Flat Earth Disproval Time

[Not Anyone To Care For]

We all need to disprove this video together.

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0xClWgidZU-

I have had enough of this shit.

 

[Rook]

Humans would be falling off all willy nilly if the earth was not flat, now wouldn't they?

http://www.intpforum.com/showthread.php?t=22093

 

[Not Anyone To Care For]

Humans would be falling off all willy nilly if the earth was not flat, now wouldn't they?

http://www.intpforum.com/showthread.php?t=22093

That or all humans would fly towards the center. How would a flat Earth stay flat anyways?

 

[Not Anyone To Care For]

Here's a video explaining why they would fall to the center if you are interested.

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNqNnUJVcVs-

 

[Zero-11]

there is far more Globeheads: http://anti-globe.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=11

 

[smithcommajohn]

I couldn't finish the original video. Debunking this nonsense is a waste of time. If people want to ignore science, then let them.

 

[Not Anyone To Care For]

I'm thinking of making a video response to it, who knows?

 

[Auburn]

I'd be curious to see how members would respond to this, without doing any deferring to authorities.

In other words, premises:

1. you can't trust NASA, or any third party data. not even non-science related academic articles.
2. you have to demonstrate the world's roundness to someone in a way that is verifiable from 1st person experimentation/etc
3. within a reasonable budget for most people, so lets say €5,000 max.

anyone up for the challenge?

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

ya cant disprove the truth, m8!

the earth is just a big flat thing with borders that join up to the other ends

space is just a big painting in the sky made by an extinct race of giants

neither the sun nor the earth ever moves, it is a big illusion made by human faith

nasa is a hoax. all astronauts are put under hypnosis by the countdown and told theyre on the moon

government is lying to us, we here at intpf will uncover the truth

 

[Not Anyone To Care For]

I'd be curious to see how members would respond to this, without doing any deferring to authorities.

In other words, premises:

1. you can't trust NASA, or any third party data. not even non-science related academic articles.
2. you have to demonstrate the world's roundness to someone in a way that is verifiable from 1st person experimentation/etc
3. within a reasonable budget for most people, so lets say €5,000 max.

anyone up for the challenge?

This method is free

http://www.windows2universe.org/citizen_science/myw/w2u_eratosthenes_calc_earth_size.html

 

[Not Anyone To Care For]

ya cant disprove the truth, m8!

the earth is just a big flat thing with borders that join up to the other ends

space is just a big painting in the sky made by an extinct race of giants

neither the sun nor the earth ever moves, it is a big illusion made by human faith

nasa is a hoax. all astronauts are put under hypnosis by the countdown and told theyre on the moon

government is lying to us, we here at intpf will uncover the truth

Ha nice try!

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

Btw, speaking of government lies, I was on the train the other day, and they put subliminal advertising for a shopping centre through the train's PA system thing. Like it's just an automated thing, they advertise the shopping centre every time they're coming close to it.

They also use other hypnotising tactics through how they announce their stops.

I'm pretty certain the people making these announcements know exactly what they're doing with all of that.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

Ha nice try!

you didn't laugh not even once?

meh, someone will xD

 

[Not Anyone To Care For]

Btw, speaking of government lies, I was on the train the other day, and they put subliminal advertising for a shopping centre through the train's PA system thing. Like it's just an automated thing, they advertise the shopping centre every time they're coming close to it.

They also use other hypnotising tactics through how they announce their stops.

I'm pretty certain the people making these announcements know exactly what they're doing with all of that.

Yeah I have heard that kind of thing before, it's kind of creepy. The creepiest part is that it actually works on people.

 

[redbaron]

I'd be curious to see how members would respond to this, without doing any deferring to authorities.

In other words, premises:

1. you can't trust NASA, or any third party data. not even non-science related academic articles.
2. you have to demonstrate the world's roundness to someone in a way that is verifiable from 1st person experimentation/etc
3. within a reasonable budget for most people, so lets say €5,000 max.

anyone up for the challenge?

a) Go sit on a beach and look out to the ocean and wait for a ship to appear. It comes from 'below' the water, because it's rounding a bend. This alone would be evidence enough to call it spherical, but since this is apparently a "challenge" I'll give more.

Budget: going to the beach.

b) We can also see further away, the higher up we get. Go atop a sufficiently tall building or on a plane and you can see 'over' the bulge of the spherical ground. If the Earth were flat, this wouldn't happen. The only thing that could block your view in a flat Earth would be things protruding up from the ground and/or atmosphere, yet that's not the case. The Earth itself blocks our view and limits our horizon, even on what is otherwise a perfectly 'flat' section of ground.

Budget: climbing a tall building.

c) Put sticks in the ground vertically, about 20-30km apart. Find what time noon (sun directly overheard) occurs at the location of one of the sticks. At that location, the stick won't cast a shadow because the sun's directly overhead. If the stick at the other location casts a shadow at the time of 'noon' for the other stick, then the Earth is spherical. Why?

The distance is not far enough apart that if the Earth were flat, the shadows would be different. It can only occur if the Earth is round. You can put this into mathematical terms whereby you calculate the distance of the sun relative to the distance the sticks are set apart and it's provable that if the Earth really was flat, their shadows would be exactly the same when set that far apart (20-30km) on a flat surface at a distance of 146million - 152million km from an object the size of the sun. So the experiment works regardless of whether we're at perihelion or aphelion.

Budget: two long, straight sticks.

d) There's other observations you can make, regarding how the shape of the moon can only be spherical because of the way light falls on it. It's impossible for it to be anything other than a sphere.

You can test this yourself with a flashlight and any round object. Use a basketball or something and shine a flashlight on it in a dark room from different angles. You'll see that the angle of the light creates various 'crescents' exactly like it would on the moon and that you can replicate all the same kind of light patterns as we see on the moon at night.

To verify that this isn't possible with a circular or disk-shaped object, cut out a circular piece of cardboard and try to do the same. You can't. The shadows produced won't be concave like is produced by the sphere, but convex. This is because in a flat disk, there's no spherical bulge that casts a shadow on the other surfaces of the sphere. So the light patterns will just shine across the disk as normal.

Budget: flashlight and a spherical object.

~

Flat Earth theory rekt in the time it takes me to climb a building.

 

[Not Anyone To Care For]

a) Go sit on a beach and look out to the ocean and wait for a ship to appear. It comes from 'below' the water, because it's rounding a bend. This alone would be evidence enough to call it spherical, but since this is apparently a "challenge" I'll give more.

Budget: going to the beach.

b) We can also see further away, the higher up we get. Go atop a sufficiently tall building or on a plane and you can see 'over' the bulge of the spherical ground. If the Earth were flat, this wouldn't happen. The only thing that could block your view in a flat Earth would be things protruding up from the ground and/or atmosphere, yet that's not the case. The Earth itself blocks our view and limits our horizon, even on what is otherwise a perfectly 'flat' section of ground.

Budget: climbing a tall building.


c) Put sticks in the ground vertically, about 20-30km apart. Find what time noon (sun directly overheard) occurs at the location of one of the sticks. At that location, the stick won't cast a shadow because the sun's directly overhead. If the stick at the other location casts a shadow at the time of 'noon' for the other stick, then the Earth is spherical. Why?

The distance is not far enough apart that if the Earth were flat, the shadows would be different. It can only occur if the Earth is round. You can put this into mathematical terms whereby you calculate the distance of the sun relative to the distance the sticks are set apart and it's provable that if the Earth really was flat, their shadows would be exactly the same when set that far apart (20-30km) on a flat surface at a distance of 146million - 152million km from an object the size of the sun. So the experiment works regardless of whether we're at perihelion or aphelion.

Budget: two long, straight sticks.

d) There's other observations you can make, regarding how the shape of the moon can only be spherical because of the way light falls on it. It's impossible for it to be anything other than a sphere.

You can test this yourself with a flashlight and any round object. Use a basketball or something and shine a flashlight on it in a dark room from different angles. You'll see that the angle of the light creates various 'crescents' exactly like it would on the moon and that you can replicate all the same kind of light patterns as we see on the moon at night.

To verify that this isn't possible with a circular or disk-shaped object, cut out a circular piece of cardboard and try to do the same. You can't. The shadows produced won't be concave like is produced by the sphere, but convex. This is because in a flat disk, there's no spherical bulge that casts a shadow on the other surfaces of the sphere. So the light patterns will just shine across the disk as normal.

Budget: flashlight and a spherical object.

~

Flat Earth theory rekt in the time it takes me to climb a building.

Pfft, NASA rigged all of it obviously.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

Yeah I have heard that kind of thing before, it's kind of creepy. The creepiest part is that it actually works on people.

Not on meeeee though

I'll sit there, listening, and know they're emitting subliminal messages to the population, and I'll take them to court after that, cos I'm (in) the Inspektah

 

[Auburn]

This method is free

http://www.windows2universe.org/citizen_science/myw/w2u_eratosthenes_calc_earth_size.html

To that one, I answer with:
---https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNqNnUJVcVs&t=3m40s---

The same effect is demonstrable with a different scaling of the sun and moon. The size and distance of the sun or moon can't be assumed here.

@redbaron

a) the OP video actually goes through this example at 7:10, with magnification far better than the human eye, and shows that even from as far as we can see with high-zoom capacity, the ships are there all at once.

b) answerable via perspective. the human eye does not look at the world entirely flat; it's spherical and like a camera, there is a degree of fish-eye effect.

[bimgx=250]http://imgur.com/EidhKkj.png[/bimgx]

if you were looking out from atop a skyscraper or a plane, how could you know if the curvature you see is due to lens distortion or earth's curvature?

c) answerable by the above video aimed at Hunter Wulf.

d) the roundness of the moon does not = roundness of earth. especially if, as per the above, you suppose the moon is only a round object in the sky some few thousand miles up and of some 30 miles in diameter.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

I'd be curious to see how members would respond to this, without doing any deferring to authorities.

In other words, premises:

1. you can't trust NASA, or any third party data. not even non-science related academic articles.
2. you have to demonstrate the world's roundness to someone in a way that is verifiable from 1st person experimentation/etc
3. within a reasonable budget for most people, so lets say $5,000 max.

anyone up for the challenge?

With your telescope you notice the moon has phases, these phases can be used to argue that the earth and moon indeed orbit the sun but for now we'll take it for granted. As you travel around across the earth you then observe that the moon's crescent will rotate and has a different pattern in the north & south hemispheres and in the tropics of cancer and capricorn.

You then build a 3d model of what you observed:
[bimg]http://i.imgur.com/zjWys2a.jpg[/bimg]
You notice that depending on your reference point (the arrow) the moon phases will rotate again as you observed before. Moving the arrow in clockwise (or counterclockwise) fashion shows that the earth is spherical because the crescent returns to its original position as you complete 360 degrees.

If the earth was flat it would not be possible to observe the crescent rotating, you would instead get a parallax effect.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

lol why not just use astral projection? wtf is this shit

 

[EyeSeeCold]

The 3d model would prove it though if you performed it irl, this stuff is hard to explain because it's counter-intuitive to 2d verbalization.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

The 3d model would prove it though if you performed it irl, this stuff is hard to explain because it's counter-intuitive to 2d verbalization.

the moon thing just looked like jungian psychology to me

\(o.O)/

edit: haha I missed the orange guy in the parallax thing the first couple times through

 

[Auburn]

The 3d model would prove it though if you performed it irl, this stuff is hard to explain because it's counter-intuitive to 2d verbalization.

There's a response to this in the OP at 18:25:

--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0xClWgidZU&t=18m25s--

The same crescent effects could be seen if the earth was flat but the moon was a round object in the sky some 2-3k miles up and of some 30 miles in diameter. At that distance, traveling to the opposite hemisphere would show a different moon shape because the moon's a lot closer to the earth overall.

or so goes the thinking. i'll play devil's advocate.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

There's a response to this in the OP at 18:25:

--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0xClWgidZU&t=18m25s--

The same crescent effects could be seen if the earth was flat but the moon was a round object in the sky some 2-3k miles up and of some 30 miles in diameter. At that distance, traveling to the opposite hemisphere would show a different moon shape because the moon's a lot closer to the earth overall.

or so goes the thinking. i'll play devil's advocate.

How about using a drone suspended in the air to film the rotation of the earth?

Here's an example of what it should look like:
https://vimeo.com/pagefilms/ridethesky

Again I believe we would not see the rotation of the stars in the same way as if they are moving in a circle, there would be a greater parallax if we spun around the circumference of a flat earth.

 

[Pyropyro]

I'm still curious though. What's on the other side of the flat earth?

 

[redbaron]

To that one, I answer with:
---https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNqNnUJVcVs&t=3m40s---

The same effect is demonstrable with a different scaling of the sun and moon. The size and distance of the sun or moon can't be assumed here.

@redbaron

a) the OP video actually goes through this example at 7:10, with magnification far better than the human eye, and shows that even from as far as we can see with high-zoom capacity, the ships are there all at once.

b) answerable via perspective. the human eye does not look at the world entirely flat; it's spherical and like a camera, there is a degree of fish-eye effect.

[bimgx=250]http://imgur.com/EidhKkj.png[/bimgx]

if you were looking out from atop a skyscraper or a plane, how could you know if the curvature you see is due to lens distortion or earth's curvature?

c) answerable by the above video aimed at Hunter Wulf.

d) the roundness of the moon does not = roundness of earth. especially if, as per the above, you suppose the moon is only a round object in the sky some few thousand miles up and of some 30 miles in diameter.

Before I respond to this idiocy, I need to know if you're just playing devil's advocate and testing or if you legitimately think the Earth is flat.

 

[Auburn]

How about using a drone suspended in the air to film the rotation of the earth?

Here's an example of what it should look like:
https://vimeo.com/pagefilms/ridethesky

It doesn't really solve the question. One can say the sky is stationary and the earth is rotating (love that vid btw), but one can just as easily say the sky is what's rotating while the earth is stationary.

@Pyropyro - Er, the OP doesn't really claim to know, though it hypothesizes that the earth is probably simply the "floor" of the universe. And that, rather than looking at earth like a disk floating out in space, it's on the ground of a flat plane that may go on in all directions forever....

[bimgx=250]http://imgur.com/29o3ctV.png[/bimgx]

But icy antarctica (which in this model spans all around the whole known-world as the "edge") is as far as we've gone.

This is fun =D
c'mon guys i know u have better material than this..

edit: @redbaron - I am playing devil's advocate, though I'm not trying to troll anyone. I'm really interested to see how the debate could pan out and what reasonings can be used to support each side.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

In my own personal opinion, Auburn is trying to settle the debate by focusing on the strongest points that the rest of you refuse to focus on because you're too set in your ways.

Bad Auburn, bad!!!

 

[redbaron]

@redbaron

a) the OP video actually goes through this example at 7:10, with magnification far better than the human eye, and shows that even from as far as we can see with high-zoom capacity, the ships are there all at once.

b) answerable via perspective. the human eye does not look at the world entirely flat; it's spherical and like a camera, there is a degree of fish-eye effect.

[bimgx=250]http://imgur.com/EidhKkj.png[/bimgx]

if you were looking out from atop a skyscraper or a plane, how could you know if the curvature you see is due to lens distortion or earth's curvature?

c) answerable by the above video aimed at Hunter Wulf.

d) the roundness of the moon does not = roundness of earth. especially if, as per the above, you suppose the moon is only a round object in the sky some few thousand miles up and of some 30 miles in diameter.

a) This is actually wrong and the video is misleading. You'll notice when he zooms in, none of these boats are actually on the horizon. When he zooms in on the second boat, notice that there's still a horizon even with the zoom. It doesn't matter how powerful you can magnify, you're going to hit a physical horizon at some point.

Also yes, if the boat is too small you're still not going to see it regardless of where the actual horizon is. Note also how he doesn't show a magnified version of a ship coming into focus, he's just zooming in on ships already over the horizon. This doesn't disprove that ships come over the horizon.

b) The human eye doesn't have a fish-eye effect, because we don't translate the images onto a flat surface like a computer screen. The fish-eye effect occurs on your screen because what you're looking at is a wide angle picture (curved) altered to fit onto a flat computer monitor, which naturally warps the dimensions.

This discrepancy doesn't occur to the human brain and our vision, because our brains aren't flat computer screens - they're complex and adaptable organs that are capable of giving us an accurate picture of reality. I know you're playing devil's advocate, but let's avoid the, "BUT WOT IF EVERYFING WE NO ABOUT REALITY IS RONG REDBARUN?!" because I can't be bothered with that one right now.

c) It's actually not but I don't have the patience or the mathematical competence to necessarily demonstrate why. Don't need this point to prove the Earth is spherical though.

d) It's actually a very important point though, because the moon is responsible for tidal forces and its distance/size/orbit is something predictable and calculable due to gravity.

The fact that the moon is spherical verifies that celestial bodies develop spherically because of gravity.

The moon is only a few thousand kilometres from Earth? It'd crash into it. Earth has gravity, we know this. It can also be verified first hand. If the Moon was an object 30km in diameter only a few thousand kilometres away - it would fall back to Earth.

Not to mention it'd be easily noticeable by all kinds of passenger jets, balloonists, skydivers...and so on and so forth.

A 30km diameter object only a few thousand kilometres into the sky would also make a lunar eclipse impossible. It would in fact, make it almost impossible to ever see the moon at all because it'd be in the Earth's shadow more often than not. If it's night time on Earth, then any object only a few thousand kilometres above is also undoubtedly going to also be in darkness.

Stating the moon as an object with 30km diameter orbiting at ~3250km raises far more unbelievable scenarios than it being an object closer to 3,500km in diameter orbiting ~375,000km away.

 

[Shieru]

I feel woefully ignorant of the topic of astronomy :P I think it's likely I'd be able to debunk this whole argument in a few sentences if I only had more extensive knowledge, but I'll have to make due with logic and the limited knowledge I do have.

Restricting information to only what we are able to observe individually, without any equipment such as a telescope, one of the first things that comes to mind to disprove the idea of a flat Earth is the lunar eclipse (good call @Redbaron ). If the theory presented in the OP video was true, there would in fact be no such things as lunar eclipses, as the moon and sun would circle around the upper surface of the flat disk and therefore the Earth wouldn't ever obfuscate the light of the sun from hitting the moon.

Now, if we present a slightly altered argument, and say that the sun sometimes rotates behind the flat disk of the Earth in order to create the shadow of the eclipse, this results in a irreconcilable problem. The sun rotating behind the disk would cause the entire planet to experience night time all at once, which to my knowledge has never happened in recorded history. Even if we don't refer to textbooks or professional astronomers, I believe this argument could be easily disproven by having several people on the day-side of the planet stream footage of their sunlit world to the night-side during a lunar eclipse. As long as we're willing to trust our friends on the other side of the globe, I think this would be a sufficient validation that the Earth is a sphere which rotates between the sun and moon.

The second claim that doesn't match our observations of reality is that Antarctica encircles Earth's entire circumference. If we omit NASA footage of the continent, there are several ways we might debunk this idea. First, one could either purchase or construct a drone with a video camera attached to it in order to fly over and observe the continent of Antarctica themself. If you'd rather, there's also the option of purchasing your very own hot air balloon, or you can get a ticket for one of these flights which takes passengers over the continent of Antarctica: http://www.antarcticaflights.com.au/home#inclusions

All of these options can potentially be afforded at less than 5000 Euro. But, if this is all too much, we could decide that amateur footage is trustworthy. In this video done by someone not affiliated with NASA, you can see a 360 degree view of the edges of the continent of Antarctica:

https://youtu.be/uZnM8Km_Nvo

Clearly, the ice is confined in the middle of the ocean, not the other way around.

The third most obvious thing which doesn't add up is the fact that if the sun varied in orbit from the tropic of Cancer to the tropic of Capricorn as is described in the OP, much more drastic temperature variances would be expected at the equator. Instead, in reality we see very stable temperatures which vary little from season to season, resulting in a warm tropical climate all across the equator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equator#Equatorial_seasons_and_climate).

All this taken into consideration, the theory of a flat Earth already seems very unlikely. But in addition to this, there are also quite a few holes in the theory. The first is an alternative to gravity; why do we not fly off the planet? The OP video seems to disagree with the concept of the Earth-disk continually moving upward at great speeds, but they also don't offer any alternative to this (absurd and easily refutable) idea. In order to give the argument a fair chance, I poked around youtube and found a couple of other videos on flat Earth theory, but none of them offered any alternative explanation for the phenomenon commonly referred to as gravity. It seems the OP video, as well as others like it, claim ignorance on this topic.

Another phenomenon related to gravity that's not explained is Earth's magnetic field. The dynamo theory, whereby the currents in the center of the planet generate electromagnetic fields, makes sense in the context of modern physics. It is just a theory, as we've never actually observed what's going on beneath the crust of the Earth, but at least it offers a reasonable explanation. I haven't seen any flat Earth theorists even mention the topic of magnetic fields, which makes their argument seem even weaker in comparison.

There are many other things which aren't satisfactorily explained as well, such as the claim that satellites don't exist, the said motive of the government to lie about the true shape of the Earth, why the Earth would be an exception in an observable universe full of spherical objects, etc.

 

[Auburn]

a) This is actually wrong and the video is misleading. You'll notice when he zooms in, none of these boats are actually on the horizon. When he zooms in on the second boat, notice that there's still a horizon even with the zoom. It doesn't matter how powerful you can magnify, you're going to hit a physical horizon at some point.

Also yes, if the boat is too small you're still not going to see it regardless of where the actual horizon is. Note also how he doesn't show a magnified version of a ship coming into focus, he's just zooming in on ships already over the horizon. This doesn't disprove that ships come over the horizon.

This is a circular argument (no pun intended). In a flat earth model, there is no "horizon to go over", as things are always just constantly getting closer to a horizon that just get smaller. So the fact that these ships didn't go over the horizon isn't proof that the experiment was done wrong.

Here is another footage example that covers a much wider distance:

--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEqDbsPUgH8&t=10m17s--

But this is all testable with mathematics. For example, if we calculate the assumed curvature of the earth, we could calculate just how far off a ship of a given height would need to be in order to vanish below the horizon. Since telling apart distance with your eyeballs isn't reliable, you can hire a guy to go on a boat and have him report his distance from you, while you record him with HD zoom and see if you see the expected results. You also have to account for wave heights, refractions and mirages, though.

So, this has been tested already though. Later in the video link right above, it shows the Chicago skyline from (what I assume is) Michigan City, which is about 37 miles away, and you can still see Chicago just fine. To quote someone on youtube:

"According to main stream science what you are seeing is impossible. Pythagorean charts for the curvature of a ball with a radius of 3959 miles (Earth) show that an object 30 miles out would be 600.96 feet below the horizon. And at 40 miles out the object would be 1066.19 feet below the horizon. The tallest building in Chicago is the 108 story Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), which rises 1,451 feet. So, how do explain that you can see many of the buildings of the Chicago Skyline from Michigan City? There are those who say it is refraction or just a mirage. Yet, there are those who say you can see the buildings thru Infrared binoculars, which would mean that the objects you are seeing are in fact line of sight."

b) The human eye doesn't have a fish-eye effect, because we don't translate the images onto a flat surface like a computer screen. The fish-eye effect occurs on your screen because what you're looking at is a wide angle picture (curved) altered to fit onto a flat computer monitor, which naturally warps the dimensions.

This discrepancy doesn't occur to the human brain and our vision, because our brains aren't flat computer screens - they're complex and adaptable organs that are capable of giving us an accurate picture of reality. I know you're playing devil's advocate, but let's avoid the, "BUT WOT IF EVERYFING WE NO ABOUT REALITY IS RONG REDBARUN?!" because I can't be bothered with that one right now.

The human eye does have a radial/cone vision angle. And the light it takes in is in a cone shape; not quite as much as a GoPro camera, but we do have a cone. In order to fit that much into our line of sight, our image of the world has a curve in it.

When there are vanishing lines involved, toward our peripherals, this can cause curving of the image in order for it to stitch together into our cone shaped vision. But lets look at some actual footage of this instead. Here is one taken of over 100,000 feet with a GoPro:

--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CjjbauSvBE&t=2m35s--

You can see that the "curvature" of the earth changes from convex to concave randomly, given the fish-eye effect. But here is footage of a cam at 100,000+ feet with the GoPro distortion taken off:

--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi7PZOSmj70--

Looks pretty straight to me.

c) It's actually not but I don't have the patience or the mathematical competence to necessarily demonstrate why. Don't need this point to prove the Earth is spherical though.

Okay

d) It's actually a very important point though, because the moon is responsible for tidal forces and its distance/size/orbit is something predictable and calculable due to gravity.

The fact that the moon is spherical verifies that celestial bodies develop spherically because of gravity.

The moon is only a few thousand kilometres from Earth? It'd crash into it. Earth has gravity, we know this. It can also be verified first hand. If the Moon was an object 30km in diameter only a few thousand kilometres away - it would fall back to Earth.

Not to mention it'd be easily noticeable by all kinds of passenger jets, balloonists, skydivers...and so on and so forth.

This whole part is assuming gravity is as you know it. The flat earth argument is that the gravity model is wrong, and it's primary use in explaining planetary motions is also primarily why it's unreliable if what we've been told about the planets is false.

What you need it for on earth (i.e. explain why things fall) can be explained through the 1g upward acceleration hypothesis. But in general it could even remain an unknown. The standard gravity model doesn't actually define what gravity is, just what it's assumed to do, using primarily planetary bodies for its reasoning.

I'm not sure what you mean by noticeable, but being 1-2k miles up in the sky is far too high for skyscrapers or balloonists to see things any differently than people on the surface. Balloons can only go about 30km (18 miles) up.

A 30km diameter object only a few thousand kilometres into the sky would also make a lunar eclipse impossible. It would in fact, make it almost impossible to ever see the moon at all because it'd be in the Earth's shadow more often than not. If it's night time on Earth, then any object only a few thousand kilometres above is also undoubtedly going to also be in darkness.

I think you misunderstood the argument. The sun and moon always stay above the earth, never falling under/behind it. So nothing would be "in earth's shadow more often than not"

Stating the moon as an object with 30km diameter orbiting at ~3250km raises far more unbelievable scenarios than it being an object closer to 3,500km in diameter orbiting ~375,000km away.

How so?

 

[Not Anyone To Care For]

@Auburn

Are you a flat earther?

 

[Auburn]

@shieru

Lunar eclipses: I think this one is getting somewhere. It seems the flat earth model doesn't really give a solid explanation for this. However, it casts doubt on the earth-shadow interpretation.

There are dozens of historical accounts where a lunar eclipse happened while the sun was clearly visible in some part of the sky. What this implies is that a spherical sun, earth and moon could not have been in alignment. There's even a name for this, it's called a Selenelion. Look it up.

Of course, round-earthers will have a rationalization for this using refraction, but my point is that the "irrefutable" statement that a lunar eclipse would be impossible given a flat earth model, isn't entirely or always true -- as sometimes we can see the sun. There is at least room to speculate an alternative hypothesis for why the moon sometimes goes dark and it doesn't have to be the earth.

Antarctic Crossing

This footage is really sketchy, non-continuous and blurry. My flat-earth argument for this would be, how do you know you went straight the whole time?

Sure, you can see the antarctic edge while you're entering, but if you watch, in the middle of the video it's white in all directions. And compasses start to change directions there. So how would you assure a completely linear route across?

In other words, how do you know you didn't just very slowly turn (whether by wind/storm/etc) and popped out on the antarctic edge elsewhere?

Equator & Seasons

The equator does experience fluxes, but they're considered minimal and not enough to cause very distinct seasons. Nonetheless it's not uniform. If you pick a specific country on the equator, for parts of the year the sun wobbles a little more to one side than the other, but in general it keeps the equator about the same.

This is also about what the flat earth theory would propose, given that the sun wobbles around the equator slightly.

Gravity

I agree with your point here, except that it doesn't really answer the question for either party. Some flat-earthers don't believe in the acceleration interpretation and some do. Those that don't, don't have much else to explain it with so "it's unknown" is the answer.

In contrast, round-earthers will tell you it's due to this invisible force that holds big round things together, which is also a very farfetched and removed conclusion to come to. And it relies on the assumption that the planets are as far away and big as they are.

But this avenue has some promise. Could you verify the size and distance of the planets for yourself for under $5k?

And how would you explain gravity itself, from a practical point of view -- in this budget -- starting with no assumptions?

Other Round Objects

As I told redbaron and others, the spherical shape of other sky objects wouldn't be reason to say "everything else is round, therefore earth must be round too." I think you'd need some way to deduce the earth itself, specifically, is round.

 

[smithcommajohn]

The distance to the moon and sun can be triangulated from different parts of the Earth. The sheer distance of these objects would cause them both to be in full view of the Flat Earth all the time. There would be no way for them to disappear from view as they rotated in their tiny circles.

 

[Auburn]

@Auburn

Are you a flat earther?

I'm on your side Hunter.
But to really debunk the flat-earthers, you gotta think like them. And then out-think them.

Some of the points made above are okay-ish, but I don't feel I'd yet be "sold" on the round-earth idea if I was coming from the flat-earth model. Every argument so far has had some grey area and "room for interpretation".

I have a couple of rebuttals in mind myself which I feel are pretty strong. But I'll save them for later. ^^

 

[Shieru]

@Auburn

I think at this point our arguments diverge at epistemology. The truth about human knowledge is that it's always hypothetical to some degree. Even using scientific instruments to gather data in a more objective way, at some point our subjective interpretation enters into the situation. What this means, I think, is that we can never know anything absolutely, but a rational point of view will side with the most logically coherent, best supported argument.

In this case, I see the flat Earth hypothesis as lacking substantiation, both in the form of physical evidence and logically coherent assertion. Just because we observe a flat horizon with our eyes, doesn't mean the Earth isn't curved. If we are to question the accuracy of anything, I would first assess the mathematics being used to calculate the expected visibility over the horizon. Mathematics are completely theoretical models that we humans derive in a sterile way, and so they are subject to error when applied to real-world situations that contain unaccounted for variables. I think it's presumptuous to dismiss refraction as part of what effects our perception of the horizon, especially in videos like the one you posted which is viewing a city over the ocean. There is a lot of water in Earth's atmosphere, especially right over large lakes and seas. We know that water refracts light, and that this distorts the image we see though it, so why wouldn't this be a factor in how the horizon appears to us?

The fact that the flat Earth hypothesis relies so heavily on direct, subjective observation and the fact that it has either weak arguments or nothing to say at all about some of the very obvious phenomena we experience - like gravity - leads me to favor the spherical Earth hypothesis, which is more sufficiently substantiated. It's a stronger argument, therefore more likely representative of reality.

Also, on the existence of gravity, there have been some interesting observations lately that further support the theory:

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160211

https://www.theguardian.com/science...m-collision-of-second-set-of-black-holes-ligo

I'm very interested in hearing your rebuttals ^^ (come come, stop playing devil's advocate, join us on the rational side!)

 

[Auburn]

@Auburn
I'm very interested in hearing your rebuttals ^^ (come come, stop playing devil's advocate, join us on the rational side!)

Okay 0:

Crossing the South Pole

So for under $5k, what I would try is a variation of your cross over Antarctica on a plane. But I'd specifically design it to keep track of distances.

I'd take beacons with me, which I would drop like bread crumbs every 100 miles or so. Every time I drop a beacon, it would send out a signal of how far away I am moving in relation to the beacon.

If the beacon starts to get too far to broadcast or gets obscured by a snowstorm before the 100 miles, I'd drop another one right away, and keep track of the mileage. When I finally emerge on the other side of Antarctica, I'd know how many miles I traveled via the plane's speed, time taken, the plane's own instruments, but also the beacons.

[bimgx=300]http://imgur.com/0K3hpRw.png[/bimgx]

Here the green arrow that goes off South America is where I'd start my flight, with the goal in mind to pop up at the base of Australia, seen by the other green arrow. If I succeed and my distance traveled is only some 2k miles, then I've confirmed the earth is round.

To explain the same trip via a flat earth model would take saying I somehow traveled all the way around the diameter of the flat earth (seen here by the orange line) to get to the base of Australia. That would be some 10 times the distance, and the gas on my plane alone would make that an impossibility.

If I did get thrown off-course a bit and popped up at, say, where the red arrow is, it'd still be some 5 times the distance I recorded with my beacons and it still would not make sense with my observations + time taken + gas.

Budget:
- $1,500 one-way flight
- $150 x ~20 beacons = $3,000
Total?: $4,500

Curvature of the Earth

The other thing I might try is to measure the curvature of the earth using long distance lasers. The horizon of the water introduces a lot of variables, but lasers are pretty consistent.

These can do 100 mile distances, but I think there are longer ones. What I'd try to do is go to a large lake with a friend and we'd both be on opposite sides. The lake provides a guarantee of equal starting elevation since the water line would be the same.

We'd both go up exactly 30 feet from the lake's elevation (to prevent interference) and mount our lasers to be exactly level with gravity. Then we'd shine them back at each other to measure whether it arrives at the other side at an angle. I'd expect the laser light to shine some feet above where the laser is being placed.

This experiment would have to be very well calibrated, but I think it could work, and for under $5k.

 

[Not Anyone To Care For]

I'm on your side Hunter.
But to really debunk the flat-earthers, you gotta think like them. And then out-think them.

Some of the points made above are okay-ish, but I don't feel I'd yet be "sold" on the round-earth idea if I was coming from the flat-earth model. Every argument so far has had some grey area and "room for interpretation".

I have a couple of rebuttals in mind myself which I feel are pretty strong. But I'll save them for later. ^^

Lmfao I was getting confused.

That is a very good way to practice debating, good idea.

 

[Not Anyone To Care For]

Okay 0:

Crossing the South Pole

So for under $5k, what I would try is a variation of your cross over Antarctica on a plane. But I'd specifically design it to keep track of distances.

I'd take beacons with me, which I would drop like bread crumbs every 100 miles or so. Every time I drop a beacon, it would send out a signal of how far away I am moving in relation to the beacon.

If the beacon starts to get too far to broadcast or gets obscured by a snowstorm before the 100 miles, I'd drop another one right away, and keep track of the mileage. When I finally emerge on the other side of Antarctica, I'd know how many miles I traveled via the plane's speed, time taken, the plane's own instruments, but also the beacons.

[bimgx=300]http://imgur.com/0K3hpRw.png[/bimgx]

Here the green arrow that goes off South America is where I'd start my flight, with the goal in mind to pop up at the base of Australia, seen by the other green arrow. If I succeed and my distance traveled is only some 2k miles, then I've confirmed the earth is round.

To explain the same trip via a flat earth model would take saying I somehow traveled all the way around the diameter of the flat earth (seen here by the orange line) to get to the base of Australia. That would be some 10 times the distance, and the gas on my plane alone would make that an impossibility.

If I did get thrown off-course a bit and popped up at, say, where the red arrow is, it'd still be some 5 times the distance I recorded with my beacons and it still would not make sense with my observations + time taken + gas.

Budget:
- $1,500 one-way flight
- $150 x ~20 beacons = $3,000
Total?: $4,500

Curvature of the Earth

The other thing I might try is to measure the curvature of the earth using long distance lasers. The horizon of the water introduces a lot of variables, but lasers are pretty consistent.

These can do 100 mile distances, but I think there are longer ones. What I'd try to do is go to a large lake with a friend and we'd both be on opposite sides. The lake provides a guarantee of equal starting elevation since the water line would be the same.

We'd both go up exactly 30 feet from the lake's elevation (to prevent interference) and mount our lasers to be exactly level with gravity. Then we'd shine them back at each other to measure whether it arrives at the other side at an angle. I'd expect the laser light to shine some feet above where the laser is being placed.

This experiment would have to be very well calibrated, but I think it could work, and for under $5k.

Start a Go Fund Me ASAP!! I would challenge the flat earthers to bet their money on it.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

It doesn't really solve the question. One can say the sky is stationary and the earth is rotating (love that vid btw), but one can just as easily say the sky is what's rotating while the earth is stationary.

If the sky is rotating, the earth flat & stationary, and the moon round(your counter-argument for the moon's phases) we would see all sides of the moon, which we currently don't.


Also what place does gravity have here? Gravity accounts for the trajectory of a bullet as much as it accounts for the ability to exit the atmosphere and orbit the earth.

 

[Black Rose]

As anyone can see Earth chan does not have a flat chest.