If the earth is spinning

Here is flat-earther Nathan Oakley showing that in fact the horizon doesn't rise to eye-level:

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But if I stand on a beach and look across to another country I see the end of the sea. If I get on a boat and it goes straight I get to that country, unless you're saying that I fall off the edge and go underneath the earth and am upside down, held to the boat which is in turn held to the sea by gravity. There must be a lot of edges in your world and a lot of people falling. And I'm pretty sure I'd notice if the boat flipped upside down. Unless you're trying to imply that I'm already on the underside of the earth and I kind of crested the horizon to get around to the country, which is a much easier motion, especially when you're spinning through space at an extremely rapid rate.

No no don't make it more difficult! You mean if the earth is still and the universe is spinning around it? Yikes. An allegory for our times.

Nice question, but no.

The spinning of the earth is the periodic motion of its mass relative to its own axis of rotation. Gravity is the attraction of all mass to all other mass. Neither of these, on Earth, have much to do with the mass of the rest of the universe.

The spinning of the Earth alone can't explain the Cavendish experiment, in which, once isolated well enough, two small masses and two large masses (in the original experiment, four balls made of lead) are shown to consistently, but very slightly, deflect around each other (all masses start stationary relative to each other). With sufficiently sensitive equipment, this can be used to measure the force of gravity between the masses.

Gravity alone can't explain the Eötvös effect, in which net acceleration toward the Earth is slightly greater when traveling against the rotation of the Earth than when traveling with it, because the former cancels out some of the centripetal force of rotation. If the Earth were not rotating this wouldn't happen.

1) These are not legit questions - they've been answered and settled for hundreds of years, even if the Church tried to suppress it until the 20th century

2) "Countless high altitude balloons" have shown the exact opposite of what you're saying. Are you suggesting this because every photo ever taken from one of these balloons is distorted somehow or is it because they're in on the conspiracy?

3) What do you mean the horizon rises to eye level? It's nonsense. If I'm sitting on the beach and there's a kayaker 2.2 miles out to sea, I won't be able to see them. If I stand up, I will. That's practical reality. We can use maths to measure this. We use Pythagoras' theorem. If you're suggesting this is wrong, and Pythagoras was wrong, you're also questioning the existence of all engineering, construction and the basic maths that enables our society to function.

4) Given all this, and given the scale of the conspiracy that would be needed and the absence of a single leak from anyone in the know, what is it that causes you to believe in flat earth?

How do you explain the Moon? Is it flat as well? Is the Earth the only planetary body that is flat?

Legit question is a wise individual. How SO many have been fooled to believe we live on a "globe" where people live upside down, rain falls sideways and "gravity" holds untold amounts of water on this so-called "globe" absolutely astounds me.

Outer "space" is a lie as well. There is the Earth, how big the Earth is, what is past Antarctica? No one knows as no one, aside from several countries (including North Korea), which, for some reason, can get along with other nations and be a part of the "Antarctica Treaty", which are permitted to. Antarctica is not a continent but surrounds the Earth holding in our oceans. I, too, believed the globe lie for about the first 20 years of my life thanks to indoctrination. Few wake up, respectfully. Research Flat Earth, folks.

I just did this. It shoots back. I hit the gas and then threw the ball up and it immediately flew back. I don't get what your trying to say.

Exactly. It's a FACT that the Earth is flat and its impossible to debate against it.

As far as gravity goes, you can actually measure the gravitational attraction of two objects you can hold in your hands, using a very simple approach. It’s called the Cavendish experiment, and I’ve done it. It’s how people originally calculated the gravitational constant. All objects with mass attract all other objects with mass (obviously for objects in our daily experience this attraction is way too small to be perceptible without a careful experiment).

Sorry buddy, gonna need a source for this

A source for The Cavendish Experiment? Look up Cavendish Experiment!

You seem easily astounded. No globe earther believes people live upside down or rain falls sideways, because they define down as towards the globe earth's center.

What is astounding is that no flat-earth scientist is able to draw an accurate flat map of the flat-earth. That should be a 1-1 no brainer. The typical Azimuthal-Equidistant North Pole projection map used by Flat-Earth "researchers" knowlingly distorts Australia, making it look compressed from top to bottom and stretched like a balloon from side to side.

The "wise" "Legit Question" was asked about that 1-year ago, and said he would get back to that, and unsurprisingly we are all still waiting for his wisdom. His wisdom in this thread was "what about planes"?

I cannot take any single flat-earther seriously until they can produce a flat world map of the flat-earth without distorting Australia.

It might surprise flat earthers to learn how flat the globe earth is "locally". If you consider a flat-earth observer standing in the center of a 100-mile radius circle drawn at his 100-mile horizon, that observer needs to tilt his head down less than 1 degree to look in the direction of the circumference (which of course he cannot see, because his view is limited to about 3 miles).

All of the flat earth proofs seem to boil down to their childlike inability to understand how big the planet is in comparison to the minuscule human field of vision.

(Either that of they are just idiots that think like to think they are smart. )

I think the modern flat earth movement has been running strong for about 10+ years at least. Does it ever occur to them that it is strange that there are zero peer reviewed studies or formal published papers on this monumental physics and astronomy discovery? It would seem to be a huge field of discovery and not limited to a handful of clickbait YouTube purveyors. None of that registers as suspicious?

lemme guess it is the globers that are squashing the studies right? And you are so smart that you saw through the conspiracy with your internet research.

I agree with just about all of that. I think it’s a lot of people who went through school being told they didn’t get it, and now that they’re out of school they’re yelling “no YOU don’t get it! 😭”

I’m aware that there’s nothing worse than forcing right/left politics into a discussion where it doesn’t belong. But I really think this is part of a conspiracy theory resurgence (Q-anon, etc.) that’s getting a boost from Republican efforts to discredit science and journalism. People are slowly absorbing a message that there are no trustworthy sources of knowledge, and you have to form your own opinions based on what you can piece together yourself. Which of course leads to people piecing together a lot of total nonsense. Twenty years ago I think it was much more accepted that what scientists and journalists reported was the our best attempt at understanding the truth.

Indeed. This playbook of discrediting expertise is not new. Authoritarian govts do this all the time. It is beneficial to an authoritarian for the populace to feel that there isn’t any truth. Or truth is just too hard to find. Because when that is the case they check out and just accept whatever the Authoritarian says. Many dictators have killed experts or forced then to flee the country.

Propagandas goal most times is not to get you to believe something. Instead it is to get you to disbelieve everything.

Trump wanted his people to disbelieve everything they read or watched unless he was the one giving the okay to believe. He was the final say and it worked on a large swath of people.

It's more than likely this. Everyone else is getting the wool pulled over their eyes except for them. They like to think that they're the smartest ones in the room not getting fooled by the government or, you know, someone like Einstein.

A while back I did a little research into the whole thing and discovered:

Flat earthers have a hard time agreeing with themselves.

The sun, moon, and other planets are spheres but earth is flat.

The government keeps people from going to the edge of the earth.

The earth is moving upwards and that is how people stay on earth (not gravity).

There is a dome over the earth that keeps in the atmosphere.

Probably missing something but these are the main things.

Frick. You have a good point about the sideways rain. I hadn't thought of that one. But then if it's a squiggly globe whirling around, up = down, left = right, it's always moving, so sideways isn't really a thing.