Quick Debunk: Manny's Magic 12,000 mile Solstice Image

Our spammy twitter friend Manny (now Brian because we assume he got banned for spamming?) loves to make bizarre claims about this image:

This is the illusion. In this image, the sun has provided noon to 12 time zones. Then it's going to provide noon to 12 more WITHOUT pic.twitter.com/tkCnrAZ0cm

— Brian (@hplarc12345) June 11, 2017

Here is the image:

Image Credit: Danilo Pivato © Copyright: - Images 2006

This was also APOD 2007 December 22, where we learn some details about the image:

• This series is from the 2005 Solstice
• It is looking down the Tyrrhenian Sea coast from Santa Severa toward Fiumicino, Italy
• The view covers about 115 degrees in 43 exposures

The sunrise & sunset times for Santa Severa in Dec 2005 were:

Sunrise: 7:37 am (121°)
Sunset: 4:44 pm (239°)

Which are 118° apart.

And this is only 9 hours 06 minutes 47 seconds.

So this is NOT "12 timezones" as Manny claims, it's only about 9.

So it seems that Manny cannot actually look at photographs and magically tell ANYTHING from them as he claims.  He is almost always wrong about details.

This is, in fact, EXACTLY what we would expect to see on 22 Dec 2005 from this location on Earth if the Earth is a Globe and NOTHING like what any Flat Earth model would predict.

Here is a Celestia simulation of this view, Celestia is Open Source so I challenge any Flat Earthers to find the "Flat Math" in the source code and expose the conspiracy.

He THINKS this shows the sun going in a big circle overhead but he's just Flat Out Wrong.

The Celestia calculations are a good match with observed reality.  I took 10 screenshots from 06:44 and hourly after that and overlaid them, clipping out the sun from each shot and overlaid the APOD image over that.  That is the predictive power of the Heliocentric/Globe model - it matches observed reality with the FEWEST assumptions.

The Heliocentric/Globe model is built on top of the observed reality that Mass mutually attracts.  Scientists have moved a very large mass around a Cesium fountain and OBSERVED the microscopically fine details in the paths the Cesium atoms take to confirm that it's the external large Mass that accounts for the changes in observations.  Move it above the atomic fountain and the atoms fall more slowly, move it to every side and the atoms move slightly to that side.  This is not a "Theory", this is directly observed and confirmed observations.  The THEORY of gravity is that it's the shape of space that best explains these observations.  The OBSERVATIONS themselves are Fact.  Could Einstein be wrong and it's NOT the local shape of spacetime?  ABSOLUTELY!  But that doesn't change the OBSERVATIONS that mass mutually attracts.

And BTW, according to Einstein gravity is NOT a force, at least not what is called a Proper Force.  This is drawn from the Gedankenexperiment that in an enclosed shell with no access to the outside world an observer inside feels no force and can measure no acceleration but from outside we clearly see the shell hurtling towards the ground and accelerating rapidly (9.8 m/s/s).  This is now easily confirmed by almost anyone with a modern cell phone with an accelerometer.

This is an image of the Accelerometer readings on my iPhone while I dropped it onto pillows.

It falls about 0.7 seconds from approximately 2.4 meters (8 feet).  Just a quick double check on the math -- height fallen equals one half the gravitational (Earth) constant (9.8m/s/s) times the time squared (gt²/2):

h = gt²/2 = 9.8*0.7²/2 = 9.8*0.49/2 = 4.8/2 = 2.4m ~ 8"

This confirms that the acceleration we observe ('g') is about 9.8 m/s/s.  At least for me, you'll have to repeat the experiment on your own to confirm it.  EVEN IF I offered you a video you still need not trust that I'm about 6 foot tall and was holding the phone to the ceiling which makes it about 8 feet.  No amount of evidence from me is better than you simply repeating this trivial experiment.  Keep in mind your margin for error on your measurements -- I'm pushing it using even a single decimal point here -- if you want accuracy you'll need a consistent and timed release mechanism and some way to more exactly time the fall, higher resolution sensors, and about 1000 repeats looking for ways you unknowingly introduced some error.

But more important for our purposes here is that our accelerometers drop to ZERO during the freefall (until we start seeing a small amount of air resistance showing up -- sorry, I don't have an 8 foot tall vacuum chamber but that experiment has been done) and the following ballistic arc after the bounce.

NOTHING ELSE works this way -- this is one reason that Gravity isn't merely some form of normal acceleration and it confirms our earlier thought experiment -- we cannot locally measure the acceleration of Gravity.  But we soon see the impact of the pillow which starts resisting and then rapidly applying a resistive acceleration to our phone far exceeding "1 Gforce".

This ONE thing -- mass mutually attracts -- then explains SO MUCH of what we observe and gives us phenomenal predictive power that results in incredibly useful tools like Celestia.

What force holds the Sun and Moon above the Earth and moves them in Circles and how was that force confirmed?  Flat Earthers have no answers here -- they just make things up and ignore the glaring gaps in their wild guess (it's not even a testable theory).


For safekeeping: