Flat Earth?

[Duman]

They probably have an argument for the Focault pendulum argument.

[O2HeN2]

They probably have an argument for the Focault pendulum argument.

Precession.

I watched a ton of FE videos and read a lot of articles to fully understand their arguments.

I can defend the FE position really well against any baller, while not believing any of it for a moment.

O2

[leightoncash]

So through the latter part of 2018 and all of 2019 I hung out with the local Colorado Springs flat earth folks, going to their meetings, doing experiments with them, etc.

Not undercover, they all knew I was a "baller". At some level it was entirely selfish on my part, I have a pretty broad knowledge of science, and I LOVE to talk science and explain things. And I wasn't alone, there were two other ballers that regularly attended the meetings as well.

Both sides enjoyed the debate.

I find the Flat Earthers have two major problems: They don't understand the scale of things "How come when I look out over the ocean I don't see a curve?" You do. Just not with the naked eye without equipment to help you.

And they have problems with frames of reference "If we're spinning at 1000 miles an hour, why can't I feel it?" It's just like during a smooth plane ride - you don't feel yourself moving then, do you?

Less importantly, they also like to glom onto one piece of data that supports the FE position, discounting the overwhelming data that contradicts the one piece they choose to believe: "They said the Van Allen belts were deadly, how come suddenly we can fly through them now?" Yhea, when initially discovered back in the 50s they thought they were deadly. But as we got more data, turned out they weren't so much...

And lastly they get a little confused on how things work. We had one meeting to discuss the Foucault pendulum and after a period of time I realized that they thought the pendulum was moving, when in fact it's the observer that's moving, not the pendulum (the frame of reference problem).

I grabbed a wire-framed busing cart (we met at a coffee shop), tied a sting with a weight on it that hung from the top shelf to the lower shelf and put an object to represent the observer on the lower shelf and started the little pendulum swinging 90 degrees (back in forth) in front of the "observer object". At that point I twisted the cart 90 degrees and the pendulum was now swinging towards and away from the observer.

The woman who leads the group fell silent and stared at it for a long time. To this day I don't know if she "got it" or not, but it completely unseated all the arguments she had to discredit "how the pendulum moves".

It actually was a really fun time. We did several Pueblo Lake experiments to try and measure the curve, and I learned a TON about optical refraction above water. I got to see upside down images of the far shoreline, fata morganas, all sorts of stuff I never would have otherwise. And just how exacting you need to be to do a small experiment to measure something so large as the earth.

O2

I love that you did that. We need more people like you in the world, that can engage with and have relationships with people of opposing views, while still thinking for yourself. It's easy to be surly and "right", much harder to be a thoughtful but diplomatic person with some warmth. Very cool.

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[Irving]

Precession.

I watched a ton of FE videos and read a lot of articles to fully understand their arguments.

I can defend the FE position really well against any baller, while not believing any of it for a moment.

O2

I think any issue worth discussing, is worth understanding from both sides. Well done.

[MrPrena]

After space tourism is available for mass public, those flat earth guys can chip in the money and send their leader to capture unedited gopro footage of the travel.

[00tec]

After space tourism is available for mass public, those flat earth guys can chip in the money and send their leader to capture unedited gopro footage of the travel.

Thats what they were doing when dude launched the steam rocket that left the parachute attached to the launchpad.

[O2HeN2]

After space tourism is available for mass public, those flat earth guys can chip in the money and send their leader to capture unedited gopro footage of the travel.

Won't work. They'll claim they were bought off by NASA and are now part of the conspiracy. You'd have to send every flat earther into space and I'm sure some would claim it was anti-grav units and a projection.

We had one meeting where I pointed out that they could take flights that stayed in the Southern hemisphere and prove to themselves that it wasn't as far around as the FE map showed. I even showed them the scheduled flights.

The response: Those flights never happen. They're always canceled. They're only listed to give the impression that they exist.

O2

[ray1970]

Is there a map somewhere of this flat earth?

I kind of need to know where I am in relation to the edge.

[O2HeN2]

Is there a map somewhere of this flat earth?

So as long as I'm displaying a map. The first meeting that was cancelled because of COVID early this year was going to discuss a topic I had brought up in an earlier discussion, the Chile's 1960 Valdivia earthquake and the Tsunami that resulted from it.

The times the Tsunami hit various coasts was well documented by local newspapers and actually killed people; I was hoping that the magnitude of information coupled with the tragic loss of life would make the information rise above any claims of "It's a conspiracy, people were paid off, etc." (but I wasn't going to hold my breath, either).

Just a two of the facts I was going to present were:

• The Tsunami hit the Southeast coast of Australia and the Big Island of Hawaii at about the same time.
• It struck the East coast of New Zealand.

Looking at the flat earth map below, you'll see that Australia is almost twice the distance from the Tsunami's source (West coast of Chile) than Hawaii (which would make the "hit at the same time" impossible on the FE map) and not only is Australia in the "shadow" of both South and North America, but it's SE coast is AWAY from the source of the Tsunami. Also, NZ's East coast faces almost directly away from the Tsunami's source.

Whereas if you take a globe and look at the coastal orientations and distances, the Tsunami's propagation time makes complete sense. See second picture.

So that's the kinda stuff we discussed during the meetings. For me, since it was all about science, I was like a pig in $#!+.

O2



Tsunami propagation time in hours:

[Grant H.]

Won't work. They'll claim they were bought off by NASA and are now part of the conspiracy. You'd have to send every flat earther into space and I'm sure some would claim it was anti-grav units and a projection.

We had one meeting where I pointed out that they could take flights that stayed in the Southern hemisphere and prove to themselves that it wasn't as far around as the FE map showed. I even showed them the scheduled flights.

The response: Those flights never happen. They're always canceled. They're only listed to give the impression that they exist.

O2

You don't need me to say this, but I've taken flights that screw with their ideas in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere...

But, I also work for a company that makes money by taking pictures of the pretty ball in space, FROM space... I've just been bought off apparently.