EP30: The One Where She Goes Over The Edge

Hello, Lovelies! Welcome to the blog post covering the episode that made Ashley and Tiffany think Rebecca had a mental break down. (Don’t worry, we checked checked Rebecca. She’s fine and will resume her usual skeptical snarkiness next week) As usual, here you’ll find pictures, Rebecca’s show notes, and information about this episode’s drink break.

This week’s drink break is brought to ya’ll by the amazing Our True Crime Podcast! The hosts are lifelong best friends that bring their candid, sometimes funny observations on true crime cases; many you haven’t heard yet. Click on their logo to check them out!

Flat Earth is a theory that uses an empirical approach when gathering information, in other words, relying on the information you observe and your senses.

So what does the Earth actually look like?

The Earth is actually a disc with a diameter of 12,510 miles and circumference of 78,603 miles (the sphere is 7,917.5 mile diameter / 24,901 circumference)

Imagine the Earth like a plate. The center would be the North Pole and the edges would be Antartica.

Antarctica is actually an ice wall that rises about 150ft above sea level, preventing the oceans from falling off the edge

This ice wall is several hundred meters thick, is almost vertical, and was discovered by Sir James Clark Ross, a British Naval Officer (he was one of the first explorers who attempted to locate the south magnetic pole)

We don’t know what is beyond this wall

For a documentary on the conspiracy behind governments guarding the ice wall, Click Here.

The Flat Earth Theory is not associated or unassociated with religion, as some religions even today uphold the flat earth theory while others (like Christianity)

Some theories think there’s a pile of rocks holding up the earth, others think there’s a void, others think  since we can’t directly observe it we shouldn’t make assumptions, then there’s the belief in the cosmic tortoise who carries the world on its shell (this is an ancient myth)

How does this work?

Gravity:

Basically, in some theories, this is an illusion

Instead, the disc of the Earth accelerates upward at a steady 32ft/s^2 (called universal acceleration). There are two explanations for this even:

• Dark Energy: Dark energy lifts the disc of the earth at a constant acceleration. This is an unknown energy without a known origin, that makes up 70% of the universe
• Davis Plane: This is a more recent theory, states that there’s an infinite plane of exotic matter that pushes in the opposite manner of gravity (this is a more recent theory)

Universal acceleration: Think of throwing a ball while standing in the yard vs throwing a ball while in the car (frame of reference experiment)

That being said, some argues that celestial bodies still have a slight gravitational pull, causing the tides

Orbit of the Sun:

The sun and moon orbit 3000 miles above the earth (stars orbit 3100 miles above the earth)

Through direct observation, we can see the sun and moon are both at least circular objects

The sun / moon have an orbit that’s parallel to the disc of the earth

How would the seasons work?

The North pole (center of the disc) is North while South points to the edges of the disc (this would be considered antarctica)

In the Northern Hemisphere (stick with me on the nomenclature), the sun is orbiting closer to the North Pole during the summer, and during the winter it is orbiting closer to the edges of the earth

How do you explain eclipses?

Lunar eclipses are caused by a shadow object (also known as an antimoon) that’s a satellite of the sun, lunar eclipses happen when the shadow objects pass in front of the moon

In relation to the earth, this shadow object has an orbit that’s tilted 5 degrees 10 minutes, allowing it to pass between the moon and the surface of the earth

The shadow object is not viewable during the day for the same reason we don’t see other celestial bodies during the day

Additionally, the red tint of lunar eclipses happen because the shadow object is not dense enough at the edges to block all the light emitted from the sun to the moon (like holding up your hand to a flashlight)

IF the spherical earth was real, then the moon wouldn’t turn red during a lunar eclipse. We now the earth is fairly solid, therefore, if the earth was spherical during a lunar eclipse there should be a ring of red around the earth’s shadow on the moon and the moon wouldn’t completely turn red like it does.

Solar eclipses happen when earth passes through the shadow of the moon during the day

“This happens when the Sun, Moon and observer are nearly aligned on a straight line when the Moon is close to the ecliptic”

When the path of an eclipse is drawn on spherical map of the earth a bunch of squiggly lines are shown

When the path of an eclipse is drawn on a flat earth map, the path creates either arcs or full circles

NASA today is able to predict eclipses because, ignoring the fact that they still use ancient astrological charts that were created before the idea of round earth, those charts would be generated through the same method now, which is observation

Testing the Theory: The Bedford Level Experiment:

This experiment was a series of observations that was carried out on a 6 mile long section of the Old Bedford River in Norfolk, England

The experiment was based on the idea that, because of the curvature of the earth, an object should become partially visible the farther away it gets from the observer until eventually becoming completely hidden by the curvature of the earth

The first recorded person to make this type of observation was Samuel Birley Rowbotham in 1838 and the first experiment was performed at Old Bedford River

Rowbotham waded into the river with his telescope then held it 8 inches above the water to watch a boat, which had a flag on its mast 3 feet above the water, sail away from him

He reported that the boat had stayed fully in his view all the way until it reached Welney Bridge

According to his calculations, the top of the mast should have been 11 feet below his line of sight when it reached 6 miles

He published his observations in 1849 and eventually wrote the book “Earth Not a Globe” which was published in 1865

In 1901 Henry Yule Oldham, a geography reader at King’s College in Cambridge conducted the experiment above with the same results

On May 11 1904 Lady Anne Blount hired a photographer with a telephoto lens to take a picture from Welney of a large white sheet she hung that touched the surface of the river from Rowbotham’s original position and had the same results

The Case Against Photographic Evidence

It’s too easily manipulated or altered

The camera lenses can cause “barrel distortion”, which can show an inaccurate depiction of the earth (i.e. sphere), especially when references are not in the picture

In a plane, the pictures are prone to distortion when taken through a window or in a pressurized cabin

The Conspiracy

There is not a flat earth / round earth conspiracy, as in, no formal group is attempting to convince that the concept of a round earth is part of a conspiracy put together by NASA

Instead, the purpose of NASA is to fake the concept of space travel to further America’s militaristic dominance of space

Here’s a quote from President Lyndon B Johnson in 1958:

“Control of space means control of the world. From space, the masters of infinity would have the power to control the earth’s weather, to cause drought and flood, to change the tides and raise the levels of the sea, to divert the gulf stream and change temperate climates to frigid. There is something more important than the ultimate weapon. And that’s the ultimate position. The position of total control over the Earth that lies somewhere in outer space.”

A month after saying this, President Johnson and the Senate Special Committee on Space and Astronautics drafted a resolution to change the name of the Us Army’s Ballistic Missile Arsenal to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NASA’s early research into rockets had an awful track record, with one rocket failing after another

At some point, reportedly soon after the Apollo 1 disaster, the decision was made to fake the program by using rockets that only had to fly high enough until they were out of sight

This is important because soon after this decision is when launches at NASA went from failures to higher and higher rates of success

The reason NASA portrays the earth as round is because NASA thinks it’s round, this is based off of the teaching handed down to us all the way from the Ancient Greeks.

Since a round globe was accepted by the population as the shape of the earth, it was easy for NASA to choose how to display the earth

After the end of the Cold War, the this ruse was kept up to allow funding to not only continue fake space travel but embezzle it

http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php/topic,1324.msg1312141.html#msg1312141

https://www.livescience.com/24310-flat-earth-belief.html

https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Flat_Earth_Wiki