If the earth is spinning

translucent wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

This is actually pretty much true. The only real thing is the sets of equations for predicting motion. But those don't always work, and they don't tell anyone what's really going on.

The short correct answer for OP is that at Earth's surface, everything is being accelerated centripetally at the same rate. Everything of size much smaller than Earth, at least. And that acceleration is faster than the centripetal acceleration of Earth's spinning. If it were spinning too fast, things would be different.

But now consider this: what if there was nothing but the Earth? Just outer space with no stars, planets, dust, comets, nothing at all. How would we know Earth was spinning? Would it be spinning at all? Isn't that what "spinning" is, a motion relative to some outer reference frame?

From that perspective, what we now think of as "spinning" would be different. Fast spinning would just look like things floating up into the air for no reason. Slow spinning would look like gravity having its way.

The spinning of the earth is the periodic motion of its mass relative to its own axis of rotation.

I can explain this wrote:

Water board Willie wrote:

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.

Troll feeder wrote:

I can explain this wrote:

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.

I think it's willful ignorance.

For many of them, because of some extreme religious view they have, they are chosing to hold on to medieval descriptions of the world that even the Church doesn't believe anymore.