Flat Earth

[Ray Von]

42 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Ray,

 

That sounds a bit too much like the set of the Truman Show !

 

Truman's boat which was called the Santa Maria, as was Columbus' boat, had 139 on its sail which is interesting as to quote Psalm 139 it does say:

 

"8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast."

 

Here is the right hand rule of Physics :

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-hand_rule

 

Wikipedia of course because they WOULD NEVER LIE TO US !!!!

 

It would seem that @newbryford may have been on to something,

 

Gibbo.

The Truman Show is referenced in the documentary (more than once!) 

[Ramblin Rich]

Why can't flat earthers just look at the sea? As a boat moves away towards the horizon, it's hull starts to vanish around the curve, then then upperworks, sails etc. That can't happen in a flat surface. I really have a problem with anyone who can't see that simple fact. Deliberate wooly headed denial of reality, tying up in ever more complex 'explanations' when the simple notion of a sphere, orbiting another, fits with every observation we make.

I knew someone who worked in x-ray who eventually professed to flat earth belief, and I just couldn't figure how he could work in a very technical and physics heavy field, where the science underpinned everything he did, but ignore it. He eventually left under a bit of a cloud so evidently he couldn't square it either; a shame really. 

Eratosthenes in Greece worked out the size of the spherical Earth 2000 years ago, just by realising that the town of Syene was directly under the Sun at the summer solstice as a vertical stick cast no shadow. But at Alexandria there was a shadow, because the sun wasn't overhead, by about 7°. So the distance from Alexandria to Syene is about 7/360 of the distance total distance around the globe. And he was within 100km of the modern accepted value. Science just works....

[Alex TM]

2 hours ago, Gibbo675 said:

Here is the right hand rule of Physics :

Memories of High School physics come flooding back .... assuming we have floods on this disk.

 

At school I majored in maths, physical sciences, and engineering; later in life I studied theology at a respected University ... the lectures on science and faith systems were always 'colourful', especially the day we discussed red-shift.

Edited November 9, 2020 by Alex TM
Adding university reference.

[Alex TM]

2 hours ago, 30801 said:

Brilliant badge.  Where do I get them, and do they do bulk discount?  (I know of a few folk that would wear them simply to annoy some of our 'acquaintances'.)

[Alex TM]

1 hour ago, Ramblin Rich said:

simple fact

Why let fact get in the way of a cherished fantasy?

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, Alex TM said:

Brilliant badge.  Where do I get them, and do they do bulk discount?  (I know of a few folk that would wear them simply to annoy some of our 'acquaintances'.)

 

Google says here:

https://www.offworlddesigns.com/not-flat-pin/

[Gibbo675]

1 hour ago, Alex TM said:

Memories of High School physics come flooding back .... assuming we have floods on this disk.

 

At school I majored in maths, physical sciences, and engineering; later in life I studied theology at a respected University ... the lectures on science and faith systems were always 'colourful', especially the day we discussed red-shift.

Hi Alex,

 

Here was me thinking that red shift-blue shift was voting for different political parties !!!

 

Gibbo.

[newbryford]

I also believe that there are members of the flat earth society who do not "get" the cost of producing railway models..........................

[PatB]

8 hours ago, Ramblin Rich said:

Why can't flat earthers just look at the sea? As a boat moves away towards the horizon, it's hull starts to vanish around the curve, then then upperworks, sails etc.

 

I've seen this flatly denied by flat-earthers.

 

Never underestimate the ability of a good percentage of humans to actually see what they are told they're seeing, rather than what they are really seeing, whether metaphorically (good illustration off this in the US at the moment) or literally.

 

And, on a more general note, why is it that most of those claiming to be privy to the great secrets of the world seem to be those to whom the world, if it had any sense, would be least likely to divulge its secrets?

Edited November 10, 2020 by PatB

[The Johnster]

Why doesn’t the sun, when it sets in the sea, not make a little hissing sound, and when it rises out of the sea, why are there no drips?  

[AndyID]

Everyone knows the Earth isn't flat. Obviously it's a one-sided Möbius strip.

[Reorte]

15 hours ago, Ramblin Rich said:

Why can't flat earthers just look at the sea? As a boat moves away towards the horizon, it's hull starts to vanish around the curve, then then upperworks, sails etc. That can't happen in a flat surface. I really have a problem with anyone who can't see that simple fact. Deliberate wooly headed denial of reality, tying up in ever more complex 'explanations' when the simple notion of a sphere, orbiting another, fits with every observation we make.

What you're seeing are ships falling off the edge of course!

 

[009 micro modeller]

On 08/11/2020 at 22:44, SRman said:

Love the Terry Pratchett reference!   

 

I was trying to remember the name of the country in Mort which was on the edge and ‘had its fair share of drop-outs, but not many of them had the chance to drop back in again.’

 

Incidentally, lots of medieval philosophers and scientists (famously including Bede) knew the world was a spheroid, contrary to popular belief about medieval science: https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/05/the-earth-is-in-fact-round.html

(The bit that most of them got wrong was that they believed in a geocentric universe, but that’s slightly different.)

[009 micro modeller]

On 09/11/2020 at 01:33, PatB said:

The trouble with things like the flat earth idea is that, to make it work and fit with observable reality, you have to fence it around with a vast array of complex exceptions, mechanisms, hand-wavings and general faff, that it starts to get implausible pretty quickly. 

 

Any similarity between this description and any freelance railway modelling that I or anyone else has ever done is purely coincidental...

[Hroth]

5 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

Any similarity between this description and any freelance railway modelling that I or anyone else has ever done is purely coincidental...

 

The back-story for my Midsomer Brevis O-16.5 layout is something like that...

 

[Gareth Collier]

I guess the flat earther conspiracy theorists are the same people suggesting on social media that the Covid-19 vaccine announced yesterday is a govt plot to change the populations DNA.......

[Reorte]

Just now, Gareth Collier said:

I guess the flat earther conspiracy theorists are the same people suggesting on social media that the Covid-19 vaccine announced yesterday is a govt plot to change the populations DNA.......

It contains 5G receptors don't yer know!

[Hroth]

51 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

I was trying to remember the name of the country in Mort which was on the edge and ‘had its fair share of drop-outs, but not many of them had the chance to drop back in again.’

 

 

Krull.

https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Krull

 

The literal "cliff-hanger" of the last section of "The Colour of Magic".

 

[Steamport Southport]

On 09/11/2020 at 03:47, John ks said:

The story i heard goes something like this 

Q what holds the earth up

A an elephant

Q what is the Elephant standing on

A A turtle

Q what is the Turtle standing on

A another Turtle

Q what's that Turtle standing on

A It's Turtles all the way down

 

 

 

The "Turtles all the way down" was what Pratchett was ridiculing*. It's been used by philosophers and politicians for centuries but it originated in India.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

 

*His swam through space

[Edwin_m]

48 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

 

The "Turtles all the way down" was what Pratchett was ridiculing*. It's been used by philosophers and politicians for centuries but it originated in India.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

 

*His swam through space

But where did it come from before India?  Is it actually philosophers all the way down?  Is this something to do with the chicken and the egg (except that dinosaurs were laying eggs millions of years before chickens).  

[BoD]

21 hours ago, Ramblin Rich said:

Why can't flat earthers just look at the sea? As a boat moves away towards the horizon, it's hull starts to vanish around the curve, then then upperworks, sails etc. That can't happen in a flat surface.

 

It's the chamfered cork that they laid the earth on.

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

With regard this thread I fear that there is far too much reliance upon the Wisdom of Wikipedia* !

 

I am however intrigued that no on has yet mentioned Airy's Failure which didn't manage to prove that the Earth actually moves and that it turned out as decribed below:

 

"The experiment called Airy’s Failure was a test conducted by Astronomer Royal Sir George Biddell Airy in 1871, in which Airy failed to detect the motion of the earth. The experiment showed that the stars move relative to a horizontally fixed Earth. By first filling a telescope with water to slow down the speed of light inside, then calculating the tilt necessary to get the starlight directly down the tube, Airy unintentionally demonstrated that the earth was fixed horizontally since the starlight came in at the correct angle without needing to change the tilt of the telescope."

 

Just for fun**, for the above I took the first of Googles search results.

 

* An electronic book burning exercise if ever I saw one.

** Lazyness

 

Gibbo.

[Ray Von]

I'm not sure how seasons fit into the Flat Earth philosophy, or how water goes down plug holes in different directions above / below the equator...? 

[Nearholmer]

Another approach to this topic might be to ask a more general question: why do some people take a delight in ‘believing’ total nonsense?

 

I’m not talking about either genuine questioning of orthodoxy as a means of pushing the boundaries of understanding, or having faith in the untestable (religion), I’m talking about people who delight in believing things that are either proven by a huge body of evidence to be incorrect, or are so incredibly unlikely on the balance of probability as to be within whisker of proven untrue.

 

And, do they actually believe these things, or are they simply taking jokes or infantile fantasies a little bit too far?

[petethemole]

1 hour ago, Ray Von said:

I'm not sure how seasons fit into the Flat Earth philosophy, or how water goes down plug holes in different directions above / below the equator...? 

 What equator?