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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday August 13 2017, @10:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-does-that-even-happen dept.

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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  • (Score: 2) by mth on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:41AM (15 children)

    by mth (2848) on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:41AM (#553188) Homepage

    I always wonder how these people explain time zones. If the earth was flat, day and night would be at the same time everywhere. Do these people never travel to or chat with people from other longitudes, or do they believe everyone is part of a giant conspiracy?

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  • (Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:51AM

    by BsAtHome (889) on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:51AM (#553194)

    That would mean they would open for reason and objective evidence. For these people it means: if the evidence does not fit my system (hypothesis), then the evidence must be wrong, the system cannot be wrong.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:15PM (5 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:15PM (#553204) Journal

    I always wonder how these people explain time zones.

    Their answer for this is not very well developed, but boldly assertive - From the "Flat Earth Society FAQ [theflatearthsociety.org]":

    The sun simply illuminates only a portion of the earth at a time.

    So, basically, in their world, it's convenient to claim that the sun is more like a tightly focused spotlight than like a sun.

    An important note; be careful reading this FAQ--It can actively make you dumber by encouraging the short circuit of thought. Besides the above, it also contains gems such as "Gravity as a theory is false. Objects simply fall." and "Astronauts have been bribed or coerced into their testimonies."

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @02:07PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @02:07PM (#553257)
      And somehow Russia, China etc are all in on the conspiracy as well :). Similar for the Apollo man on the moon stuff, the Russians were fooled into thinking it was the real thing or they were part of the conspiracy.

      FWIW I'm one of those who's suspicious of the official accounts of the 9/11 incident in the USA, but the flat earth stuff is too big a stretch to consider :).
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:02AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:02AM (#553514)

        Agreed. There is a huge difference between a 9/11 'conspiracy' or cover up and something like a moon landing or a non-flat earth being faked. Theoretically 9/11 may have been a CIA/GOV operation where only half a dozen people know the truth and need to keep quiet, while everyone else just sees the result. Whereas with these other things, the 'conspiracy theorists' are denying overwhelming evidence that is contrary to their belief, and vast numbers of people would need to be continually and intentionally faking things. With 9/11 there isn't sufficient evidence either way about the motivations of the dead people involved. We know the outcome, but the 'consipiracy theory' on that one is about the motivations that caused it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @05:39PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @05:39PM (#553315)

      Ok given that, wouldn't that result in a very long night-time while the Sun was underneath the Earth?

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Sunday August 13 2017, @07:02PM (1 child)

        by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 13 2017, @07:02PM (#553328) Journal

        wouldn't that result in a very long night-time while the Sun was underneath the Earth?

        They believe the sun can't go underneath the earth because the Earth extends infinitely in all directions; the "known earth" has the north pole at its center, and Antarctica as a big icy ring around the parts we know and have mapped. Then just snowy, icy nothing forever in all directions.

        I swear, I am not making this up.

        Their model has the pinpoint-spotlight sun just moving around pointing at different parts of the Earth to make it day where it's shining and night where it isn't.

        They also mention that, sure, you can see satellites in the sky, but they are all fake, placed there to "fool us."

        • (Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Monday August 14 2017, @05:41AM

          by Fluffeh (954) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 14 2017, @05:41AM (#553503) Journal

          I swear, I am not making this up.

          I totally believe you, it would be difficult to make up this sort of shit on the fly without really having to think about how it is fricken possible without contradicting other statements - not to mention contradicting common sense heh.

          There's so much in flat-earth that just doesn't even pass a half-assed logical thought that it is scary that people are still in that sort of mental state to believe this.

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 13 2017, @01:12PM (3 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 13 2017, @01:12PM (#553235)

    I think this would be pretty easy to simulate on an underground moon base using two cranes and a very bright light source, you just woosh the crane along the path once per day, lit one illuminating and unlit one not illuminating.

    Some decades ago I read a semi-serious "popular science" level magazine seriously proposing this for polar moon bases to grow food for lunar colonists. The theory was if you use very large mirrors to gather 24x365 sunlight at the poles and reflect that into a greenhouse, the plants will all grow toward the light and some species will never bend to follow the sun which might weaken them so it makes sense to force the apparent source of light to different locations over a roughly 24 hour day. They also had some weird speculation about localized heating, 24x7 growth might be a problem for some species, so simulating a cooler darker night might be biologically important.

    Of course this was 1970s style industry solution. Today we'd use 24+ banks of individual high power LEDs run off solar panels. Copper high voltage cable is a lot cheaper than mirrors big enough to run a civilization sized greenhouse. And I'm sure we'd need tons of electricity to do something else anyway on the lunar surface, make oxygen from lunar rocks or melt lunar grit into construction materials or whatever. But it made a pretty magazine article. A giant moving mirror in a single giant greenhouse, the perfect pile of singe points of failure, yet artistically pleasing in the magazine.

    Personally I kind of like the "giant moving mirror" solution as I appreciate a good trolling such as flat earthing. There are many aspects where flat earth is sociologically valuable. It give a subset of the population a mostly harmless target for the two minutes hate. It gives people who like a good troll, something mostly harmless to salute. It gives people who are WAY to holier than thou for their own good a harmless target to preach against. It provides an authority for people to rebel against in a hopefully non-violent peaceful manner, which could be redirected to other fictional beliefs like religion or political progressive beliefs or multiculturalism or any other fictional false belief. In summary flat earth is good harmless fun, a net positive to society.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @04:22PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @04:22PM (#553295)

      I think the biggest issue would be that the sun would have to reset every day. Which would require it to move infinitely fast on the back side of the disk or for there to be more than one sun.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @04:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @04:46PM (#553298)

        I think the biggest issue would be that the sun would have to reset every day. Which would require it to move infinitely fast on the back side of the disk or for there to be more than one sun.

        You mean move at light speed?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @05:36PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @05:36PM (#553314)

        As I understand it, their spotlight sun rotates about the north pole, or the “center” of the world as they think of it. Imagine an azimuthal equidistant map projection, then take a spotlight and move it continuously over the equator in a giant circle. This gives timezones and local apparent sunrise/sunset. Of course, their spotlight sun doesn't actually set but moves far enough into the distance that it appears to drop below the horizon.

        This is also their explanation for why distant ships appear to disappear below the horizon. It's an optical illusion of some kind.

        The flat-Earth AC had a powerful telescope and claimed to be able to see distant ships after they had apparently dipped below the horizon to any other observer. Or else she was using that to disprove curvature since she could see those ships despite the fact that they should have been below the horizon.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @05:31AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @05:31AM (#553495)

    They claim that the sun is a lot closer and smaller and rotates around the north pole, moving in towards the north pole in the summer, and out towards the antarctic ring in the winter. [youtube.com]

    Imagine a light bulb in a large dark room. Why is the entire floor not lit? Because the dot product of your look vector, the light and the surface normal at your feet decreases towards zero with distance. This is how your GPU works. If you're standing directly under the light the floor at your feet is brightly lit, but stand far away and the floor is not as brightly lit under you because the angle to the light is not nearly as orthogonal.

    Atmospheric haze also limits visibility of the sun as in travels away from you. Perspective makes things seem smaller as they vanish into the distance (becomes smaller than the visible arc resolution of your eye). The sun would also, in their model, decrease in size. According to some FE researchers using Cinema4D, Atmospheric lensing on a flat earth would also make the sun rise and set [youtube.com] and the flat model matches observed sunrise and set more closely than the globe model does when simulating atmospheric lensing.

    Additionally, seasons make less sense on a globe earth model: [youtube.com] You would expect the weather in Antarctica to be the same as the arctic circle, but the antarctic is much colder, which is a point in the flat earth's favor.

    I'm not a Flat Earther, but they are not idiots, despite what media propaganda would have you believe. There are some groups like the Flat Earth Society which most flat Earthers claim is a disinfo group spreading easily debunked theories that few actually believe.

    Most people who laugh at and dismiss the Flat Earth movement ask questions like yours assuming they have no answer on a Flat Earth. The truth is that Flat Earthers have a lot of hard observable evidence on their side of the argument, and if you actually do a search many of such questions have been answered. I'm not convinced the Earth is Flat, but these researchers have raised many valid problems with the current globe model of the earth. Such as: Why can I see this car as it drives across the salt flats beyond the predicted curvature of the earth? [youtube.com] Or why did the MSM news call Chicago a Mirage, when multiple people have clearly seen it without atmospheric inversion from across lake Michigan? [youtube.com] (in defiance of the Globe earth's predicted curvature) Explain such observations however you like, but it's not like they don't exist. Flat earth isn't ONLY espoused by unscientific idiots, there are legit people doing actual science and raising valid questions.

    • (Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Monday August 14 2017, @09:08AM (2 children)

      by Rivenaleem (3400) on Monday August 14 2017, @09:08AM (#553568)

      Do they have a reply for why water drains clockwise or anti-clockwise depending on which hemisphere you are in?

      • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Monday August 14 2017, @05:39PM

        by Justin Case (4239) on Monday August 14 2017, @05:39PM (#553774) Journal

        Ooh this is fun, let me try!

        American water is driven through the pipes by pumps spinning in the proper direction. This imparts angular momentum to the water which is retained at the atomic level throughout its lifecycle until it finally evaporates.

        People who live in the poor, ignorant, backwards countries naturally spin their pumps backwards, causing the water to drain backwards.

        I mean it should be obvious if you just open your mind a crack.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by VortexCortex on Monday August 14 2017, @09:22PM

        by VortexCortex (4067) on Monday August 14 2017, @09:22PM (#553845)

        Apparently you've been misinformed about this. The truth is that even modern science agrees that the Coriolis Effect does not make drains spin in different directions.

        Have a snopes link:
        http://www.snopes.com/science/coriolis.asp [snopes.com]

        If what you believed about drains was bogus, then how much of everything else you believe and repeat is bullshit? Question Everything.

        I'm not a Flat Earther, but at least they question what they hear.