I'm obsessed with flat earthers

@plasturion airplane flights are planned with a little thing we call "math", along with precision instruments that allow pilots to determine their position in 3D space

Obviously the aircraft manufacturers are in on the conspiracy too! It's like someone can just say it's a conspiracy and use that as a catch-all for every argument.

@Localhorst86 If the flat-earther answer is a telescope with greater magnification, that would be so not satisfying and uninspired. And it still doesn't give a good explanation to why objects on sea start disappearing bottom first, and no matter how much the magnification of the observers telescope is improved, the bottom half can't be brought back into view.

Even ignoring the above there are still 2 things that bother me with he flat-earth theory:
1. The sun - it is possible for a light source to exist that traverses a plane in such a manner that only a part of it is illuminated. But given the way that the sun illuminates the world, how exactly does the sun manage to be at the beginning of the plane and at the end at the same time? Or do they believe multiple suns exist?

2. What's the point of covering up that the world is flat. I mean even if the world was flat, there would still be a sky to explore. We would need to find out what is beyond the ice wall, and what is below or plane. Unless I got something wrong and falt-earthers think we live in a 2 dimensional world.

Now something more inline with a gaming forum. Imagine how dangerous a miners job is in the flat-earth. Imagine mining so far down that you fall through the plane.

@Reiten direct that question to flat earthers, not me

1. Sun is a spotlight traveling in a circle some 3000 miles above the plane.

2. *THEY* want to keep the people uninformed so people keep working in their confined space we call earth.

3. Obviously, the plane is infinetly deep, just like it is wide.

Ahem.
I think, people, you will find that it is actually indestructible bedrock. Not even a diamond pickaxe can just through that. So you can't "fall through the plane" because that's in the way.
You just gotta put yo' dirt back down as you jump to create yourself a towevator to get back to the surface.

@plasturion airplane flights are planned with a little thing we call "math", along with precision instruments that allow pilots to determine their position in 3D space

Click to expand...

Not exactly, please check this document https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88104main_H-1391.pdf
In reality sphere earth require some simplicity for navigation, so nasa pilots usualy use an algorithm to fly over a flat earth.
This math method is similar to integration and differentiation of any function.

..... you understand that "linear" in this sense means that when viewed from above, the flight path is a line, correct? Not that it's not arced when viewed from the side?...

As per the highest rated and most sensible seeming answer (which isn't mine cause my brain ain't that intelligent)


"All models are wrong. Some are useful.

These days there's a popular trend when simulating things to simulate every possible mechanism we can imagine. Those who think that way would agree with you. Why would you ever make a flat Earth model when everything is eventually going to make its first flight on a real rotating spherical-ish Earth?

This approach works great until you come across real development or computational limits. The cited paper is from 1988. Computers were much weaker back then. For perspective, the Cray Y-MP was sold that year. Its peak performance was 333 megaflops. She cost $15 million dollars. Contrast that to today. A Geforce GTX 1070 is capable of 6,500,000 megaflops (6.5 teraflops) and has a price tag of around $400.

In those days, you didn't waste computational power on frivolities. It turns out that for a vast array of aeronautical problems, the effects of a flat earth vs. round are minimal (much less the effects of rotating vs. not). If you're shooting a shell 15km, and need it to land with pinpoint precision, you need all that extra complexity. However, many aero problems include a guidance unit which would address any error due to Coriolis effects or the spherical ground the same way it would handle any other errors. It'd simply see it wasn't on the right path and make a correction. The other sources of error here, such as winds, play a far larger effect in deviations from a flight plan, so all the rotating and spherical effects can just get lost in the noise.

Even today, we still make flat Earth models. The reason is not computation time, like it was in 1988, but development time. The more things you model, the more things you need to develop, verify, and maintain. If a particular problem does not call for advanced models, why waste budget developing and maintaining them?

A real life example of this shows up in geoids. Quite often we can do all the modeling we need with a spherical Earth. However, sometimes we find that we need to model the Earth with its proper oblate shape, so we them switch to the WGS84 geoid, or any one of its brethren. The price: all sorts of fun complexities. When I say I have a "forward/right/down" body rotation matrix, is the "down" vector towards the center of the earth, or is it perpendicular to the geoid? On a sphere, they're the same. On an oblate spheroid, I have to take the time to figure out which one was intended. If I don't take the time, then I might as well have just used a sphere."

Bottom line is, back then it was a measure used due to the nature of not having the technology to be able to fully and viably transition that data into a digital format, and today it is merely used for production value, to speed up the designs and allow more to be churned out in quick succession (whilst still using the same equations and Maths to actually calculate the flights themselves)

Think of it like Google Maps.
If you go onto it and locate your home address just using the standard view, then shift from that to, say, the 3D view (Street View), watch the CPU and RAM of your computer ramp up as it has to process all that additional information and data.
Now consider that in a wider scale like countries.

It's interesting b/c we no longer teach scientific principles or method in schools.
Curiosity is squelched, questioning is treasonous, and only idiots have doubts. You have people like Neil Degrasse who's science is more authoritative and cult like than actually something people can relate too - that is why you have flat-earthers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection

Are 1000 years of cartogrophy wrong too?

? What school did you go to where the scientific method wasn't taught and asking questions was discouraged? Because I think your teacher may need to be fired and/or retrained

when you realize that flat earthers are just trolls

There are a lot of back and forth between the religious people and the people that don't believe in a higher being, and this in itself is because there is no definitive proof that one exists. There are spiritual experiences that some people may have, but those are localised to the individual who claimed they experienced it. This allows for debates and different opinions on the matter.

Flat-Earther's are generally mocked because there is scientific evidence that counters their assertions however they stick their heads in the sand, claim it's all lies and falsehoods and that, as was mentioned by someone on YouTube (for useful numbers), NASA, 71 Space Stations (13 with Launching Capabilities) and all associated personnel inside and all Astrophysicists (which basically totals around 75K people as a very very rough guesstimate.) are all involved in a conspiracy that goes back to...when?

I mean...with numbers like that, the only body of people that could potentially control a falsehood that large has to be the Illuminati.
Illuminati Confirmed!
*Puts my foil hat back on*

@Apathetic_Discord That's all true, except one thing: Many people actually have the same religious experience. A friend of mine technically died when he was 2 years old, his heart stopped, and he swears he remembers having a religious near death experience. He told me that everyone in such a situation meets the same person (and that said experience can also be caused by a certain drug)
It would be a very big coincidence for so many people to have the same religious experience, but then again, I take everything my friend says with a spoonful of salt because he likes to mess around and it's not always easy to tell if he's messing around or not. What he did tell me though was that there is a god, but all of the religions have it wrong. Which sort of makes sense, because even if there is a god, the religions can't all be right, and so much time has passed that it might have muddled things.

@The Real Jdbye there's an argument within the scientific community that that's just a bizzare, but consistent function of the brain going into shock and struggling to process what's going on. In the end, we (or at least I) really don't know what to say in terms of higher beings; I personally don't really believe in any, but I'm not opposed in any way to the existence of one, I'd just hope that any kind of afterlife they offer is merit-based rather than because of faith

I suppose it could be attributed, within the sciencey area, to something similar to the Mandela effect potentially?
I do however agree with Insanity. I personally don't believe in a...omnipotent God who rules over all. I like the idea of spiritual and mythological beings (as seen with my comment about the 4 Holy Beasts of China, amongst others) however as said, there are too many religions, all taking queues from each other, and the prospect of the many that state that if you are not part of their religion then you are, by default, Satan's bitch repulses me.
However this is a scientific blog discussion as opposed to a Religious/Spiritual one so I'll leave it at there.

I knew, the earth flatters hate this video.

ok guys, so 800km visibility is no problem on a globe?