However, as we can observe the earth being flat directly AND we cannot observe any curvature whatsoever DESPITE knowing what curvature we would expect IF the earth was spherical, the only conclusion we can draw is that the earth is in fact flat, and not spherical

A flat earth can also be round, yes

8 inch per square mile is an approximation via Taylor-Series. It works up to a certain degree until the uncertainty becomes too high

However, as it's an approximation, you would still expect results close to the approximation, you don't. At all.

No, they didn't.

Except that all our laser experiments show no curvature whatsoever. People like D.Marble made multiple such experiments that show no curvature

@road to diabetes Do you see the problem with that?

"The moon might be round, therefore the earth is also round"

That's a non-sequitur

Light doesn't bend at long distances.

Light only diffracts due to refraction

Light only bends around non-zero gravitational gradient fields

Gravitational fields affect anything with a non-zero mass-momentum-stress tensor. Photons have no mass energy, but they have momentum energy and are thus affected by gravity

Wherever there is mass, there is an affect we attribute to gravity

The existence of gravity, however, does not imply the shape of the earth

It's just that 99% of flat earthers are hompsky chonks when it comes to physics

The question has already been answered; perspective

Your eyes can only see so much

I'm literally answering your question, it's simply that you don't like the answer

I feel like you don't really want a conversation. I've given you an adequate answer, you simply reject it based on nothing

And no, other suns aren't "millions" of light years away.

In fact, we don't even know if they're suns. We simply assume they are because they seem to behave similar to our sun

For all intents and purposes, they are illuminating lights in the sky

Saying that we know what stars are is simply dishonest

Because we have no way to observe them in a way that would give us a definitive answer

We *don't*

We simply *assume* they are

I did

I have a formal education in physics

Yes, I've been to university and studies physics, so I know the mathematics necessary, however during my time there I saw firsthand what kind of strange assumptions we make

I don't have a PhD, unfortunately I had to quit university before I could've gotten my bachelor degree due to personal issues.

Mainly linear algebra, analysis I&II, theoretical mechanics and a bit of functional analysis

The mathematics parts are nice, it was interesting to learn about lagrangean mechanics. But one should take the theoretical assumptions made with a grain of salt

Is gaussean method okay?

Sure, give me a moment

My dad works for Nasa

Yes

AIDS doesn't exist

You shouldn't do gay stuff because it's a sin

We're waiting for you to state why you believe the earth is flat

@Seeker of Truth That's not exactly true, the horizon doesn't elevate to eye-level, but your eyes can't see that because they're limited in what they can see. The horizon slighly lowers as you rise up, but because we're talking about huge distances here, you can't really tell the difference unless you have precise tools. But this is simply how perspective works on any surface

@Hamburger Guy I have been convined that the earth is in fact flat

@Seeker of Truth I mean even in the thumbnail you can see how the horizon is not on eye level since it's *under* the eye level of the camera if you point the camera the same direction as you rise. Again, this is simply how horizons work on *any* surface. There's no reason to deny this since it's not an argument against a flat earth

We ought to remain scientifically literate when it comes to this, because a lot of flat earthers aren't, thus making the entire movement seem like laymen

@Seeker of Truth Here, you can even draw it yourself, both on a spherical plane and a flat plane. Simply draw a circle and a flat plane and place an observer at one point, then draw a line of sight parallel to the plane. You will notice that the horizon will *always* be below the line of sight *except* if the observer were the horizon. As you place the observer higher and higher you can see that the angle between the horizon and the line of sight will start to increase. Now remember, we're talking about *huge* distances here. At multiple thousands of miles of altitude that is a fraction of a degree; your eyes cannot physically percieve such a change. But you will notice that the same effect occurs both on a sphere as on a flat plane, simply because both have a horizon

Junk science in the FE community should definitely be called out so that people stop thinking we're illiterate troglodytes like the *muh water would fall off the globe!!* squad.

Most conspircies I believe in are related to jews

Just say kachigga instead

Unfortunately discord fell for the jewish marxist feminist agenda

Earth-chan was created by the jews in a petty attempt to normalize pedophilia

Siri is unfortunately right, we can decipher the components of our sun due to it's blackbody radiation from color, however just because we know what the sun is made out of we can't say how far away it is or how big it is since we can't directly observe those things

Because we don't know the size of the sun or the distance of the sun, all those things are important to whether or not it would burn us.

And since clearly it doesn't, we can at least conclude that the sun is a rather small object

Clearly it didn't, which must mean that the sun isn't as "powerful" and huge as we're told. Furthermore, we can't know for sure how old the sun is, so your first sentence is an assumption

I don't know, nobody *can* know because we can't directly observe it. Anyone who claims to know is making baseless assumptions that cannot be tested

Most of them are, yes. A lot of flat earthers are scientifically illiterate and try to come up with weird explanations themselves. Truth of the matter is, nobody can know for certain. The reason why I'm a flat earther is that the evidence for a spherical earth is very wobbly and based on assumptions at best. In that regard I simply apply occam's razor to the question and pick the most simple answer; namely facts what we *can* observe without the needs for assumptions, such as the earth remaining flat at high altitudes and laser experiments showing that there's no curvature whatsoever

https://fecore.org/final-results-fecore-measurements-disprove-the-wgs84-model-by-proving-flat-lake-surface/

These guys made a series of laser experiments on different lakes to compensate for any differences in altitude, as well as accounting for refraction and whatnot

More or less, IIRC they used a more exact approximation for the supposed earth's curvature rather than the Taylor Approximation used by civil engineering, so even at small distances *especially* they should get results well within the margin of error for approximations

Yes, but with precise laser experiments you ought to find a curvature *for* those 25 miles. It would be a small one, but a curvature nonetheless.

It would be more probmatic to actually measure over longer distances since the margin of error would increase to a point where you can't be sure about your measurements anymore

Also keep in mind, at 25 miles we would expect about 400 feet of curvature when using the Taylor approximation, and for 25 feet the approximation itself is perfectly fine

Mhm

Hold on

http://walter.bislins.ch/bloge/index.asp?page=Eight+Inches+per+Miles+squared+Formula+Derivation

Here, this website adequately explains how the formula is derived using Taylor approximation

The Cavendish experiment is alright though keep in mind that usually you ought to work with no external forces such as friction or torque which isn't always the case

@The Gwench Send full pfp please

Aka ideal environment. The classic *weightless string, no friction, assume π=3* stuff

There should be a gazillion of them

Google scholar pls

So you get actual papers and not esoteric blogs

On Cavendish itself, no

But similar experiments

Redefining constants is a hot topic in science right now

One of my research topics in Uni was redefining the kilogram using avogardo constant in spherical silicon balls

I'm not quite sure why flat earthers deny gravity. Gravity doesn't really change whether or not the earth is flat.

@Fading Except we don't know what planets are

Then they should find a different explanation for planets, because gravity is simply an effect we observe

The point is that we have no idea what planets are, so using gravity to explain anything about planets is senseless.

Yes, I don't believe anyone knows what exactly planets are since there's no way we can directly observe their size or weight.

Yes, but that's just the *apparent* size.

For the *actual* size you'd need the distance, which can't be measured

I mean that's assuming planets have something like an orbit

@Fading Precisely, AFAIK all those things are based on assumptions we cannot test, repeat or replicate. It's variables which we cannot empirically prove, therefore the only honest answer one could give is *I don't know*

I'm not exactly sure who that is, I'm rather bad with names

It's less that I disbelieve it and more that I believe it's based on assumptions which we can't directly test. Saying a planet has an orbit because it follows a certain path is a non-sequitur. A planet following a certain path simply means that a planet is following a certain path, you can't induct anything else from that.

@Fading No, I'm saying that it's would be true if you could successfully falsify it by showing that 1) an orbital model sufficiently represents the observation and 2) any other model *wouldn't* sufficiently represent the observations. So far, you can explain planets by either an orbital model, which also assumes that planets have an orbit or that planets are some kind of wandering lights in the sky that happen to have a path. Using occam's razor on the two would yield that it's more likely that planets do in fact not have an orbit.

@Fading In the case where a model has suffient evidence to be proven, yes. But in this case one model has a ton of assumptions to be made for it to work, while the other one can be clearly observed without the need of assumptions. So in this case you can definitely use occam's razor to reduce it and say that the more simple explanation is *most likely* the true one.

Which doesn't mean that it's *definitely* the true one

Simplicity is an indication of what's more likely to be true when confronted with having to choose between a system that relies on multiple assumptions and one that doesn't rely on them.

It's simply a way to determine what's *more likely* to be true

The one that we can observe, motes of light moving in the sky

That's what I meant, I think my wording was just inadequate

The thing is that it's a huge leap from *things move in the sky* to *planets have an orbit around a gigantic ball of gas*. What I'm trying to say is that we cannot go any further from the observation that we can see lights moving in the sky since we lack the data to come to any other conclusion and most likely will never have the data to do so

So unless we can *directly observe* planets orbiting a sun, which would confirm the hypothesized model, where's no way we can be absolutely certain that planets have an orbit

It is, but the only thing you can tell from that is that, again, things seem to move in the sky. You can't possibly make the assumption that gravity keeps them in orbit because we don't know what planets are made out of and if they're even affected by gravity.

Okay, but then you also have to *falsify* it by showing that it's *only* gravity affection them and nothing else

Because gravity is an adequate explanation, but so is that planets are wandering motes of light in the sky.

Except that it's exactly how it works