on Mondays (and most mornings) i take a look at my Yahoo reader (an RSS reader like Google) and this morning i read soror Nishi’s friday post Obama Admits Earth is Round….
it’s a fun look at current news events and places them in their rightful context of pretty much being absurd and that we humans tend to be doofuses often. i certainly am a doofus on many occasions and i thought i’d offer a retort to her first paragraph from a highly-caffeinated science g33klette perspective
note: this post is intended to be light but may be a bit heavy for a monday morning =p
okay, prove to me Earth is a sphere (oblate spheroid is fine)
tell me in as many words as it takes that it is round
did you know it takes about 64 pages to mathematically prove that one plus one equals two? maybe we should have stuck with Roman numerals where there is no concept of zero . . .
Einstein’s work on space and time tell us that space is heavily warped by huges masses and that the universe itself is like a basketball with everything being on a plane (the material part of the basketball) and that the centre is empty – a void (this is what allows for wormhole theories)
so the universe itself is a plane that is formed into a hollow sphere by its own mass
the Earth may look like a sphere from space but is it?
Sol (our sun) warps space around it and we “know” that because we can measure how much it bends lights coming from behind it – so if it bends that light and makes things appear curved, maybe the world is flat?
a good scientist has an open mind to that; they may casually dismiss it, but they never entirely do
now onto your second paragraph – virtually all quantum physicists, and certainly many Nobel Laureates, are searching for God – it’s that open minded dealio =)
lol, my two cents =)
and something else Einstein said in 1931 to help us all maintain perspective
I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference!
“okay, prove to me Earth is a sphere (oblate spheroid is fine)”
I’m up for it, and without using math :-D
Take a Lego brick, which will be a “sailing ship”. Glue a short thin straw to it as a “mast”. Hold the Lego brick “ship” on top of a basketball and hold it so that the “ship” is at eye level. Slowly move the ship away from you along the surface of the basket ball. Notice how the ship slowly disappears until even the top of the “mast” is gone? Isn’t that the exact same thing that happens when we watch a real ship sail away from us as we stand on shore? That happens only with spherical objects, including eggs (oblate spheroids) :-D
Btw, are you sure the plural of doofus is doofuses and not doofii? *laughs*
Sarge Misfit
14 May 12 at 8:48 am
hehhehe…I’m cool with that…. as long as the coffee is good.
soror Nishi
14 May 12 at 9:02 am
[like the blog design]
soror Nishi
14 May 12 at 9:02 am
i think you are proving that a basketball is round and not that the Earth isn’t bending light (thus a ship appearing to move down rather than simply farther away)
come into the light Sarge and become a doofii with me:
http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=66
thanks soror, coming from you that means a lot =) and thanks for getting my mind awake for the week! it made me very happy and ener-gised! =)
Ener Hax
14 May 12 at 9:51 am
Its the curve of the Earth that increasing blocks the sight of the ship. If light were being bent around the Earth to that extent, then we would see the whole of the ship as it sails off. The light that reflects back (and is fundamental to sight and colour and all) would curve like a string laid on the basketball from the ship to the eye.
Light does get bent by Earth’s gravity, but to such a small extent as to be indistinguishable from a straight line without extremely delicate measuring devices. :-D
You know, if light were bent that much by the Earth’s gravity, then why don’t we see the backs or our heads?
Do I get a cookie for solving the challenge? *laughs*
Sarge Misfit
14 May 12 at 10:03 am
Earth is a sphere, but it’s hollow and we are actually on the inside. I learned this many years ago from a magazine article, something like popular mechanics. Oddly the enough one of the more concise sources of reference for this now is actually at the Flat Earth Society http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=50167.0
“Just as the geometry of space inverts, so do all the laws of physics. Toward the centre of a hollow Earth, light slows down and everything shrinks — atoms, astronauts, spaceships, and measuring rods. Light travels in circular paths, producing some weird (but lawful) optical effects. Astronauts on the moon looked back on what they thought was a blue sphere in the distance. Actually it was the inside of the earth’s shell, seen through sight lines that flared like the bell of a trumpet, producing the illusion of a sphere. The optical distortion is something like the wide angle view through a fish-eye lens”
Best not use this for homework or exam answers though, teachers usually like to you to give the answers they told you, for some reason they don’t like answers you made up yourself or pulled out of a magazine. That’s another thing I learned many years ago.
(A sadder and a wiser boy, he rose the morrow morn …)
keith selmes
14 May 12 at 12:00 pm
From a different perspective …
There is no such thing as gravity.
The World sucks.
*grins*
Sarge Misfit
14 May 12 at 12:20 pm
Scientists of the ancient world discovered that the Earth is round.
Their scientific work was based on things like the lunar eclipse, for the shadow cast on the moon was rounded and only a round object can cast a round shadow.
Also shadows on the ground at different citadels where in different directions, had the Earth been flat, shadows would’ve noticeably been in one direction.
Plus those ancient scientist realised that in different places, different constellations are seen, for if the Earth was flat we would see the same constellations throughout the world.
On a round Earth, if you where to stand on the south pole you would not see the north star. If the Earth was flat you would see the north star from the south pole position because you’re just looking up.
The furthest the north star can be seen is near the equator, the Earth’s curvature makes sure you don’t see it thereafter you sail further south.
Eros Deus
14 May 12 at 2:04 pm
Now that we’ve explained that the Earth is round, how do we explain the four elephants that hold it aloft, while they’re standing on a giant space turtle.
Eros Deus
14 May 12 at 2:22 pm
ha! wait till we start talking about evolution! i’ll kick your butts all over the place! try this:
population statistics show that at the present population and rate of growth, there were only two people living approximately 6300 years before present, or 4300 BC (Adam and Eve). this proves that humans and civilization are quite young
if Earth was old, say a million years old, over the course of 25000 generations at 1/2% rate of population growth and an average of 2.5 children per family, the present population would be 10 to the power of 2100!!! which is impossible since there are only 10 to the power of 130 electrons in the universe
Ener Hax
14 May 12 at 3:00 pm
Ener, are you accounting for the people who where born 6300 years ago as still being alive and part of the current population?
Plus it’s not fair you overdosed me with maths XD
Can we go back to astronomy and ancient world science and discoveries :D
Eros Deus
14 May 12 at 3:23 pm
Ok here’s another go at Ener’s evo puzzle, ignore my last lame attempt XD
Basically it shows that humans or the ‘genus homo’ have been populating more than a million years, otherwise if you use the million year time frame you get this impossible number of humans occupying the globe via doubling.
* please note that the word homo in latin means man, and is used as a masculine scientific term to classify early to modern humankind e.g Homo Sapien.
Eros Deus
14 May 12 at 4:06 pm
I still want a cookie for being the first to solve the Earth is Round challenge.
Hey, cookies are another answer! They are both round AND flat!!
Does that mean I can have two??
*laughs*
Sarge Misfit
14 May 12 at 4:44 pm