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Mic has an article on the upcoming Solar Eclipse across the USA, focusing on one particular group of observers: Flat Earthers, who believe that the sun and moon rotate around each other above the Earth's surface.
...astronomers (both professional and amateur) aren't the only groups excited for this once-in-a-lifetime event. Another, more controversial community believes the upcoming eclipse could provide overwhelming evidence to support their cause. These people are flat Earthers, and they believe the solar eclipse will prove once and for all the Earth is not a sphere.
The article describes some of the proposed arguments from the newly resurgent, and apparently quite serious, flat earth community.
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Flat Earth Truthers and the Solar Eclipse
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
spagmumps, n.:
Any of the millions of Styrofoam wads that accompany mail-order items.
-- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Sunday August 13 2017, @10:34AM (7 children)
No problem, these people have a lot in common with the people that finds memos describing that in fact males and females have different features is evil and thus needs to be exorcised.
Now we just need to await the senate hearings "have you ever been a member of the spherical earth society!? you're lying!", witch hunts, local zombie thugs, reformations schools etc.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday August 13 2017, @01:48PM
That they do. Feminism (and I don't mean these “TERFs,” whatever untrue Scotsmen transfeminists have invented) is an anti-technology hate group with a monotheistic religion (despite its ostensible roots in paganism), so it would not surprise me one bit if many feminists were also flat-Earthers.
Also, where is our flat-Earth AC? This is her big chance!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @05:44AM (4 children)
Actually, these people have a lot more in common with an engineer that sees some evidence that no one else wants to believe, but the evidence exists none the less. So, they write a memo about it trying to say, "Hey, that laser test that Steven Hawking presented? It looks like that's bogus [youtube.com] since no 3rd party independent researcher can replicate the claimed observance of 6ft of curvature at 3mi distance".
Then everyone has a knee jerk reaction calling them names because they never even read the damn memo or looked at all the citations that also back up the claim that there are problems with the Globe Model.
Such as the fact that you can see the Canigou Peak Mountain From Allauch, France over a distance of 160 Miles as the sun sets behind them two days out of the year. [youtube.com] That mountain is supposed to be far below the curvature of the earth, and if it were atmospheric refraction then it should move / rise / shimmer or be affected by air temperature, humidity, etc. but the vision is quite stable and reliable. It has made Allauch France into a tourist destination to view this world record in distance which contradicts the globe-earth model's predictions.
Now, the memo may be wrong. There may be other factors to consider. However, your post is more like the zealots who dismiss legitimate concerns raised by rational observations simply to support the ideas you were taught in school and never actually questioned.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday August 14 2017, @08:36AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @09:13PM
The point is that the globe model that is 25000 in circumference is disproved by this observation. The thing to remember is that these people are not all trying to prove the flat earth, but to show there are problems with the globe earth. Consider this: If the globe was much bigger then you would not see as much curvature but the orbital mechanics and distances would be different.
Indeed then it would not be so strange to have a moon that is so large and seemingly too light weight for its orbit -- if the planet were larger then the moon would be the right size. We could live in a ring around the north pole in the northern hemisphere on a larger globe.
Not that I believe this is the case, but my point is that the evidence does in fact show results not conducive to the current globe model. And not just one experiment, but many.
(Score: 2) by bart on Monday August 14 2017, @12:21PM (1 child)
An engineer that is unable to understand the overwhelming evidence that supports a somewhat blobby ellipsoid shape of our planet does not have the understanding to add knowledge to this subject!
It is pure arrogance to think that because you find that there is an observation that doesn't seem to fit a hugely successful model (in this case of the thing we live on), that you with apparently little actual knowledge have earned the right to be even taken seriously on this matter.
Fortunately, no-one does, except similar idiots in their internet echo chamber.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @09:07PM
Ah the old "You can't raise any uncomfortable questions because you're not an expert!" rubbish.
If that were true then Marie Curie should have been ignored.
Any theory that is unquestionable is not science but religion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @10:09AM
This story and comments like yours sent me on a trip around the 'net to find some stuff to point at and laugh to make myself feel better. And yes, there was much to mock.
There was also a collection of folks who set up simple tests that should have shown the heliocentric spinning globe model working quite clearly using high-speed gyroscopes in various configurations over the course of minutes and hours. The problem is, the gyroscopes [youtube.com] did not behave [youtube.com] as expected [youtube.com].
It disturbed me enough to prompt me to look into buying a high-speed gyroscope for myself to run my own experiments, since they are simple and cheap enough to easily eliminate any fakery.