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Flat Earther Now Wants To Launch His Homemade Rocket From a Balloon (themaineedge.com)
A Maine alternative newsweekly just interviewed self-taught rocket scientist "Mad" Mike Hughes, who still believes that the earth is a flat, Frisbee-shaped disc. ("Think about this. Australia -- which is supposedly on the other side of the planet -- is upside down yet they're holding the waters in the ocean. Now how is that happening?") And Mike's got a new way to prove it after his aborted launch attempt in November. An anonymous reader writes:
"One thing I want to clarify is that this rocket was never supposed to prove that the Earth is flat," Hughes tells an interviewer. "I was never going to go high enough to do that." But he will prove it's flat -- with an even riskier stunt. "I have a plan to go 62 miles up to the edge of space. It's going to cost $1.8 million and that could happen within 10 months."
"I'm going to have a balloon built at about $250,000 with $100,000 worth of hydrogen in it. It will lift me up about 20 miles... If I'm unconscious, they can use the controls to bring the balloon back." But if he's still conscious? "Then I'll fire a rocket through the balloon that will pull me up by my shoulders through a truss for 42 miles at 1.5 g's."
It's an awesome plan "if I don't burn up coming back through the atmosphere."
The interviewer asks Hughes a reasonable question. "Wouldn't it be cheaper and less deadly to just try to drill through the Earth to the other side to prove your point?"
"You can't," Hughes answers. "That's another fallacy. The deepest hole ever drilled is seven-and-a-half miles and it was done in Russia. It took 12 years. You cannot drill through this planet. It dulls every drill bit. All the stuff that you learned in school -- that the core is molten nickel -- it's all lies. No one knows what's in the center of the Earth or how deep it is. I'm no expert at anything, but I know that's a fact."
"I'm going to have a balloon built at about $250,000 with $100,000 worth of hydrogen in it. It will lift me up about 20 miles... If I'm unconscious, they can use the controls to bring the balloon back." But if he's still conscious? "Then I'll fire a rocket through the balloon that will pull me up by my shoulders through a truss for 42 miles at 1.5 g's."
It's an awesome plan "if I don't burn up coming back through the atmosphere."
The interviewer asks Hughes a reasonable question. "Wouldn't it be cheaper and less deadly to just try to drill through the Earth to the other side to prove your point?"
"You can't," Hughes answers. "That's another fallacy. The deepest hole ever drilled is seven-and-a-half miles and it was done in Russia. It took 12 years. You cannot drill through this planet. It dulls every drill bit. All the stuff that you learned in school -- that the core is molten nickel -- it's all lies. No one knows what's in the center of the Earth or how deep it is. I'm no expert at anything, but I know that's a fact."
you've always been such a generous supplier of uninentional comedy. God knows what would've become of you if it weren't for all those highly educated and skilled H1B workers you suck up every year.
The retard coalition is the biggest Republican constituency left sadly.
It might be even cooler... to launch a balloon from a rocket. You know, if you're a flat-earther.
Something tells me this guy may not be true believer.
What a stupid retard this guy is, my self of steam is so high knowing I'm smarter than at least some one
Is it really necessary to keep posting news about this idiot? I mean at first it was fun and everything, now it's just sad. Stop please.
Just go to the edge and jump off.
...is just a world-class troll. Nothing more.
He does not believe the earth is flat. What he believes is that a bunch of stupid people either DO think the earth is flat, or would just be willing to pay to see him die. He is just trying to swindle some cash.
Stop feeding the troll people...
- sigs are stupid
Grammatical and logical perfection!
- "I'm no expert at anything, but I know that's a fact."
That is *definitively* becoming a T-shirt!
This that? That that? This and that? What?
> if a schmuck like this can get to space
By launching a rocket from an hydrogen filled balloon ? Yes, he might go to space all right.
If they 'proved' the Earth is a sphere centuries before flight or space, then you can prove it right back to flat just as easily. See my other post for how.
And bump into the ceiling, space is a lie.
I don't want to read posts about mentally ill cuckservatives who have no idea how peer-review works.
He'll use the proceeds to open a pub on the Portland ME waterfront, called The Flat Earth.
Patrons will be warned by the waitstaff not to get the proprietor started talking about astronomy and rocketry.
Just to make yourself feel good.... ridicule and schadenfreude.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Would be cheaper to call some friend that he had in a different time zone, wait for sunrise and ask if the sun is rising there now. If answer is no, try to explain that with a flat earth.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Trump will soon be recruiting this loser to run NASA.
We should all consider ourselves fortunate to be witness to this monumental moment in history. The most elaborate and expensive suicide ever attempted.
Proving that the ignorance you can find in one person is really unlimited. I fear, though, that he is not that much more ignorant than the average person, just more stubborn.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
are soon parted. Still at least it's a change from Jesus needs the money.
Is there some infinite supply of water in the middle of the disc? A wall? Why aren't there any pictures of the edge?
The question is. Is Earth the armature or the stator? It's got to be one or the other. And nothing else. Aint it so?
My question why any sensible person anywhere, would ever discuss this ... and give the guy the air tie he wants?
flying off the edge?
Since the earth is flat, he can just use a directional antenna to maintain constant communication with a cell tower and livestream the whole thing.
Fame as a moron. Who knew there was a future in that?
#freedumbs
wait so he's against hillary AND against bump stocks? da heck kinda alt right conspiracy nut are you?
Just another second banana
I seem to recall another rather famous balloon that was filled with hydrogen. It could have gone better. I'm all for getting out the beer & popcorn if this guy actually does it and isn't just a con artist trying to separate idiots from their money, but in the unlikely event of this actually happening, hope he does it far away from populated areas or anything flammable.
One of the saner ones, I'm afraid.
Log in or piss off.
Or he could blow $2000 on airfare and fly around the earth. If it doesn’t work, he can ask for a refund. If it works, he learns something. Either way, poor legroom and dodgy airplane food.
This idiot craves attention like a 2 year old and the press is more than happy to oblige.
You only need a stick, clock, sunny day and a little math to check if Earth is round or not:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Measurement_of_the_Earth's_circumference
Everyone learns this at school, so the guy is obviously just trolling.
The Earth is not flat. This is a lie spread by fools and idiots. If the earth was flat, the water would run off the edge. It is CLEARLY bowl shaped, as this is the only shape that would retain water over time.
Do not believe this idiot, his ideas will lead you down a path of folly and ruin.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I was considering what sort of response would be appropriate when I fell into a hush looking at your four digit ID. I mean that's older than me even if I DID sign up when I first started reading.
Just another second banana
No one knows what's in the center of the Earth
If he doesn't believe the earth is round, why does he believe it has a center?
Because, on a flat earth the center would be, going by their maps, the north pole. Only a sphere has a 'center' that you theoretically could reach by drilling.
If this were his own words, then i think this dude knows darn well the earth is round. He's just seeking publicity. And just unmasked himself by this slip of the tongue.
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
Come on. This guy is obviously trolling if that is a real quote from him and not a typo. If he said "or" then maybe hes just stupid. But he said "at". Trolls love easter eggs like that because they think they are smarter than the people they are fooling, so they occasionally let the truth slip through to see if people are still buying it.
Faking stupid in a long game does take a large amount of effort. So he may have just screwed up too. But the wording is significant i think.
He'd be better off letting the balloon go higher with a lighter payload. A steam rocket with its massive pressure vessel is going to take more off your maximum altitude than it contributes.
The first humans to see the curvature of the Earth were US Army captains Albert Stevens and Orvil Anderson, who achieved an altitude of 22km in the Helium-filled Explorer II balloon on November 11, 1935. This would be the way to go. The record for a hot-air balloon ascent is 21 km, which would be sufficient to detect the curvature of the Earth if your gondola sported a porthole with a sufficiently wide field of view.
But the easiest and cheapest sensory evidence you can get is from a camera lofted into the stratosphere by a weather balloon. For under $150 you can buy a ballon with a burst height of over 35 km. You could probably rig the entire mission for under $1000.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Is it wrong for me to hope they guy miscalculates and ends up in orbit? So in the hour or two before he runs out of air, he's either completed one full circuit or at least enough of one to go to his death knowing he was an ignorant fool.
It's an awesome plan "if I don't burn up coming back through the atmosphere."
Altitude has nothing to do with burning up in the atmosphere. He will merely reach terminal velocity speeds (which will vary with the density of the atmosphere) but there is no risk of burning up. Objects that are in orbit burn up because they are at orbital velocity, not because of their altitude.
Better known as 318230.
Is he proposing a cubic planet ?
Either way, being able to reach east west destinations via polar paths should be all the proof anyone needs.
Or he'd be invited to DC for his accomplishments like clockboy was.
Same off topic troll on a second post of the same spam
And maybe a bigger factor is that if a schmuck like this can get to space, that can only mean the day is getting closer when I can too.
If you give this guy $10, you'd be the schmuck. He's not going to launch himself anywhere, he just saw some greater fools in the flat earther's to start funding his own silly rocket. He only started being a flat earther when he saw some dollar signs in it.
Now all of a sudden he's NOT going to launch his garbage rocket, and instead needs 1.8 million bucks. Yeah, really believable.
Fly over the wall and prove the Earth is flat!
A Maine alternative newsweekly just interviewed self-taught rocket scientist "Mad" Mike Hughes...
Why is anyone giving this lunatic the time of day? More specific to here, how exactly is this news for nerds or stuff that matters? If this lunatic wants to become a Darwin Award recipient, let him and spare us the details. All the media are doing is giving a lunatic a bullhorn to infect other idiots with his stupidity. He's not even an entertaining species of lunatic.
This is the quote of 2017.
And all of you haters and losers making fun of this guy, why do you hate diverse viewpoints in science? It's about time we had more Trump-supporting scientists.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've seen a hypothesis that our universe is a 3d hologram essentially projected from a 2d source on a brane, (Yes, I spelled "brane" correctly, go look it up.)
Of course, we have no idea if that's true or not, or if branes actually exist either. But even if the source of the universe is 2d, that doesn't mean the earth is "flat" in our perception of the universe.
"Then I’ll fire a rocket through the balloon that will pull me up by my shoulders through a truss for 42 miles at 1.5 g’s
Better have a hella long line between him and the rocket exhaust.
"Everything will be controlled remotely. Even if I’m unconscious, they can use the controls to bring the balloon back. That is the plan. That is if I don’t burn up coming back through the atmosphere."
He seems to think that the slow velocity he will be going will allow for enough friction heating to ignite him? He won't even be going fast enough to orbit, so he'll pretty quickly slow to terminal velocity.
We do make stupid people famous don't we?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Actually, no. You cannot project a 3D sphere onto 2D space without introducing distortions (and discontinuities). This is why there is no single "best" map, only different projections that each attempt to preserve a specific desired characteristic.
Either this guy is the epitome of stupidity and obduracy, or else he's a ruthless scammer attempting to capitalize on a common fad. We'll probably find out soon.
I'd say people have been independently verifying the shape and structure of the Earth by various means for a bit over 3000 years, and in the last half century or so in high resolution astroselfies as well :)
Flat-Earthers make me feel the way I'm sure I make climate alarmists feel, but I believe in science (the process), and I'm willing to put a few bucks towards an independent verification.
And who exactly do you think is qualified to perform your "independent verification"? You do realize that climate scientists actually have more to gain by proving the consensus wrong than they do in going along with it? They ARE the independent verification. Only people engaged in confirmation bias pretend otherwise.
In any case the science has already been done on this (both flat earth and climate change) and there is no need to rehash what is out there unless you want to either confirm an experiment yourself or have new evidence to present.
And maybe a bigger factor is that if a schmuck like this can get to space, that can only mean the day is getting closer when I can too.
This idiot isn't going into space. Please tell me you aren't actually dumb enough to believe anything this moron claims.
Frisbee-shaped disc
As opposed to... what? A non-Frisbee-shaped disc?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I think I love this guy ... awesome wackiness! Troll or not, he's highly entertaining :)
Low effort troll could have at least shown some respect for tradition and snuck a Goatse link in there somewhere.
"Wouldn't it be cheaper and less deadly to just try to drill through the Earth to the other side to prove your point?"
That's a reasonable question?
Flat earthers all killing themselves to prove that the world is flat? I'm all for it!
5 minutes of publicity why?
This is why we have oceans. The fluid simulation is able to fill those areas and hide the distorted textures. This is also why mountains are covered in snow, to cover up the stretching on the peaks.
The current incarnation of the flat earth movement is a huge gaslighting campaign on the american people. Of that much I am sure. Who is behind it and and what their motivations are is still unclear,
I still am waiting for them to tell me where the edges of the Earth are
..........FULL STOP.
I'll pitch in $10.
Flat-Earthers make me feel the way I'm sure I make climate alarmists feel, but I believe in science (the process), and I'm willing to put a few bucks towards an independent verification. And maybe a bigger factor is that if a schmuck like this can get to space, that can only mean the day is getting closer when I can too.
What does this guy have to do with science?
Back when he just wanted a rocket ride then his first test would have been a ride on a standard commercial hot-air balloon. Of course that wouldn't have been high enough as you apparently need to be about 10k up.
So now that he's apparently done the dedicated research of a 5 minute google search he's realized his rocket (which he backed out of) wouldn't get high enough, but instead of testing his hypothesis by sending up a camera for a few thousand he wants a couple million to play pretend astronaut.
He's not trying to do science, science is about trying to honestly investigate and verify your ideas. If he really was a scientist the first thing he'd do is ask a friend to hop in a sailboat and watch for a few hours, when the sailboat vanished over the horizon, exactly as predicted, he'd go "huh, so I guess the earth is round after all". Of course, if he came up with some dumb excuse for the ship vanishing like oh, it's just too far away I need a telescope then it would immediately occur to him to make two observations with a telescope, one close to sea level and one on a sea cliff. And again he'd disprove his flat earth hypothesis.
I don't believe this guy is such an idiot that I only needed 30 seconds to come up with experiments that never occurred to him in a lifetime of scientific research. Rather, I think this guy isn't a scientist, he's just a religious believer playing science, and he's deliberately avoiding doing anything to challenge his beliefs. Plus if he can get his name in the papers and bilk a bunch of people out of money that's just a bonus.
I stole this Sig
...I say performance artists. There's no way the majority of money he is getting come from people who really think the earth is flat; instead they come from people who REALLY want to see a guy fire a rocket with himself strapped in via shoulder harness...
My only real concern with his plan is that he's made sure his beneficiaries get a great percentage of the video rights.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1 - The sunlight DOES pass through more atmosphere in the summer. Take some geometry classes.
2 - If your hard drive is vibrating that badly, something is out of balance. The rest of your assumptions and innuendo in that section are not relevant.
3 - Your playing with gyroscopes isn't the same as a planet in orbit, or pretty much anything in orbit, but I'm not going to take the time to educate you on this especially since you put it in a section that supposed to be on eclipses.
4 - You've never been to a Solar Observatory either I see. No, the Corona never moves faster than the speed of light, any movement of portions of the suns Corona is SIGNIFICANTLY BELOW the speed of light. How the heck do you think we can identify when a Coronal discharge will hit earth by observation? We don't some kind of sci-fi superluminal telescopes!
And no, the sun and the moon are in no way the same size. Parallax measurements have verified that without any doubt by anyone who knows at least high school level math/geometry/physics.
There are NO observatories on the dark side of the moon (it's not dark because there's no light, it's "dark" because it can't be seen from Earth), though we have had probes and manned missions orbit the moon and send back the pictures of it. Now if you mean we can see protuberances of the solar corona beyond the edges of the moon during a full solar eclipse, well that is correct! That's because the moon isn't completely smooth, the disk of the sun is far enough away that it can be completely blocked by the moon, but it's atmosphere, the corona, is large enough to peek out from behind it like a guy with a beer belly turning sideways to hide behind a tree that's not wide enough. As to it not being smooth either, well duh! The sun was once thought to be a perfect structure of divine essence, then we developed methods to see past it's bright glare and learn the truth. It's a seething turbulent mass. So of course the corona isn't some nice smooth thing. Heck, it's magnetic field has enough loops and twists it could be the manifestation of a knitters nightmare! And with the corona being plasma, it's able to be manipulated by those magnetic fields. Anyway, this is more time trying to educate a willfully ignorant fool that I should be spending. NEXT!
5 - Wow, more eclipses huh? Neither the Earth nor Luna are perfect spheres, not even close, or hadn't you noticed the mountains and other such discrepancies?
Color changes are due to the passing of the light through the EARTHS atmosphere as well as the particles in it. At different angles you get different frequencies due to the scattering. Sorry the cameras used by the filmer suck worse than human eyes which are easily fooled by changing light levels.
Sorry you don't understand how when circling another object an object has to rotate to maintain facing that same object, so yeah, the moon has rotation, stop being so ignorant. In fact, the rotation doesn't keep it exactly facing the earth because the orbit isn't perfectly circular, though it is still orbit locked. (Look up orbit locked if you still don't get that the moon is rotating, or go to an FPS forum and ask about circle strafing which is the same basic idea.) Because of this slight mismatch we can actually see about 59% of the total surface of the moon with the naked eye over the period of an orbit. That time is almost a month, or a bit more accurately, is a lunar month. If you want more accuracy than that, grab an encyclopedia, you need to read a set badly.
Craters do tend to be round, just look at the ones on the Earth made by meteorites, and even the artificial ones we made by slamming high speed objects into the ground, accidentally and intentionally. The only time they aren't "round" is when they are more oval and stretched out in one axis. Those are caused by things hitting at a more horizontal angle, and yes, they exist on the moon too, but do to the way orbital mechanics, gravity, and the resultant impacts end up working out, they rarely strike at that kind of angle.
I've seen a hypothesis that our universe is a 3d hologram essentially projected from a 2d source on a brane, (Yes, I spelled "brane" correctly, go look it up.) Of course, we have no idea if that's true or not, or if branes actually exist either. But even if the source of the universe is 2d, that doesn't mean the earth is "flat" in our perception of the universe.
The rain in Spain
falls mainly on the brane?
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
The answer I've seen to this is quite clever (FSVO clever) - Light rays are heavy, so they "fall down" over distance, giving us the "illusion" of a round Earth.
Funny, the illusion gives a precisely equal circumference than all other indirect measurements...
An obvious mod choice is missing!
Do we know who he voted for?
Any guesses?
This guy is the same as the anti-vaxers, the moon-landing-hoaxers, the homeopathic medicine users, the phones-cause-cancer believers, and the “911 was an inside job” crew. All the same.
No matter what you believe today, you’ll find a healthy group of people on the internet with the same beliefs, and lots of data to back them up.
And they vote.
On certain issues I would be considered "right wing" on others sane and sensible :) Though while I used to say I would vote for the best candidate the Republicans have become so bizarre that I will probably never vote republican again.
Take this as a lesson:
On matters of drug legalization the libertarian part of the Republican party is actually in agreement the liberal wing of the democratic party on the issue of drug legalization.
So it is not all black or white.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Yeah, slashdot has really gone downhill since the good old days.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
...Banning bump stocks is the ONLY way to prevent future mass shootings like the Las Vegas shooting...
You apparently have little to no knowledge of firearms.
He has a hypothesis and wants to test it. That's more "science" than anything the hockey team has been up to for the last 20 or 30 years - and we give them billions of dollars taken at gunpoint from the unwilling. What's a couple of bucks here and there given by volunteers? And if you aren't going to pitch in anyway, what do you care if his approach is sub-optimal?
See that "Preview" button?
If he really was a scientist the first thing he'd do is ask a friend to hop in a sailboat and watch for a few hours, when the sailboat vanished over the horizon, exactly as predicted, he'd go "huh, so I guess the earth is round after all". ... is the earth now "flat" or a sphere? ... are you behind a hill on the water or is that indication for a sphere?
Hu? What has that to do with science?
You go uphill and then vanish behind the hill
You ride a boat and vanish
Sorry, calling other people dumb only makes yourself look dumb.
he's just a religious believer playing science
With the same likelyhood I could say he is an atheist.
Why is every idiot on the planet convinced that all the other idiots are religios nutcracks instead of 'normal' nutcracks?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
1 - The sunlight DOES pass through more atmosphere in the summer. Take some geometry classes.
If you live on the northern hemisphere and talk about what northerners call summer, then no.
I suggest you take your own advice and take a geometry class.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The purpose isn't necessarily to prevent mass shootings, but to make it harder.
It's like driver's licenses. Well educated and uniform drivers reduce accidents.
Now the police can set up honey pots for people trying to do something like this...
Not literally at home, you'll have to go outside, but with very basic tools.
What you need:
1. A place with a very long expanse of "flat" (spoilers: follows the curvature of the earth) ground and a tall structure (a runway with control tower or flat expanse of desert with a nearby tall cliff or plateau could work)
2. A large equilateral triangle frame with a plumb weight hanging from one corner. This is your highly sensitive angle measuring tool. Mark the level position on the face opposite from where the weight is hanging. Enclose it in clear plastic to keep wind away from the plumb line for bonus points.
3. Optional but recommended: Binoculars/spyglass/telescope, pressure altimeter.
Start near the base of the tall structure. Note any easily visible features near the base. Walk away from it in the direction that will give you the longest distance on flat ground. Check that the ground is level (and optionally check altitude) as frequently as you like. As you get very far away from the tall structure, note that features near the base are no longer visible. If the ground is measured as being flat (altitude can help confirm) yet the base of the tall structure is obscured by the ground at long distances, this proves that the earth is not flat.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
My takeaway is that these crazy fucks believe the Russians but not American scientists...
I can't believe morons like this are still around. It's been proven a very long time ago that the Earth is NOT flat. Also there is no sea monster out to swallow ships whole.
that the tether he uses is very short. Darwin will take care of this problem.
Has this guy heard of the Hindenburg?
Clearly not the brightest bulb on this frisbee.
If you just want to laugh at gullible idiots then look at Africa.
It's turtles all the way down.
Dude, you are an intellectual flyweight who occasionally happens to be on the factual side of arguments. Mostly you just blather about things which you don't understand.
Case in point: when you find a hill on water, let us know.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Check with local legislators? How is it THEY secretly know the world is actually a flat disk? How do you build up speed by driving a car in circles? The faster you go the more centripetal forces will pull the car to the side causing you to loose traction. Wouldn't driving in a straight line be a better way to accelerate to the desired speed? Oh wait, you're a "self-taught" scientist so you never took any science classes in high school or college. That would explain why you think filling your balloon with hydrogen is a great idea for you to launch your rocket from. I'll just walk away from you shaking my head.
I appreciate your consideration, at least. About 4, although the corona is apparent on the back of the moon, it is the chromosphere which is most apparent.
More to the point, even if the earth is a flat projection, anybody who still believes it isn't spherical in the context of our dimension probably qualifies as a p-brane. :-)
Sorry, science pun. Carry on.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Plenty of news sites/publications have an "on the lighter side" section.
So what? This still isn't news even of the lighter variety. This is either an idiot or a troll. Either way he should be ignored.
In this case, many find it amusing to see the lengths a flat earther will take their beliefs and for those of us with any science education it's seeing the 101 glaring problems with his plan. It's an amusing distraction.
Maybe if you have a truly perverse sense of humor. I don't see anything funny about this. We're already dealing with a presidency that is more anti-science than any in my lifetime. We don't need to be giving the lunatics the microphone. I'm not outraged but his 15 minutes of fame should be in the rear view mirror except jackasses keep giving him the attention he desires.
If you don't get it that's fine, feel free to be outraged.
There is nothing to get. He's a moron and an attention whore. It sounds like you are part of the problem.
He has a hypothesis and wants to test it. That's more "science" than anything the hockey team has been up to for the last 20 or 30 years
Since you REALLY want to take some shots at AGW research do you actually have a proposal for a better way they could test their hypothesis?
- and we give them billions of dollars taken at gunpoint from the unwilling.
Don't worry, we were already able to deduct your political affiliations.
What's a couple of bucks here and there given by volunteers? And if you aren't going to pitch in anyway, what do you care if his approach is sub-optimal?
Well if you want to give your money to something that is at best, worthless, and more likely a scam then go ahead.
But it's not that it's sub-optimal, it's that he's not interested in testing his flat-earth hypothesis at all. You could stick him on the ISS and he'd come up with some excuse about the windows distorting the light.
I stole this Sig
Or even getting a rocket. That man if not mentally ill, is simply trying to fleece other people out of $1.8 million. And that's the extent of the story.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
You go uphill and then vanish behind the hill ... is the earth now "flat" or a sphere? ... are you behind a hill on the water or is that indication for a sphere?
You ride a boat and vanish
So that means the earth is either round or there's hills of water. Ok, lets see if we can detect a hill of water. Take measurements from a few different locations on the shore, take measurements between two boats, etc, etc. Eventually you'll discover that there's a hill, precisely matching the supposed curvature of the earth, that always happens to be in exactly between your two observation points.
The only reason you wouldn't do that followup experiment is because you don't want to know the answer.
Sorry, calling other people dumb only makes yourself look dumb.
Actually I said I don't believe this guy is such an idiot, a fact you seemed to miss, along with the fairly obvious followup experiment to your "hill on the water" excuse.
I think someone once said something about people who call other people dumb...
he's just a religious believer playing science
With the same likelyhood I could say he is an atheist.
Why is every idiot on the planet convinced that all the other idiots are religios nutcracks instead of 'normal' nutcracks?
It's a metaphor. I was saying his flat earth belief was better classified as a religious belief than a scientific one.
I stole this Sig
I know they guy is crazy, but better this than saying we are "detecting gravity waves" from a star +2K light years away. Really? No. That's is true utter grant money horse shit.
It would be cheaper to just launch a GoPro to that same altitude, and then release it with a small parachute. But the guy seems to have a death wish.
Doesn't that just sum up the world in general?
but he's 100% positive the Earth is flat. /boggle
The rocket stuff is crazy, but the flat Earth isn't. Explain the weaker and yellower winter Sun. The tilt can't do it.
Why do you think they waste time on gravity waves? To reinforce the illusion.
Space is fake. Earth is flat. The eclipses prove it.
The answer I've seen to this is quite clever (FSVO clever) - Light rays are heavy, so they "fall down" over distance, giving us the "illusion" of a round Earth.
Funny, the illusion gives a precisely equal circumference than all other indirect measurements...
Hmm, that is a clever one. And technically kinda correct according to Einstein. Of course their physics break down pretty quickly and you'd probably see a visible distortion in mountains from the effect but that's not something you could easily communicate.
I'm not sure how to disprove that one. Maybe if you have a laser pointer set it up on land and point at the sail, showing that the laser point gets cut off part way, demonstrating that the curvature cuts off the beam, rather than the beam falling ever shorter. But even if you could get one powerful enough it would be a massive pain to calibrate. A transmitter and radio receiver might also do the trick, I've never looked into it but I suspect that's why ships have radio towers (to get around the curvature).
I stole this Sig
Use this one weird trick to generate more clicks
"Mad" Mike Hughes is truly the Einstein of the Trump era! (oops, I meant error!).
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Let's help the guy out.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Beware... commenting on a low digit ID is near guaranteed to summon the Elder Gods of slashdot. There's still a few three's that troll this realm.
Log in or piss off.
Strangely, no one seems to able to find this curve (hill of water) that should be there. Maybe you will be the one to solve the flat Earth puzzle?
For my part, ships disappear due to the limitations of your eye (angular resolution) or because they are blurred out by the humidity in the water/air interface. And that happens bottom up. (most humid to least)
It lets people of even average intelligence or scientific knowledge feel smugly superior.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Ah - so as the glaciers melt => no more snow - what "distortions" will come to light?
Please tell us - oh leader of the tin foil hat clan.
how has all the water not spilled over the edge into space?
Even though you're wrong, I'll help you out: Do it over water. Water is guaranteed curved if on a sphere, and flat if not.
How about we give him cash to buy a GoPro (if we bought it for him ot would be a plot) and a weather balloon and a string and a lead weight and he can do what fucking middle schoolers ddo and send it into space. Oh wait he's just a guy trying to get money out of people who are dumb.
The answer I've seen to this is quite clever (FSVO clever) - Light rays are heavy, so they "fall down" over distance, giving us the "illusion" of a round Earth.
That is completely daft. The light from the sailboat drops, but the light from the ocean doesn't? Plus, if that really was the case, we would see the boat, we would just be viewing it from above, seeing light that "fell down" from a higher trajectory.
..."that's easy! Show me where the edge of the Earth is! That'd be the coolest place ever! Heck, I'll build a house right at the edge of the world!"
Personally, my favorite corollary is that the presence of cats is disproof of a flat Earth. If the Earth were flat, there would be an edge somewhere. Which is where all the cats would be, knocking things off the edge, rather than piddling around with us mere humans.
You know that assuming the planet is flat,an open expanse of water is practically flat, right?
See what happens to the water level when you introduce a hill or object (like a body) in a container of water (like a tub). Does one side become uneven or the tubs water level change uniformly?
Feeling sad that interviewer asked "Wouldn't it be cheaper and less deadly to just try to drill through the Earth to the other side to prove your point?" and can't do it?
Feel sad no more, with this shortcut to the other side of earth!
First get/steal a pair of nice shoes. (use magnet for maximum efficiency)
Next, run as fast as you can to the top Mount St. Helens and jump off into the volcano.
Volcano has a big hole at the top so you won't need any digging. You'll reach the other side of earth in no time as you'll fall straight to the other side. Russia goes bankrupt, drill companies go bankrupt, school goes bankrupt. U Mad, interviewer fag?
I thought you were no longer allowed to use that term. How about "fact-based according to a someone who admits he doesn't know what he is talking about"?
The time, effort and just stone cold crazy to use a bump stock in combat is baffling. The weapon is literally rocking back and forth while spraying. Fine grained control with adrenaline is not easy.
The guy was determined and crazy. With time and effort you could do worse. It would have been easier to hand pick parts, build a seer and make his own full auto. Being illegal doesn't stop people who are going to break the law. Same goes for constructing silencers.
I'm rather surprised it didn't turn out worse. He didn't pick the most efficient method.
Except that to create the illusion of a round earth, light rays would need to curve upward over distance.
So stressful, need a cigarette.
" I'm no expert at anything, but I know that's a fact."
- and they are learning the way to win votes, in twitter length winning bigly insight after another...
This needed editing, tho': "All the stuff that you learned in school -- []-- it's all lies"
Ruth isn't coming back.
When they asked him why not just dig through the earth?
He says 'You cannot drill through this planet. It dulls every drill bit. All the stuff that you learned in school -- that the core is molten nickel , it's all lies. No one knows what's in the center of the Earth or how deep it is. I'm no expert at anything, but I know that's a fact."
Why not move to the edge and dig there? ; )
Actually, yes you can. You can't project a sphere from a cartesian 3D space onto a cartesian 2D plane, but the surface of a sphere is, in fact, a 2D space.
There are people (serious scientists) who believe that the entire universe might be 2D, with a special geometry and rules of physics that make it appear 3D to us. They base this on the assumption that entropy in a black hole must be conserved, and a black hole can only hold an amount of entropy proportional to its surface area, but personally I think it's a bit far-fetched. I think it's far more logical to just accept that black holes can decrease entropy.
Not just the assumption, but the standing rule that energy cannot be created or lost. Just because the rock you chucked at a black hole disappears behind its event horizon, does not mean the rock no longer exists. And it turns out that black holes do emit energy, observable at their event horizon. So, theoretically, you could determine what is going on beyond the event horizon by looking at the 'surface' of the same event horizon.
And if you can do that, you can consider a model of our universe where the 'outside' can also be regarded as an event horizon.
It's also testable: if our universe is a 3D projection of its 2D surface area, you can expect to see granularity of our reality. Like zooming in a picture, at one point you cannot get beyond the detail of a single pixel.
How does the ocean not fall? Hrmmm... GRAVITY? Why does he think he needs 1.8 million dollars to fund this absurd exercise if Gravity doesn't exist; he's clearly not jumping hard enough.
It's either alreasdy here or quickly marching towards our territory.
Actually I'd thought of that but it would make the experiment more difficult. My experiment was inspired by the effect of tall ships disappearing bottom-first over the horizon, but on a moving water surface with waves, there could be ways for flat-earthers to weasel out of this problem: They could argue that it's too difficult to measure angles on the ocean, or that wave peaks are what obscures the bottoms of boats at long distances. Doing the experiment on land eliminates these problems and keeps it cheap and simple (no need for a boat for one). These people like evidence that is directly and easily observable.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I still can't believe the parent post is +5 insightful. It's BS. The whole point of science is to use evidence to figure out the laws of physics. When the sitting president bans scientists from using the term "evidence-based", it should be clear the president DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT about science. Why would anyone expect real scientists to support him? (Real scientists: people interested in founding out how things actually work, as compared to snake oil salespeople claiming their mystical bracelet will cure all your ailments.)
If you want to throw out science that has been proven for centuries, you might as well go to a doctor who thinks leeches can fix broken bones.
Hey guys, it's sad people have to keep reminding of this but this guy is nothing but a professional troll. And what do you do with trolls? Don't feed them! Stop posting stories and comments about this guy, stop tweeting about him (even if making fun of him or trying to debunk him). Stop everything and just ignore him and he will go away. If you are going to say anything at least tell people to stop feeding him as well.
I'm a low five, but that's not saying much.
Fellowship 9/11
Is there a gofundme where I can assist him? I want to help.
I miss GNAA.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Anyone have a link for his kickstarter, or whatever? I'm generally not one to promote suicide, but this guy seems adamant on using his homemade rocket to kill himself in a most spectacular fashion. I mean, if this is what he really wants as his dying act, who am I to deny him? Hell, maybe we can help him along with his goal?
One famous experiment used a narrow canal.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
If you look into this guys story further, you find that for several months he was looking for financial backing for his rocket hobby. He tried NASA, and various other groups to help with funding. After exhasuting EVERYTHING he could think of, he started talking to the Flat Earth movement. He was able to convince the group that he was a heavy believer through a 90 minute talk with one of their interviewers. They gave him the funding for his hobby, and he has been pushing their ideals every chance he gets.
Scott Carr
I take the hammer and tongs to them. I have no interest in trying to convince them they are wrong -- I just metaphorically kick'em in the nuts -- that is if they have any.
It's obvious that this guy is acting as a comedian. Why not do the right thing and laugh about his jokes? That statement with the water running off is super-funny, IMO. I can imagine the tone of his voice he conveyed it with.
Here it is...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtODdWv6PVk
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Earth is not flat, it is pringles chip shaped and I have evidence! At the poles there is ice, that's the parts of the "chip" that swing upwards so of course it's colder. The other parts swing downwards (the equator) and are closer to hell, that's why it's warm there!
I hear ya. I fully recognize that the democratic party doesn't serve well the needs of the minority community. And I would love to participate in voting for a party that would serve my needs but in reality that choice isn't on the table. It's the party that will ignore me vs the party that will kill me. But soon as the party that's officially become too crazy to have any value left. Is gone I'm totally on board with making like the Green Party something of substance and not just conspiracy theories
Just another second banana
I'm a low five, but that's not saying much.
I should have been a high five but I was "born" in LeWrongGeneration or however that meme goes.
Just another second banana