Flat Earth

[Ray Von]

Just watched a documentary "Behind the Curve" - following the Flat Earth theorists and their growing army of followers. 

I'm not a convert or anything like that, but the theory does capture my imaginative / creative side as a sort of fantasy world - I was particularly intrigued by the followers ability to make established fact fit the theory! Maybe it's because of what we in the hobby do (creating little bits of Flat Earth) I was just curious to hear other people's views on the theory....

 

[Alex TM]

Did they mention the elephants, or turtle, at all?

[Ray Von]

1 minute ago, Alex TM said:

Did they mention the elephants, or turtle, at all?

I'm just playing Devils Advocate, I assure you - I'm as sane as the next man...

[RFS]

If you fancy a bit of light entertainment, it's worth browsing the Flat Earth Society's website. Some of the discussions on their forum are hilarious!

[BoD]

This  2m social distancing really upset them.

Quite a few fell off the edge.

[newbryford]

They say that there are members of the Flat Earth Society all around the world...................

[APOLLO]

The earth is indeed flat. It starts at Bamfurlong in the south, ends at Standish in the north, and extends east west from Pemberton to Hindley. Note Wigan is the centre of not only the earth, but also the universe.

 

 

Brit15

[LBRJ]

19 minutes ago, RFS said:

If you fancy a bit of light entertainment, it's worth browsing the Flat Earth Society's website. Some of the discussions on their forum are hilarious!

 

I used to have a look on there quite often, until I felt my brains were leaking out of my ear.

 

[Ray Von]

I'm intrigued to know what they believe is on the "flip side" - maybe it's some messy wiring, pine batten and pencil scribbles? 

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

Here is a question to which I have not as yet had a satisfactory answer :

 

How can the atmosphere have a positive pressure without any sort of containment if space has an almost complete vacuum.

 

Gibbo.

[Pete the Elaner]

It must be flat or else the Crimson Permanent Assurance would have taken over the world.

[Ray Von]

3 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Folks,

 

Here is a question to which I have not as yet had a satisfactory answer :

 

How can the atmosphere have a positive pressure without any sort of containment if space has an almost complete vacuum.

 

Gibbo.

No expert but this is what Google sez: https://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/65-What-keeps-our-atmosphere-attached-to-Earth-

[Gibbo675]

4 minutes ago, Ray Von said:

No expert but this is what Google sez: https://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/65-What-keeps-our-atmosphere-attached-to-Earth-

Hi Ray,

 

Knowing that the internet would never ever be wrong about anything, why then does gravity not affect the operation of the vacuum brake ?

 

Weird or what !

 

Gibbo.

[SRman]

3 hours ago, Alex TM said:

Did they mention the elephants, or turtle, at all?

 

Love the Terry Pratchett reference!   

 

I have absolute proof that the world just cannot be flat: if it really was flat, all the cats in the world would have pushed everything moveable off the edges! 

[Tony_S]

4 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Ray,

 

Knowing that the internet would never ever be wrong about anything, why then does gravity not affect the operation of the vacuum brake ?

 

Weird or what !

 

Gibbo.

Not weird. Gravity will exert a force on all the components in the brake. However the brake works by the difference between the part of the brake with a vacuum and the atmosphere. The internet also isn’t wrong about atmospheres and planetary gravity. Well most of the internet. Apparently flat earthers don’t believe in gravity. 

[SRman]

1 minute ago, Tony_S said:

Not weird. Gravity will exert a force on all the components in the brake. However the brake works by the difference between the part of the brake with a vacuum and the atmosphere. The internet also isn’t wrong about atmospheres and planetary gravity. Well most of the internet. Apparently flat earthers don’t believe in gravity. 

 

Next, we'll have to get them onto the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide. 

[Gibbo675]

1 minute ago, Tony_S said:

Not weird. Gravity will exert a force on all the components in the brake. However the brake works by the difference between the part of the brake with a vacuum and the atmosphere. The internet also isn’t wrong about atmospheres and planetary gravity. Well most of the internet. Apparently flat earthers don’t believe in gravity. 

Hi Tony,

 

Neither does physics for it is as yet only a theory not a law, just saying.

 

Gibbo.

[Gibbo675]

1 minute ago, SRman said:

 

Next, we'll have to get them onto the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide. 

Now that is real because I saw it on Star Trek or Dr Who or something like that anyway !!!

[Tony_S]

50 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Tony,

 

Neither does physics for it is as yet only a theory not a law, just saying.

 

Gibbo.

Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation and Newton’s Laws of Motion provide enough laws for big physics. If you want to get down to quantum mechanical effects there are other explanations. This thread started as a look at the thoughts of flat earthers.  Flat earthers do not believe that gravity (attraction between masses) causes us to stay on the ground. They believe the earth disc is accelerating upwards at about 9.8metres per second squared. 
Gravity is really interesting, 

[newbryford]

1 hour ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Folks,

 

Here is a question to which I have not as yet had a satisfactory answer :

 

How can the atmosphere have a positive pressure without any sort of containment if space has an almost complete vacuum.

 

Gibbo.

 

The atmosphere is magnetic and we all live on a great big iron sheet that attracts it.

[SRman]

40 minutes ago, newbryford said:

 

The atmosphere is magnetic and we all live on a great big iron sheet that attracts it.

 

This sounds like a very attractive theory.  

[PatB]

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. 

 

The now conventional view, however, requires much less fudging to explain the phenomena that we actually see. That is not, in itself, "proof", of course. There is no natural law that says that the simplest explanation is the correct one. However, when you combine it with the fact that, for several hundred years, science has made predictions based on eg. the Earth being roughly spherical, and, when tested, those predictions have been shown to be, within reasonable margins of error, correct, I think anyone postulating a different model needs to present a rather better set of arguments than the average flat earther. 

 

And, yes, I'm well aware of issues such as Newton and Einstein not being in perfect agreement. That doesn't make Newton wrong. His work on gravity produced a damn good approximation for what happens at a "human" scale and only breaks down at very large or very small scales. Certainly it's not the whole story, but it is sufficiently correct that, unless you're crossing universes or poking about inside atomic nuclei, it will do most of what you need. 

[woodenhead]

8 hours ago, Ray Von said:

Just watched a documentary "Behind the Curve" - following the Flat Earth theorists and their growing army of followers. 

I'm not a convert or anything like that, but the theory does capture my imaginative / creative side as a sort of fantasy world - I was particularly intrigued by the followers ability to make established fact fit the theory! Maybe it's because of what we in the hobby do (creating little bits of Flat Earth) I was just curious to hear other people's views on the theory....

 

Flat Earthers - people who take Rule 1 just that bit too far.

[John ks]

8 hours ago, Alex TM said:

Did they mention the elephants, or turtle, at all?

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

 

3 hours ago, Tony_S said:

They believe the earth disc is accelerating upwards at about 9.8metres per second squared. 

I've been wondering about that acceleration

I found a velocity calculator on line & it gave the following results

 

If the flat earth is accelerating at 9.8 m/s squared then from rest it will be traveling at 3,048,190km/h after 24 hr or 1,112,590,000 km/h after a year (which is about 1.03c where c is the c from e=mc squared)

Your velocity will reach about 1,079,000,000km/h after 354 days which happens to be the speed of light

 

My understanding is the max speed possible is the speed of light

& as an object speed increases it length decreases

So Logically speaking if the earth started as a ball & was accelerating at 9.m/s sq  then its length (diameter in the direction of travel) would decrease to 0 as it approached light speed 

after 354days the earth would truley be flat

OH Damm !!!!!!! I think I just proved the earth is flat

 

Sorry

 

John

 

 

[iL Dottore]

6 hours ago, Ray Von said:

I'm intrigued to know what they believe is on the "flip side" - maybe it's some messy wiring, pine batten and pencil scribbles? 

....and a bloke in jeans and polo shirt, scrabbling around, muttering “well it €$§@#£& worked back in the €$§@#£& clubhouse”