The Flat-Earth believers number is rising

[jethrofloyd]

Just come across an article about rising numbers of Flat-Earth supporters. Why are numbers of the flat-earhers rising?

[Rlyeh]

On 11/5/2021 at 11:34 PM, janesix said:

I don't know.

Should be your answer to everything.

[jethrofloyd]

2 hours ago, Desertrat56 said:

How can we answer the question if we haven't read the article you refer to?

The flat-Earth conspiracy is spreading around the globe

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/16/us/flat-earth-conference-conspiracy-theories-scli-intl/index.html

[diddyman68]

On 9/16/2021 at 10:02 PM, jethrofloyd said:

The flat-Earth conspiracy is spreading around the globe

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/16/us/flat-earth-conference-conspiracy-theories-scli-intl/index.html

I think the headline contradicts itself a bit.  

[Duke Wellington]

On 9/20/2021 at 7:37 PM, Desertrat56 said:

It is so weird.  My friend came for a visit Saturday and she asked if I had ever met a flat earther.  I have not, I am suspecting they are not real, but we discussed them and both concluded that anyone who has that belief is like a religious person who will not admit evidence that they are misquoting the bible even when you show them the actual words.

For the Earth to be flat is not impossible, but it would require some exotic physics.

None of us can visually experience a 3D object. If you put a ball in front of you then you can only see one side. Put a video camera around the back and the image it presents is only one side. Your eyes would have to be capable of seeing it from all sides at once and then you would require a brain that could bring all that information together to create a 3D object in your mind. We have neither. 

The Flat Earthers would require some exotic physics to make an unobserved side cease to exist. That would be like quantum mechanics but only affecting the unobserved side of an object.

I have never met a Flat Earther, or listened to one on YouTube that was intelligent enough or knew enough to make the above argument.

Straight up I can even think of an experiment to test it. Create a large weakly magnetic sphere (lets say 100 metres radius). Cover the reverse side with iron fillings and photograph their layout. Put all this setup in a controlled environment so nothing like wind can alter the layout of the iron filings.

Go sit around the front, maybe have a brew and read the paper for an hour. Then walk around the reverse side, take a new photo of the layout of the iron filings, and then compare both images. Are they identical or has their been some change? Change equals quantum wavy behaviour, which means those iron filings became probability waves, which means there is wavy behaviour going on around the reverse side of the sphere. That would prove the Flat Earth Theory.

What would be key is spending a few million on the experiment to definitely make sure nothing can disrupt the location of the iron filings in the experiment. Also the time the reverse side needs to be left alone needs to be precisely calculated as while the thickness of the sphere dampens down the flow of information to the observer, we are still dealing with macroscopic objects (the sphere and the filings).

[Duke Wellington]

Actually, I revise the experiment.

We already have a planet we can do it on and as we would be trying to test if the `Earth is Flat` it would be more appropriate to use the globe we already have. We need to show that we can induce quantum behaviour in a macroscopic object through the simple act of locating around the opposite side of the planet.

[Duke Wellington]

16 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

There's another term for FE believers... "mostly trolls".  

 

But as a side comment, amongst the thousands of ways you can 'prove' the earth is round is this rather fancy one - I'd love to see a couple of FE'ers take on this fairly simple challenge and explain the results...

Requirements:
One FE believer living in the Northern hemisphere, mid latitude.  One FE believer living in the Southern hemisphere, mid latitude.  Both must have reasonably good telephoto cameras (eg HD video camcorders), and have an internet connection.

Process
Using a forum (or FB or whatever), message each other until you both have a clear night and good view of the Moon.  It should be at least half full for best results.  Set up the cameras, and at the same time, video the horizon for reference, and then pan up to the Moon.  Zoom right in - you'll need to be able to see the surface patterns (may need to adjust the exposure setting - the Moon is as bright as daylight..).

 

As an example of what will happen, here's a shot of MY moon, taken from my location at about 25 degrees south of the equator..

So what....?  Well, here's an example of a moon shot taken by someone in the northern hemisphere (from the Moon wiki):

Look carefully. Notice how it is quite significantly rotated?  It is rotated by the exact number of degrees difference in latitudes...  As it has to be for two people standing at obviously different angles on the surface of our round planet.  If the earth was flat, EVERY picture of the moon would be the same angle, as every one would be standing vertically on a flat plane...  

Please explain, genuine flat earthers.

  

This is a good attempt at trying to explain to Flat Earthers that the Earth isn`t flat.

But if you put a football on one side of your room, and walk back and forth across the opposite wall, you can see different parts of the ball. So your proof will be seen as Flat Earthers that the Moon is round, not necessarily the Earth lol.

You can see a slight curvature of the Earth up a sky scraper, or rather curvature of the horizon.

Edited September 29, 2021 by Cookie Monster

[ChrLzs]

1 hour ago, Cookie Monster said:

But if you put a football on one side of your room, and walk back and forth across the opposite wall, you can see different parts of the ball.

Look again at what I said.  This isn't a 'different view' from a different angle, it is ROTATED.  We are not talking about parallax.

[Duke Wellington]

2 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

Look again at what I said.  This isn't a 'different view' from a different angle, it is ROTATED.  We are not talking about parallax.

But the Moon is in tidal lock with the Earth.

It isn`t rotating, it is looking at it from different angles.

[ChrLzs]

Is anyone else not getting this?  Coz I'm suspecting a troll  , and I shall stop wasting my time after this additional comment..

LOOK carefully at the craters and other features in the two moon pics I posted.  The entire moon face is rotated about its centre point.  This has nothing whatsoever to do with orbits or wobbling or tidal lock.  LOOK at where Tycho is, in the two shots - everything is rotated.  And that's because the Northern hemisphere viewer and the Southern Hemisphere viewer are standing on the round earth at different angles, like this (apologies to 'Science Alert'):

See how the SH person is almost upside down compared to the NH person?  So, at the same moment in time, the craters and other landmarks on the Moon that are near the top for the NH viewer, will be near the bottom for the SH viewer.   On a flat earth that wouldn't happen, both views would be identical.

[Grey Area]

1 hour ago, Desertrat56 said:

That works if you live in a place that has clouds all the time.  In the desert you need a different example.   

Well, when conditions are right, a little patience maybe needed.

 

[psyche101]

[ChrLzs]

39 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

Just the fact that we  have satellites should be enough.   I don't think anyone who really believes the flat earth myth is going to change their mind.   How do they explain the moon?   

As I said, I think most are trolls, and most of the rest .. how can I put it.. are 'challenged'...

As for the Moon - it would have to be a hologram, with varying phases and different 'projections' for both different latitudes and longitudes.

I also like the simple proof that many gradeschoolers have done, with their projects to put a camera under a helium balloon and send it into the upper atmosphere, where the curvature becomes very obvious, with pics like this one:

from https://phys.org/news/2017-01-students-breathtaking-curvature-earth-high-altitude.html

 

 

[+and-then]

On 9/16/2021 at 1:31 PM, Piney said:

It's doing some nice work

Yeah... I guess some fraction of the >2% is better than nothing.  

[Duke Wellington]

On 10/1/2021 at 1:13 AM, ChrLzs said:

As I said, I think most are trolls, and most of the rest .. how can I put it.. are 'challenged'...

As for the Moon - it would have to be a hologram, with varying phases and different 'projections' for both different latitudes and longitudes.

I also like the simple proof that many gradeschoolers have done, with their projects to put a camera under a helium balloon and send it into the upper atmosphere, where the curvature becomes very obvious, with pics like this one:

from https://phys.org/news/2017-01-students-breathtaking-curvature-earth-high-altitude.html

 

 

They could argue that things exist only when being observed.

Then we would have to construct a quantum physics experiment spanning opposite sides of the planet. The aim being to see if the other side gets replaced by a wavefunction.

[el midgetron]

On 9/30/2021 at 8:13 PM, ChrLzs said:

As I said, I think most are trolls, and most of the rest .. how can I put it.. are 'challenged'...

As for the Moon - it would have to be a hologram, with varying phases and different 'projections' for both different latitudes and longitudes.

I also like the simple proof that many gradeschoolers have done, with their projects to put a camera under a helium balloon and send it into the upper atmosphere, where the curvature becomes very obvious, with pics like this one:

from https://phys.org/news/2017-01-students-breathtaking-curvature-earth-high-altitude.html

 

 

fisheye lens

I don’t think the curvature of the Earth in the photo can be explained by the use of a fish-eye lens. However, its evident that a wide angle lens was used for this photograph. If you notice the curvature of the rope on the right hand side, its bending outward due to the shape of the lens the photo was taken through. Again, I don’t think this effect could justify the curvature of the Earth in the photo but it’s and argument FE proponents could make, 

Edited October 12, 2021 by el midgetron

[ChrLzs]

17 hours ago, el midgetron said:

fisheye lens

I don’t think the curvature of the Earth in the photo can be explained by the use of a fish-eye lens. However, its evident that a wide angle lens was used for this photograph. If you notice the curvature of the rope on the right hand side, its bending outward due to the shape of the lens the photo was taken through. Again, I don’t think this effect could justify the curvature of the Earth in the photo but it’s and argument FE proponents could make, 

While that is an issue with some images, there are two simple and provable (and verifiable) facts:

1. The fisheye effect of curved lines is most obvious when the straight (in reality) line is well away from the centre of the image, ie, out towards the upper or lower extremity of the image.  That image looks to be taken on a wide, not fisheye, lens (of about 30-40mm equivalent focal length), and the horizon is not far enough away from the centre of the frame to give that degree of curvature.

2. There is also a lot of movie footage out there from similar experiments, where the horizon clearly crosses the centre of the frame and is very obviously curved.

Even on an extreme fish-eye lens, if a line is straight and it is roughly centred in the lens field of view, the lens will correctly render it as straight.  Indeed, I own an 8mm fish eye that gives roughly 180 degrees of view, and I can give examples proving the above..

As I said, this isn't really about proving things using technical discussion - it's just an excuse for idiocy, or trolling, or honing debating skills by defending the utterly ridiculous..

[+joc]

On 9/30/2021 at 5:50 PM, ChrLzs said:

Satellites, then.  If you sky watch as I do, you'll see many satellites.. but only in the early evening and morning.  That's when the sun is just below the horizon so there are light rays passing overhead, even though your location is in darkness.  As each satellite moves into those light rays it gets brightly lit up, but then at some point they will disappear back into shadow as they move out of the sunlit region.

All of that can be predicted and worked out from scratch - the mathematics are easily and publicly accessible.  Or if you want to get involved easily, just go to Heaven's Above.  You can enter your latitude and longitude and see very precise predictions for everything that goes overhead each night.  Look for the brighter ones, eg magnitude 2 or lower (or negative) - they are the brighter ones, like the International Space Station.  You'll find it will pass overhead at a good viewing time every week or so, and it is a spectacular sight...

With a bit of practise you will be able to also spot passing planes at high altitude (there are sites out there like Flightradar24 that will let you identify them too) - they do look slightly different..

I saw a train of about 50 satellites one night last winter.  

[janesix]

On 9/16/2021 at 11:02 AM, jethrofloyd said:

Just come across an article about rising numbers of Flat-Earth supporters. Why are numbers of the flat-earhers rising?

Because it might be true?

[aztek]

On 9/16/2021 at 2:02 PM, jethrofloyd said:

Just come across an article about rising numbers of Flat-Earth supporters. Why are numbers of the flat-earhers rising?

can we read that article?   i mean we would want to establish if it is at all credible before we believe them, right?  

[Eldorado]

On 10/28/2021 at 4:46 PM, aztek said:

can we read that article?   i mean we would want to establish if it is at all credible before we believe them, right?  

Here's a similar article.

https://physicsworld.com/a/fighting-flat-earth-theory/

[janesix]

On 11/2/2021 at 1:50 PM, ChrLzs said:

How about reading what I posted, and actually addressing what was said?  Your derails and avoidance of questions are becoming tiresome.

"Oh, really?  I think that the ongoing embarrassment and mental scarring of any progeny, who at some point will have to go through the horrible process of realising their parent/s are morons and are lying to them, is actually very serious.  I've seen the results of similar Cults, like Nancy Lieders 'PlanetX / Zetatalk' madness, where parents have scarred their children for life by preparing bunkers and food and water and emergency procedures for the "end of times" when they might be killed.... oh yeah this was back in 1995, and the dates when they would die ranged from about 2002 thru 2012 and ongoing.  Each time the date shifted, of course more damage was done to those poor kids and their family units.  Think about how that would pan out....

 

You happy with that, Janesix?"

I will try:

I suppose those kids may be somewhat traumatized. Not much different from the normal religious traumatization a lot of kids go through. No, I am not "happy" with that. Most people learn to deal with it though. It's called life. 

[janesix]

1 hour ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

I was talking about the flat Earth belief, not belief in general. I thought that was clear from my post and it is afterall the topic at hand.

In order to believe In a flat Earth, you have to believe in a huge World wide conspiracy. People who works in fields such as astronomy, physics, aviation, shipping and space exploration have to be part of the conspiracy.

Theyve done it before (like with tartaria) , they could do it for flat earth too.

[janesix]

13 hours ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

Who are "they" ?

I don't know.

[GlitterRose]

I thought with the world of information at everyone's fingertips...people would get smarter.

Lol.