>>14071

>that’s not science, that’s just a formula

The Christian Right have done a real number on flat earthers and their like, they're also almost exclusively British or American. It's bizarre. I had an old school friend phone me in a rage and say "You and your precious gravity!" once when I was explaining to him why all the water doesn't spin-off the Earth on a "NASA lies" FB post he'd made.

What I don't get about flat earthers is that they imply not only is australia fucking massive, but you can't get from australia to say, South America without traversing an insane amount of distance, yet planes do this literally every day.

>>14075

Sydney to Santiago takes like 12 hours or so with no stops, but one of the arguments I've heard as to why it takes so long to get to [literally anywhere outside Europe] from here is because they have to maintain the illusion of the Globe and go via the Middle East and South-East Asia and you can't go direct. So, considering you're covering more distance on a flat earth from Sydney to Santiago via the roundabout "NASA approved" route, Australia should be <12 hour flight and it isn't.

That is always where they tell you you're a sheep, because deflecting is easier than accepting you're a tit.

>“I don’t believe in science,”

Ironic because testing and retesting findings regardless of how established they are is the cornerstone of scientific method. We laugh but what if he does prove the Earth is flat - what do we do with the Royal Family, does one need to be a human to hold the Crown?

>>14075
But Australia is fucking massive and crossing the pacific ocean is an insane amount of distance. I don't want to sound like some sort of conspiracy theorist but you're not going to get a direct flight across the South Pacific because you'd probably crash and never be found again.

>>14077

>Sydney to Santiago takes like 12 hours or so with no stops

>>14077

>Ironic because testing and retesting findings regardless of how established they are is the cornerstone of scientific method.

That, and even the most basic physics formulas according to which that daft rocket of his is going to take off, or not, didn't just fall out of the sky. Like he will.

Silly puns aside, without the likes of Newton, who is among the most revered scientists of all time precisely because of the genius and rigorousness with which he applied the scientifc method to his research and later findings, this daft git from the colonies would never be able to launch his pseudo rocket in the first place.

The problem isn't that there are pea-brained tits like him. The problem is that there are many. Who all believe that the Earth being a sphere or the Earth being more than 8,000 years old is a government or liberal media conspiracy, or both.

I saw on TV a while ago that some Young Earth Creationist outfit even offers guided tours through the Grand Canyon during which the guides attempt to convince people that the geology of the Grand Canyon is proof positive that the Earth is only a few thousand years old.

>>14071
Pretty sure this guy is just scamming flat earthers for their money and there will be constant delays.

>>14077
>you're not going to get a direct flight across the South Pacific because you'd probably crash and never be found again.

https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/QFA27

Come on, lad; literally 30 seconds on Google.

>>14086
One of the greatest problems we have as a species is stupid people with too much money. He's right there with others like Apple in helping to relieve it.

>>14087

>because you'd probably crash and never be found again.

Your chances of survival are indeed somewhat better if you crash over land. From what I've read, a water landing makes it slightly more likely that the plane will stay intact upon impact, and therefore that you won't get torn to shreds together with the airplane. But then if you are in the middle of the ocean, your survival time is often just a few hours, on account of possible cold water temperature, strong waves, and predatory wildlife like sharks.

Then again, the vast majority of plane crashes occur during takeoff and landing. Mid-air disasters, let alone in the middle of the ocean, are very rare. So even if your plane crashes on water, it's likely to be near the coast and rescue personnel will be able to recover you within a short time. Also, mid-air disasters at 30,000 feet tend to have the worst survival rates regardless of whether you go down over land or sea. A fall from that altitude is simply not survivable.

There's an urban legend that one woman survived the Lockerbie Air Disaster bombing, and that she was actually still alive after she hit the ground. "Alive" being a relative term though, I guess it was more that she still had a pulse and was whimpering quietly. She died just moments after rescue teams happened upon her.

I flew from Honolulu to Sydney once. Pretty impressive, because for many hours at a time, you've got nothing but vast featureless ocean beneath you except for a few small dots of coral reefs and islands. But the weirdest thing is still when you cross the date line, because suddenly the date changes to a day earlier. You do worry what will happen if your plane goes down in the middle of the ocean, but again, you will be dead just the same if your plane drops out of the sky over land from 30,000 feet.

>>14089
>A fall from that altitude is simply not survivable.
You need less than 200m fall to reach terminal velocity which is the point at which how high you actually were becomes irrelevant. Plenty of people have been documented to have survived falls of more than 200m, in particular Vesna Vulovic who fell 33,330 ft.
The chances of survival aren't great and you won't walk away from it but it does happen.

>>14090

>Plenty of people have been documented to have survived falls of more than 200m, in particular Vesna Vulovic who fell 33,330 ft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87

>Air safety investigators attributed Vulović's survival to her being trapped by a food cart in the DC-9's fuselage as it broke away from the rest of the aircraft and plummeted towards the ground. When the cabin depressurized, the passengers and other flight crew were sucked out of the aircraft and fell to their deaths. Investigators believed that the fuselage, with Vulović pinned inside, landed at an angle in a heavily wooded and snow-covered mountainside, which cushioned the impact.


That's still markedly different from falling from 30,000 feet and hitting the ground dead-on. It's a bit like ski jumping, or even ski flying. Athletes can be up to 100 feet and more up in the air above ground, but they usually survive their jump unharmed because the ground slopes down where they land, and thus the kinetic energy is deflected slowly. Jumping 100 feet straight down, even onto a snow cover, typically kills you or at least you'll have severely life threatening injuries. Even a fall from just five metres can kill you if you're very unlucky.

Don't let survivorship bias fool you. For all practical purposes, you are really as good as dead when your plane starts falling to the ground from six and a half miles up. And most people also will not survive a direct fall onto a level surface from 200 metres. You hear about rock climbers falling a few hundred feet and surviving, usually with a few broken bones, but again that's typically because a sloped hillside slows down their fall and deflects kinetic energy.

>>14093
I'm not sure what your point is. If you fall out of a plane you're not going to be travelling directly down and most of the planet is covered with stuff. I'm just explaining that when you said it's "simply not survivable" you're wrong and that there are more than just one urban legend about someone surviving a fall from that height. The chances of survival aren't great and you won't walk away from it but it does happen.
>And most people also will not survive a direct fall onto a level surface from 200 metres.
Yes I already said about terminal velocity.

>>14094

>If you fall out of a plane you're not going to be travelling directly down and most of the planet is covered with stuff.

True, in that initially, your forward velocity will be much greater at some 500 mph than your downward velocity. But you do reach terminal downward velocity at some point, as you said. It's generally held to be something like 200 mph, isn't it?

>The chances of survival aren't great and you won't walk away from it but it does happen.

Really very rarely though. How many people die in mid-air plane disasters, and how many do you hear about surviving it, to the point that they will eventually recover from their injuries. Not failed takeoffs or landings (you've actually got around an 88 percent survival rate in those if you follow a few rules), but actual crashes from high altitude. I'm sure the rate is about one in several hundred.

Like I said, for all practical purposes, consider yourself dead if your plane starts falling out of the sky from 30,000 feet. It's kind of a safe bet.

>>14095
Yes. The chances of survival aren't great and you won't walk away from it but it does happen.

Parachutes are snake oil, they have never been any randomised
controlled trials of them.

http://www.neonatology.org/pdf/ParachuteUseRPCT.pdf

>>14097

Sorry, but that's a load of rubbish.

How many skydivers do you know who live to perform their sport repeatedly without a parachute?

What's true though is that parachutes are pointless for a passenger airplane when a disaster hits. Your forward velocity of some 400 to 500 mph even after your plane has disintegrated is too high to safely open a parachute. Your neck would probably snap in half from the sudden deceleration of a deploying parachute canopy at that kind of speed. Moreover, at 33,000 ft, you are in fact a few miles higher than the top of Mount Everest, which even experienced mountaineers will not climb without an oxygen tank. If your plane breaks apart at 33,000 feet, you will lose consciousness in about 20 seconds from the sudden decompression, and will not be able to put on a parachute and pull on its cord. Add to that the possibility of your parachute getting tangled in wreckage and what-have-you.

>>14095

Terminal velocity for a human being is about 122mph as you approach sea level in the typical parachutist's spread-eagle position. If you fall from high altitude you'll reach a higher terminal velocity in the early part of the fall, but start slowing down again as you reach denser air.

The equation is totally different if you're still in an aircraft or attached to a piece of wreckage. It doesn't take a huge amount of extra drag to slow you down to a survivable impact velocity, especially if you land on something soft and you're falling at an angle. Kinetic energy increases with the square of speed, so you don't need to reduce the velocity by much to massively reduce the impact energy. Your odds are still fairly poor, but Mad Mike might survive simply because his shit "rocket" is generating a small amount of lift.

>>14097

It's a funny article, but a bit too glib for my taste. The crucial point is that the sample size you need to establish statistical significance is dependent on the effect size. You don't need a particularly large sample size to establish that a gunshot wound to the head is fatal. The difficulty of evidence-based medicine is that you're often dealing with very small effect sizes, so you need very rigorous research methodologies to figure out what's going on. "Common sense" is extremely dangerous when you're dealing with very large NNTs or effects that take years or decades to manifest.

>>14099

>Your odds are still fairly poor, but Mad Mike might survive simply because his shit "rocket" is generating a small amount of lift.

I'm kind of rooting against him tbh.

His rocket design is perfect but so-called "globe-earth" conspirators will murder him, have his rocket shot down, just to keep their secret. I'm calling it now. Screencap this.

The plane crash conversation is more interesting.

How long would it take you to reach the ground if you fell out of a plane, then? I can't remember how to do the downward/horizontal velocity acceleration thing from GCSE physics.

If you at least have a few minutes of freefall, I think it would be a pretty serene way to go. Grab a bottle of wine from the in-flight duty free, light up a cig, and jump out. Spend your final minutes in free-fall, weightless, reflecting on the wonder of the planet you will soon be leaving a small bloody crater in.

>>14118

A typical airliner cruises at about 11,000 meters. The initial acceleration up to terminal velocity will take about 5 seconds and 150 metres. You've then got about 3 minutes and 20 seconds of freefall at 54m/s, assuming you're in a standard skydiving posture.

I doubt your fag would stay lit.

>>14120

Thank the lord for e-cigs.

>>14118

There is very little oxygen to breathe at 11,000 metres. It is generally held that if the cabin depressurises fully at that altitude, you will lose consciousness within the first 20 seconds. So you will not even witness your own death, let alone be able to reflect on it.

You might come to again as you fall into denser layers of air, from about 4,000 metres downward. In which event you will probably be more concerned with the sight of the ground racing towards you than to sit back and light one up.

Explain this picture then you smug bastards. Protip; You can't.

>>14150

>>14150
Where does all the water go?

>>14159

Surface tension m8.

>>14150

> Explain this picture then you smug bastards.

Russian fake news, spread by Putin trolls. What else. We know already that they're colluding with the Alt Right in America.

The madman's only gone and done it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YzNZE287QQ

>>14509

So did he happen to mention if he saw the shape of the earth while he was up there?

Also, why not just put a fucking go-pro on a weather balloon if you want to see the curvature of the earth (or lack of it, harhar) - people frequently do similar things successfully.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y0nHhFGXDo

The first Australia to UK direct flight landed the other day at Heathrow, I've not seen a single peep from them since.

Also, I've yet to see them explain how Sydney to Santiago only takes 12 and bits hours.

>>14511
>go-pro

Careful, lad. Banggood lad will be here to tell us how you could get a knock-off Chinese equivalent for about £3.59 any minute now.

>>14511

Everyone knows that balloons are just vessels to steal your orgone energy and delivery it to the Nordics, you God damned shill.

>>14509
Look at the state of his chute after deployment.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkKChMXJ3TM?start=122

>>14517

One of these days, he'll kill himself with his contraptions.

>>14517
He's got some fucking balls, I'll give him that.

>>14519

You're confusing courage with idiocy of epic proportions, lad.

>>14520t
The 2 are often indistinguishable from the outside particularly to the cowardly.

>>14521

Sometimes true; but there is a limit.

>A Grimsby man who believes that the Earth is flat is calling on bookmakers to accept his bet after he has been rejected by a number of the main national bookies.

>Gerrard Gallacher, of Eastern Inway, has attempted to bet a number of national bookmakers up to £100 that the Earth is flat, however is constantly being rejected by them, as they say that his request is "invalid".

>But Gerrard firmly believes that he will win the bet, and in doing so could end up costing bookies millions of pounds. He also feels that if the betting agents feel that he is 100 per cent wrong and won't pay out on the bet, they should at least accept it.

>He said: "I think the reason that they won't accept my bet is because they know that I am right in saying that the Earth is flat, and if other people joined me in placing the bet they could lose millions."

>Gerrard says that he first began thinking that the Earth was flat a few years ago after becoming curious about the subject and since then he has done research and is now even more convinced that he is right. One of the biggest arguments that persuaded him, is the theory that there are no actual real photographs of the Earth, believing that NASA use computer generated images because it is not possible for them to send a rocket into space.

>He said: "I just don't believe that we have ever sent rockets into space. I cannot comprehend that if space is a vacuum where there is no air, then what do the rockets propel against? I have also viewed footage of amateur weather balloons that clearly show to me that the Earth is flat, as I cannot see a curvature anywhere. Another reason that has convinced me is that apparently water is always meant to fall at a level and does not bend. So then how does the Earth manage to bend water all the way around a globe, it just doesn't seem to add up."

https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/grimsby-man-calls-out-bookmakers-1546506

>>15045

>So then how does the Earth manage to bend water all the way around a globe

Fucking hell.

It's a problem when someone is clever enough to question the world around them, but not clever enough to think beyond their very first conclusions.

>>15045

I wonder why the bookies won't take his money though, is it because the bet is already concluded, as the proof already exists? Like they wouldn't let you bet on who won the last World Cup when already know who did?

>>15047
>It's a problem when someone is clever enough to question the world around them, but not clever enough to think beyond their very first conclusions.

His name is Gerrard. He's got greasy hair and lives on a council estate in Grimsby. He decided it would be a good idea to wear a Celtic top to look nice when having his picture taken in the local paper.

Let's not expect too much from him.

>>15051
Aren't there rules about not taking money off the vulnerable? All that 'gamble responsibly' stuff...

>>15051
Aren't there rules about not taking money off the vulnerable? All that 'gamble responsibly' stuff...

>>15054>>15055
DOUBLE POST
DOUBLE POST
YOU'RE THE ONE WE LOVE THE MOST

>>15051

They know that it's more hassle than it's worth. If they take the bet, he'll keep coming up with spurious evidence that "proves" he has won and demanding a payout. He might take them to court, even though betting slips aren't legally binding. He might organise a protest outside their headquarters. For the sake of a hundred pound bet, they could end up spending thousands dealing with his bullshit antics. They could find themselves being bombarded with similar bets from even more unhinged weirdos, which could get very ugly.

>>15059

True enough.

And they likely know that if a fucking live feed from a space station isn't enough proof for them, then they'll probably never accept any sort of evidence as proof they've lost.

>>15057
I'm going to leave it there, just for you. Can post it again, if you like?

>>15062
Post it again! Post it again!

>>15057

Well? Aren't there rules about not taking money off the vulnerable?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMjDAzUFxX0

If you haven't watched Behind The Curve on Netflix then I recommend it; here's one of the flat earther experiments proving the curvature of the planet.

>>14150
Why that white bastard has flown so far away from the Earth?

Well,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51602655

>>21378

>In the video of the launch, a parachute can be seen trailing behind the rocket, apparently deployed too early, seconds after take-off.

I do that all the time in Kerbal Space Program.

>>21378
You've done half a job. Where's the video?

It was sabotage, he was going to prove that the earth really is flat. Got killed off before he could reveal the truth.

Fair play to the mad bastard to be honest. He disagreed with the science and went to great personal risk to prove his stupidly wrong theory. Men have always done dangerous and stupid things in the name of science. All the way back to Hippocrates tasting his patients' bodily fluids to diagnose them.

>>21396

>All the way back to Hippocrates tasting his patients' bodily fluids to diagnose them.

That's certainly one way to get away with a bizarre fetish in an era where your neighbours know your name.

>>21380
If you want a job doing etc.

Holy crap, that didn't look remotely survivable.
Impressive performance from a peroxide rocket, though.

>>21402
I suppose it's impressive in the sense that he build it himself, as far as I know, but the technology is the best part of a century old and he killed himself because he wanted to check if the Earth was round, something we've known to be true since antiquity, if not earlier. I know that's not the rocket's fault, but personally it all takes away from the spectacle.

>>21409
It must be especially galling for NASA etc. who scrape a scant handful of pageviews for their serious scientific launches when this dumb fuck got headlines for years.

>>21415
Yeah, I'm sure NASA are livid about some berk who pretended to think the Earth was flat so people would come and see his suicide-by-hubris.

>>21423

I imagine there's at least one nerdy person at NASA who does think about this kind of thing and is pissed off about the view comparison at an unhealthy level. Perhaps he also has other things to think about which are more important, but it's entirely possible to care about more than one thing at a time and has been for quite a few years now.

I've been in an airliner cockpit at 35 000 feet, you can see the curvature of the earth at that height. All he had to do was privately hire a Learjet and look out of the window.

>>21435

M8 that's just because the cockpit glass is curved. Look out one of the flat passenger windows and you'll see the flat truth. QED, innit.

>>21436

I was going to say, how are you going to beat them at their game and prove them wrong by using THEIR technology. It goes without saying that you need a homebrew rocket built in your shed for 15 grand. It's the only way to find out the truth.

>>21437

The flat earth theory is entirely undone if air travel works the way we are told it does, there is no decent flat earth model that is compatible with real world flight times, so you either have to say that planes are going a lot slower than 'they' tell us they are, or that the GPS on planes lies to the pilots so they believe they are flying in a straight line when they're actually circling a flat disc, and so on and so forth. Any logical argument or even looking out the fucking window is quashed by "yeah but we're being lied to". The ISS is cgi, even sending a flat earther up there would likely not change their minds as they're the sort of person unwilling to accept information that doesn't agree with their own ideas. They're right and any proof to the contrary is a conspiracy. I'd not be surprised in the least to hear that the flerfers have decided this fruitcake's rocket was sabotaged.

>>21439

I've never understood the rationale that flat-earthers believe is behind the 'conspiracy'. Who benefits from tricking the world into thinking we live on a lumpy, oblate spheroid? It's such an enormous and elaborate ruse, what on flat-earth (sorry) is the payoff from such a massive disinformation campaign? Who has so much to gain from it that America and the USSR were collaborating in the conspiracy even at the height of the Cold War?

Makes you think, dunnit?

>>21440

You are trying to debate logically a phaenomenon involving people who are impervious to logic itself.

If I've made up my mind that you're part of the conspiracy and of whatever THEY want me to believe, then surely it's not a stretch to say that any new reason you and they will present to me is just another attempt to keep up the lie and keep the wool over my eyes. The more you try to deny the universal truth that I would then believe I am trying to uncover and expose, the more suspicious you will make yourself look.

>>21440

From what I understand (and I do try to understand it, as it fascinates me too) they believe that organisations like NASA are behind it purely for money - they are often talking about how NASA gets 20 billion dollars a year in funding, of course that's a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of money the US government pump out elsewhere, but it sounds like a big number, and to someone sceptical of the whole endeavour it sounds like a waste. More extreme (mental) flerfers think it's a way to control us - either give us hope, distract us, or keep or head in the clouds in some way. The most fucked of them just think it's a satanic movement, set on dispelling the obviously true statements in the bible about firmanents and how the moon works etc.

The second part of the flat earth idea is that these people seem unable or unwilling to see the bigger picture - they simply can't comprehend that the earth is so fucking huge they can't see the curve. If they can't see it, it must be fake. I've watched far too many flat earth debunking videos and a huge amount of them are people standing on tall buildings complaining that they can't see a curve or that they can see more of a boat on the horizon than they should be able to if there was a curve, all while misunderstanding or misinterpreting the actual maths.

The bit I don't understand is the gap in accepting the logic of very simple concepts - the classic "why can't we see a curve" is easily explained by taking a very, very close up photo of a basketball or similar - the closer and more macro lensed you can get, the flatter the surface of the ball will look. You show that to a flat earther and they dismiss it as ridiculous, usually without any explanation as to why.

I think they're just people who feel uncomfortable or embarrassed about not understanding the concepts fully, so end up explaining their ignorance away by becoming convinced that the other people aren't smarter than they are, they're just lying. And they'll come up with so many creative and varied ways of justifying that conclusion. It's really interesting to me.

>>21443

I saw something on TV a while ago about a Young Earth Creationist who has devoted his life to offering guided tours through the Grand Canyon where he attempts to convince visitors that evolution and the idea that the Earth is anything more than 8,000 years old are complete bollocks, and that the Grand Canyon itself is proof.

I think his position wasn't so much that astronomy and geology are a hoax, but he incessantly went on about things like, the only reason you find fossils of marine species at the top of mountains is that they are remnants of the biblical Great Flood. And that it was simply impossible that mountains could have formed from seafloor sediment, because the vertical distance of in some cases several miles could not have been overcome in the 8,000 years that the Earth was really actually old. So it was kind of a mish mash by a homeschooled born-again git throwing together scientific fact that he understood nothing about and audacious Bible claims that were drummed into him in the worst kind of way, but he was so adamant that the Grand Canyon's rock formations proved the Young Earth idea, it was kind of just really sad to see.

Gravity warps space, right?
What if, outside of the affect of gravity, space could be thought of as 'flat'? What kind of process would require mapping of reality in such a way? Doesn't gravity affect time, as well?

>>21440

After watching the behind the curve documentary I went and did a bit of research into various things output by various parties in the film.


The motive seems to largely be believing they are smarter than everyone else.

That at some point people believed based on current data (in Renaissance) that the world was round,but as modern technology came along it proved that theory incorrect, specifically that people reached the edge in Antartica. Now they are either too embarrassed to admit they were wrong as it will make science look stupid, or think it would cause mass chaos as people react to the news.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnOzOZ2KW4s


Part of this is based on what until relatively recently wha modern flat eart was. A tool for a theoretical exercise to promte critical thinking and challenge commonly held beliefs, that was co-opted by people who started to believe the arguments being put forward.

>>21450

>A tool for a theoretical exercise to promte critical thinking and challenge commonly held beliefs, that was co-opted by people who started to believe the arguments being put forward.


I guess it then sort of falls into epistemology, which is for the most part just academic self pleasure, but has some interesting approaches to the challenging of beliefs that are held to be entirely true facts.

It's like that whole argument of whether you exist, and how you know you exist. On the one hand, it can be a brilliant philosophical question that requires all the sharpness of your mind. But then some gits start telling you that they think we live in the Matrix.

>>21503

I'd argue epistemology is the most important topic there is. It does result in self torture though as you just constantly spot the bad arguments that people prefer and pick over the truth, mostly when they agree with what they thought anyway.