What about the so called photographs of a funny dot claiming to be Earth near Saturn ?
I’m going to hate myself for asking, I just know it… :smack:
What about it??
It’s not coherent enough to even be wrong. It’s just, um, stuff.
I am not sure that that is accurate.
But before clarifying that issue, I think there is a more important and unspoken consideration. I’m pretty sure karol is the author of the linked articles. That may be apparent to everyone, and it may be off topic, but I do think saying it out loud—as it were—is important. (If anyone wants to hear my reasoning, I will provide, but I’m guessing karol will cop.)
As for being a flat-earther, that’s not really true. The idea is that the Earth is Concave; still round, but inside out. The ideas need to be debunked, but let’s be sure to debunk the actual claims, and not some other claim.
OK, let me try to follow this…
Hundreds of people have been in space. Quite a lot of people have flown high enough in aircraft to see the curvature of the Earth. Are all of them lying? Did they all fake the photographs they took? Are you saying that they all said, ‘Hey, if we use a fish-eye lens, the Earth will look like a ball! Tee-hee-hee!’?
IANA physicist, engineer, or rocket surgeon. But let’s think of an experiment. Take a ball and hold it at arm’s length. Let go of the ball. What happens? I predict it will fall to the ground. Go ahead and try it. Now launch the ball horizontally and time how long it takes to hit the ground. Same amount of time. The faster it goes, the more ground it covers. Now let’s launch it really fast, and high enough that friction doesn’t burn it up. How long will it take before it hits the ground, versus dropping it from the same height?
Ha! Trick question! It doesn’t hit the ground at all! Why? Because the Earth is falling away from it at the same rate as the ball is falling toward the Earth. This is what we call ‘orbit’. The Soviets demonstrated this when they launched Sputnik, and did it again when they put the first man in orbit in 1961. The Americans duplicated this experiment next, and other countries have made things fall around the Earth in the succeeding decades.
Is the Earth a ring? Or a hollow sphere? Perhaps the OP has never been on a merry-go-round, or better yet one of those amusement park rides that spin and make you stick to the wall when the floor drops. Maybe he’s never gone around a corner in a car. But I can assure that ‘an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.’ Satellites go in circles because there is an ‘unbalanced force’ called ‘gravity’. The satellite wants to go in a straight line, but gravity tries to pull it to the Earth. Since the Earth is curved, the satellite just keeps falling round and round. How would that work in a ring or a hollow Earth? A satellite going in a straight line would hit the Earth. It doesn’t, so the Earth cannot be one of those shapes.
Maybe spacecraft don’t exist! Have you ever seen one in space? No! (Well, actually, billions of people have. I see satellites flying overhead sometimes, and people have seen the ISS with their own eyes. But most people haven’t actually been in space, watching one fly by them in close proximity.) If spacecraft don’t exist, then what about those aircraft from which people have seen the curvature of the Earth? They must not exist either. But it’s unreasonable to assume there is some Line That Must Not Be Crossed; one that above which the curvature can be seen. So any flight must be excluded. Ergo, there are no airplanes or balloons. Q.E.D. If you see an airplane or balloon (even a toy one), then you have fallen for the Scientific Conspiracy.
You mean pictures of Earth taken by the Cassini probe, showing Earth as a dot? What about them?
Yes, things look smaller when you get further away, so from the moon, the Earth looks like a marble; from Mars, it looks like a little blue pearl; from Saturn, it’s pretty much a pale blue dot.
But you didn’t answer my question, which is: Why does the Earth look like a sphere in the photos taken by astronauts who went to the moon?
You didn’t understand the irony and the hint I tried to give you. Too bad.
Karol, we expect people to provide some content beyond “here’s a link, discuss” when starting a thread. Explain what you understand the point of the link to be and whether or not you agree with it.
And probably take it to Great Debates, where religion discussions happen.
Since this thread is about your insulting people who are failing to read your mind, I’m going to close it.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator