Relativity
November 14, 2024 - Reading time: ~1 minute
I found out about the experiments conducted by Einstein and others in the 20th century during solar eclipses. They photographed stars during eclipse totality and measured the deflection of their positions. this was confirmed over and over by scientists. It's evidence for the bending of spacetime by the sun. very interesting stuff.
Historical Astronomers
October 21, 2024 - Reading time: 8 minutes
I recently started to dig into writings by Brahe, Kepler and others after hearing globe skeptics say they were all flat earthers or subscribed to non-globe models.
Ptolemy
§ 2.1.4 Moreover we have selected the projection which we especially consider the best in the making of maps, this being the one in which we start at the right hand. The work may then proceed from places already inserted to those not yet inserted. This can best be carried out if we write in the northern latitudes before the southern ones, and the western before the eastern ones; since to the eye of the writer or reader the northern localities appear in the upper part, and the eastern appear on the right hand, on both the globe and the map of the habitable earth.
Brahe
Here are selections from De Nova Stella:
Here he talks about how the Earth has a semi-diameter (radius) and says sphere and globe all over the place. It's pretty obvious he believes in a globe Earth.
I think this language is pretty clear that the mass of the Earth can be calculated and it's a sphere.
Here Tycho is discussing calculation of the distance to the moon and then extrapolating to the bodies behind it. Unless he's talking about observing from the North Pole and Antarctica, it's rather obvious this is based on a spherical Earth.
Kepler
Here's a great selection by Kepler:
For as the sun rotating into itself moves all the planets by means of the form emitted from itself, so too—as the philosophers teach—mind, by understanding itself and in itself all things, stirs up ratiocinations, and by dispersing and unrolling its simplicity into them, makes everything to be understood. And the movements of the planets around the sun at their centre and the discourses of ratiocinations are so interwoven and bound together that, unless the Earth, our domicile, measured out the annual circle, midway between the other spheres—changing from place to place, from station to station—never would human ratiocination have worked its way to the true intervals of the planets and to the other things dependent from them, never would it have constituted astronomy. (See the Optical Part of Astronomy, Chapter 9.)
On the other hand, in a beautiful correspondence, simplicity of intellection follows upon the stillness of the sun at the centre of the world, in that hitherto we have always worked under the assumption that those solar harmonies of movements are defined neither by the diversity of regions nor by the amplitude of the expanses of the world. As a matter of fact, if any mind observes from the sun those harmonies, that mind is without the assistance afforded by the movement and diverse stations of his abode, by means of which it may string together ratiocinations and discourse necessary for measuring out the planetary intervals. Accordingly, it compares the diurnal movements of each planet, not as they are in their own orbits but as they pass through the angles at the centre of the sun. And so if it has knowledge of the magnitude of the spheres, this knowledge must be present in it a priori, without any toil of ratiocination: but to what extent that is true of human minds and of sublunary nature has been made clear above, from Plato and Proclus.
Under these circumstances, it will not have been surprising if anyone who has been thoroughly warmed by taking a fairly liberal draft from that bowl of Pythagoras which Proclus gives to drink from in the very first verse of the hymn, and who has been made drowsy by the very sweet harmony of the dance of the planets begins to dream (by telling a story he may imitate Plato's Atlantis and, by dreaming, Cicero's Scipio): throughout the remaining globes, which follow after from place to place, there have been disseminated discursive or ratiocinative faculties, whereof that one ought assuredly to be judged the most excellent and absolute which is in the middle position among those globes, viz., in man's earth, while there dwells in the sun simple intellect, πῦρ νοερὸν, or νοῦς, the source, whatsoever it may be, of every harmony.
For if it was Tycho Brahe's opinion concerning that bare wilderness of globes that it does not exist fruitlessly in the world but is filled with inhabitants: with how much greater probability shall we make a conjecture as to God's works and designs even for the other globes, from that variety which we discern in this globe of the Earth. For He Who created the species which should inhabit the waters, beneath which however there is no room for the air [327] which living things draw in; Who sent birds supported on wings into the wilderness of the air; Who gave white bears and white wolves to the snowy regions of the North, and as food for the bears the whale, and for the wolves, birds' eggs; Who gave lions to the deserts of burning Libya and camels to the wide-spread plains of Syria, and to the lions an endurance of hunger, and to the camels an endurance of thirst: did He use up every art in the globe of the Earth so that He was unable, every goodness so that he did not wish, to adorn the other globes too with their fitting creatures, as either the long or short revolutions, or the nearness or removal of the sun, or the variety of eccentricities or the shine or darkness of the bodies, or the properties of the figures wherewith any region is supported persuaded?
Behold, as the generations of animals in this terrestrial globe have an image of the male in the dodecahedron, of the female in the icosahedron—whereof the dodecahedron rests on the terrestrial sphere from the outside and the icosahedron from the inside: what will we suppose the remaining globes to have, from the remaining figures? For whose good do four moons encircle Jupiter, two Saturn, as does this our moon this our domicile? But in the same way we shall ratiocinate concerning the globe of the sun also, and we shall as it were incorporate conjectures drawn from the harmonies, et cetera—which are weighty of themselves—with other conjectures which are more on the side of the bodily, more suited for the apprehension of the vulgar. Is that globe empty and the others full, if everything else is in due correspondence? If as the Earth breathes forth clouds, so the sun black smoke? If as the Earth is moistened and grows under showers, so the sun shines with those combusted spots, while clear flame-lets sparkle in its all fiery body. For whose use is all this equipment, if the globe is empty? Indeed, do not the senses themselves cry out that fiery bodies dwell here which are receptive of simple intellects, and that truly the sun is, if not the king, at least the queen πῦρος νοεροῦ [of intellectual fire]?
Purposely I break off the dream and the very vast speculation, merely crying out with the royal Psalmist: Great is our Lord and great His virtue and of His wisdom there is no number: praise Him, ye heavens, praise Him, ye sun, moon, and planets, use every sense for perceiving, every tongue for declaring your Creator. Praise Him, ye celestial harmonies, praise Him, ye judges of the harmonies uncovered (and you before all, old happy Mastlin, for you used to animate these cares with words of hope): and thou my soul, praise the Lord thy Creator, as long as I shall be: for out of Him and through Him and in Him are all things, καὶ τἀ αἰσθητὰ καὶ τὰ νοερὰ [both the sensible and the intelligible]; for both whose whereof we are utterly ignorant and those which we know are the least part of them; because there is still more beyond. To Him be praise, honour, and glory, world without end. Amen.
THE END
This work was completed on the 17th or 27th day of May, 1618; but Book V was reread (while the type was being set) on the 9th or 19th of February, 1619. At Linz, the capital of Austria—above the Enns.
There are more, but this is a good start. People conflate their often geocentric beliefs with believing in flat Earth. Definitely not the same thing.
Cell Towers
October 1, 2024 - Reading time: ~1 minute
If Earth was flat, you'd only need one cell tower at a modest height for this entire flat area. Why are there hundreds? I think it's obvious.
High Altitude Photos of Curvature
September 25, 2024 - Reading time: ~1 minute
Commercial Photographer in a U2
This article and video is about a photographer who gets to go up in a U2 with several cameras and lenses. What he photographs matches what you would expect on a globe with rectilinear lenses. Here's what the 10mm lens took along with a simulation of what it should look like.
Deck Guns
September 24, 2024 - Reading time: ~1 minute
Battleships use range tables (or more likely computers) when targeting with deck guns. This article explains how:
Semantics
September 24, 2024 - Reading time: ~1 minute
"Photos" from space
Often, FE proponents claim there are no photos from space. It's literally the first thing they did with the V2 rocket.
It isn't the whole earth, but getting the film back from that far away would be pretty challenging.
They try to use a semantic tactic to discredit the word "image" as being fake. They're images because they were taken with sensors instead of film. That's it. Just like your digital camera takes images. Calling them "photos" isn't accurate. Instead of getting mad at NASA for using accurate language, get mad at Apple for misusing the word Photo.
The CORONA satellites are another example of film in space. There are declassified archives of the photographs.
http://heroicrelics.org/info/corona/corona-overview.html
They did aerial recovery of the film which is pretty cool.