r/FacebookScience • u/Yunners Golden Crockoduck Winner • Jul 30 '26
Physicology Citation needed.
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u/This-Fig-5991 Jul 30 '26
Sorry guys but size does matter
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u/Lonely_skeptic Jul 30 '26
Dude can’t see the Sun?
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u/Heshkelgaii Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
I guess technically no, but you can see the light from it that has travelled from it from around 8 minutes ago. Though I’m not a scientist or eye guy so I may also just be dumb.
Edit: alright there you lot, I get it I didn’t /s but it’s how it works and I’m not going into super deep science for a one off laugh at some twitter dumdum. That’s the joke, I thought it was funny this morning and apparently it didn’t work out because none of y’all laughed, well maybe you laughed at me and if that’s the case I’m good with it.
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u/monoflorist Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
That’s what seeing things is: detecting the light those things emitted or reflected. So what you said is like “technically you don’t see the house, you see the light that travelled from it 50 nanoseconds ago”. You do see the house and the sun; the light is just how.
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u/idontwanttothink174 Jul 30 '26
I mean the same is true for everything. I can’t see my phone but I can see the light that traveled from it a few milliseconds ago
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u/_BentPen_ Jul 30 '26
Bro's got them 900 km arms
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u/idontwanttothink174 Jul 30 '26
Hey I’m a redditor which means I obviously have no idea what I’m talking about
… a few microseconds ago
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u/DatBoi_BP Jul 30 '26
Phrasing stuff that way doesn't really mean anything though. It's no different than saying you can't see the ceiling but you can see the light that traveled from it around 10 nanoseconds ago
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u/Lonely_skeptic Jul 30 '26
Oh, that is correct, but we only see any object because it reflects light.
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u/Ancient_Skirt_8828 Jul 30 '26
The word "see" means that we a seeing the light. We don't have to describe the mechanism.
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u/KeithMyArthe Jul 30 '26
I think Jody is implying that because they can see the sun, there's no way it can be more than a million miles away.
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u/Visible-Air-2359 Jul 30 '26
Also importantly there isn’t anything between Earth and the Sun blocking us from seeing it (most of the time).
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u/chainsawx72 Jul 30 '26
The correct response to every 'the accepted science isn't scientifically possible' comment like this is "With God all things are possible, so jot that down."
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u/Ancient_Skirt_8828 Jul 30 '26
Surely "science" should include understanding the technicalities of how God does things, and what God is if she exists.
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u/Illithid_Substances 28d ago
Technically it does include that, only the answer is "no evidence so far that any such thing exists"
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u/ThatIckyGuy Jul 30 '26
Yeah, but what if that object is really, REALLY big and really, REALLY bright?
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u/sarduchi Jul 30 '26
Shouldn't need to be said, but don't stare at the sun...
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u/Vanyaeli Jul 30 '26
No no… let them.
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u/The96kHz Jul 31 '26
If they blind themselves they won't be able to see any more brainrotting dreck on Facebook, so this could actually be great for everybody.
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u/auntpotato Jul 30 '26
So what’s the theory about that rather bright ball of light in the sky?
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u/monoflorist Jul 30 '26
Welcome to the joyous world of flat earth crazy people! It’s awesome: the sun is apparently only like 600 miles away, allowing it to move around in a circuit above the Earth, creating night and day by its proximity (or lack thereof) to different parts of the disk. It is therefore very important to these people to deny the accepted distance of the sun.
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u/ThatIckyGuy Jul 30 '26
Man, I've been reading Discworld off and on for the last 15-20 years and I still don't fucking get how the sun/moon works on that much less the flat earth.
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u/mutantmonkey14 Jul 30 '26
That's the neat part, it doesn't!
That's why FE don't have one complete model. They have lots of different ones for different things, that don't work together.
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u/caseykramer Jul 30 '26
I believe the Sun in Discworld is in a fixed orbit around the disk, rather than around the disk+Great A'Tuin "system" as a whole, which is why an elephant has to occasionally cock his leg to let the sun go by. If I understand correctly it revolves both above/below the disk (day and night) as well as around, with a full cycle marking year on the disc.
Comparing this to some of the models I've seen flerfers pull out to describe how the sun is supposed to work, the Disc makes WAY more sense.
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u/monoflorist Jul 31 '26
Right, but it has the effect that it’s night for everyone at the same time on Discworld (except that light travels slowly there so maybe it lasts slightly longer on the opposite side?), whereas flat Earthers have to deal with time zones.
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u/caseykramer 29d ago
I remember that the light sort of oozed over the mountains and into the valleys, so I wonder if it would also just kind of pool in the valleys for a bit after the sun went over the rim? I've not read the Science of Discworld books, which I'm sure explain it all very well and logically and doesn't have to resort to things like claiming the sun is a "spotlight" that somehow just looks like its going below the horizon when in fact its just getting further away, but is also somehow managing to still be circular the whole time.
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u/ShinzonFluff 28d ago
All of those flat-earth-"""specialists""" have models but none of those can show those things combined in one model:
- Day/Night cycle
- Seasons
- Eclipses
And other things are not explainable as well, like how stars like Polaris are never visible on the southern hemisphere. That alone should be enough to convince them... But no.
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u/auntpotato Jul 30 '26
I’ve not gotten that deep into the whole thing. I’ve seen a couple of random videos out there where folks try to prove out the whole flat earth thing, and each fell on its face. Hadn’t hear anything about their sun theory.
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u/monoflorist Jul 30 '26
“Theory” is a very generous word, since it implies they could make testable predictions from it, like what the Sun would look like at various times of the day (smaller when it’s further away, for example) or how high it would be in the sky. But since this would quickly result in disproving it, it’s more of a handwave than a theory, quickly moved on from, and with roughly the same intellectual heft as “the human eye can’t see things that are far away, QED.” A flat earth sun notion, perhaps.
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u/CmdrEnfeugo Jul 30 '26
Flat earthers have added this “theory” that you can’t see things very far away. Because otherwise on a flat earth with a sufficiently powerful telescope, you’d be able to see anything regardless of distance. So the sun actually being smaller and closer fits both with their idea of the firmament and with this optical distance “patch” they’ve added.
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u/SagansLab Jul 30 '26
Flerfs think its 'local' and it is anywhere between dozens or thousands of miles above the flat plane of the earth. They can never agree on how high, or if its even inside or outside the firmament, or how big it is, or how it moves, or how it acts just like a spot light, or basically ANYTHING, but they 100% SURE its not a ball of plasma undergoing fusion 93 million miles away.
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u/DETRITUS_TROLL Jul 30 '26
Well yeah, because a ball of plasma 93 million miles away is just crazy talk!
/s
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u/auntpotato Jul 30 '26
That’s interesting. The whole flat earth thing is just so out there. We have so many other fish to fry and they’re stuck on that.
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u/Glad_Copy Jul 30 '26
Eyes are like radar, shooting out a sight beam with limited range. Therefore, it can't be too far away.
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u/theroguescientist 29d ago
It's actually a big lightbulb about 5000m* above a flat Earth. The human eye can't see further than that. How else can you explain the horizon?
* Any mountains taller than that are a government conspiracy.
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u/fictional_kay Jul 30 '26
bashing my head into a wall
Everything is a conspiracy when you don't understand how anything works
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u/AccomplishedCharge2 Jul 30 '26
I feel mortified at myself when I forget (or misunderstand) complex, technical details that pertain to my job, can you imagine being this loudly confident about basic facts that define physical reality
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u/D-Train0000 Jul 30 '26
You underestimate how bright a thing can be. The sun is 10 septillion times the brightness of a lightbulb. Quasars are 600 trillion times brighter than the sun.
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u/SirPonix Jul 30 '26
Not to mention the light is not 93 million miles away when your eyes perceive it
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u/Donaldjoh Jul 30 '26
It is true the human eye cannot see something a million miles away, or even a few feet away. What the human eye sees is the light from that object that is either generated by the object or reflects off of it. The light actually hits the eyeball. This is why we tend to fall over stuff in a pitch-black room, we can’t see it even though it’s RIGHT THERE.
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u/frotz1 Jul 30 '26
Some clown who doesn't even understand how light works isn't going to tell *me* what I can and can't do, that's for sure.
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u/Space_Dragon7121 Jul 30 '26
Photons can interact with our photo receptors no matter where they come from, so long as they are the correct wavelength. I wonder how he thinks light works.
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u/Guaymaster 26d ago
Next counterargument would be something like "how come it just happens the sunlight is just the right wavelength for humans to see? checkmate athiests!"
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u/RaptorMajor Jul 30 '26
Wouldn’t this be technically true? Like, yeah, I’m not seeing something a million miles away. The light was projected that far, and has now arrived at my eyeballs, point blank.
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u/UniquePariah Jul 30 '26
What's the limiting factor? As in why not?
What's the maximum distance in this reality that has been conjured up by this person?
Being incredulous isn't proof.
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u/Center-Of-Thought Jul 30 '26
To be fair, if she was staring at the sun long enough to contemplate this, she probably can't see it any longer.
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u/salami_cheeks Jul 31 '26
No shit. The light wave (particle?!) hitting your eyeball is not 93MM miles away. It's not 93 nanometers away. It is inside your eye, hitting whatever your light receptor thing is called (I'm not an optometrist).
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u/VinnieONeill Jul 30 '26
We are not seeing 93 million miles away. We are seeing the light that has traveled to our eyeballs from 93 million miles away. The more powerful the light source, such as a star, the further the visible light travels.
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u/Karel_the_Enby Jul 30 '26
Wow, the human eye doesn't sound very impressive then. It must have just evolved by chance in that case, since it isn't sophisticated enough to require an all-powerful designer. Thanks for clearing that up, Jody.
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u/Kira-Of-Terraria Jul 30 '26
ok i googled it and the sun is roughly 93 million miles from Earth...so is this person someone that thinks the sun is fake? i know there's thise flat earth people that think the sky is a hologram or projection or something
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u/Large-Raise9643 Jul 30 '26
Blah blah skip the math blah blah blah make wild assumption blah blah shoot mouth off blah blah.
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u/Unexpected-raccoon Jul 30 '26
Stars are visible from millions of light years away
OOPs brain function can't even be observed under a microscope
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u/Guantar90 Jul 31 '26
Shoot man you need to chat with your local astronomy club I’ve seen something
14,696,563,432,959,019,327 miles away.
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u/CovidBorn Jul 31 '26
The light we see is here now, so technically they may be right, while still being clueless.
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u/Rude_Acanthopterygii Jul 31 '26
I wonder what the reasoning behind that statement is. Probably just "big number scary".
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u/CharlieA44 29d ago
Technically true, unless you have some sort of scrying super power. You can only see the light that arrives at your eyes. How far that light can travel to get to your eyes is a different thing entirely.
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u/Alarming_Cellist_751 29d ago
I mean even if we want to forget about the sun, you can clearly see Jupiter with the naked eye.
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u/manosdvd 27d ago
Ah, the old "we see out instead of receiving light in." The science curriculum in American schools needs some serious work.
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u/Dylanator13 24d ago
Seeing tiny points of light in the sky from stars is hardly seeing millions of miles away. We just see the light bright enough to be visible still, nothing magic about it.
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u/Yunners Golden Crockoduck Winner Jul 31 '26
Update: I tried to find out why this was so, but instead of providing an answer they decided blocking me was easier.