Flat Earth

[Gibbo675]

2 hours ago, maico said:

 

 

I remember at age 13 using the School theodolite to do some long-distance triangulation measurements. The sum of the interior angles always equals slightly more than 180 degrees. This spherical excess is because you are dealing with a spherical triangle. The results are the same everywhere hence the Earth must be spherical or to be more precise an oblate spheroid due to the Earths's rotation of 15 degrees per hour. As every schoolboy knows the sum of a smaller planar triangle always equals 180 degrees.

(Ramsden built the first accurate theodolite capable of measuring spherical excess in 1796 and they were used to produce the first geodetic surveys of the UK.)

Hi Maico,

 

I hate to tell you this but my brother works for Leica Goesystems as product support.

 

He was involved in working out why the outflow pipe for one of the Hinkley point power stations wouldn't drain into the sea. It seems that the boffins that built it somewhat miscalculated the curve of the earth.

 

Another job was resurveying Mersey Rail's tunnels in readiness for the new stock, as the survey didn't cross reference and followed just one side of the tunnel. The gravitational effects of the walls of the tunnels skewed the results somewhat.

 

A job I used Leica equipment for was to position the fitting onto the various ligaments of the Olympic Stadium some years back while at Watson Steel. No curve of the earth required for that job as the site was set to an azimuth.

 

Who on earth takes a flat earth thread seriously* ???

 

Gibbo.

 

* I can't, and haven't done.

[maico]

1 hour ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Maico,

 

I hate to tell you this but my brother works for Leica Goesystems as product support.

 

He was involved in working out why the outflow pipe for one of the Hinkley point power stations wouldn't drain into the sea. It seems that the boffins that built it somewhat miscalculated the curve of the earth.

 

Another job was resurveying Mersey Rail's tunnels in readiness for the new stock, as the survey didn't cross reference and followed just one side of the tunnel. The gravitational effects of the walls of the tunnels skewed the results somewhat.

 

A job I used Leica equipment for was to position the fitting onto the various ligaments of the Olympic Stadium some years back while at Watson Steel. No curve of the earth required for that job as the site was set to an azimuth.

 

Who on earth takes a flat earth thread seriously* ???

 

Gibbo.

 

* I can't, and haven't done.

 

See Page 86 of the Leica Geosystem TS16 user manual pdf.

 

https://surveyequipment.com/assets/index/download/id/845/

 

I got into an enormous argument with one of the Youtube flat earth groups who hired one of these instruments and convinced themselves the measurements proved the Earth was flat. One of them was a building surveyor!

Edited November 10, 2020 by maico

[Ray Von]

4 hours ago, petethemole said:

 What equator?

Exactly!  They also don't believe in dinosaurs and (rather less palatable) one spokesperson denied that 9/11 happened.  On the subject of aeroplanes, the documentary suggests that the lack of air traffic in the southern hemisphere accounts for the Flat Earth theory (it's a long "circular" flight path.... 

[maico]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I'm not sure where the confusion caused by Columbus in this comes from.  You could still have America and a flat earth, and if you wanted to get to the Indies, the Spice Islands, which was the intention as Muslims had cut the Silk Road, you could get there by finding the edge and going around it, keeping a few miles in from the actual lip.  In fact, and I mean verifiable fact, Columbus knew perfectly well that sailing due west would get him to land; not only was he fully aware of the planet's spherical nature, but he was also conversant with the historical voyages of Eric the Red, and Lief Ericson, Prince Madoc, and the Irish input, the Ossianic Oceanic legends and the monastically recorded, if a little fantastic in detail, voyages of the various saints.  He was in Limerick before the first Transatlantic voyage and was shown the recently discovered corpse of an 'Indian' and the canoe he had arrived in on the Irish Atlantic coast, the canoe being of a type unknown anywhere in Europe. 

 

Moreover, many of his sailors, supposedly terrified of sailing over the edge, would have been aware of the knowledge of Breton, Cornish, Galician, and Irish fishermen who had been to the Grand Banks that vegetation in the water and land birds had shown that a land mass was close at hand.  The 'falling off the edge' thing seems to have been a 19th century invention of Washington Irvine, the American writer, who wrote a biography of Columbus; it is this, and it's inclusion in American school curriculae, that has fostered the impression that Columbus proved that the earth was round. 

 

Christopher Columbus was not a chap that was backward in coming forward in the matter of self promotion, but he never claimed to have proven any such thing, nor did he feel the need to as everybody already knew this.  He claimed, because he knew no better, to have found a route to the Spice Islands, and proved it by bringing some Caribbean spices home with him; he never knew that what he had discovered was a different continent, and that what the Viking and Welsh expeditions had found was not, as he'd thought, the northeastern extremity of Asia. 

 

It was Amerigo Vespucci, another Italian, who first sighted and named for Europeans the Pacific Ocean, and not until Magellan's attempt was the misidenetified continent proven to be separate from Asia, and even then there was no reason to suspect that it did not connect with Asia in the far northern latitudes.  In the event, the Bering Straits were discovered in the early 18th century by Bering, who was a Swede working for the Russians,  The Russians, using English and Swedish captains on occasion, had been for hundereds of years gradually exploring the Arctic Siberian coast, in small ships called Koches, which were shaped to be pushed on to the top of the ice rather than crushed by it so that the expeditions could overwinter.  The European exploration of North America had not reached Alaska at that time, and found Russian colonies when it did.

 

Magellan's expedition (he was killed in the Pacific by hostile islanders) proved that if you sail west and keep going, you get back where you started, but the earth could still have been cylindrical, or had holes at the poles.  But both the poles were reached in the 20th century and there are no holes, neither is the planet cylindrical.  Columbus never even landed on the mainland of the American continent, he only heard about if second hand from the Carib 'Indians', who were rapidly wiped out by pathogens that he'd carried with him on the ships and with the crews. 

 

Asked about the civilisations he was expecting them to know of, the Chinese and South East Asian societies that Marco Polo had written about and which he thought were not more than a short distance away further west and south, the Caribs were able to inform him that great and wealthy civilisation did indeed exist exactly where Columbus thought they were, but they were Aztecs and Incas. and the Caribs mentioned that they had a fair amount of gold.  This proved very unfortunate for those people over the next century...

 

Columbus never proved that the world wasn't flat, or that the Amercias were not the far east of Asia.  He never thought the planet was flat, or anything other than a planet, but without a reliable means of establishing longitude had only a vague idea how for west he was, and since he was expecting to find far eastern Asia. that's what he thought he'd found.

 

Magellan's exact passage is well depicted here...

The only improvement I can see is to use magnets underneath.

 

 

Edited November 10, 2020 by maico

[Gibbo675]

5 minutes ago, Ray Von said:

Exactly!  They also don't believe in dinosaurs and (rather less palatable) one spokesperson denied that 9/11 happened.  On the subject of aeroplanes, the documentary suggests that the lack of air traffic in the southern hemisphere accounts for the Flat Earth theory (it's a long "circular" flight path.... 

Oh Ray, what have you said !!!!!

 

9-11 was a masonic ritual where the twin towers of masonry were brought down to cause the chaos out of which order will arise.

 

It's just like Covid1984 is causing Capitalism, the second pillar of the worlds economy to collapse, as Communism did nearly thirty years ago.

 

Any way, I've just turned up a Tarot card to see what the energy of the thread is and it was the Three of Pentacles reversed. For those that don't know it's divinatory says: Mediocrity in work, Puerility, Pettiness and Weakness.

 

I couldn't of made that up, what is more I can't wait for the personal insults !!!

 

 

Gibbo.

[Ray Von]

12 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Oh Ray, what have you said !!!!!

 

9-11 was a masonic ritual where the twin towers of masonry were brought down to cause the chaos out of which order will arise.

 

It's just like Covid1984 is causing Capitalism, the second pillar of the worlds economy to collapse, as Communism did nearly thirty years ago.

 

Any way, I've just turned up a Tarot card to see what the energy of the thread is and it was the Three of Pentacles reversed. For those that don't know it's divinatory says: Mediocrity in work, Puerility, Pettiness and Weakness.

 

I couldn't of made that up, what is more I can't wait for the personal insults !!!

 

 

Gibbo.

No one would do that, Gibbo.  Look after yourself.

Ps, it's "couldn't have" 

[Gibbo675]

1 minute ago, Ray Von said:

No one would do that, Gibbo.  Look after yourself.

Ps, it's "couldn't have" 

Matron says I have to go to bed now.

[Ray Von]

1 minute ago, Gibbo675 said:

Matron says I have to go to bed now.

A matron on duty after 6pm, must be a private facility n'est-ce pas??! 

[Gibbo675]

Just now, Ray Von said:

A matron on duty after 6pm, must be a private facility n'est-ce pas??! 

No details, for I have been banned from quite enough threads thank you !

[AndyID]

and consider this:

 

If electromagnetic waves propagate through space/time does that mean space/time is actually a "thing"?

[Ray Von]

5 minutes ago, AndyID said:

and consider this:

 

If electromagnetic waves propagate through space/time does that mean space/time is actually a "thing"?

The Magic 8 Ball says: "Ask Again Tomorrow..." Wait, I mean the Magic 8 Disc!  

[PatB]

4 hours ago, steve1 said:

Well , one flat earther nearly proved himself wrong and made a valiant attempt at a Darwin Award at the same time...

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Hughes_(daredevil)

 

steve

 

 

I heard about him a couple of years back. I strongly suspect his flat earthism may have been a reaction to a discovery that there was a large body of gullible people who might be prepared to bankroll his rather expensive hobby. 

[PatB]

2 hours ago, maico said:

 

See Page 86 of the Leica Geosystem TS16 user manual pdf.

 

https://surveyequipment.com/assets/index/download/id/845/

 

I got into an enormous argument with one of the Youtube flat earth groups who hired one of these instruments and convinced themselves the measurements proved the Earth was flat. One of them was a building surveyor!

Never underestimate the ability of people, even qualified, professional people, to be really, really bad at their jobs. 

[The Johnster]

Or the ability of educated people, even well educated, informed, and intelligent people, to be really really stupid. 

 

Not quite flat earth territory, but a couple of true stories about a couple, let's call them Steffan and Cerys because those are their names, who are members of the Latin percussion group I am involved with when I'm not doing trains (Samba Galez if your want to Google us).  Steff and Carys and a lovely couple, who hold down well paying and responsible jobs, have degrees, and read broadsheets, the sort of people who listen to Radio 4.  Some years ago the band organised an 'intensive workshop weekend' (we do this every year, it's code for a jolly) on the very interesting island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel (go if you ever get a chance, it's brilliant).  In order to get to Lundy, unless one has one's own boat or books on one of the 'Waverley' or 'Balmoral' visits, one travels on the 'Oldenburg' from either Ilfracombe or Bideford, lovely little ship but she doesn't carry cars. 

 

Anyway, we'd all motored down to Ilfracombe to stay overnight in a guest house prior to the voyage over in the morning; Oldenburg was moored at the quay ready for us.  But a bit of a Northeasterly gale had come up overnight, and this made the approach to Lundy's quay, normally sheltered from the prevailing southwesterlies that are more common in the Bristol Channel, impossible.  The plan B is to go over on a helicopter from Hartland Point, which meant a coach to Hartland from 'Combe and being shuttle ferried over 5 at a time, a flight of less than 10 minutes but it took 2 hours to shuttle us all across.

 

Steff and Cerys were most confused and dismayed at this; how would they be able to take their car over?   It was with some difficulty that we managed to explain to them that they were never going to be able to take their car anyway, and that there are no made roads on Lundy to drive it on, and that Lundy is an island, surrounded by deep and that day somewhat choppy water.  You can walk from one end of the island to the other in about an hour!  How could these erudite, intelligent, and well informed and real people not know this?   But they really didn't!  'Ok', they said, 'but if there isn't a ro-ro car ferry, there's a bridge or a tunnel, look' pointing to map 'it's really close' (it's about 20 miles from Ilfracombe or Bideford, a near 3 hour sailing time, and a dozen from Hartland).  No, guys. no bridge or tunnel; 'well, someone should build one, that's terrible'.  Planks, the pair of 'em.

 

Another feature of Steff and Carys is a total absence of, not just a sense of direction, but any concept of where they actually are in relation to any other point on the surface of the planet, be it the other side of the world or only a mile away.  Satnav is essential to them, they cannot read maps or understand dircections.  This is not stupidity, of course, it is simply the way they veiw and deal with the world around them, but it is surprising in people of this sort.  They had a lovely time on the island as we all did, and the return journey was done on Oldenburg.  The day was clear, and, pointing to the distant hills of Pembrokeshire, Gower, and Glamorgan visible over the horizon 30 or 40 miles away to the north, Steff, who is very proud of being Welsh, pipes up with 'what are those islands over there, then'?  I then had to explain about the curvature of the Earth and the concept that we were about 20 feet above sea level while these hills were over 1,000 in the case of Pembrokeshire and Glamorgan, and 800 odd on Gower thus we could see them but not the Welsh coastline, but I don't think he believed me and thought I was having him on!  After all, we could see the Devon coast, right down to sea level with the waves breaking on the rocks, but at the time that was only about a mile away, and Steff didn't 'get' the distinction even when I drew a diagram in the beer we'd spilled on the table.  I was reminded of Father Ted and Father Dougal; 'these cows are small, but these cows are far away'!

 

How can people go through life in this state of not understanding?  Blissful ignorance, perhaps; Steff and Cerys live quite happily in their little SteffandCerys-centred bubblem, with a pair of anklebiters to prove it, and this sort of thing just doesn't matter to them, but it is beyond my simple comprehension that anyone can be so unaware of what is all around them, the physical world,

[Ozexpatriate]

7 hours ago, The Johnster said:

It was Magellan who named the Pacific Ocean, not Amerigo Vespucci who I believe was the first to sight it, 'from a hill in Darien'.

Vasco Núñez de Balboa is generally credited as the first European to see the Pacific in 1513 from the isthmus of Panama. At that time they knew it as the "South Sea". 

 

Vespucci's alleged voyage in 1498 is disputed.

[PatB]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Vasco Núñez de Balboa is generally credited as the first European to see the Pacific in 1513 from the isthmus of Panama. At that time they knew it as the "South Sea". 

 

Vespucci's alleged voyage in 1498 is disputed.

Sensible chap. Presumably just nipped round the corner to Morocco and spent a couple of years getting wasted on kif and arak instead, thus avoiding all that tedious scurvy/mutiny/hostile natives/drinking one's own waste products nonsense that so beset other early voyagers .

[Hroth]

I blame the current crop of "flat earthers" on the various projections used to put maps of the earth on a plane surface. 

From Mercator

 

via

Robinson

 

to

Polar projections

 

 

All provide a skewed worldview.  The polar azimuthal equidistant one is obviously the inspiration for the model above!  The model even implements the Ice-wall that holds all the water on the flat earth.  It'll be interesting to see if "Planar Warming" has any effect on it...

 

 

[Edwin_m]

14 hours ago, Gibbo675 said:

Oh Ray, what have you said !!!!!

 

9-11 was a masonic ritual where the twin towers of masonry were brought down to cause the chaos out of which order will arise.

 

It's just like Covid1984 is causing Capitalism, the second pillar of the worlds economy to collapse, as Communism did nearly thirty years ago.

 

Any way, I've just turned up a Tarot card to see what the energy of the thread is and it was the Three of Pentacles reversed. For those that don't know it's divinatory says: Mediocrity in work, Puerility, Pettiness and Weakness.

 

I couldn't of made that up, what is more I can't wait for the personal insults !!!

 

 

Gibbo.

Gosh, I think I'll stick to the cats thread in future.  Although the glue messes up their fur no end.  

[Kickstart]

47 minutes ago, Edwin_m said:

Gosh, I think I'll stick to the cats thread in future.  Although the glue messes up their fur no end.  

Burnt fur from solder is probably far worse!

 

All the best

 

Katy

[ardbealach]

Now getting back to model railways..  Model railways, in the main, tend to be set out on dead flat boards - which, of course, follow the beliefs of the Flat Earthers.  It set me thinking...    to ensure we get the accuracy and detail correct, should we not be using convex shaped baseboards?   The only problem might be free wheeling rolling stock running away all the time.  Or is this accuracy in the detail only for P4 and EM modellers?  (AM) 

[Reorte]

2 hours ago, ardbealach said:

Now getting back to model railways..  Model railways, in the main, tend to be set out on dead flat boards - which, of course, follow the beliefs of the Flat Earthers.  It set me thinking...    to ensure we get the accuracy and detail correct, should we not be using convex shaped baseboards?   The only problem might be free wheeling rolling stock running away all the time.  Or is this accuracy in the detail only for P4 and EM modellers?  (AM) 

 

If you're lucky enough to have space for 20'... that's about 500 yards at 1:76. The Earth's circumference is approximately 25000 miles (not being exact here so not differentiating between polar and equatorial). My possibly faulty maths ends up working out that the middle of the board should be about a 2 1/2 millionths of an inch higher than the ends. A bit beyond the tolerances I'm capable of!

 

edit: I didn't scale back, so 2 1/2 millionths over 72. Have to say I thought it would be a little bigger than that.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Reorte

[The Johnster]

8 hours ago, PatB said:

Sensible chap. Presumably just nipped round the corner to Morocco and spent a couple of years getting wasted on kif and arak instead, thus avoiding all that tedious scurvy/mutiny/hostile natives/drinking one's own waste products nonsense that so beset other early voyagers .

I've been aboard the Matthew replica, and the Spanish carracks and caravels he'd have been sailing in were about the same dap; the thought of crossing the Bristol Channel in one never mind the Atlantic is terrifying.  I would not blame him one bit if he got wasted in Morocco instead.  Perhaps he hallucinated the whole thing and thought it was real...

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, Edwin_m said:

Gosh, I think I'll stick to the cats thread in future.  Although the glue messes up their fur no end.  

One of mine came home one day up to it's fetlocks in cement and looking very sorry for himself; I didn't help by laughing at him, and felt more sorry for whoever's fresh cement garage floor or whatever he'd tracked up!  It had set by this time and proved very difficult to get out, and made it difficult to resolve the situation by shaving his legs.  The best I could manage was to cut the worst bits off, and let the rest grow out, which they did over the next few weeks.

[maico]

2 hours ago, Reorte said:

 

If you're lucky enough to have space for 20'... that's about 500 yards at 1:76. The Earth's circumference is approximately 25000 miles (not being exact here so not differentiating between polar and equatorial). My possibly faulty maths ends up working out that the middle of the board should be about a 2 1/2 millionths of an inch higher than the ends. A bit beyond the tolerances I'm capable of!

 

No maths required: The Bislin advanced curve calculator is easy to use

http://walter.bislins.ch/bloge/index.asp?page=Advanced+Earth+Curvature+Calculator

[steve W]

Some years ago when I had a day job involved with large ocean going ships, we had a technician who was employed to travel from ship to ship to fix control problems, carry out minor mods and such like.  He was a very clever chap, but a true eccentric i.e. it wasn't just for show. For example, whilst he was working back in the office, we returned from lunch one day to find him standing on his head, propped up against a filing cabinet. To the obvious question of 'Why?' the answer was that he 'wanted to get a different perspective on the problem'.  He was also a fully paid up member of the Flat Earth Society.

I noted that he was clever,  this was demonstrated during one of his voyages (300,000ton tanker) at about 2:00 am one morning when the ship's skipper heard a lot of noise in the wheelhouse above is bedroom. Investigating, 'Cyril' was in full flight with drawings and confident calculations 'proving' to the 2nd mate, the ship's navigator,  that the Earth was flat. I understand there was an abrupt termination of the discussion. 'Cyril' was sent home in disgrace from the next port for trying to indoctrinate the navigator and a telex to personnel from the skipper noting he would never allow 'that man' to step aboard his ship again.