The Flat Earth society

[michael rauls]

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:

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?

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.

 

[The Basket]

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.

 

[The Basket]

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.

 

[GrauGeist]

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.

 

[The Basket]

I did a search on black cougar videos.

I was not disappointed.

 

[mikewint]

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.

 

[mikewint]

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?

 

[special ed]

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.

 

[mikewint]

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.

 

[The Basket]

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.

 

[mikewint]

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.

 

[The Basket]

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......

 

[wuzak]

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.

 

[mikewint]

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.

 

[wuzak]

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.

 

[herman1rg]

 

[mikewint]

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.

 

[soulezoo]

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.

 

[KiwiBiggles]

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.

 

[special ed]

Curses! Foiled again.