So 1 Nautical Mile does not equal 1 arc minute, and we can agree that sextants don't work right? Also, electricity doesn't work the way you think it do without gravity, so throw out any explanations using electric charges of anything other than planar sheets of charge.

Can you give me a practical experiment that I can do at home so that I can confirm the Aether for myself?

We've had a pretty good handle on what a kilogram is for a while now. The physical representation isn't a standard, its just some guys that were bored that thought it'd be cool to have a metal cylinder, or more recently a less reactive silicon sphere. The issue of the official kilogram losing mass isn't that big of a deal, they started with non reactive materials for a reason, in a few billion years we may need to revisit it to change the 25th value after the decimal place. All of the changes that have been made are just for the sake of people with OCD.

Technically speaking, you can't convert between SI units and Imperial, you will always gain an additional uncertainty factor thats a pain in the junk to calculate. Though most people asking for directions don't care about the .0005 inches that we gained when converting, so it doesn't effect too many people.

The Imperial system is an absolute mess, the US was on track to change over to Metric in the 1970s, but lobbyists from Screw manufacturers said it would cost them too much to change out their machinery. So here we have a system that isn't base 10, its got all sorts of weird imprecise conversions that make engineering difficult.

Gee, I sure do hope the 1:1 ratio between arc minutes and nautical miles has nothing to do with the properties of a spherical earth.

Radius of Earth = 3959 Miles
Radius of Earth in Nautical Miles = 3959 Miles / 1.15078 Miles/Nautical Mile
Radius of Earth in Nautical Miles = 3440 Nautical Miles
Circumference of Earth in Nautical Miles = 2*Pi*3440 = 21603 Nautical Miles

1 degree is 1/360 degrees, 1 minute is 1/60th of 1 degree = 1/21600 degrees

So, we've established the radius of the earth is 3959 Miles, or Sextants stop working. Are we in agreement about that?

You are using too many wrong assumptions to even need to discuss whether you are interpreting a reading from a sextant right. Optics do not work the way we all seem to agree they work if you make changes to the distance of celestial bodies from the earth, or change the base geometry that you are deriving optics laws from (which the sextant is basing its use on)

We can't discuss how to take a measurement of a sextant without first coming to an agreement on a lot of factors that we aren't going to. Your argument is using scientific tools that were designed based on physics, and then denying the physics that was used to construct them, and using that as your argument. Its the same as me saying that I'm measuring the horizon line with my chainsaw, and it works because my eye is actually a prism, and light is just electricity coming from a 40 watt bulb 15 fortnights away.

I'm sure there is going to be some angry incomprehensible babbling, but the point is that theres no way to have a discussion if you change a million variables at once and expect everyone to agree with you, by having them assume things that haven't been proven.

Express your opinion on the shape of the earth, the size of the sun, distance of the sun, speed of light, angles light coming from the sun, whether the light is polarized, whether its at all visible, etc. Then look at the assumptions that go into calculating distances using a sextant, and you'll find errors.

It works the other way around, you need to prove that gravity doesn't exist. We operate under the assumption that it exists until otherwise proven, not the other way around. If we assume that gravity doesn't exist and there is no other theory to fill its place in the meantime, the most basic of things on earth stop working. Without gravity, there is no friction, how electricity works changes, the concepts of energy change, as well as a billion other factors that you can imagine for yourself.

Not everything has a practical demonstration. Some things are limited by your knowledge, some by funds, others by time. I don't refuse to believe that airplanes fly because I can't fly my own airplane to see how it responds. I can observe airplanes flying, and listen to someone explain why it is. A child can understand that a plane flies, even if they haven't had vector calculus to understand why that is. If their explanation makes sense, I believe it. If there are any cases where what they said isn't true, then I don't believe it, unless there is a good reason for that. Without what other men tell us, we wouldn't know how to do basic math, how to dress ourselves, or start a fire. There isn't something inherently bad about listening to others. "History" is how humanity evolves. We wouldn't get very far if no one thought to tell others how to make a fire, and we had to wait for someone to figure it out in every generation.

You need to come up with a unified theory of how everything else continues working using your theory that gravity doesn't exist, and that density is what matters if you want to make your case. Keep in mind that you can't use evidence to support your case, if your theory throws out the basis for that evidence.

As I've said before, I don't dislike your motivation, but I feel you are mixing the desire to find a flaw and what we currently hold true, and to learn for yourself. Have you taken any physics classes in the past? Its not a matter of listening to what you are told and applying formulas, its about learning the means of natural phenomena happening, and making sure it coincides with your understanding. After every single lecture, it all needs to make physical sense. And you build on material. Skipping from, what is gravity, to the neorelativistic model is jumping ahead 1000 steps, and a great way to cause misunderstandings. If you are still trying to rationalize whether these things make sense or not, start with the simple version before adding in additional detail. Gravity, Elves, Density, whatever you want to call it will always work the way we expect it to. We can represent it with equations, it doesn't matter whether the equation is solving for gravity, density, or elves. The point is that it exists and is observable. Humans have yet to find a situation where it doesn't apply the way we expect it to.

 So far, I've only been using Newtonian physics, because its 99.99% accurate, without the 6 years of formal education you need to understand the most basic concepts of time. Fourth dimensional analysis is not fun and not observable. It requires you to restrict your bounds and use math operations to confine it back into 3 space.

Water "finding level" is an analysis of potential energy and fluid dynamics. "Level" is an arbitrary gravitational level point. After reading a lot of these posts, I think a major concern is people keeping their reference points consistent.

Assuming the earth is round, there are currently no laws of physics that are broken. There hasn't really been any "broken" physics since the early 1800s. There have been improvements, but a lot of it, we've had figured out for a few thousand years. We are just getting more accurate with more precise measuring instruments and expanding theories. There are are currently small correction factors from theoretical fields and particles that may or may not exist, but there is no question that physics as it exists now works as we expect it to 100% of the time.

I'm not sure what you mean by, you cannot bend water? And you are correct, you cannot have a system with 101300 Pa of pressure right next to a system with 0 Pa of pressure. Think of what happens when a hatch opens up on a pressurized cabin of an airplane up in the sky where the pressure is lower. You can however have 101300 and 101299 Pa next to one another, and 101298 next to that 101299, and so on and so forth until you get reallllly high up in the sky where you have 1 Pa next to 2 Pa and eventually 0 Pa.

There aren't any efforts. The point is just that the burden of proof is being done wrong here. Its not for people who believe the earth is round to disprove that the earth is flat. On the contrary, people who want to disprove that the earth is round need to prove that the earth is flat. And to do that, they need to not violate any other laws of physics unless they have proof as to why they can, and a uniform set of theories that support their claims. If you want to say that the earth is flat, gravity is elves, and the moon doesn't exist, because of electricity, you need to one, make sure that electricity still works under the assumption that the earth is flat, gravity is elves, and the moon doesn't exist. And two, that everything else still works as it should under your new unified theory. If your claim causes cars to stop working theoretically, you need to go back to the drawing board.

If people want to do personal attacks, or disregard facts, who cares. Don't argue with them. Argue over sound theories that they can give. Why bother arguing over whether the sky is blue with a color blind person, if there is another guy posting in the thread that makes a claim that can actually be discussed rationally. I don't think the earth is flat, but that doesn't mean that there are certain scenarios where the earth being flat would work, and under those circumstances something cool might happen. Don't waste your time with someone claiming that by measuring the horizon with their chainsaw, they can see the edge of the earth.

There are people out there with valid claims about the earth being flat. Tune out the noise and have a neat conversation with someone who can approach a problem in a completely different manner than yourself.

I had an interesting conversation with someone who doesn't believe in flat earth (sort of obvious in my field) but they were very curious about trying to prove the earth was flat. They came to a similar conclusion that I did a while ago. If you want to prove the earth is flat, there are a few conditions that need to be met, but I've yet to see anyone do.

The most important is that you need a uniform set of laws that always hold true. Its not enough to say, hey because of this, the earth is flat, if that assertion breaks 50 other laws of physics that you aren't questioning. If you are questioning those other 50 laws, you have to come to some new theories and equations that makes everything continue working while you are exploring new possibilities. Until you get everything working again under all circumstances, there is no point in proving the earth is flat if your car won't turn on because electrostatics no longer apply. Everything else needs to continue working as it actually does under your theory.

If someone comes up with proof that the earth is flat, that doesn't violate any laws of nature, please let me know.

I may have a misunderstanding of hydrogen fuel cells, isn't hydrogen driven through a catalytic converter and combusted?

I take that back, I was mistaken about how the energy was captured, its not thermal its creating current from the splitting of H2 gas and separating the electrons off. In this case, how is that any different than just using batteries? I suppose the only benefit would be "charge" time where you just refill the hydrogen rather than recharging a battery in its place. It'd still be far less energy efficient than just using batteries.  If we make the splitting process more efficient and it takes 1.1 joules to get 1 joule worth of hydrogen. Then you get a 50% efficiency from the fuel cell, wouldn't you have been better off just taking that 1.1 joules, putting it into a battery at negligible loss, and running a 80% efficient electric motor?

I'm all for clean energy, I'm particularly pro nuclear, but I'd be perfectly content if we increased our solar/wind/hydro/tidal/geothermal power instead. I'm not "against" hydrogen. I just don't think its a practical option.

Well, its a bit beyond hobbyist, but its not industrial production. Saying leaks are only dangerous around flames or enclosed spaces is a not very helpful condition to place, considering we are talking about fuel gases around flames/combustion.

I don't recall why, but I was under the impression that fuel gases that are lighter than air pose some additional risk, such as acetylene, from when I was researching propane vs acetylene fuel sources. I mostly only work with Propane and Hydrogen though, so I can't recall the finer details of acetylene at the moment.

Another thing I thought reading back at your posts. You said Hydrogen Refineries are safer than Gasoline refineries. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that since I don't know if they are actually safer, or if there are just 1000x more oil refineries than hydrogen refineries. But to the point about brain dead people pumping or not being allowed to pump their own gas. People working in refineries are rigorously trained on all aspects of safety. Their equipment is top of the line, they pay attention to hazard details that others wouldn't know about, or might not have the safety equipment mandated by OSHA or whoever.

I hesitate to say that anything is more dangerous than something else. How do you say, whats more dangerous, a duck or a barbed wire fence? It really depends on the situation. The same is true of any fuel. I guess my position on the matter is that gasoline is more idiot proof than hydrogen. If you want to be safe with gasoline, you don't put it in the oven, don't throw a match at it, and if you smell it or see it leaking out, you do something about it that isn't throwing a match at it. Hydrogen is less intuitive, and I think there is more room for mistakes to be made. I know all of the safety protocols, I follow a pretty strict safety routine, like that guy you all know that actually checks and adjusts their car mirrors every time before they start driving, yet I still run into somewhat hazardous situations. I'm confident I wont blow up, but I'm also purposely limiting my risk exposure by not allowing another variable of pressure potential energy along with my chemical potential energy.

Individuals aside, As soon as we have hydrogen for consumer applications, we now have to trust Toyota hydrogen combustion engines, *shudders* Chevy hydrogen combustion engines. Weird chinese off brand $50 leaf blowers hydrogen combustion engines, etc. That's why I think its better to skip hydrogen fuel development research and just stick with a more sure thing. We've been searching for that magic battery for years now, we haven't found it, but battery technology is getting better. I think it'd be cheaper and safer to get closer and closer to that magic battery than to engineer "pretty" safe hydrogen appliances.

I generate my own hydrogen with water splitting, compress it to a low working pressure, under 2 million Pa, and burn it. I do not store it, I use it as soon as I produce it, for a few reasons. One, I can't store it, hydrogen atoms are small, and they slip through solid objects. Two, while storing any compressed gas is typically not the safest thing, its far more difficult to find hydrogen gas leaks than a more common odorized fuel. If the propane line on your gas stove springs a leak, you smell it and know there is a gas leak. In that case, don't light any open flames, turn off the gas, and get some ventilation going. No big deal. With hydrogen you don't know until its too late.

The issues I've personally come in contact with are burn hazards, and backfire. As I mentioned, burning hydrogen, there is no flame that you can see. If there is a hydrogen fire somewhere, you might not even know if other things around it aren't catching on fire. On that note, I'll mention that you need to wear protective eye wear to protect from radiation. The second one that I've dealt with somewhat frequently is startling, but not dangerous since I don't compress it much, is backfire. I use flashback arrestors in my torch lines, but I've had condensation accumulate in my fuel lines, dampen the arrestors, and then have a little explosion blow the hoses off of my generator a few times.

Now I'm sure there are ways to mitigate backfire with a lot more certainty, but the fact that I have an issue with it, even with safety gear in place is a little alarming. We trust brain dead morons with fueling up their cars at a gas station. I think we'd have a lot more accidents with hydrogen in the hands of the general public.

I use hydrogen fuel on a weekly basis anyway, and can say from personal experience, that the potential for danger is much higher. There are a lot of reasons why we don't use hydrogen commonly as a fuel now but.

Cons:
Proper materials for long term safe combustion are very expensive, its hard on equipment, when it burns you can't see the flame, its difficult to compress, it escapes through container walls

Pros:
Clean burning, water vapor as a byproduct, higher energy density.

As a matter of cost, its been getting cheaper to produce it. New technology that uses Nickle Oxide catalysts instead of Platinum lowered the cost to produce hydrogen gas, at least from water splitting. That said, it still requires that you put more energy into it than you are going to get out. I don't see the benefit over just keeping your electricity as electricity, except for specialized cases.

Rather than use the funds on researching and developing new ways to use hydrogen, I don't see why we wouldn't be better off finding new ways to store and use electricity, and then just generate clean energy from solar/wind/geothermal/hydro and call it good.

I read a few pages up to the point where the plan was done being laid out, and resident expert on drone asteroid mining, Bill Gates was referenced. I figure at that point, its filler.

I'm disagreeing, and qualifying the paper as the type that leaves out the unexciting details. It may be theoretically possible, but it leaves out some inconvenient details like how far out the time frame would be to make it possible. In its credit, it does mention that they expect it'll take 2-4 decades to actually put into place once the international community comes together on it. But it doesn't provide a time frame for creating the technologies needed to do it in the first place. The concepts may exist, but if you don't have the machinery on earth to reliably manufacture the parts you need to get your project going, you need to wait for the manufacturing capacity to exist. If the leaders were convinced today, would it take 20-40 years to produce? Or 80 years, 40 to setup the manufacturing, and 40 to get it launched. People get a lot less interested in projects when they are more than 1 lifespan out. As someone who has written papers that are supposed to be technically factually accurate, but still pandering to people to gain support, its written like a template.

I'm not really blaming them, you have to do it. I just don't get excited by things like this, because I don't care about things more than one lifespan out.

We are at the point where expanded space technologies are becoming viable, but not feasible.  Its progress, but media science tech articles do a really shitty job of over-promising, or rather leaving out the unexciting details. And tech journals don't become popular if they aren't vague enough to allow people to imagine a few details for themselves. It wouldn't be nearly as interesting to read if it had a forewarning that the topic of the article has been proposed, it'll finally be built in 10 years, and may be able to be produced in 30 years.

I don't have specific numbers to back it up, but I'd be willing to bet that it isn't feasible to transport gold back to earth, even without any labor. Just the transportation costs alone would be a few times the cost of the precious metals. Robot space mining makes a really cool scifi story, but when we do get around to it, it'll probably be for the purpose of getting water, rather than metals.

If its something that obviously deserves to be deleted, its not a huge deal. We can probably all agree that referral link spam, threats, or illegal advertisements can probably be removed on sight without too much conflict of interest. If its someone posting an opposing opinion, even if its spam, probably best for the moderator to report it and let an unbiased party handle it.

I wouldn't say rules need to be put in place, its kind of an unspoken rule. If someone does it, call them on it. As far as I know this is the first time the topic has come up in 8 years, so I wouldn't say its been much of a problem.

People get too polarized on this type of issue. I don't know for certain that the photos were edited, but you know what, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and agree that they were. Like I said, it wouldn't surprise me. I don't need to fight tooth and nail over the photos. That said, its not like this is a picture of bigfoot, and then claiming its real despite being shopped. Its more like photoshopping a picture of a deer. The now prettier picture of the deer will get more people to go awww, look at that! But even knowing that they made it look nicer, it doesn't make me question whether deer are real or not. The same thing holds true for me here.

Proving gravity is a whole lot more difficult than proving the earth is round. I can only prove gravity by saying that no matter what it will always act the way that we predict it will act based on our current understanding of it. I can't point to a battery or a guy pushing as a source. At this point, I don't really need to say the earth must be round because of "x, y, and z" I can just say. Here you go, get on a plane, or try this high altitude balloon experiment for yourself. Don't trust that the lens in videos wasn't one that would create curvature? Fine, do the experiment yourself with whatever lens you'd like. Just make sure you are aware of the effects of the lens you are using. I don't care in the slightest about the people who want to believe whatever they want for their own reasons, I do care about trying to give satisfying answers to people who actually care. I'm definitely not going to stick around to try to change anyone's mind, but if I think of any cheap home experiments you can do to help draw your own conclusions from, I'll be sure to swing by and post them.

Best of luck with your own discoveries. Maybe you'll confirm what I believe, maybe you'll find anomalies. Its really a win win. If you can prove something that goes against physics as it is now, you'll win a bunch of money, get some equations named after you, and a nobel prize. Be sure to buy me a drink if an experiment I suggest gets you there.

I believe the earth is flat now, I'd like to see a meteorologist try to explain this. I bet they'd mumble about weather patterns, pictures taken at different times of "day" and different months based on the direction of the axis of the "earth". I'd disregard anything they said because about 3 weeks ago, they told me to expect a sunny day, but it was slightly cloudy...bastards... I guess some photographers while we are at it to help clear up the whole issue of contrast and things with "alleged" light sources in different positions. I don't think those pictures are proof the earth is round, there are so many better fakes out there.

Maybe we should compare photos taken by NASA, JAXA, CSA, UK Space, CNES, CNSA and Virgin Galactic, and Spacex to see if they are all consistently shopped.

*tiny side note, I'm not being snippy at you joe, just thought your question was a good jumping off point for a joke*

I honestly don't think that we need to draw any conclusions from photos that NASA takes to release to the public. They need the public's support to get funding, so of course they probably make the picture a little deeper blue, or something to get more people to look at it when it goes on the news.


*Edit*

Joe, you might find this interesting. By all means disregard the video in itself, but its affiliated with people who do this just for fun, so read some instructions, and maybe try it for yourself if you are feeling like you'd really like to know for certain.

https://www.balloonchallenge.org/learn-more-beginner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y0nHhFGXDo

Nah, video and livestreams can be tampered with. NASA is evil, so we can't trust them. We also can't trust the other dozen space organizations that everyone else fails to acknowledge, but I know they are bad too. Also, Redbull! Remember that time they dropped that guy from 23 miles up, and livestreamed it all as publicity? Yeah, that was actually NASA.

You are forgetting, the sun is actually 3,000 miles away (4800km) so that'd make Mars ~1750km away, and its only 500 feet in diameter, smaller than some cruise ships. At that distance, you could make out a person waiving to you from mars with a kid's telescope, or maybe a really good pair of binoculars if we get a nice clear night.

Its only like an hour flight, so it should be easy enough to settle. Though, the planet isn't big enough to have a runway, so you need to parachute off when you get close, and hope that you are more dense than whatever the atmosphere is there so you don't fall back to earth instead.