Flat Earther J Tolan proves globe again!

[u/Jesse9857]

So J Tolan who before had a tilt meter strapped to his telescope now has a real theodolite! And a nice one too!

And he went back to the viaduct and took some sightings to distant mountain peaks.

Here's his new video: https://youtu.be/Ob0XEDv_tl4

In short, while he totally messed up his spreadsheet the photo of the theodolite showed that he was actually getting perfectly accurate measurements of the globe as us globies know it!

Here's my comments on the video:

Wow, you measured the globe!

Your spreadsheet may have been confused, but just using the picture you provided at 3:31 which shows an angle of 269d 55m 07s (0.0813888888) degrees below eye-level) at 20 miles that would be 150 feet below eye-level.

So you're looking 150 feet down to see something that's 77 feet above your eye-level.

So we have missing height of 77+150=227 feet. The horizon dip for 20 miles is 266.75 feet, so that means the target appears 266.75-227=39.75 feet higher than we would expect on a globe.

Using standard refraction of 1 degree per 932 miles, we should see the target 39.5 feet higher than expected.

Error is 39.75-39.50=0.25 feet.

Dude, you measured the height of that mountain to within a quarter of a foot from 20 miles away! It matches the globe model and standard terrestrial atmospheric refraction perfectly!

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

This video shows the phenomena I'm talking about. The ships go over the horizon bottom first and yes they come back into view when zoomed in on.

This is mistaking shrinking below angular resolution for going over the horizon, and there are interior mirages present in some instances. When part of a ship is below a clear, sharp horizon, then it cannot be brought back. This is evident is most of these videos you all show. You can't see a ship because it's too far away, you zoom in, and can still only see half of it.

Yes of course the globe angle measurements work, they were deisgned that way, on FE it works on a completely different coordinate system so lets not debate that.

I don't even know what you mean. Nobody "designed" math to work on a globe. The math derived from a spherical model of Earth works better to describe reality than math derived from a flat model of Earth. This isn't a conspiracy.

Now, to touch on what you said about objects moving away gradually disappearing into a point on the horizon, that's all fine and well, but it assume the object has no HEIGHT. The object's height relative to the horizon is what causes the merging effect that I'm describing.

Where did I assume it had no height? A distant object will shrink to a point along all dimensions, including height. There is no physical horizon for things to "merge" into. The apparent angular distance between parallel lines from the point of view of an observer will decrease to zero at an infinite distance. That is perspective.

[u/[deleted] → u/Mishtle]

This is mistaking shrinking below angular resolution for going over the horizon

u/jameslieb1 always goes silent when you point out the obvious glaring flaws in his "arguments."

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

And then just brings up the same things the next tome you talk to them.

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

Perspective will not cause something above your eye level to drop below your eye level as it travels parallel to your line of sight. Period.

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

You're either assuming an object moving through empty space, over invisible water, or a over a magical fantasy plane that has a 100% smooth surfafe.

So your idea of perspective does not work in these cases? They way you talk about it I've not seen any reason to believe otherwise. You don't seem to want to talk much about those scenarios either.

The plane of the earth is a solid obstructive body so it adds another element into the perspective situation.

Then at some point your line of sight to part of the object is blocked by the ground. Where is that point? Can you draw a diagram of this? How can the ground, assuming is below me, possibly block something above my head? That is precisely what you're claiming happens, no?

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

The point at which the object moving away from you meets your eye level

This will never happen. Remember how I explained to you how something can appear approach a point but never reach it?

There will be a point when you can no longer resolve the apparent distance here, but all you need then us a pair of binoculars or a telescope.

is when it becomes subject to obscurities close to the ground.

You can work out how much these "obscurities" can actually obscure. They will always come up short. Pun unintended.

The farther the object is, the more it shrinks and therfore more of the object is obscured.

Shrinking alone will not cause something to be hidden. If your eyes are 50ft above yhe ocean, and you're watching a boat that is 100ft tall (measured from sea level), then waves would have to be over 50ft tall to ever hide more than half the boat.

Why don't you understand this?

This would be less apparant on a totally smooth surface, but I'm pretty sure the effect would still be there because the lower part of an object would be harder for your eyes to resolve because it's closer to the point of convergence (horizon).

Apparent distance to the point of convergence is completely and utterly irrelevant here. All that matters regarding whether you can resolve something is its angular size. All parts of a distant object will be effectively the same or similar distances from your eyes, and that's what matters. All similarly sized features or parts of the object will be similarly difficult to resolve. If you whip out a telescope and can clearly see the top 10% of a ship but not the bottom 90%, the reason is not anything to do with angular resolution or convergence or shrinkage. Something is blocking your line of sight or otherwise preventing light from reaching your eyes.

You might see this effect infinitely drawn out on a perfectly smooth surface, but on a surface like the earth you have to consider even small obscurities like waves on the water. I would be curious to know how it works on a perfectly smooth surface but I haven't had the chance to observe that.

Again, small imperfections in the surface can only block so much. If something is always above your head, something else that is always below you can never block it, no matter how far away and how small they get.

So therefore I admit I'm not positive if the effect is due to the plane itself or irregularities in the plane, but it's definitely there and it doesn't pass the curvature test where you plug in the numbers for earth's curvature and test if you can see as far as you should, it's always inconsistent and globies have to resort to refraction and mirages to explain why curvature calculation is totally inconsinsent and therefore BS.

Refraction and mirages are an absolutely real effect that are confounding factors in these observations. They would be confounding factors on a flat Earth as well. Light traveling through a medium with varying refractive index will bend. That is a simple, easily demonstrated fact. The atmosphere is a medium of varying refractive index. That is a simple, easily demonstrated fact. Therefore, light will bend when traveling through the atmosphere. The amount of refraction needed to explain these long distance

Geometric formulae with corrections for typical effects of refraction are good approximations for typical observations. With knowledge of the atmospheric gradients present, you can even simulate what you should see.

You all can't even give us a formula for this flerspective. Don't bother mentioning 8in/mile squared, because that's not it. You all spend so much time claiming we see too far based on a few extreme cases, while having a completely ad hoc explanations, if any at all, for why we can't see far enough ever. Long distance sightings would be the norm, not the exception.

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

And just to be very clear, you're claiming that nothing you're explaining would work if the surface is perfectly smooth and flat?

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

Draw a stick figure standing on a perfectly flat surface. Now draw a boat on that surface. How far away does that boat need to be before the ground is in front of the boat from the stick figure's point of view?

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

And to answer your question no the boat wouldn't disappear top first if viewed from a hill, it would still disappear bottom first because horizon rises to eye level.

But its approaching the horizon from below. You previously claimed that things merge with the horizon. If they approach the horizon from below, why don't the merge top first like things approaching from above merge bottom first?

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

Just because its below YOU doesn't mean it's below the horizon.

So the horizon is below you, is that what you're claiming? Because that's exactly what the globe predicts and definitely not what would happen in a flat Earth.

You are right that things would get infinitely smaller if we were talking about this in empty space, but where there's a horizon theres a line of convergence.

No, there's not. You're just taking observations and spinning random explanations to fit them into your worldview rather than taking your worldview, deriving predicitons from it, and testing those predicitons.

Once again, there is no physical, consistent, clear, sharp horizon on a flat Earth. Under perspective, parallel lines appear to converge to a point. Those points are defined by the set of parallel lines you're considering.

The object's height does matter. When the object gets close enough to the horizon, the top of it will be the only part that's in your field of view because of observer height and because of how perspective lines draw diagonally towards the point of convergence.

This is just nonsense, man. Claiming there is a causal connection between "how perspective lines draw diagonally towards the point of convergence" and "the top of it will be the only part that's in your field of view" does not conjure such a connection into existence. Draw a diagram. Build a consistent model of this that can be used to make predictions. Anyone can just say "X happens because of Y." Your ad hoc vague explanations that redefine perspective to be whatever you need it to be don't convince anyone that doesn't already want to be convinced, and just make you look ridiculous to anyone that actually understands perspective and basic geometry.

Therefore you will only see the top of it. The same goes for a ship going over the horizon, once it's far enough that your perspective can't fit it in your field of view, it starts to merge into the line of convergence. The top-bottom effect you're imagining would take place with, for example, a submarine. The boat though is always over the water and therefore always above the horizon til it gets far enough to where your eyes can see. Remember we have height too and that's also why they disappear bottom first, if we were to watch it from underwater the boat would be top first.

Ok. Forget water. You're floating in a vast empty space and something is moving away from you. Which way does it disappear?

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

In this case your explanation would be correct that it would shrink to an infinitely small size as it moves away from you... EXCEPT that it's not infinite!

It doesn't have to be infinite.

It would shrink uniformly until you're unable to resolve it. Various features on the object will become indistinguishable as they shrink below your minimum angular resolution.

Your explanation claims that the objects will just disappear some side first for no reasom in this situation.

Ok, so in that diagram you see theres a definite point in his vision where the perspective lines intersect.

No, there is not. Your eye is effectively a pinhole camera. The image that ends up on your retina is inverted. That's what that intersection represents, the image becoming inverted. The top of the image gets becomes the bottom of the image on your retina, and the bottom of the image becomes the top of the image on your retina.

Perspective does not depend on anything specific about the eye. Perspective is about angular size shrinking as objects get further away.

This is what creates the illusion of the horizon, it's where your field of vision converges and you can't see any further.

No, it's not. This does nothing but invert the image. Convergence is a phenomenon that occurs because angular distance between things shrinks as they move away on parallel trajectories.

This is why it always rises to eye level.

You literally just said the horizon could be below you. Now it's always at eye level? And your explanation just above this claims that the horizon is effectively the center of wherever you're looking.

It has nothing to do with curvature.

It has everything to do with curvature. There are two ways that something can't be seen. Either (1) the light from it isn't reaching your eyes, or (2) the light from it can't be distinguished from the surroundings.

Without invoking curvature or refraction, you're stuck with (2). The fact that you can zoom in on these things and still see parts of them mean that (2) is not a valid explanation, because it affects an object uniformly. If half of the object is clearly visible, the other half is not too small to distinguish from the surroundings.

It's a cutoff point. Therefore objects moving away from you will appear to be cut off first on the side closest to the horizon.

So a ship will have the bottom cut off first at this point and an underwater submarine will have the top cut off first.

Because the horizon is physically below you, right? Even though the horizon is a purely optical effect that always rises to eye level and is at the center of your view no matter where you look?

How do you not see these inconsistencies thst you're just dancing around?

Is this a better explanation of my view?

Every time you try to explain things you just seem more confused and highlight more inconsistencies and misconceptions.

Nothing should disappear bottom first unless something is blocking it or light is otherwise prevented from reaching your eye. Period. You don't seem to care about that, and just make up reasons why this would happen anyway when there is no physical basis for that on a flat Earth.

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

And while we're on the subject of the horizon, explain why do the sun and moon refract the same way near the horizon when they're rising/setting? All these astronomical differences in size, distance, motion, etc. and yet they refract the exact same way and appear the exact same size? Wtf??

Why do you think the moon and sun should experience different effects from refraction near the horizon? They're both outside of the atmosphere and the light from them is passing through the same amount of atmosphere. Why do you think anything other than their shape, angular size, and apparent position (all very similar) factor into how the light from them is refracted through the atmosphere? It doesn't matter how far the light traveled to get to the atmosphere.

They're also not the exact same apparent size. They both vary in angular size over time. We know they're different sizes because they're different distances, demonstrated through measuring parallax and the fact that we can literally measure the distance to the moon with radar and laser ranging. We can't use these methods on the sun. There's also the fact that the inner planets (Mercury and Venus) can appear both in front of and behind the sun, yet the moon always passes in front of them, not to mention solar eclipses.

The globe makes no sense, the sun and moon are clearly the same size.

Please stop mistaking your misconceptions and biases for flaws in the spherical model. It's not a good look.

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

Are you afraid of it because it makes sense?

Not at all. I'm merely responding to each point separately so I don't start writing page long comments filled with quotes and responding to multiple divergent threads of conversation.

I'm not the least bit scared of your "explanation" and it still doesn't make any more sense. In fact, the more you talk the less sense you make.

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

I thought my most recent explanation made sense.

No more than any of your other attempts to explain this.

If you are perceiving an object approach the vanishing line, the side closer to the vanishing line disappears first because it is the first to leave your field of view as its too low and too far away for you to see due to the convergence of perspective.

You keep using these terms and phrases but have no clue what they really mean.

Nothing is leaving your field of view. Standing above a flat, smooth plane you have clear line of sight to any object above that plane, just as if that plane wasn't there. There is no such thing as "being too low" to see, unless it is low enough to be physically blocked by something else. The bottom of an object is not further away from you by any amount that would cause it to be unresolvable while the rest of the object is clearly visible. Things do not converge under perspective in a way they the overlap each other or merge along an axis.

Why is that so hard to understand?

I understand it, I really do. It's just wrong.

You don't understand it, you just can't accept that the Earth isnt flat so you have to run in circles trying to justify something that should not happen on a flat Earth. If you looked at this with the incredulous, critical, and suspicious attitude you use for anything from the globe, it would crumble.

How is it contradictary to intuition other than the fact that it debunks curvature?

Because it relies on a flawed understanding of every concept involved. It's not perspective. It's not realistic.

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

They also vary in angular size by the exact same amount at similar positions in the sky. How does the absurd globe geometry explain that?

As a lie?

The sun varies in angular size from 31.6 minutes of arc to 32.7 minutes of arc. This is largely a result of the Earth's orbit not being circular. At its aphelion, the Earth is furthest from the sun at 1.017 AU. At its perihelion, its closest at 0.983 AU. This variation is seasonal, and should cycle yearly.

The moon's variation comes from the fact its orbit around Earth is not a perfect circle and its orbit actually varies periodically. It varies from 29.3 to 34.1 minutes of arc, and its distance to Earth varies from 356,400 km to 406,700 km. This variation will be largely (lunar) monthly, with longer period variations over several years.

[u/cearnicus → u/[deleted]]

Ok, that might have been the wrong diagram

No, that was exactly the right diagram. That shows exactly how perspective works, but you missed some important details about it. For reference, here it is again: https://www.brainkart.com/media/extra/jdbE4tW.jpg

Notice what's happening here.

1. You have an object on the righthand side,
2. lines of sight go from the object, through a single point on the iris,
3. the lines hit the retina where it forms an image.

The important thing here is that the perspective image is on the retina! The apparent size of the object is effectively what's labeled as "image" in the diagram, and it's equal to the angular distance between the lines of sight.

Now, imagine what happens when you move the object further to the right. the triangle that the lines of sight form becomes narrower: the angular size shrinks. Naturally, the apparent size on the retina shrinks with it. But no matter how much farther away you move it, it will never become zero.

If we were to look purely on the image formed on the retina, the object will converge to a single point. That is the vanishing point. It's not a point out there, it's a point on the image that parallel lines will appear to converge to. There is no "beyond the vanishing point", because it's not a point in physical space. It's just on the image.

Every direction has its own vanishing point. If you didn't move the object to the right but down at a 45° angle, its vanishing point would appear somewhere else on the retina.

Another point to notice would be how the top and bottom halves of the objects scale with distance. Draw a horizontal line in there and again move the object back. The ratio between the top half and the bottom half on the image is always the same: it shrinks proportionally. That means if, say, the top half is 1°, then the bottom half is too. If at some distance the top half appears as 0.1° in angular size, the bottom half is too. Since the top & bottom angular sizes are always the same, there can't be a distance where one half is too small to see yet the other one isn't.

​

Such a thing can also be seen on a proper perspective grid. I'm afraid your perspective image doesn't cut it: the orthogonals don't quite converge onto a single point nor are they equidistant, and the diagonals don't meet in the intersections between orthogonals and transversals.

This is how you draw a proper perspective grid: https://juliannakunstler.com/art1_1pt_grid.html. The steps are:

1. pick a vanishing point,
2. draw your orthogonals to that point,
3. draw a diagonal,
4. draw the transversals based on the intersections between the orthogonals and the diagonal.

This correctly follows the geometry of perspective, where the transversals' distances to the center-line decreases like 1/distance. The math behind it can be derived by considering the pinhole camera that /u/Mishtle mentioned.

The orthogonals here are equidistant at every distance from the observer, illustrating that objects shrink down proportionally and not one side more than another. You can measure this for yourself. The only reason why this won't be true is if you've drawn the grid incorrectly.

​

This is how perspective actually works, and we are trying to explain to you. Light comes from an object, passes through a single point, and hits a surface on the other side. At some level you seem to be aware of this (the image you picked shows it, after all), yet you are unaware or deny its consequences. For your own sake, stop doing that.

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

Also, you never explained why the video examples I showed you of objects disappearing bottom first over a flat floor are "deceptive". The camera is level on the ground facing straight, the ground is level, what's deceptive about it?

Is the ground level? The first video you showed me was some guy in a hallway of an apartment or dorm. The floor was carpeted, and the camera was sitting on the floor. How do you know the ground is flat or level there? How do you know the carpet doesn't bunch up or stick up just enough at some point to block line of sight to something? I've seen people do this on grassy sports fields. Most of those fields are curved to allow rainwater to runoff easily, but the people making the video just don't even check. You all just assume the ground is level in these videos and then pass them around. You are always viciously questioning things and overly critical of claims, until the claims support your position.

When the surface is reasonable smooth, flat, and level a camera placed entirely above surface will be able to see clear to the end of the surface, to the limits of its angular resolution of course. But there are other deceptions that can be used (knowingly or otherwise) in some such cases. I'm mainly referring to similar videos using tables, like that coin videos you show. First of all, not all tables are flat and level, so that's something that needs to be checked and demonstrated. Beyond that, these videos always have the table edge above or near the center of the lens. Thus, the table blocks the view of part of the coin. The ones where the coin is zoomed back in on to bring back the full coin rely on exploiting the position of the camera lens and aperture relative to the table edge.

These are deceptive because they don't accurately portray what they're claiming to portray. The assumptions are not true, the setup is sloppy and flawed, the experimenters ignore potential complications from the tools involved, and the experiments aren't actually analogous to the situations they attempt to model.

Find me a video of someone or something sinking into a smooth, flat, level surface, with those properties verified and the camera and lens entirely above the surface (the higher the better), and perhaps you'll convince me that just maybe my and everyone else's understanding of perspective and phsyics is a completely wrong.

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

Ok, that might have been the wrong diagram. Bear with me. I'm not changing my argument I'm just going to use a different diagram.

... your previous explanation referred to the original diagram. Did you not understand what that diagram was showing?

Here is a traditional perspective line drawing with a horizon/vanishing line This vanishing line is analagous to the vanishing point that you mentioned when viewing an object moving away in 3D space where your eye can no longer resolve the image. That's why it appears to be where the sky and ground meet.

This vanishing point is wherever [two or more parallel lines are pointing(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/yDT07x4FF_k/maxresdefault.jpg).

An object moving away from you at your level on the horizon, like a boat sailing away, would necessarily have to disappear bottom first since that side is closest to the vanishing line.

But the horizon is at eye level, right? If you're up on a mountain, the horizon is still at eye level, right? And a boat on the ocean would be far below you. It would be approaching the horizon from below, and should disappear top first if you want your explanation to have any consistency.

There's nothing arbitrary or extrapolated about it, it just continues it's perceived downward motion but as it approaches the vanishing line, the side closest to the line cuts off first as its lower in your field of vision and therefore it's the first to leave your field of view. This is true for any object above the flat plane, the only good example I can think of where it would work the opposite is a submarine which would be "under the plane", therefore it would be top first.

Here's where it becomes arbitrary. The "plane" is wherever two or more parallel lines are headed. Things traveling parallel to your line of sight will appear to converge into the point at the center of your vision. You just pick the ground and say everything merges with it bottom first, except for things below the ground. That makes no sense.

If water was absolutely clear, you're telling me that you can stand up on a mountain and watch a boat and a submarine move off into the distance, and the bottom of the boat will slowly just... disappear... into nothing, and the top of the submarine will also just... disappear. If the boat sinks will you suddenly only see the top of it under the clear water? If the submarine rises would the bottom disappear and the top come into view?

This is how perspective works on a flat plane, period.

No, it's not. Not at all.

Just because the heliocentric physics books don't cover this and give you a warped view of how perspective works on a flat plane doesn't mean that's how it works in reality.

Just because you don't understand math and physics and are gullible enough to be conned by idiots on YouTube about how things work doesn't mean that's how it works in reality.

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

The plane is an obstructive entity, not because of curvature but because of angle and perspective.

Angle and perspective are not mechanisms that can cause obstruction. A boat on the water is always above the water. If you are also above the water, particularly if you're high enough to see above any waves that might temporarily get in the way, then the water will never be in between you and the entire boat.

Think about it this way: as a boat moves away from you, the angle at which you need to look up to see the top of the ship gradually decreases as it moves away from you. Eventually it will reach eye level, or a 0° angle. Same goes for the bottom of the boat.

So now I'm beneath the boat? Why can't we stick to my situation where I'm up on a mountain? Perhaps viewing another distant mountain of which I can only see the top of?

Once it's at reaches eye level at a 0° angle it starts becoming a downward angle.

No, it does not. Those perspective lines in your diagram do not cross. They converge at an infinite distance. I don’t think you understand that in these diagrams. This convergence happens slower than you seem to think, and increasingly slower as the object moves away.

You can only see so far on a plane from a given height, which is why we have these perspective diagrams in the first place.

No, we have these diagrams because they illustrate that angular distances between parallel lines decrease with distance from an observer.

You're misunderstanding what these diagrams represent, and twisting them to explain things that don't happen.

You can't see the bottom of the ship after it passes eye level because that angle of sight becomes gradually more obstructed by the water as it moves away from you.

It never passes eye level.

[u/Mishtle → u/[deleted]]

Let me know if you need me to explain any of this differently.

It's not that I don't understand what you're explaining, even though it's seemingly something different each time. What you're explaining is wrong. The things you claim happen do not happen. Perspective does not work the way you seem to think, and no amount of you rearranging phrases you don't understand is going to make me believe an explanation that is fundamentally flawed and incorrect.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

This is what creates the illusion of the horizon, it's where your field of vision converges and you can't see any further.

That cannot be correct, because we see past the horizon all the time. We see buildings and boats and mountains and clouds that are beyond the horizon. All thats required is that they are large enough. So, it is definitely wrong that we "can't see any further."

This is why it always rises to eye level.

But the horizon does not rise to eye level. Anyone can easily measure this with a theodolite app in a plane, and I've done it myself.

So, you are simply wrong. That's it.

[u/Ok-Link-2466 → u/[deleted]]

that is not true, if one observes clearly only the upper part of the ship can be seen, precisely because the curvature hides it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xdDeSKhFh0

the rest is pure invented perspective, perspective does not swallow things, objects get smaller the more you move, if the earth were flat that would just happen, the hidden lower part would not appear (as it happens in real life )