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Old 7th August 2017, 11:33 AM   #121
Imhotep
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Originally Posted by Foster Zygote View Post
D.Marble has his Flat Earth Offensive stuff written all over the side of his van. He's a true believer and he really, really wants people to praise him. He'll be mixing up some poisoned Flavor Aid in within a few years.
Oh boy...

Well the next generation can claim it was a CIA operation to kill off all the Flat Earthers.
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Old 7th August 2017, 02:10 PM   #122
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Originally Posted by Foster Zygote View Post
To quote the much missed Dr. Adequate, "The stupid, it burns!".

The latest video from flat earth cult leader wannabe D.Marble addresses the upcoming North American solar eclipse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z5-9RAZbKE
I love the fact he forgets the earth and moon orbit the sun as a pair. I'd suggest he redo his global model but I don't think his flashlight is strong enough to be seen several miles away.
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Old 7th August 2017, 03:14 PM   #123
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Flat earth

This question seems so obvious someone must have asked it before but if so, I missed it. So, if the earth is flat, where's the edge? Can I go there? And take pictures? And throw my paper airplanes off the edge?
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Old 8th August 2017, 01:44 AM   #124
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Originally Posted by thines View Post
This question seems so obvious someone must have asked it before but if so, I missed it. So, if the earth is flat, where's the edge? Can I go there? And take pictures? And throw my paper airplanes off the edge?
This again? right once more. There is an ice wall encircling the flat earth beyond which an edge may lie. This ice wall is patrolled by the UN with millions of troops and unmarked black helicopters to prevent us Muggles finding out the real truth . I am not making this up. Such are the mad claims.

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Old 8th August 2017, 01:23 PM   #125
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Google "flat earth map". Not only are they hilarious, but they are also beautiful.
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Old 8th August 2017, 02:37 PM   #126
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Originally Posted by DGM View Post
I love the fact he forgets the earth and moon orbit the sun as a pair. I'd suggest he redo his global model but I don't think his flashlight is strong enough to be seen several miles away.
And he's holding his model moon just a few inches from his model earth. If he's got a 12 inch diameter globe, then his model moon should be some 30 feet away. So the actual moon covers an orbital distance some 20.34 times greater than he's showing in his "devastating" demonstration, so it's actually moving with an orbital velocity 20.34 times faster than he shows.
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Old 8th August 2017, 02:42 PM   #127
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Originally Posted by Foster Zygote View Post
And he's holding his model moon just a few inches from his model earth. If he's got a 12 inch diameter globe, then his model moon should be some 30 feet away. So the actual moon covers an orbital distance some 20.34 times greater than he's showing in his "devastating" demonstration, so it's actually moving with an orbital velocity 20.34 times faster than he shows.
Scale is not his friend...........
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Old 9th August 2017, 08:46 AM   #128
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Originally Posted by DGM View Post
Scale is not his friend...........
I honestly don't think that flat earthers have any aptitude for spatial modeling. As a group, I don't think they'd do particularly well on a standardized intelligence test like the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, but I strongly suspect that most, if not all, would do very poorly on the spatial modeling parts of the test.

That's not to say that the inability to think in three dimensions makes one a flat earther. And I'm sure that D. Marble in particular, while unable to work out simple geometry himself, has comprehended it after I've explained it to him, because his reaction to having his errors exposed is to block me and delete the posts explaining why he is wrong. This tells me that he simply wants to believe that he is a highly erudite Truth Crusaderİ, because it makes him feel special. So he just ignores all evidence that threatens the fairy tale construct that his fragile ego so depends upon. I suppose if I lived in a van and crapped in a bucket, I might have self-esteem issues as well.
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Old 9th August 2017, 04:35 PM   #129
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That D. Marble is such an idiot. He showed the experiment where a bowling ball and a feather were dropped at the same time in a vacuum. They of course hit the ground at the same time. He claims things fall due to density. If this were true, wouldn't the ball hit the ground first (in a vacuum) due to it being more dense than the feather?
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Old 10th August 2017, 06:34 PM   #130
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Originally Posted by mike81 View Post
That D. Marble is such an idiot. He showed the experiment where a bowling ball and a feather were dropped at the same time in a vacuum. They of course hit the ground at the same time. He claims things fall due to density. If this were true, wouldn't the ball hit the ground first (in a vacuum) due to it being more dense than the feather?
Don't confuse him with facts. People are just supposed to take his arguments and pin them to the refrigerator with magnets and tell him how really smart he is for making those videos. Don't tell him that buoyancy needs gravity to work. That just makes him upset.

Interestingly, I've seen a video from a zero g drop chamber test with a helium balloon in the chamber. It's held in a clip until a split second after the chamber is dropped, at which point the clip is electrically released. The helium balloon neither rises nor falls within the chamber for the entire duration of the free fall. After the chamber stops at the bottom, the balloon hits the bottom, then rises up to the top.
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Old 10th August 2017, 06:41 PM   #131
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For Flat Earther countering, I found Mick West / Soundly's Lake Pontchartrain work particularly effective, works well with FE trolls on Facebook for space.com and ISS.
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Old 10th August 2017, 07:06 PM   #132
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Originally Posted by LSSBB View Post
For Flat Earther countering, I found Mick West / Soundly's Lake Pontchartrain work particularly effective, works well with FE trolls on Facebook for space.com and ISS.
The interesting thing is that you can see flat earth memes spread like viruses. The latest argument I've seen, and one that I'm sure will spread throughout the FE cult, is that the electricity in the wires somehow bends the light because... fields... or something.

And I just came across this one from December of last year that makes the same argument as D. Marble's video, which was an idea that I'm sure he stole from Joseph Green, who doubtless stole it from someone else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvbPs7AqOl8

Someone remarked how funny they thought this guy was in his video, but I see someone who's either really, really high, or mentally ill.

The thing is that it's really hard to track down the sources of these ideas because I've found that flat earthers rarely cite the sources of their arguments. This seems to be because they typically want to be perceived as the one's who thought of them.
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Old 10th August 2017, 07:50 PM   #133
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Originally Posted by Foster Zygote View Post
The interesting thing is that you can see flat earth memes spread like viruses. The latest argument I've seen, and one that I'm sure will spread throughout the FE cult, is that the electricity in the wires somehow bends the light because... fields... or something.

And I just came across this one from December of last year that makes the same argument as D. Marble's video, which was an idea that I'm sure he stole from Joseph Green, who doubtless stole it from someone else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvbPs7AqOl8

Someone remarked how funny they thought this guy was in his video, but I see someone who's either really, really high, or mentally ill.

The thing is that it's really hard to track down the sources of these ideas because I've found that flat earthers rarely cite the sources of their arguments. This seems to be because they typically want to be perceived as the one's who thought of them.
The electromagnetic excuse is a non-starter, because it's obvious the water doesn't fall off away from the power lines, farther from their theorized electromagnetic field.

Maybe they're just trying to merge with Electric Universe crap. Just as persistent in their nonsense.

Most FE aren't even that imaginative, they try to call the Pontchatrain curve "perspective" or just regurgitate yt links.
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Old 14th August 2017, 05:04 PM   #134
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Here's a well done rebuttal to D.Marble's eclipse nonsense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46HXJGzJcuc&t
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Old 18th August 2017, 01:47 PM   #135
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Some funny stuff from Dave at the Flat Earth Podcast

Science has never been able to make a shadow with a distant light get smaller as the object moves away from the surface the shadow is on.

Here's an example: Hold a golf ball against a wall with a light at any distance and notice the shadow on the wall is about the same size as the ball itself. Now, move the ball away from the wall towards the light and what you will see is the shadow gets bigger and fuzzier until it no longer can cast a shadow at all.

This is not what we see during a solar eclipse. We see a shadow approximately 70 miles wide made by an object that is suppose to be 2,000 miles wide and 238,000 miles away. This is complete nonsense and impossible.
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Old 19th August 2017, 01:03 AM   #136
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Originally Posted by Imhotep View Post
Some funny stuff from Dave at the Flat Earth Podcast

Science has never been able to make a shadow with a distant light get smaller as the object moves away from the surface the shadow is on.

Here's an example: Hold a golf ball against a wall with a light at any distance and notice the shadow on the wall is about the same size as the ball itself. Now, move the ball away from the wall towards the light and what you will see is the shadow gets bigger and fuzzier until it no longer can cast a shadow at all.

This is not what we see during a solar eclipse. We see a shadow approximately 70 miles wide made by an object that is suppose to be 2,000 miles wide and 238,000 miles away. This is complete nonsense and impossible.
Yup - did something similar myself to demonstrate to a flat earther that the central small shadow in an eclipse is not all of the shadow:

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Old 26th August 2017, 11:29 AM   #137
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Originally Posted by Imhotep View Post
Some funny stuff from Dave at the Flat Earth Podcast

Science has never been able to make a shadow with a distant light get smaller as the object moves away from the surface the shadow is on.

Here's an example: Hold a golf ball against a wall with a light at any distance and notice the shadow on the wall is about the same size as the ball itself. Now, move the ball away from the wall towards the light and what you will see is the shadow gets bigger and fuzzier until it no longer can cast a shadow at all.

This is not what we see during a solar eclipse. We see a shadow approximately 70 miles wide made by an object that is suppose to be 2,000 miles wide and 238,000 miles away. This is complete nonsense and impossible.
The darker umbra is smaller than the Moon, but the outer edge of the penumbra is larger than the Moon. This is a consequence of the Sun's 1/2 degree angular diameter.

A distant star, which is anglarly a point source and so has its light arriving at Earth all parallel, casts a shadow of the Moon on Earth that is the same size as the Moon.

Next time you're in a plane on a sunny day, observe the plane's shadow on the ground after take-off. It starts out at ground level as pretty sharply defined. But with increasing altirude, the plane's shadow becomes less distinct and 'fuzzy', the outer edge getting larger, the shadow eventually fading to essentially invisibility. During this process the central, darkest part of the shadow shrinks; it goes to less than full shadow once the plane is high enough that as seen from the ground no part of it fully blocks the Sun.

If the Sun were instead a white dwarf, which is about the size of Earth, it would be almost a point source in the sky and would cast *very* much sharper shadows. You would see a still pretty well defined shadow of your plane a few kilometers above the ground.

The point here is that the geometry of a shadow depends critically on the angular size of the light source.
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Old 31st August 2017, 11:09 PM   #138
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This man is a lawyer who has won jury trials. He is no fool.

https://www.facebook.com/flatearthre...type=2&theater

Checkmate Spherists.
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Old 1st September 2017, 06:43 AM   #139
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Originally Posted by Alareth View Post
This man is a lawyer who has won jury trials. He is no fool.

https://www.facebook.com/flatearthre...type=2&theater

Checkmate Spherists.
He claims not to be a fool, which may well be true, but he appears not to have heard of gravity.
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Old 1st September 2017, 08:13 AM   #140
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Originally Posted by Alareth View Post
Checkmate Spherists.
I'm convinced.

Seriously though, while this is a particularly absurd example none of the Flat Earth "proof" is much better. I disagree with religious belief but I can at least get it for the most part because it openly relies on magic - the flat earth stuff I can't even begin to understand how they're convincing themselves.
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Old 1st September 2017, 10:18 PM   #141
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Winning jury trials is no sure indicator of scientific competence, unless those trials rely on science and the jury is comprised of scientists--or at least scientifically literate laymen.
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Old 1st September 2017, 10:48 PM   #142
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I've enjoyed the videos in this playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgY8...vTP_WM43B4ebNq
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Old 13th November 2017, 03:33 PM   #143
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Originally Posted by cow_cat View Post
I thought of this thread at work on Friday. For reasons too boring to go in to, I had to reboot an Inertial Navigation System a number of times. For those who don't know, you can think of an INS as three very accurate gyroscopes in a box, which can very accurately sense small amounts of movement or rotation. Using this movement or rotation information and knowing where you started from, it is possible to accurately track your movement so that you know where you are with a high degree of accuracy. Modern aircraft normally use a kalman-filter blended solution of GPS and INS information for navigation.
Isn't that how luxury cars with in-car navigation systems worked in the days before GPS?
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Old 13th November 2017, 05:00 PM   #144
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No idea. It's certainly possible, but an inertial system would not know your initial position. So there would have to be a way of inputting your position as you start, then some way of rendering that information onto a map, or in some other useful format. I doubt your average luxury car owner would want to wait 5 minutes for it to align before driving off though...

Inertial navigation systems also drift, so some kind of way of updating the position, or some clever coding would be required to assume the car is on a road so that the drift in the system can be countered. I'd likely be interested to see an example of it though
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Old 14th November 2017, 01:40 AM   #145
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Originally Posted by BBC
Why do people still think the Earth is flat?

The Flat Earth International Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, attracted hundreds of attendees who believe the shape of the Earth is a disc instead of a sphere.

Short BBC report on the FE Conference HERE

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Old 14th November 2017, 03:00 AM   #146
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Originally Posted by CompusMentus View Post
Short BBC report on the FE Conference HERE

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I was just about to post that 'Satan's greatest lie'
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Old 14th November 2017, 06:49 AM   #147
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Originally Posted by CompusMentus View Post
Short BBC report on the FE Conference HERE

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"A prankster turned a road sign around and the attendees all fell off the edge of the Earth"
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Old 15th November 2017, 05:06 PM   #148
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I saw the curvature

Once I rode in a passenger airliner over the pacific ocean. I thought I saw the horizon curve, but I wasn't sure, so I got out a piece of paper and put it on the window. Sure enough, I was unable to make the horizon touch the paper at both ends and the middle. It always stuck out a 2 or 3 millimeters at one spot or another.
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Old 16th November 2017, 12:56 AM   #149
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Originally Posted by ShamelessGit View Post
Once I rode in a passenger airliner over the pacific ocean. I thought I saw the horizon curve, but I wasn't sure, so I got out a piece of paper and put it on the window. Sure enough, I was unable to make the horizon touch the paper at both ends and the middle. It always stuck out a 2 or 3 millimeters at one spot or another.

Whooosh! Please, dumb it down for us.
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Old 16th November 2017, 01:04 PM   #150
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Press Release: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017

Quote:
Gravitational waves finally captured
On 14 September 2015, the universe's gravitational waves were observed for the very first time. The waves, which were predicted by Albert Einstein a hundred years ago, came from a collision between two black holes. It took 1.3 billion years for the waves to arrive at the LIGO detector in the USA.

The signal was extremely weak when it reached Earth, but is already promising a revolution in astrophysics. Gravitational waves are an entirely new way of observing the most violent events in space and testing the limits of our knowledge.
A revolution you say?

Two Stars Slammed Into Each Other And Solved Half Of Astronomy’s Problems. What Comes Next?

Quote:
it’s hard to overstate the enormous leap forward that astronomy took on Aug. 17, 2017.

On that day, astronomers bore witness to the titanic collision of two neutron stars, the densest things in the universe besides black holes. In the collision’s wake, astronomers answered multiple major questions that have dominated their field for a generation. They solved the origin of gamma-ray bursts, mysterious jets of hardcore radiation that could potentially roast Earth. They glimpsed the forging of heavy metals, like gold and platinum. They measured the rate at which the expansion of the universe is accelerating. They caught light at the same time as gravitational waves, confirmation that waves move at the speed of light. And there was more, and there is much more yet to come from this discovery. It all happened so quickly and revealed so much that astronomers are already facing a different type of question: Now what?
Why yes, a revolution.

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Old 16th November 2017, 06:54 PM   #151
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Originally Posted by ShamelessGit View Post
Once I rode in a passenger airliner over the pacific ocean. I thought I saw the horizon curve, but I wasn't sure, so I got out a piece of paper and put it on the window. Sure enough, I was unable to make the horizon touch the paper at both ends and the middle. It always stuck out a 2 or 3 millimeters at one spot or another.
Here's your curve.

https://www.metabunk.org/soundly-pro...artrain.t8939/
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