Talk:Flat Earth

Ancient Indian texts

@Deacon Vorbis: Why are you removing sources and sourced content? If you wish to reword a part, you may. But deleting WP:RS and content is inappropriate. Have you checked Pingree? The old version misrepresents what he states. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 22:36, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Title

Why is the article entitled Flat Earth, and not Flat Earth model, or something similar, as in the first sentence? The article isn't about an Earth that is actually flat, but rather the belief that it is flat. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 12:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Tunisian PhD thesis endorsing a flat earth

See [1]. Dreadful that this has gotten as far as it did, and that it was approved by senior academics. However, it's now been rejected.[2] Doug Weller talk 11:16, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: The following is interesting from the same source...

Quote:

"In this particular case, I believe this was due to an adherence to religious, scriptural literalism, in other words taking the meanings of religious texts literally and blindly, at the cost of rejecting all knowledge that appears to contradict it, no matter how much evidence supports it.

"Indeed, we find in the conclusions of the thesis clear indications of this stand and approach, expressions such as: “using physical and religious arguments”, “also proving the world scale of [Noah’s] flood”, “proposed a new kinematic approach that conforms to the verses of the Quran”, “the roles of the stars are: (1) to be ornaments of the sky; (2) to stone the devils; and (3) as signs to guide creatures in the darkness of earth”; and finally “the geo-centric model... accords with the verses of the Quran and the pronouncements of our Prophet.”

They should have considered awarding the Tunisian student a PhD in theology, not physics/astronomy! I wonder if a sentence or two in this article is worth a mention. May be not, per WP:FRINGE, Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 11:44, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Modern flat-earth theories in the lede

Concerning this change, I don't strongly disagree with ‡ Єl Cid, Єl Caɱ̩peador's most recent edit. I agree the current text (the later edit in the diff) is a little abrupt, but I don't think abruptness is relevant in the lede, where each paragraph is expected to encapsulate a different aspect of the subject. My concern with ‡ Єl Cid, Єl Caɱ̩peador's edit is that it implies continuity in flat-earth belief into modern times. There is no such continuity. These modern flat-earthers are largely isolated individuals who start up a "movement", collect a few adherents if they are lucky, and then fade back into obscurity. Hence I prefer the text as reverted to by User:Deacon Vorbis. Strebe (talk) 20:05, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

I prefer the simple direct statement in the Deacon's reversion. I also believe that this article would be more informative saying something like "some are serious, some not" as seen in the lead sentence of Modern flat Earth societies. Just plain Bill (talk) 20:22, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

lead rating: 10/10

I had read some heavy PR stories that completely represented a positive image of a certain subject without any neutrality whatsoever.

I thought that if I opened the Flat Earth wikipedia article I would get an equally "PR" view without any mention that it is rejected by modern science.

I decided to read the lead for how accurate it is as an introduction to the subject, then talk on this talk page about my judgment. I thought I would give it like 1/10 or 2/10, since I thought that due to heavy editing by argumentative proponents, it would not in any way be neutral.

Instead I found the introduction to be 10/10. Good job!

WP:Fringe

In my oppinion, this edit violates WP:Fringe. I won't revert it, as this would violate WP:3RR for me, therefor I put it up for discussion if this should stay. 78.94.53.130 (talk) 11:59, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Already taken care of. Assuming the IP editor is also Giphted, he's already passed 3RR, among other things. I'm usually too lazy to report these things, though. --Deacon Vorbis (talk) 12:14, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Evidence put forth by Flat Earth believers in support of Flat Earth

1 The horizon always appears completely flat 360 degrees to the observer, regardless of how high you go up. Any curvature you think you see is from curved airplane windows or Go Pro cameras and fisheye lenses (which NASA loves to use). The reality is that the horizon never curves because we are on an endless plane. On a globe with 25,000 miles in circumference you would see a noticeable disappearance of objects the further they are as they would be leaning away from you and dropping below the constantly curving horizon. Completely flat horizon from the stratosphere:

2 The horizon always rises to meet your eye level never no matter how high in altitude you go. Even at 20 miles up the horizon rises to meet the observer/camera. This is only physically possible if the earth is a huge "endless" flat plane. If Earth were a globe, no matter how large, as you ascended the horizon would stay fixed and the observer/camera would have to tilt downward, looking down further and further to see it

3 The natural physics of water is to find and maintain its level. If Earth were a giant spinning sphere tilting and hurling through space then truly flat, consistently level surfaces would not exist here. There would be a massive bulge of water in the oceans because of the curvature of the earth. If earth was curved and spinning the oceans of water would be flowing down to level and covering land. Some rivers would be impossibly flowing uphill. There would massive water chaos and flooding! What we would see and experience would be vastly different! But since Earth is in fact an extended flat plane, this fundamental physical property of fluids finding and remaining level is consistent with experience and common sense. The water remains flat because the earth is flat!

4 If Earth were a ball 25,000 miles in circumference as NASA and modern astronomy claim, spherical trigonometry dictates the surface of all standing water must curve downward an easily measurable 8 inches per mile multiplied by the square of the distance. This means along a 6 mile channel of standing water, the Earth would dip 6 feet on either end from the central peak. Every time such experiments have been conducted, however, standing water has proven to be perfectly level.

5 The sun is much closer than we have been told. It is, in fact, in our atmosphere. You can clearly see that it is not 93 million miles away. Many times you can see the sun's rays shooting out of a cloud forming a triangle. If you follow the rays to their source it will always lead to a place above the clouds. If the sun was truly millions of miles away, all the rays would come in at a straight angle. Also the sun can be seen directly above clouds in some balloon photos, creating a hot spot on the clouds below it and in other photos you can clearly see the clouds dispersing directly underneath the close small sun.

6 If we were living on a spinning globe airplane's would constantly have to dip their noses down every few minutes to compensate for the curvature of the earth (with a circumference of 25,000 miles the earth would be constantly curving at the speed of an airplane). In reality however, they never do this! They learn how to fly based on a level flat plane. Also if the earth was spinning the airplane's going west would get to their destination much faster since the earth is spinning in the opposite direction. If the atmosphere is spinning with the earth then airplane's flying west would have to fly faster than the earth's spin to reach its destination. In reality, the earth is flat and airplane's just fly level and reach their destination easily because the earth is not moving. Planes Could Not Land if Earth was Moving or Spinning

7 The experiment known as “Airy’s Failure” proved that the stars move relative to a stationary Earth and not the other way around. By first filling a telescope with water to slow down the speed of light inside, then calculating the tilt necessary to get the starlight directly down the tube, Airy failed to prove the heliocentric theory since the starlight was already coming in the correct angle with no change necessary, and instead proved the geocentric model correct

8 The Michelson-Morley and Sagnac experiments attempted to measure the change in speed of light due to Earth’s assumed motion through space. After measuring in every possible different direction in various locations they failed to detect any significant change whatsoever, again proving the stationary geocentric model

9 If “gravity” is credited with being a force strong enough to hold the world’s oceans, buildings, people and atmosphere stuck to the surface of a rapidly spinning ball, then it is impossible for “gravity” to also simultaneously be weak enough to allow little birds, bugs, and planes to take-off and travel freely unabated in any direction. If “gravity” is credited with being a force strong enough to curve the massive expanse of oceans around a globular Earth, it would be impossible for fish and other creatures to swim through such forcefully held water.

10 Ship captains in navigating great distances at sea never need to factor the supposed curvature of the Earth into their calculations. Both Plane Sailing and Great Circle Sailing, the most popular navigation methods, use plane, not spherical trigonometry, making all mathematical calculations on the assumption that the Earth is perfectly flat. If the Earth were in fact a sphere, such an errant assumption would lead to constant glaring inaccuracies. Plane Sailing has worked perfectly fine in both theory and practice for thousands of years, however, and plane trigonometry has time and again proven more accurate than spherical trigonometry in determining distances across the oceans. If the Earth were truly a globe, then every line of latitude south of the equator would have to measure a gradually smaller and smaller circumference the farther South travelled. If, however, the Earth is an extended plane, then every line of latitude south of the equator should measure a gradually larger and larger circumference the farther South travelled. The fact that many captains navigating south of the equator assuming the globular theory have found themselves drastically out of reckoning, more so the farther South travelled, testifies to the fact that the Earth is not a ball.

I proposed that we include the ten "evidence" and their debunking into the article for Flat Earth. 110.22.20.252 (talk) 09:02, 10 October 2017 (UTC)