Celestial body gravities compared - GIF

[Altair]

Celestial body gravities compared.




Previously:

Natural satellites size comparison - GIF
Atmospheres of the Solar System - infographic
Relative rotation rates of the planets - GIF
Reduced gravity simulator - photo
Honey in zero gravity - GIF

[hemmjo]

Thinking the car would have melted before it hit the barricade on the Sun. Come to think of it, so would the barricade!

[Toolmaker51]

Wait for it.
Flat earthers inbound.........

[hemmjo]

If the Earth is flat, and you live close to the "edge", there is a danger you could walk off the edge? If someone walked off the edge, would gravity pull them back and they are now walking around on the bottom side of the disk? Taking this a step further, wouldn't all kinds of stuff like rocks, water, dirt, trees, etc. fall off the edge, then be collected on the underside? If that happened, over millions of years, wouldn't the Earth begin to take on a more spherical shape as things fell off the and became stuck on the other side?

[Toolmaker51]

If the Earth is flat, and you live close to the "edge", there is a danger you could walk off the edge? If someone walked off the edge, would gravity pull them back and they are now walking around on the bottom side of the disk? Taking this a step further, wouldn't all kinds of stuff like rocks, water, dirt, trees, etc. fall off the edge, then be collected on the underside? If that happened, over millions of years, wouldn'tt he Earth begin to take on a more spherical shape as things fell off the and became stuck on the other side?

I run into flat earthers now and then. The over the edge argument is hard for them to counter, just like asking who/ what is on the bottom side? Well, the "stuff fell off and stuck to the bottom, hence spherical" angle will be added.
However, if explorers to that region should find vast deposits of orphaned socks and lost 10mm sockets, we may have some 'splainin to do.

[mklotz]

The subject of gravity for a flat earth is fascinating. If flat earthers were capable of thought, working out the details would terminally muddle their brains.

Newton showed that gravity could be modelled as emanating from the mass considered as a concentrated point at the center of mass.

The FE earth model puts the North pole at the center of the disk and imagines Antarctica as an icy fence at the circumference which prevents stuff from falling off the disk.

That would mean that the gravitational force on the disk surface would point horizontally towards the North pole. Living in a horizontal force field would have some disturbing features. Dropped objects would end up on the north wall of your house. Ball games would brecome exercises in vector math. Every pendulous object would be a compass. Hunting with a firearm would require accelerometers and a fire control computer.

[Frank S]

Whenever I encounter a FE'r I ask them if they have ever heard of a man by the name of Dave Kunst. he lives in Minnesota, and has a verified walk completely around the world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Kunst
Not the first though

[Toolmaker51]

Whenever I encounter a FE'r I ask them if they have ever heard of a man by the name of Dave Kunst. he lives in Minnesota, and has a verified walk completely around the world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Kunst
Not the first though

Dedicated feet. Impressive feat.
I guarantee he took the long way, to avoid trekking across Kansas.

Glad Marv's analysis of flat earth phenomenon didn't entail water closets, sewers and storm drains.

[mklotz]

It isn't about physics or astronomy. The quote below from...

https://physicsworld.com/a/fighting-flat-earth-theory/

says it better than I can.

It would be easy to dismiss flat-Earthers as simply being misguided due to a lack of education. While there are indications that those susceptible to such views have low levels of scientific literacy, Landrum at Texas Tech says that flat-Earthers aren’t necessarily people who don’t believe in science. “It’s not really an education thing,” she says. “It really is about distrusting authorities and institutions. [It] seems to be based on both a conspiracy mentality and a deeply held belief that looks a lot like religiosity but isn’t necessarily specifically tied to a religion”.

Landrum thinks this conspiracy mentality is linked to science denial and a susceptibility to believing deceptive claims on social media (Politics and the Life Sciences 38 193). No longer the domain of a “foil-hat-wearing fringe”, she believes those with a conspiracy mentality have lost the ability to judge when to trust and when to be a sceptic. Their lack of trust in authority includes not just scientists but scientific bodies such as NASA, all of whom (they think) are part of a massive conspiracy to prevent the flat-Earth truth being revealed. “[They] view the world through this really dark filter where [they] assume that all authorities and institutions and corporations are just there to exploit you.”

Also, this from another article on the subject...

“With extraordinary few exceptions, no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the Earth was flat,” historian Jeffrey Burton Russell noted in 1997. “A round Earth appears at least as early as the sixth century B.C. with Pythagoras, who was followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others in observing that the earth was a sphere.”

[Toolmaker51]

Bam, there it is; "she believes those with a conspiracy mentality have lost the ability to judge when to trust and when to be a skeptic. Their lack of trust in authority includes not just scientists but scientific bodies such as NASA, all of whom (they think) are part of a massive conspiracy"..........

That facts and personal observation, calculations were sophisticated enough by 300 B.C. to convince a progressively educated populous; should be convincing enough. Yet denial takes persistence, resistance to proven facts; despite they haven't a thing to convince 'us' otherwise. My favorite might be their photographic 'evidence' of Earth, being taken at a low angle, doesn't show much curvature. As an orbit progresses, the curve doesn't vary much, saying "See what I mean?".
That's right buster, it doesn't.
And looking straight down, doesn't change either, always round.