Listening to Flat Earthers talk about science and gravity is equivalent to hearing Leftists talk about how guns work. Joe Biden recently said the government should ban "magazines that can hold 100 clips," a statement that makes no sense at all, since Leftists think clips are magazines. Leftists also think gun shots make people fly through the air (they don't), and they're possessed with the idea that when a person is shot, removing the bullet stops the damage... As if the bullet itself is a magical vampire device that drains life energy or something. (Hint: It's the blood loss and physical trauma caused by the bullet that matters, not the presence of the bullet itself.)
Those of us who are gun owners have all but given up trying to teach Leftists how guns work. When we attempt to do so, we're accused of "gunsplaining," another derogatory term invented by the left-wing language police. The truth is, Leftists don't care how guns work, they just want to ban them.
Similarly, Flat Earthers really don't care how gravity works, either, and some of them deny the existence of gravity altogether. Trying to explain gravity to a Flat Earth advocate is a pointless exercise. They will argue for the existence of an entirely different set of laws that govern the universe, even though their laws are not consistent with observable reality.
Their latest argument -- which they claim is "proof" the Earth is flat -- centers around the claim that since the planet is in a slightly elliptical orbit around the sun, the changes in Earth's velocity relative to the sun as it traverses this elliptical orbit is "proof" that the planet is accelerating and decelerating in a way that you should be able to feel. This argument is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of gravity and how gravity curves space, creating an apparent acceleration but without imparting G forces onto bodies in orbit (which is why astronauts in space stations orbiting Earth feel weightless, even as they are constantly pulled toward the planet in a circular orbit).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qqp4SJksTlQ
To skip to the full explanation of why the Flat Earthers are horribly ignorant of the basic laws of physics, skip ahead to the subhead below titled, "Flat Earthers claim you should "feel" the acceleration of planet Earth as it orbits the sun."
What follow is some background on the Flat Earth phenomenon and why Flat Earthers aren't stupid, just wildly misinformed and utterly ignorant of the laws of physics.
Flat Earthers are not stupid; they're simply misinformed (and a little bit fanatical)
Flat Earthers are not necessarily stupid people. I strongly disagree with the typical response to Flat Earthers by the science establishment, which claims they're stupid mindless morons. In truth: Most Flat Earthers have extensive knowledge in other fields of study, but knowledge is usually specialized, and just because you're a good car mechanic or a dentist, for example, doesn't mean you're informed about the laws of motion and the acceleration of gravity. (At this point, you should naturally be wondering what makes me qualified to talk about this subject with authority, but as I explain below, the acceleration of gravity is self-evident, and you can verify it from your own experience.)
I tend to think of Flat Earthers as being passionate but misinformed. They aren't stupid, or evil or insane, but they do lack the kind of basic science education that I was taught in high school. They're also not very good thinkers, generally speaking, because critical thinking combined with some simple observations would convince any rational person that the Earth isn't flat. In any case, you can't discount the passion of people who build home made rockets to launch themselves into high orbit so they can "see how flat the Earth is." That's serious dedication, even if it's also probably a suicide mission.
Here's what Flat Earthers get right
There's one thing Flat Earthers get right, which is stating that just because a "consensus" of scientists decrees something to be true doesn't mean it is. This simple truth is abundantly obvious in the climate change debate, where politically-motivated "scientists" have largely agreed to condemn carbon dioxide as a "pollutant" when it's actually the single most important atmospheric molecule for life as we know it on planet Earth. (Plants use it to create energy. Without it, all plants, animals and even most microbes would be exterminated.)
So it is correct to question the status quo when it comes to science. In fact, the very process of scientific discovery requires questioning the status quo. Without that process, Einstein would have never seriously put forth his Theory of Special Relativity, which later expanded into what we now know as the Theory of General Relativity. We also wouldn't have quantum computing, lasers, integrated circuits, carbon nanotubes or thousands of other science-based advancements that initially seemed to defy common sense.
But questioning the status quo requires triple checking your own facts first. When I analyze a flu shot as a sample on ICP-MS mass spec instruments in my lab, the instrument reports seeing over 50,000 parts per billion mercury. But the tech giants, the CDC and the science "establishment" all censor that information, pretending flu shots don't contain mercury at all, even when the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Agency of the State of California openly advocates the use of mercury flu shots in children. So that's proof, yet again, that mainstream science often engages in malicious censorship and narrative control to push its own agenda, which lately has everything to do with decreasing the human population in order to "save the climate."
Again, the Flat Earthers aren't wrong when they say the science establishment is very often full of bunk, but that doesn't prove the Earth is flat, of course.
It's similarly wrong for Spherical Earthers to pursue to lazy path of declaring, "Well NASA says it's round" and end the debate there. NASA lies all the time about a great many things, such as their discovery of microbial life on Mars during the 1976 Viking Lander missions. That discovery was exhaustively covered up in order to withhold that information from the public.
Logically speaking, however, the fact that NASA lies about some things does not mean they are lying about the spherical nature of planet Earth. It is not rational to believe that just because NASA is lying about the existence of microbial life on Mars, therefore NASA must have faked every space mission, moon landing and photograph of the Earth from space. That's a bonkers leap of bad thinking.
Elaborate thought experiments
To try to "prove" the Earth is flat, advocates of the theory create elaborate thought experiments to try to match observable phenomena (such as the motions of the planets and stars) with their theories. There's nothing wrong with thought experiments; they are a mainstay of modern science. Einstein relied heavily on them, as do most theoretical physicists. Stephen Hawking, you might say, was the "king of thought experiments." Almost everything he espoused was rooted in theory, not necessarily observable fact (although many of his theories were later experimentally verified, and much the same took place with many of Einstein's theories).
Because I don't call Flat Earthers idiots, from time to time they invite me to "debate" them on Flat Earth theory. This, too, is pointless, akin to trying to debate Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler on the facts surrounding Ukraine, Joe Biden and Burisma Holdings. In my experience, I've found Flat Earthers to be fanatical in their beliefs, and that's not intended as an insult but rather as a dictionary definition of fanaticism. It means their "faith" in their thought experiments is so complete that no amount of evidence can alter their conclusions.
Interestingly, I've also noticed a similar pattern of occasional fanaticism in opposition to glyphosate, the Monsanto-created weed killer that has been linked to cancer. When I tested twenty-six beers for glyphosate concentrations, I found that none of them posed any real health risks from glyphosate, since glyphosate levels in the beer ranged from 0 ng/ml (that's zero parts per billion) to a high of 10.08 ng/ml (ppb).
Watch the video here, if you're interested, and see the resulting chart below:
After conducting these tests using a triple quad mass spec instrument (LC-MS-MS), I remember hearing from one reader who insisted my tests were wrong. He had developed a better testing method, he insisted, using "muscle testing."
He also said that his muscle testing method was sensitive to 1 part per billion of glyphosate, and that even 1 ppb was dangerous to the human body.
Muscle testing is when a practitioner tells a person, "Stick you arm out and resist my force" then proceeds to push downward on their outstretched arm. According to this person, the strength of the resistance indicates the concentration of glyphosate in that person's blood. (Yep, I know, it sounds insane, but I'm just describing what some people believe...)
If you know anything about real laboratory science, you're probably laughing right now. There is, of course, no correlation whatsoever between a person's blood concentration of glyphosate in the ppb range and their ability to resist the completely non-calibrated, impossible-to-replicate force of pushing downward on their arm. Muscle testing for pesticides is bogus. It doesn't work. But some people believe it does, and they also think they can test for heavy metals, too. (Which brings up the obvious question, how can they know if said muscle weakness is due to lead, or mercury, or glyphosate or BPA or something else? The answer is that the practitioners just thinks of the toxin they want to test, and this thinking somehow magically narrows the strength testing to that one particular molecule. Obviously, it's nonsense.)
Muscle testing, by the way, potentially does work when it comes to mental states in the subject, such as asking the subject to do something like, "Remember a time when you were teased as a child." Sure enough, they get weaker. But even then, the "strength" of the test is entirely subjective and uses no reproducible standards or rigorous methods that can be replicated by other practitioners. Trying to apply muscle testing to blood contamination tests is just comic haberdashery.
But the fact that some people literally believe muscle testing could replace all blood lab tests in hospitals tells you how individuals can be sucked into a path of fanaticism about a certain belief system that has no basis in physical reality whatsoever. It's more common than you think. Abortion advocates, for example, don't consider unborn babies to be "alive" until after they're born and accepted by their mothers. That's why New York recently legalized the actual murder of a healthy, living, fully born human infant, based entirely on the decision of the mother to say, "I decided I don't want it anymore."
In the State of New York, it is 100% legal to murder that infant. That's fanaticism, and it's way more dangerous than Flat Earth beliefs, by the way. It also turns out that tens of millions of (left-wing) Americans believe in murdering infants. You might even be one of them, so don't go laughing at Flat Earthers until you examine your own twisted, insane beliefs first.
Flat Earthers claim you should "feel" the acceleration of planet Earth as it orbits the sun
Now we get to the real crux of the latest Flat Earth assertion here. One of the hot new arguments against Spherical Earth theory is that since the Earth changes its speed as its orbiting the sun in a slightly elliptical orbit, you should "feel" the acceleration. Since you feel no acceleration, the Earth isn't changing speed, they claim, and therefore it's not orbiting the sun and is flat.
I learned about Kepler's Laws of Motion in high school. They describe how any planet moves in orbit around a larger mass (gravity well) such as the sun. When the orbit is a perfect circle, the Earth would maintain a constant speed all the way around the orbit. But when the orbit is elliptical, the Earth obviously moves faster as it's whipping around the sun during the part of the orbit that brings the planet closer to the sun. When Earth is farther away from the sun, at the apex of the elliptical orbit, it's moving slower relative to the sun.
This is described in the following graphic, which could be from any 11th grade physics textbook:
At the "perihelion" point in the elliptical orbit, the Earth is moving the fastest relative to the sun. At the "aphelion" point, it's moving the slowest. Naturally, the area described by the arc of C-D-sun is the same as the area described by points B-A-sun, and these areas will be equivalent if sampled from any two arcs along the elliptical orbit, using the same time span such as one month. In other words, the orbital arc described by the Earth as it moves around the sun for one month is always equivalent.
Stated in the language of mathematics (via wisp.physics.wisc.edu)
- Planets orbit Sun in an ellipse with the Sun at one focus
- A line joining the planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal intervals of time
Newton's universal law of gravitation:
- m1, m2 masses of objects
- R separation distance
- G = 6.67 x 10-11 newton m2/kg2
This formula isn't very complicated, by the way. It describes the Force of "attraction" (explained below) between two masses based on their mass and separation distance, using the constant of gravity, g.
Understanding gravity: It's not a "force" but rather a bending of spacetime
Now here's where people get confused about all this. In truth, there is no "Force" that's pulling the planets together, not really. Instead, Gravity bends space, causing "orbiting" objects to actually feel as if they are traveling in straight lines, experiencing no acceleration or deceleration at all, even if they their velocity relative to other objects (such as the sun) is in fact changing.
Gravity, in other words -- and this is crucial to understand -- accelerates objects without imparting felt g forces upon them. Understanding this is key to grasping orbital velocities, faster-than-light travel and many other topics that I've lectured about from time to time.
What's really kinda cool about this is that you can experience this effect yourself on a trampoline (or by walking off a tall building, which is not recommended unless you have a death wish). When you're jumping on a trampoline, notice that when you're in the air, you feel weightless. You feel this weightlessness even though your velocity is changing as you are being "accelerated" at 9.8 m/s/s back toward the Earth due to the so-called "pull" of gravity. But you don't feel the change in velocity, do you? In fact, if you were to have someone take a photo of you when you're at the height of a trampoline bounce, you would appear weightless, with your hair, your arms and maybe even your facial skin all appearing to be completely weightless, as if you're in zero gravity.
So how can you feel weightless when your velocity is changing as you're being accelerated back down toward the trampoline? The answer is because gravity bends space, "accelerating" you in a direction (downward) without causing you to feel any acceleration at all.
You can confirm the same thing by walking off a tall building or leaping from a tall bridge. Sadly, this experiment can only be performed once per lifetime, but during the fall you will feel weightless even as you are being "accelerated" toward the ground at 9.8 meters per second per second. The only deceleration you will feel occurs when you land on someone's car roof or hit the pavement. (By the way, it's the deceleration that kills you, not the fall.)
This is exactly the same way the Earth is also "weightless" as it accelerates toward the sun in its elliptical orbit. The Earth doesn't "feel" any acceleration or deceleration as it is changing velocities, because -- get this -- as far as the Earth is concerned, it's traveling along the same "grid" of spacetime, at the same rate as always.
Put another way, you don't feel changes in acceleration from spacetime being curved, because the very fabric of spacetime is, itself, being stretched. The only time you feel acceleration is when you change your velocity relative to the "grid" of spacetime itself, i.e. fighting against the structure of space. That's why you feel yourself pressed against the back of the seat in your car when you slam the accelerator and the car increases its velocity relative to the spacetime grid that permeates everything.
But if you were to take that same car into outer space and drop it toward the sun from a staring position with zero velocity, the car would feel weightless even as its velocity toward the sun is rapidly accelerating. This is the key point that Flat Earthers don't understand: They think gravity should impart felt g forces at all times.
Why you don't feel gravity's acceleration
But if that were true, astronauts in orbit in a space shuttle would be slammed against the walls of the shuttle, unable to move. If gravity imparted felt g forces, then every time the Earth spun on its axis, the people facing the sun side of the planet (i.e. those experiencing daylight) would be ripped off the surface of the planet and thrown into the sun itself.
If gravity imparted "felt g forces," then every planet would have already been ripped apart by the sun, and every star would have already been ripped apart by the large black holes in the center of nearly every galaxy, and the entire universe as we know it could not exist.
In other words, if the universe worked the way Flat Earthers describe it, the universe as we know it would have never come into existence in the first place. Gravity, along with strong and weak nuclear forces, is one of the key "forces" of the very existence of the cosmos. And it is, in fact, gravity itself that causes planets to form into spheres since we live in a three-dimensional universe where a sphere is the most compact form of matter floating in space. That's why all stars are spheres, of course, and it's why all planets of sufficient size are also essentially spherical in shape.
All this explains why I'm glad the Flat Earthers are wrong, because if they were correct about gravity, there would be no life in the cosmos at all and none of us would even be here to ponder this curiosity. This, of course, leads to the anthropomorphic principle argument, which is a relief for us all since we obviously picked the correct universe where the laws of physics operate in consistent ways that give rise to the precise conditions that can support life in the first place.
But since we coexist on this planet with science-illiterate fanatics who seem to randomly reach bizarre conclusions that fly in the face of directly observable reality, I'm wondering when someone will come up with the flat blood cells theory, claiming that all blood cells are flat and therefore can't carry oxygen via hemoglobin.
Or maybe someone will give rise to the flat atomic nuclei theory that supposes all electron orbital shells are actually flat, since that's how they were drawn in their chemistry textbooks. (s,p,d,f)
See, here's proof! They sure do look flat on your computer screen, don't they?
Non-felt "g forces" of gravity explain why exotic alien technology can achieve faster-than-light travel without smashing biological beings against the front window of the UFO
On a serious note, the fact that bending spacetime results in apparent "acceleration" without "felt g forces" of gravity explains precisely why exotic alien spacecraft can perform seemingly impossible maneuvers, apparent "teleportation" and faster-than-light travel without imparting deadly g forces onto the beings inside the craft.
Advanced, alien technology exists to project "warp bubbles" of bent spacetime around the craft, causing the craft to accelerate very rapidly without experiencing any g forces whatsoever, since it's the "grid" of space that's being bent. In effect, the craft falls into the gravity well which was created in front of it, even while the occupants of the craft experience zero g forces.
This isn't science fiction, by the way. It's a serious subject that's being studied by serious scientists connected with NASA as a form of future space flight. It turns out you actually can travel faster than light by bending space using antimatter, which means you aren't violating the absolute speed limit of light, even as you are moving from point A to point B at a velocity that would appear to be faster than light to a stationary observer.
This is the subject of study of a NASA-linked project called "Project Eagleworks," and here's a video of Harold "Sonny" White from Eagleworks laboratories, explaining his ongoing research into this exotic "advanced propulsion" technology:
https://youtu.be/Wokn7crjBbA?list=PLfnpkfDmrBqZBuDtMJsCH8bVri1F4ojI7
I lecture about this exotic technology on my website OblivionAgenda.com, which covers terraforming, faster-than-light travel, cosmic fuel harvesting from quasars and other similar topics.
As I mention on that site, alien spacecraft can appear to "teleport" by applying a 100 x C (100 times the speed of light) spacetime warp bubble for one microsecond (one millionth of a second), which would propel a craft 30 km faster than the blink of a human eye. Importantly, the occupants of the craft would feel nothing.
Harold White is the same scientist, by the way, who has calculated that warp bubbles which achieve 10 x C (ten times the speed of light) could be achieved using the energy found in 200 kg of antimatter fuel. See his research summary document here, which explains:
Additionally, the lab is implementing a warp field interferometer that will be able to measure spacetime disturbances down to 150nm. Recent work published by White [1] [2] [3] suggests that it may be possible to engineer spacetime creating conditions similar to what drives the expansion of the cosmos. Although the expected magnitude of the effect would be tiny, it may be a "Chicago pile" moment for this area of physics.
Similarly, the Tauri Group is working with NASA and says antimatter propulsion systems may only be 50 - 60 years away.
There are many fascinating areas of research to consider in all this, and I've lectured about many of them at OblivionAgenda.com. For example, I've proposed that gravity wave detectors could be placed on the moon and used to detect visitations from alien craft which are using projected warp bubbles, since any disturbance in the gravity warping of spacetime ripples out at the speed of light and can be detected by ordinary sensors. This is how Earth can easily detect when non-Earth civilizations are using warp bubble drives anywhere near our solar system. (My guess is that NASA already has these sensors on the moon and is already well aware of all this.)
Additionally, I've proposed ideas on harvesting pulsars and magnetars to produce antimatter fuel which would be necessary to power warp bubble projection systems. This also explains the economics of the cosmos and why pulsars and similar collapsed stars are so valuable as the "cosmic oil wells" for intragalactic travel.
By the way, intergalactic travel is very, very slow even with faster-than-light technology. Even if you can travel at 1000 times to speed of light (1000c), it would take you 120 years just to move from one end of the Milk Way galaxy to the other (traversing the full diameter of the spiral arms). And that doesn't even count traveling to another galaxy, which would take much longer except for the one galaxy that's actually very close to ours.
Our Earth is 27,000 light years from the center of our own galaxy. I mention this because the enormous distances present in the natural geography of the cosmos demands huge expenditures of energy to traverse the large distances, even traveling at 1,000 times the speed of light. This means there is enormous competition for energy sources such as stars in their various forms (i.e. pulsars), and that there are very likely star eaters in our cosmos -- civilizations that literally consume entire stars to achieve greater conquest and territory.
That's a topic worth discussing, but beyond the scope of this article.
In any case, no, the Earth isn't flat. It's spherical just like all the other planets. But until we figure out how to bend spacetime with warp bubble propulsion systems, we are all sitting ducks in a universe that's filled with advanced, exotic technology and intelligent civilizations.
Watch my videos at OblivionAgenda.com to learn more.
P.S. There is a strange but strong correlation between people who believe the Earth is flat and people who believe Bitcoin will replace all other currency. Go figure...
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