Earth: Flat or Round?

[aftnium]

I said round. Cannot imagine a flat earth. still remember an old disney cartoon about flat earth. the ship fall when reach the edge of earth.

[piepie]

I said round. Cannot imagine a flat earth. still remember an old disney cartoon about flat earth. the ship fall when reach the edge of earth.

 

That's how Nasa conducted the moon missions. They sent a rocket (actually a torpedo) over the edge of the Earh and it fell down to the orbiting moon. Kinda like in discworld but not as funny or smug.

[rcazant]

Terry Pratchett's The Last Hero gives a counter example. It's a fun, fun, read. Perhaps I should post the audiobook here?

 

Please do!

[piepie]

If you're going to torrent Last Hero make it the illustrated book. The Paul Kidby pictures have the characters right on the nose.

[maverick]

I say round. All those TV satelites we use to watch enterprise' date=' would find difficulties orbiting aROUND a flat earth :([/quote']

 

so if we look under the earth then we might find all the socks, biro's and coins i lost?

 

it might be a treasure trove down there, like the back of the sofa.

 

glad im studying geology now.

 

will start lookin into pratchetian tectonics

[TFMF]

neither

[dingding100]

What if you asked this same question of someone with a bi-polar personality? ...and each personality disagreed with the other.

...hours of entertainment...

[VonHelton]

I say flat' date=' but our eyes distort reality making it look round. Glad you agree.[/quote']

 

Interesting (or not) Trivia:

 

The Bible refers to the Earth being round several times, yet Feudal Europe, strong believers in the Bible, still insisted it was flat.

 

:stare:

 

 

[elderbear]

That's crazy talk. We'd fall off' date=' and then where'd we be?[/quote']

 

Australia?

[elderbear]

I say flat' date=' but our eyes distort reality making it look round. Glad you agree.[/quote']

 

Interesting (or not) Trivia:

 

The Bible refers to the Earth being round several times, yet Feudal Europe, strong believers in the Bible, still insisted it was flat.

 

:stare:

 

 

I don't recall that it does - but I'm open to seeing a text or so to refresh my memory. But I do know that it refers to the "four corners of the earth - implying flat:

 

 

And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

 

Isaiah 11:12

[elderbear]

Do you know where to find universal maps? I didn't know it existed until now... not much to reap but hell I've got nothing better to do...right now....

 

You can try to find Deep Space Explorer or Starry Night. They both have been on the tracker.

 

There are starmap database files available. You'd have find one with distance as well as declination and right ascension. Then it would be a simple job to translate them into cartesian coordinates (x,y,z - Earth at origin) - then all you'd need was a display program.

[elderbear]

While locally flat, the evidence seems to be in that the earth is round - and it's been in for 2250 years, more or less:

 

 

Eratosthenes

 

He calculated the earth's circumference circa 240 BC, using trigonometry and knowledge of the angle of elevation of the Sun at noon in Alexandria and Syene (now Aswan, Egypt). The calculation is based on the assumption that the Earth is spherical and that the Sun is so far away that its rays can be taken as parallel.

 

Eratosthenes knew that on the summer solstice at local noon on the Tropic of Cancer, the Sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead- though Syene was in fact slightly north of the tropic. He also knew, from measurement, that in his hometown of Alexandria, the angle of elevation of the Sun would be 7° south of the zenith at the same time. Assuming that Alexandria was due north of Syene- Alexandria is in fact on a more westerly longitude- he concluded that the distance from Alexandria to Syene must be 7/360 of the total circumference of the Earth. The distance between the cities was known from caravan travellings to be about 5,000 stadia. He established a final value of 700 stadia per degree, which implies a circumference of 252,000 stadia. The exact size of the stadion he used is no longer known (the common Attic stadion was about 185 m), but it is generally believed that Eratosthenes' value corresponds to between 39,690 km and 46,620 km. The circumference of the Earth around the poles is now measured at around 40,008 km. Eratosthenes' method was used by Posidonius about 150 years later.

 

Circa 200 BC Eratosthenes is thought to have coined or to have adopted the word geography, the descriptive study of the Earth.

 

Eratosthenes' other contributions include:

 

* The Sieve of Eratosthenes as a way of finding prime numbers.

 

* The measurement of the Sun-Earth distance, now called the astronomical unit (804,000,000 stadia).

 

* The measurement of the distance to the Moon (780,000 stadia).

 

* The measurement of the inclination of the ecliptic with an angle error 7'.

 

* He compiled a star catalogue containing 675 stars, which was not preserved.

 

* A map of the Nile's route as far as Khartoum.

 

* A map of the entire known world, from the British Isles to Ceylon, and from the Caspian Sea to Ethiopia. Only Hipparchus, Strabo, and Ptolemy were able to make more accurate maps in the classical and post classical world.

 

Eratosthenes was known under the name β, because he supposedly proved himself to be the second in the world in many fields. He was also reputedly known for his haughty character. In 195 BC he became blind and a year later he starved himself to death.

Wikipedia - Eratosthenes - full article - well worth reading and following links ...

 

Eratosthenes was a regular Wesley Crusher ... ;)

 

But while the world is apparently round, who says we live on the outside? I believe that it is possible to reformulate all the rules of physics to have the earth as a shell around a finite universe. As you travel inward, everything scales by 1/x, where x is your distance from the point on the earths (inner) surface closest to you.

 

But because this would take too much thinking to work out, and the math would be too difficult (given our understanding of things - imagine a species who learned to count by reciprocals! Their math and physics would readily describe an "inner" universe), I find it simpler to live with a round earth where gravity keep all but the densest individuals from falling to Australia ...

 

:p

 

(Nothing against Australia or Australians - just trolling for y'all today)

[MrLapage]

I like to picture the universe the same way the ancient egyptians did:

The universe is a cylinder, double in heigth as its diameter, sitting one of it's flat sides... the earth (or surface of) fills the bottom of the cylinder, and at the top of the cylinder are little holes where the stars hang through. That's Life, the Universe, and Everything.

[CthulhuSpawn]

Do you know where to find universal maps? I didn't know it existed until now... not much to reap but hell I've got nothing better to do...right now....

 

You can try to find Deep Space Explorer or Starry Night. They both have been on the tracker.

 

There are starmap database files available. You'd have find one with distance as well as declination and right ascension. Then it would be a simple job to translate them into cartesian coordinates (x,y,z - Earth at origin) - then all you'd need was a display program.

 

Celestia is an excellent freeware stellar navigation program, and you can find it here: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ It allows you to navigate through a very accurately detailed model of the local galaxy. Just make sure you have a decent graphics card. Another freeware one I like is Stellarium at: http://stellarium.sourceforge.net/ , although it is more of a planetarium program and seen from the vantage point of the ground at your local latitude and longitude. But it allows you to zoom to any visible star in the sky. For what I believe you want to do, I'd recommend Celestia. Both great astronomy programs, though.

 

Oh, btw, the Earth is neither round nor flat, it is a hyper-dimensional tesseract-based computer contracted to be constructed by white mice... :stare:

[Guest c4evap]

Here's an interesting webpage on the subject:

 

International Flat Earth Research Society

 

c4 B)

[elderbear]

If you're going to torrent Last Hero make it the illustrated book. The Paul Kidby pictures have the characters right on the nose.

 

All I have is the AUDIO book. :(

 

It's been fun to listen to while doing my weekend commute, though. And of all the Diskworld books, this one is Definitely space-faring science fiction - so it belongs here. Most of the others are fantasy.

[elderbear]

I like to picture the universe the same way the ancient egyptians did:

The universe is a cylinder, double in heigth as its diameter, sitting one of it's flat sides... the earth (or surface of) fills the bottom of the cylinder, and at the top of the cylinder are little holes where the stars hang through. That's Life, the Universe, and Everything.

 

;)

 

Whatever's outside the cylinder isn't part of Everything?

[TetsuoShima]

Well, at least our galaxy is flat, ....., sort of. ;)

[GorunNova]

Nope... the earth is round. Fly up high enough, and you see the curvature along the horizon... and fly in a straight line far enough and you'll be back where you started. That proves the earth is round pretty decisively to me ^^

[subspatial]

Copernicus or Ptolemy?

 

If the earth is flat,

Is it still the centre of the universe?

 

:)