Flat Earth? Not Far From The Truth.

Inkfingers

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So ... how is the common human experience of sunrise/sunset accounted for on a flat earth ?

Usually people thought that it went down into the underworld before arising again in the east. Imagery we are all familiar with...albeit in a different manner. :sorry:
 
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prodromos

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Stars can orbit a flat earth just as easily as sun and moon can
Except the stars rotate anticlockwise around the north celestial pole and clockwise around the south celestial pole, an impossibility on a flat earth.
 
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Ophiolite

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Except the stars rotate anticlockwise around the north celestial pole and clockwise around the south celestial pole, an impossibility on a flat earth.
Mirrors. It's all done with mirrors.

And prisms. Giant prisms. Suspended from the mirrors.

And rabbits. Angora rabbits.

Also, mass hypnosis and flouride in the drinking water.

. . . . .

Actually, I'm not sure about the rabbits.
 
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Inkfingers

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Except the stars rotate anticlockwise around the north celestial pole and clockwise around the south celestial pole, an impossibility on a flat earth.

The vast majority of people throughout the history of the earth would never know that.

Hence my point...
 
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prodromos

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The vast majority of people throughout the history of the earth would never know that.

Hence my point...
Given how the night sky would have been incredibly clear without all the light pollution we have today, I suspect many people would have been a lot more aware than you think.
 
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Radagast

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Given how the night sky would have been incredibly clear without all the light pollution we have today, I suspect many people would have been a lot more aware than you think.

Exactly. And you can still get pretty close to that by heading for remote parts of Australia.

If you take a good look at the sky, especially if you do a little bit of north-south travelling, the natural thing is to perceive the stars as a hollow sphere, spinning around the earth, which is also spherical. That was the view from around 500 BC.
 
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Inkfingers

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Given how the night sky would have been incredibly clear without all the light pollution we have today, I suspect many people would have been a lot more aware than you think.

The would have no knowlege of the opposite hemisphere.
 
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essentialsaltes

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Deception.

So how do you test to ensure that you are not deceived?

You don't even need to test necessarily. You can just reflect on your experience of the world. Have you flown in a plane? Driven fast in a car? What did you notice about the motion as you sat comfortably in your seat?

But, but, but...

I'm down on earth, I look up, I see plane moving at 500 miles/hour. I can tell it's moving.

I'm up in airplane. I look down, I see earth moving at 500 miles/hour net speed. I can't tell it's moving.

Certainly something is moving. You look down and see a big emerald square of farmland, and when you look out the window a few minutes later, it's not where your eyes left it. Maybe it's no longer in sight. It moved away from you, while you just sat there!

Oh, haha, maybe it's you that moved and not the earth. But how do you know you're moving? If the plane flight was at perfectly constant velocity, how would you know? The flight attendants walk up and down aisles like normal, pour coffee like normal. The cloud of steam rising above the coffee holds together, just as though it were not moving at hundreds of miles an hour. But it is! Or is it? How would you know?

There is no test you can perform in such an airplane cabin moving at constant velocity that would tell you whether you are moving at constant velocity or at rest.

This inability to test is general. It applies to cars, boats, trucks, trains, and armchairs by your fireplace. If you're moving at constant velocity, there is no test you could perform to distinguish that state from being at rest. It's almost a cliche about the effect of being on a train and thinking the train next to you is moving, but it was really your train that was moving (or vice versa).

Fortunately of course, we who live on the surface of the earth are not moving with constant velocity. We are moving in more or less constant circular motion as the earth rotates. So we can make a test. We can build a Foucault pendulum and determine that we are neither at rest, nor moving at constant velocity. We are accelerating (very slightly) due to our uniform circular motion every 24 hours. If the earth is still, there is no explanation for the rotation of the plane of motion of a Foucault pendulum.
 
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46AND2

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But, but, but...

This man give wrong answer, then run to delete.


He trying to make up lie with big dictionary word??

No it isn't. Same principle. But, for your benefit, I also posted a better one in the next post....which I suspect you'll either ignore or respond with moving goalposts.

I certainly called that one.
 
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Yttrium

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At this point it feels like there are only two options:
1) Massive troll
2) Willful ignorance

I would add:
3) Cognitive dissonance

I encountered a geocentrist with a serious cognitive dissonance problem once. He seemed quite intelligent, and was an excellent writer, but couldn't grasp even very simple concepts in physics. Among many other things, he was convinced that thrusters couldn't work in space because there was nothing to push against. Anything that violated his beliefs went right over his head.

But it's hard to judge that kind of thing.
 
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essentialsaltes

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He seemed quite intelligent, and ...

Yeah, it's fascinating that many smart people fall for conspiracy theories. Part of it seems to be that some smart people are tricked into thinking that only smart people can see through the tissue of lies that confound 'normal' people. Since they are smart, therefore the common 'normal' understanding must be wrong.

At the same time... it must be said that many... er.... not-smart... people also fall for conspiracy theories.
 
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Radagast

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Yeah, it's fascinating that many smart people fall for conspiracy theories. Part of it seems to be that some smart people are tricked into thinking that only smart people can see through the tissue of lies that confound 'normal' people.

There's also the facts that:

(1) being "smart" at one thing doesn't mean you're "smart" at everything.

(2) being "smart" doesn't make you immune to the problem of thinking that you're smarter than you really are.

I was going to say that not having travelled to the Southern Hemisphere is a factor -- except that there are flat-earthers in Australia too.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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You don't have to call up people in different parts of the world to check what the sun is doing (or, for that matter, the weather - another thing that would be very different for non-globe models) there are webcam sites that give you live feeds from around the globe, e.g. Skyline webcams, or Earthcam (including the ISS planet Earth cam).

The ISS orbits Earth at ~17,100 mph and no-one up there gets dizzy from it (although they do get dizzy from the zero-g).

At the equator, the surface of the Earth moves at ~1,037 mph relative to a non-rotating Earth. As you move north or south towards the poles, this speed decreases until at 45° latitude it's ~733 mph, and at the poles it's 0 mph, you just rotate in place over the 24 hrs.

But the Earth also moves in orbit around the sun at an average ~67,000 mph (584 million miles/year), and the solar system (including Earth, of course) moves around the galaxy at an average of ~448,000 mph (~230 million years per circuit).

You need a basic understanding of physics and mathematics to work out the numbers, but it only takes an average intelligence & visualisation to grasp the basic ideas.
 
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Ophiolite

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You need a basic understanding of physics and mathematics to work out the numbers, but it only takes an average intelligence & visualisation to grasp the basic ideas.
Do you think this might tell us something relevant about those who don't grasp the basic ideas? :)
 
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