As a sailor and navigator, I’ve been noticing the proliferation of the “Flat Earth” mania. I admit I’m curious how flat earthers find their way here and there in the world where all the books that explain how to do that presume a globular earth. By far the most interesting part of the phenomenon is the manner of its most visible proponents, who appear bent on shaming, belittling, and making fun of those who don’t buy their assertions.. To me this speaks worlds about their miniature egos and their fantasies of superiority.
Still, to give the devil his due, I’m issuing the following challenge to the flat-earth crowd. If you competently fit one of the 40 descriptions below, please contact me at once. I have some questions for you. Perhaps you can shed some light on just what it means to say the earth is flat.
Aeronautical Engineer
Aerospace Engineer
Air Almanac Writer/Editor
Airline Logistics Engineer
Antarctic Explorer
Antarctic Researcher
Archaeologist
Astronaut
Astronomer
Astrophysicist
Aviator / Air Navigator
Military
Commercial
Amateur
Cartographer
Civil Engineer
Roads
Canals
Bridges
Electronic Beacon Engineer
Expedition Logistics Professional
Geographer
GPS Engineer
LORAN Engineer
Mathematician
Military War-Gamer
Nautical Almanac Writer/Editor
Orbital Flight Engineer
Paleontologist
Physicist
“Practical Navigation” (Bowditch) Reader
Science teacher
Sextant maker
Ship officer
Captain
Mate
Able seaman
Surveyor
Tanker Logistics Engineer
Volcanologist
World traveler
Yachtsman
Professional
Amateur
If you are a flat earth proponent but you aren’t on the list, I rather imagine you are laughing your ass off at the gullible fools who believe your nonsense. Prove me wrong. Bring me a flat earther who is on the list who is prepared to answer some probing questions intelligently. I will consider failure to do so to be an admission of fraud, in the form of baseless attention-getting. Bring it on!
Example: According to public records there are over 45,400 commercial ships plying the oceans today. So allowing for at least 3 navigation-savvy crew members on each ship, there must be some 136,000 reasonably capable navigators out there. Based on these numbers, it seems reasonable to me that there must be over a million individuals whose careers appear on the list above. I’ll be amazed if even 1 of them supports the flat earth hypothesis. We’ll see.
One of my first projects out of college involved the construction of a seven story office building on Galveston Island in Texas for an insurance company. Part of my job was engineering controls; establishing grids (plan lines) and grades (elevations).
One of my favorite things to do was to set up the Dumpy Level that I was using for "shooting" grades (elevations) on one of the upper floors of the building and gaze through the optics at the horizon. There are verniers in the scope; an upper and lower that are horizontal and then two that cross in the middle. The middle horizontal vernier represents the HI (height of instrument) above mean sea level.
There is a level tube that is below the scope which has about a 30 foot radius ground in the glass of the tube where the leveling bubble resides. The instrument is leveled by adjusting leveling screws on two opposite axes of the instrument to bring the bubble in the center of the tube.
If the earth were flat, then no matter how high the instrument is, the horizon line would match the sea level line when the instrument is level. But of course, this is not the case.
I would set up on the sixth or seventh floor and watch the ships approach Galveston bay. On a clear day, the ships could be seen beyond the sea level horizon line, and this line would bisect the ship above the draft level until the ship got close enough to my line of site that was above sea level. The HI (Height of Instrument) line may be above the ship, depending on the ships height above sea level. But as it approached, the line would get lower and lower on the image of the ship, until it resolved with my relative height above sea level when it was close proximity to my location.
Clearly this was an indication of the surface of the earth curvature.
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Thank you Cactusclef. I've had similar experiences.
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Hi! I questioned flat or globe earth since 2013 and have spoken to many pilots, astronomers, architects and also land surveyors to find out if they account for curvature or have any solid evidence for the rotating curved ball we all have been told to live on.
They didnt have convincing evidence. Especially the land surveyors and geologists just level everything out and use the sea LEVEL for it.
Pilots fly level with earth not accounting for curvature. They even have a gyro instrument - artificial horizon which they have to maintain level all the time and this gyro doesnt rotate upside down when flying to australia^^ ;)
All the interviews are on youtube but in german. In 2016 I started a live show about this topic and I had some more experts there who also got curious about flat earth. A geologist hasnt observed curvature where it should be so he came often on to our show.
We had about 400-600 viewers live because of these experts and good research.
Simple way to end the debate:
Amazing flight of a balloon shows if we live on a ball or not!
https://steemit.com/balloon/@doctortruth/amazing-flight-of-a-balloon-shows-if-we-live-on-a-ball-or-not-ending-the-ongoing-debate
Dont just rely on "Experts". Make up your own mind about it and stop believing in unproven myths like the globe.
Take care
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I have to add: The problem with the flat earth theory is that it is a controled and made up model disk earth which doesnt work with all observations.
There are huge channels pushing this map and therefor make questioning the hilarous globe a little difficult.
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Precisely what evidence of pilots and astronomers didn't you find "convincing"? Was it the existence of great circle routes that are shorter than straight line routes? Was it the fact that we experience seasons? Was it the fact that the word "level" means perpendicular to the radius of the earth - and not parallel to the surface of the earth locally? Was it the simple fact that we experience day and night? Or was it, perhaps, the existence of the Coriolis effect that is responsible for the rotation of storms counter-clockwise in the Northern hemisphere and clockwise south of the equator?
Your scorn and ridicule for physicists, pilots, and astronomers ("hilarious globe", "unproven myths") doesn't increase your credibility. It has more the effect of revealing yourself as a posturing know-nothing.
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