View of Snowdonia From Dublin - Mirage?

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Thanks for your response. I shall look into the sticks experiment, although on the FE model the outcome would be the same, as per the Eratosthenes experiment with sticks would too.

As far the Foucault pendulum this requires an electromagnet to keep it in motion. So I'm unclear on what this Foucault pendulum is supposed to prove.

Gyrocompasses I don't fully understand. As for absolute north thats in the same spot for both models.
The "sticks experiment" shows a different outcome for both models as soon as you use sticks on more than 2 different latitudes.
Try my pizza box experiment on/around September 21st!

The pendulum I have seen was mounted over a solid stone floor, no electromagnets were needed. You may note that neither brass nor lead are magnetic:
Article:
The experiment, still visible at the “Musée des Arts et Métiers” (Fig. 1), was then repeated at the Panthéon in March 1851, using a 67-m-long pendulum with a hollow brass sphere, 17 cm in diameter, filled with lead to reach a mass of 28 kg.


A gyrocompass is at its core a spinning object suspended horizontally (e.g. floating on water) but able to rotate freely in the other directions. The axis of rotation of that spinning object will shift and eventually point North. There is no reason for it to do so if the Earth was stationary and unmoving.
 
"water always find its level" contradicted on a daily basis if you live near the ocean

Are you refuting that water always finds level? What you maybe be referring to is ocean tides which are more pronounced in the northern hemisphere.

I am saying that "water finds its level" meaning that this level is perfectly flat is wrong; and I am saying that this claim has never been proven in any way.

By the way, what do you think is causing the tides on an immovable Earth?

-- Flat Earth does not have a working map, when
it should be very easy to map a flat Earth on a flat piece of paper- agreed there is not absolute accurate map in existence. FE maps fall short even further than globe maps, but since we've had the technology in the last 50 years to produce a more accurate map of earth, all the money and focus has been spent on globe maps so they have a running headstart on this topic.
Dude, Gerhard Mercator lived in the 16th century; he had much less resources available to him than you have, since you seem to be using a computer to access the Internet. Any Flat Earther living now has a lot more money and resources than Mercator had when he first produced his maps and globes. The modern Flat Earth movement has been around for over 100 years, longer than the time span between the discovery of America and Mercator's death. This isn't about any "head start", this is a complete and utter failure to get an essential piece of evidence produced.
 
Also full moon in Thailand is considerably smaller than a full moon here in UK from my experience.
How have you measured this?
-- you ultimately also need to believe that nothing in the sky is even close to where we see it- please elaborate on this?

---- especially if you consider sunrise and sunset in summer in the Southern Hemisphere (e.g. New Zealand) -
---- find a webcam in christchurch that is trained to the southern sky in December
---- or simply look up the directions for sunrise and sunset on timeanddate.com
--I shall look into this thanks.
Even in Thailand in December, the sun rises south of East and sets South of West. This will only work on any Flat Earth model I have seen if light is considerably bent sideways, a phenomenon that has never been shown to actually happen.
https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/thailand/phuket?month=12&year=2021
 
You seem to have a good understanding of the Foucault pendulum. Please could you explain in layman terms how this pendulum proves rotation? Because if you start a pendulum which stops, whether its friction/ air resistance or not, it seems a failed experiment, needing an electromagnet to keep it in motion. What does a pendulum which eventually comes to rest actually prove? Thanks
A properly designed pendulum (long and heavy) will keep swinging for a day if started in the morning. On an unmoving Earth, you would expect it to keep swinging in the direction you started it in, or maybe randomly deviate from that. What actually happens is that the direction of the swing rotates like clockwork in the same manner and at the same speed each time you repeat the experiment (which was each day in case of the physics building), so much so that you can actually paint a clock on the floor and measure time accurately by this rotation. The speed of that rotation depends on the latitude of the pendulum; at the North Pole, it would rotate ~360° in 24 hours as the globe rotates "below it"; at higher latitudes it becomes less until it won't rotate at all at the equator, and rotate the other way going further south.

There is no other explanation for the rotation of this pendulum (and no other way to predict it) other than to assume that we're on a globe that rotates once per day. Thus, Foucault's Pendulum proves that Earth rotates.

Physics and astronomy professor Jim LaBelle discusses the science behind a classic physics experiment, Foucault's pendulum, while seated next to Dartmouth's pendulum in Fairchild Tower.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMxLVDuf4VY
 
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If you had a hypothesis that a pendulum would swing indefinitely, then if it came to a stop the hypothesis would be falsified. Since no-one has proposed such a hypothesis the fact that it comes to a stop does not make it a failed experiment. But I think we have all spent/wasted enough time replying to you already. I have recently been pondering whether flat-earthers or UFO-enthusiasts are more annoying. I was inclined to think it was the latter, so thank you for reminding me just how annoying flat-earthers can be.
You didn't answer my question, How does a pendulum that comes to rest prove the earth is rotating?
For the record no flat earther I know believes in UFO's, so at least we can agree on one thing for now.

The foucault pendulum is on par with the Cavendish gravity experiment. They tell us nothing.

So if you have any other examples of experiments that show us the earth rotates then I'm all ears.
 
The "sticks experiment" shows a different outcome for both models as soon as you use sticks on more than 2 different latitudes.
Try my pizza box experiment on/around September 21st!

The pendulum I have seen was mounted over a solid stone floor, no electromagnets were needed. You may note that neither brass nor lead are magnetic:
Article:
The experiment, still visible at the “Musée des Arts et Métiers” (Fig. 1), was then repeated at the Panthéon in March 1851, using a 67-m-long pendulum with a hollow brass sphere, 17 cm in diameter, filled with lead to reach a mass of 28 kg.


A gyrocompass is at its core a spinning object suspended horizontally (e.g. floating on water) but able to rotate freely in the other directions. The axis of rotation of that spinning object will shift and eventually point North. There is no reason for it to do so if the Earth was stationary and unmoving.
Yes you and @Amber Robot have put a good case forward with regards to sticks and shadow experiments and will look into this.

As for the gyrocompass I'm aware of the mechanics of them, how that relates to earth and if it indefinitely proves the earths rotation i will need a better understanding and shall look into this further.

Your suggestions are exactly the kind of points I want to explore to disprove flat earth. Like in my original post (which was edited by amin) the fact that the horizon always raises to eye level and how we can see too far, is exactly whats got my attention.

Thanks
 
I am saying that "water finds its level" meaning that this level is perfectly flat is wrong; and I am saying that this claim has never been proven in any way.

By the way, what do you think is causing the tides on an immovable Earth?


Dude, Gerhard Mercator lived in the 16th century; he had much less resources available to him than you have, since you seem to be using a computer to access the Internet. Any Flat Earther living now has a lot more money and resources than Mercator had when he first produced his maps and globes. The modern Flat Earth movement has been around for over 100 years, longer than the time span between the discovery of America and Mercator's death. This isn't about any "head start", this is a complete and utter failure to get an essential piece of evidence produced.
Water always running down and finding level whether its the sea, a lake, a pond or a puddle is observable every where.

Tides is a different ball game altogether, tides being heavily effected in the northern hemisphere and significantly less in the southern hemisphere is interesting. The great lakes not classed as tidal is also interesting which raises more questions.

As far you asking me or any flat eather to produce a FE map is unrealistic, especially that the current globe map we use has decrepncies, in continent sizes, in time zone overlaps, even the diomede islands, which are 2.2miles or so apart but 21hours difference between them makes no sense. Seems like they are compensating for something.

So with all the funding and technology, aviation available to institutional cartographers, they still fall short.
 
How have you measured this?

Even in Thailand in December, the sun rises south of East and sets South of West. This will only work on any Flat Earth model I have seen if light is considerably bent sideways, a phenomenon that has never been shown to actually happen.
https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/thailand/phuket?month=12&year=2021
Not sure we a starting from the same point regarding the suns movement on a flat earth model. So this is a difficult discussion to have if we have different models in our heads. What I'm very sure off is that some parts of the FE model don't make sense in the southern hemisphere, and rely on assumptions, so yes agree with you somewhat.

If we were to tally up all the things that rely on assumptions in the heliocentric model vs the geocentric model, I wonder which one would lean on more assumptions. My feeling is heliocentric model would, but I'm biased at the moment in regards to the two models.
 
You didn't answer my question, How does a pendulum that comes to rest prove the earth is rotating?

Because a pendulum can disprove the flat earth model in less than an hour, and accurately be shown to be tracking the predicted rotation according the the sperical earth model in only a couple of hours, long before it comes to a rest. Why would it later coming to rest change those conclusions, in particular as the whole time it's slowing down it's repeatedly reinforcing those conclusions?
 
As far you asking me or any flat eather to produce a FE map is unrealistic, especially that the current globe map we use has decrepncies, in continent sizes, in time zone overlaps, even the diomede islands, which are 2.2miles or so apart but 21hours difference between them makes no sense. Seems like they are compensating for something.

Which region of the map presented by google earth do you claim has the greatest discrepancies, how large are those discrepancies, and how was that discrepancy measured?

In what way does a government chosing to align their clocks at some particular interval to some other international body's arbitrary time standards change the *geometry*? Your argument makes as much sense as "how can one country on the map be coloured red, and the country next to it is coloured blue?" - is that an issue for you, are you happy with arbitrary colourings on (flat earth ones, if it keeps you happy) maps? Time zones aren't the map, time zones are something arbitrary and artificial that are drawn on the pre-existing map.

And you've not explained *why* is it unrealistic for you to do this simple thing, all you've done is change the subject onto our maps, which will satisfy any testable requirement you k of them. Support your claim - why is it unrealistic?
 
Water always running down and finding level whether its the sea, a lake, a pond or a puddle is observable every where.
Water follows any force. I can easily demonstrate that.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJpPETh_1-s

There is no reason to assume that a water level is flat if the force acting on the water is not uniform and parallel. (And in fact, tides are another proof that water follows any force.)

So if "down" is towards the center of a ball, the water level is spherical. Archimedes, the inventor of hydrostatics, wrote as much in his textbook over 2000 years ago.

You need to actually measure if the sea, a lake, pond or puddle is flat, or if it's only almost flat. But if you look the right way, you can even see it's curved.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/beautiful-photographs-that-show-the-earths-curvature.11456/

Tides is a different ball game altogether, tides being heavily effected in the northern hemisphere and significantly less in the southern hemisphere is interesting. The great lakes not classed as tidal is also interesting which raises more questions.
Article:
True tides—changes in water level caused by the gravitational forces of the sun and moon—do occur in a semi-diurnal (twice daily) pattern on the Great Lakes. Studies indicate that the Great Lakes spring tide, the largest tides caused by the combined forces of the sun and moon, is less than five centimeters in height. These minor variations are masked by the greater fluctuations in lake levels produced by wind and barometric pressure changes.


As far you asking me or any flat eather to produce a FE map is unrealistic, especially that the current globe map we use has decrepncies, in continent sizes, in time zone overlaps, even the diomede islands, which are 2.2miles or so apart but 21hours difference between them makes no sense. Seems like they are compensating for something.

So with all the funding and technology, aviation available to institutional cartographers, they still fall short.
They have 23 hours of time difference because the international date line is between them. This is not a discrepancy of any kind.
Time zones and the international date line are the result of political agreements and not natural features of the world we live in - same as daylight savings time!
Article:
The Diomede Islands are a pair of rocky islands located in the middle of the Bering Strait between mainland Alaska and Siberia. Though the two islands are only 3.8 km apart and clearly in a single group, they are separated by the International Date line which also marks the international border between Russia and the United States. Big Diomede is owned by Russia and Little Diomede is owned by the USA. Additionally, Big Diomede is 23 hours ahead of Little Diomede owing to the International Date Line that passes between them, because of this they are sometimes called Tomorrow Island and Yesterday Isle, respectively.
diomede-island-map2[3].jpg

The "current globe map" is a globe, and there are no discrepancies in continent sizes. Flat maps of the world have these, because you can't turn the surface of a ball flat without wrinkles.

But every Flat Earth map I've seen so far has got the shape of Australia horribly wrong, and there's no reason for that if Earth is flat.


These Flat Earth claims simply don't hold up, and provably so.
But they can give you no clear explanation how 100 years of the FE movement and some very well-funded efforts have failed to outdo a 16th century cartographer, and have no proof or measurement of a sea or lake actually being flatter than it ought to be, given the huge size of the globe. (The drop-off is only 8 inches 1 mile out - do you think you could see that with the naked eye?)

The Flat Earthers have no proof that the Earth is flat. All they can do is sow doubt in the Globe Earth, all the while relying on the science and technology that established science provides them with. If you start questioning the FE claims with the same zeal that you want to question established science, it would quickly fall apart. So you need to ask yourself, why are you taking their side in this?
 
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Not sure we a starting from the same point regarding the suns movement on a flat earth model. So this is a difficult discussion to have if we have different models in our heads. What I'm very sure off is that some parts of the FE model don't make sense in the southern hemisphere, and rely on assumptions, so yes agree with you somewhat.

If we were to tally up all the things that rely on assumptions in the heliocentric model vs the geocentric model, I wonder which one would lean on more assumptions. My feeling is heliocentric model would, but I'm biased at the moment in regards to the two models.
The heliocentric model has proven superior because Kepler's astronomical tables were able to more accurately predict the movements of the planets for longer in advance than any other set of assumptions, proving them more correct than the other assumptions. That was 400 years ago.
Article:
The Rudolphine Tables (Latin: Tabulae Rudolphinae) consist of a star catalogue and planetary tables published by Johannes Kepler in 1627, using observational data collected by Tycho Brahe (1546–1601). The tables are named in memory of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, in whose employ Brahe and Kepler had begun work on the tables. The main purpose of the Rudolphine tables was to allow the computation of the positions of the then known planets of the Solar System, and they were considerably more precise than earlier such tables.

Science tests assumptions before accepting them.
Kepler's astronomical tables were used for sextant navigation on sailing ships, any inaccuracies would have ended up in ships mis-reading their positions; they'd soon have been proven wrong in the age of sail.
Flat Earth assumptions have consistently failed the test where they lead to consequences that diverge from established science. This is the reason why there is no Flat Earth map -- because none have ever worked. And that's because it's impossible.
 
This thread has gone waaaaaaay off topic: it's supposed to be about a photograph of Wales, but now it's on to water, pendulums, the moon, etc.

Suggest a split and moving to 'Rambles'?
 
This thread has gone waaaaaaay off topic: it's supposed to be about a photograph of Wales, but now it's on to water, pendulums, the moon, etc.

Suggest a split and moving to 'Rambles'?
Haha yes it has, sometimes difficult not to. The original post was about earths curvature or lack of and atmospheric conditions which effect what we see.

All things mentioned are valid really, although its not the most coherent thread to follow with the zig zag of topics.
 
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A properly designed pendulum (long and heavy) will keep swinging for a day if started in the morning. On an unmoving Earth, you would expect it to keep swinging in the direction you started it in, or maybe randomly deviate from that. What actually happens is that the direction of the swing rotates like clockwork in the same manner and at the same speed each time you repeat the experiment (which was each day in case of the physics building), so much so that you can actually paint a clock on the floor and measure time accurately by this rotation. The speed of that rotation depends on the latitude of the pendulum; at the North Pole, it would rotate ~360° in 24 hours as the globe rotates "below it"; at higher latitudes it becomes less until it won't rotate at all at the equator, and rotate the other way going further south.

There is no other explanation for the rotation of this pendulum (and no other way to predict it) other than to assume that we're on a globe that rotates once per day. Thus, Foucault's Pendulum proves that Earth rotates.

A good thread which confirms the unreliability of Foucault's pendulum as a way to prove earths rotation.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/q...cault-pendulum-really-prove-earth-is-rotating

"If Earth weren't rotating and a Foucault pendulum started in a state with zero velocity, it would keep swinging back and forth along the same line. If at its highest point, it has a tiny velocity in a direction perpendicular to the direction to the lowest point on the pendulum, then maybe it would have such a tiny deviation from moving exactly back and forth that a human can't see that tiny deviation with their own eyes, but that deviation would result in a slow precession of the pendulum and a day is so long that the direction it's swinging in would rotate a significant amount."

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About the construction of a Foucault pendulum:

I have read several accounts from teams that had constructed a Foucault pendulum. And indeed a recurring theme is that is very hard to get the parasitic effects down to a level where the Foucault effect dominates. Many a time a team saw with elation how their pendulum finally showed precession, only to realize that it was in the wrong direction. Also it is common to add a driving mechanism, so that the swing doesn't decay. But it's very hard to eliminate a bias from the driving mechanism. I read an account that went something like this. "We tweaked our setup until we obtained the theoretical precession rate. To be honest, we can't be sure whether our pendulum is doing a true Foucault precession, or whether we've merely dialed in the precession rate."

So, yeah: from a purely scientific point of view a Foucault pendulum setup is not a particularly good way to demonstrate that the Earth is rotating. (However, Foucault's gyroscope was, I'll get to that in a few paragraphs.)

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There is a 1969 paper by E. O. Schulz-DuBois titled, 'Foucault pendulum Experiment by Kamerlingh Onnes and Degenerate Perturbation Theory', discussing the research into pendulum swing by H. Kamerling Onnes

Schulz-DuBois writes about the solutions to the equation of motion for the asymmetrical case: "the first and second eigenfunctions describe ellipses with interchanged major and minor axes, and with opposite sense of circulation. [...] If the pendulum is excited to an orbit described by an eigenfunction if will continue to move in this orbit without change [...]. Any other excitation involves both eigenfunctions. Due to the frequency difference between them the pattern of pendulum motion changes with time."

So: the problem of imperfect construction is acute.

(For completeness:
Kamerling Onnes had designed his setup in such a way that it was adjustable. He devised procedures to systematically home in on adjustments to eliminate any asymmetry. Schulz-DuBois writes: 'When adjusted his pendulum performed as expected from unsophisticated theory.')

***I think the thread cited on pyhsics.stackexchange highlights the issues of the Foucault pendulum. The gyroscope Foucault later commissioned, and to this day seems a more credible way to measure rotation, like I've said earlier in the thread I need a better understanding of this, and how to apply to both models.
 
Because a pendulum can disprove the flat earth model in less than an hour, and accurately be shown to be tracking the predicted rotation according the the sperical earth model in only a couple of hours, long before it comes to a rest. Why would it later coming to rest change those conclusions, in particular as the whole time it's slowing down it's repeatedly reinforcing those conclusions?
I'm not sure it would, see my reply to @Mendel
 
Haha yes it has, sometimes difficult not to. The original post was about earth's curvature or lack of and atmospheric conditions which affect what we see.

All things mentioned are valid really, although its not the most coherent thread to follow with the zig zag of topics.

In other forums, it's normal. But at metabunk the technique is to:

- Post one claim of evidence (eg, "photo of Wales impossible on a globe")
- Investigate that claim
- Explain it (eg, "with unusual but not uncommon atmospheric conditions it's perfectly normal")
- Stay on topic
- And if other claims are being put forward (eg, stuff to do with the moon, pendulums, etc) then new threads are started.

It takes a little while to get used to. But it's better in the long run. :)
 
This thread has diverged from the original topic and has been closed. New topics in new threads. Search first.

If you just want to chat, use PMs.
 
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