2, 2017)

All I have to say is: I like turtles

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## Peter Gunn (Jun 2, 2017)

Capt. Vick said:


> All I have to say is: I like turtles



As do I...

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## DBII (Jun 2, 2017)

Lucy Van Pelt always said that snow does not fall Fromm the sky. It came up from the ground. The wind would blow it around making people think it fell from the sky... I like chocolate covered turtles...

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## Robert Porter (Jun 2, 2017)

A neighbor in our community is one of a number of Flat Earthers I have run across, recently he sent me the following as "proof". I have no way to respond to this kind of thing, I mean how does one combat this? At least civilly.

Airbus A321 cruise speed 515 mph.
23.75 minutes @ 515 mph. is roughly 203.85 miles along the earth's surface.
The pilot should have dipped the nose to compensate for over *5 miles of curvature*!
But nope! 



Very simple experiment and a very confident guy posting it! Hard combination to beat!


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## stona (Jun 2, 2017)

Robert Porter said:


> Hard combination to beat!



Not really. What has he shown? He's shown that the aircraft was in level flight and nothing else. His basic premise, that the aircraft _"should be constantly dipping its nose forward, to compensate for the curvature [of the earth]"_ is incorrect and simply demonstrates his ignorance of how aircraft fly. An aircraft does not have to lower its nose to lose altitude. He himself would probably have noticed, if he had bothered to look at his spirit level, that as the aircraft came into land, whilst descending, the the nose of the aircraft was raised, but this did not cause it to zoom off into the upper atmosphere . 
He's a f*cking idiot. 
Cheers
Steve

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## Crimea_River (Jun 2, 2017)



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## Peter Gunn (Jun 2, 2017)

Robert Porter said:


> A neighbor in our community is one of a number of Flat Earthers I have run across, recently he sent me the following as "proof". I have no way to respond to this kind of thing, I mean how does one combat this? At least civilly.
> 
> Airbus A321 cruise speed 515 mph.
> 23.75 minutes @ 515 mph. is roughly 203.85 miles along the earth's surface.
> ...




Wow... just... Wow.

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## Gnomey (Jun 2, 2017)

Some people are just really special...

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## Robert Porter (Jun 2, 2017)

stona said:


> Not really. What has he shown? He's shown that the aircraft was in level flight and nothing else. His basic premise, that the aircraft _"should be constantly dipping its nose forward, to compensate for the curvature [of the earth]"_ is incorrect and simply demonstrates his ignorance of how aircraft fly. An aircraft does not have to lower its nose to lose altitude. He himself would probably have noticed, if he had bothered to look at his spirit level, that as the aircraft came into land, whilst descending, the the nose of the aircraft was raised, but this did not cause it to zoom off into the upper atmosphere .
> He's a f*cking idiot.
> Cheers
> Steve


Just to be clear those were his words not mine! But I agree, you just cannot argue with this kind of insanity, facts and logic do not apply! Drives me right round the bend!

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## Robert Porter (Jun 2, 2017)

When he first approached me I honestly thought he was pulling my leg, but now, sigh... I truly do not understand how people can not understand what should be basic grade school science. I just find it hard to believe that in this day and age this kind of thing even still exists, let alone the fact it is gaining adherents and expanding!!!!


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## parsifal (Jun 2, 2017)

As the science gets more complex , the weirdness goes up proportionately. Asimov once said "any technology that is sufficiently advanced is like magic to most people". These people are confronted with some complex earth science issues and attempt to exploit that into something it is not. They are essentially equating the natural sciences to magic.


There are complex sciences from apparently simple observations and this is one of them. A couple of ex amples

Most of us believe in the Newtonian physics, but his laws are only good or true in the relative environments that we live in. approach c (the speed of light) or subject the environments to massive gravitational forces from a black hole and his laws dont stand, they begin to fail in their ability to describe the physics occurring in those environments

Most of us believe that the earth orbits the sun right. not necessarily so. It is true to say that in the context of the solar system, but in the context of the galaxy it probably is not true. Extrapolate that to a universe and in fact both the earth and the sun are constantly expanding away each other. I struggle with that stuff.

Maybe the earth is flat after all, but these nuts aren't operating at the theoretical sciences level to show that. in the context of our existence on the planet, the world is spherical or almost so....

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## stona (Jun 2, 2017)

parsifal said:


> the world is spherical ....



Even the ancient Greeks (and probably others) assumed that well over 2000 years ago. It was good enough to give them an approximation of the size of the earth which was really not bad at all.

The earth to moon distance is measured several times a day and it's not a few thousand miles! Since late May the moon has been easing away from us, but that doesn't mean we are about to lose it. 

Cheers

Steve


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## buffnut453 (Jun 2, 2017)

Hmmm...if the earth is flat, what does the other side look like? Do they also deny that the earth is orbiting around the sun because, presumably, a flat earth would have to be flipping like a coin-toss to account for sunrise/sunset?

I can't read this thread any more. So sad that modern technology allows such inane concepts to actually increase in popularity.


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## stona (Jun 2, 2017)

The earth is at the centre of the universe and everything revolves around it....everyone knows this. If it wasn't so then astrology wouldn't work either 
Cheers
Steve

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## pbehn (Jun 2, 2017)

stona said:


> The earth is at the centre of the universe and everything revolves around it....everyone knows this. If it wasn't so then astrology wouldn't work either
> Cheers
> Steve


funny you should say that.

Watch: Saudi cleric tells students 'Earth does not rotate'


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## Marcel (Jun 2, 2017)

Terry Pratchett had it right after all:


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## pbehn (Jun 2, 2017)

parsifal said:


> Most of us believe in the Newtonian physics, but his laws are only good or true in the relative environments that we live in.
> 
> .


Newton said that he took time to be a constant, to me that means he must have considered the possibility that it isnt.

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## Old Wizard (Jun 2, 2017)

If you live your life with your head up your butt, every thing is possible.

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## Robert Porter (Jun 2, 2017)

Old Wizard said:


> If you live your life with your head up your butt, every thing is possible.


Truer words never spoken. The same neighbor also has "proof" that the Apollo Lunar landings happened in a warehouse in Hollywood and no one has landed on the moon! Capricorn One anyone?

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## The Basket (Jun 3, 2017)

When I was a lad didn't have mobile phones. Piece of string and two tins I had. And we were happy.
Smart phones? If you told me we had smart phones in the 1980s then would be considered impossible. I got GPS. I got my music and a camera with video camera and a calculator and even a torch and can even phone Australia. In one device? Pure star trek. As been said. More magic than science. My phone is now a year old and originally was sold in 2015 and now no longer available and is considered obsolete. What a world we live in.
The problem with internet is that an idiot believes dumb idea and then goes on to internet and finds justification for dumb idea. In old days and info in news has to be fact checked while internet rant don't.

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## Gnomey (Jun 3, 2017)

The internet is both a wonderful collection of knowledge and a giant collection of idiots...

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 3, 2017)

Gnomey said:


> The internet is both a wonderful collection of knowledge and a giant collection of idiots...



More so now than ever...


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## stona (Jun 3, 2017)

pbehn said:


> Newton said that he took time to be a constant, to me that means he must have considered the possibility that it isnt.



Not really.

"Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equably without regard to anything external, and by another name is called duration...."

Cheers

Steve


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## mikewint (Jun 3, 2017)

Wow there is SO much here to comment on.
TIME Steve hit it squarely on the head, time is one of the spacial dimensions and DURATION is an excellent way to describe it.
To exist in the Universe something must have Length, Width, and Depth AND it must have a fourth dimension of Duration, i.e. it must endure for a period of time...from one instant to another. That of course does not actually say what time is or why is is unidirectional.
The Laws of Thermodynamics do not answer the question of WHY they merely state what is. SPACE is necessary (Length, width, height) else everything would happen in the same place and TIME (whatever that is) is necessary else everything would happen at once. Clocks, no matter what type do NOT measure time (whatever that is). Clocks count EVENTS. TICK and TOCK are events separated by an interval of time (whatever that is). Since we can only measure these events and not time itself, time will appear to be a constant to any observer within his frame of reference. Since there does not exist an absolute Frame of Reference every ones unique frame is as valid as anyone elses...IT'S ALL RELATIVE you see. 
Gravitational fields (which also don't actually exist any more than centrifugal force exists) also affect time. The more intense gravitational field of the sun, for example, causes time to run slower RELATIVE to the flow of time on Earth. Thus within the ultimate field of a Black Hole time would cease to flow, and volume would go to zero that's why it's called a SINGULARITY.
Speed also alters the flow of time. Time slows as speed increases RELATIVE to the slower moving Frame of Reference. The so called Twin Paradox: My twin brother boards a spacecraft and heads to the nearest star at 98% of the speed of light. If I could observe him in flight I would see him moving slower and slower whereas he, observing me, would see me moving faster and faster. On his return he would be much younger than I and I much older than he due to the time differential within our Frames of Reference.
Oh, by the way, Newtonian Physics NEVER actually worked as it was supposed to, there always existed small discrepancies between prediction and experiment. Those discrepancies were chalked up to EXPERIMENTAL ERROR, i.e. the inability to make a fine enough measurement. Experimenters stated that WHEN the ability to measure improved those discrepancies would vanish. Unfortunately as mensuration improved the discrepancies got worse. The Quantum Universe is not Newtonian and can't be made to be so.


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## Robert Porter (Jun 3, 2017)

But I read it on the interwebs, it MUST be true....


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## pbehn (Jun 3, 2017)

Please remember that for Newton, time was not a constant, in his lifetime no one had made a clock that ticked and tocked uniformly on land and sea. His book _Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica _was written ten years before Huygens made his pendulum clock.


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## stona (Jun 3, 2017)

I quoted Newton above. For him time, that is 'duration' was constant and flowed_ 'equably'_. For Newton time, true time, progressed at a consistent rate throughout the universe, it did not vary nor was it dependent on the perceiver.
He acknowledged that_ "relative, apparent and common time, is some sensible and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by the means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time"_, that is the time we measure by anything from the dripping of a water clock to the swinging of a pendulum, to the oscillation of a quartz crystal, to the most accurate atomic clocks.
In this context relative time is not the same as that in Einstein's theory (ies). If you had suggested time dilation to Newton he would have given you a blank stare 
Cheers
Steve


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## pbehn (Jun 3, 2017)

stona said:


> In this context relative time is not the same as that in Einstein's theory (ies). If you had suggested time dilation to Newton he would have given you a blank stare



If I suggested it maybe he would, if an Einstein suggested it I am sure he would have been impressed. The common story to illustrate Einsteins theory is of a person leaving a clock and travelling at the speed of light at which point the clock appears to stop. But for Newton such clocks did not keep uniform time anyway if you could find one. Prior to suggesting time dilation I would show him my wrist watch which in Newtons time would be the worlds most accurate, a few hundred of them would hand superiority in world navigation to any navy.


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## stona (Jun 3, 2017)

pbehn said:


> The common story to illustrate Einsteins theory is of a person leaving a clock and travelling at the speed of light at which point the clock appears to stop. But for Newton such clocks did not keep uniform time anyway if you could find one.



No need to go so fast. If you and I were wearing identical watches and I flew over your house at any speed at all my watch would appear, to you, to be running slower. The faster I went the slower my watch would appear to be running, to you, not me. 

For Newton time ran at a constant pace throughout the universe, for Einstein it did not.

Cheers

Steve


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## mikewint (Jun 3, 2017)

Again all the above is true ONLY to an observer OUTSIDE the Frame of Reference in question. To a person on a spacecraft traveling at 98% the speed of light and his twin brother on Earth THEIR clocks, atomic, digital, mechanical or otherwise would appear perfectly normal and unchanged. You can't measure time, per se, unless and until you actually know what it is and furthermore time is not a distinct entity. There is only a single entity, i.e. SPACETIME unified and inseparable much as MASS and ENERGY as distinct entities do not exist. They are different aspects of MASSENERGY. Depending on what you are observing you can observe mostly the massness of it or the energyness aspect.
Newton did not have the tools (nor did anyone else in his time) to measure the discrepancies between his theory and actual. Today with atomic clocks and laser measurement the distance to the moon can be measured to within 3cm. With such data it is easy to show that the moon does not follow the orbit predicted by Newtonian physics.
Modern GPS satellites in orbit above the Earth have to have their clocks synchronized by ground controlers with earth clocks. Clocks on the surface run slower than the satellite's clocks as the earthbound clocks are located deeper within the Earths gravitational well


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## Greg Boeser (Jun 3, 2017)

stona said:


> The earth is at the centre of the universe and everything revolves around it....everyone knows this. If it wasn't so then astrology wouldn't work either
> Cheers
> Steve


Actually, I am the center of the universe. I know this because wherever I go, there I am.


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## Florence (Jun 4, 2017)

The Flat Earth Society has members all around the globe.

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## Old Wizard (Jun 4, 2017)




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## rich_miller (Jun 4, 2017)

Seems to me that back in the 80's, the flat earth society was a satirical movement, started by a comedian.


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## Gnomey (Jun 4, 2017)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> More so now than ever...


Yeah people _really_ will believe anything...


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## mikewint (Jun 4, 2017)

Greg Boeser said:


> Actually, I am the center of the universe.


Being as the Universe is finite and boundless you are correct as is everyone else


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## Marcel (Jun 4, 2017)

There is no life in the universe as proven by Douglas Adams. There is a finite amount of inhabited planets, while there is an infinite amount of total planets. So finite divided by infinite means 0 part of the universe is inhabited.


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## mikewint (Jun 4, 2017)

First proposed by radio astronomer Frank Drake in 1961, the equation calculates the number of communicating civilizations by multiplying several variables. It's usually written, according to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), as:

*N = R* • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L*


N = The number of civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable.

R* =The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life.

fp = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.

ne = The number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.

fl = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.

fi = The fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.

fc = The fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.


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## Robert Porter (Jun 4, 2017)

42

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## mikewint (Jun 4, 2017)




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## pbehn (Jun 4, 2017)

Jakob Bronowski pointed out that humans had developed weapons to eliminate themselves within decades of inventing radio transmitters. L in the quaation may be very short indeed.

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## mikewint (Jun 4, 2017)

Yup, The Drake equation is definitely SWAG. Another factor seldom addressed is the distances involved.
Some of the quantities -- R*, fp, and ne -- are observable with our current technology. By observing many stellar systems, astronomers can come up with reasonable numbers. For example, let's say that astronomers look at 100,000 stars and find that 40,000 have planets. If the rest of the galaxy behaves like these 100,000 stars (and, chances are, it does), fp is 0.4, or 40%. But how would we know if a star has planets?

By watching and waiting for a planet to go in front of its star, astronomers can detect a small change in the star's brightness caused by this transit. They can also look for gravitational evidence of planets, such as changes in the star's orbit. Although such measurements were not possible in Drake's day, 506 exoplanets have been discovered since 1992. Based on the number of stars checked for planets versus the number of stars with planets, astronomers have determined that fp is about 0.4. Drake, without the help of the sensitive telescopes available today, estimated fp to be 0.5 -- pretty close!

R* (star formation rate), however, appears to be much lower than Drake suspected. While data in 1960 suggested that 10 new stars were born every year, the current number is more like 1 star per year. Since the first SETI meeting, we have been able to make many more observations of "star nurseries" -- nebulae, where stars are born -- and to gather statistics on the general population, to find stars' ages and deduce how many were forming at any given time.

Drake estimated ne, the number of habitable planets in each system, to be 2. This estimation was based on our solar system, where one planet is definitely habitable! Mars and moons like Europa and Titan could also still harbor life, or evidence of former life. To be considered habitable, planets need orbits that don't take them too close or too far from their star; they need an atmosphere; and they need access to life-sustaining chemistry, like organic molecules and water. Currently, we are much better at detecting large, hot planets (ones that are like Jupiter) than planets like Earth, so no consensus on this number has been reached. It is estimated to be between 0.5 and 2. As NASA's sensitive Kepler telescope, whose mission is to find exoplanets, provides more data, we will be able to pin ne down.

The last four terms are where the math starts to get dicier. fl, the fraction of planets where life develops, is not something we can currently discover, since we cannot travel to the exoplanets. By looking at their chemistry, we can say whether life is possible -- but not whether life actually is.

Astrobiologists are trying to determine whether, given the conditions for life (conditions like those early in Earth's history), life will arise. Is life inevitable, or is it an anomaly? Drake believed that it was inevitable and set fl to 1. Modern scientists tend to be more conservative with that estimate, so conservative that they don't like to speculate.

After we have life, how much of that life will become intelligent (fi)? Drake said 0.01, but that was even more of a guess than fl. Today, we can do no better. Some say that fi is tiny: of the billions of species on Earth, we are the only one that became intelligent. Others say that all those species were leading inevitably to us, and that given the chance to develop, life will always become intelligent -- meaning that fi would be 1. Who knows?

After smart life exists, what chance does it have of using electromagnetic waves to communicate? Drake said 0.01, or 1%. There is evidence for pretty much any number on the 1-100% spectrum. Until we detect a civilization -- or, really, unless we detect hundreds of civilizations -- we can't know too much about this number. At that point, we won't care very much about the Drake Equation!

The same is true of L, the length of time that a typical civilization communicates: The only example we can have, until we find ETI, is ourselves, and we don't know when our communication will end. A world war could easily end us. So could a supernova. Or runaway greenhouse effect. Or an asteroid. Or, alternatively, civilization could progress for millions of years. The problem is, we'll never know until we get there. Drake said L was 10,000 years, but, again, that was just guessing, and hope.

L is the term that has the most potential to change the equation's outcome. While most parameters must be between 0 and 1, and can only make N smaller, L can be anything. The lifetime of civilizations is the most important factor determining our chances of finding ETI.

Taking the current numbers (or the average of the estimates) and multiplying them, we get N=(1)(0.4)(1)(0.5)(0.5)(0.5)(10,000) -- Drake's L thrown in for good measure -- or
*N=500 communicating civilizations in the galaxy.*

Our galaxy is pretty big. It's a flat disk about 100,000 light years across and a thousand light years thick. The volume of a disk is its area (pi x radius^2) times its thickness. So:

*Volume = pi x (50,000)^2 x 1000 = 8 trillion cubic light years*

If evenly spaced throughout the entire galaxy:

8 trillion cu ly / 500 = 1.6 X 10^10 cu Ly per civilization or about 8,000,000,000 Light Years apart!!

But that’s a lot of “fringe territory” so lets assume that these civilizations are distributed along the galactic equator, say a slice 10 light years thick, then:

Volume = 3.141 X 50,000^2 X 10 = 7.85 X 10^10 cu ly / 500 = 1.57 X 10^8 cu ly per civilization or roughly 7.85 X 10^7 light years apart

So with distances like these to deal with changing the number of civilizations by 10, 100, or even a 1000 still puts each civilization thousands of light years apart.
The Drake Equation must be one of the SWAGiest equations ever created because of the uncertainty associated with its parameters. The Drake Equation does do a great job of identifying and categorizing the relevant parameters. It also accomplishes the task of providing structure to the ongoing debate about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the likelihood of its existence. The large degree of uncertainty associated with so many of its parameters does tell us one important thing: that we have a lot more to learn.

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## Robert Porter (Jun 5, 2017)

rich_miller said:


> Seems to me that back in the 80's, the flat earth society was a satirical movement, started by a comedian.


You mean like Scientology? LOL!!!


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## herman1rg (Jun 5, 2017)

You are all wrong

It was the Magratheans who constructed the planet-sized computer named Earth (for a race of hyperintelligent pandimensional beings, the mice) to determine the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, which is required to understand the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

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## Old Wizard (Jun 5, 2017)




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## The Basket (Jun 5, 2017)

I wonder if the search for intelligent life on Earth has been successful yet.
Cruising the internet would suggest a big zero on that.


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## mikewint (Jun 5, 2017)



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## vikingBerserker (Jun 6, 2017)

I miss the olden days when the stupid people got eaten by lions.

Now they just continue to breed.

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## Old Wizard (Jun 6, 2017)




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## Robert Porter (Jun 6, 2017)

Pretty sure they are a protected species now under EPA rules.

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## Gnomey (Jun 6, 2017)




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## pbehn (Jun 6, 2017)

Mike...oil isnt a finite resource, if we cut down trees and throw them into swamps in a few million years we will have more oil. Simples!!!


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## mikewint (Jun 6, 2017)

Viking, I'll give you the fact that it's not as easy today as in a bygone age. The morons REALLY have to work at it nowadays and silly things like warning signs, fences, moats, and pay for admission gates are NOT going to stop them!


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## parsifal (Jun 6, 2017)

Oh lord. Stupidity knows no limit for some. I hope those people were eaten to be frank.


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## Old Wizard (Jun 6, 2017)




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## vikingBerserker (Jun 9, 2017)

6 down, 2 billion to go.


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## Robert Porter (Jun 9, 2017)

That is a very conservative estimate. I remember reading an interview with Robert Heinlein, he made mention of the fact that stupidity and ignorance while used interchangeably were not at all the same. His characters quote summed it up something like this: 
*“Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”*
His contention is that when human mercy and protection laws interfere with the natural laws we lose as a race. Keeps bad genes active in the gene pool too long.

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## herman1rg (Jun 9, 2017)

Good to see a Heinlein quote, worth some Bacon

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## mikewint (Jun 9, 2017)

“Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.”


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## Robert Porter (Jun 9, 2017)

Very true, and in that context can even be considered valid and with purpose which make them worthwhile. Not words one usually associates with "delusions" but very true!


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## pbehn (Jun 9, 2017)

To people on the outside others actions may appear stupid, movies like The charge of The Light Brigade are made about such events. At least one of those people "attacked" by a big cat was caused by a failure of safety barriers. I use parenthesis for "attacked" because a big cat does what they do, eat meat. I have seen young children trying to get into a pen to stroke a pig, it was a full grown male Saddleback male, quite capable of killing an adult. It is for adults to educate their children of dangers and today the internet does the opposite, tigers and lions are used in advertising and are usually cute and cuddly. It is quite common in China for people to try to enter the Panda enclosures because Pandas are such lovable cuddly dahhlings. A full grown Panda can rip any human to pieces any time they want, they dont realise what cute means.


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## mikewint (Jun 9, 2017)

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”

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## Robert Porter (Jun 9, 2017)

pbehn said:


> To people on the outside others actions may appear stupid, movies like The charge of The Light Brigade are made about such events. At least one of those people "attacked" by a big cat was caused by a failure of safety barriers. I use parenthesis for "attacked" because a big cat does what they do, eat meat. I have seen young children trying to get into a pen to stroke a pig, it was a full grown male Saddleback male, quite capable of killing an adult. It is for adults to educate their children of dangers and today the internet does the opposite, tigers and lions are used in advertising and are usually cute and cuddly. It is quite common in China for people to try to enter the Panda enclosures because Pandas are such lovable cuddly dahhlings. A full grown Panda can rip any human to pieces any time they want, they dont realise what cute means.


Exactly, and therein lies the difference between stupidity and ignorance. We are all born ignorant, a mostly correctible condition. Stupidity, and by this I am NOT referring to mental illness, cannot be cured. I know some folks with severe learning and social disabilities that fit neither definition.

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## stona (Jun 11, 2017)

I have two simple (I think that they are simple) questions for the flat earthers.

1. As a ship sails over the horizon it doesn't disappear at once as it would if it fell off the earth, it disappears slowly, first the bottom, then gradually the rest of it. This happens no matter in which direction the hypothetical ship sails. If the surface of the earth is not curved how do you explain that? If you accept a curve then you must acknowledge that a spherical object has a curved surface making the spherical (near enough) earth a plausible explanation.

2. Ancient humans noticed that in certain circumstances the earth casts its shadow on the moon. That shadow is always circular, or in the case of a partial eclipse a portion of a circle. The only object that will always cast a circular shadow, no matter from what angle the light comes is a sphere. How do you explain that?

Any idea where I should ask these questions? 

Cheers

Steve


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## herman1rg (Jun 11, 2017)

Find a school in the USA that teaches creationism and have a discussion


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## Zipper730 (Jun 11, 2017)

The flat-earth thing recently appearing was largely a US psy-op from what I was told. It sounds ridiculous, but I guess the idea was to either discredit people, or see how stupid some people are.

Personally, I think it's quite telling when a member of the flat earth society said "the flat earth society has members all around the globe".


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## mikewint (Jun 11, 2017)

On the sinking ship, Rowbotham describes a mechanism by which the hull is hidden by the angular limits of perception - the ship will appear to intersect with the vanishing point and become lost to human perception as the hull's increasingly shallow path creates a tangent on which the hull is so close to the surface of the ocean that the two are indistinguishable. The ship's hull gets so close to the surface of the water as it recedes that they appear to merge together. Where bodies get so close together that they appear to merge is called the Vanishing Point. The Vanishing Point is created when the perspective lines are angled less than one minute of a degree. Hence, this effectively places the vanishing point a finite distance away from the observer.

Usually it is taught in art schools that the vanishing point is an infinite distance away from the observer, as so:







However, since man cannot perceive infinity due to human limitations, the perspective lines are modified and placed a finite distance away from the observer as so:






This finite distance to the vanishing point is what allows ships to shrink into horizon and disappear as their hulls intersect with the vanishing point from the bottom up. As the boat recedes into the distance its hull is gradually and perceptively appearing closer and closer to the surface of the sea. At a far off point the hull of the ship is so close to the sea's surface that it is impossible for the observer to tell ocean from hull.






While the sails of the ship may still be visible while the hull is perceptively merged, it's only a matter of time before it too shrinks into the vanishing point which rests on the surface of the sea and becomes indiscernible from the surface.


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## stona (Jun 11, 2017)

what a load of bollocks


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## Shortround6 (Jun 11, 2017)

stona said:


> what a load of bollocks


No, it's true, you just aren't using the right telescope or camera in order to get around the vanishing point problem. 

Now what kind of telescope do I need to see The tip of the Brest peninsula from Lands End? 
Or Ireland?

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## mikewint (Jun 11, 2017)

The above is a perfectly reasonable explanation of the phenomenon and is logically consistent with the observations. 
It was decided long ago that when there were two (or more) competing explanations explaining the same phenomenon the simplist one has the *best chance *of being correct. The principle of Occam's Razor.
Occam's (or Ockham's) razor is a principle attributed to the 14th century logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." William used the principle to justify many conclusions, including the statement that "God's existence cannot be deduced by reason alone." That one didn't make him very popular with the Pope.

Many scientists have adopted or reinvented Occam's Razor, as in Leibniz's "identity of observables" and Isaac Newton stated the rule: *"We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances."*
The most useful statement of the principle for scientists is:
*"when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better."*
*N.B.* Simplicity is subjective and the universe does not always have the same ideas about simplicity as we do. 

In physics we use the razor to shave away metaphysical concepts. The canonical example is Einstein's theory of special relativity compared with Lorentz's theory that ruler's contract and clocks slow down when in motion through the ether. Einstein's equations for transforming spacetime are the same as Lorentz's equations for transforming rulers and clocks, but Einstein and Poincaré 
recognized that the ether could not be detected according to the equations of Lorentz and Maxwell. By Occam's razor it had to be eliminated.

The principle has also been used to justify uncertainty in quantum mechanics. Heisenberg deduced his uncertainty principle from the quantum nature of light and the effect of measurement.

Stephen Hawking writes in A Brief History of Time:
*"We could still imagine that there is a set of laws that determines events completely for some supernatural being, who could observe the present state of the universe without disturbing it. However, such models of the universe are not of much interest to us mortals. It seems better to employ the principle known as Occam's razor and cut out all the features of the theory that cannot be observed."*

This principle goes back at least as far as Aristotle, who wrote *"Nature operates in the shortest way possible."* The principle of simplicity works as a heuristic rule of thumb, but some people quote it as if it were an axiom of physics, which it is not. It can work well in philosophy or particle physics, but less often so in cosmology or psychology, where things usually turn out to be more complicated than you ever expected. Perhaps a quote from Shakespeare would be more appropriate than Occam's razor: *"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.".
*
So in simplest terms you can't win a Flat Earth argument. Find a hole in their logic and they plug it with a new assumption. 
It's like the flat horizon. The Earth's curvature, 8" for the first mile is so small as to be undetectable by human senses. Add to that the F.E. don't understand the difference between PLANE trigonometry and Geodetic trig. At a height of 1000ft the horizon is only down by 0.56 degrees. Even at aircraft height of 40,000ft the declination is only 3.5 degrees. Don't know about you but my head can't measure that small of an angle very well


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## stona (Jun 12, 2017)

Adolphe Quetelet’s "homme moyen", reasonable man, or the British 'man on the Clapham omnibus' all spring to mind. Faced with the evidence, for example that the vast majority of the observable universe (the biblical heavens and earth) is more than 6,000 light years away, how could a reasonable man conclude that the universe was created in six days about 6,000 years ago? The last estimate I saw for the diametre of the observable universe was 93 billion light years!
I'm sure the creationists will have some other idiotic explanation, but which would the reasonable man accept?
Cheers
Steve


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## pbehn (Jun 12, 2017)

mikewint said:


> While the sails of the ship may still be visible while the hull is perceptively merged, it's only a matter of time before it too shrinks into the vanishing point which rests on the surface of the sea and becomes indiscernible from the surface.



This explanation only works for the naked eye. When you use a good telescope and a smooth sea it is obvious that the hull disappears over the horizon. Galileo mde money from spotting the trading fleets first.


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## Robert Porter (Jun 12, 2017)

herman1rg said:


> Find a school in the USA that teaches creationism and have a discussion


There is no "discussing" with those types. But it may get you burned as a heretic...


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## mikewint (Jun 12, 2017)

Pbehn, actually not, depending...bear with me it gonna take a bit...
First a bit of history: FEers (Flat-Earthers) often refer to the Rowbotham experiments or the Bedford Level Experiments -

The Old Bedford River had a six-mile drainage canal marked at each end by a bridge. The canal was so long and straight that, if the world were round, a boat at one end would not be visible to a boat on the other end. They would each be hidden from each other by the curve of the Earth.

**NOTE* The curvature of the Earth on average is 8in for the first mile; 32in for two miles; 72in for three miles; etc. Thus at 6 miles the curvature would produce a drop of 288in or 24 feet.*

Parallax — whose real name was Samuel Rowbotham, in the summer of 1838, waded into the river and used a telescope held eight inches (20 cm) above the water to watch a boat, with a flag on its mast three feet (0.91 m) above the water, row slowly away from him. He reported that the vessel remained constantly in his view for the full six miles (9.7 km) to Welney bridge, whereas, had the water surface been curved with the accepted circumference of a spherical earth, the top of the mast should have been some 11 feet (3.4 m) below his line of sight. He published this observation using the pseudonym Parallax in 1849 and subsequently expanded it into a book, Earth Not a Globe, published in 1865. Rowbotham often took people out on the water and showed them the boats at the other end of the canal convincing many that the world, therefore, was flat.

On 11 May 1904 Lady Elizabeth Anne Blount, who would go on to be influential in the formation of the Flat Earth Society, hired a commercial photographer to use a telephoto lens camera to take a picture from Welney of a large white sheet she had placed, touching the surface of the river, at Rowbotham's original position six miles (9.7 km) away. The photographer, Edgar Clifton from Dallmeyer's studio, mounted his camera two feet above the water at Welney and was surprised to be able to obtain a picture of the target, which should have been invisible to him given the low mounting point of the camera. Lady Blount published the pictures far and wide.

The above is True and Correct as attested to by the actual photographs. Here is a more recent example also sited and reproduced by many FE blogs, articles, videos, etc,
Below is an actual photograph of the Chicago skyline taken from the shore of the state of Michigan directly opposite Chicago. The "straight-line" distance is 60 SIXTY miles.







Now consider the curvature, at 60 miles the curvature is 2400 feet. The Willis Tower (Tallest building to the left is 1450 feet tall to the Skydeck or to the twin antennas 1729ft. Clearly the none of the building should be visible from 60 miles standing on the shore UNLESS the Earth is indeed FLAT

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## mikewint (Jun 12, 2017)

Don't start the fires just yet...Me not done yet.
Now a bit of science:
*Inferior mirages* are the most commonly noticed type of mirage; therefore, in the minds of most people, it is the only type of mirage. An inferior mirage occurs when there is a layer of warm air in contact with the ground, with layers of much cooler air just above. This condition exists nearly every sunny day. As the sun’s radiation is absorbed by the ground, the air in contact with the ground heats, while air a short distance above the ground remains cooler, so a large temperature difference can exist between these two layers. Because this temperature difference is most pronounced when the sun is as high in the sky as possible, this condition is most likely to occur in the early afternoon in late spring and into summer. The type of surface exposed to sunlight is very important too, because dark, flat surfaces, such as pavement, rock, and sand are most efficient at heating air this way. Surfaces with much vegetation, such as grass, are far less efficient in doing this. Because of its high specific heat and great optical depth, water generally is very poor at producing conditions conducive to an inferior mirage.

One of the most common objects reflected in this way is blue sky, which our brains interpret as light reflecting off a body of water. The reflected image appears below the object, which is why we call this an inferior mirage. The layer of warm air near the surface acts much like an ordinary mirror. As a mirror reverses direction left to right, an inferior mirage reverses direction from top to bottom (you see the same thing with a mirror if you tilt your head 90 degrees and look at reflections in the mirror.) The reversal happens because light from the top of a distant object will reflect closer to the observer than light from the bottom of the object. Therefore, inferior mirages usually appear inverted. Early in the morning or late in the afternoon, solar heating of the ground is not nearly as great, so inferior mirages are less likely to happen then. The same is true during autumn and winter when the sun is much lower in the sky.

The warm surface air that causes inferior mirages tends to expand. As air expands, it becomes less dense, producing buoyancy. Buoyant force causes the warm air to rise, and the air must be replaced somehow. This unstable condition leads to upward and downward motion of air (turbulence). Light passing through turbulent air is blurred. The constantly changing turbulence causes the images to shimmer. It is unusual for an inferior mirage to be steady.

*Superior Mirages*
As previously mentioned, the reaction of bodies of water with sunlight is very different from that of land. Being largely transparent, light penetrates deeply into water, so that the sun’s light is absorbed throughout a thick layer from the surface to some depth rather than just on the surface, as with land. Additionally, water has a high specific heat, which means that its temperature increases very slowly as heat is added. Consequently, water exposed to sunlight does not change temperature appreciably throughout the day, so there is no heating of air in contact with the water. If anything, during summer afternoons, when land is rapidly heating, bodies of water frequently are cooler than air temperature. The cooler water chills the air in direct contact with it, so the air lying just above water often is cooler than air higher up. Since air temperature normally decreases with height, this temperature reversal from the norm is called a temperature inversion. Temperature inversions are common over bodies of water during late spring and into summer. Since this temperature structure is the reverse of what causes inferior mirages, inferior mirages are far less commonly noticed over water. This happens particularly during the summer, when inferior mirages are common over land.

With increasing distance from the object, the earth’s curvature causes the surface of the water to fall away from the beam of light. This is the point of the Bedford level experiment—the curvature of the earth ought to intervene to prevent the mast of the boat being visible from much more than three miles, let alone six miles. However, for the light from the distant object not to be visible, it would have to travel in a straight line. But with a temperature inversion, straight-line motion would carry the light from a cooler layer of air into a warmer layer of air at nearly a grazing angle. The light cannot do this, so it *continually is internally reflected* (just like a fiber optic cable), causing the light to bend around the edge of the earth. Therefore, with a temperature inversion, one can see objects that lie well beyond the edge of the earth’s curvature when viewing close to the surface of water.

Since this image is visible above where the object is, it is called a superior mirage. Because cooler air has no physical reason to rise, a temperature inversion is a stable situation, with little convection as with the condition that produces an inferior mirage. Therefore, superior mirages can be very steady, much steadier than inferior mirages. Furthermore, since the refraction acts almost continually rather than at one point, superior mirages normally are erect rather than inverted.

What was captured in the above post is a SUPERIOR MIRAGE of the Chicago skyline caused by a temperature inversion over the lake.

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## mikewint (Jun 12, 2017)

OK, now ships and what is actually being seen in those FE telescopic images wherein the whole ship at the "vanishing point" to the eye appears when you use a telescope.
The first photograph below is of a cargo ship bearing the name of the company on its hull. The company is the NYK line, a major Japanese shipping company. Notice that the bottoms of the letters are not visible. The letters on the hulls of cargo ships do not extend to the water line, even when fully loaded, so clearly the bottom of the hull is not visible. This is consistent with what we would expect on a spherical earth, but not on a flat earth. Notice the white bridge castle to the left. The shipping containers are multicolored, and they are stacked at least seven high above the hull directly in front of the bridge castle. Below the visible tiers of the multi-colored containers there is a level of what appears to be gray containers. Finally, notice that the image is a bit blurry. This is because of turbulence in the air between the ship and shore. With increasing distance, the turbulence will get worse, and the images will get blurrier.






In the next photograph below and succeeding photographs, the ship is farther away, as indicated by the decreasing apparent size of the ship. In the second photo, an inferior mirage is starting to show up. At the edge of the water, you can see a gray line, which is an inferior mirage of the row of gray containers right above the hull. On the right side of the ship, you can see the inferior mirage of the bow. The hull protrudes forward there, and the small white patch just above is a small portion of the forecastle. Notice that the inferior mirage of the bow is inverted, as one would expect. Note that the lettering on the hull is no longer visible. The layer of gray containers is even more visible in the inferior mirage, and the first layer of multi-colored containers is now beginning to appear in the inferior mirage.






In the third photograph, the light from the gray layer of containers and its inferior mirage are beginning to merge. The first layer of the multi-colored containers above it is clearly visible in the inferior mirage. The white of the bridge castle is starting to show up in the inferior mirage.






In the fourth photograph, the layer of gray containers no longer is visible. The bottom of the bridge castle and its inferior mirage have merged. None of the hull is visible as in actual fact it is below the curvature of the Earth.
So to anyone looking through a telescope the combination of real ship and mirage combine appearing to be a whole ship

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## pbehn (Jun 12, 2017)

Informative Mike, but the people who kicked off all this with their ships and telescopes lived in the Mediterranean region where much of the time the sea is like a pond. This discussion about sunlight heating things is a strange form of science fiction to us Brits.

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## stona (Jun 13, 2017)

pbehn said:


> This discussion about sunlight heating things is a strange form of science fiction to us Brits.



True. Some say it is a bright object that lurks above the clouds, but since I've never seen it I can't really believe in it 
Cheers
Steve


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## Robert Porter (Jun 13, 2017)

No one really believes in the "bright ball in the sky" anymore than that the earth is flat. Do they?


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## Shortround6 (Jun 13, 2017)

I don't know, Can I really believe something 93 million miles away turns my skin a strong red color in just a few hours time when outdoors?

It _must _be much closer

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## mikewint (Jun 13, 2017)

Indeed you are correct. The sun is 32 miles in diameter located about 3000 miles above the flat earth. The Moon is also 32 miles in diameter and at the same distance. This is clearly evidenced by the clearly observed diverging rays of sunlight.





The sun also shines only down on the Earth acting much like a flashlight illuminating only a portion of the flat earth





Seasonal changes are brought about as the sun spirals inward closer to the North Pole and then further from the pole





The stars, planets are projections on the Dome of the Firmament and it's all held in by the Antarctic wall


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## buffnut453 (Jun 13, 2017)

Clearly Amundsen (and Scott) never reached the so-called "South Pole". The just walked in a giant circle around the edge of the flat earth, right?


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## Shortround6 (Jun 13, 2017)

Admiral Byrd's expeditions and all the ones after them were hoax's financed and perpetuated by a secret society that made vast profits selling bogus globes to schools and children.


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## Old Wizard (Jun 13, 2017)

I never knew that.


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## mikewint (Jun 13, 2017)

At 3:29 p.m., on November 28,1929, the FLOYD BENNETT took off from Little America on its historic first-flight over the South Pole. With Byrd as navigator, Harold June as co-pilot and radio operator and McKinley as aerial photographer, the heavily loaded plane proceeded to climb towards the Queen Maud Mountains. For purposes of navigation, magnetic compasses were useless so close to the South Magnetic Pole. Thus, reliance was solely on the sun compass. Balchen flew south on the meridian of 163°45'W and when they reached 85°S they scanned the horizon, in vain, for Amundsen's Carmen Land. At 8:15 p.m. the geological party was spotted below, 100 miles from the base of the Queen Maud Mountains. A bag containing messages and photographs taken during the base-laying flight were dropped by parachute. The geological party radioed their position from which Byrd checked his navigation. From this point the plane began to gain altitude as it neared the glacier-filled passes of the Queen Maude Mountains. By 9:15 p.m. they had climbed to 9,000 feet but were still 2,000 feet too low to attain the Polar Plateau. As the plane ascended the Liv Glacier, empty tin containers of gasoline and 300 pounds of food were dumped out in order to reduce weight. For the next 30 minutes the FLOYD BENNETT struggled to gain the necessary altitude to clear the 11,000-foot pass between Mount Fridtjof Nansen and Mount Fisher at the head of the Liv Glacier. With only a few hundred yards to spare, the plane gained enough altitude to attain the Polar Plateau. As they flew over the Polar Plateau, a new mountain range, the Grosvenor Mountains, was viewed to the west and southwest. Looking back, they could identify the Mount Thorvald Nilsen massif, now called Nilsen Plateau. On the Polar Plateau the plane passed over a heavily crevassed area, the Devil's Ballroom, named by Amundsen. Observations at 12:30 a.m. showed them to be 50 miles from the Pole. Shortly after midnight on November 29, 1929, the FLOYD BENNETT flew over the South Pole. They flew a few miles beyond the Pole and then to the right and left to compensate for any possible navigational errors. Byrd dropped a small American flag and at 1:25 a.m. directed the plane for Little America. They descended down the Polar Plateau and the Axel Heiberg Glacier on the east side of Mount Fridtjof Nansen. At the foot of the glacier they flew along the front of the Queen Maud Mountains to the base of Amundsen Glacier. At this point a short fuel supply forced them to turn west for the gasoline that had been cached at the foot of the Liv Glacier on November 18. They landed beside the gasoline, took aboard 200 gallons and left 350 pounds of food for the geological party. Within an hour, they took off again and landed at Little America at 10:10 a.m. on November 29...they had been gone 18 hours and 41 minutes.


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## Zipper730 (Jun 13, 2017)

mikewint said:


> Pbehn, actually not, depending...bear with me it gonna take a bit...
> First a bit of history: FEers (Flat-Earthers) often refer to the Rowbotham experiments or the Bedford Level Experiments -
> 
> The Old Bedford River had a six-mile drainage canal marked at each end by a bridge. The canal was so long and straight that, if the world were round, a boat at one end would not be visible to a boat on the other end. They would each be hidden from each other by the curve of the Earth.
> ...


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## mikewint (Jun 13, 2017)

Buff, Initially, Ernest Shackleton and the South Pole crew began their journey at 10 am, under a cloudless sky with the wind at their backs, on October 29, 1908. At lunchtime, one of the Manchurian ponies, "Grisi", kicked Adams just below the kneecap and exposed the bone. This was not a good beginning. Even the light played tricks with them. When clouds and mist blocked the sun, they could see no shadows. As a result, ledges, mounds and gullies disappeared into a dead, flat white plain. Crevasses were difficult to spot. Covered only by fragile snowcrust, they were often so deep they could not see the bottom nor hear an echo from an object they dropped into them. On November 5, Wild, Adams, Marshall and "Grisi" were all rescued from crevasses---Marshall twice. Three days later Marshall and Wild pitched their tent right next to an unseen crevasse. The next day another pony slipped into an abyss and was fortunately saved from the brink of death. Shackleton's party experienced deep hunger. Three weeks out Shackleton complained in his diary about the size of their rations...if they were this hungry now, what will it be like "later when we are really hungry?" They shot "Chinaman", the weakest pony, on November 21, ate some of the meat and laid a depot with the rest for when they returned. Adams, unable to sleep for days from a toothache, let Marshall extract it without the use of tooth-pulling equipment. After 29 days, on November 26, they passed the previous "furthest south" record set by Robert Scott in 1902. In early December two more ponies were shot. Shackleton, with his soft heart for animals, believed he heard the last pony, "Socks", whinnying "all night for his lost companions". They started eating pony maize. Shackleton remained optimistic, reporting on December 11 that, "Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all". Christmas was celebrated at 9500 feet with plum pudding, medical brandy, cocoa, a spoonful of créme de menthe and cigars. They still had 250 miles between themselves and the pole, with only three weeks' biscuits left. "Tomorrow we will throw away everything except the most absolute necessities", Shackleton wrote. "Everytime we reach the top of a ridge we say 'perhaps this is the last', but it never is the last", he wrote. On December 27th they reached the polar plateau at an altitude of 10,200 feet. The weather was severe as a strong headwind chilled them to the bone. On December 30 a blizzard held them to only 4 miles traveling. They were weak from a lack of food and their hands and feet were always on the verge of frostbite. By January 2, 1909, Shackleton was near the breaking point. "I cannot think of failure yet. I must look at the matter sensibly and consider the lives of those who are with me...man can only do his best..." Two days later he wrote, "The end is in sight. We can only go for three more days at the most, for we are weakening rapidly". They fought through a blizzard on January 4, 5 and 6. On January 7, only 100 miles from the pole, a howling blizzard kept them in their sleeping bags all day. It was the same on January 8. The end of their southern journey began at 4 am on January 9. They left the sledge, tent and food at the camp and took only the Union Jack, a brass cylinder containing stamps and documents to mark their farthest south, camera, glasses and a compass. Their farthest south was reached at 9 am: 88°23'S, longitude 162°--just 97 miles from the South Pole.

They planted the flag, stayed a few minutes, and then turned round and headed for home. The strong winds which worked against them on their trip south now helped them on their return. For two weeks they traveled quickly with the sledge rushing, under sail, down ice falls and over crevasses. One day, January 19, they made 29 miles. By the morning of January 26 they had only tea, cocoa and a little pony maize left. That day they traveled 16 miles over "the worst surfaces and most dangerous crevasses we have ever encountered". On February 13 they reached the depot with "Chinaman's" carcass, which "tasted splendid". They found the Bluff depot on February 23. When spotted, Shackleton wrote, "It seemed to be quite close and the flags were waving and dancing as though to say 'Come, here I am, come and feed. After months of want and hunger, we suddenly found ourselves able to have meals fit for the gods, and with appetites the gods might have envied". By this time Marshall was suffering badly from dysentery. On February 27 Shackleton decided to leave Marshall and Adams behind while he and Wild took off for Hut Point.

When they arrived, they found a letter telling them that the NIMROD had picked up the magnetic pole party and would shelter near the glacier tongue until February 26. It was now February 28. After a bad night, they burned the magnetic hut and shortly thereafter the NIMROD appeared. By 11 am they were on board and three hours later Shackleton led a rescue party for Marshall and Adams. At 1 am on March 4, all were safe on board the NIMROD; they had walked 1700 miles.


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## mikewint (Jun 13, 2017)

Both Robert F. Scott and Shackleton had made attempts to reach it, but neither had succeeded. Although Shackleton had come close in 1909, reaching further south than any other human before, the Pole remained unconquered.

Scott was not the only one with the Pole in his sights. The Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was also heading there. He was determined and experienced, having learnt how to survive and travel in polar conditions from Arctic indigenous peoples. Where reaching the South Pole was one of Scott’s aims, it was Amundsen’s only one.

To get to the South Pole, Amundsen and Scott would have to travel roughly the distance from Scotland to northern Spain, more than 1,400 kilometres, but in freezing cold conditions and with heavy sledges.

Once in Antarctica, they had more than eight months to refine their plans. Scott studied Shackleton’s account from his Pole attempt, and would follow the same route. They tested and fine-tuned the food rations, and weighed them up in exact portions. Sledging equipment was perfected, and clothing altered.

On 13 September 1911, Scott revealed his final plans. Sixteen men would set out with ponies, dogs and motor sledges, and beyond the Beardmore Glacier they would man-haul. Men would gradually turn back, leaving a smaller group to complete the last stretch. The journey to and from the South Pole would take almost five months.
By the time they set off, the men were used to coping with life and travel in the cold Antarctic environment. They were as prepared as they could be.

Both Amundsen and Scott had to ensure they had enough provisions to get them to the South Pole and back.
There were limits to how much they could pack on their sledges and to make sure they didn’t run out of food and fuel, they placed stores along the route in advance. In early 1911, both men and their teams set off to lay supply depots.

Scott aimed for 80° South for the last drop, but his ponies suffered badly in the cold and he decided to turn back early. His last depot was further north than he had planned. Amundsen, on the other hand, laid his last depot at 82˚ South, closer to the Pole than Scott.


Amundsen’s journey
Amundsen started his journey on 19 October 1911, setting off with five men, four sledges and 52 dogs. Being experienced polar travelers and dog drivers, his group travele quickly across the frozen landscape and both men and dogs had lengthy periods of rest.

As the journey progressed, dogs were killed to provide fresh meat for the other dogs as well as the men. But Amundsen faced a risk. He was pioneering a new route and did not know if he would find a way through the Transantarctic Mountains to the Polar Plateau and on to the Pole itself. Luckily, he found a steep glacier that opened the way. The dogs struggled, clawing their way up, but after four days they were through.
They reached their final destination on 14 December – Amundsen and his men were the first humans at the South Pole.
Route
Amundsen’s base was at the Bay of Whales, on the Great Ice Barrier. If he was unlucky, the edge of the ice shelf could collapse into the sea, but here he was closer to the South Pole. His route had not been tried before. He had to look for an opening in the mountains to take him to the Polar Plateau.
Transport
Amundsen used only one method of transport: dogs. He set off with 52 dogs pulling four sledges. He and his men were experienced in managing and driving the animals, and in their hands it was a fast and efficient way to travel. They were also expert skiers. Because of their speed, men and dogs were allowed longer periods of rest.
Teams
Amundsen’s team consisted of five men. The dogs pulled the heavy weights, so the men didn’t need to. The dogs transported the supplies and equipment, and along the route were further supplies dropped off earlier in the year. They didn’t need a large team.
Food rations
Amundsen’s team had a similar diet to Scott’s, also designed to be high in calories: pemmican, chocolate, powdered milk and biscuits. As their journey progressed, they also killed their animals. The fresh dog meat was fed to both men and the other dogs.





Scott left 13 days after Amundsen, on 1 November 1911. His southern effort included 16 men in three teams, each transporting supplies for the journey. Men would gradually turn back, leaving one party to complete the last push to the Pole.
Scott was following Shackleton’s route up the Beardmore Glacier and on to the Polar Plateau. He relied on a combination of methods for travel, including man-hauling, two dog teams and 10 ponies, which would be killed along the journey to provide fresh meat.

Scott pioneered a new transport method, motorized sledges, but despite high hopes they broke down soon after leaving. Once the ponies were killed and the dog teams sent back, it was just the men and their sledges.
Although a tested way to travel in the Antarctic, progress was physically strenuous and slow. When Amundsen reached the South Pole, Scott was still on the Beardmore Glacier, about one month behind.
Route
Scott’s base was at Cape Evans on Ross Island. Here, he was further from the South Pole than Amundsen, but on firmer ground. He chose a route established by Ernest Shackleton during his 1907–1909 expedition, accessing the Polar Plateau via the Beardmore Glacier.
Transport
Scott used a combination of transport methods. Two dog teams and 10 ponies would pull supplies and equipment. He also relied on manually pulling the sledges, man-hauling. Shackleton had used ponies and man-hauling before, but Scott’s motorised sledges were a new addition. Unfortunately, they broke down early on in the journey.
Teams
Scott set off with 16 men which allowed for more food and fuel supplies to be taken. At the start of the journey, two men drove the dog teams, a team of 10 men travelled with the horses, and four men with the motor sledges. As they progressed, men gradually turned back, leaving just one smaller party of five, including Scott, to complete the last stretch. They were man-hauling.
Food rations
Scott’s team used a high-calorie diet of pemmican – fat mixed with ground meat – biscuits, sugar and butter, with hot tea or cocoa to drink. This was a common polar survival diet at the time. Ponies were killed along the journey, providing fresh meat for the men, important for avoiding scurvy. Although their diet was similar to Amundsen’s, Scott’s men carried out harder physical work when man-hauling.

Scott and the Polar Party – Bowers, Evans, Oates and Wilson – reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, one month after the Norwegians. Bitterly disappointed, Scott wrote, "Now for the run home and a desperate struggle".
The short Antarctic summer was coming to an end and time was running out. As they travelled north, they were slowed by unexpected cold, blizzards and sand-like ice that made man-hauling gruelling. Forced to reduce their daily rations, they began to starve. Exhausted and suffering from frostbite, they knew they might not make it. Evans died one month after reaching the Pole on 17 February.

Four weeks later Oates walked into a blizzard never to return. He suffered from painful frostbite and could not go on. He sacrificed himself to give his comrades a chance to survive. Scott wrote, "He said, “I am just going outside and may be some time”… we have not seen him since".

Scott, Bowers and Wilson were running out of food and fuel and were in desperate need of supplies. If they were to make it back, they had to get to the next reserve, the large One Ton depot, where they would find provisions and fuel.
But the unusually cold temperatures (-44C) and violent blizzards trapped them in their tent. They never made it and died sometime in March from cold, exhaustion and starvation, about 10 weeks after reaching the Pole. They were only 20 kilometers from the depot.

Aware of their fate, each man thought of home and wrote farewell letters. These were heartbreaking and powerful goodbyes to parents, wives and friends. Scott kept writing his diary until the very end. His last entry was on 29 March 1912, in which he pleaded "for God’s sake look after our people".

Sadly written instructions left by Scott before his departure had ordered the men left at base camp to send dog sleds out past the food depot to meet him and his party as they returned from the pole.
Those orders were not obeyed and instead a series of mistakes by the men he had left in charge – including choosing not to jeopardize the scientific goals of the mission – led to his death.

Scott has been heavily criticized for not making use of dog teams during his journey to the South Pole, however Scott had left detailed written instructions for the party to be relieved by dog teams as they trekked back to base camp, at Cape Evans.
Instead the dog teams were only sent as far as the food depot, 11 miles from the spot where the frozen corpses of Scott and his men were eventually found.

Edward Atkinson, the expedition surgeon who was in command at base camp in Scott’s absence, had issued an order “not to risk the dogs”.
Atkinson made a series of poor decisions that ultimately meant teams did not meet Scott as instructed. These include using men from the base camp to unload supplies from the Terra Nova ship just days before the date when Scott had ordered dog teams to leave the camp. It meant they were too tired to leave in the first week of February as instructed.
Atkinson also sent an inexperienced scientific assistant with poor navigation skills – Apsley Cherry-Garrard – rather than the more adept senior physicist Charles Wright to refill the food depot.
With superior navigation skills Wright would have been able to venture further south and would probably have met Scott’s team, whereas the less skilled Cherry-Garrard was unable to do so and returned to camp after dropping off the food.





From left to right at the Pole: Oates (standing), Bowers (sitting), Scott (standing in front of Union Jack flag on pole), Wilson (sitting), Evans (standing). Bowers took this photograph, using a piece of string to operate the camera shutter.


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## Airframes (Jun 14, 2017)

Of course the Earth is flat - here's proof ...............


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## mikewint (Jun 14, 2017)

OMG Terry, so from Cromwell on the Temms you can SEE Holland!!!! Zowie Batman, whoda thunk it!

AND parallel crop furrows converging on a vanishing point no less


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## Old Wizard (Jun 14, 2017)




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## Robert Porter (Jun 14, 2017)

It's a conspiracy I tells ya, a conspiracy! And if they don't stop denying it the great space turtle what carries us is liable to toss us off in sheer annoyance!


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## pbehn (Jun 14, 2017)

Why do people in a "round the world" boat race pass around the south pole as close as possible if it doesnt exist?

Grabs pop corn sure that Mike has read an explanation somewhere!


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 14, 2017)

pbehn said:


> Why do people in a "round the world" boat race pass around the south pole as close as possible if it doesnt exist?
> 
> Grabs pop corn sure that Mike has read an explanation somewhere!



I have not read all the posts in this thread. Please tell me there are not people in the forum who believe the earth is flat.


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## pbehn (Jun 14, 2017)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I have not read all the posts in this thread. Please tell me there are not people in the forum who believe the earth is flat.


Mikewint has made some great posts, complete garbage but well argued, worth reading.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 14, 2017)

Mike, are you a flat earther?


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## pbehn (Jun 14, 2017)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Mike, are you a flat earther?


From what I read Mike isnt, however he knows their arguments and presents them well. honestly worth a read, not to convince you of a flat earth but to read about some phenomena.

I live by the sea with high cliffs, my world doesnt look flat from the ground, even less so from 30,000ft from where it looks just like a globe.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 14, 2017)

I _think _we are all just having fun with it.

Looking on some of the other websites/forums is amazing, like the explanation of why air travel in the 'southern hemisphere' where the flat earth map/s show roughly twice the distance between cities/continents as a globe don't show a corresponding increase in travel time. 

Answer is _tailwinds, _according the flat earthers aircraft in this region ALWAYS have a tailwind of the appropriate speed and direction, regardless of day or season or direction of flight to achieve the same flight times of much shorter flight distances in the 'northern' part of the map. 

I am considering selling them a bridge connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn that I own


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## The Basket (Jun 14, 2017)

A few things I think of Scott.
It was much colder than usual.
The fuel cans leaked so he had less heating.
His trek was into the wind whereas Amundsen was sheltered.
He should of quit. 
I do think Amundsen being Norwegian helped him. Train all you want but if you're used to very harsh winters in a country of harsh winters then you quickly have an idea of what works.
I just feel Cook was unlucky and also too dogged. He should of quit while the going was good.
By the by...if the world is flat how does on get to the south pole?


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## Shortround6 (Jun 14, 2017)

The Basket said:


> By the by...if the world is flat how does on get to the south pole?



One doesn't. Scott and Amundsen's expeditions were hoax's perpetrated by the international globe manufacturers confederation.

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## The Basket (Jun 15, 2017)

So how did Scott die? Did Hollywood have a sound stage? 
So a brave man died for some vainglorious achievement has instead been killed by the shadowy globe manufacturers confederation?
By typing this we are in grave danger.
Under interrogation I am going to sing like a canary.

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## Old Wizard (Jun 15, 2017)




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## mikewint (Jun 15, 2017)

Chris, OKey I won't. It's being: Befürworte für den Teufel
Pbehn, I'll try to earn my popcorn but I'm not sure exactly what you are referring to when you say "as close as possible". First, there is not a Northern sailing route as a lot of land masses are in the way and the Arctic Ocean is blocked by constantly shifting sea ice.
Now going south is possible though weather conditions steadily worsen as you proceed further and further South since their are no landmasses to block wind or warm currents to moderate conditions. The names of the southern latitudes are very descriptive, i.e. Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties, Screaming Sixties.
Therefore, all of the Yacht races are generally along the old clipper ship route: From England/France/Spain down (south) the Atlantic Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope; then clockwise around the Cape, keeping Cape Hope to port; then East towards Australia. On this leg, the ships will be in the Roaring Forties or Furious Fifties (40-49 degree South Latitudes and 50-59 degree South Latitudes). The winds here blow from the west to the east with a good degree of force. In addition the ships will be in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current which also flows west to east.
The race then rounds the southern tip of Australia and continues East towards Cape Horn. Rounding the Horn west to east the race turns North up the coast of South America, across the Atlantic Ocean returning to their starting point. The race generally runs from November to February, and is timed to place the competitors in the Southern Ocean during the austral summer when wind/weather conditions have moderated to some extent.

Probably the toughest race was the Global Challenge run every four years starting in 1992. What made this unique was the direction of the race, from the East to the West, against the prevailing winds and currents. The route has varied but in 2004/5 started from Portsmouth (UK) and stopped at Buenos Aires (ARG), Wellington (NZ), Sydney (AUS), Cape Town (SA), Boston (USA) and La Rochelle (FRA) before returning again to Portsmouth.


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## pbehn (Jun 15, 2017)

Mike, i was wondering how the flat earthers explain it?


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## Peter Gunn (Jun 15, 2017)

Look, I like hanging here and all, and you guys are aces, but, if you fellows are gonna' run afoul of the international globe manufacturers confederation I'm outta' here, in fact, I was NEVER here...

*Frantically looks up how to delete account*


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## herman1rg (Jun 15, 2017)

_Sir Bedevere_: ...and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. 
_King Arthur_: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.


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## mikewint (Jun 15, 2017)

pbehn said:


> even less so from 30,000ft from where it looks just like a globe.



At 30,000ft or 5.68mi the horizon would be 212mi in ALL directions and would still appear flat. Even at 60,000ft the horizon is only 300mi in each direction you simply are not going to see anything resembling a globe. Remember you are at the CENTER of what becomes a circle whose boundary is the horizon. So is it curved?? OF COURSE it is, IT'S A CIRCLE. Photographs from high flying aircraft are TWO DIMENSIONAL and as such the curve APPEARS to be curved in the vertical (photograph direction) direction from the pilots perspective as in this 2-D drawing but it's actually curved along the horizontal.
Think about it this way. As you move higher the horizon recedes getting further away. Picture taking a slice through an orange 




You are at the top center looking down at the horizon. The angle is very small, just 1.7 degrees at 10,000 feet; 3.5 degrees at 40,000 feet but you can't see over the edge so you are seeing a flat circle (remember circles are round).




If you go higher the horizon recedes further and further BUT you are still at the center and it's still just a CIRCLE, curved? You bet IT'S A CIRCLE




Go high enough and your horizon becomes the equator and you see the full DISK of the earth


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## mikewint (Jun 15, 2017)

pbehn said:


> Mike, i was wondering how the flat earthers explain it?



Flat or globe it matters not. The winds still come from the west and blow east around the globe/disk and the current is CIRCUMpolar so no matter how you look at it you're going around a globe/disk till you're back at your start point.


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## Airframes (Jun 15, 2017)

Personally, I think it's all balls ..........................


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## mikewint (Jun 15, 2017)

Now they're actually oblong...

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## Robert Porter (Jun 17, 2017)

Telling youse guys are gonna piss off the space turtle!


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## mikewint (Jun 18, 2017)

THE EARTH ON TURTLE'S BACK
Before Earth was here there was only water as far as one could see in all directions, with birds and
animals swimming around in it. Up above in the clouds there was Skyland. In Skyland was a great and
beautiful tree with four white roots stretching to the four sacred directions. Every kind of fruit and
flower grew from its wide spreading branches.
The Chief of Skyland's young wife was expecting a child. One night she dreamt she saw the great tree
uprooted. The next morning she told her husband her dream. "This is very sad," he said, "for it is a
dream of great power and we must do all we can to make it come true." Then the chief called all the
men together and told them they must uproot the tree. But the roots were so deep and strong they
couldn't budge it. So the ancient chief himself wrapped his arms around the tree and strained and
strained, until with one last great effort he uprooted it. Now there was a great hole where the tree's roots
had been. The chief's wife came and leaned over to look down, holding the tip of one of the uprooted
tree's branches to steady herself, Far below she thought she saw something glittering like water. Leaning
out further she lost her balance and fell into the hole. Her hand slipped from the tip of the branch,
leaving her only a handful of seeds as she fell.
Far, far below in the waters some of the animals looked up. "Someone is falling from the sky," said one.
"We must help her," said another. Then two Swans flew up and caught her between their wings, and
brought her gently down to the water where the birds and animals were watching.
She is not like us," said one of the animals. "She doesn't have webbed feet. I don't think she can live in
the water."
"What shall we do?" said another of the water animals.
"I know," said one of the birds. "I have heard there is Earth far below the waters. If we dive down and
bring up Earth she will have a place to stand. So the birds and animals tried to bring up Earth. First
Duck dove far down beneath the surface, but he couldn't reach the bottom and floated back up. Then
Beaver tried. He went even deeper, so deep that it was all dark, but he couldn't reach the bottom either.
Then Loon tried and was gone a long, long time, but he too failed to bring up Earth. Soon it seemed
that all had tried and failed. Then a small voice spoke.
"I will bring up Earth or die trying." They all looked to see who it was. It was little Muskrat. She dove
down and swam and swam. She was not as strong and swift as the others, but she was determined. She
went so deep that it was all dark, and still she swam deeper. Her lungs felt ready to burst, but she swam
deeper still. At last, just as she was becoming unconscious, she grasped at the bottom with her little paw
and floated upwards, almost dead. When the other animals saw her break the surface, they thought she
had failed. Then they saw her right paw was held tightly shut.
"She has the Earth," they said. "Now where can we put it?"
"Put it on my back," said a deep voice. It was Great Turtle who had come up from the depths. They
brought Muskrat over and placed her paw against his back. To this day there are marks at the back of
Turtle's shell that were made by Muskrat's paw. The tiny bit of Earth fell on the back of Turtle. Almost
immediately it began to grow and grow until it became the whole world.
Then the two Swans brought Sky Woman down. She stepped onto the new Earth and opened her hand,
letting the seeds fall onto the bare soil. From the seeds the trees and grass and flowers sprang up. Life
on Earth had begun.

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## Capt. Vick (Jun 18, 2017)

Paraphrasing Neil D. Tyson:

The good thing about science is it works if you believe in it or not.

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## mikewint (Jun 18, 2017)

And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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## stona (Jun 18, 2017)

mikewint said:


> There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
> Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.



Dreamed of in your 16th century philosophy. The gaps for the god of gaps are getting very small indeed 400 years later.

Just saying 

Steve


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## mikewint (Jun 18, 2017)

I think that's called HUBRIS
William Thompson, Lord of Kelvin, in an address to an assemblage of physicists at the British Association for the advancement of Science in 1900 stated, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." A similar statement is attributed to the American physicist Albert Michelson at the dedication of the University of Chicago's Ryerson Physical Laboratory:

“While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of *the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice. It is here that the science of measurement shows its importance — where quantitative work is more to be desired than qualitative work. An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.”*


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## stona (Jun 18, 2017)

Not really, unless you still believe that thunder is caused by a divine hammer 
Cheers
Steve


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## Marcel (Jun 18, 2017)

stona said:


> Dreamed of in your 16th century philosophy. The gaps for the god of gaps are getting very small indeed 400 years later.
> 
> Just saying
> 
> Steve


Not really. From my own experience, I am a molecular biologist. We thought we knew a lot, until in 2009, we got our first vegetable genome sequenced. Then we realised we only have a mere idea how it works but reality is way more complex. I'm p


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## mikewint (Jun 18, 2017)

Well Steve I gotta admit I surly wish that I could be as sure as you seem to be that all you know is true and correct,
But then you are in good company:
In his 1842 book The Positive Philosophy, the French philosopher Auguste Comte wrote of the stars: “We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere.” In a similar vein, he said of the planets: “We can never know anything of their chemical or mineralogical structure; and, much less, that of organized beings living on their surface.”
Comte’s argument was that the stars and planets are so far away as to be beyond the limits of everything but our sense of sight and geometry. He reasoned that, while we could work out their distance, their motion and their mass, nothing more could realistically be discerned. There was certainly no way to chemically analyze them.


Throughout the Renaissance and the early development of modern science, astronomers refused to accept the existence of meteorites. The idea that stones could fall from space was regarded as superstitious and possibly heretical – surely God would not have created such an untidy universe?
The French Academy of Sciences famously stated that “rocks don’t fall from the sky”. Reports of fireballs and stones crashing to the ground were dismissed as hearsay and folklore, and the stones were sometimes explained away as “thunderstones” – the result of lightning strikes.

The number of scientists and engineers who confidently stated that heavier-than-air flight was impossible is too large to count. Lord Kelvin is probably the best-known. In 1895 he stated that “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible”.

In March 1934 Enrico Fermi bombarded uranium with neutrons, producing what he thought were the first elements heavier than uranium. Most scientists thought that hitting a large nucleus like uranium with a neutron could only induce small changes in the number of neutrons or protons. However, one chemist, Ida Noddack, pointed out that Fermi hadn’t ruled out the possibility that in his reactions, the uranium might actually have broken up into lighter elements, though she didn’t propose any theoretical basis for how that could happen. Her paper was largely ignored, and no one, not even Noddack herself, followed up on the idea.
On 29 December 1934, Albert Einstein was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as saying, “There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”

Einstein’s skepticism was, however, overtaken by events. By 1939, nuclear fission was better understood and researchers had realized that a chain reaction – one that, once started, would drive itself at increasing rates – could produce a huge explosion. In late 1942, such a chain reaction was produced experimentally and a project was proposed to produce such an ATOMIC bomb. Fleet Admiral William Leahy told President Truman: “This is the biggest fool thing we’ve ever done – the bomb will never go off – and I speak as an expert on explosives.”

And some EXPERTS weigh in on computers:
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949.

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

" There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.


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## stona (Jun 18, 2017)

I'm not sure at all and I too have a background in science as a chemistry graduate, though I quickly got bored working for a multi national company and opted for a career change. I'm just pointing out that the gaps are smaller now than 400 years ago. Confronted with the vast majority of the 'observable' universe actually being invisible to us we are unlikely to suggest god as an explanation, but there is plenty to know and inevitably there will be much to unlearn. Plus ca change


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## Robert Porter (Jun 18, 2017)

Don't forget the still living Bill Gates "No one will ever need more than 640K of memory."


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## pbehn (Jun 18, 2017)

mikewint said:


> Go high enough and your horizon becomes the equator and you see the full DISK of the earth



No, I have two eyes and I see the near side of a sphere. You can put 6 discs in my garden and 6 spheres of the same size and colour and I guarantee I will not mix up the two types. You can quote the extremely small angles involved, in fact our eyes can tell the difference.

While flying over the North Sea and looking across East Anglia and Kent I was looking at the extreme on the disc of the French Belgian and Dutch coast, my line of vision being at a tangent to the extreme not the limit of how far I can see, If I stand close, or not so close to a straight wall it never looks anything but a straight wall, while if i stand next to a curved wall (circular around a property) it looks just like what it is.


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## Robert Porter (Jun 18, 2017)

pbehn said:


> No, I have two eyes and I see the near side of a sphere. You can put 6 discs in my garden and 6 spheres of the same size and colour and I guarantee I will not mix up the two types. You can quote the extremely small angles involved, in fact our eyes can tell the difference.


Had not thought of it that way but you are correct.


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## pbehn (Jun 18, 2017)

Robert Porter said:


> Had not thought of it that way but you are correct.


A "trompe de -l'œil can fool the eyes to the extent that we think "that is clever" but seeing this picture






Do you actually believe a boy is jumping from a picture frame?

Trompe - Wikipedia de l'œil

When you consider the calculations a "catcher" in baseball or cricket has to make in space time and ballistics to make a catch it is unwise to underestimate our senses. Within a small fraction of a second the catcher knows if a catch is possible and heads to the place to catch it, even though the ball is not actually heading towards them just in their general direction. Of course there are other animals with more developed senses but ours are none too shoddy.


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## mikewint (Jun 18, 2017)

stona said:


> I'm just pointing out that the gaps are smaller now than 400 years ago.


Steve, if anything the gaps have grown out of all imagined proportion
*We don't know why the universe exists*: This is really quite unfair, and could be grounds for doubting that the cosmos knows what it’s doing. But in terms of physics, although there are some really very appealing, very promising, theoretical frameworks that begin to answer the question, the simple truth is that we're not sure which might be right. It may be that the universe springs from an inherently unstable 'nothingness'. The most void-like void, prone to spontaneous generation of matter and energy in proportions that always balance out to zero (yep, really, read Lawrence Krauss's great book on this). Furthermore, this may not be the only universe (a terrible linguistic fail, I know), but rather one of a vast array, part of a multiverse of more than 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 16 distinguishable realities. But a big piece of the problem is that we're still waiting for the next generation of cosmic measurements to chip away at the models, and we're still waiting for theories that provide more readily testable hypotheses, not just mathematical elegance. So we don't know why the heck all of this exists.

*We don't know what dark matter, or dark energy, is*: Big problem, honking big problem. Normal matter, the stuff of you, the stuff of me, planets, stars, and cheese sandwiches, amounts to only about 4.9% of the total matter and energy content of the universe. 26.8% of matter is 'dark', we know it's there because on large, cosmic, scales stuff moves around faster than it should and because the way that galaxies strew themselves across space is consistent with the existence of vast amounts of slow-moving gravitating 'stuff' that never turns into stars or planets or anything, just stays as diffuse, invisible, incredibly antisocial particles. Except we really have no idea what these particles truly are - a situation beautifully summarized recently by Mario Livio and Joe Silk. That's nasty, but perhaps nastier is dark energy. Something is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. It didn't used to. Until about 5 or 6 billion years ago the stretching of space following the Big Bang was in decline, but then something started to counter that, another unseen component, perhaps a type of vacuum energy density that fills up space as space itself grows. What exactly is it? We do not know. We have lots of ideas though, which is great, always good to have ideas about 68.3% of the universe.

*We don't know whether life exists anywhere else*: This one is close to my heart. Here we are, sentient beings on a planet seething with life (although perhaps not as seething as it could be) that's been busy sculpting and re-sculpting the physical and chemical environment for much of the past 5 billion years. And now we're confident that there are lots of planets out there, and that many of them could have an equal shot at playing host to life. But we still don't know whether or not we're alone. No clue. That's quite a problem. Don't get me wrong, it's a good problem, a juicy problem, one of the best. But even when the President of the United States introduces a lovely glossy TV series all about science, science that addresses the question of life in the universe, that doesn't mean that governments or industry give a fig about paying to solve the problem. As Lee Billings writes in his recent book, the lack of a sense of urgency is a little bewildering. So we continue to bumble along in splendid isolation.

*We probably haven't really figured out the quantum world*: What!? While it's true that our present mathematical framework of quantum mechanics can do wonders, from describing atoms and molecules to the bizarre nature of entanglement and qubits, BUT… One need only cast a look over the literature to see that the most fundamental aspects of the quantum nature of the universe are still causing headaches and disagreements. People are still reformulating the ways in which we cope with the quantum nature of reality so it's clearly too soon to call this understood. Not only that, but the possibility of pure quantum effects reaching into the realm of soft, wet, and warm biology has also raised its head, a rather unnerving notion. . Oh, and then there’s black holes and quantum firewalls...

*We don't understand our own biology*: It's not too radical to say this, after all, if we did understand every detail of how we worked we'd presumably be able to eliminate disease (assuming that's actually better for us, which it clearly is individually, but perhaps not as a species). We'd also be able to customize ourselves by reaching into to those 3 billion or so nucleic acids in our DNA and doing a spot of molecular engineering, getting those purple earlobes we've always wanted. But we're not close to doing this any better than we can come up with 'engineered' crops - lots of misses and a few hits. Want a good example of our pitiful lack of knowledge? It's the microbiome. Our ten trillion human cells are augmented, exploited, nurtured, by a hundred trillion microbial cells - a couple of pounds of bacteria and archaea that we all carry around and can't live without. They're in our guts, our lungs, up our noses and in every other dank corner. We're just cruise ships for the ultimate microbial Club-Med, and we simply don't know what that all means.

*We don't know how the Earth works*: Let's lurch back to a grander scale. No human, or robot, has ever physically traveled deeper than a few miles into the Earth's crust, everything else is extrapolation and interpolation from 'remote sensing' and clever physical analyses. It took us a ridiculously long time to figure out that the outer planetary skin is moving and sliding around; plate tectonics was not generally accepted until the mid-20th century! We're still not sure exactly how the inner dynamo works, how rolls of convecting, conducting material in the outer core generate our planetary magnetic field. There's also so much mess after 4.5 billion years of geophysics that some of our best information about the planet's origins come from meteorites and the cratering of other worlds - outsourced. Speaking of other worlds, we're not even sure we understand where the Moon came from, maybe it was a giant impact, maybe not. For an allegedly clever species on a small rocky planet this is a bit of an epic fail.

*We can't prove or solve many of our own mathematical conjectures and problems*: Lest mathematics thinks it can escape this festival of ignorance, just remind yourself that there's a long list of unproven, unsolved problems and unproven conjectures.

*We don't know how to make an artificial intelligence*: I'm putting this here because it's a perennial problem, and one that speaks to both our desire to understand ourselves (if you can make an artificial being you may find the secret sauce behind your own intelligence, even if ultimately it's just an emergent phenomenon) as well as to understand what might be 'out there' in the vastness of the cosmos, wrought by billions of years of alien evolution, and really quite depressed by it all. Although we've come a long way with our machines, it's not clear that predictive text or automated suggestions for shopping and movie streaming are really assembling information in any way that resembles how our minds generate ideas. This is truly a frontier and a VERY scary one if we ever actually succeed.

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## pbehn (Jun 18, 2017)

mikewint said:


> *We don't know why the universe exists*:
> 
> .


Why would it need a reason? This is scientific Anthropomorphism. Humans think that things happen for a reason, so because the universe exists it must exist for a reason, maybe it doesnt.


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## Robert Porter (Jun 18, 2017)

The old saying "the more we learn, the more we realize what we don't know" applies. I agree gaps in our knowledge are growing not shrinking. We are realizing more of what we don't know.


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## stona (Jun 19, 2017)

The gaps are not growing, it is not necessarily so that the more we know, the more there is to know, but science should always assumes that it is.

*We don't know why the universe exists:*
There doesn't have to be a why? What we want to know is how?

*We don't know what dark matter, or dark energy, is*:
Give us a chance. It's theoretical existence is postulated by a model of the universe that is certainly not 100% correct, and even in human terms very recently. Given time we will sort this one out.

*We don't know whether life exists anywhere else*:
We don't. Our hypothesis is that the universe should be teeming with life, but given the factors of astronomical distances and time beyond the conception of human beings who have been genetically programmed to understand such things in terms of our own planet and lifespans we have to accept that we might never know, unless of course we find life close at hand, in our own solar system.

*We probably haven't really figured out the quantum world*:
Another concept that has been around for barely 100 years. There is no quantum world. It is a theoretical construct which seeks to explain what has been described as the 'universe of the very small'. Like all chemists my studies brushed up against quantum mechanics and I found it almost completely irrelevant to day to day chemistry in the agro-chemical industry 

*We don't understand our own biology*:
We understand it a lot better than we did 5,10, 50, 100, 1000 years ago. The level of understanding, down to a molecular level is astonishing and it is a field that moves rapidly forward. From Watson and Crick's elegant and intuitive model of the DNA molecule to a complete human genome in less than fifty years is a stupendous achievement.

*We don't know how the Earth works*:
Same as above. We've got a good model now, but of course the science evolves. There is no room for the gods in volcanoes, tsunamis, earth quakes or the aurora anymore.

*We can't prove or solve many of our own mathematical conjectures and problems*:
If there weren't unsolved conjectures and problems, let's call them hypotheses, then people wouldn't be doing science and mathematics properly.

*We don't know how to make an artificial intelligence*:
In 1944 we didn't know how to manufacture an atomic weapon. We do now.

Cheers

Steve


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## herman1rg (Jun 19, 2017)




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## stona (Jun 19, 2017)

But often they are true 
One of my favourites.
_"If there's no such thing as simultaneity_ [as shown in Eistein's man on platform, woman on fast moving train thought experiments] _then there's no such thing as absolute time everywhere throughout the universe, and Isaac Newton was wrong."_ Sean Carroll, California Institute of Technology, trying to explain special relativity and why James Clerk Maxwell was correct about the speed of light.
We can send our unmanned probes throughout the solar system and beyond using Newton's equations, but he was wrong about some things! 
Cheers
Steve


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## pbehn (Jun 19, 2017)

Was Newton wrong or just not right, as I understand it a theory is valid until proved wrong by another better theory.


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## Capt. Vick (Jun 19, 2017)

I'm not sure my small ape like brain can handle all this...


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## pbehn (Jun 19, 2017)

I am always fascinated by people discussing "understanding" earthquakes and volcanoes. This is based on a human emotion, understanding must lead us to be able to predict when and where they will occur. Well they occur all over the place it is purely a question of magnitude and local building regulations.


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## mikewint (Jun 19, 2017)

pbehn said:


> Was Newton wrong or just not right, as I understand it a theory is valid until proved wrong by another better theory.


Newton was indeed wrong, because he did not take into Relativity into account. Accurate measurements of motion and Newton's equations predictions showed errors even in his time BUT they were ascribed to experimental error and it was felt that the errors would vanish when measuring instrumentation improved. That was not the case and more accurate measurements simply verified the errors. 
Newton's equations required a Privileged Position an absolute time/space co-ordinate. Since there is no such Privileged Position all measurements are subject to variation as they are viewed from other locations, measurements are RELATIVE. Objects, e.g., do not all fall at the same rate everywhere on earth as gravity varies with location.


stona said:


> We can send our unmanned probes throughout the solar system and beyond using Newton's equations,


Indeed we can BUT with, in some cases, several orbital corrections due to the increasing error build-up. Newton's Laws of Motion are very close approximations and they work very well in the short term. Much as surveyors surveying small parcels of land use PLANE Trigonometry. It is only when large tracts need to be surveyed that Geodetic survey techniques become necessary.

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## pbehn (Jun 19, 2017)

mikewint said:


> Newton was indeed wrong, because he did not take into Relativity into account. Accurate measurements of motion and Newton's equations predictions showed errors even in his time BUT they were ascribed to experimental error and it was felt that the errors would vanish when measuring instrumentation improved. That was not the case and more accurate measurements simply verified the errors.


It would be perfectly reasonable to ascribe errors to experimental error since an accurate clock was only developed much later and the standards of weight and length were actually not standard.


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## mikewint (Jun 19, 2017)

pbehn said:


> It would be perfectly reasonable to ascribe errors to experimental error


Indeed it would BUT by the very standards of the scientific method a Theory is disproven as soon as ONE exception is found and verified. But we are dealing with Human Beings here and when a man has spent years on a Theory that produces close results we hang onto it and ascribe the exceptions to human/instrumental errors which are, of course, very real.
Scientific history is replete with such universal acceptance of wrong theories because they were close.


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## pbehn (Jun 19, 2017)

mikewint said:


> Indeed it would BUT by the very standards of the scientific method a Theory is disproven as soon as ONE exception is found and verified. But we are dealing with Human Beings here and when a man has spent years on a Theory that produces close results we hang onto it and ascribe the exceptions to human/instrumental errors which are, of course, very real.
> Scientific history is replete with such universal acceptance of wrong theories because they were close.


All experiments produce close results, even calibration of scientific equipment produces close results, if you demand exact results then industry stops. The equipment available in the sixteenth century and the few people in the world who knew what the discussion was actually about cloud the issue. At the time people still believed in biblical creation and even biblical floods


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## stona (Jun 20, 2017)

pbehn said:


> I am always fascinated by people discussing "understanding" earthquakes and volcanoes. This is based on a human emotion, understanding must lead us to be able to predict when and where they will occur. Well they occur all over the place it is purely a question of magnitude and local building regulations.



We now understand what causes them (volcanoes are not Vulcan's forges) but it may be a long road to accurate prediction. We are well on the way to predicting where, but not so much when.

Newton was wrong about time. It was Clerk-Maxwell's ideas about electromagnetic radiation (the so called second unification, of electricity and magnetism) that led Einstein towards the concept that time was relative and not absolute. Einstein realised that there was a fundamental contradiction between Newton and Clerk-Maxwell, one he solved with his theory(ies). There is now a contradiction between Einstein's theories and those proposed by quantum mechanics and physics requires another unification. 
Unified Field Theory anyone? A doff of the cap to Clerk-Maxwell in the very name. He also sported an absolutely splendid beard, any Victorian gent would have been proud of it 

Cheers

Steve


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## pbehn (Jun 20, 2017)

stona said:


> We now understand what causes them (volcanoes are not Vulcan's forges) but it may be a long road to accurate prediction. We are well on the way to predicting where, but not so much when.
> 
> Newton was wrong about time. It was Clerk-Maxwell's ideas about electromagnetic radiation (the so called second unification, of electricity and magnetism) that led Einstein towards the concept that time was relative and not absolute. Einstein realised that there was a fundamental contradiction between Newton and Clerk-Maxwell, one he solved with his theory(ies). There is now a contradiction between Einstein's theories and those proposed by quantum mechanics and physics requires another unification.
> Unified Field Theory anyone? A doff of the cap to Clerk-Maxwell in the very name. He also sported an absolutely splendid beard, any Victorian gent would have been proud of it



We only know what volcanoes are and what has led to any particular eruption which is like accident investigation. Earthquakes are similar but they happen all over the world all the time, the question is always will anybody die. Early records of earthquakes in UK are almost completely confined to damage to cathedrals or churches, these were the only early buildings that can be damaged, the others were wattle and daub huts that no one cared about anyway. The UK is subject to much seismic activity but it is such a low level no one knows or cares. Forecasting volcanoes and earthquakes is not a fruitful activity there is no guarantee in science that we can, and what is required is to forecast activity that will cause fatal structural damage.

Newton was no more wrong about time than anyone else since there was no accurate means of measuring it and many of his contemporaries considered a day was a constant because God created it.


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## mikewint (Jun 21, 2017)

pbehn said:


> Forecasting volcanoes and earthquakes is not a fruitful activity there is no guarantee in science that we can, and what is required is to forecast activity that will cause fatal structural damage.



Fruitful?? to whom? You confuse me as you seem to be both pro and con at the same time. Science has never offered a guarantee of anything useful/fruitful. Theoretical science is by its very nature a "Pie-in-the-Sky" activity with unknown applications and/or even usefulness, BUT...
In 1900, Planck THEORETICALLY deduced (from the selective colors given off by heated objects) the relationship between energy and the frequency of radiation, essentially saying that energy could be emitted or absorbed only in discrete chunks which he called quanta. This in turn gave Einstein, in 1905 the tool to publish his paper on the photoelectric effect (another multimillion dollar industry), which proposed that light also delivers its energy in chunks, in this case discrete quantum particles now called photons. Then in 1917, Einstein proposed that besides absorbing and emitting light spontaneously, electrons could be stimulated to emit light of a particular wavelength.
Almost 40 years were to pass before these theoretical constructs would be further developed. 

On April 26, 1951: Charles Hard Townes of Columbia University in New York conceives his MASER (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) idea while sitting on a park bench in Washington.

Inspired by Townes paper, Herbert J. Zeiger and graduate student James P. Gordon were able to demonstrate an actual working MASER at Columbia University. The ammonia maser, the first device based on Einstein’s predictions, obtains the first amplification and generation of electromagnetic waves by stimulated emission. The maser radiates at a wavelength of a little more than 1 cm and generates approximately 10 nW of power.

1955: At P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, Nikolai G. Basov and Alexander M. Prokhorov attempt to design and build oscillators. They propose a method for the production of a negative absorption that was called the pumping method.

1956: Nicolaas Bloembergen of Harvard University develops the microwave solid-state MASER.

Sept. 14, 1957: Townes sketches an early *optical maser* in his lab notebook.

Nov. 13, 1957: Columbia University graduate student Gordon Gould jots his ideas for building a LASER in his notebook and has it notarized at a candy store in the Bronx. It is considered the first use of the acronym LASER. Gould leaves the university a few months later to join private research company TRG.

1958: Townes, a consultant for Bell Labs, and his brother-in-law, Bell Labs researcher Arthur L. Schawlow, in a joint paper published in Physical Review Letters, show that MASERs could be made to operate in the optical and infrared regions and propose how it could be accomplished. At Lebedev Institute, Basov and Prokhorov also are exploring the possibilities of applying MASER principles in the optical region.

April 1959: Gould and TRG apply for LASER-related patents stemming from Gould’s ideas.

March 22, 1960: Townes and Schawlow, under Bell Labs, are granted US patent number 2,929,922 for the optical maser, now called a LASER. With their application denied, Gould and TRG launch what would become a 30-year patent dispute related to LASER invention.

May 16, 1960: Theodore H. Maiman, a physicist at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, Calif., constructs the first LASER using a cylinder of synthetic ruby measuring 1 cm in diameter and 2 cm long, with the ends silver-coated to make them reflective and able to serve as a Fabry-Perot resonator. Maiman uses photographic flashlamps as the LASER’s pump source.

July 7, 1960: Hughes holds a press conference to announce Maiman’s achievement.

November 1960: Peter P. Sorokin and Mirek J. Stevenson of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center demonstrate the uranium LASER, a four-stage solid-state device.

December 1960: Ali Javan, William Bennett Jr. and Donald Herriott of Bell Labs develop the helium-neon (HeNe) LASER, the first to generate a continuous beam of light at 1.15 μm.

1961: LASERs begin appearing on the commercial market through companies such as Trion Instruments Inc., Perkin-Elmer and
Spectra-Physics.

December 1961: The first medical treatment using a LASER on a human patient is performed by Dr. Charles J. Campbell of the Institute of Ophthalmology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and Charles J. Koester of the American Optical Co. at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. An American Optical ruby laser is used to destroy a retinal tumor.

October 1962: Nick Holonyak Jr., a consulting scientist at a General Electric Co. lab in Syracuse, N.Y., publishes his work on the “visible red” GaAsP (gallium arsenide phosphide) LASER diode, a compact, efficient source of visible coherent light that is the basis for today’s red LEDs used in consumer products such as CDs, DVD players and cell phones.

Early 1963: Barron’s magazine estimates annual sales for the commercial LASER market at $1 million.

June 26, 1974: A pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum is the first product read by a bar-code scanner in a grocery store.

I could go on and on..It's difficult to think of a field in which LASERs are not used in some manner


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## pbehn (Jun 21, 2017)

Mike, I am not arguing against science and research just saying that forecasting is not a fruitful activity. People have forecast a big earthquake in both California and Japan since I was a child. Actually they have had a few big earth quakes and what difference has it made? Yes buildings are generally better but still in the same place. People want to know about a big earthquake hitting a large population centre, but if they were ever told Tokyo will be hit next year by a 9.0 earthquake what would be done? As with weather forecasts people only remember when it is wrong.


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## gumbyk (Jun 21, 2017)

pbehn said:


> Mike, I am not arguing against science and research just saying that forecasting is not a fruitful activity. People have forecast a big earthquake in both California and Japan since I was a child. Actually they have had a few big earth quakes and what difference has it made? Yes buildings are generally better but still in the same place. People want to know about a big earthquake hitting a large population centre, but if they were ever told Tokyo will be hit next year by a 9.0 earthquake what would be done? As with weather forecasts people only remember when it is wrong.



Well, that's almost the situation we have here, so I can tell you what is currently being done.
We're well overdue for a rupture of the Alpine Fault here in New Zealand - capable of an M8+ earthquake, so not a 9, but certainly big enough to cause major, widespread devastation.

1. New buildings are built to earthquake code, existing buildings are being upgraded.
2. Emergency services have response plans in place
3. Community response plans are in place
4. People get mentally prepared

Forecasting isn't about preventing something from happening, and with natural disasters, generally exact forecasting isn't available, so its about preparation and response rather than prevention.


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## pbehn (Jun 21, 2017)

gumbyk said:


> Forecasting isn't about preventing something from happening, and with natural disasters, generally exact forecasting isn't available, so its about preparation and response rather than prevention.


That was my original point, if Tokyo ever got hit by a 10.0 earthquake the of course many people made the wrong choice or decision, until that time measures will be taken to minimise the risk when everyone could live somewhere else but maybe make less money.


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## gumbyk (Jun 21, 2017)

pbehn said:


> That was my original point, if Tokyo ever got hit by a 10.0 earthquake the of course many people made the wrong choice or decision, until that time measures will be taken to minimise the risk when everyone could live somewhere else but maybe make less money.



Yes, and this isn't 'fruitless', quite the opposite in fact.


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## Robert Porter (Jun 21, 2017)

Mainly due to the need for access to navigable waterways for trade historically humans have settled coasts and rivers, and the fertile volcanic soil keeps large populations centered in volcanically active areas. This is an oversimplification but the point I am trying to make is that most modern cities and population centers were picked due to reasons that no longer may be valid, but they leave those populations in high risk locations. Rising sea levels, volcanoes, and earthquakes are all present near most large population centers. The ability to accurately predict earthquakes and eruptions is certainly desirable. Japan has one of the best tsunami warning systems in the world and their population generally takes the risk seriously and acts appropriately when needed. I honestly can't see San Francisco evacuating in anything like sufficient numbers even given sufficient warning. Mainly due to a lack of belief in the consequences. It always surprises me that people would knowingly put themselves and their families in high risk locations yet freak out over manageable and well understood risks like flying.


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## pbehn (Jun 21, 2017)

gumbyk said:


> Yes, and this isn't 'fruitless', quite the opposite in fact.


None of the four points you posted have anything to do with prediction. From UK the earliest records are of damaged cathedrals which would lead one to conclude its best not to build huge bell towers. The UK makes a half decent job of predicting weather but they are surrounded by weather, they rarely predict the really serious events and no one would abandon their home or business for months based on their forecast.


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## pbehn (Jun 21, 2017)

Robert Porter said:


> Japan has one of the best tsunami warning systems in the world and their population generally takes the risk seriously and acts appropriately when needed. I honestly can't see San Francisco evacuating in anything like sufficient numbers even given sufficient warning. Mainly due to a lack of belief in the consequences. It always surprises me that people would knowingly put themselves and their families in high risk locations yet freak out over manageable and well understood risks like flying.


I worked for a while in Japan and it was noticeable that the normal warning about fire in hotels was replaced by "what to do in an earthquake" good advice because there was a tremor while I was there, it is normal. Many countries have moved their capital cities and many cities have withered, I cant see why a political decision isnt made to move from the dangerous to the safe.

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## gumbyk (Jun 21, 2017)

pbehn said:


> None of the four points you posted have anything to do with prediction. From UK the earliest records are of damaged cathedrals which would lead one to conclude its best not to build huge bell towers. The UK makes a half decent job of predicting weather but they are surrounded by weather, they rarely predict the really serious events and no one would abandon their home or business for months based on their forecast.



They are a result of the predictions. The thing is that EQ's aren't predicted with 100% accuracy, they are just given possibilities, which scientists openly admit to. Did you realise that typically when thunderstorms are predicted, that translates to a 30% possibility? same thing, just lower numbers.

We can't prevent these events, just prepare, and you prepare more for those events that are most likely to happen.


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## stona (Jun 22, 2017)

pbehn said:


> Newton was no more wrong about time than anyone else since there was no accurate means of measuring it and many of his contemporaries considered a day was a constant because God created it.



You are mistaken. Newton was fundamentally wrong about the very nature of time which has nothing to do with the measurement of elapsed periods or the relative accuracy of any kind of chronometer.
He thought that time flowed at a constant rate throughout the universe, and it does not.
Cheers
Steve


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## mikewint (Jun 22, 2017)

pbehn said:


> that forecasting is not a fruitful activity.


Wow, the Weather Guys on TV, military, and all those commercial weather forecasters working for outdoor venues are gonna be real sorry to hear that. pbehn, man has been "predicting" the future since Ugh first stepped out of the cave. The ultimate test of any Theory is its ability to predict a future outcome.
In today's world computer "simulations" do that very thing. Auto makers, aircraft designers, boat builders, e.g., can try many different configurations without having to resort to the time and money consuming prototype stage. Naturally the "simulation" isn't the real world and its ability to "predict" is limited since many of the real world events we'd like to model, like weather, are governed by Chaos Theory.
So like weather "forcasting" there are simply too many "initial" conditions that are unknown or just slightly off, that can cascade to cause massive end effectsm the so called "Butterfly Effect". 
Try hitting a golfball EXACTLY the same way twice in a row!


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## Robert Porter (Jun 22, 2017)

mikewint said:


> Try hitting a golfball EXACTLY the same way twice in a row!


I will have you know I hit it the same way every time. Every ball I own has been struck exactly the same way, right into the water "feature".

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## pbehn (Jun 22, 2017)

Mike I was talking about volanoes and earthquakes. It has already been forecast that there will be earthquakes in Japan and California, in fact they happen almost daily it is merely a question of scale. It has also been forecast that statistically "one is due" what is done with this information? Unless someone ca forecast perfectly accurately in the weeks months and years ahead no one will take any notice because it costs too much. Improved building standards help but do not solve the issue and they are not research into forcasting but the way earthquakes happen.


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## stona (Jun 22, 2017)

Volcanic eruptions have already been predicted, not exactly, but within a time frame of days. Ongoing research is establishing more and more measurable activities within a volcano that are precursors to an eruption. There are many different classes of volcano, and within each class there are significant variations, none of which makes the job any easier.

At the moment we are further away with earthquakes. There are models which predict where an earthquake is likely based on various means of measuring the build up of stress within a fault, but when the fault will 'let go' and cause an earthquake is still unpredictable. There certainly is a great deal of research devoted, ultimately, to predicting earthquakes. You have to understand the how to stand any chance of working out the when.

Let's bear in mind that the people living in Pompeii and Herculaneum had no idea that Vesuvius was a volcano at all. I imagine they were rather more surprised by the eruption, explained in the only terms they knew, than would be the modern population of Naples, who will have seen all the documentaries about the ancient eruption and be familiar with complicated ideas and concepts like pyroclastic flow. It might not save them if there is ever a repeat of that type of eruption!.

Cheers

Steve


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## mikewint (Jun 22, 2017)

pbehn said:


> I was talking about volanoes and earthquakes.


Really a distinction without a difference. Just as with weather accuracy depends upon the input data, i.e., better data better prediction.
The problem with Volcanoes & Earthquakes is that they are underground and therefore precursor data is difficult to find and measure.
Let me post this again:
*We don't know how the Earth works*: Let's lurch back to a grander scale. No human, or robot, has ever physically traveled deeper than a few miles into the Earth's crust, everything else is extrapolation and interpolation from 'remote sensing' and clever physical analyses. It took us a ridiculously long time to figure out that the outer planetary skin is moving and sliding around; plate tectonics was not generally accepted until the mid-20th century! We're still not sure exactly how the inner dynamo works, how rolls of convecting, conducting material in the outer core generate our planetary magnetic field. There's also so much mess after 4.5 billion years of geophysics that some of our best information about the planet's origins come from meteorites and the cratering of other worlds - outsourced. Speaking of other worlds, we're not even sure we understand where the Moon came from, maybe it was a giant impact, maybe not. For an allegedly clever species on a small rocky planet this is a bit of an epic fail.

Earthquakes are very difficult due to their location deep within the Earth's crust and perhaps deeper. But there are a number of promising approaches being developed:
1. Unusual Animal Behaviour:
It is a well established fact that animals are endowed with certain sensory perceptions denied to human beings. Some of the animals have much better power of sniffing, hearing, seeing and sensing than the human beings. The unusual behaviour of animals prior to earthquakes received wide publicity after the Haichang earthquake in Liaoning province of China, in February 4, 1975 was successfully predicted.
The Stanford Research Institute, California, under the ‘Project Earthquake Watch’ has a network along the San Andreas Fault. This group keeps a watch on the behaviour of about 70 animal species. Dr. B.G. Deshpande has compiled a list of 87 animals which have been watched all over the world and whose behavior might sense as an advance indicator of impending quake.

2. Hydrochemical Precursors:
Chemical composition of underground water was observed on a regular basis in seismically active regions of Tadzhik and Uzbekistan. These observations yielded following results.
(i) Concentration levels of dissolved minerals and gaseous components remained almost constant during seismically inactive period.
(ii) An appreciable increase in concentration of dissolved minerals was noticed 2 to 8 days before an earthquake. Variations in level of underground water, the pressure of artesian water, the discharge of water sources and temperature of underground water were also noticed during this period. These variations are large in the event of a strong earthquake.

3. Temperature Change:
There seems to be some relation between temperature and earthquakes. A considerable rise of temperature by 10°C and 15°C was reported before earthquakes in Lunglin in China (1976) and Przhevalsk in Russia (1970). The epicentral distances of these earthquakes where observations were taken in hot spring/well were 10 and 30 km and precursory periods were 42 and 72 days respectively.

4. Water Level:
There are drastic changes in water level in several wells just before a major earthquake. There was a fall in water level a few days before the Nankai earthquake in Japan (1946). Rise of water level by 3 and 15 cm was reported before Lunglin (China) and Przhevalsk (Russia) earthquakes.
Similarly, water level rose by 3 cm a few hours before the earthquake in Meckering in Australia (1968). In China rise of water level in wells was observed before earthquakes of Haicheng (1975), Tangshan (1976), Liu- quiao and Shanyin (1979).

5. Radon Gas:
Radon is a radioactive gas which is discharged from rock masses prior to earthquake. It is dissolved in the well water and its concentration in the water increases. Such an increase was reported in Tashkent in 1972 where increase in concentration varying from 15 to 200 per cent was noticed about 3 to 13 days prior to an earthquake.
In China, 50% and 70% increase in radon concentration was reported 18 and 6 days respectively before the Tangshan (1976) and Luhuo (1973) at Langfang and Guzan stations which were located 130 and 200 km epicentral distances for two cases. In 1995, a correlation in radon anomalies at four sites in Kangra and one site in Amritsar with the time of occurrence of Uttarkashi earthquake (1991) was reported.

6. Oil Wells:
Large scale fluctuations of oil flow from oil wells prior to earthquakes were reported in Israel, northern Caucasus (Europe) and China. These earthquakes which occurred in 1969, 1971 and 1972 gave rise to increased flow of oil before their occurrence. It has been suggested that when the tectonic stress accumulates to a certain level, the pore pressure within a deep oil bearing strata reach its breaking strength causing oil to sprout along the oil wells.

7. Theory of Seismic Gap:
Seismicity gap is a region where earthquake activity is less compared with its neighbourhood along plate boundaries. Soviet seismologist S.A. Fedotov studied the seismic record of 12 large earthquakes which rocked northern Japan between 1904 and 1963. By plotting the size of each tremor- struck area, he found that each quake segment abutted the next contiguous one without overlapping, as if each deep seated crack had been shut off by a barrier at the ends of the fracture zone.
Each large earthquake was in a segment that was quiet for the last 39 years or so. Fedotov predicted that those segments which were quiet for some time will be hit by earthquake sooner or later. Three of these blocks in Kurile Island were struck where according to Fedotov an earthquake was due. Thus evolved the theory of seismic gap in earthquake prediction.
Based on this theory Dr. Kiyo Mogi of Tokyo succeeded in predicting a few earthquakes in Japan. Three geophysicists—Masakazu Ohtake, Tosimatu Matumoto and Gary V. Latham—working at Taxas University’s Marine Science Institute had predicted a major earthquake in southern Mexico around the town of Puerto Angel based on the theory of seismic gap. On 29 November, 1978, a severe earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale with an epicentre within a kilometre of the predicted site struck the area.

8. Foreshocks:
Generally major earthquakes are preceded by minor shocks known as foreshocks. These foreshocks provide valuable dues to the occurrence of a strong earthquake. Some of the earthquakes have been successfully predicted on the basis of study of foreshocks. The Haichang earthquake in China (February 4, 1975) was predicted by studying the increased seismicity from December 1974 to February 1975.
The Oaxaca, Mexico earthquake of November 1978 was also successfully predicted on the basis of foreshock observations. Foreshocks have been detected a few days to a month in advance with the help of closely located seismic stations in Himachal Pradesh for several earthquakes like Anantnag (1967), Dharmasala (1968), Kashmir (1973), Kinnaur (1975) and a few others. Uttarkashi earthquake of October 20, 1991 was preceded by foreshocks on October 15 and 16 with magnitude larger than 3.5 on Richter scale.

9. Changes in Seismic Wave Velocity:
We know that P, S, and L waves originate from the focus of an earthquake. P and S are called body waves because they travel through the body of the earth, while L waves are known as surface waves because they move along the upper crust of the earth. P waves are faster than the S waves and reach seismographs first.
The time lag between the arrival of P and S waves is called lead time. Russian seismologists found that this lead time began to decrease significantly for days, weeks and even months before the earthquake. But just before the quake hit the area the lead time was back to normal. A longer period of abnormality in wave velocity presaged a larger quake.
Taking the cue from the Russians, Lynn Sykes, Scholz and Aggarwal conducted laboratory, experiments on rock samples in 1973. These experiments showed abnormal change of ratio of velocities of P waves and S waves before the earthquake.
This ratio is expressed as Vp/Vs. The duration of Vp/Vs anomaly depends upon the fault or dimensions of the aftershock area. After the Garm region of the former USSR, Vp/Vs anomalies were noticed in Blue Mountain Lake earthquake in the USA in 1973. The velocity anomaly period for this earthquake was about 5 days and the decrease in velocity was about 12 per cent.
Similar decrease in velocity ratio was reported before the damaging Haichang (February 4, 1975), Songpan-Perigwu (August 16, 1966) and bungling (1976) earthquakes in China. In Japan, 7 to 40% decrease in the velocity ratio ranging from 50 to 700 days before the main earthquakes were recorded. In Tehran 14% decrease in velocity was reported 1 to 3 days before three earthquakes in 1974.


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## Robert Porter (Jun 28, 2017)

So this is the latest I was sent. Wow, just wow!


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## turbo (Jun 28, 2017)

Sigh...

I have my own Unifying Theory of the World which explains almost everything I see and helps me to be more chilled about it.

That is - "60% of people on the planet are, independent of education or socio-economic status, inherently stupid".

And most of them are on the internet...


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## wuzak (Jun 29, 2017)

gumbyk said:


> Well, that's almost the situation we have here, so I can tell you what is currently being done.
> We're well overdue for a rupture of the Alpine Fault here in New Zealand - capable of an M8+ earthquake, so not a 9, but certainly big enough to cause major, widespread devastation.
> 
> 1. New buildings are built to earthquake code, existing buildings are being upgraded.
> ...



5. People move to Australia.


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## stona (Jun 29, 2017)

Flat earthers and similar types are only guilty of applying common sense to more complicated mathematical problems. Common sense is good at explaining things on the human scale, but bigger or smaller, not so much.
Let's assume the earth is a sphere. Now stretch a rope around its circumference, just touching the surface, all the way round. Now increase the length of the rope by just one metre. How far off the surface of the earth would it be? Common sense would suggest that three feet on a rope 40,000 Km long would make F. A. difference. The answer, which you can look up or work out will surprise you.
For problems like this common sense does not work.
Cheers
Steve


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## Robert Porter (Jun 29, 2017)

My trouble with the whole concept is using common sense you can easily defeat their outlook. I mean with a pair of cheap binoculars you can _*see*_ satellites and most assuredly the ISS! If we cannot leave earth because we are constrained by the "firmament" then common sense tells you the ISS must zip instantly from one horizon to the other in its constant cycle across the sky! Good grief I am literally reduced to flapping my jaws when confronted by this mindset. And I suppose as long as a person feels free to define their own set of "facts" there will be no convincing them short of stuffing them on the next crew launch to the ISS. And even that won't work because it will all happen in a simulator.... sigh....

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## stona (Jun 29, 2017)

I think I mentioned before that there is a growing tendency today to equate fact and opinion. A person is entitled to the opinion that the earth is a few thousand years old, but the facts prove different. I'm entitled to my opinion that someone who believes the earth is a few thousand years old is a f*cking idiot.

It might be your opinion that a book can stop a large calibre round from a hand gun, but when you shoot your boyfriend dead you are a proven idiot.

Cheers

Steve


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## Robert Porter (Jun 29, 2017)

stona said:


> It might be your opinion that a book can stop a large calibre round from a hand gun, but when you shoot your boyfriend dead you are a proven idiot.


I honestly thought that was a news story from the Onion or something when I first saw it. They were both too stupid to live.


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## turbo (Jun 29, 2017)

Natural selection at work


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## mikewint (Jun 29, 2017)

Ah Steve, let's take a trip through Common Sense Land:
For those of you who equate ALGEBRA with the Egyptian Book of the Dead (actually that’s the Calculus) this may be a bit bumpy but hang in there.

You might recall from school that the Circumference of any circle is the Radius of that circle times 2 times Pi. (Pi you may recall is approximately 3.141593)
#1. Applying this to the Earth at the Equator we have Ce (Circumference of Earth) = 2 x Pi x Re (radius of Earth)

Divide both sides by 2 x Pi and we have

Re = Ce / 2 Pi

#2. OK now let’s go to the NEW rope

Rr (new radius) = Lr (new length of the rope) / 2 Pi

#3. Let’s also consider Lr above, it must be = Ce (Circumference of Earth) + X (amount we added to the rope) or
Lr = Ce + X


#4. Now to what we want which is H (distance the rope is now above the surface). It follows that:

H = Rr (new radius) – Re (radius of Earth remember). Now we ADD Re to both sides of the equation, and get:

Rr = H + Re

#4. Now look at #4. Since equals can be substituted for equals it follows that:

H + Re = Lr / 2 Pi

AND by the same principle

H + Re = (Ce + X) / 2 Pi

#5. OK now (Ce + X) / 2 Pi is a fraction and can be expanded into:

(Ce / 2 Pi) + (X / 2 Pi)  and therefore:

H + Re = (Ce / 2 Pi) + (X / 2 Pi)

#6. We’re almost home Matilda hang in there. Look at #5 (Ce / 2 Pi) and at #1. It follows that Ce / 2 Pi is the same as Re (radius of Earth) since again equals can be substituted for equals it follows that:

H + Re = Re + (X / Pi)

#7. Now the fun part. Notice that Re is being added to BOTH sides of the equation. Thus we can SUBTRACT it from both sides and not change anything.

#8. So it follows that H (height above surface) is just:

X (amount added to rope) divided by 2 x Pi or 6.283185

So how high above the surface is the new rope? H = 3ft / 6.283185 or 5.73 inches

Or for you Metric types add 1.00 meter to the rope and H = 1.00 / 6.283185 or 15.92 centimeters

Notice that the actual circumference used has NO bearing whatsoever on the outcome. If you have a 40 inch waist and a 40 inch belt and add 3 feet to that belt (76 inches) and then step into the center of that 76 inch belt it (the belt) will be 5.73 inches from your waist on all sides.

Isn’t MATH CHOOL!!!

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## wuzak (Jun 29, 2017)

mikewint said:


> H + Re = (Ce + X) / 2 Pi
> 
> #5. OK now (Ce + X) / 2 Pi is a fraction and can be expanded into:
> 
> ...



Nice analysis, but you dropped the (2) in (2 Pi ) in this section, but you still used it at the end to calculate the result.



mikewint said:


> #8. So it follows that H (height above surface) is just:
> 
> X (amount added to rope) divided by 2 x Pi or 6.283185

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## mikewint (Jun 30, 2017)

Good catch, just a Lapsus Stylii on my part


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## stona (Jul 18, 2017)

Flat earthers, like many who espouse of conspiracy theories, are not really concerned with the details of their theory. They are indulging in a negative, the important thing being to disagree with the accepted view, because this view is false and imposed on us by some controlling force, the new world order, the banks, the illuminati etc. (you can fill in any other you feel fits). Why such an elite, if it existed, would want to convince us that the earth is flat is a question that flat earthers don't feel needs answering. This leads to a distinctly unpleasant strain of prejudice in many of their beliefs. See here:
NASA, UN, Freemasonry, Vatican, Jews, Jesuits, NWO
Of course, the idea that the Jews are behind the controlling evil elite is not exactly new, but it still leaves a nasty smell behind it.
Maybe we should not be surprised that the flat earth beleifs have origins in the 1800s and the interpretation of biblical passages by Christians with fundamental (in modern terms) beliefs. Look up Samuel Rowbotham/Parallax if you actually care.
Cheers
Steve


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## Shortround6 (Jul 18, 2017)

stona said:


> Why such an elite, if it existed, would want to convince us that the earth is flat is a question that flat earthers don't feel needs answering. This leads to a distinctly unpleasant strain of prejudice in many of their beliefs. See here:



It's all about the money.......as in Rand McNally is, despite public records to the contrary, secretly a whole owned subsidiary of an international cartel of map and globe makers dating back hundreds of years if not thousands. 
Globes are harder to make than flat maps and can be sold for more money, they also confer status to their owners better than a flat map. 
Anybody can stick a flat map on a wall but to have space in your house/office to devote to a 3 dimensional globe shows off wealth and power. 

It's all marketing and profits

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## vikingBerserker (Jul 18, 2017)

....and don't forget the really nice globes hold a bar inside! You can't do that with a flat one.

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## Old Wizard (Jul 18, 2017)




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## Robert Porter (Jul 18, 2017)

Those flat earth's folks have no clue, come to the cubic earth society, we have cookies!

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## mikewint (Jul 18, 2017)

Hallelujah Robert something we can both TOTALLY agree upon: 
The Earth is not round nor flat, it's cubic... but does have a flat surface on this side of the Cube in which we live, and does have a circular attraction from its Magnetic Center or Pole.
Each side of the Cube is a different World, each with its own moon at their respective Magnetic Center and the 6 Worlds together form the cubic Earth. Each side of the Cube has one Sun, so there are in total 6 Suns... the total trajectory of each Sun takes 120 hours to complete the full cycle. Each Sun takes 24 hours to complete the trajectory on each lateral side of the Cube, and an extra 12 hours to complete the trajectory on the top of the Cube and another 12 hours on the bottom of the Cube... so a total of 120 hours. The movement of each Sun is gradient, and while during the trajectory along the 4 sides of the cube the movement is gradient but spiraling squarely, on the top and bottom the movement is spiraling circularly, taking 12 hours to reach from the side's edge into the Magnetic Center in on side and another 12 hours to reach from the Magnetic Center into the edge on the opposite side. The trajectory of each Sun over the top and bottom sides of the Cube are in total 24 hours, 12 in each side. So Earth is a Cube, each side is a different World, having each side a Magnetic Center, each side having a moon, and the Earth is a Cube with 6 Suns gradiently spiraling its surface, separated each by 24 hours of traveling distance

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## Old Wizard (Jul 19, 2017)

Oh! Now I understand.

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## swampyankee (Jul 26, 2017)

<snark>I have become convinced that there is a conspiracy, operated by Illuminati and reality TV producers, to produce idiotic conspiracies. </snark> The bug report has been submitted see xkcd: Conspiracy Theories

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## vikingBerserker (Jul 26, 2017)

MIke, did you just Cut-N-Paste somebody else's thoughts and claim them as your own?

Show Posts - Zero Point


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## fubar57 (Aug 21, 2017)

....and on it goes.......

http://www.theprovince.com/some+fla...e+just+proved+world+round/14304013/story.html

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## Wayne Little (Aug 22, 2017)

fubar57 said:


> ....and on it goes.......



Round and around I suspect.....


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## fubar57 (Aug 22, 2017)

Wayne Little said:


> Round and around I suspect.....



....like some kind of Earthy object?


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## mikewint (Aug 22, 2017)

simple matter of speed differentials. Both travel eastward, i.e. Counter-clockwise seen from the N, Pole. Moon at 3400 kph and the Earth (at the equator) 1670 kph. Thus the faster moon and its shadow travel eastward at 3400 - 1670 = 1730 kph roughly Mach 1.5
Smaller shadow is also a simple matter of a large diffuse light source at a large distance. Rays of sunlight are parallel by the time they reach the earth and when they hit a blocking object they "wrap-around" it (diffraction). Not by much because of the short wavelength of light but you can see this yourself if you look closely at your own shadow, The edge is not sharp it's a bit fuzzy due to the diffraction of the sun's light. The dark UMBRA is surrounded by a graduated shadow or PENUMBRA and the further you are from the wall the smaller your shadow becomes.
Very little mystery here


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## Old Wizard (Aug 22, 2017)




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## Robert Porter (Aug 22, 2017)

Hmm, I guess my expedition to the edge is off then? Oh well...


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## Thorlifter (Aug 23, 2017)

I haven't read this entire thread but it amazes me the absolute stupidity of some people. We can see the G.D. earth from space.....not even from space but we can see the curvature from the upper atmosphere. Unbelievable! It really is.

Just like that woman with a viral video on FB that says there is no such thing as fossils, but they are just rock formations.


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## parsifal (Aug 23, 2017)

in a way, she is correct, fossils are rock formations, though I doubt she was meaning quite that when she said what she did.

Fossils are formed in a number of different ways, but most are formed when a plant or animal dies in a watery environment and is buried in mud and silt. Soft tissues quickly decompose leaving the hard bones or shells behind. Over time sediment builds over the top and hardens into rock. As the encased bones decay, minerals seep in replacing the organic material cell by cell in a process called "petrification." Alternatively the bones may completely decay leaving a cast of the organism. The void left behind may then fill with minerals making a stone replica of the organism. either way, the fossil is a rock, and the material is not in any way organic.


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## Thorlifter (Aug 23, 2017)

No she absolutely means it and she means that dinosaurs didn't exist. She and her group think that the formation of "dinosaur bones" is just random rock formations. She is part of a group that wants all mention of dinosaurs taken out of schools as they never existed on earth.


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## Wayne Little (Aug 23, 2017)

wish these people would go back to their own planet.....


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## vikingBerserker (Aug 23, 2017)

...or at least go on the bottom side of the flat earth...


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## mikewint (Aug 23, 2017)

James Ussher (1581-1656), Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland, and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College in Dublin was highly regarded in his day as a churchman and as a scholar. Of his many works, his treatise on chronology has proved the most durable. Based on an intricate correlation of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean histories and Holy writ, it was incorporated into an authorized version of the Bible printed in 1701, and thus came to be regarded with almost as much unquestioning reverence as the Bible itself. Having established the first day of creation as Sunday 23 October 4004 BC, by the arguments set forth in the passage below, Ussher calculated the dates of other biblical events, concluding, for example, that Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise on Monday 10 November 4004 BC, and that the ark touched down on Mt Ararat on 5 May 2348 BC `on a Wednesday'.

AND, for those of you who are Stooled to the Rogue, October 23 is AVOGADRO DAY!!! How about that

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## Marcel (Aug 24, 2017)

I'm sure the earth is flat. I just wrote a story for my kids called 'achterstevorenland' (topsy-turvy land) that is located on the backside of the earth. If it has a backside, it must be flat, not? And as I wrote it, it's now there, black on white, so it must be true.


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## Thorlifter (Aug 24, 2017)

It's only true if you post it to the internet. You can't put things on the internet if they aren't true

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## Marcel (Aug 24, 2017)

Thorlifter said:


> It's only true if you post it to the internet. You can't put things on the internet if they aren't true


But then only if you configure the website to have a white background and black fonts.

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## Airframes (Aug 24, 2017)

I am extremely happy that numerous idiotic groups and individuals truly believe that the Earth is flat, because it confirms that I am sane !!


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## Robert Porter (Aug 24, 2017)

Sanity is just a state of mind. But those of us without sanity understand that life is more fun! Plus we have cookies! And trips to the zoo on most weekends!


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## Shortround6 (Aug 24, 2017)

A trip to see the in-laws is not usually considered a trip to the zoo. 

Perhaps equivalent to a train wreck?

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## mikewint (Aug 24, 2017)

Marcel said:


> If it has a backside, it must be flat, not?



Not necessarily


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## Robert Porter (Aug 24, 2017)

That is good old "Hookie" named for his nose!


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## Old Wizard (Aug 24, 2017)




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## parsifal (Aug 24, 2017)

Airframes said:


> I am extremely happy that numerous idiotic groups and individuals truly believe that the Earth is flat, because it confirms that I am sane !!


Might be a tad optimistic terry. after all, your still here, which has, as a requirement for membership, a measure of insanity.

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## mikewint (Aug 24, 2017)



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## Old Wizard (Aug 25, 2017)




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## Wayne Little (Aug 25, 2017)

mikewint said:


> View attachment 380959



Sounds about right...


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## fubar57 (May 12, 2018)

http://listverse.com/2018/05/12/10-ways-life-would-be-different-if-the-world-was-flat/


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## wuzak (May 12, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> http://listverse.com/2018/05/12/10-ways-life-would-be-different-if-the-world-was-flat/




Of course flat-earthers have answers for all them. Which make complete sense - to them.


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## The Basket (May 12, 2018)

Flat earth slows that nonsense has no limitations.
And people will happily believe nonsense.
And I find that very very scary.
Because all you have to do is appeal to the irrational and anything is possible.


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## Zipper730 (May 12, 2018)

The Basket said:


> Flat earth slows that nonsense has no limitations.


I don't even bother with such people, sometimes I make a comment that there are flat earth's all around the globe


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## vikingBerserker (May 12, 2018)

People like that do serve a purpose, they always make me feel better about myself.


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## The Basket (May 12, 2018)

We should never allow such ideas to flourish and find common ground.
Idiots can always find other idiots to agree and reinforce their stupidity.
These ideas must be challenged with most vigour because it's flat earth one day and we are back to leeches and horoscopes the next.

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## mikewint (May 13, 2018)

People who do not understand Physics should NOT try to marshal arguments against people who know as little as they do:
1. GRAVITY - A flat disk Earth would show NO difference as every particle of matter attracts every other particle of matter. You as an individual have your own gravitational field. You as a particle of matter attract the Earth. By Newton's laws the attractions MUST be equal and opposite. If you weigh 150lbs(668N) then the Earth attracts you with 150lbs(668N) of force AND you attract the Earth with an EQUAL amount of force. Jump off of a chair and the Earths attraction force pulls you towards it AND YOU PULLING on the Earth move it towards YOU. You accelerate towards the Earth AND the Earth accelerate towards you. Earth's 6.0 X 10^24 kg mass is naturally accelerated a very small amount by 668N of force, much as jumping off a canoe towards a dock produces a vastly different result than jumping off a cruise liner.
Descend into a deep well and your weight decreases as the mass above you exerts its force upward. 
Oh yea, so called GRAVITY is as much a fictional force as is CENTRIFUGAL FORCE. 
2. No Magnetic field!! Even more ridiculous. Somebody better inform disk magnets that they can't have a magnetic field and therefore can't possibly work.
3. Since the flat disk Earth would and could have a magnetic field #3 No Navigation is a specious point.
4. Ah if only the atmosphere were that clear not to mention the affect on light as it passes through varying densities of air. Wonder if this guy ever heard of mirages. Light only seems to travel in a straight line. Then there are hills and valleys and mountains and smog.
5. Even the author admits here have tectonic plate movement is an unknown. The plates move because they "float" on a layer of magma. A flat Earth could certainly have a layer of magma. "Volcanoes would not work" Why not?? Volcanoes "produce!!" oxygen, WTF!! This Gomer must have slept through Biology class. Silly me always thought chlorophyll was responsible
6. A reasonable point though once again you must depend on navigation. Without visual reference points EVERYONE walks in a circle. Compasses depend on the magnetic field (see 2). Stellar navigation and GPS are valid arguements.
7. Seasons?? Why not? A flat disk can certainly wobble presenting one edge closer and further.
8. Rain?? Why not? The winds DO basically move north and south. They are deflected by the Coriolis Force (fictional). The flat disk Earth spinning would/could generate the same deflection. Bet this Gomer thinks the winds blow because trees wave back and forth. The uneven heating of the Earths surface would still produce warm moist air pockets which rise and colder dry pockets which fall
9. Finally some valid points though so called Gravity is indeed a fictional force.
10. At last validity


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## pbehn (May 13, 2018)

If the earth were a flat disk with magma under the surface it would have to be perfectly flat or it would start to collapse to a sphere, just as water droplets do.


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## mikewint (May 13, 2018)

Only if all particles were free to move. The rigid layer of solid Earth would pull on the liquid magma towards it. If you theorize a disk Earth then the bottom would be solid as well. Thus the magma would be the filling of the pie


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## GrauGeist (May 13, 2018)

Had an opportunity recently, to "discus" this subject with a die-hard supporter.
After this long, drawn out dissertation about extensive proof, I simply asked: "show me the edge".
He paused for a moment and then replied that "the edge is guarded by governments and no one is allowed to get close enough. We have proof from a top government official who has to remain anonymous for his protection and his family's protection."
I replied: "ohh, I know this guy! He's the same one who's provided information on Chemtrails, Geoengineering, UFOs, the false Lunar Landings and Vaccinations!"
Him: "um, no. That's a different guy."
(Akward silence)
Me: "show me the edge..."


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## herman1rg (May 13, 2018)

So, if the Earth is flat. then surely also The Moon, The Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars etc must all be flat? Seems perfectly logical to me........................

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## mikewint (May 13, 2018)

Dave an excellent point and no one "guards" the south pole. If you've got about $45,000 USD laying around there are several commercial companies which will convey you to the south pole where there is a permanent (1956) research station. But now we're right back to that equally valid argument "How do you know". It's a building in the middle of a vast snow field. Instrumentation?? Easily faked. Possibly the only way is stellar observation.
Herman, not necessarily...the Earth is "Special"


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## GrauGeist (May 13, 2018)

And that recent Lunar Eclipse was awesome!

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## fubar57 (May 13, 2018)

https://gizmodo.com/what-if-the-earth-suddenly-turned-flat-1795819464


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## mikewint (May 13, 2018)

Sorry Geo, these are the same specious arguments the other Gomer made, in fact, tis essentially a paraphrase of that article.

Dave, I SAW that eclipse...awesome


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## fubar57 (May 13, 2018)

Oh yea....I forgot about the "facts"


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## mikewint (May 13, 2018)

Facts are slippery things and not as cut and dried as one might think. Dismissing a "theory" because it does not fit in with your belief system is not "scientific". One has observed/measured data and Theories are formed to link them. The history of "Science" is replete with "facts" that were ignored because they did not fit in with "accepted" beliefs. Newton ignored data which did not fit in with his "new" theory of motion. The entire scientific community jumped on Mendeleev's Periodic Law though there were elements which did not quite fit, Einstein himself could not bring himself to accept the randomness of Quantum Theory nor could he accept an expanding universe, which his own calculations supported and predicted, so he invented a "fudge-factor" to make it a steady-state.
There are often many paths to the top of the mountain. Occam's Razor is often applied to pick the "best" yet the Razor itself is open to question. Why can't Nature be devious?
*THE UNIVERSE IS NOT ONLY WEIRDER THAN YOU IMAGINE, IT IS WEIRDER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE *


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## gumbyk (May 13, 2018)

mikewint said:


> 8. Rain?? Why not? The winds DO basically move north and south. They are deflected by the Coriolis Force (fictional). The flat disk Earth spinning would/could generate the same deflection. Bet this Gomer thinks the winds blow because trees wave back and forth. The uneven heating of the Earths surface would still produce warm moist air pockets which rise and colder dry pockets which fall



Coriolis confirms the spherical earth. The force acts in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere than it does in the northern, due to the fact that you guys are upside down compared to us.


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## Zipper730 (May 13, 2018)

mikewint said:


> People who do not understand Physics should NOT try to marshal arguments against people who know as little as they do:
> 1. GRAVITY - A flat disk Earth would show NO difference as every particle of matter attracts every other particle of matter. You as an individual have your own gravitational field. You as a particle of matter attract the Earth. By Newton's laws the attractions MUST be equal and opposite. If you weigh 150lbs(668N) then the Earth attracts you with 150lbs(668N) of force AND you attract the Earth with an EQUAL amount of force. Jump off of a chair and the Earths attraction force pulls you towards it AND YOU PULLING on the Earth move it towards YOU. You accelerate towards the Earth AND the Earth accelerate towards you. Earth's 6.0 X 10^24 kg mass is naturally accelerated a very small amount by 668N of force, much as jumping off a canoe towards a dock produces a vastly different result than jumping off a cruise liner.
> Descend into a deep well and your weight decreases as the mass above you exerts its force upward.
> Oh yea, so called GRAVITY is as much a fictional force as is CENTRIFUGAL FORCE.
> ...


Man, you can really weave a good tale!


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## wuzak (May 13, 2018)

mikewint said:


> People who do not understand Physics should NOT try to marshal arguments against people who know as little as they do:
> 1. GRAVITY - A flat disk Earth would show NO difference as every particle of matter attracts every other particle of matter. You as an individual have your own gravitational field. You as a particle of matter attract the Earth. By Newton's laws the attractions MUST be equal and opposite. If you weigh 150lbs(668N) then the Earth attracts you with 150lbs(668N) of force AND you attract the Earth with an EQUAL amount of force. Jump off of a chair and the Earths attraction force pulls you towards it AND YOU PULLING on the Earth move it towards YOU. You accelerate towards the Earth AND the Earth accelerate towards you. Earth's 6.0 X 10^24 kg mass is naturally accelerated a very small amount by 668N of force, much as jumping off a canoe towards a dock produces a vastly different result than jumping off a cruise liner.
> Descend into a deep well and your weight decreases as the mass above you exerts its force upward.
> Oh yea, so called GRAVITY is as much a fictional force as is CENTRIFUGAL FORCE.



Gravity is fictional? Do you not feel it all the time?

The point about gravity not working on a flat earth is that gravity acts towards the centre of mass. The further away from the centre of mass you are, the more inclined the force due to gravity is.

Myself, being at nearly 43°S would experience gravity somewhat differently to someone at 43°N, or, indeed, at the North Pole, since the centre of mass will be approximately below the North Pole (if that is the centre of the "flat earth").


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## The Basket (May 14, 2018)

Freedom of speech allows a flat earth advocate to stand up and say what he believes. And that is right and proper.
But what if it is wrong? Does it matter?
Not really unless of course he is in some positions of power and suddenly he uses his belief to push his views. 
Imagine if he was navigating a ship! Instead of going from USA to Australia he wouldn't use the Pacific but the Atlantic and Indian ocean instead!!!!
If obviously stupid and easily provable nonsense gets wide support then much more difficult to disprove will be even harder to debunk


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## GrauGeist (May 14, 2018)

Show me the edge!


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## gumbyk (May 14, 2018)

The Basket said:


> Freedom of speech allows a flat earth advocate to stand up and say what he believes. And that is right and proper.



Yes, but just because the idiot thinks that, doesn't mean that we have to listen to it without ridiculing it.

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## swampyankee (May 14, 2018)

gumbyk said:


> Yes, but just because the idiot thinks that, doesn't mean that we have to listen to it without ridiculing it.



Agreed: freedom of speech doesn’t imply freedom from criticism or ridicule.


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## Lucky13 (May 14, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Show me the edge!



I've been living on the edge for years....

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## GrauGeist (May 14, 2018)




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## mikewint (May 14, 2018)

gumbyk said:


> Coriolis confirms the spherical earth.


 Sorry it does not. (a) it is not a force. (b) Newton's 1st Law: Objects in motion follow straight lines. Air moving North (or South) move in a straight line BUT the Earth is turning under them


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## fubar57 (May 14, 2018)

Co·ri·o·lis ef·fect
ˌkôrēˈōləs iˌfekt/
_noun_
Physics
noun: *Coriolis force*

an effect whereby a mass moving in a rotating system experiences a force (the _Coriolis force_ ) acting perpendicular to the direction of motion and to the axis of rotation. On the earth, the effect tends to deflect moving objects to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern and is important in the formation of cyclonic weather systems.
Origin
early 20th century: named after Gaspard Coriolis (1792–1843), French engineer.

Just so everyone is up to speed on this

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## pbehn (May 14, 2018)

I know the earth is a flat disc, it is like all the other flat discs in space.


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## at6 (May 14, 2018)

Due to the gravity of this discussion, I had to weigh in with my two copper coated zinc cents. Flat Earthers have personalities and IQs as flat as their theories.

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## mikewint (May 14, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Gravity is fictional? Do you not feel it all the time?


Sorry feeling don't count. And again gravity is fictional in exactly the same way that the "force" you "feel" pulling you towards the passenger-side of your car as you go around a curve is fictional. CENTRIFUGAL is NOT a force any more than is gravity. Your feeling not withstanding. OUTSIDE the car you can see that you are actually moving in a straight-line and the car is turning out from under you. You slide across the seat until the passenger door smacks you and applies a force to push you around the curve
Now to fictional Gravity Force. Suppose you are in a large box, no windows, no frame of reference besides the interior of the box. Next, the entire box is being accelerated at 32ft/sec/sec(9.8m/s/s). *WITHIN* the box if you jump up (direction of the acceleration) you will rise up but slower and slower due to friction, stop, and "fall" down (direction opposite the acceleration). SEE, Gravity at work "pulling" you down. Throw a ball up, it rises, stops, and falls. See Gravity at work pulling the ball down. Toss the ball across the box laterally, it follows a parabolic path striking the opposite wall below the point of launch. See, Gravity at work. Now the biggie - Shine a laser beam across the box - the beam BENDS striking the opposite wall below the level of the emitter. See, Gravity even affects light beams.
To see REALITY you must change your point of reference and step *OUTSIDE* the box. JUMPING: you jump, accelerating faster than the floor and move away from it. BUT friction slows you and the floor soon catches up to your feet, smacks them and pushes them up (direction of acceleration). BALL - throwing the ball up accelerates it faster than the floor, it moves up, friction slows it, the floor catches up and smacks the ball pushing it up. TOSS ACROSS - the balls up velocity remains constant once it leaves your hand AND it travels in a straight-line towards the opposite wall, but the floor is accelerating so it is moving faster and faster. It soon catches up to the ball and the ball strikes the wall below the point of launch. LASER- works the same way, the photons emitted have a constant UP velocity and it takes time for the beam to cross the box. During that time period the floor/wall have moved up a bit, thus the beam strikes the wall BELOW the point of launch.
Let's pretend it (Gravity) is real. Sorry again, but it simply does NOT invariably act toward the center of the Earth. EVERY particle of matter attracts every other particle. Gravity varies considerably over the Earths surface. That's how they find oil and minerals from aircraft. Using Calculus you can sum all the individual force vectors to a single vector at the Earth's center BUT IF you were at that point you would be weightless as all the Earth's mass would be above you

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## mikewint (May 14, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> experiences a force


Sorry it is NOT a FORCE. The quote is not exact it is a simplification. The Earth is rotating on its axis and the speed of that rotation varies with latitude. The 30 degree N latitude circle has to turn faster (its circumference is longer) than the 45 degree N latitude circle (both must complete one rotation in 24 hours). The Earth rotates towards the east. A cannon ball fired due north from 30 degrees N latitude has a eastward velocity equal to the east velocity of its launch point. It maintains that east velocity as it moves north. The ground over which it passes is traveling east too but slower and slower the further north you travel. The cannonballs path is straight north BUT SEEN FROM THE GROUND the path APPEARS curved and it strikes to the right of where it was aimed. NO FORCE was ever applied to curve the balls path as it was always straight due north.
The exact same thing is true for air molecules traveling north from 30N to 45N latitude


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## gumbyk (May 14, 2018)

mikewint said:


> Sorry feeling don't count. And again gravity is fictional in exactly the same way that the "force" you "feel" pulling you towards the passenger-side of your car as you go around a curve is fictional. CENTRIFUGAL is NOT a force any more than is gravity. Your feeling not withstanding. OUTSIDE the car you can see that you are actually moving in a straight-line and the car is turning out from under you. You slide across the seat until the passenger door smacks you and applies a force to push you around the curve
> Now to fictional Gravity Force. Suppose you are in a large box, no windows, no frame of reference besides the interior of the box. Next, the entire box is being accelerated at 32ft/sec/sec(9.8m/s/s). *WITHIN* the box if you jump up (direction of the acceleration) you will rise up but slower and slower due to friction, stop, and "fall" down (direction opposite the acceleration). SEE, Gravity at work "pulling" you down. Throw a ball up, it rises, stops, and falls. See Gravity at work pulling the ball down. Toss the ball across the box laterally, it follows a parabolic path striking the opposite wall below the point of launch. See, Gravity at work. Now the biggie - Shine a laser beam across the box - the beam BENDS striking the opposite wall below the level of the emitter. See, Gravity even affects light beams.
> To see REALITY you must change your point of reference and step *OUTSIDE* the box. JUMPING: you jump, accelerating faster than the floor and move away from it. BUT friction slows you and the floor soon catches up to your feet, smacks them and pushes them up (direction of acceleration). BALL - throwing the ball up accelerates it faster than the floor, it moves up, friction slows it, the floor catches up and smacks the ball pushing it up. TOSS ACROSS - the balls up velocity remains constant once it leaves your hand AND it travels in a straight-line towards the opposite wall, but the floor is accelerating so it is moving faster and faster. It soon catches up to the ball and the ball strikes the wall below the point of launch. LASER- works the same way, the photons emitted have a constant UP velocity and it takes time for the beam to cross the box. During that time period the floor/wall have moved up a bit, thus the beam strikes the wall BELOW the point of launch.
> Let's pretend it (Gravity) is real. Sorry again, but it simply does NOT invariably act toward the center of the Earth. EVERY particle of matter attracts every other particle. Gravity varies considerably over the Earths surface. That's how they find oil and minerals from aircraft. Using Calculus you can sum all the individual force vectors to a single vector at the Earth's center BUT IF you were at that point you would be weightless as all the Earth's mass would be above you


So, wait, not only are we on a flat earth, but it's accelerating through space (or is the turtle climbing at an ever-increasing rate?)

And there's a bit of a math problem with your scenario: accelerating at 9.8 m/s, it would take you less than a year to reach the speed of light.


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## fubar57 (May 14, 2018)

So the dictionary and ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA are wrong and Mike is right?

Coriolis force | physics


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## at6 (May 14, 2018)

Then why do I suddenly feel weighed down by all of this?

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## Marcel (May 15, 2018)

Centrifugal force is a force resulting as a vector from two other forces. It is therefore also called an inertial force or fictive force. It's still a force though


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## GrauGeist (May 15, 2018)

It almost seems like we're headed in the direction of the "Speed of Dark" thread!


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## Airframes (May 15, 2018)

Gravity is a myth - the Earth sucks !

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## wuzak (May 15, 2018)

mikewint said:


> Sorry feeling don't count. And again gravity is fictional in exactly the same way that the "force" you "feel" pulling you towards the passenger-side of your car as you go around a curve is fictional. CENTRIFUGAL is NOT a force any more than is gravity. Your feeling not withstanding. OUTSIDE the car you can see that you are actually moving in a straight-line and the car is turning out from under you. You slide across the seat until the passenger door smacks you and applies a force to push you around the curve



Fictional, as in apparent not as in it doesn't exist.


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## Marcel (May 15, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> It almost seems like we're headed in the direction of the "Speed of Dark" thread!


While you mention it: what *is* the speed of dark?


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## GrauGeist (May 15, 2018)

Marcel said:


> While you mention it: what *is* the speed of dark?


Well my friend, I'm glad you asked!
In the "Speed of Dark" thread, there are many theories presented, and good ones, too.

But I'll tell you this: the speed of dark can be equated with the rapidity of a room darkening at the flip of a switch on a winter evening. Anything else is lies and falsehoods!

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## Marcel (May 15, 2018)

But *if* the world would be a sphere, would the speed be influenced because the room actually has a bit of a curve? I can imagine, darkness going along a straight line will have difficulties to 'cut corners' so to speak. So is the speed of dark proof of the flat earth theory?


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## Crimea_River (May 15, 2018)

My brain hurts...

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## pbehn (May 15, 2018)

A sphere is not a structure, any liquid without gravity becomes a sphere. Flat earthers contend the earth is a structure in space made of liquid and rock, rock has no ductility or torsional strength only compressive. The biggest structure made by man from rock is a few hundred feet high and requires massive bracing.


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## mikewint (May 15, 2018)

gumbyk said:


> And there's a bit of a math problem with your scenario: accelerating at 9.8 m/s,


First let me be a bit pedantic here, accelerations have the dimension: meters per second *per second* or m/s^2. That would indeed be the case EXCEPT for the Relativistic effects that occur as light speed is approached. The Special Theory shows that as light speed is approached more and more energy is being used to increase the objects mass and less and less into increasing speed. Therefore a starship could accelerate at 1g infinitely and never reach light speed as its mass would approach an infinite value. No material object can travel at light speed within this universe. Weird as this seems particle accelerators have demonstrated the mass increase. Fermilab uses enough electricy to power Chicago to accelerate 200 protons to 99% light speed.



fubar57 said:


> So the dictionary and ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA are wrong


Geo, well as difficult as that scenario is to conceive I unequivocally stand my ground Coriolis is NOT a force. The northbound or southbound object retains the lateral velocity of the point of launch as it moves into a region of lower velocity. If I jump into the air I land back where I started from, the Earth does not move out from under me as we both have the same eastward velocity. Now *within the reference frame of the Earth *which appears to be stationary the object *appears to curve* to the right (northern hemisphere) since nothing moves unless a force is applied a fictional force, Coriolis, fills the requirement and simplifies the math. Outside the Earth based reference frame we can see that the objects path is a straight line due north with the Earth turning under it.



Marcel said:


> It is therefore also called an inertial force or fictive force. It's still a force though


As above, CENTRIFUGAL (center fleeing) is NOT a real force. Like the above Coriolis, it is a frame of reference construct. In circular motion there is a real force involved which is CENTRIPETAL (center seeking) FORCE. Moving objects travel in straight line unless a force is applied. An object traveling in a circle MUST have a constant force applied TOWARD the center of the circle in order to maintain that circular path. An object traveling in a circle at a constant velocity is also constantly ACCELERATING TOWARDS the center of that circle.
Within the frame of reference of your car, for example, a ball placed on the seat will roll towards the outside of the curve you are on and you will feel a "force" pulling you in that direction. It is NOT a real force. You must step outside the car frame of reference to see that the ball is actually traveling in a straight line, it is the car that is turning out from under it. The ball will continue to travel that straight line until the car door hits it and applies a force, Centripetal, to accelerate it toward the center of the car's curved path.
You also mention "inertial force" which is also not a real force though INERTIA is indeed real and is resistance to change in state. Newton's 1st Law, the familiar, objects in motion or at rest remain in motion or at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Is the Law of INERTIA. Inertia resists motion which is why force is needed to start motion. Inertia also resists changing motion once started which is why force is needed to stop motion. Mass and inertia are inextricably linked together though the WHY of it is unknown


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## mikewint (May 15, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Fictional, as in apparent not as in it doesn't exist.


This one gonna be a REAL can-o-worms but NOPE Gravity as a FORCE is total fiction and does not exist. Like the other fictional forces Centrifugal and Coriolis it is a artificial frame of reference construct used because it simplifies the math involved. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity back in 1916 did away with poor old Gravity. It remains a useful fiction and simplifies motion calculations.
So while it Looks like a Duck, Walks like a Duck, and Quacks like a Duck it is NOT a Duck though it is useful to pretend that it is indeed a Duck


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## pbehn (May 15, 2018)

Mike you have explained the laws of attraction that give rise to what we call "gravity". It is these laws that result in gases becoming ever denser and forming into planets and stars. How do these forces not apply in a disc of molten liquid with a crust of various thicknesses from miles to zero?


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## herman1rg (May 15, 2018)

Gentlemen, let's not get bogged down.


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## mikewint (May 15, 2018)

Depending upon the Flat Earther group you ascribe to there are essentially two explanations. One of the groups take a page from Einstein General Theory wherein Gravity, as a force, does not exist and the recent cosmological construct Dark Energy. The earth isn't pulled into a sphere because the force known as gravity does not exist. The earth is constantly accelerating up at a rate of 32 feet per second squared (or 9.8 meters per second squared). This constant acceleration causes what you think of as gravity. Imagine sitting in a car that never stops speeding up. You will be forever pushed into your seat. The earth works much the same way. It is constantly accelerating upwards being pushed by a universal accelerator (UA) known as dark energy or aetheric wind.
Other Flat Earthers ascribe to the Davis model wherein the earth sits on an infinite plane, with the sun moving overhead. Gravity works much like it does in a round-earth model, and the earth will never form into a sphere because the plane is endless.


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## pbehn (May 15, 2018)

So nothing sensible then?


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## gumbyk (May 15, 2018)

pbehn said:


> So nothing sensible then?


nope... I'm outta here...

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## fubar57 (May 15, 2018)

....moi aussi................................................


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## mikewint (May 15, 2018)

pbehn said:


> So nothing sensible then?


I guess that depends on your particular viewpoint. No single physical phenomenon ever has a single explanation and can be internally self-consistent. For example take the geocentric universe. Obviously the Earth, Created by God him/her/itself MUST be the center of the universe and everything else moves around it in God's perfect shape a circle.
Thus because the earth is assumed to be fixed and stable in the center of the cosmos (geocentric and geostatic), and further, all heavenly bodies are assumed to move around the central earth in perfect circles, some device was needed to describe the apparent retrograde loop that planets make when in opposition to the sun. To account for the apparent backward looping of the planet, Claudius Ptolemy (140 AD) devised a very elegant geometrical construction to describe this motion. His model involved a large circle (deferent) and a second smaller circle (epicycle) on which the planet moved. The result was that the planet moved with a double circular motion.
Using Ptolemy's equations all heavenly motions could be plotted and predicted.


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## mikewint (May 15, 2018)

fubar57 said:


> moi aussi


Which is neither an explanation, argument, nor alternative. I suspect it is what Urban VIII said to Galileo about Heliocentrism


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## Wayne Little (May 17, 2018)

I just wanna know.....Who's on First?


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## herman1rg (May 17, 2018)

Yes, What's on Second


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## mikewint (May 17, 2018)

Wayne Little said:


> Who's on First?


Exactly Wayne...You got it


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## mikewint (May 17, 2018)

herman1rg said:


> What's on Second


That's Immaterial actually Whats been moved to the outfield


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## herman1rg (May 17, 2018)

I don't Know is on Third


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## Zipper730 (May 19, 2018)

at6 said:


> Then why do I suddenly feel weighed down by all of this?


Oh I feel weighed down too, but it ain't by gravity


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## mikewint (May 19, 2018)

Zipper730 said:


> but it ain't by gravity


Precisely!! The presence of mass dimples the fabric of Spacetime. Masses simply follow that curvature as do photons


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 19, 2018)

I have not been following this thread, and that appears to be a good thing.

Please tell me I’m wrong, but does Mike deny gravity and believe that the earth is flat? I’m getting this just from reading tidbits.


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## Zipper730 (May 19, 2018)

mikewint said:


> Precisely!! The presence of mass dimples the fabric of Spacetime. Masses simply follow that curvature as do photons


Well, I was mostly talking about being weighed down by an awesomely arrayed load of bull-manure, but gravity *is* technically a curvature in the fabric of space-time -- the thing is these curves tend to produce spheroid shapes as all the mass accumulates in the middle and the curvature produced by the mass radiates out evenly in all directions


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## pbehn (May 19, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I have not been following this thread, and that appears to be a good thing.
> 
> Please tell me I’m wrong, but does Mike deny gravity and believe that the earth is flat? I’m getting this just from reading tidbits.


Adler, well you asked. Mike flits between actual laws of physics and theories proposed by flat earthers. I saw a couple of obvious howlers in the argument but couldn't be bothered. You have been up in the air more than me I am sure and I have seen we live on a sphere, that is enough for me.


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## wuzak (May 19, 2018)

mikewint said:


> Precisely!! The presence of mass dimples the fabric of Spacetime. Masses simply follow that curvature as do photons



The warping of space-time IS gravity.

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## pbehn (May 19, 2018)

wuzak said:


> The warping of space-time IS gravity.


Is that in a world with flat or a spherical earth?


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## wuzak (May 19, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Is that in a world with flat or a spherical earth?



Definitely a spherical earth.


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## pbehn (May 19, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Definitely a spherical earth.


You are on the wrong thread then.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 19, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Adler, well you asked. Mike flits between actual laws of physics and theories proposed by flat earthers. I saw a couple of obvious howlers in the argument but couldn't be bothered. You have been up in the air more than me I am sure and I have seen we live on a sphere, that is enough for me.



My head hurts...

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## Lucky13 (May 20, 2018)

What says, that the earth isn't a square?

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## herman1rg (May 20, 2018)

My own personal gravity has meant that I have a round and not flat tummy.

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## mikewint (May 20, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> does Mike deny gravity and believe that the earth is flat


Chris, as to the former, I unequivocally deny that it is a FORCE. As to the latter I object to objecting to it (Flat Earth) using the same pseudo-scientific non-knowledge that they (Flatearthers) use to promote it up to an including ridicule. There are plenty of real actual scientific reasons to obviate it. I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
Real, actual forces all have force carriers. Something must "carry" or transmit the force from one point to another. There are FOUR fundamental Forces -
1. The WEAK FORCE carried by the W+, W-, & Z Bosons it acts on Quarks and Leptons to change their Flavor
2. The ELECTROMAGNETIC FORCE carried by Photons, it act on all electrically charged particles attracting unlike or repelling like charges
*N.B.* Now unified into a single ELECTROWEAK FORCE
3. The FUNDAMENTAL STRONG FORCE carried by Gluons, it acts on Quarks to bind them together due to their their Color
4. The RESIDUAL STRONG FORCE carried by Mesons, it acts on Hadrons to bind the atomic nucleus together against P+/P+ repulsion

Newton identified GRAVITY as a universal force and formulated a law of universal gravitation which was sufficient to describe all motion within the solar system UNTIL the 20th century. A supposed carrier was even proposed and named, i.e.: the graviton. Unfortunately gravitational force could NEVER be reconciled with the other actual forces and the graviton could never be found. In addition small discrepancies in actual motion from predicted motion remained and a huge error was observed in the predicted and actual motion of the planet Mercury. Proponents of Newtonian Gravitational Force even went so far as to proposed another planet, Vulcan, to expain the perturbations observed in Mercury's orbit.
When Einstein formulated his General Theory of Relativity he looked at the actual orbit of Mercury and found that his theory could explain it. In GR, gravitation is not viewed as a force, but rather, objects actually move freely under their own inertia in straight lines through curved space-time (masses warp the fabric of space and time – space-time). From the perspective of the object, all motion occurs as if there were no gravitation whatsoever. It is only when observing the motion in a global sense that the curvature of space-time can be observed and *the force is inferred* from the object's curved path. Thus, the straight line path in space-time is seen as a curved line in space, and becomes a ballistic trajectory from an Earth based frame of reference. For example, a basketball thrown from the ground is observed to move in a parabola, *as if* it were in a uniform gravitational field. Its space-time trajectory is almost a straight line, slightly curved (with the radius of curvature of the order of few light-years) due to the Earth’s mass curving the local space-time. The time derivative of the changing momentum of the object is what we label as "gravitational force".

Within the Earth based reference frame, Newtonian Gravitation formulas are excellent and simple ways to predict and describe the motion. The minuscule errors are inconsequential. BUT when extreme accuracy is required Relativity MUST be taken into account.
GPS satellites aren't moving at anything close to the speed of light but, they are moving at roughly 10,000 kph and are sending signals to ground stations on Earth. For the required accuracy the satellites use clocks that are accurate to a few billionths of a second (nanoseconds). Since each satellite is 12,600 miles (20,300 kilometers) above Earth and moves at about 6,000 miles per hour (10,000 km/h), there's a relativistic time dilation that tacks on about 4 microseconds each day. Add in the effects of space-time curvature and the figure goes up to about 7 microseconds. That's 7,000 nanoseconds. While this may seem inconsequential the difference is very real: if no relativistic effects were accounted for, a GPS unit that tells you it's a half mile (0.8 km) to the next gas station would be 5 miles (8 km) off after only one day.


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## mikewint (May 20, 2018)

Zipper730 said:


> gravity *is* technically a curvature


There is no "technically" about it. Gravity as a force is non-existent. Space-time is warped by the simple presence of a mass. Photons which have no mass could not be affected by "gravity" which Newton defined as an attractive force between two masses. Yet light curves around the sun as the photons follow the warped space-time produced by the mass of the sun 



pbehn said:


> Mike flits between actual laws of physics and theories proposed by flat earthers. I saw a couple of obvious howlers in the argument but couldn't be bothered.


Mike actually knows the actual modern Theories of Modern Physics and not the popularize pseudoscience of "everybody knows"
"Howlers"?? Please elaborate. I'm always willing to be educated




wuzak said:


> The warping of space-time IS gravity.


No it is not, but the path of things moving through Space-time warped by the presence of mass gives the illusion of a force acting on the object, just as an object sliding across the seat of your car gives the illusion of a force pulling it across the seat. The Earth orbits the sun NOT because of an illusory force but because it is following the warped space-time caused by the presence of the sun's mass.


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## Zipper730 (May 20, 2018)

mikewint said:


> There is no "technically" about it. Gravity as a force is non-existent. Space-time is warped by the simple presence of a mass...


Interesting how you didn't address the rest of what I wrote...


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## mikewint (May 20, 2018)

Zipper730 said:


> address the rest of what I wrote.


Mostly because it is semi-correct. The biggest flaw is that you seem to consider space and time as separate entities whereas they are manifestations of a single entity. We simply do not have the vocabulary to adequately discuss the actual dimensional nature of spacetime. Curve and even sphere are 3 dimensional constructs whereas GR Theory requires a minimum of four. Additionally I have no idea as to what time is other than the dimension: duration. Now depending upon your particular belief system Super String posits 10 dimensions; M-Theory has 11; and Bosonic String has 26. 
So please enlarge on the point of the rest of you posting that I ignored


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 20, 2018)



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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 20, 2018)

Hmmm...

Does this look flat?


_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtU_mdL2vBM_

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## mikewint (May 20, 2018)

Chris, Flatearthers would counter with "it was faked". In today's computer world of CGI effects anything goes and can be made to appear real. As I posted sometime earlier the most telling argument is the vastness of the conspiracy that would have to exist on all levels to fake the spherical shape. Not to mention the why fake it. To what end and who profits from the faking.


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## GrauGeist (May 20, 2018)

It seems to me, that to some people, conspiracies are a distraction.
I know several people who are truly intelligent people and yet, they buy into chemtrails and geo-engineering.

Not sure if there's a pattern buried in there somewhere, but faked moon landings, flat-earth, alien coverups, chemtrails, FEMA camps, geo-engineering, the Hitler/JFK/Elvis cover ups and so on, seem to attract a diversity of people from all sorts of backgrounds.


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## pbehn (May 20, 2018)

mikewint said:


> Mike actually knows the actual modern Theories of Modern Physics and not the popularize pseudoscience of "everybody knows"
> "Howlers"?? Please elaborate. I'm always willing to be educated
> .


You act as devils advocate, read your own posts, it is impossible to tell whether you are putting forward actual laws of physics or those put forward by the advocates of a flat earth. I got tired of figuring out your point and bored with your boorish attitude addressing everyone else as an idiot. .

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## wuzak (May 20, 2018)

mikewint said:


> Chris, Flatearthers would counter with "it was faked". In today's computer world of CGI effects anything goes and can be made to appear real. As I posted sometime earlier the most telling argument is the vastness of the conspiracy that would have to exist on all levels to fake the spherical shape. Not to mention the why fake it. To what end and who profits from the faking.



Either faked, or the result of a fish-eye lens.

They also latch onto statements about images being photo-shopped "because they have to be". Neglecting the fact that the statement referred to an image made of a composite of images from a satellite in low earth orbit.


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## pbehn (May 20, 2018)

wuzak said:


> Either faked, or the result of a fish-eye lens.
> 
> They also latch onto statements about images being photo-shopped "because they have to be". Neglecting the fact that the statement referred to an image made of a composite of images from a satellite in low earth orbit.


Long before all this conspiracy nonsense huge sums were spent to develop clocks that could tell the time on a ship to navigate a sphere.


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## wuzak (May 20, 2018)

pbehn said:


> Long before all this conspiracy nonsense huge sums were spent to develop clocks that could tell the time on a ship to navigate a sphere.



The British government set up the Board of Longitude - Wikipedia to determine a way to accurately find longitude.

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## pbehn (May 20, 2018)

wuzak said:


> The British government set up the Board of Longitude - Wikipedia to determine a way to accurately find longitude.


I know, in any old port there was a system for a ships captain to tell the exact time, not a matter of conversation but life, death and profits.


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## Shortround6 (May 20, 2018)

mikewint said:


> Not to mention the why fake it. To what end and who profits from the faking.



I answered that back in Post #106
The "International Globe Manufacturers Confederation" or IGMC. 
Their fleet of very quiet helicopters are not black, just a very dark shade of Green

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## wuzak (May 20, 2018)

mikewint said:


> Not to mention the why fake it. To what end and who profits from the faking.



There seems to be a religious element to the flat earth movement. That is, some like to interpret the bible literally, and believe the bits in there where a flat earth is described, with a dome firmament. 

In itself that is interesting, since the bible was written several hundred years after it was known that the world was round.


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## Zipper730 (May 20, 2018)

mikewint said:


> So please enlarge on the point of the rest of you posting that I ignored


Uh, the part about the earth being a sphere...


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## pbehn (May 20, 2018)

wuzak said:


> There seems to be a religious element to the flat earth movement. That is, some like to interpret the bible literally, and believe the bits in there where a flat earth is described, with a dome firmament.
> 
> In itself that is interesting, since the bible was written several hundred years after it was known that the world was round.


Is there any explanation why the centre of this imaginary disc gets dark in winter for about a month while six months later the edge gets dark in a similar fashion? The people who wrote the Bible did not concern themselves too much with what was not of great importance, for centuries it was completely unimportant whether the worlds people believed in a flat or spherical earth. When it did become important then the Church fought against science and from that we have in English the term "revolutionary theory". Eventually the Church had to accept the Earth revolves around the sun.


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## wuzak (May 20, 2018)

The sun is close, moves between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer during the year and has a magic shape shifting lamp shade (not their words).


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## pbehn (May 20, 2018)

wuzak said:


> The sun is close, moves between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer during the year and has a magic shape shifting lamp shade (not their words).


Silly old me, it is obvious now I have had it explained properly.


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## parsifal (May 20, 2018)

Of course , the variation to this argument is whether the moon missions were bogus. Further, the images that they took of the earth and the moon with spheres where these objects lie are bogus too

How Do We Know The Moon Landing Really Happened?


It just gets better and better for me.


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## GrauGeist (May 21, 2018)

wuzak said:


> There seems to be a religious element to the flat earth movement. That is, some like to interpret the bible literally, and believe the bits in there where a flat earth is described, with a dome firmament.
> 
> In itself that is interesting, since the bible was written several hundred years after it was known that the world was round.


Not a religious movement, the church knew the earth was round.
Even at the time of the writings of the New Testament, the Apostles, several of whole were well educated, would have been familiar with scholars' works such as Pythagoras, Parmenides and Aristotle.
The Church as a whole, did not challenge the accepted science of the time.
Also, many of the Biblical texts FE'rs use as "proof" are taken so far out of context, there's no real way to even try and explaining the truth. One such example they use is from Daniel, about the Tree that was so tall, it could be seen from all the world - what they fail to understand, is that Daniel was writing about a _DREAM_ that the King had confided in him for interpretation....yes, that's right, a dream.
And in the case of Columbus, there is a fable by flat-earthers that people were afraid that Columbus would sail off the edge of the earth. This is simply not true, and anyone who wishes to read his journal or other writings that involved him, would see the flat-earther's claim is not only misleading, but a bald-faced lie.
Columbus (and his contemporaries) knew that the "Indies" could be reached by sailing westward. BUT, they assumed that the voyage would take months to accomplish, as they thought the globe was much larger than it actually is. In Columbus' day, they would avoid venturing any further than 3 days sailing from land, thus a voyage to the west was thought to be sheer folly and a recipe for disaster.

All of this recent nonsense can be traced back to the 1800's, when it became almost a social fad.


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## parsifal (May 21, 2018)

Eratosthenes was the man to first accurately estimate the circumference of the earth. Pythagoras had first theorised in approximately 500 BC that the earth was a sphere

Eratosthenes’ most famous discovery is his accurate prediction of the earths circumference. He did this by comparing altitudes of the mid-day sun at two places a known North-South distance apart. His calculation was remarkably accurate. He was also the first to calculate the tilt of the earth’s axis (again with remarkable accuracy). Additionally, he may have accurately calculated the distance of the earth to the sun. and invented the leap year. He created the first map of the world, incorporating parallels and meridians based on the available geographic knowledge of his era.

Contrary to common misconception, the medieval church did not teach that the earth was flat. Thomas Aquinas introduced Aristotelian thought into medieval church teaching. Writing in the fourth century BC, Aristotle clearly taught that the earth was spherical. As indicated above, In the early second century BC, Eratosthenes accurately measured the circumference of the spherical earth. Claudius Ptolemy’s _Almagest_, from the early second century AD, provided a useful model for calculating the positions of heavenly bodies. While this model was geocentric, it did not promote a flat earth, but instead was based upon a spherical earth. The works of Aristotle, Eratosthenes, and Ptolemy were all widely available and discussed in the late medieval period, and continued to be through the transition to the Renaissance. Given the clear record of history, why is it so commonly believed today that most people, and especially the church, thought that the earth was flat?

This misconception is easily traced to the writings of two late nineteenth-century skeptics, John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who invented the conflict thesis. The conflict thesis holds that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, held back progress. The contention of the conflict thesis was that medieval Europe was gripped with superstition that prevented intellectual advancement, and it was only after man’s reason reasserted itself during the Renaissance that man slowly became unshackled from religious dogma, bringing about the Enlightenment. It is true that four centuries ago the Roman Catholic Church opposed Galileo’s teaching of the heliocentric theory. According to the conflict thesis, it was the alleged geocentric teaching of the Bible that caused the Roman Catholic Church to oppose Galileo.

However, the historical record demonstrates that it was the teachings of Aristotle and Ptolemy that played the major role in that conflict That is, the Galileo affair was a battle between _two scientific theories_—geocentrism and heliocentrism—with the Bible playing a very minor role. Hence, the conflict thesis reinterpreted the Galileo affair into something that it was not.

The promoters of the conflict thesis also retold the story of Christopher Columbus. Most people today persist in the belief that at the time of Columbus, nearly everyone thought that the earth was flat. According to the story, Columbus was one of the few people who thought the earth was spherical, and he understood that on a spherical earth one could sail westward from Europe to reach India and China. Supposedly, Columbus had to argue against strong objections coming from those who thought that the earth was flat to get support for his expedition. Finally, according to the story, Columbus managed to complete a voyage to the New World, and when he returned to Europe, people realized that Columbus was right—the world was round and not flat. Really? How did sailing from Europe to the Caribbean and back to Europe prove that the world was spherical? It didn’t. The truth is that no one told Columbus he could not reach the Far East by sailing west. Everyone knew that it was possible, because everyone knew that the earth was spherical. The problem was that the earth was very large. Most people understood that the distance westward from Europe to the Far East was far greater than going eastward (a look at any globe proves this). The question was not how possible it was to reach Asia by going westward, but rather how feasible it was. The belief was that the ocean between Europe and Asia was vast, with little or no land in between. At the time of Columbus, voyages over open water were very risky, and ships rarely sailed more than three days out of the sight of land. A voyage westward across the ocean to Asia would have required months, with no opportunity for resupply or rescue along the way if problems developed.

The facts of history refute the commonly held story about Christopher Columbus. Much of the work supporting a flat earth today uncritically repeats and builds upon this false view. The flat earth movement began in the mid-nineteenth century, the same time that the conflict thesis was being developed. While the skeptics were ridiculing the Bible for allegedly teaching that the earth is flat, early flat-earthers foolishly accepted this false claim. Undoubtedly, the recent surge of interest in the flat earth among Christians has been fueled by the (false) belief that the Bible teaches that the earth is flat. Those who have enlisted in the flat-earth movement of late apparently are ignorant of the fact that those who promoted the conflict thesis made the same arguments to discredit the Bible. This could be ironic, or perhaps it is not. It is possible that certain people promoting the flat-earth today are doing so to discredit the Bible and Christianity all over again. If so, then Christians who have been misled into believing that the earth is flat have foolishly fallen into the trap.

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## wuzak (May 21, 2018)

I personally can't speak top the veracity of their claims, but they do claim the bible sets out a flat earth beneath a firmament dome.

They have videos claiming the sun is between 3000 and 5000 miles away and inside the dome, yet there are also videos from on-board weather balloons which they claim have hit the dome - at 120,000ft.

Edit: Apparently the firmament idea came from Genesis. And while the Greeks figured the earth was round, they still thought there was a firmament.


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## Marcel (May 21, 2018)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> View attachment 494219


I made a smiley for that 



GrauGeist said:


> It seems to me, that to some people, conspiracies are a distraction.
> I know several people who are truly intelligent people and yet, they buy into chemtrails and geo-engineering.
> 
> Not sure if there's a pattern buried in there somewhere, but faked moon landings, flat-earth, alien coverups, chemtrails, FEMA camps, geo-engineering, the Hitler/JFK/Elvis cover ups and so on, seem to attract a diversity of people from all sorts of backgrounds.


Well all you guys had a lot of fun discussing these theories here, soi guess they at least serve a purpose, entertaining you.


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## wuzak (May 21, 2018)

parsifal said:


> Eratosthenes was the man to first accurately estimate the circumference of the earth. Pythagoras had first theorised in approximately 500 BC that the earth was a sphere
> 
> Eratosthenes’ most famous discovery is his accurate prediction of the earths circumference. He did this by comparing altitudes of the mid-day sun at two places a known North-South distance apart. His calculation was remarkably accurate. He was also the first to calculate the tilt of the earth’s axis (again with remarkable accuracy). Additionally, he may have accurately calculated the distance of the earth to the sun. and invented the leap year. He created the first map of the world, incorporating parallels and meridians based on the available geographic knowledge of his era.
> 
> ...




Does the Bible Teach that the Earth is Flat?


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## Marcel (May 21, 2018)

Guys, make sure you don't end up in a religious discussion. I'll step in if I think you are going too far.


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## herman1rg (May 21, 2018)

Gentlemen you cannot fight here, this is The War Room.

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## mikewint (May 21, 2018)

pbehn said:


> attitude addressing everyone else as an idiot. .


Apologies if you took it in that manner it was never meant that way nor did I IMHO imply that you were intellectually impaired.
Popularized science, like all things, is both positive and negative. It is difficult to reduce everything to simplistic terms as anyone with children can affirm. "Daddy, how does TV work?" will eventually bring an an exasperated retort, mostly 'cause Daddy really doesn't know how himself AND if Daddy were an electrical engineer, what common vocabulary would they share.
Considering Gravity to be an actual Force is OK and so much simpler to comprehend. F = ma is a wonderful simplistic mathematical concept taught in every Physics class. That it is actually incorrect is a concept for more advanced study. A negative number times a negative number equals a POSITIVE number!!! WTF!!! Try explaining that one sometime.


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## mikewint (May 21, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> as they thought the globe was much larger than it actually is. I


Dave, I think that it's actually the reverse. Columbus, et. al., thought that the Earth's was much smaller thus Asia could be reached by sailing westward. Thus INDIANS for the natives Columbus encountered. That the Earth was large enough for another entire continent to block his route was inconceivable.


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## GrauGeist (May 21, 2018)

Columbus was convinced that he could sail directly to the west and reach the Indies (yes, that's why the natives of the Americas are named that) in a matter of weeks as opposed to the commonly held belief of several months.

Like I mentioned earlier, mariners did not stray any further than 3 days from shore because of provisioning. Breads, meats and water fouled quickly, increasing the potential for sickening the crew...and without a healthy crew, they could run into serious trouble.


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## mikewint (May 21, 2018)

Dave, The idea of sailing westward to India dates back to the early Romans. The Roman writer Strabo, not long after Erathosthenes and Posidonius, reported their results and noted:

*"if of the more recent measurements of the Earth, the one which makes the Earth smallest in circumference be introduced--I mean that of Posidonius who estimates its circumference at about 180,000 stadia, then. . . "*

and he continues:

*"Posidonius suspects that the length of the inhabited world, about 70,000 stadia, is half the entire circle on which it had been taken, so that if you sail from the west in a straight course, you will reach India within 70,000 stadia. "*

Notice that Strabo--for unclear reasons--reduced the 250,000 Stadia of Eratosthenes to 180,000, and then stated that half of that distance came to just 70,000 stadia. Handling his numbers in that loose fashion, he could argue that India was not far to the west.

All these results were known to the panel of experts which King Ferdinand appointed to examine the proposal made by Columbus. They turned Columbus down, because using the original value by Eratosthenes, they calculated how far India was to the west of Spain, and concluded that the distance was far too great.

Columbus however, had an estimate of his own. His claim was based on incorrect units of distance. Columbus used an erroneous estimate by Ptolemy, who based it on a later definition of the stadium, and in estimating the size of the settled world he confused the Arab mile, used by El Ma'mun, with the Roman mile on which our own mile is based. All the same, his final estimate of the distance to India was close to Strabo's.
In the end Queen Isabella overruled the experts, and the rest is history. We may never know whether Columbus knowingly fudged his values to justify an expedition to explore the unknown, or actually believed India was not too far to the west of Spain. He certainly did call the inhabitants of the lands he discovered "Indians," .

Interestingly if the American continent had not existed, the experts would have been vindicated: Columbus with his tiny ships could never have crossed an ocean as wide as the Atlantic and Pacific combined and would have perished.


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## GrauGeist (May 21, 2018)

There is compelling evidence that Carthagenians sailed westward and reached South American when they and their allies fled Carthage after being defeated by Rome in the third Punic War (146 BC).

In Columbus' case, if he were just a few degrees north as he approached the new world, he would have landed on the Florida coast, instead, he reached the Bahamas, changed to a southerly course and "discovered" Cuba.

Still, quite a leap of faith going in the face of convention, really.

BTW, attached is Columbus' map circa 1490.

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## mikewint (May 21, 2018)

Spices were extremely important in preserving food and very expensive in Europe at the time because they came from Asia for the most part. The only trade route was through the Middle East. At the time, the Muslims controlled all trade routes between the Mediterranean and Asia. The Venetians, with their powerful navy, had a monopoly on trade with the Egyptians and controlled the bulk of spice imports into Europe.

In 1492, Spain had just finished the reconquista (reconquest). They had finally pushed the Muslims out of Spain and taken over control of all of the Iberian peninsula. For obvious reasons they weren't on great terms with the Muslims. So trade with the Muslims was out of the question and buying spices through 3rd parties (Venice) was very expensive.

Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese sailor, had sailed around Africa and found a route to India. This opened up a new route to allow Portugal to start trading directly with India and Asia and bring spices back. This allowed them to make massive amounts of money.

Spain and other European countries could not just simply sail around Africa for a number of reasons. Portugal did not share the maps that Vasco de Gama had made so Spain and the others would have to explore on their own... a risky proposition. Also, the Portuguese had already set up key ports and posts along the route which dramatically reduced the risk of the journey as they could put in at ports, get fresh water, wait out storms, etc. There were only so many suitable natural harbors and Portugal had gotten there first. There was also the concern that both countries using the same route would lead to friction and war.

Christopher Columbus, a Genoan with no love for Venice (Genoa and Venice were constant rivals) did some basic calculations (which he got wrong), and figured that he could sail westward from Europe and find Asia. He figured he could sail a week or two due west and find Asia. He then went to Portugal (twice), Venice and Genoa and proposed sailing west. They all checked his numbers, told him he was cracked and said no, they wouldn't fund it.
Eventually, he talked to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castille, the two rulers who married and united Aragon and Castille and a few other kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula into Spain. They were also advised that Columbus had his math wrong. But they gave him a salary to stop him from going somewhere else (in case he was right). After a few years, Ferdinand and Isabella finally conquered the last Muslim holdout in Grenada. All of Spain was now free of the Muslims. So they celebrated and finally consented to support Columbus and fund his voyage westward.

On his first voyage, with the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, he spent five weeks at sea and finally found the Bahamas. He met with the native Arawaks and noted they had gold jewelry. He also sailed to explore parts of Cuba and Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic). He lost the Santa Maria (run aground) and then sailed back to Spain. It became obvious that what he discovered was not Asia, but they still called the people Indians and the islands the West Indies.
He made 3 more journeys exploring the Caribbean islands and the north coast of South America bringing settlers and explorers and creating various colonies. He was correct in assuming that South America was a very large landmass (based on the size of the rivers he found).


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## at6 (May 21, 2018)

I think that I should avoid this thread as it is leaving me flat.

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## mikewint (May 21, 2018)

As in Flatland by Edwin Abbott?
Flatland is a world that exists on the two-dimensional plane, where its inhabitants—literal geometrical shapes—live in a highly-structured society organized into classes based on the number of sides of a figure. The narrator and protagonist of Flatland, A Square, writes from prison, intricately detailing the social organization of his country and recounting the revelations he has received from the sacred “Sphere.”
In the first half of his treatise, A Square painstakingly describes the social landscape of Flatland, which is strictly regulated by natural laws as dictated by the Circles, the priests that make up the highest class. While women are simple straight lines, the males are full polygons. Flatland society is organized from the isosceles triangles at the bottom, then the equilateral triangles, square, pentagons, hexagons, higher polygons, and finally, the priestly circles at the top. By indoctrinating the Flatlandians to “Attend to your Configuration,” the Circles maintain power, limiting the freedom of lower polygons and women through oppressive policies and institutions, and immediately suppressing any rebellion through frequent executions.


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## GrauGeist (May 21, 2018)

at6 said:


> I think that I should avoid this thread as it is leaving me flat.


Sooo....put the lid on tighter next time, so all the carbonation doesn't escape!

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## Airframes (May 21, 2018)

The Earth can not possibly be flat - I live on a hill !

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## Zipper730 (May 21, 2018)

GrauGeist said:


> Columbus (and his contemporaries) knew that the "Indies" could be reached by sailing westward. BUT, they assumed that the voyage would take months to accomplish, as they thought the globe was much larger than it actually is.


Just to be clear, did they mean the Caribbean or India? How big exactly did they expect earth to be?



mikewint said:


> Dave, The idea of sailing westward to India dates back to the early Romans. The Roman writer Strabo, not long after Erathosthenes and Posidonius, reported their results and noted:
> 
> *"if of the more recent measurements of the Earth, the one which makes the Earth smallest in circumference be introduced--I mean that of Posidonius who estimates its circumference at about 180,000 stadia, then. . . "*
> 
> ...


Wait... according to the definition of Stadion, that's 185-192 meters and that would mean that

If the Earth was 180,000 stadia in circumference, that would correlate to 33,300 km to 34,560 km, and that's only roughly 83% to 86% the actual circumference
If the Earth was 250,000 stadia in circumference, that correlates to 46,250 km to 48,000 km in diameter which is 115.4% to 119.8% the actual circumference
If these figures were averaged to 215,000 stadia, you would get a circumference of 39,775 km to 41,280 km which is quite close to the actual 40,075 km circumference, and if you averaged 39,775 km and 41,280 km, you would get 40,527.5 km which is only 452.5 km off...



> All these results were known to the panel of experts which King Ferdinand appointed to examine the proposal made by Columbus. They turned Columbus down, because using the original value by Eratosthenes, they calculated how far India was to the west of Spain, and concluded that the distance was far too great.


Why weren't we taught this stuff in school?


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## wuzak (May 21, 2018)

Zipper730 said:


> Just to be clear, did they mean the Caribbean or India?



India.

Part of the Columbus legend is that his crew were getting panicked before they reached the Caribbean. The story s often told that the sailors thought they were about to go off the edge of the earth, but the reality was that Columbus had miscalculated and they were running out of food.




Zipper730 said:


> Why weren't we taught this stuff in school?



I wasn't taught much about Columbus - maybe that's because I'm not American?

Also, Columbus never set foot in North America!

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## fubar57 (May 28, 2018)

This Flat Earth thread has gotten flat, You know this has got to be true because Hitler is mentioned in it.......http://listverse.com/2017/03/11/10-strange-reports-about-the-hollow-earth/

..........have fun Mike

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## GrauGeist (May 28, 2018)

Wait...what?
Not only is the earth flat, but it's hollow too?? 

_The plot thickens..._


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## Airframes (May 28, 2018)

No Dave, the plot flattens ............. and if the earth is flat, how come there are 'Round the World Yachtsmen' ?


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## parsifal (May 28, 2018)

I will get your coat for you terry


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## GrauGeist (May 28, 2018)

Airframes said:


> No Dave, the plot flattens ............. and if the earth is flat, how come there are 'Round the World Yachtsmen' ?


lol Terry! 

The 'round the world yachtsmen sail out to the edge and start circling, always keeping the mysterious icy edge to their starboard side, making sure to remain just outside of the secret government boundary (that no one is supposed to know about except former government employees who remain anonymous for their family's safety) and they do laps.
When the yachstmen make their famous voyages, people crowd to the top of Everest so they can follow their progress.
It must be a wonderful spectacle to behold.

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## Airframes (May 28, 2018)

Ah, _now_ I understand ............. er ............ hmm ............. but - oh never mind !


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## fubar57 (May 30, 2018)



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## Lucky13 (May 30, 2018)



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## vikingBerserker (May 30, 2018)

How I long for the ancient days, when lions ate the stupid people.

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## Builder 2010 (May 30, 2018)

They're following the same rule book that thinks the earth is 6,000 years old and dinosaurs and early man coexisted. If early man and dinosaurs coexisted, there wouldn't be a men around today. Dinos would win hands down. Don't those people ever watch what water can do and how slowly it takes to do it. We were just in New Mexico and visited the Ghost Ranch which where Georgia O'Keefe (famous American modern artist) lived and painted many of her most famous work. The ranch totals 21,000 acres (O'keefe owned 7), and has produced the most Triassic-epoch fossils of any place in the world. The cliff faces are unique and expose the modern era on top all the way to 220 million years ago on the bottom and all the ages in between. When people with odd beliefs are confronted with obvious facts, I wonder what happens in their brains. There is a cognitive dissonance that must be almost painful when a flat earther looks at the moon or any other the other celestial bodies and sees that they're obviously spheres and then keeps insisting that one he's living on isn't. I suggest taking them up about 150 miles and then throwing them out of the space ship. Give them a space suit so they'll survive in the vacuum and then let them contemplate the earth's roundness on their way to their demise.


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## wuzak (May 30, 2018)

Meanwhile, there will be a trans-polar circumnavigation flight of the Earth later this year. I believe it is an attempt to beat the previous record.

https://samchui.com/2018/02/17/polar-explorer-2018-fly-north-south-pole-record-time/#.Ww9biUiFNhE


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## fubar57 (Jul 9, 2018)



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## Zipper730 (Jul 9, 2018)

Fubar57,

Because if that was the case, the earth would have a circumference of 6-10 feet


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## fubar57 (Jul 9, 2018)




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## Zipper730 (Jul 9, 2018)

C'mon George, I'm just responding to an absurd question with an absurd answer!


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## fubar57 (Mar 30, 2019)

http://listverse.com/2019/03/30/10-surprising-facts-you-didnt-know-about-flat-earthers/

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## wuzak (Mar 30, 2019)

10. Many flat earthers don't believe that Mars is a planet, nor are any of the other planets - they are lights in the sky.
3. Most flat earthers don't believe in space.
2. The numbers of people involved is still relatively small, and the search trends on YouTube has reversed.

Recently there was a documentary released called _Behind the Curve_. It can be found on iTunes, Prime Video, Google Play and Netflix. 

It is worth a watch, as it does expose a few of the "leaders" of the movement as intellectually dishonest.


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## parsifal (Mar 30, 2019)

Its hard to accept that people believe this BS with the conviction of a sleepwalker. The question begs.....what are they so utterly misguided yet so obstinately certain they are right?


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## Crimea_River (Mar 30, 2019)

To understand them, your brain needs to work like theirs so be glad that you don't get it.

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## special ed (Mar 30, 2019)

There those who disbelieve gravity.............the earth sucks.


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## michael rauls (Mar 30, 2019)

I suspect the flat earth" movement" for lack of a better term is basically a few scammers fomenting such beliefs so that they can make money off the gullible from news letters, books, confrences, etc.
Probably the same dynamic that propels the chemtrail phenomenon.

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## GrauGeist (Mar 31, 2019)

Most of these "conspiracies" have gained traction via the internet because any chain-smoking idiot with a caffeine addiction can create a web page espousing their theories (loaded with ads, of course for revenue) and make it appear legitimate.
First rule is to post some BS bits about a "government official, who has to remain anonymous for the safety of their family".
Then go on about secret documents and so-and-so passed these on, blah blah blah.

Then post some sketchy, granulated photos under the caption of "secret photos taken by (insert random name here" and the list goes on.

One of the greatest shams ever concocted, was by Art Bell and his Coast-to-Coast AM radio show. He started the "chemtrail" thing in the 90's, which happened to be connected to a natural remedy he was pushing.

Before the 1990's, everyone on the face of the globe knew what a contrail was...after the 1990's, the stupid started compounding at a ridiculous rate...


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## mikewint (Mar 31, 2019)

First off I applaud the fact the Flat Earthers' are actually employing Cartesian doubt, a method of skeptical thinking following a philosophical idea that the world outside the self is subject to uncertainty initially promulgated by René Descartes, the French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist.

Next consider Michel Foucault, a 20th century philosopher who made a career of studying those on the fringes of society to understand what they could tell us about everyday life.
He looked closely at the close relationship between power and knowledge. He suggested that knowledge is created and used in a way that reinforces the claims to legitimacy of those in power. At the same time, those in power control what is considered to be correct and incorrect knowledge. According to Foucault, there is therefore an intimate and interlinked relationship between power and knowledge.
Consider, for example, the way in which early religious institutions, who previously held a very singular hold over knowledge and morality exercised a very ridged control over that knowledge which then in turn supported their position of power. While that religion based control eventually ended it would seem that today we are moving towards a network of scientific institutions, media monopolies, legal courts, and bureaucratised governments which are replacing those former religious institutions. Foucault argued that these institutions work to maintain their claims to legitimacy by controlling knowledge.

Consider HG Well’s “world brain” essays in 1936, that held that a worldwide shared resource of knowledge (such as today’s internet) would create peace, harmony and a common interpretation of reality. It appears that quite the opposite has happened. With the increased voice afforded by social media, knowledge has been increasingly decentralized, and competing narratives have emerged each supported by cadres of followers who would never have met nor been able to organize without social media.

So far so good, then it gets scary.

A recent YouGov poll (believe it or not) found that only about two-thirds of Americans aged between 18 and 24 believe that the Earth is round. Furthermore, there seems to be a growing belief that the idea that the Earth is round (well actually an Oblate Spheroid iff’n ya wants to be picky) is actually a conspiracy theory.

And it's gaining more believers than some of the other conspiracies out there, like chemtrails (which, as we all know is actually Chris and his cohorts, dispensing chemical and/or biological agents from their high flying jets).

Interest in most of these other far-fetched theories remains relatively stable but the flat-Earth movement is growing, particularly in America. And it has some high-profile supporters, from basketball players to musicians, rappers to TV hosts, a number of celebrities are jumping on the flat Earth bandwagon.

So why, despite overwhelming scientific evidence, is the flat-Earth movement gaining traction in the 21st century? IMHO, it's due to a general shift towards populism and growing distrust in the views of experts, academics, scientific agencies, the government and the mainstream media. Once again IMHO, I lay this at the door of social media. A fringe group of really good "influencers" can now hold more sway than an expert in the field and very soon you can get a bunch of people around you who are constantly reaffirming your belief. These social media self-proclaimed experts are really good storytellers and people naively think, 'Oh, they're a real person, not an academic, a scientific agency, part of the government or the mainstream media so it must be true'.

The flat Earth community uses various social media platforms to create a kind of welcoming ecosystem that attracts those who distrust the “establishment”. YouTube becomes a content hub, Facebook becomes an administrative one-stop shop for that hub, and then Twitter continually pushes out the message. For these fringe groups flat-earthers, et al, YouTube becomes an alternative documentary channel. Via YouTube these groups can have their daily or weekly TV show in the same way that we might watch David Attenborough, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, etc.
YouTube is a powerful social media tool, more so than Facebook or Twitter because it's a "high context" platform, where users can stream themselves with an immediacy and intimacy that's lacking from text or TV specials. And unlike TV, on YouTube you can go searching for videos by people who agree with your view of the world or in this case, the Flat Earth. As we increasingly rely on social media for entertainment, we are creating an environment where misinformation easily circulates and becomes reinforced.
Look at how quickly the Flat Earthers spread the idea that the UN supported their position by their very logo which they say is actually a flat Earth map. 

Lastly let me add that the results of a single public opinion survey are by no means authoritative. Differences in the phrasing of questions, variance in the methods of polling, randomness and error and (rarely but sadly) misconduct: all of these guarantees that a single survey should never be taken as the last word.

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## Gnomey (Mar 31, 2019)

11) They are all morons...

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## Shortround6 (Mar 31, 2019)

I have my own theory about polls, 1/3 of all poll responders are having a laugh at the poll taker "Hmm, I wonder if this guy asking these stupid questions really believes my answers".


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## fubar57 (Mar 31, 2019)

Yep. I really love taking telephone polls


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## michael rauls (Mar 31, 2019)

I read the results of a poll that indicated that 25% of the people make up one quarter of the population.


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## The Basket (Mar 31, 2019)

A friend advised me that one of his friends was a crazy conspiracy theorist and there was no way of arguing with him. 

But you could out crazy him. 

So when asked by his conspiracy chum if he believed in the moon landings, his response was, 

'you believe there's a moon?' 

if one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects, you must embrace...a larger view of the conspiracy


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## mikewint (Mar 31, 2019)

Gnomey said:


> 11) They are all morons...


While I understand the source of your categorization of this group dismissing an idea in pejorative terms is a trap. I'm sure that Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, and many others were termed Morons and worse.

From the Medical Establishment come many others whose discoveries were rejected out of hand regardless of evidence. Starting with *William Harvey* and De Mortu Cordis rejected for decades, Harvey was ostracized by the scientific world, becoming a recluse, living life in private and peace rather than launching again on what he called “the faithless sea.”;
*Ignaz Semmelweis *was a Hungarian physician working at the Vienna General Hospital where, at the time, maternal mortality due to puerperal fever reached as high as 50%. Semmelweis discovered that the Hospital’s medical students went from autopsying cadavers straight to birthing babies. Though he didn’t know anything about germs, he assumed it was a lack of cleanliness causing unnecessary deaths. When he had doctors and midwives wash their hands in chlorine lime solutions, the mortality rates went down to 1 percent. Naturally this Moron was completely rejected by his peers who viewed him as an embarrassment. The rejection drove him to alcoholism, depression, and isolation.
*William Coley *— a cancer researcher and bone surgeon who worked at New York Cancer Hospital. One of Coley’s patients began recovering from cancer after he was infected with _Streptococcus pyogenes_bacteria. Coley theorized that post-surgical infections mobilized the immune system. He experimented with what became known as Coley’s toxins — mixtures of dead bacteria, particularly streptococcus, injected into cancer patients to trigger their immune systems. He kept a series of case reports on it, but most of his scientific peers rejected the idea, writing it off as crazy and dangerous.
*Francis Peyton Rous* was a pathologist who discovered that certain viruses may play a role in the development of particular kinds of cancer. In 1911, while he was working at Rockefeller University in New York City, Rous noted that a sarcoma growing on a chicken could be transmitted to healthy chickens through a cell-free extract injection of chicken tumor. His findings were largely discredited. Over 50 years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

It is a slippery slope to simply write a theory off as total nonsense because "We know better". To understand Flat Earthers, and other people who hold unconventional beliefs, we need to first consider what it means to “believe.” A belief is a cognitive representation of the nature of reality, encompassing our inner experiences, the world around us, and the world beyond. In 1965, Oxford philosophy professor H.H. Price distinguished between “believing in” and “believing that.” As summarized by John Byrne, author of the website *Skeptical Medicine*, “believing that” something is true is a relatively straightforward matter of looking at the evidence. “Seeing is believing” is one kind of “believing that.” In contrast, we “believe in” something when there’s no evidence and the belief isn’t falsifiable. Religious faith is a kind of “believing in.” Both types of believing are normal cognitive capacities, but can run amok when combined, resulting in beliefs that are poor models of reality.
*“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.”*
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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## michael rauls (Mar 31, 2019)

mikewint said:


> First off I applaud the fact the Flat Earthers' are actually employing Cartesian doubt, a method of skeptical thinking following a philosophical idea that the world outside the self is subject to uncertainty initially promulgated by René Descartes, the French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist.
> 
> Next consider Michel Foucault, a 20th century philosopher who made a career of studying those on the fringes of society to understand what they could tell us about everyday life.
> He looked closely at the close relationship between power and knowledge. He suggested that knowledge is created and used in a way that reinforces the claims to legitimacy of those in power. At the same time, those in power control what is considered to be correct and incorrect knowledge. According to Foucault, there is therefore an intimate and interlinked relationship between power and knowledge.
> ...


 I think you're right about the mistrust of experts facilitating erroneous beliefs like flat earth, chemtrails, etc. amoung a certain percentage of the population and although most of these shall we say alternative realities are laughable the mistrust of experts is not entirely unwarranted.
For example in the investment world( another one of my hobbies) at the end of every economic cycle most of the experts which for the most part work for sell side institutions i.e. Goldman Sachs, J.P.Morgan et all, will continue to give buy recommendations long after it is obvious to anyone who has any basic knowledge about economic cycles that things are turning down. Right now for example one can find numerous articles in the financial press that even though the yield curve has inverted( this has preceded every recession in modern history with only one false alarm) that this time its different and we shouldn't pay attention to the yield curve inversion this time. ( they do this every buisness cycle by the way). 
Why do they do this? Because they are beholden to those they make the most money from and that is the brokerage houses that employ them and by extension institutional clients and those brokerage houses and institutional clients need bag holders( that would be your average mom and pop investor) to unload there economicly sensitive assets to when the economy is turning down.
So......... when people get lied to or scammed by experts like in the example above enough times it eventually brings about mistrust of anything experts say in some people which I would atribute to the herd mentality or one could say the tenancy of people to join sides. That is many seem to be short on critical thinking skills and openmindedness and if failed by experts, whether intentionally as in the example above or simply because experts can be wrong also, will reflexively "choose a side" i.e. either they are with all experts or against all experts instead of examining the merits of each issue. Many will choose the against side thereby giving use fervent believers in flat earth, chemtrails, etc.
...........As long as I kinda touched on economics i wouldn't feel right if I didn't give my buy/ sell recommendation for for anyone interested. And that recommendation is..................................................SELL!!!!!!!!!!!............... or at least lighten up on the economically sensitive assets, stocks, corperate bonds etc............remember you herd it here first. Could it really be different this time? Sure it could...... but I doubt it.


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## wuzak (Mar 31, 2019)

mikewint said:


> First off I applaud the fact the Flat Earthers' are actually employing Cartesian doubt, a method of skeptical thinking following a philosophical idea that the world outside the self is subject to uncertainty initially promulgated by René Descartes, the French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist.



I think that you give them too much credit.

Many flat earthers have been sold the idea that the bible says that the earth is flat. And they believe the bible to be true.

Others just don't understand the basics of how the earth works, or don't understand the explanations for it.

Others are straight out frauds. They exploit the idea of flat earth for personal financial gain. A number of flat earth YouTubers have their channels monetized, and provide several other ways for people to give them money. 

Largely those who follow the flat earth hold to many other conspiracy theories - from 9/11, a world wide shadow government, chemtrails, moan landings, etc - and have a deep mistrust of government.

Some do their own experiments. But often the experiment doesn't work or produce the results they expect, need, so they discard the results.

An example of this was shown in the documentary _Behind the Curve_. A group of people bough an expensive gyroscope which was to show that the earth does not rotate. When it showed a 15° they dismissed the findings as being influenced by the "heavenly energies".


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## wuzak (Mar 31, 2019)

mikewint said:


> While I understand the source of your categorization of this group dismissing an idea in pejorative terms is a trap. I'm sure that Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, and many others were termed Morons and worse.



I doubt any of those were though morons. 

Heretics is more likely. Galileo was even put under house arrest by the church for his work.

But Galileo wasn't working in a vacuum. He was building on the works of Copernicus, Kepler, Brahe and others. He provided evidence for his theories.

The examples you cite may have been ridiculed or rejected, but they provided evidence for their claims, though it was not accepted by their peers. 

In the _Behind the Curve_ documentary several scientists are interviewed, as well as the flat earthers. They generally do not summarily dismiss them as "morons", and one even says that they should be applauded for trying to discern reality for themselves, even if their methods or conclusions are faulty.

The problem is that the flat earthers are often not swayed by evidence, and will dismiss explanations that don't conform to their ideas.

Many will talk of the globe earth as a 500 year old lie, putting the time of the discovery of the earth's shape around the same time as the start of the heliocentric model of the solar system. Maybe that is based on the myth that Columbus' sailors freaked as they thought they were going to go over the edge.

The other side of this is that there is a community of flat earth debunkers on YouTube that, generally, try to answer the questions and doubts that flat earthers have.


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## tyrodtom (Mar 31, 2019)

I don't think the Bible actually comes out and says the earth is flat.
But in the King James version it says " Spread the gospel to the four corners of the earth" written in the King James era, it used the vernacular of the day.
To me that phrase just means to spread the gospel everywhere, to some one else it might take on a deeper meaning.

Be careful here, because now we've let religion get into the discussion.


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## Greg Boeser (Mar 31, 2019)

Basing one's science on a collection of religious writings is about as sensible as basing one's religion on a bunch of scientific hypotheses.
Modern science based on empiricism cannot control for the supernatural, therefore writes it out of the equation.


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## wuzak (Mar 31, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> I don't think the Bible actually comes out and says the earth is flat.
> But in the King James version it says " Spread the gospel to the four corners of the earth" written in the King James era, it used the vernacular of the day.
> To me that phrase just means to spread the gospel everywhere, to some one else it might take on a deeper meaning.
> 
> Be careful here, because now we've let religion get into the discussion.



I did not say that the bible actually says that the earth is flat - rather that some followers of flat earth believe that the bible says that the earth is flat.

This article disputes the idea that the bible actually says that the earth is flat.

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 1, 2019)

It’s gaining traction, especially in the US, because of our poor education system.


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## fubar57 (Apr 1, 2019)



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## GrauGeist (Apr 1, 2019)

In the days that the Old Testament was written, scholars were aware that the earth was round. 

As far back as 2,250 BC, Egyptian mathematicians had roughly calculated the earth's circumference based on observations and the Greek Pythagoras had written extensively on the earth's shape based on his travels (ca 500 BC). The list of subsequent scholars of antiquity is a long one, who argued that the earth was indeed a sphere. And if anyone's had to suffer through Trigonometry, then they'll be interested to know that spherical trig was originally designed to calculate the distance and direction to Mecca from any point on earth.

Then there was Magellan and other voyagers who circumnavigated the earth and made extensive notations of new constellations and other discoveries which confirmed what was already known.

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## The Basket (Apr 1, 2019)

Flat earthers are safe unless they start acting on their impulses. I can believe I can fly but that's no big deal unless I jump of a cliff to prove it. 

The real issue is anti-vaxx which is genuinely dangerous and absolutely scary. 

When you are cleverer than the world after watching one hour YouTube video is not only ignorant but delusional. 

What people don't know is not a problem but what people think they know is. Mass cult thinking without a shred of real evidence other than feelings is going to send us down many a dark path. 

It has killed millions before and will kill millions again.

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## fubar57 (Apr 1, 2019)

B.C. is dealing with a rash of measles right now because of these clowns and Alberta just reported two cases yesterday


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## GrauGeist (Apr 1, 2019)

fubar57 said:


> B.C. is dealing with a rash of measles right now because of these clowns and Alberta just reported two cases yesterday


We have three cases of measels just in the past two weeks in this area and a possible 5 more cases in the past two days.
Starting to think we should refer to these idiot "anti-vaxxers" with a more appropriate name of "pro-plaguers"


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## The Basket (Apr 1, 2019)

In ye olde days.... If you said something stupid, your peers would put you out of your misery quickly and advise you of your stupid ways.
But today I can go on to the Internet and find echo chambers which not only agree with me but reinforce even the most extreme of views.
And I can watch videos which spout nonsense as science truth.

Anti Vaxx is truly a plague on our society and the costs will be much highly than believing in flat earth.

Its laughable that we are at the apex of human existence and yet some want us to go back to medieval times.

I would say April fool to such shenanigans but though its 1st April anti vaxxers are not only risking themselves but also us as well. And that is no joke.


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## The Basket (Apr 1, 2019)

One issue I have nowadays is loss of sarcasm and loss of funny. 

I read stuff on the Internet or even in print media or on YouTube which is so stupid that it has to be only for comidic effect. But nowadays God knows. 

We are so far into the world of 1984 and the lunatics taking over the asylum that the apocalyptic meteor strike will be a blessing.

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## fubar57 (Apr 1, 2019)



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## herman1rg (Apr 1, 2019)

The Basket said:


> A friend advised me that one of his friends was a crazy conspiracy theorist and there was no way of arguing with him.
> 
> But you could out crazy him.
> 
> ...



To which moon are you referring?


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## The Basket (Apr 1, 2019)

herman1rg said:


> To which moon are you referring?


The hologram or the cheese one?


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## Shortround6 (Apr 1, 2019)

My brother, many years ago, worked on a roofing crew with a born again christian who tried to proselytize while 3 stories up. 

He asked my brother if he believed in Christ and my brother replied "no",

He then asked if my brother celebrated Christmas to which my brother replied "yes"

The next question was "how can you celebrate Christmas if you don't believe in Christ?

My brother replied, deadpan and holding a roofing hammer in his hand " I believe in Santa Claus"

End of missionary work.

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## mikewint (Apr 1, 2019)

wuzak said:


> the flat earth hold to many other conspiracy theories


The problem is that using the very term "Conspiracy Theory" evokes an automatic "they're nut-jobs" viewpoint. I suspect that the best way to hide a heinous plot is to announce it as a conspiracy. Would you believe:
Project Sunshine - The US government was stealing parts of dead bodies. Because they needed young tissue, they recruited a worldwide network of agents to find recently deceased babies and children, and then take samples and even limbs - each collected without notification or permission of the more than 1,500 grieving families. 
Prohibition - To enforce the alcohol ban between 1926 and 1933, the federal government pushed manufacturers to use stronger poisons to discourage bootleggers from turning the alcohol into moonshine.
That didn't stop the bootleggers or their customers, and by the end of Prohibition, more than 10,000 Americans had been killed by tainted booze.
Government Mind Control - Only REAL nut-jobs would believe that - Enter MK-ULTRA, and it was real. The CIA started by using volunteers - the novelist Ken Kesey was one notable subject. But the program heads soon began dosing people without their knowledge; MK-ULTRA left many victims permanently mentally disabled.
The Government is spying on us - Another real nut-job one, right - In 2016, government agencies sent 49,868 requests for user data to Facebook, 27,850 to Google, and 9,076 to Apple, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (the EFF), a major nonprofit organisation that defends civil liberties in the digital world and advises the public on matters of internet privacy.
Canada the we welcome everyone country - In the 1960s, the Canadian government hired a university professor to develop a way to detect homosexuality in federal employees. He came up with a machine (called GayDar) that measured pupil dilation in response to same-sex-erotic imagery; the Canadian government used it to exclude or fire more than 400 men from civil service, the military, and the Mounties.
The Illuminati and the NSA work together - I'll let you discover this one for yourself. Type ILLUMINATI *backwards* and add Dot-Com (.com) into your browser and see what happens

Now NONE of this makes any of the Flat Earth theory more believable or true. But pejorative names and evoking conspiracy-nut-jobism to disprove their theories is just as anti-science


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## The Basket (Apr 1, 2019)

A modern airliner is goes about 0.8 Mach flies about 40,000 feet. So no better than a 1950s Boeing 707 or DC-8. So much for progress. 

But some website said that a 1970s jetliner had afterburner, go Mach 2.04, fly 60,000ft, carry 120 passengers and fly the Atlantic!!! 

If that was the case we would be flying Mach 10 and VTOL. These conspiracy websites feeding us garbage like we is chumps.


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## mikewint (Apr 1, 2019)

Ah yes, the conspiracy of the Concorde. Concorde was a French-British turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner that was operated from 1976 until 2003. It had a maximum speed over twice the speed of sound at *Mach 2.04* (1,354 mph or 2,180 km/h at cruise altitude), with seating for *92 to 128 passengers*. *First flown in 1969*, Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued flying for the next 27 years. It is one of only two supersonic transports to have been operated commercially; the other is the Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-144, which operated in service from 1977 to 1978. Concorde had a maximum cruise altitude of 18,300 metres *(60,039 ft). *
The aircraft used reheat (_*afterburners*_) at take-off and to pass through the upper transonic regime and to supersonic speeds, between Mach 0.95 and Mach 1.7. The afterburners were switched off at all other times.


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## The Basket (Apr 1, 2019)

I wanted to use the word reheat but not sure if it is understood internationally so had to use afterburner. 

Concorde was excellent at dispensing chemtrails due to the colder atmospheric temperatures at higher altitudes and its sonic booms were in fact acoustic cannons used to make thunder to control weather. 

It was said that Concorde flew so high you could easily see how flat the Earth was.

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## wuzak (Apr 1, 2019)

mikewint said:


> The problem is that using the very term "Conspiracy Theory" evokes an automatic "they're nut-jobs" viewpoint.



While some conspiracy theories have been shown to be true, most are not.

All I said is that flat earthers, by and large, believe in a number of conspiracy theories. I did not say they are nut jobs, or mean to imply it.

But many are, in fact nut jobs. And many are not. There is a whole range of flat earthers, from nut job to outright fraud (people who promote the theory for money but do not actually believe it).

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## GrauGeist (Apr 1, 2019)

This happens to be one of my all-time favorite "chemtrail" pix.

Of course, I've used it plenty of times in "discussions" with the "spraying" crowd, who insist that contrails never existed before the early 60's.

I'm pretty sure that there were a good many Germans in the mid-1940's who would disagree with that notion...

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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 2, 2019)

wuzak said:


> While some conspiracy theories have been shown to be true, most are not.
> 
> All I said is that flat earthers, by and large, believe in a number of conspiracy theories.* I did not say they are nut jobs, or mean to imply it.*
> 
> But many are, in fact nut jobs. And many are not. There is a whole range of flat earthers, from nut job to outright fraud (people who promote the theory for money but do not actually believe it).



But they are...

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## The Basket (Apr 2, 2019)

If I say that flat earth is scientific fact, then fair play to question the validity of my views.

But if I said flat earth is my religion then don't you dare blasphemous in my presence!

Problem is we live in a world of organised religion and where midi-chlorians decide how strong we are with the force. Fed all kinds of bovine excrement by government and Hollywood by politicians.

And we can't see oxygen but told we need to breathe it to live. Or wireless or Internet signals. So we take a lot of truth on face value. Don't even know how my body works.

So if some woman says she don't believe the round earth view then can you blame her?

It takes 2 people to lie. One to believe it and the other to tell it!


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## mikewint (Apr 2, 2019)

GrauGeist said:


> I'm pretty sure that there were a good many Germans in the mid-1940's


Not any more, they were killed by the toxins being sprayed by those primitive initial "chemtrails"

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## GrauGeist (Apr 2, 2019)

Yeah...instead of "spraying" barium, chromium, cadmium, nickle and other such materials, they bringing an iron rain to the Axis.


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## ODonovan (Apr 4, 2019)

Personally, I think we should gather all the flat Earthers together...










...and push them off the edge. 



-Irish


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## Airframes (Apr 5, 2019)

The Earth can not possibly be flat - I live on a hill !!!

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## rednev (Apr 5, 2019)

Airframes said:


> The Earth can not possibly be flat - I live on a hill !!!


 Cues the beatles ..
the fool on the hill


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## nuuumannn (Apr 5, 2019)

mikewint said:


> The problem is that using the very term "Conspiracy Theory" evokes an automatic "they're nut-jobs" viewpoint. I suspect that the best way to hide a heinous plot is to announce it as a conspiracy. Would you believe:



You know far too much about this stuff, Mike. Should we be worried? 

Watched that Netflix doco on flat earthers, Behind the curve: very intriguing; it delves not into the theories but the types of individuals who subscribe to it. Trailer below:

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## GrauGeist (Apr 6, 2019)

Every morning, when I clean the cat's litter box, I uncover conspiracy theorists by the scoopload.

They are dumped into a plastic bag and carried out to the trash with never a second thought...

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## mikewint (Apr 7, 2019)

nuuumannn said:


> Should we be worried?


YUP!



GrauGeist said:


> with never a second thought...


Dave you and I agree 99% of the time but here we depart. While I surely agree that the vast majority of these plots are pure nonsense, the attitude you advance is the reason some pretty nasty real conspiracies have succeeded or come frighteningly close. Just two more examples:

In 1960, it was discovered that the monkey kidney cells used to make the Salk polio vaccine could cause cancer. Americans were not told about this, and between 1955 and 1963, nearly 100 million children were given this contaminated vaccine. Although the cells were removed from polio vaccines in 1963, scientists around the world continue to identify them in human brain, bone and lung cancers of children and adults.

Approved by the Pentagon chiefs, the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CIA, *Operation Northwoods* was a proposed plan to fabricate acts of terrorism on U.S. soil. If carried out, it would’ve killed innocent citizens to trick the public into supporting a war against Cuba in the early 1960s. The operation even proposed blowing up a U.S. ship and hijacking planes as a false pretext for war. Luckily, John F. Kennedy, who was the President at the time, put a stop to this planned operation.

Want to touch upon the operations of the major cigarette manufactures through the years?

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## The Basket (Apr 7, 2019)

I saw what i thought I saw was like a black panther near Stirling Castle. 

But I couldn't. But I did. Or did I? It was for a very short moment. 

So either there was a black panther. Or I was mistaken and it was something else. Or I am nuts. Or all 3.

I don't go round saying I saw a panther coz I don't wanna be seen as a loony but if there was a large cat roaming the fields the. Surely that's a thing? Maybe conspiracy theories are real and all are genuine but average Joe wants to keep his job and his medical record clean of electric shock therapy so that time he was kidnapped by aliens and winces at the size of the anal probe is kept firmly quiet. 

Have you noticed that most conspiracy people have poor cameras? We now all pretty much have a decent camera and video recorders in our pockets now at all times so ufo and bigfoot photos should be ten a penny but they are not. Odd that.


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## wuzak (Apr 7, 2019)

The Basket said:


> I saw what i thought I saw was like a black panther near Stirling Castle.
> 
> But I couldn't. But I did. Or did I? It was for a very short moment.
> 
> So either there was a black panther. Or I was mistaken and it was something else. Or I am nuts. Or all 3.



If memory serves, there were rumours of a panther, or panthers, prowling a part of Victoria. 

Meanwhile, there have been numerous sightings of the Tasmanian Tiger (thylacine) around Tasmania (as you would expect), South Australia and even Queensland, several thousand miles north.




The Basket said:


> Have you noticed that most conspiracy people have poor cameras? We now all pretty much have a decent camera and video recorders in our pockets now at all times so ufo and bigfoot photos should be ten a penny but they are not. Odd that.



In general, yes, the picture quality is poor.

For flat earther's the camera of choice is/was the Nikon P900. This is mainly because of the great zoom range.

One of the tricks used is to take a video of a boat near the horizon. They would zoom out so the boat is so small, it can be barely be seen, if at all, and declare that it is over the horizon. Then they would use the zoom capabilities of the camera to bring the boat into view and say that it was brought into view "from over the horizon", which would be impossible on a round Earth. Invariably such videos show the horizon to be beyond the boat.

Another trick is to take a video of a planet, such as Venus. Most flat earthers deny the existence of space and other planets, so being able to zoom in and see Venus or Mars is a problem. What they would usually do is to zoom into Venus, but the P900 could not auto focus and did not have a manual focus ring, so the image would not look like a planet, but more like a fuzzy ball of light.


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## michael rauls (Apr 7, 2019)

mikewint said:


> YUP!
> 
> 
> Dave you and I agree 99% of the time but here we depart. While I surely agree that the vast majority of these plots are pure nonsense, the attitude you advance is the reason some pretty nasty real conspiracies have succeeded or come frighteningly close. Just two more examples:
> ...


Yes, that sort of behind-the-scenes oparation, when they eventually become public, and it seems they almost always do make for fertile ground in which for some to sow the seeds of wild conspiracies and coverups and for many to find them believable.


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## The Basket (Apr 8, 2019)

I blame movies and books and TV.
In these fictional worlds they show flawless police or flawless military that always get job done.
Columbo always got his murderer.
The great inexperienced masses don't know this isn't the case.

Oddly these government agencies which are often hotbeds for gross numbskullery are able to achieve great feats of dastardly cunning when our main experience says otherwise.


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## The Basket (Apr 8, 2019)

I saw the object for about 3 seconds. 
It was black. That colour that panthers have. Which is very dark black. Not usually seen. 
It was cat like but it was too big for a domestic tabby. So I thought it was a black labrador or another large dog since was a large animal. But it moved like a cat not a dog. 

This was on the park and ride bus so I wasn't driving and the bus zipped passed too quickly. It was an inclement day and the windows were covered in condensation. When I got to the car park, I quickly drove to the spot with my camera akimbo but saw nothing. 

As Stirling Castle is a major tourist attraction, there were other people about so the idea a large cat was about and I was the only one to see it don't figure. 

So, in the end, I don't know. I didn't tell the local constabulary due to my lack of vision and kinda left with a mystery. I cannot say what I saw but can only describe what I seen. And I could easily be mistaken.


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## GrauGeist (Apr 8, 2019)

In the nearby county, there was a wealthy mine owner who built an expansive home complete with a Victorian zoo.
As was the habit at the turn of the century, exotic animals were part of the collection, including an actual black Panther. While the owner was away, a disaster struck and all the animals escaped and to this day a century later, there are wild Peacocks roaming the woods and once in a while, black Cougars are spotted in the Trinity Alps wilderness area.


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## The Basket (Apr 8, 2019)

I did a search on black cougar videos. 

I was not disappointed.

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## mikewint (Apr 8, 2019)

wuzak said:


> brought into view "from over the horizon", which would be impossible on a round Earth


Not so, "Seeing over the horizon is a common everyday experience.
Light, of any type, visible, UV, Infra-red, Laser, Radar, DOES NOT TRAVEL IN A STRAIGHT LINE.
#1. Photons follow the curvature of spacetime, which is curved by the presence of mass. The greater the mass, the greater the curvature. Stars that are actually behind the sun can be seen during total eclipses.
#2. REFRACTION: Light has different speeds in different transparent substances, always slower than in vacuum. From this differing speed, you can show that a light beam is bent at the boundary between substances with different index of refraction, which is the ratio of how much light slows down in the substance compared to vacuum. Camera lenses, eyeglasses, etc, harness this principle deliberately.

The speed of light in air is close to that in vacuum, but not exactly the same. Put another way, the index of refraction of air is almost 1, but not quite. Furthermore this index of refraction varies with the density of the air. To convince yourself of this, imagine the limiting case where you measure index of refraction of air as the pressure is gradually lowered. When it gets to 0, the index of refraction must be 1 by definition. The index of refraction of air therefore varies smoothly as a function of pressure.

Now think of the air envelope around the earth. Obviously there is a pressure gradient with altitude. When you get high enough, the atmosphere is gone and you have only the vacuum (almost) of space. In this case there isn't a sharp boundary like there is when light enters a glass lens. However, the gradient still bends light, in this case smoothly over some distance, as apposed to abruptly at the air/glass boundary in a lens. This vertical pressure gradient, and therefore index of refraction gradient, causes light to bend a little when shot horizontally thru the atmosphere.

However, there is more to it than this general effect. The atmosphere is not uniform at any one altitude. As you know, there is wind, pockets of hot and cold air, rising thermals, cold downdrafts, and lots of phenomena that are much more significant locally than the general decrease in pressure vertically. The air can have different layers at different temperatures, and the interface between layers can be much more abrupt than the general trend of decreased pressure with altitude.

Shooting a light beam with the right atmospheric conditions can exhibit much more bending than in the general average case. A mirage is a good example of this. Light from the horizon is refracted by the relatively sharp boundary at the top of a thin hot layer of air warmed by the ground. From far enough away to that the light is at a very glancing angle, you "see" sky light reflected off of what looks like the ground. This gives the visual impression of a lake, since a lake would similarly reflect sky light in normal cases even when there are no special atmospheric effects.

In the case of a mirage, light is actually bent upward. Light can just as well be bent downward using similar boundaries of layers in the atmosphere. It depends on the position of the emitter and receiver relative to the index of refraction gradients in the atmosphere which are highly variable and constantly changing.

These horizon phenomenon are difficult to impossible to see on land since land is never flat (neither is the ocean as Sea-Level varies from location to location but it’s considerably flatter). At both sunrise and sunset the refraction phenomena allows the sun to remain (become) visible *after* it is below the horizon. 







A very rare phenomena is the 1 - 2 sec "green" flash seen just before the sun falls below the horizon. The refraction is at its maximum and beginning to separate the sun's light into its component colors as with a rainbow.


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## mikewint (Apr 8, 2019)

The Basket said:


> saw what i thought I saw was like a black panther near Stirling Castle.
> 
> But I couldn't. But I did. Or did I? It was for a very short moment.



OK backup a bit the eyes are not cameras. They (retinas) send electrical signals to the brain where the visual cortex PERCEIVES and INTERPRETS these signals in terms of previous experiences. Ever "seen" something and had no idea what you were looking at and then suddenly you "realized" what you were looking at? Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, which is a more generalized term for *seeing *patterns in random data. Some common examples are *seeing* a likeness of various animals in the clouds or *seeing* the image of a man/rabbit on the surface of the moon. The brain will do its very best to take random bits of data related or not and put them together in a meaningful pattern. You saw bits of shifting light and shadow which your brain "assembled" into a meaninful imade of a panther

Three lines and a circle in actuality but do you "see" a face?

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## special ed (Apr 8, 2019)

Mike,

Do you write textbooks? I'm reasonably sure I understand what you are saying, but I could never explain it to someone else. This is why I don't have a college degree. Keep on with the education, even though it makes my brain hurt.


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## mikewint (Apr 8, 2019)

special ed said:


> I'm reasonably sure I understand what you are saying,


It's really quite simple though knowledge does not alter ones "Perception". I KNOW that it is a mirror reflecting light back at me, BUT, all my life's experiences have taught me (brain) that light travels in a straight line. I cannot see the bouncing of the light beam off the mirror's reflective surface thus I PERCEIVE me standing behind the mirror's surface as far behind the mirror as I am in front of it. We PERCEIVE the world around us and interpret it in terms of past perceptions.
Moving bands of light and shadow in the treeline lit by the flares becomes and entire division of VC attacking my position: APOPHENIA.

Wonder what Ezekel actually saw as he interprets the sight in the only terms he is familiar with:

As I was watching the living creatures, I saw one wheel on the earth beside each of the living creatures with four faces. 16 The wheels and their structure appeared to glow like chrys′o·lite, and the four of them looked alike. Their appearance and structure looked as though a wheel were within a wheel. 17 When they moved, they could go in any of the four directions without turning as they went. 18 Their rims were so high that they inspired awe, and the rims of all four were full of eyes all around. 19 Whenever the living creatures moved, the wheels would move along with them, and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels would also be lifted up. 20 They would go where the spirit inclined them to go, wherever the spirit went. The wheels would be lifted up together with them, for the spirit operating on the living creatures was also in the wheels. 21 When they moved, these would move; and when they stood still, these would stand still; and when they were lifted up from the earth, the wheels would be lifted up together with them, for the spirit operating on the living creatures was also in the wheels.


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## The Basket (Apr 8, 2019)

I have done that before where a small deer was running towards me down a road. 
Such a bizarre happenstance that it took me a few seconds to rearrange the ideas in my head. 
I only doubt what I saw due to logical conclusion which say it wasn't a panther. 

But it was the most panther looking sheep I ever did see.


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## mikewint (Apr 8, 2019)

The Basket said:


> I only doubt what I saw due to logical conclusion which say it wasn't a panther.


And it may very well have been. As I posted earlier knowledge cannot alter perception. Magicians have used the difference for thousands of years.

Humans invariably perceive patterns where none may or may not exist. Success if/when it occurs reinforces such perceptions.


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## The Basket (Apr 8, 2019)

Ask 10 people the same question for 10 different answers. 
Problem with say the JFK assassination is I wasn't there so the only opinions I can have are based on other opinions of people who also weren't there. 
The only thing I know is that it wasn't me. 
I wasn't born and I have never visited Texas. So that rules me out 
Or does it......


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## wuzak (Apr 8, 2019)

mikewint said:


> Not so, "Seeing over the horizon is a common everyday experience.



Not so much that you can see a boat in its entirety that has already disappeared over the horizon.


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## mikewint (Apr 8, 2019)

wuzak said:


> Not so much that you can see a boat in its entirety that has already disappeared over the horizon.



Actually the refracting can under certain circumstances become coupled with total internal reflection making objects beyond the horizon appear to be floating high in the air. It's called:
LOOMING
Is a phenomenon that occurs when very cold air sinks under a layer of warmer air. In the Polar Regions of the Earth the layers of air near the surface of earth are very cold and hence behave as optically denser medium. Whereas, the upper layers of air are comparatively warm and hence behave as optically rarer medium. Now, a ray of light coming from a ship goes from denser to rarer medium thus bending away from the normal, at every layer due to atmospheric refraction. But, at a particular layer, when the angle of incidence becomes greater than the critical angle, the total internal reflection occurs, and the totally reflected ray travels downward reaching the observer below the horizon. As I have already posted we 99.99% of the time experience the light only in straight line path, so the reflected ray appears to be coming from a point high in the sky to the observer. Due to this, the observer sees a virtual and erect image of the ship at a position in the air which is much above the actual position of the ship in the sea.


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## wuzak (Apr 8, 2019)

OK, you got me there.

Visual distortions can make a vessel appear. But neither of them looks to be actually over the horizon, particularly the lower one. 

But if the conditions were stable enough, on a flat earth you would be able to observe the vessel disappear due to its apparent size becoming too small and be able to zoom in with a longer lens to bring the vessel back into view.


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## herman1rg (Apr 9, 2019)



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## mikewint (Apr 9, 2019)

wuzak said:


> But neither of them looks to be actually over the horizon, particularly the lower one.


In actual point of fact they are well over the horizon. Again you have to understand that light can and does follow the curvature of the Earth as the atmosphere refracts the light. HOWEVER all common experiences your entire life have taught your brain that light travels in a straight line, i.e., when you see something in front of you and you reach out, there it is exactly where you saw it. Again think of a mirror, you know absolutely that there is nothing behind the mirror yet your brain is totally convinced that there is something there. When light enters the eye our brain interprets this as coming from straight ahead and is coming from a real object. Think of a movie. There is NOTHING ON THE SCREEN the light rays are coming from behind you and bouncing off the screen YET your brain receiving light rays from straight ahead "sees" a image on the screen in front of you.
Hot, less dense air will refract upwards thus you "see" blue puddles of water on the road ahead of you. Cool dense air refracts downward and when the refracted angle exceeds the critical angle we get total internal reflection (like in an optical cable). You can "see" well beyond the curvature of the Earth but your brain insists that the rays reaching your eyes came from STRAIGHT ahead.
NO ONE "*SEES*" anything we *PERCEIVE* the world.


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## soulezoo (Apr 9, 2019)

An ancient Greek mathematician, Eratosthenes (sp?), who was a dude in Alexandria, was able to prove the earth was round. As I recall, he did an experiment in another city where at noon there was no shadow cast from a stick in the ground. In Alexandria at the same time of day, the stick in the ground always cast a shadow and the difference in the two was about 7 or 8 degrees or so. Anyway, off the top of my head so some of that may be off a little, but you get the gist.


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## KiwiBiggles (Apr 9, 2019)

soulezoo said:


> An ancient Greek mathematician, Eratosthenes (sp?), who was a dude in Alexandria, was able to prove the earth was round. As I recall, he did an experiment in another city where at noon there was no shadow cast from a stick in the ground. In Alexandria at the same time of day, the stick in the ground always cast a shadow and the difference in the two was about 7 or 8 degrees or so. Anyway, off the top of my head so some of that may be off a little, but you get the gist.


Not quite. Eratosthenes assumed the earth was round, and so calculated its diameter. The shadow difference showed that the sun appeared at a different angle at the two cities. A flat earth and a nearby sun would give the same effect.


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## special ed (Apr 9, 2019)

Curses! Foiled again.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 9, 2019)

Mike, I have to ask again, do you actually believe the earth could be flat?

If so, I think the chemtrail exposure has been too much for you.


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## special ed (Apr 9, 2019)

I don't see how it could be flat. In basic training the runs were always up hill.

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## wuzak (Apr 9, 2019)

KiwiBiggles said:


> Not quite. Eratosthenes assumed the earth was round, and so calculated its diameter. The shadow difference showed that the sun appeared at a different angle at the two cities. A flat earth and a nearby sun would give the same effect.



But if a person in a third location did the same experiment, it would how the earth to be round.


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## wuzak (Apr 9, 2019)

mikewint said:


> In actual point of fact they are well over the horizon. Again you have to understand that light can and does follow the curvature of the Earth as the atmosphere refracts the light. HOWEVER all common experiences your entire life have taught your brain that light travels in a straight line, i.e., when you see something in front of you and you reach out, there it is exactly where you saw it. Again think of a mirror, you know absolutely that there is nothing behind the mirror yet your brain is totally convinced that there is something there. When light enters the eye our brain interprets this as coming from straight ahead and is coming from a real object. Think of a movie. There is NOTHING ON THE SCREEN the light rays are coming from behind you and bouncing off the screen YET your brain receiving light rays from straight ahead "sees" a image on the screen in front of you.
> Hot, less dense air will refract upwards thus you "see" blue puddles of water on the road ahead of you. Cool dense air refracts downward and when the refracted angle exceeds the critical angle we get total internal refraction (like in an optical cable). You can "see" well beyond the curvature of the Earth but your brain insists that the rays reaching your eyes came from STRAIGHT ahead.
> NO ONE "*SEES*" anything we *PERCEIVE* the world.
> 
> View attachment 534714



Whatever.

Optical effects can only allow you to see so far, as there are limits to how much refraction there is.

Very large objects, like mountains, can obviously be seen much farther than a boat on the water.

You could argue that on a flat earth there would be less refraction effects, because you would not be looking through layers of the atmosphere. This would allow you to see much further, assuming you had a big enough lens/telescope to zoom into the object.


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## KiwiBiggles (Apr 9, 2019)

wuzak said:


> But if a person in a third location did the same experiment, it would how the earth to be round.


No, again, a flat earth and a nearby Sun would give the same effect. It's only if you assume a very distant light source (i.e. the Sun) that a curved surface becomes necessary. If you were to start instead from the assumption that the earth is flat, then the same experimental result, instead of yielding an Earth of radius 6400 km, you give a solar distance of 6400 km.

The point is, that Eratosthenes' experiment let him determine that distance; it wasn't a proof that the Earth is round. The _a priori_ assumption that the Earth is round and the Sun is very distant let him calculate the size of the Earth. Leaving aside the validity of assuming the Earth is flat, if instead he had taken a flat Earth as his _a priori_, then nothing in his experimental result invalidated that assumption.

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## mikewint (Apr 9, 2019)

wuzak said:


> Whatever.
> 
> Optical effects can only allow you to see so far, as there are limits to how much refraction there is.
> 
> ...



Flat or round makes no difference, the refracted ray travels within the layer of air next to the surface

Air is not a perfectly transparent medium being composed of molecules, atoms, and dust. As to refraction again it depends on the medium doing the refracting, with air refraction the temperature and air quality define the limits. 
In ultra pure fiber optic cables which utilize total internal reflection the Guinness World record book gives the longest un-regenerated terrestrial fiber optic link is 10,358.16 km (6,436.26 mi) and was achieved by Telstra Corporation (Australia) with their link between Perth and Melbourne, Australia, as verified on 13 February 2015. The signal was successfully transmitted the entire distance between Melbourne and Perth and back again without any regeneration.
Back to air, looking at lines-of-sight a number of factors come into play: For a 6 foot tall person the horizon is about three miles away sans refraction. From the top of Mt. Everest in cold clear air, one can see mountains that are 211 miles (340 Km) distant. Now consider observer height, target height, temperature, air quality, refraction, and nothing to block your sightline. We have the sightline from Mt Dankova in Kyrgyzstan to Hindu Tagh in China a distance of 334 miles (538 km) This is theoretical as no photographs exist but the longest photographed sightline is from Pic de Finestrelles in Spain to Pic de Gaspard in the French Alps a distance of 275 miles (443 km)

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## wuzak (Apr 9, 2019)

KiwiBiggles said:


> No, again, a flat earth and a nearby Sun would give the same effect. It's only if you assume a very distant light source (i.e. the Sun) that a curved surface becomes necessary. If you were to start instead from the assumption that the earth is flat, then the same experimental result, instead of yielding an Earth of radius 6400 km, you give a solar distance of 6400 km.



Two observations could work on a flat earth, from which the altitude of the sun could be calculated.

With a third observation, from a different latitude, the sun's altitude would not match that calculated from the first two points.

Here the experiment was done with people all around the world by a YouTube channel.
 

"These are the results of a group project which took place during the September Equinox 2017. 23 participants in 9 different countries conducted a simple scientific experiment similar to that of Eratosthenes over 2000 years ago. The test is simple. Using the Latitude of each participant (as Longitude will be either 180° or 0°) The sun's elevation angle was measured during Solar Noon. These angles were then placed across both a Flat Plane and a Sphere to see which model the angles correspond to. "

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## wuzak (Apr 9, 2019)

mikewint said:


> Flat or round makes no difference, the refracted ray travels within the layer of air next to the surface



Refraction depends on a change in the density of the medium, so if you are looking flat and level through air that is of consistent density you won't observe refraction.




mikewint said:


> Air is not a perfectly transparent medium being composed of molecules, atoms, and dust. As to refraction again it depends on the medium doing the refracting, with air refraction the temperature and air quality define the limits.



Refraction occurs when the medium changes density. In air there is a gradient from the surface which cause teh refraction. If the air is consistent, there is no refraction.




mikewint said:


> In ultra pure fiber optic cables which utilize total internal *refraction* *REFLECTION* the Guinness World record book gives the longest un-regenerated terrestrial fiber optic link is 10,358.16 km (6,436.26 mi) and was achieved by Telstra Corporation (Australia) with their link between Perth and Melbourne, Australia, as verified on 13 February 2015. The signal was successfully transmitted the entire distance between Melbourne and Perth and back again without any regeneration.



Fibre optic cables are of consistent density, and so there is no internal refraction. Fibre Optics work by reflecting off the walls of the cable.

*Refraction*
the fact or phenomenon of light, radio waves, etc. being deflected in passing obliquely through the interface between one medium and another or through a medium of varying density.




mikewint said:


> Back to air, looking at lines-of-sight a number of factors come into play: For a 6 foot tall person the horizon is about three miles away sans refraction. From the top of Mt. Everest in cold clear air, one can see mountains that are 211 miles (340 Km) distant. Now consider observer height, target height, temperature, air quality, refraction, and nothing to block your sightline. We have the sightline from Mt Dankova in Kyrgyzstan to Hindu Tagh in China a distance of 334 miles (538 km) This is theoretical as no photographs exist but the longest photographed sightline is from Pic de Finestrelles in Spain to Pic de Gaspard in the French Alps a distance of 275 miles (443 km)



Mountains can be seen farther away because they are big.

Observing a long distance from Mt. Everest is very much helped by being 8km above MSL, and that the unrefracted line of site is much farther.

Same with those other observations.

The longest photographed sightline was done at a time with rare atmospheric conditions. The vast majority of the time you would not be able to see that far. On a flat earth that observation would surely be more common.


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## KiwiBiggles (Apr 9, 2019)

wuzak said:


> Two observations could work on a flat earth, from which the altitude of the sun could be calculated.
> 
> With a third observation, from a different latitude, the sun's altitude would not match that calculated from the first two points.


Only if the subtended angle (either to the centre of the Earth, or to the Sun for a flat Earth) is large. For 'small' angles, where a = sin(a) = tan(a) more or less, and for a shadow size much smaller than the result, the result would be the same. From memory, the subtended angle in the Eratosthenes calculation was 7 degrees, which definitely counts as small (0.122 radians, sin(7)=0.122, tan(7)=0.123), and the stick used to create the shadow was much smaller than the radius of the Earth.


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## wuzak (Apr 10, 2019)

Yes, 1/50 of a full circle = 7.2°, from the vertical.

So, if the three test sites were close together they may match, within a margin of error. But if the sites are farther apart, they won't. 

Small separations in the test sites make for larger errors.

I post this video again, just in case you missed it earlier, to show the experiment done with multiple people in the Northern Hemisphere and a couple in the Southern Hemisphere.


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## mikewint (Apr 10, 2019)

wuzak said:


> Refraction depends on a change in the density of the medium, so if you are looking flat and level through air that is of consistent density you won't observe refraction.


Indeed, but read my statement again. As the ray travels upward the air is changing density and temperature so it is continually bent toward the Earth. Perhaps I should have said "LAYER*S*"



wuzak said:


> Refraction occurs when the medium changes density. In air there is a gradient from the surface which cause teh refraction. If the air is consistent, there is no refraction.


Indeed, again re-read my statement I said *temperature* cold air is denser than warm hence the density increases. By air quality I was referring to particulate matter which would tend to block light rays. However even perfectly pure air is not totally transparent as molecules and atoms are still present



wuzak said:


> Fibre Optics work by reflecting off the walls of the cable.


You are totally correct here I did indeed use an incorrect term. As the incoming ray's Angle of Incidence changes it approaches and eventually equals the Critical Angle for that material. With the incoming ray *AT *the Critical Angle the ray is REFRACTED at 90 degrees to the Normal. Exceeding the Critical Angle causes the ray to re-enter the medium and the terminology changes to the Ray being REFLECTED rather than refracted.
Returning to my statement on LOOMING I also made the same terminology error terming it Total Internal *REFRACTION* when once again I should have termed it *REFLECTION*. The rest of my statement is correct. The actual ship is well over the curve of the Earth but rays from the ship traveling upward from cold dense air to warmer, higher, less dense air are initially refracted until the refraction exceeds the Critical Angle at which point the ray is Totally Internally REFLECTED within that layer. The air layer is acting like a fiber optic cable



wuzak said:


> Mountains can be seen farther away because they are big.


Very true BUT the curve of the earth hides more and more of the mountain as distance increases. Pic Finestrelles is 2820 m and Pic Gaspard is 3883 m.
From a height of 2820 m the horizon is 190 km distant and from 3883 m the horizon is 223 km. 190 km + 223 km = 413 km. Now recall that the two peaks are 443 km distant from each other. Continuing Pic Finestrelles UN-REFRACTED line of sight over the Earth bulge puts the line 5.04 km above the ground at 443 km. BOTH calculations show that WITHOUT REFRACTION Pic Gaspard would NOT be visable from Pic Finestrelles.
The photographer himself stated: 
To his left, other peaks of the Alps also were to be seen. *Refractive favorable circumstances allowed to view some other peaks, even that more distant than the Barre des Ecrins*. Pic Gaspard, 443 Km, is what has given us this time the brand new a new world record distance of photograph landscapes of our planet.

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## mikewint (Apr 10, 2019)

KiwiBiggles said:


> From memory, the subtended angle in the Eratosthenes calculation was 7 degrees,



Actually a bit more 7.2 degrees. Using JUST the two measurements: D / H = tan(7.2) H = D / tan(7.2) H = 5000 stadia (800 km) / 0.126 H = 6330 km to the sun.

Eratosthenes measurement did NOT prove the roundness of the Earth. He made two assumptions, i.e. That the Earth was ROUND and That the sun was at a large distance so all incomming rays were parallel to each other


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## fubar57 (Apr 10, 2019)

Gotta watch your "Copy/Paste" Mike. People will think its you making the errors

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## mikewint (Apr 10, 2019)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> If so, I think the chemtrail exposure has been too much for you.



Chris, indeed it has, with you in Louis Anna and me here in Ark you keep flying over the house with your chemtrail spray. I've installed vinegar patio sprayers and they have helped but....

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## wuzak (Apr 10, 2019)

mikewint said:


> Actually a bit more 7.2 degrees. Using JUST the two measurements: D / H = tan(7.2) H = D / tan(7.2) H = 5000 stadia (800 km) / 0.126 H = 6330 km to the sun.
> 
> Eratosthenes measurement did NOT prove the roundness of the Earth. He made two assumptions, i.e. That the Earth was ROUND and That the sun was at a large distance so all incomming rays were parallel to each other



No, Eratosthenes did not try to prove the Earth was round, that theory had already been accepted by scholars in Greece at that time.

He set out to measure the circumference of the Earth.


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## mikewint (Apr 10, 2019)

It was only a circumference IF the Earth was indeed round as he ASSUMED. It could juat as easily been a diameter he determined.


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## wuzak (Apr 10, 2019)

mikewint said:


> It was only a circumference IF the Earth was indeed round as he ASSUMED. It could juat as easily been a diameter he determined.



No, he was trying to measure the circumference.

It is possible that he measured the circumference of a flat earth, but only if that circumference was in the plane of Alexandria and Syene.


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## mikewint (Apr 11, 2019)

wuzak said:


> It is possible that he measured the circumference of a flat earth,



Nope on a flat Earth it would have been a diameter. To *measure* a* circumference* he would have had to travel around the edge.
Eratosthenes had simply assumed that the earth was a sphere in his experiment, based on the work of Aristotle. He could just as easily been measuring the *diameter *of a flat earth, which is a figure identical to the circumference of the round earth

.Syene and Alexandria are two North-South points with a distance of 500 nautical miles. Eratosthenes discovered through the shadow experiment that while the sun was exactly overhead of one city, it was 7°12' south of zenith at the other city.





7°12' makes a sweep of 1/25th of the FE's total longitude from 90°N to 90°S (radius).

Therefore we can take the distance of 500 nautical miles, multiply by 25, and find that the radius of the flat earth is about 12,250 nautical miles. Doubling that figure for the diameter we get a figure of 25,000 miles.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 11, 2019)

Good thing the earth is 100% not flat. We don’t have to worry about it.

[/thread]

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## mikewint (Apr 11, 2019)

Exactly Chris, hills, valleys, mountains, etc. comprise the disk


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 11, 2019)

mikewint said:


> Exactly Chris, hills, valleys, mountains, etc. comprise the disk

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## ODonovan (Apr 11, 2019)

-Irish

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## MiTasol (Apr 12, 2019)

stona said:


> Not really. What has he shown? He's shown that the aircraft was in level flight and nothing else. His basic premise, that the aircraft _"should be constantly dipping its nose forward, to compensate for the curvature [of the earth]"_ is incorrect and simply demonstrates his ignorance of how aircraft fly. An aircraft does not have to lower its nose to lose altitude. He himself would probably have noticed, if he had bothered to look at his spirit level, that as the aircraft came into land, whilst descending, the the nose of the aircraft was raised, but this did not cause it to zoom off into the upper atmosphere .
> He's a f*cking idiot.
> Cheers
> Steve



All he has proved is that in cruise the aircraft remains at the same angle to a vertical line from the centre of the earth.

PS - he is not a f*cking idiot - many of them are smarter. And he is not a complete idiot because he is missing too many brain cells.
If you go to thisistrue.com they call his sort an obliviot - from *obliv*ious id*iot*


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## pbehn (Apr 12, 2019)

How does a 25,000 mile diameter disc actually have the surface area of an 8,000 mile diameter sphere?


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## wuzak (Apr 12, 2019)

Since Eratosthenes didn’t know angles or latitude, he could not have known that the centre of the flat earth was 90 degrees north and the outer edge was at 90 south.

You’re right that he assumed a round earth, since it was well established by then


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## pbehn (Apr 12, 2019)

wuzak said:


> Since Eratosthenes didn’t know angles or latitude, he could not have known that the centre of the flat earth was 90 degrees north and the outer edge was at 90 south.
> 
> You’re right that he assumed a round earth, since it was well established by then


As far as I know, any group of people who thought about it thought the earth was round, especially people who lived near the sea or a large body of water. The only ones I have heard of that considered it flat were in ancient central China, where it isn't obvious that it is a sphere or at least a dome.


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## wuzak (Apr 12, 2019)

MiTasol said:


> All he has proved is that in cruise the aircraft remains at the same angle to a vertical line from the centre of the earth.
> 
> PS - he is not a f*cking idiot - many of them are smarter. And he is not a complete idiot because he is missing too many brain cells.
> If you go to thisistrue.com they call his sort an obliviot - from *obliv*ious id*iot*



If he isn’t a complete idiot, then he must be a fraud, since he receives money through YouTube and probably gets donations on his live shows and through methods such as patreon.

Btw, there is video of a co-pilot pouring a wine as the pilot executes a roll.

A flat earth debunker called Wolfie6020 did a similar experiment with a level and some portable instruments, showing that the level was unmoved by some manoeuvres


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## swampyankee (Apr 12, 2019)

wuzak said:


> If he isn’t a complete idiot, then he must be a fraud, since he receives money through YouTube and probably gets donations on his live shows and through methods such as patreon.
> 
> Btw, there is video of a co-pilot pouring a wine as the pilot executes a roll.
> 
> A flat earth debunker called Wolfie6020 did a similar experiment with a level and some portable instruments, showing that the level was unmoved by some manoeuvres




It's iced tea or lemonade. The pilot is Bob Hoover. See 

They didn't come better.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 12, 2019)

I cannot believe a thread over such an stupid thing has gone on for 22 pages...

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## special ed (Apr 12, 2019)

How about UFO's then?


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 12, 2019)

special ed said:


> How about UFO's then?



At least that has a much more likely chance of being true and real than the earth being flat its moronic followers.


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## Marcel (Apr 12, 2019)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I cannot believe a thread over such an stupid thing has gone on for 22 pages...


They are trying to beat the “colour of a model I’m building”

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## herman1rg (Apr 12, 2019)

Marcel said:


> They are trying to beat the “colour of a model I’m building”


Impossible, that thread will never die.


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## Marcel (Apr 12, 2019)

herman1rg said:


> Impossible, that thread will never die.


Hasn’t had a reply for half a year.


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## herman1rg (Apr 12, 2019)

Marcel said:


> Hasn’t had a reply for half a year.


In the timescale of that thread six months is a short period.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Apr 12, 2019)

Marcel said:


> They are trying to beat the “colour of a model I’m building”



It just amazes me that this type of thing can even believed with what science has taught us. I think it says a lot about our education system. I think people need to believe more in science books than other things.


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## Marcel (Apr 12, 2019)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> It just amazes me that this type of thing can even believed with what science has taught us. I think it says a lot about our education system. I think people need to believe more in science books than other things.


I think some people are just bored with the facts. They just try to enhance reality with their own facts.


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## special ed (Apr 12, 2019)

Some of the replies are tongue in cheek. Others are merely an academic exercise. Anyone who really believes the Earth is flat had already sent all his money to Nigeria for his lottery winnings and won't be of any consequence.

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## stona (Apr 13, 2019)

I think that the promotion of flat earth, creationism, anti-vaxxers, etc. in the echo chamber of the internet is potentially quite sinister and represents an increasing anti-science movement within 'western' societies.

Many of these people are fools or foolish, but there is a core promoting a dangerous agenda.

In the face of increasing measles outbreaks the Italians are the first to ban unvaccinated pre-school children from school. Older children cannot be banned, but their parents can be fined. Cases of measles in the EU tripled in the 2017-18 period and there were 114 fatalities in those two years. I bet those parents wish that they'd vaccinated the children they effectively killed.
In 1967, the year before the measles vaccine was introduced in the UK, there were over 460,000 cases and 99 deaths. Since 2006 there have been just two deaths from measles.

Cheers

Steve

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## fubar57 (Apr 21, 2019)



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## The Basket (Apr 22, 2019)

I have come to hate social media with a long burning loathing over the years.

It is a pernicious, vapid nest of vipers which I believe is more harmful than beneficial.
The big tech companies sow the seeds and allow the poor individuals reap the whirlwind.

Without responsibility and even when caught they don’t care.

They have no accountability or recourse. An example is a marriage situation has arisen where the husband can trash talk about his wife and Facebook go ‘not my problem, Guv’ even though he is using their platform to twist his lies.

And now? Madness! Madness and stupidity.

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## herman1rg (May 10, 2019)

Can you get Flat Bacon? Just wondering...................................


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## special ed (May 10, 2019)

They do it in the diner by sitting something heavy on it while cooking. Regular curly is better.


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## Zipper730 (May 10, 2019)

It's kind of interesting when you think about it

The Sun is spherical
The Moon is spherical
All the other planets are spherical
And yet we are this giant frisbee spinnin' through the cosmos


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## fubar57 (May 10, 2019)



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## Zipper730 (May 22, 2019)

fubar57 said:


> View attachment 537659​


Yeah pretty much -- except no hole!


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## Capt. Vick (May 23, 2019)

Watch "Behind the curve", hilarious!


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## bobbychipping (May 24, 2019)

parsifal said:


> A friend at work sent me this link
> 
> 
> http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space/the-flat-earth-theory-has-seen-a-resurgence-with-people-trying-to-prove-our-planet-is-not-a-sphere/news-story/0bd1226fbe2e2bc819ec12733591e8c9
> ...


I got news for them guys, it actually an upside down PYRAMID

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## fubar57 (Dec 9, 2020)



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## Lucky13 (Dec 9, 2020)

Not to mention....


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## MiTasol (Dec 10, 2020)

The earth is definitely flat if "a gracious loser" did not win a certain race


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## fubar57 (Dec 10, 2020)

Jan....you've got it all wrong about lunar eclipses. This was the last one as photographed by Flat Earthers.....

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## Gnomey (Dec 10, 2020)




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## herman1rg (Dec 10, 2020)

I was involved with a Flat Earth Society zoom meeting recently.


When I asked whether this COVID Pandemic had sent them over the edge I was banned!!

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## MiTasol (Dec 10, 2020)

fubar57 said:


> Jan....you've got it all wrong about lunar eclipses. This was the last one as photographed by Flat Earthers.....
> 
> View attachment 604524​



Yea - a Pratchett reader

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