The world is flat.....

[AA999]

...according to some.

I'm sure some will be aware that there is a whole 'society' that believes the world is actually flat.
http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/
Even though there is a wealth of evidence/proof that the earth is 'spherical' like shaped. (The society views this as a worldwide conspiracy naturally!)


But one thing that arises from relativity is that the earth can be 'flat' if you approach it at/near the speed of light.
Distance contracts the faster you travel, but only in your own time frame reference. So if you travel at/near the speed of light directly towards the earth then for all intensive purposes any measurement you make will show distances vastly reduced in 'true' (relative) length.

[Its why rapidly short life-span muons (elementary particle) generated from cosmic ray interactions with the upper atmosphere are able to make it down in to earth's ground when they shouldn't really exist long enough to travel that far].


Not sure what the flat earthers would make of the 'Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment' though... http://lbne.fnal.gov/images2/lbne-beam-map.png
Another conspiracy I guess

Edited by AA999 on Tuesday 9th December 11:09

[Eric Mc]

Pity we can't discuss a real science phenomenon without invoking the headcases.

[Fugazi]

This reminds of this video Optical Effects of Special Relativity which looks at the distortions that would occur as you approach the speed of light. The strange voice and poor resolution just add to the weirdness.

[cymtriks]

I thought that this society was a bit of fun, a free whoosh parrot for anyone who took them seriously.

Anyway, chill, we've known the Earth is a sphere for over two thousand years (yes, really). A Greek worked out the Earth's circumference in 300BC. He didn't work out that the Earth was round, he just thought up a way to measure it. There are European manuscripts depicting a round Earth from the Dark Ages so we know the knowledge was not lost.

[Nimby]

Many years ago Patrick Moore gave a talk at my Uni. His put-down to a flat-earther was to agree; as a WWII RAF officer he'd flown in a straight line for hours and never once went off into space at a tangent.

[Derek Smith]

Isn't it oblate?

[Eric Mc]

Nimby said:

Many years ago Patrick Moore gave a talk at my Uni. His put-down to a flat-earther was to agree; as a WWII RAF officer he'd flown in a straight line for hours and never once went off into space at a tangent.

He always had a soft spot for "non-conformist" thinkers - even if he thought they were all a spanner short of a tool box.

His book "Can You Speak Venusian?" is a good laugh - even though he was never rude to any of the interviewees. He was too much of a gentleman for that

[Simpo Two]

I think the definition of the Earth's shape over the centuries has gone from flat to round to spherical to oblate sperhoid to 'earth-shaped'.

To me a 'flat earther' is not a loony creationist type but a general term for someone who won't be trammeled by established views. One step beyond 'thinking outside the box' if you like.

[blasos]

cymtriks said:

A Greek worked out the Earth's circumference in 300BC.

Yes, Eratosthenes. To categorise him according to the man-made concept of a "country" in which he was born is crude. As Christiaan Huygens said "The world is my country, science is my religion".

[Toltec]

AA999 said:

So if you travel at/near the speed of light directly towards the earth then for all intensive purposes any measurement you make will show distances vastly reduced in 'true' (relative) length.

I think it is even weirder than that, at the speed of light no time passes in the time frame of the traveller so the earth is just a point, being whatever object it, for want of a better word, collides with and this is also the same point that it originated at.

[paranoid airbag]

Eric Mc said:

Pity we can't discuss a real science phenomenon without invoking the headcases.

I'd say this is an excellent illustration of several scientific phenomena, concerning the human mind and its deficiencies.