"J. Clarke" wrote in message
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LDosser wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in message
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LDosser wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in message
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"J. Clarke" wrote in message
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"J. Clarke" wrote in message
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"HeyBub" wrote in message
m...
Doug Miller wrote:

And you must be restricting your viewpoint to Europe only.
:-) Mariners knew
for a long time that the surface of the earth is curved --
what other explanation can there be for the fact that you
can see the masts of a distant
ship long before you can see the hull? Non-sea-faring
cultures, though, had no
such reference points -- the earth is "obviously" flat,
right?

The answer to the ship-mast question can easily be answered
by positing a hill (of water) between the ships.

As to the conclusion "what other explanation can there be,"
ignorance of any other possibility is not a proof. Sherlock
Holmes said: "If you eliminate all other possibilities,
whatever is left must be the answer" is correct as far as
it goes. The fact remains that one cannot eliminate all
other possibilities. There always remain the cases of
miracles, hallucination, lies, mistakes, and a host of
others. Absence of evidence is not evidence of anything.

As for the earth being flat, it is if you're building a
house, surveying a lot, plowing a field, laying out a road,
building a railroad (except for the hills), and so on. Just
like Newtonian mechanics are the ultimate truths for
bowling, billiards, or shooting a scrot who breaks into
your shed.




Measuring the universe. For all practical purposes, the
universe is Flat.

The planet Mercury appears to be blissfully unaware of this.


But Cosmologists have decreed it so. And offered mathematical
proofs.

Which cosmologists are these?


Sean Carroll for one.

In what paper did Sean Carroll offer a mathematical proof that
spacetime is
flat?



The Hillsboro Argus

Do you have someting peer-reviewed?


Nope. Heard it in a lecture.

Are you sure you understood correctly? Carroll seems to accept
General Relativity, which does not allow flat spacetime in a real
universe.


Space, not space-time. And it's an approximation.

Yes, it is an appproximation and it is one which is not valid when
computing
the orbit of Mercury.


What use is the orbit of Mercury to a cosmologist?