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From: len@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Leonard P Levine)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage,alt.flame
Subject: Re: The flat earth
Keywords: platygaeanism,creationism,astroloy
Message-ID: <3838@uwmcsd1.UUCP>
Date: 9 Dec 87 17:12:17 GMT
References: <9578@shemp.UCLA.EDU> <590@cos.COM> <4084@bellcore.bellcore.com> <17127@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Sender: daemon@uwmcsd1.UUCP
Reply-To: len@csd4.milw.wisc.edu.UUCP (Leonard P Levine)
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Organization: University of WI-Milwaukee
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In article <17127@bu-cs.BU.EDU> madd@buita.UUCP (Jim Frost) writes:
>About the flat earth stuff:  It's easy to show the earth is spherical
>and also to find it's diameter.  All you have to do is take the angle
>of the sun to the earth in relation to two lines (preferably
>perpendicular).  Like, angle of sun to earth along longitudinal and
>latitudinal lines (ie north-south and east-west).
>
>Do this at three points widely separated (same hemisphere) at the same
>time on the same day and look at the data you get.  The discrepancies
>in the data will give you the angles necessary to project to the
>center of the earth.  The geometry and math is simple so it is left as
>an excercise to the reader.

Sorry, Jim, although I am not a flat earther, the same data can be 
interpreted by assuming a flat earth, and locating the sun close to
the earth.  It is easier to show with a figure.  The classical experiment
was done by noting that on a given day the sun shone to the bottom of a
well at noon in one city (Alexandria?) and did not do so in another
(Cairo?).  Draw a flat earth, two wells, the sun near the earth and
you will see that the same picture develops (no pun) as with a round
earth and the sun far away.


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O fillers please stop.  In 1932 the state of Nebraska produced 1 1/2 pounds
of dry edible beans for every man, woman and child in the United States.
Len