Post by Thork on Apr 19, 2015 23:22:39 GMT
What shape do you suppose the earth to be? Flat of course, but a dish? Infinite? Something else?
Lets see what we can rule out.
Infinite.
Can't be. Nature doesn't do infinite and the earth is a natural phenomena. Nothing can be said to be infinite. It is a man made concept. The number of stars is infinite, the number of atoms in the universe, the speed of something, the quantity of anything. Infinity exists no where in the natural world. On a personal level, I find the idea of an infinite earth unintuitive anyway. At that point the earth either bisects the universe in two, or its a floor for the universe. Neither is demonstrable and we are into a thought experiment as opposed to the shape of the earth. Leaning on my Deist beliefs ... Round earth theory makes you an atheist - science, the idea you are a fluke, that you are small and insignificant, a spec of dust in a cosmos of trillions of galaxies where you can spontaneously just be by accident, the logical conclusion is no God. But flat earth theory puts you in the centre of the universe. Intelligent design, a universe created by an architect of some form ... flat earthers inevitably end up as Deists. Which is interesting because that is the religion of the illuminati. Everyone from Neil Armstrong to Isaac Newton was a deist. I like to think we know what they know and so have the same beliefs. But anyway, leaning on my Deist beliefs, infinity can't be. Only a creator can be infinity, you are invoking God, infinity is not in his vocabulary. I'm very happy to rule out infinite earth. Its absurd.
A disc.
Well it makes for a nice logo, its something people can relate to, its not a huge step from a ball. Its a geometric shape people can identify with ... hence used by the flat earth society. But you may be interested to know many of our card carrying members don't think its a disc either. Why would it be? How would a disc be formed naturally? And the earth isn't geometric. The shapes of the continents are messy, they are irregular, there is no order. Why would the edge be ordered? Why the neat border? What makes it neat? We don't have any explanation for it, and many of us we don't think it is a disc.
The subject of another thread, but the North Pole is the centre of the earth. the axis mundi. Proof for this is outside the context of this thread. So the map below is an abomination. The earth is inside out. But note the shapes of the continents. Kinda messy.
Note how this map is a projection and the edges are smooshed to spread the continents around them. The squiggles are ocean currents. I'll come to that in a bit.
Next map, same thing but reversed.
Same smooshing at the edges, because its a projection. Now we have a disc with a smooth icewall.
Finally, the map below is very rare. It is a "A Constant-Scale Natural Boundary Map of Earth" - Constant scale, no distortion. Natural boundary ... hmm interesting what are the natural boundaries in an ice wilderness? The coastline aside where we have hills and mountains, further inland is an ice sheet wilderness. Smooth, flat, featureless. What are the natural boundaries? the edge?
Now I have an earth that is every bit as irregular as one would imagine it to be. I have large areas of icewall edge but also some rather narrow bits, which may well explain historical reports of some people finding the edge in antiquity. From some points, the edge isn't so far from the icewall.
Back to the squiggles. The final map actually works very nicely with other observations. Ocean currents as depicted for example.
When you are a kid, you are taught "Earth is round and coriolis makes Northern Hemispheres currents go one way, and SH the opposite.
Nice ball theory, rubbish in practice. Ocean currents are actually driven by temperature (hooray, something Matt Boylan got right), and not by coriolis. You get as my splat earth map depicts. Now we know this to be true because of an accident in 1992. A container ship carry plastic ducks capsized sending those little ducks into the sea.
news.co.cr/28000-rubber-ducks-teach-us-about-our-ocean-systems/10534/
What was known abut the ocean currents had to be completely rewritten. Coriolis predictions were bunk (as usual ... earth doesn't spin) and those little ducks followed the heat driven currents derived from land mass vs sea temps and longitude variations. By looking at the timings of these ducks and much other evidence, we concluded the splat earth map is a very close shape to earth.
There are very few examples of this map on the internet. In fact these are the only I have ever seen on the internet. We have a few more in our archives. We suspect this map to have been released by accident and was intended for military use only. We are working on verifying the sources of these maps, but the shape is pretty good.
So what do you all think?
Infinite?
A neat little dish?
Or a splat?
