Flat Earth?

[Bobbie Bobster]

Lets eat grandma

[Chinahand]

On 11/19/2018 at 9:57 PM, Chinahand said:

So what did later surveyors find?  One of my favourites is Jean Picard and his work inspired Cassini.

These surveyors were working far from the tropics in the mid latitudes where there is a huge difference between the way the sun would behave on a flat earth compared to a sphere.

PGW - willing to speculate what their results were? 

Continuing on - we now can see what other independent experimenters have found as they've measured the earth - as outlined in the forth step in Rochester University's outline.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

So what empirical regularities have people discovered while observing the sun and moving north and south?

Surveying is one of the fundamental ways of collecting evidence - in the early days literally dragging chains between triangulation points (hence the use of the word chain for a unit of distance).

Picard measured 110.46 km for one degree from Paris to Sourdon and Cassini undertook the immense effort to measure a meridian from South to North. His two separate calculations for a degree of meridian arc were 57,097 toises  (111.282 km) and 57,061 toises (111.211 km), 

Eratosthenes was a bit out, but remember this is nearly 2000 years earlier, so in many ways the accuracy of Eratsothenes' work is incredible, but the point to really notice is that as well as being basically consistent with Eratosthenes, Cassini's measurements are totally incompatible with a flat earth.  Surprise surprise.

The 19th century saw multiple attempts to measure the world.  The French thought the world was a prolate spheroid with the smaller circumference about the equator, not the poles, while the British Royal society working under the influence of Newton thought it was oblate.

 

It took basically a century of surveying, especially George Everest's great arc to finally settle the debate. 

This web page lists some of the results.

So, where are we?

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

Eratosthenes observed well over 2000 years ago how the angle up to the sun changes as you move north and south from where the sun is directly overhead.

He formulated a hypothesis to explain this via a mathematical relation between where he was (x) and how the angle up to the sun would change as he moved further away (y).

He used his hypothesis to predict the circumference of the world - if the world was a certain shape (a sphere) and a certain size the distance to move a degree would be a certain distance.

He measured that distance, as have innumerable people since.

The results are exactly what you would expect from a spherical earth and nothing like what you would expect from a flat one.

Who'd have thunk it!

 

[Chinahand]

Goodness I do love the internet.

In researching this I found hints that Qing dynasty China had used cartography techniques similar to Cassinis at a similar time due to Jesuit priests bringing Western knowledge in to China.  The result detailed maps of Imperial China.

And now I find this - a wonderful research project which took these maps and projected their longitude and latitude measurements back onto a spherical projection to assess their accuracy.

For maps from the 1720s they are incredibly accurate - between 8 and 12 km out for lat and long respectively - an early example of successful collaboration between eastern and western ideas!

[paul's got wright]

John with a look back at a heated moment of the globe lie tour x

 

[paul's got wright]

Gets messy at 28 min mark! When, what i can only presume to be, a drunkard baller, arrives with heckling and declerations of love for Galileo! He claims flat earthers would have killed Galileo! Epic x

[manxy]

The US Government agencies repeatedly lie to the general public and presumably to save their jobs and have to fabricate a lie as if the truth became real, then there would be a collapse of control as people would become incensed to finding out the truth.

Watch a minutes worth of pictures to see what the liars send out and yet they want us to believe that this is real space? Come on guys! Trillions of dollars are being earmarked for the mars project and obviously the money isn't going there, so where is it going to? 

 

 

[TheTeapot]

It is the desire to be seen as retarded that gets me.

[RIchard Britten]

Why oh why do you insist on trying (and constantly failing) to engage with PGW?

340+ pages of us heaping evidence, science, fact and data onto him and still he smirks away in his hovel, waiting for the next poster to respond to him.

Give it up.  You are not going to convince him, whether he belives in FE or not, he has played you all for fools and will continue to do so.

[manxman1980]

8 minutes ago, RIchard Britten said:

Why oh why do you insist on trying (and constantly failing) to engage with PGW?

340+ pages of us heaping evidence, science, fact and data onto him and still he smirks away in his hovel, waiting for the next poster to respond to him.

Give it up.  You are not going to convince him, whether he belives in FE or not, he has played you all for fools and will continue to do so.

Whilst I do agree with you I have actually learnt a lot from this thread thanks to the contributions of Chinahand (and some others).  I will openly admit that I was taught the Earth was a globe, saw the photographs and diagrams and never asked the question about the science behind it.

What this thread has done is fill in those missing gaps for me and to improve my understanding of the science behind our understanding of the world.  I now feel confident that I could explain to a child that there are experiments that we can do at home to demonstrate the shape of the Earth.  

My stance is still that PGW is just a wind up merchant and is not really interested in "listening" to anyone else and simply stands behind his position that there is an ongoing discussion regarding the shape of the Earth and uses this thread to prove it.  That may be true to an extent but it is driven my a minority (normally those with deeply held Christian beliefs based on how many times the bible is mentioned by some who believe in a flat earth) and there are a few people out there in internet land who feel compelled to respond and challenge their views. 

[Uhtred]

4 hours ago, RIchard Britten said:

Why oh why do you insist on trying (and constantly failing) to engage with PGW?

340+ pages of us heaping evidence, science, fact and data onto him and still he smirks away in his hovel, waiting for the next poster to respond to him.

Give it up.  You are not going to convince him, whether he belives in FE or not, he has played you all for fools and will continue to do so.

Agreed. I used to think Chinahand was an evangelist - now I know he's a masochist.

[Chinahand]

I wonder if PGW understands that the dots for Eratosthenes and Cassini are from the actual measurements they made, they aren't maths or calculations, they come from actually looking through a sextant, or lining up a back staff and then recording how far you have to move until the angle changes by one degree?  

These measurements allow you to discard hypotheses which do not fit the data, just as PGW quoted:

"The scientific method requires that an hypothesis be ruled out or modified if its predictions are clearly and repeatedly incompatible with experimental tests. Further, no matter how elegant a theory is, its predictions must agree with experimental results if we are to believe that it is avalid description of nature. In physics, as in every experimental science, "experiment is supreme" and experimental verification of hypothetical predictions is absolutely necessary."

So with the experimental data presented - the measurements made by Eratosthenes, Cassini, Everest, etc etc etc the hypotheses being ruled out are the flat earth hypotheses and also the spherical earth hypotheses where the assumed circumference is too big or too small.

And when you get really detailed the data shows exactly spherical, or prolate spheroids are also ruled out by the data, the only hypothesis which continues to accurately predict the evidence in advance is the oblate spheroid.

Now there is one further issue I'd like to discuss ... atmospheric refraction, which is a very slight complication to the story, but it is only a minor one and what is most helpful is that you can take two observations and so basically cancel out the issue.  And while these two observations help us understand that the shape of the earth is a sphere, they once again totally confound the flat earth.

So PGW.  Any idea what the second observation the surveyors took as well as the height of the midday sun?

 

[paul's got wright]

6 hours ago, RIchard Britten said:

Why oh why do you insist on trying (and constantly failing) to engage with PGW?

340+ pages of us heaping evidence, science, fact and data onto him and still he smirks away in his hovel, waiting for the next poster to respond to him.

Give it up.  You are not going to convince him, whether he belives in FE or not, he has played you all for fools and will continue to do so.

what on earth has it got to do with you richard?  people are free to respond as they see fit, cant see what that has got to do with you for the life of me!

US??? what have you provided here please? scientific evidence of some sort? please link me to your post which does this?

HOVEL!!! how very dare you, i live in a nice home thank you very much.

why is this thread making you emotional richard? is it challenging your world view somehow?  do you think that people are being forced to reply to this topic?

if you all stop posting, would that mean the earth is spinning?

do you think nathan's show will stop if you stop posting in this thread? will it make john smith give up the globe lie tour?

the popularity of this topic hasn't dawned on you yet has it richard! keep tuning in to keep up to date with the "flat earth" debate

 

[paul's got wright]

6 hours ago, manxman1980 said:

Whilst I do agree with you I have actually learnt a lot from this thread thanks to the contributions of Chinahand (and some others).  I will openly admit that I was taught the Earth was a globe, saw the photographs and diagrams and never asked the question about the science behind it.

What this thread has done is fill in those missing gaps for me and to improve my understanding of the science behind our understanding of the world.  I now feel confident that I could explain to a child that there are experiments that we can do at home to demonstrate the shape of the Earth.  

My stance is still that PGW is just a wind up merchant and is not really interested in "listening" to anyone else and simply stands behind his position that there is an ongoing discussion regarding the shape of the Earth and uses this thread to prove it.  That may be true to an extent but it is driven my a minority (normally those with deeply held Christian beliefs based on how many times the bible is mentioned by some who believe in a flat earth) and there are a few people out there in internet land who feel compelled to respond and challenge their views. 

stance? like you have a say in it somehow? if you cannot read it is not my problem, but it has been clearly stated why i am here. you just cant handle the truth eminem. desperately seeking fantasy in place of the actual facts of this thread!

flat earthers generally know more about the ball than believers like you, so it i nice you are furthering your education here. what if the naysayers got the thread closed all that time ago? you would have lost out on the oppurtunity to learn here. i wonder why they wanted to close the science thread?

i'm no merchant but you certainly are a customer of the ball beliefs system eminem arnt you! we already know how populzr the subject is. nothing to prove in that sense is there. we all know how popular this thread is!

and you still have offered nothing of substance that scientifically supports your beliefs. you just think chinahand is gonna save you with maths all the time! he simply cannot x

[manxman1980]

@paulsgotwright #yawn

Chinahand - he is to busy engaged in distraction again to respond to your eloquent points.

 

[paul's got wright]

No eminem, you are too religious to realise the difference between a scientific hypothesis, and mathmatical. Maths doesn't cause anything, china is desperately trying to pretend it does. You are a blind follower at this point. Every independent variable he offered was obliterated. All he has left is maths, which isnt a cause in a cause and effect situatuon like a scientific hypothesis test. Dream on m n m x