Originally Posted by
Cosmic Yak
So they are saying it doesn't actually rise or set at all, but instead is switched on and off to simulate sunrise and sunset? At sequenced times that make it look like the earth is round?
You're right, this is a whole new breed of madness.
It's been a while since I read it up and I have no desire to revisit that cess-pit but from memory...
The sun doesn't switch on/off. it circles directly over the equator at an altitude of approx 3000 km (or miles. oddly 3000 of either depending on nationality) thus, the spotlight effect means that only a portion of the disc illuminated. We don't see it at night, because it isn't pointed our way at that time of day. As it approaches our location, the sun's rays are subtly bent by the atmosphere to give an optical illusion of the sun rising over the horizon, with the reverse being the case at sunset. To provide seasonal variation in the suns altitude, it has a helical path rising higher than 3000 miles/kms in the summer and lower than 3000 miles/kms in the winter.
Oh and there is no gravity, by Newton's Laws the disc is simply accelerating at 9.8 m/s straight up all the time. Doesn't that mean that by now we have surpassed light speed? Sure, but the notion that light speed is a limit is somehow wrong thanks to a jumped up patent clerk in Switzerland.
So what's beyond the Great Antarctic Ice Wall? "They" wont let us find out. Every government in the world contributes to a communal border force atop the Ice Wall and prevents overflight too. (yeah that works out at millions of troops and equipment, but screw it).
That is about as much crazy that I can type at one sitting.