[_ Old Earth _] Where Did the Idea of a Flat Earth Originate?

[Barbarian]

10 Easy Ways You Can Tell For Yourself That The Earth Is Not Flat
http://www.popsci.com/10-ways-you-can-prove-earth-is-round

One ingenious fact I hadn't considered before:
Gravity. If the Earth is round, you will always be pulled straight down. If it's flat, you'll be pulled sideways toward the middle of the flat Earth.

The most effective one remains. A Foucault pendulum will not work on anything but a spherical rotating Earth.

 

[Jacks Bratt]

10 Easy Ways You Can Tell For Yourself That The Earth Is Not Flat
http://www.popsci.com/10-ways-you-can-prove-earth-is-round

One ingenious fact I hadn't considered before:
Gravity. If the Earth is round, you will always be pulled straight down. If it's flat, you'll be pulled sideways toward the middle of the flat Earth.

The most effective one remains. A Foucault pendulum will not work on anything but a spherical rotating Earth.

If the earth was flat, there would not be any need for a force called "gravity". There would just be "down" and "up". Anything would fall down as there would have to be a force to keep it up. Gravity would not need to be some magical force based on an objects density and mass. We need to think outside the box if the flat earth was real.

The thing with gravity is this, Gravity depends on both the mass of the two objects pulling on each other, as well as the distance between them. So, why then, if I place two polished, smooth, solid steel balls on a perfectly smooth surface and make sure that they are even as close as 1/1000 of an inch apart, they will not "gravitate" toward each other. They will remain 1/1000 of an inch apart for ever.

Yet, the moon, which is less dense than a steel ball, can be thousands of miles away from the earth and be held in an orbit due to it's constant attraction to the earth by "gravity" and force pulling it away "centripetal force". The earth, billions of miles from the sun, would be sucked in by gravity. Pluto, a tiny little mass, is still pulled by this supposed "gravity" yet, it is 3.67 billion miles from the sun?

This does not make sense.

 

[Barbarian]

If the earth was flat, there would not be any need for a force called "gravity". There would just be "down" and "up".

What force would cause that to be?

Anything would fall down as there would have to be a force to keep it up.

Every force has an equal and opposite force. No "up" or "down" without gravity. Attempts to make artificial gravity (say by rotating a spacecraft) would produce anomalous effects not seen in gravity.

Gravity would not need to be some magical force based on an objects density and mass. We need to think outside the box if the flat earth was real.

The Cavendish experiment shows that gravity exists, even in very small objects:
The Cavendish experiment, performed in 1797–1798 by British scientist Henry Cavendish, was the first experiment to measure the force of gravity between masses in the laboratory[1] and the first to yield accurate values for the gravitational constant.[2][3] Because of the unit conventions then in use, the gravitational constant does not appear explicitly in Cavendish's work. Instead, the result was originally expressed as the specific gravity of the Earth,[4] or equivalently the mass of the Earth. His experiment gave the first accurate values for these geophysical constants. The experiment was devised sometime before 1783[5] by geologist John Michell,[6] who constructed a torsion balance apparatus for it. However, Michell died in 1793 without completing the work. After his death the apparatus passed to Francis John Hyde Wollaston and then to Henry Cavendish, who rebuilt the apparatus but kept close to Michell's original plan. Cavendish then carried out a series of measurements with the equipment and reported his results in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1798.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_experiment

Obviously, nothing of the kind would be measured on a flat, unmoving Earth.

The thing with gravity is this, Gravity depends on both the mass of the two objects pulling on each other, as well as the distance between them. So, why then, if I place two polished, smooth, solid steel balls on a perfectly smooth surface and make sure that they are even as close as 1/1000 of an inch apart, they will not "gravitate" toward each other.

Actually, they will. Cavendish measured how much, and essentially determined how much force is exerted by masses.

Yet, the moon, which is less dense than a steel ball, can be thousands of miles away from the earth and be held in an orbit due to it's constant attraction to the earth by "gravity" and force pulling it away "centripetal force". The earth, billions of miles from the sun, would be sucked in by gravity. Pluto, a tiny little mass, is still pulled by this supposed "gravity" yet, it is 3.67 billion miles from the sun?

What is so satisfying about this, is that all of those orbits neatly fit the numbers from Newton's theory of Gravitation. And they fit the results of Cavendish's experiment as well. They fit so well, that anomalies in observed orbits were used to find previously unknown Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

This does not make sense.

The data very neatly fit the theory. Would you like to see a simple example?

 

[Jacks Bratt]

What force would cause that to be?



Every force has an equal and opposite force. No "up" or "down" without gravity. Attempts to make artificial gravity (say by rotating a spacecraft) would produce anomalous effects not seen in gravity.



The Cavendish experiment shows that gravity exists, even in very small objects:
The Cavendish experiment, performed in 1797–1798 by British scientist Henry Cavendish, was the first experiment to measure the force of gravity between masses in the laboratory[1] and the first to yield accurate values for the gravitational constant.[2][3] Because of the unit conventions then in use, the gravitational constant does not appear explicitly in Cavendish's work. Instead, the result was originally expressed as the specific gravity of the Earth,[4] or equivalently the mass of the Earth. His experiment gave the first accurate values for these geophysical constants. The experiment was devised sometime before 1783[5] by geologist John Michell,[6] who constructed a torsion balance apparatus for it. However, Michell died in 1793 without completing the work. After his death the apparatus passed to Francis John Hyde Wollaston and then to Henry Cavendish, who rebuilt the apparatus but kept close to Michell's original plan. Cavendish then carried out a series of measurements with the equipment and reported his results in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1798.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_experiment

Obviously, nothing of the kind would be measured on a flat, unmoving Earth.



Actually, they will. Cavendish measured how much, and essentially determined how much force is exerted by masses.



What is so satisfying about this, is that all of those orbits neatly fit the numbers from Newton's theory of Gravitation. And they fit the results of Cavendish's experiment as well. They fit so well, that anomalies in observed orbits were used to find previously unknown Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.



The data very neatly fit the theory. Would you like to see a simple example?

If there is a force of gravity, that keeps everything "down" and if the earth was flat, then the concepts that are necessary for a globe earth would not need apply. If God made a "snow globe" for an earth, He could make gravity a universal force in one direction that is constant across the "plane".

If anyone could prove a flat earth, it would automatically negate a lot of theoretical laws that would be necessary for a globe.

 

[Barbarian]

If there is a force of gravity, that keeps everything "down" and if the earth was flat, then the concepts that are necessary for a globe earth would not need apply.

No, that's wrong. Gravity, on a flat Earth would pull all things to the center of the disk.

If God made a "snow globe" for an earth, He could make gravity a universal force in one direction that is constant across the "plane".

Could have, but the Cavendish experiment shows that He did not. Gravity works pretty much the way Newton first determined it does. If the Earth was flat, everything would be pulled toward the center, which would be in the middle of the disk.