the myth of flat earth debunked again

AG_BIC96 said:

Oh I see Estrid is here care to out yourself as one of these despicable skeptics?

Click to expand...

There's a Christians Only section of this board. Go there. Stay there. And, learn to punctuate.

Phil G said:

I also want to hear any FE believers address the equatorial mount. I've yet to see anything which can be regarded as clear & rational explaining how it could work on a flat earth.

Click to expand...

Or they can address how a sextant works on a flat earth.

Tinker Grey said:

There's a Christians Only section of this board. Go there. Stay there. And, learn to punctuate.

Click to expand...

Further replies will get this closed like what
happened to my " disprove evolution" thread.

sjastro said:

Or they can address how a sextant works on a flat earth.

Click to expand...

We can only hope! There’s a bit of a rant going on. Maybe soon……

essentialsaltes said:

But someone who starts to learn how to critically examine a claim may use those tools may start to apply these new better thinking habits in other areas of life. Ones where it really may have a damaging effect on society or themselves. And those watching in the wings can also start to make analogies. "Gee, these flat earth supporters seem to be really big on not answering questions and telling people to watch videos. That reminds me of the politics thread on the Biden Family Crimes. Nobody seems to be able to answer the question of what crime Joe Biden committed, but they keep telling us to watch a video of 3 hours of Congressional testimony."


Nope. Does he post here?

Click to expand...

Better example would be anti vaxxers. They do cause real harm.

prodromos said:

I beg your pardon. Where did I provoke you?
You do realise I am a Christian, don't you?

Click to expand...

I tried responding kindly at first and they continued to provoke and pick and pick. And I don't think that necessary on this platform there was no need for that.

AG_BIC96 said:

You do realize some of these people were very rude and terrible to me in one of my first posts. To the extent that they deliberately conspired to having it taken down. I'm fed up and I can't stand it anymore. If I'm a jerk for that then I guess I'll be a jerk but it was hurtful and uncalled for. It never should have occurred in the first place.

Click to expand...

If you feel that people have broken the forum rules, it's best just to report their posts and move on. If some get on your nerves too much, you can add them to your ignore list. If the thread gets excessively out of hand and off topic, as it's doing here, the moderators will inevitably swoop in and shut the thread down.

Yttrium said:

If you feel that people have broken the forum rules, it's best just to report their posts and move on. If some get on your nerves too much, you can add them to your ignore list. If the thread gets excessively out of hand and off topic, as it's doing here, the moderators will inevitably swoop in and shut the thread down.

Click to expand...

I understand and that’s valid. I held my anger in for very long and retaliated as a result nothing against a couple of the people here but to the ones who behaved out of line the first time around well this is what the result of pushing people to their limits looks like. I hope they are satisfied. I’m also aware I’m probably going to get banned from CF but either way it was worth it to address this behavior and how it can affect people whether it be their perception of others or emotional state etc. So apologies to the innocent bystanders but a few people had it coming to them.

AG_BIC96 said:

I understand and that’s valid. I held my anger in for very long and retaliated as a result nothing against a couple of the people here but to the ones who behaved out of line the first time around well this is what the result of pushing people to their limits looks like. I hope they are satisfied. I’m also aware I’m probably going to get banned from CF but either way it was worth it to address this behavior and how it can affect people whether it be their perception of others or emotional state etc. So apologies to the innocent bystanders but a few people had it coming to them.

Click to expand...

Please stop derailing this thread. I’m beginning to think you may be a troll

Phil G said:

Please stop derailing this thread. I’m beginning to think you may be a troll

Click to expand...

In an effort to bring the thread back on topic, would you comment on which of the arguments from FE believers you have found the best? Now clearly there are not really any good ones (that I can think of), but there must be one that hangs together better than most, that has a sort of logic to it. Any thoughts?

Ophiolite said:

In an effort to bring the thread back on topic, would you comment on which of the arguments from FE believers you have found the best? Now clearly there are not really any good ones (that I can think of), but there must be one that hangs together better than most, that has a sort of logic to it. Any thoughts?

Click to expand...

I haven’t found any which stand up to scrutiny. Usually the best attempts come from controversial Bible verse interpretations, but again these aren’t convincing when studied. What gets to me is the evasiveness when confronted with evidence such as the equatorial mount. Its design could not work on a flat earth. I’m waiting to see if anyone attempts an answer.

Phil G said:

I haven’t found any which stand up to scrutiny. Usually the best attempts come from controversial Bible verse interpretations, but again these aren’t convincing when studied. What gets to me is the evasiveness when confronted with evidence such as the equatorial mount. Its design could not work on a flat earth. I’m waiting to see if anyone attempts an answer.

Click to expand...

Well, who says that those equatorial mounts even exist? Those lyin' astronomers, that's who. Pretty easy to predict the flat Earther answer on that one. They haven't seen an equatorial mount, so it doesn't exist.

AG_BIC96 said:

To any Athiest and skeptics do you really want to be associated as being a group of hateful trolls. Why not be less rude and mean in your interactions in order to give a better reputation to the community? Would that not be a better way of spreading the word and trying to enlighten others?

Click to expand...

What "word" do we need to spread? The only thing to being an atheist is to not believe in any of your gods? I came here to discuss pseudoscience and the flat earth is about as pseudo as anything claiming to be science can be.

Yttrium said:

Well, who says that those equatorial mounts even exist? Those lyin' astronomers, that's who. Pretty easy to predict the flat Earther answer on that one. They haven't seen an equatorial mount, so it doesn't exist.

Click to expand...

And equatorial mounts don't exist because you can only get an equator on a spherical Earth! It's all so obvious when you don't think about it.

To get this thread back on topic, in another flat earth thread the subject of a planes flying over a flat earth was raised which led to the issue of gravity.
Cruising planes in the earth's gravitational field are subject to gravitational acceleration which depends not only on the earth's mass but on its shape as well.
For a spherical earth the strength of the gravitational field defined by the acceleration 'a' which is in a radial downward direction is given by the equation (1):


where:

G is the gravitational constant (6.67430×10⁻¹¹ N⋅m²/kg²)
M is the mass of the Earth (5.972×10²⁴ kg)
R is the mean radius of the Earth (6.371×10⁶ m)
h is the altitude above the Earth's surface.

At a 10,000 m cruising altitude;

a = 9.75 m/s².

For a flat earth gravity does strange things, it is only at the centre of a flat earth the gravitational field accelerates objects vertically downwards.
Since flat earthers are not terribly helpful on the physical shape of the flat earth such as its thickness, we mathematicians have had to make some assumptions.

(1) The flat earth is in the shape of a disk of radius R and has an infinitesimally small thickness.
(2) The mass of the earth is uniformly distributed throughout the disk.
(3) The disk sits in the x-y plane and the aircraft on the z axis which passes through the centre of the disk, in other words it is directly above the flat earth’s centre at a vertical distance or height z.

The acceleration equation (2) is:


The acceleration for the aircraft at 10,000 metres is found to be;

a = 19.6 m/s² nowhere near the value of 9.75 m/s².

Things get worse if that was possible when the aircraft is off-axis where the equation becomes horrendously more complicated and requires the use of elliptic functions.

As one moves away from the centre, there is a horizontal component of acceleration which becomes stronger as the vertical component weakens.
At the edge acceleration is a purely horizontal with zero acceleration in the vertical component.

The strength of the gravitational field can be measured with gravimeters.

Sticking gravimeters on aircraft is not terribly feasible as even at cruising altitudes sudden acceleration can give erroneous results, a much more stable platform is measuring the acceleration on mountains at different altitudes taking into consideration local density differences.
The altitude vs acceleration profile measurements follows equation (1) not equation (2) indicating the earth has a spherical shape.

sjastro said:

(1) The flat earth is in the shape of a disk of radius R and has an infinitesimally small thickness.

Click to expand...

Is there no geometry of a disk whose thickness varies radially, or perhaps in more complex ways, that would produce comparable gravimeter results?

Yttrium said:

Well, who says that those equatorial mounts even exist? Those lyin' astronomers, that's who. Pretty easy to predict the flat Earther answer on that one. They haven't seen an equatorial mount, so it doesn't exist.

Click to expand...

That's their usual last back-against-the-wall answer alright. However this would have to include hobbyist astronomers too, of which there are many in numerous towns/cities around the world. They'd be very surprised to learn that the cherished equipment they use any chance they get doesn't actually exist!

Phil G said:

That's their usual last back-against-the-wall answer alright. However this would have to include hobbyist astronomers too, of which there are many in numerous towns/cities around the world. They'd be very surprised to learn that the cherished equipment they use any chance they get doesn't actually exist!

Click to expand...

We need to set up a charity to provide counsellling for them. Or at least the FE enthusiasts do. It's their fault these amateur stargazers are on the brink of emotional collapse.

Ophiolite said:

Is there no geometry of a disk whose thickness varies radially, or perhaps in more complex ways, that would produce comparable gravimeter results?

Click to expand...

No.
In the thread Facts To Prove The Theory Of Evolution, I highlighted various theorems which are used in physics.
One theorem is the Shell theorem - Wikipedia which also states if there is an spherical distribution of mass such as the earth, the gravitational force exerted on an object outside the spherical distribution follows a simple inverse square law.

Deviations from this symmetry produce different force laws and the gravitational force exerted by a flat disk on an object will result in acceleration readings which differ to that exerted by a spherical object.

Ophiolite said:

We need to set up a charity to provide counsellling for them. Or at least the FE enthusiasts do. It's their fault these amateur stargazers are on the brink of emotional collapse.

Click to expand...

I know from first hand experience emotional collapse is due to sleep deprivation.