The Earth is Flat?

[cee-dee]

It seems some people still believe the Earth is flat? They think the Earth is a disc but can't say how "thick" it is or "what's underneath it".

Watch this BBC video? :- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/41973119/why-do-people-still-think-the-earth-is-flat

There's so many people on the the Earth that have strange beliefs which can't be backed up by any evidence whatsoever. They'll produce fake or flawed "evidence" but for solid, proven facts, they're sadly lacking, they're delusional in fact?

For them, "I believe" or  a knowing "I know" is fact enough for them? What about you?

[Anonymous]

Keep taking the pills.

[astrologica]

Of course it's flat...if it weren't, all the water would fall off, wouldn't it?🤔

[al**bear]

Proof  during an Eclipse

[al**bear]

But maybe Not

[theelench]

It's a "well known fact" so must be true.  That's all the "evidence" you need for many weird ideas really.

[bankhaunter]

Flat earthers are some of the daftest people on the planet, most of them however are abysmally ignorant and rely on denial or avoidance of any evidence that is contrary to their belief.

The stupid woman at the end is an example of ignorance, she doesn't realise that the horizon is a circle around the observer and therefore is not a straight line from left to right and the dip to the horizon is the same for every point on it.

One of the silliest was the chap who took a spirit level on an aircraft who had the mistaken belief that if the plane was flying round the curve of the Earth, the level would show it dipping it's nose down more and more as it did so.

[bankhaunter]

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@theelench wrote:

It's a "well known fact" so must be true.  That's all the "evidence" you need for many weird ideas really.

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An actual quote from a flat earther as evidence the earth is flat.

2) The "Flat Earth Movement" has gained exponential growth since 2015.

[cee-dee]

It's no use getting "technical" (or logical?) with people who "believe" something and the flat earthers would probably come up with some crazy explanation as to why the horizon looks curved when viewed from an aircraft or the images of the Earth from space?

I was looking at an interesting site which explained that on the Bonneville salt flats, if you lay on the ground with your eyes 9 inches above the ground, you could see a light placed on the ground a mile away BUT, if you lowered your eyes to only 7 inches above the ground, you wouldn't be able to see the light.

I suppose the flat earthers would claim that the ground there wasn't flat it was raised up?

I think I'd have a go at telling them to make the ground there flat and then pump water on it. If it was truly flat, the water wouldn't pool but if their "flat-making" had really made the ground sunken, the water would pool in the middle?

There's a lot of technical calculations for calculating the curvature of the Earth but I suppose the flat-arthers would just dismiss them?

[bankhaunter]

Flat earthers have taken the rules of 2D graphic representations and try to apply them to 3D reality. That means their horizon is the vanishing point of everything and as far as a person's eyes can see.

Of course there are many things that wouldn't apply to but that doesn't faze them, they just use some vague idea of perspective to solve the obvious problems with their model and it doesn't matter if two totally different explanations have to be used for two similar observations.

It is their magical perspective which makes the declination of Polaris reach the horizon seen from the Equator and allows the Sun to reach the horizon at sunset, despite trigonometry showing a 3,000 mile high Sun would have to be 172,000 miles away to get to one degree above the horizon.

They do use the basic formula that applies to the Earth's curve but only in claims that certain objects should not be seen at the distance they are, unfortunately they rarely allow for the observer's height of their sight line, the formula only applies to a tangent from the Earth's surface.

[cee-dee]

Like this eh?:-

[bankhaunter]

Yes that's it.

One of their problems is they have little sense of scale, they expect a ship going over the horizon or distant buildings to be leaning due to the curve and they take the fact that obviously they don't or at least not noticeably, to be evidence of the Earth's flatness.

[theelench]

That makes their ideas even weirder.  The ancient Greeks worked out that the Earth wasn't flat even though they thought it was a far smaller sphere.  They didn't know how wide the Atlantic was, knew nothing about America or that the Pacific wasn't the same ocean as the Atlantic, but still realised that ships going over the horizon meant it wasn't flat.

[theelench]

This morning on Yahoo

 'Mad' Mike Hughes Is set to blast himself 500 feet into the air above the Mojave Desert in an attempt to prove that NASA has been lying and the Earth is disc shaped.  He is going to make the attempt in a $20,000 home-made, steam powered rocket.........

I didn't read any more, but thought others might like to.

[bankhaunter]

That's hilarious, all the evidence needed that flat earthers are mad, if any were needed..

I love this quote. 

I know about aerodynamics and fluid dynamics and how things move through the air, about the certain size of rocket nozzles, and thrust. But that’s not science, that’s just a formula.

A formula that is the result of science.

[right-then-petal]

hmm i'v thought about this long and hard,have you noticed that when walking home late at night the ground does tilt a bit

waking up in the mornings, i'v also noticed my head always seems to want to be below my knee,s and who's ruth

[theelench]

Thinking about it just a little more, which is probably not such a good idea, how do they explain night and day.  Do they think the world spins like a record but with a wobble?  Or that it spins like a tossed coin?  Or does the sun go round the earth?  

[bankhaunter]

They reckon the Sun and Moon go round in circles lighting up parts of the earth as they turn and the seasons are caused by it moving toward between each of the Tropics through the year.

They have a problem with 24 hour daylight in Antarctica so they just deny it exists.

There is an amazing level of dishonesty with misrepresentation, bovine excrement, selective reading/hearing and blatant lies.

Your average flat earther faced with evidence.