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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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Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped.
-- Groucho Marx's last words
(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.