Saturday, August 31, 2019

Quito, Ecuador is on the equator and might be a new reference point for me.

Entry August 31, 2019
.........It's been awhile since I've considered the trip around Antarctica or even 60 deg south latitude or even Chippy's 55 deg south latitude-- to prove a distance greater or less than the equatorial distance of 25,000 miles. A greater distance than the equatorial circumference would be consistent with a flat earth and a lesser distance would be consistant with a globe.
..........I've been concerned more with the powering of the vehicle to be used either on water or in air and discovered that there's a lot of controversy surrounding the jet turbine engine used on both big ships and in planes-- and whether or not they use fuel. It turns out to be a real problem in terms of designing my distance test for flat vs. globe earth.
..........I bumped into a guy from Quito, Ecuador which led to my re-thinking how to more easily determine distance above and below the equator. I would not have to travel around the flat earth or globe-- a huge project-- but simply determine distance between two lines of longitude north of Quito and distance between the same two lines south of Quito. If Earth is a globe, the distance should be the same. If Earth is flat, the distance should be greater south of Quito. It occurred to me that I might contact the University of Quito and propose a study from there.
..........Thinking on this further, it now seems to me that the same should hold true for any latitude, not just the Quito latitude of zero. Theoretically, if my house has a backyard north of the house and a front yard south of the house, I should be able to detect a slightly longer distance between two lines of longitude in my front yard than my back yard. This would save me a trip to Quito. The problem becomes one of accurate measurement and determination of where lines of longitude are.
...........Why don't we see lines of longitude marked out on properties or even as tourist attractions? I watched a few Youtubes on how to determine lines of latitude using the north star, in the Northern Hemisphere but have not been able to go further than that yet.
............The advertised Flat Earth Cruise that hit the news awhile ago is not going around the circle of the flat earth but is a mere gathering on a cruise ship. It might be used to spark an interest in the journey around 55 deg south however. Chippy's idea on that was to avoid the problems 60 deg south might present, legally. I think I had thought of that first but didn't emphasize it as much as Chippy... although the Vendee race I looked at made this apparent.

4 comments:

  1. Still with you along this long an arduous Journey Rick. I'm glad you've found new motivation. 5 year reader.

    If you'd like direction, I can say, your theory is possible with a bike...

    If one were to say, bike an extremely long distance themselves, in the way you described in this article, with an extremely accurate device you'd be able to map out longitude similar to the way you described. Depending on road length sea level distance ect.

    Feel free to contact me: 601.error@gmail.com ✌️

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  2. Wow, thanks for following along this long. Now that you mention it, riding a bike along a road won't do because of elevation differences. That tosses me back out onto the sea. Or at least a lake.... a calm lake at sea level to avoid the added complication of elevation differences.

    In this blog, I've previously looked at comparing adecdotal accounts of trips across Australia, from Perth to Sydney I think I recall... and a similar trip of cross-longitudinal lines from LA to Atlanta. As far as I recall, I think I concluded that the distance travelled across the same number of longitude lines in the south hemisphere proved to be, at least anecdotally, longer than in the north. It was a tentative conclusion that I wasn't too excited about since the evidence didn't knock me over. However, it was a good enough study that I'll find it here and review it and maybe build on it for another go in a slightly different way.

    I reviewed the historical account of how Europeans crossed the Atlantic originally with a sextant measurement of north star angles to determine latitude and I now understand that clock time is crucial to determination of longitude. What I find curious about longitude over the past week is that no town, city or state-- or any tourist entity-- has marked off a specific geographical line of longitude as an attraction-- aside from perhaps Greenwich England at 0 degrees. You'd think it would be a big deal, for example, to stand right on the 90 deg. E Longtitude line and take selfies these days. Or you might imagine driving along a freeway and a blue public interest sign tells you "you are now crossing 90 Degrees East Longtitude" for example.

    I think realistically, if I were to design a doable experiment that is within reason, I might choose a flat freeway segment running east-west in Arizona and another flat freeway segment running parallel to that in Australia, say. I might hire an Uber or Lyft driver or similar cab driver in Australia measure their mileage on their car's odomter trip meter running from a definable location to another definable location in the south and north, of a reasonably long enough distance that there is enough margin for error that a conclusion can still be made one way or another. Elevation, twists and turns are still a problem in this experiment so a sea-level ship trip experiment is still preferable.

    Instead of sailing around 55 Deg. south latitude (Chippy's latitude-- rather than my potentially legally problematic 60 deg. south)... to prove distance-- I could hire the equivalent of sea-going Uber or Lyft ocean going yachts to record their distance travelled while moving along the same latitude in the north and south Atlantic or Pacfic... between the same lines of longitude. We could then simply calculate the total distance around by multiplying for the total lines of longitude. A sphere would amount to the same distance-- a flat earth would yield a larger distance in the south. It would have the added benefit of being double blind if each captain or navigator didn't know who the other one was.

    Alternatively, a further study of existing flight paths and ocean going vessel cruise ships and container ships could be made-- the same way that is already being done but with further refinements.

    The idea I originally had, of a circumnavigation, had the advantage of being clear and indisputable... and duplicatable by anyone. Maybe I ought to create the equivalent of a Vendee Yacht Race Contest for POWerED Yachts or aircraft... or maybe I could contact the Vendee people and suggest an equivalent powered race with starting and ending points ON the line of GMT. Ugh. I'm off on this tangent again. I'm going around in circles.

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  3. The more I look at this site the more I think Captain Rick's job from the CIA is to only waste the time of people trying to get to the truth about what the actual configuration of this place we call earth.

    He just spins his wheels on and on but it is my opinion that you'll never see him actually ever do anything us.

    If you want to get to the truth go to another website or better yet do your own experiments and trust no one ever.

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  4. 10 bucks says my previous post gets deleted....we'll see

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Hi, I'm Captain Rick of the Virtual Circumference Voyage of Antarctica. I intend to prove definitively if Earth is flat or a sphere by paying careful attention to how many miles we cover as we travel "around" Antarctica. Flat earth theory says it's 50-60,000 miles. Spherical Earth theory says it 14,000 miles. Join me and ask any questions that you think would help our mission.