NASA Satellite stops on a dime!? WTF!!!

[tazmic]

Were it not for this terrible thread I might never have reconsidered a question I've had about gravity for some time - but this time around, I found an answer!

Why would space-time curvature cause gravity

and with a nifty vid:



Finally... It's spaceTIME that's curved. I should learn to read. All those rubber sheet diagrams never did it for me as I couldn't see why anything (stationary) would fall down a dimple without, you know, gravity, pulling it down.

So the stationary apple (ageing 'at the speed of light', poor thing) get a temporary respite whilst falling as its temporal velocity is finally freed into the spacial domain. Groovy.


BTW, if you want to see that the surface you are on is not a flat plane you could draw a massive triangle and observe that the 3 angles don't add up to 180 degrees.

[82_28]

I'll one up you, tazmic . Excellent explanation here by one Carl Sagan. I watched this shit "religiously" in grade school. There's another clip where gravity is demonstrated. If I can find it, I'll post.

[Burnt Hill]

"Were it not for this terrible thread"
I prefer to see it as an inspirational thread.

[NeonLX]

The Antarctica part bugs me. I've been to "Arctica" (Barrow, Alaska). I was getting dangerously close to the "north pole".

[Wombaticus Rex]

The Antarctica part bugs me. I've been to "Arctica" (Barrow, Alaska). I was getting dangerously close to the "north pole".

That's why your memory of that was scrambled and incomplete - you saw too much.

The "Perpetual Sun" phenomenon is actually a massive floodlight array to keep explorers from approaching the containment wall when the weather would normally permit that.

[Elihu]

South pole

[Elihu]

Without it there is no globe

[AlienSpaceBat]

The globe is big. People and planes are small. Flying at 30k feet is barely getting above the surface of the planet. Five or six miles is not very far, I think we can all agree on that. The horizon naturally still looks like the horizon.

You can just use your mind for this one. Picture an apple one mile in diameter. Put a little ant on it. Apple looks flat from ant's perspective. Now bring ant ten, twenty feet away from apple. Apple still looks flat to ant.

Or maybe we're not supposed to trust our own imaginations.

So when was this flat earth with no stars universe created? I'm guessing around six thousand years ago.

I agree with being a few miles above not being very high at all. When do you think the height should have relevance? You can watch rocket videos go 3-4x higher than a plane does and will still observe the same things being the horizon always rises to the eye and there is no visible view down the side of a globe.

On a globe one thing that would be clearly noticeable from a distance is that buildings such as skyscrapers would be angled away from the observer. If you were the ant on the apple and you were approaching Antropolis at the distance you first saw them until you got relatively close they would be tilted away from you as they would lie on the curve. We only perceive buildings as being completely vertical from afar because the earth is flat.

As to the age of the earth, I do not have any insight or even much speculation.

Lets see: Two buildings the height of the Burj Khalifa (830m) situated 20km apart on a globe 40,000km in circumference would have the tops 2.6m further away than the bases, measured in straight lines. This is 0.013% of the horizontal distance. Obviously lower buildings (or lower point of view) and closer distances would make this effect smaller.

I very much doubt that this 1 in 8000 change would be clearly noticeable to you.

[NeonLX]

Without it there is no globe

Ya, I guess...but me no understand what yer saying here...

[Grizzly]

ESA found and photographed Philae sitting on a comet!

http://m.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_S ... ilae_found

[Burnt Hill]

ESA found and photographed Philae sitting on a comet!

http://m.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_S ... ilae_found

Such an elaborate hoax!

Picture is worth posting-


Obviously this pic was taken somewhere in South Dakota...

[dada]

I ended up here:

https://www.physicsforums.com/

Total science binge. Best part was I had a breakthrough in my tenuous grasp of quantum mechanics.

The math goes over my head, (way over) but I get how it's describing something. The misunderstanding happens when you try to describe the something with words. That's where all the pop-science ideas of quantum-mysticism come from. The classic 'confusing the map with the territory' happens. People want to eat the menu.

No need to get into it. Anyone who already got this is probably laughing at me like, 'you just figured that out?'

Anyway, I had some nice 'aha' moments. All very exciting. And I owe it all to this thread.

So. Amazing though, ain't it? That with so many fascinating questions at the cutting edge of science to wrap our heads around, people are still entertaining theories that went out with the dark ages.

[backtoiam]

dada

That with so many fascinating questions at the cutting edge of science to wrap our heads around, people are still entertaining theories that went out with the dark ages.

I keep waiting on blood letting to go out of fashion but every time I check the news another country is getting bombed.

[maco144]

If gravity is not real then how do you explain that we don't float off into space? Why do we have weight?

Edit: Also - how do you explain that you can clearly see the curve of the Earth if you're standing on a beach looking out at the ocean (no planes or windows involved)?

Because objects have density. It is the most simple and obvcious explanation for why we do not float off into space. How can you rationalize that an object (the earth) moving 1000 mph doesnt hurl off all atop it via centrifugal force?

Of course we have density, that still doesn't explain why we stick to the ground. Why do we fall back down again if we jump? What force pulls us back?

I assure you that you havent actually seen the curvature and if you were to create a massive level to judge against the ocean horizon you would clearly see there is no curve.

And I can assure you that you're wrong. Have you even been out in the ocean (as in: where you can't see land in any direction)? I have, repeatedly, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that the horizon is not flat. It's curved. Seriously, if you're near the coast just go down to the beach and look for yourself.

Edit: You do realize that the modern Flat Earth theory was conceived as a joke, right? What next? Pastafarian extremists?

Why do we fall when we jump? Because we are denser than the supporting medium. Why would you assume there is a force pulling us down when it is accurate to say that we are being pushed down by the weight of atmosphere above.

[maco144]

Now I know it's just a video game and I don't like shooters but you have to be "trained" in order to use the high powered sniper rifle, just like in real life military bullshit in Call of Duty. You have to take into consideration the Coriolis Effect. Reason being is at long distances the round Earth has spun beneath your bullet. While I hate all things military, this is a factor that must be used if you're going to hit the target.

Snipers dont actually take in to account the spin/coriolis just a fun meme to believe.