[rerevisionist]

A few readers of this forum were sourced from https://www.theflatearthsociety.org which seems to be revising its website. It needs it - it has a collection of PDF files which don't download.

One of the brothers of the dissident biologist Harold Hillman was chairman or president of that society - he had a degree in geology, which he carefully selected as a topic in which there weren't too many competitors. He chaired that society purely in the interests of open-mindedness - though predictably his open-mindedness did not extent to criticism of Jewish activities. (He was also chairman or president of the Fairy Society, something to do with Arthur Conan Doyle).

I found A hundred proofs the Earth is not a Globe By William Carpenter, 1885 which preceded much Antarctic exploration - Carpenter thought the south pole was a myth, and there was a huge circle of ice around a flat circular earth, with the north pole in the middle.

As the mariners' compass points north and south at one and the same time, and a meridian is a north and south line, it follows that meridians can be no other than straight lines. But, since all meridians on a globe are semicircles, it is an incontrovertible proof that the Earth is not a globe - Carpenter seems to have had the odd belief that the direction of a needle can be produced indefinitely. Maybe he was influenced without being aware of it by maps. He seems not to have understood such things as the angle of dip - which of course for earth's surface purposes is not important.

One of his 'proofs' is ... For instance: the light at Cape Hatteras is seen at such a distance (40 miles) that, according. to theory, it ought to be nine-hundred feet higher above the level of the sea than it absolutely is, in order to be visible! .. . It struck me how difficult mathematics can be, even in the cases where it has proven a success. In this specific case, one way to estimate the bulge of a perfect sphere between two points needs Pythagoras' theorem and also some algebra - the binomial theorem being one method. There is incredible scope for confusion, here. The lighthouse Carpenter refers to has been rebuilt, and abandoned, but seems to have been visible for twenty miles on a good day. Carpenter seems to have doubled that - the lighthouse's circle of light being 40 miles. Even so, including his error, my formula (bulge = D^2/8R - check it!) would give only 260 feet; probably there's another factor of 2, squared, in there.

There's a significant historical event - Alfred Russel Wallace, the true inventor of the theory of evolution, was sucked into a controversy over a 6 mile length of a canal near Bedford. The problem (in effect) is that air near water contains more water vapour than air further away. This increases the refractive index, so the light bends - towards the water level. The mathematics of this - needing some model of the way the refractive index changes with water vapour, and integrating the effects of such changes on rays of light - are complicated... As it turns out, a low observation point allows the surface of the water to be seen miles away. The trick was to sight along the river from a height, where the differential between water layers was considered negligible. Poor Wallace was the subject of legal action...

Another interesting argument is Surveyors' operations in the construction of railroads, tunnels, or canals are conducted without the slightest "allowance" being made for "curvature," although it is taught that this so-called allowance is absolutely necessary! This is a cutting proof that Earth is not a globe. Presumably, when these things are actually built, allowances are made - though they may not be noticed. Suppose there's a 50-mile length of railway: if spirit levels are used these will automatically give readings from the immediate local conditions.

(NB I'm not suggesting the Flat Earth Society members necessarily believe the above, but in their archival capacity they store that type of material).

However, the Flat Earth Society is an opponent of NASA. Their society has its own WIKI-style encyclopedia, (as does the Jewish realism site, Metapedia), with detailed comments on NASA's fakes; they call it 'The Conspiracy':
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=The Conspiracy
An interesting example of how deceptions can be targeted by people from very different starting-points.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

https://www.bede.org.uk/flatearth.htm


[Mod: this site explains that 'everyone in the Middle Ages knew the world was round'.]

[rerevisionist]

FirstClassSkeptic's link---

.... The idea that the uncouth people of the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat is an example of the myth that has been propagated since the nineteenth century to give us a quite unfair view of this vibrant and exciting period.
Christopher Columbus

So what was Columbus's mistake? The disagreement between him and his critics was over the size of the world - not an easy thing to measure. The story of this controversy can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and the various ways their writings were transmitted to the West. ...

[Sorensen731]

Following your topic, a good lesson;

Letter to the British and American Naval Authorities, demanding the change from rectangular to circular maps.
https://www.earthnotaglobe.com/library/C ... ompass.pdf

Doesn't matter the point of view, globe or flat, from the north pole to the equator meridians are not parallel, they get separated, so using parallel lines in rectangular maps is erroneous.

For the north hemisphere circular maps should be used.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

Although, I find there to be more difficulties with a mental picture of a flat earth than with a round earth hanging in space, I still wonder if the pictures from space aren't mosaics, and if certain geographical features might not be distorted or omitted. Likewise with maps. There might be large islands in the oceans that we don't know about.

[Sorensen731]

You are right, and new islands can be created easily with volcanoes.

The North Pole and South Pole are unknown, that's a fact, no expedition has ever reach any of them, we know very little.

I think likewise, most "satellite" images are not from satellites, but can be composite of integrated cameras in passenger planes.
Phones spy us, it would be stupid not to take advantage of the free network of planes always on the air, always flying over, surveying...

Do Google Earth for example rely on high altitude satellites? Or just images collected from passenger planes.

If I were president I would ask all planes to carry some cameras, safely integrated, maybe few know it, technicians can be told it's another piece for some other reason... free cartography, free meteorology, free espionage, even communications!

Phones spy on us, they have hidden chips and software to activate it on remote and listen. And they are fucking small. It wouldn't be hard to sneak a few cameras and tech devices in a jumbo or airbus.

Why expend billions in costly satellites? Do like the post office, ask them to take this light bag of letters if you please dear airline. Even them have the initiative to take advantage of new technology!

You can also earn a lot of money with a fake satellite industry... pay us so much and we will give you high resolution maps of your farm lands....and warn you of a forest fire... a few astronots are on it, with their own business.

[Sorensen731]

Can't you use a compass or a ruler on a circular map?

You want to go round the north pole, at the latitude of Finland, rectangular Mercator maps will give you the impression you will consume the same time as in the equator.

They've been to the coast, as are all Antarctic bases, in the coast, and some did venture inside, in my opinion they got lost but claimed otherwise, they didn't march in a straight line to the south or north pole but in zigzag or circles.

Some of them were caught lying, like Cook.

[rerevisionist]

Sorensen731 - for some reason I've lost my previous post. It was something like this--

It was along the lines that there is simply no type of projecting a sphere onto a circle that caters for all options. A round map with (say) the north pole at the centre, or Rome, or Greenwich, or Mecca, allows a ruler to give the exact direction to any other location. But it only applies to that one case; a straight line between other points won't be the shorest distance.

Some projections give 'equal area', although the shapes are distorted. Mercator of course gets strecthed the further north or south you go, but it's easy to grasp. Northern European locations often have shortest distances (their great circles) over the pole, which is fine - provided you have reliable air transport. But there's no map which can show the great circles between all points as straight lines.

(BTW worth mentioning for English speakers that 'plane sailing' is correct - using flat maps. It's not 'plain sailing').

[FirstClassSkeptic]

I think likewise, most "satellite" images are not from satellites, but can be composite of integrated cameras in passenger planes.

Check out the thread Doubts about space travel. There's some in there about high altitude balloons. Look at the photos taken from high altitude balloons, and compare them to what is said to be taken from satellites and the space station.

[NUKELIES]

I've come to the realization that we are like the Flat Earth Society. Except that their core premise is wrong, and ours is right.