Den Blonde Ulven performs an experiment on the size and shape of the Earth:
My father and I performed some optic experiments near Virginia Beach in Norfolk, Virginia. The goal of this event was to check the hypothesis: can objects be seen further than they should be able due to the curvature of the Earth?
We were standing on Ocean View Beach close to East Ocean View Beach- coordinates 36.933410, -76.201875. Three pieces of equipment were utilized- a Nikon P1000 camera, a tripod, and an SD memory card for the camera. This camera was capable of recording while shooting a video and simultaneously zooming in great distances. The P1000 is what captured the videos shown.
The weather was partly cloudy, no rain, and slightly hazy. These are not ideal conditions due to the haze. Yet even under these non-ideal conditions, objects that have been zoomed in upon are distinguishable.
We used a website to determine the location of cargo ships on a map in near real-time. This allowed us to estimate where the ships were. We then used a feature on Google Maps called “measure” to connect our location with the ships’. This gave us an approximate distance of which I estimate is accurate within a range of (+-)0.2 miles.
The obvious rebuttal, as DBU anticipates, is “refraction”. However, there is no extant model for refraction that is sufficient to account for the difference between what the curvature model predicts and the observable results obtained.
This does not suggest the Earth is flat. It does, however, suggest that the official story about the specific size and shape of the Earth is unsupported by the observable evidence.
Now, I am not a Flat Earther. Neither am I an Oblate Spheroidian. I have no dog in this hunt, except that it would not surprise me in the least to learn that the Official Story, once more, has been proven false. My fundamental position on such celestial matters can best be described as Holmesian to the core.
My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it. “You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.” “To forget it!” “You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.” “But the Solar System!” I protested. “What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
That being said, I applaud those who do care about such things taking the time and effort to actually investigate for themselves the assertions of what is said to be science. It is telling, to me, that those who claim to be completely dedicated to science so often decry those who dare to engage in real scientody to replicate the current state of scientage.