Flat Earth (Serious discussion. Please, no mocking)

I believe the following...


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What about the curvature of the shadow that the earth casts on the moon during a lunar eclipse?
 
Wide angle, yes. Fisheye, nope. Otherwise we'd see the black corners...

Any contraption that has been sent outside the atmposhere to take pictures shows the same thing:

Well, whatever you call it, I can see the bending of landscape when the rocket is grounded, so this only leaves me more puzzled.
 
The sun goes around the earth, I guess. Whatever Copernicus thought, that's how it goes.
Copernicus had the earth going around the sun. How would this work with a flat earth.

If the sun were to rise over the edge of a flat earth it would appear to rise simultaneously over all of the earth. People would see the sun rise in the north/south/east/west depending on where they are.
 
More from that link I posted:
"Earth's day and night cycle is explained by positing that the sun and moon are spheres measuring 32 miles (51 kilometers) that move in circles 3,000 miles (4,828 km) above the plane of the Earth. (Stars, they say, move in a plane 3,100 miles up.) Like spotlights, these celestial spheres illuminate different portions of the planet in a 24-hour cycle."

There's also this reference to a flat earth model that can supposedly explain why ships are partly obscured by the horizon, though I don't understand how from the description:
"What makes his flat Earth different from other theories is his theory holds that the Earth is imprinted with an 'inverse toroid.'" If you were to take a donut and press it into wet cement and then remove the donut, Bingham explained, the rounded impression it left in the cement would be what is known in mathematics as an inverse toroid.
http://www.livescience.com/14754-ingenious-flat-earth-theory-revealed-map.html
 
What would it be like? I think I'll subscribe to that universe model LoneShaman was into, so we're talking electricity then, not gravity.
I don't know anything about that. Real gravity would vary from the center of the flat disk to the edge. At the edge, all the gravitational force would be pulling you backward. This would effect such things as the escape velocity of the Earth.

~~ Paul
 
I think the idea is that the flat earth is continually accelerating upwards, and thereby simulating a gravitational pull that's uniform over its whole surface.

I still don't understand how a luminous ball can function as a spotlight, though. Possibly the sun and moon are meant to be equipped with colossal lampshades?
 
I think the idea is that the flat earth is continually accelerating upwards, and thereby simulating a gravitational pull that's uniform over its whole surface.
Wouldn't we notice if we were accelerating upward versus rotating? In particular, wouldn't we be zooming along at quite a clip by now? In fact, such a clip that the rate of acceleration would have to decrease as we neared light speed?

What's the trick to keeping the atmosphere contained?

~~ Paul
 
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