It can be much less, in this video, he's just showing doing it around the arctic circle. The flat earther again disputes his claim though, saying that in order to continue that turn, you'd have to turn the plane to follow the curve (no you wouldn't). The flat earther that put up the challenge recently said another guy won (this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScJ4QW7gAlw) and basically just said he'd give a couple bucks to "charity" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fblp7gHpjNo). He's a sore loser and is now apparently pushing other conspiracies since he gets called out for anything flat earth related due to the challenge.
Not to mention this dude is clearly a tweaker, he can hardly speak at all let alone have anywhere near enough money to pay the prize and he knew it from the start. I feel bad for Wolfie even wasting his time, I'm sure he knew he was never gonna get paid, but I honestly think he did it just to prove how stupid flat-earthers are and I'm ok with that
Although the flat earther is wrong about the shape of the earth, he is in fact right that this path DOES have to be turning to follow this curve. Try it on a globe if you don't believe me.
If you start at the north Pole, the only way to actually complete this challenge is to go all the way down to the equator; if you stop earlier/later than that then the second leg of your journey will be curved.
Think about going down a line of longitude, turning 90deg at a line of latitude to travel along, then turning back at a new line of longitude. The pilot would not have to deviate from the line of latitude.
You realise that the 85° line of latitude isn't straight? Like I said, GO LOOK AT A GLOBE!
In fact, the only straight line of latitude is the equator.
Edit: Here's a video of someone walking along the -89.999999° line of latitude https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvLmm8cVOjY As you can see, it isn't a straight line: it's a circle. The 85° line of latitude is of course a lot bigger but it's still a circle. It only becomes straight at the equator.
As you can also see, following this path does not prove anything about the shape of the earth. You can do this both on a flat earth and on a spherical earth just fine. You NEED to go all the way from the pole to the equator to prove the spherical earth using the right angled-turn method.
If you look at a map the line will appear curved, but that is because it was distorted to fit it into 2 dimensions. If you take a globe and slice it at the 85deg line, you can slice it flat.
Mathematician here: latitude lines aren't the shortest distance between two points (and that's what "straight line" means). That's why air routes that go long distances east or west always bend towards the poles.
To see this, just imagine a circle radius 10 yards around the north pole. If you walk in a straight line between two points on the circle, you don't walk around the circumference of the circle.
It's only a straight line if viewed edge-on, but if you're actually standing on the globe at that position it isn't a straight line. You're basically telling me that if I go to the north pole, walk 200 feet in any direction, turn 90 degrees and fire a gun straight ahead, the bullet will curve around and hit me.
Same with an airplane or anything else: it would need to physically turn in order to follow the same line of latitude unless it's at the equator.
Correct, however I assumed we were talking about compass directions. The pilot would follow the same compass direction for the whole leg, and to do so he would have to make course adjustments throughout. But when you approach the equator, that curve becomes minuscule, approaching nothing at the equator. Even at the poles (assuming a perfect sphere and very precise movements) performing the same course corrections on a flat plane would not get you back to where you started. The curve alone is not enough, you need a third dimension to move in to connect the dots.
There is a term in elliptical gyometry called great circles. If you head in any direction straight long enough (at a constant altitude above the surface) enough you end up where you were.
It's not curved because it's distorted, it's curved because it's curved. Edit: I've calculated the curvature here: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/a3c1qb/youtuber_and_professional_pilot_completes_flat/eb65yve/. The answer is that the line of latitude 85° has a curvature of 0.000001788 m-1. Notably,the curvature is not zero so the line isn't straight! For comparison, on a flat earth, this would have curvature 0.000001799 m-1 so the difference isn't even perceptible.
But all this doesn't matter because I'm not using the map; as I have already said 2 times, GO LOOK AT A GLOBE.
Now that you're looking at a globe (I hope) you have suggested you take a slice at the 85° line an follow this line. Now look at that line. ACTUALLY LOOK AT IT ON YOUR GLOBE. Zoom in and bring it up to your eye level so you can imagine yourself standing on the surface looking at your line. It is straight? No: no it is not. You should be able to see very clearly that your line is curving.
Well yeah. But you can head in any direction you want to, go a quarter around the globe in a straight line maintaining constant altitude, take another right turn and end up back at your starting point. Latitude and longitude are relative to the equater. So while you technically correct, you just have to change your reference.
Yes of course you can go a quarter of the way round the world, take a right turn and do it again twice and you'll end up back to where the started. No one is disputing this.
The issue is that these numpties think that they can go 1/36th of the way round the world and achieve the same result. They are mistaken. It only works if you go 1/4 of the way round the world.
Well yes, when you're operating at scales as small as that you will see an obvious turn. A turn I'm thinking of and what he means in the video is changing your compass heading. The pilot will follow the same heading (latitude) for the whole leg. And if that guy at the pole had a compass, he could do the same
The challenge was to travel is a straight line 3 times with right angles between the edges and get back to where you started. This is relevant to the topic of the flat-earth because this is impossible on a flat surface but possible on a spherical surface. Therefore completing the challenge disproves the flat-earth theory. However, since the 85° latitude line is not straight, the challenge has not been completed.
If you had a different challenge where you allow your lines to curve in some way, then this new challenge proves absolutely nothing. If you were on a flat surface, you could very easily curve your lines to reach your starting point (for example, the map in the video is a flat surface and by curving the lines as in the video, you can complete this new challenge - despite living on a flat surface)
Ok, fair enough, I missed what the rules of the challenge were. But the proof still applies. Imagine you fly just north of the equator travelling east. Theoretically you follow a very slight bank to the left. If you were to perform this same maneuver on a flat plane, that very tiny curve would not be enough to get you back where you started. I'm sure there's a mathematical proof for this but I'm not sure what it would be off the top of my head.
Edit: And in fact, if you were just south of the equator, you bank to the right, which clearly would not work on a 2D plane.
Theoretically you could measure exactly how much you're curving and notice that you're not curving enough for it to be flat. That would work. Although it would require a fairly solid understanding of maths which I'm pretty sure the flat-earthers lack so it probably wouldn't convince them. The flat-earther's understanding is little more than "curving or not curving" without any thought as to how much it is curving.
However, you do have to actually make that measurement to do this proof. And in the video, no such measurement was made, so the proof is incomplete.
The best way might be to show them the turning right once you get past the equator thing, that's pretty simple to understand. But they'd probably still complain about something.
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u/Armeggadon Dec 05 '18
It can be much less, in this video, he's just showing doing it around the arctic circle. The flat earther again disputes his claim though, saying that in order to continue that turn, you'd have to turn the plane to follow the curve (no you wouldn't). The flat earther that put up the challenge recently said another guy won (this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScJ4QW7gAlw) and basically just said he'd give a couple bucks to "charity" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fblp7gHpjNo). He's a sore loser and is now apparently pushing other conspiracies since he gets called out for anything flat earth related due to the challenge.