Comments by "H. de Jong" (@h.dejong2531) on "Big Think" channel.

  1. All of those videos are intelligent only in the sense that they are clever at misleading you. There is no actual evidence that shows Earth is anything other than an oblate sphere.
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  2. Proof that Earth is not flat is trivial to find. Every time the sun sets, it does something that would be impossible on a flat plane. Every time a ship goes over the horizon and disappears from the bottom up, it does something that would be impossible on a flat plane. Every time we measure Earth's surface, we find that it is curved, not flat. Every year, there's a sailing race around Antarctica. The distance they have to sail proves they are sailing around a continent on a sphere, not around an ice wall that's 80,000 km ling.
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  3.  @poppawolf8777  Every time we measure Earth's surface, we find that it is curved, not flat. This is the truth.
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  4. They aren't high priests of anything. They are science *communicators*, people who are good at explaining things in simple terms. Their sources are freely available to anyone.
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  5. That is incorrect. Every video where a flerf claims that zooming in can "bring a ship back into view", shows a ship that hasn't gone over the horizon yet. This is easy to see, because the horizon will be behind the ship. They do this by focusing on a small boat that is far enough away to be difficult to see in the zoomed-out view. This is the correct way to do the experiment: 1. follow a large container carrier. The larger the better. 2. Watch as it goes over the horizon. Notice how the lowest part of the ship is hidden first. 3. When the ship has fully disappeared, zoom in. Zoom in as much as you want. Bring a telescope. Nothing you do will bring the ship back into view.
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  6. The part of Calais that is visible from Dover is consistent with Earth being a sphere with a diameter of 12000 km. It is inconsistent with Earth being flat.
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  7. A water drop disagrees with you. A water balloon disagrees with you. The planet itself, and its curvature that we can both see and measure, disagrees with you.
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  8. Bill Nye may not have a doctorate, he has been practicing science for decades. That makes him a scientist.
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  9. Your Nikon can do no such thing. Every single video that claims to bring a boat back into view after it's gone over the horizon, actually shows a small boat in front of the horizon. Take your Nikon to the coast, watch a large ship (not a small boat) go over the horizon, wait until the hull is hidden from view but the superstructure remains visible. Then use your camera to zoom in. No amount of zooming in will bring the hull back into view. This will bring the hull back into view: move to a higher elevation.
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  10. Bill Nye called Apollo humanity's greatest achievement. He is the CEO of an organization that advocates for space exploration. In a Big Think Q&A, Bill Nye gave his opinion on why we cannot throw our trash into space. Flat-Earthers took Bill’s words out of context and used it to “disprove” space flight. “Why we don’t throw trash into space? Because it’s too expensive. Lifting a ton of material into space takes an extraordinary amount of rocket fuel. And, by the way, when people want to send this much plutonium-238 which is not even the weapon’s plutonium, a baseball size, a grapefruit size, people freak out because the rockets sometimes blow up.” “Now, one thing I really want your generation to embrace is that the Earth is a closed system. We cannot leave the Earth. There’s no place to go. There’s no place to throw your trash. And I wouldn’t be surprised if maybe not you but your kids develop ways to mine our landfills.” He's saying we can't remove our trash from Earth, he is not saying manned missions to the Moon or Mars are impossible.
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  11.  @FreddyKrueger-kc1sx  You can imagine all you want, but Earth is not such a plane. We can measure the surface directly and find that it is curved, not flat.
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  12.  @FreddyKrueger-kc1sx  All maps are projections of a spherical surface on a flat plane. This inevitably introduces distortions, what you are describing is those distortions. The Gleason map distorts distances: the distance from the pole to the equator is 37% too short, for instance. It distorts the angles between the longitude and latitude lines. Feet and inches do not change with distance. 1 foot in Australia is the same size as 1 ft in the UK.
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  13.  @FreddyKrueger-kc1sx  Youtube deletes comments with links, so any video link is not visible to us. Despite that, I can tell you that that video is lying. They are zooming in on a small boat that is in front of the horizon, not a ship that has gone over the horizon. A valid test would follow a large ship as it goes over the horizon. Wait until the hull of the ship is hidden but the superstructure remains visible, then zoom in. You will be unable to make the hull visible.
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  14.  @FreddyKrueger-kc1sx  Geometry 101: when you stand on a sphere, most of the surface of that sphere is not visible to you. Only a small circular area centered on you is visible to you, that area has a boundary we call the horizon.
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  15. Every time we measure Earth's surface, we find that it is curved, not flat. In 2500 years, nobody has presented any evidence that shows Earth is anything other than a spheroid.
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  16. Anyone can do simple experiments to verify the shape of our planet. Every time we do that, we find that Earth is a sphere.
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  17. 1. Satellites in polar orbits are common, and those can see Antarctica. They may not be in a high enough orbit to see the entire continent at once. 2. We have tons of photos of the far side of the Moon, starting with photos taken by Luna 3 in 1959. The Lunar Orbiter missions gave us a full map of the far side of the moon. 9 Apollo missions have orbited the moon, so those astronauts saw the far side. 3. Summer and winter are caused by the tilt of Earth's axis.
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  18. Anyone can determine what shape our planet is, with tools as simple as binoculars and a ruler. So nobody is in a position to lie: Earth's shape is not arcane knowledge in the hands of a select view, this knowledge is available to anyone.
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  19. With binoculars, the smallest detail you can see on the moon is about 25 km in diameter. The LM is 4 meters in diameter.
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  20. Yes, every flat-Earth claim has been debunked 2500 years ago.
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  21. Actual scientists have studied the optical properties of the human eye, and found nothing to support the flat-Earther claims. And we have several lines of evidence that demonstrate Earth is a sphere while ruling out any distortion introduced by the human eye. The simplest of these is a direct measurement of Earth's surface (geodetic survey).
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  22. All of the evidence shows that Earth is not flat. All of the evidence shows that gender is more complex than M/F.
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  23. That is incorrect. All bodies of water on Earth display convexity. From a cup of tea to the oceans. If the body of water is large enough, this is easily visible: watch a ship go over the horizon, and be gradually hidden from the bottom up. The obstacle that hides the ship is the curvature of the water.
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  24.  @Dmgolfer22  When a ship goes over the horizon, zooming in does not bring it back into view. Flerfs like to claim this, but when you look at those videos, you will see that the ship they zoom in on is always in front of the horizon. So: every single video that claims this, is trying to mislead you. There is only one method that will bring the ship back into view: go to a higher elevation. This demonstrates that the horizon is a physical obstacle, just like a hill can hide objects on its far side.
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  25.  @Dmgolfer22  The nature of water is to conform to the forces acting on it. One of those forces is gravity, which pulls all of the water on Earth into the same spherical shape as the planet itself. We can see this, even with the naked eye. We can measure this curvature.
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  26.  @Dmgolfer22  No, the horizon does not stay at eye level. That is another lie. At an altitude of 1 km, the horizon is already at 1º below eye level. Again, a simple measurement will confirm this.
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  27. What you're doing is not freeing people's minds. You are presenting a narrative and saying 'believe us, don't look at the evidence shat shows our claims are false'. Every time you watch a sunset, you are looking at something that is impossible on a flat Earth. Every time you measure Earth's surface, you will find that it is curved.
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  28. Every geodetic survey proves that Earth is round. Everyone can do a simple survey and confirm this. Millions of photos of Earth from space prove that Earth is round.
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  29.  @edellis2960  We take the rotating Earth seriously because we have a ton of evidence that proves Earth rotates. This includes experiments that are simple enough anyone can repeat them.
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  30.  @tecbreakthru  Bill Nye gave his opinion on why we cannot throw our trash into space. This is what he said: “Why we don’t throw trash into space? Because it’s too expensive. Lifting a ton of material into space takes an extraordinary amount of rocket fuel. And, by the way, when people want to send this much plutonium-238 which is not even the weapon’s plutonium, a baseball size, a grapefruit size, people freak out because the rockets sometimes blow up.” “Now, one thing I really want your generation to embrace is that the Earth is a closed system. We cannot leave the Earth. There’s no place to go. There’s no place to throw your trash. And I wouldn’t be surprised if maybe not you but your kids develop ways to mine our landfills.”  He's saying we can't remove our trash from Earth, he is not saying manned missions to the Moon or Mars are impossible. Nye is the CEO of the Planetary Society, an organization that advocates for spaceflight. He called the Apollo missions one of mankind's greatest accomplishments.
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  31. Using a telescope does not bring a ship that has gone over the horizon back into view. All it can do is show more details on the parts of the ship that were visible already. Every video that claims you can bring a ship that has gone over the horizon back into view is misleading you: they are actually zooming in on small boats that have not gone over the horizon yet.
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  32. We'e known Earth is a sphere for 2500 years. Any confirmation from NASA is just icing on the cake.
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  33. Nope. He is an engineer who has been practicing science and teaching science for decades.
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  34. Tyson: doctorate in astrophysics. Thaller: doctorate in astrophysics. Nye: has been practicing and teaching science for decades. That makes him a scientist, no doctorate needed.
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  35. The simple truth is that tiny errors in orbit calculations stack up which makes the simulation break down in the long term. That does not mean the solar system is not driven by gravity.
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  36.  @FreddyKrueger-kc1sx  Incorrect. Zooming in does not change what the sun looks like. In reality, the sun crosses the horizon, the only optical effect visible is that the sun gets squashed a bit. If the sun did not set, it would not get dark.
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  37.  @FreddyKrueger-kc1sx  Maps are not based on a Cartesian coordinate plane. We store the source data for maps as coordinates in a 3D space, not 2D.
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  38.  @FreddyKrueger-kc1sx  Maps are a projection of Earth's 3D surface onto a 2d piece of paper. This means all paper maps are inaccurate.
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  39. Wanna know the real shape of our planet? Measure it. Anyone can do a simple survey and find Earth's curvature. Earth has no corners.
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  40. No. 1. NASA is an acronym, not a word. 2. the Hebrew word 'nasa' means 'to lift up'. 3. the Hebrew word 'nasha' means 'to deceive'. The 'sh' is the Hebrew letter shin, which is not the same as the letter s used in nasa.
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  41. Modern photos (as taken by geostationary weather satellites like GOES and Himawari) have enough resolution that you can measure the difference between the polar and equatorial diameter (it's 30 km, in those photos that's about 30 pixels).
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  42. Earth is oblate by 0.3%. Your eye cannot distinguish between a perfect sphere and one that is oblate by 0.3%. You can measure those photos where Earth looks spherical, and find that yes, the equatorial diameter really is 0.3% larger than the polar diameter.
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  43. That is incorrect. There are a dozen lines of evidence that all prove Earth is not flat, but spherical. Behavior of the horizon and objects going over it. The changing elevation of stars depending on latitude. The shape of Earth's shadow. Geodetic surveys (ie direct measurement of Earth's surface). Photos from high altitude and from space. Observation of the planets. etc.
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  44. That is incorrect. There are a dozen different methods by which we have proven that Earth is not flat, but spherical. Starting with the measurement of Earth's curvature via geodetic surveys.
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  45. Then why do we find curvature every time we measure Earth's surface?
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  46. 8" per mile squared is an approximation that was used by surveyors. They deal with Earth's curvature every day: they measure the 3D position of a series of points on Earth's surface, and they have to separate Earth's curvature from the elevation of each point. Water is curved: every time a ship goes over the horizon, you see Earth's curvature hiding the ship. Salt flats are curved: we can measure this, there are places where you can see this (Bonneville salt flats, from the top of Wendover blvd, for instance). Salt flats, like everywhere else, have a horizon at 5 km. Anyone can see Earth's curvature: with the naked eye, it's visible from the cruising altitude of an airliner.
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  47.  @kpec3  The Google Earth app consists of satellite photos made in low orbit. These have to be tiled together on a spherical surface , otherwise they won't fit together. Google Earth represents reality.
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  48.  @kpec3  We have ten different ways to prove Earth is a spheroid, most of which are accessible to anyone. The truth is that Earth is a sphere. If Earth is a sphere, then spaceflight is real, which means these photos of Earth from space show reality.
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  49. Anyone can do simple experiments that prove Earth is a sphere, not a flat plane. Wake up!
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  50.  @James-zp5po  Those people I mentioned flew around the world over both poles. This is about 40,000 km. Every year, thousands of people visit the South Pole. Not just the continent of Antarctica, but the actual pole, where we have a research station. Anyone who lives south of the equator can confirm we have a south pole: when you make a timelapse of the stars at night, they seem to rotate around our pole. In the southern hemisphere, they do this in the opposite direction of what we see in the northern hemisphere. This is one of many natural phenomena that can only happen if Earth is a sphere.
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