Could the Earth we live on be flat?

@jackrabbit10

No, the Mississippi is going dry because the Army Corp of Engineers changed the natural course of the river. The Mississippi is supposed to change course naturally, they won't allow it.

@calicuz yell your right,,just funning with the flat earth stuff,,

@jackrabbit10

Theoretically the Earth could be flat. I mean there's nothing on Earth that requires it to be round. Life doesn't require it, the ecosystem doesn't require it, gravity doesn't require it.

@calicuz Actually, gravity DOES require it; in fact gravity is the REASON the Earth is (approximately) round.

@calicuz Really? Objects are attracted to the centre of mass. If the Earth were flat this would be at a point somewhere below the middle of the plain. Unless the land is perfectly rigid it will flow until it forms a sphere and can flow no further.

@ElwoodBlues @ninalanyon

So gravity couldn't exist on a flat surface?

@ninalanyon There is no such thing as gravity. Mass attracting mass has never been proven. It's all in your head.

@jackrabbit10 nice programmed response.

@TBIman FALSE.
FALSE. It's been proven REPEATEDLY for the last 200+ years with the Cavendish experiment.
There's also the small matter of predicting eclipses to the fraction of a second, and sending space probes to the outer planets with 1 part per billion accuracy, LOL!!!

Clearly it's not in YOUR head!! Gravity is curved spacetime, as described by these tensor field equations

@ElwoodBlues

No need to laugh, we're trying to have a real conversation here.

@calicuz Gravity exists everywhere there is mass. The shape of that mass determines the details of the direction of the field. All objects attract all other objects. The path that the objects follow when falling toward the centre of gravity is determined by the velocity that the objects already have and the distribution of the mass.

On the surface of a large sphere such as the earth the force of gravity is more or less the same at every point (but see @ElwoodBlues comment elsewhere on this post). If the same mass were to be shaped into a square plate the force due to gravity would differ not only in quantity but also in direction depending on where you were standing.

The force due to gravity is

F = (G * m1 * m2)/(r^2) where G is the gravitational constant (6.67 × 10-11 N m^2/kg^2), m1 and m2 are the two masses, and r is the distance between their centres.

Only at the exact centre would the force be perpendicular to the surface. Everywhere else it would be at an angle because it always points to the centre of gravity which is somewhere below the centre of the surface rather than directly below them.

The earth has a volume of 1,083,206,916,846 cubic kilometre. I don't know what area flat Earthers think that the square Biblical earth has but if we assume it to be 20 000 km square then to get the same volume and hence the same total gravitational attraction it would be 2700 km thick so the centre would be 1350 m below the centre. Someone standing at one of the corners would be 14 000 km from the centre of the plane and would experience a force due to gravity that was almost parallel to the plane, actually about 7.5° from the horizontal.

I hope I haven't committed arithmetical typos!

@ElwoodBlues You can post all the pictures of failed experiments that you want. It won't make gravity real or shape the motionless plane into a ball.

@TBIman You can hide from reality all you want. Reality doesn't care.

Probably, either that or someone snagged the drain plug by accident while fishing.@jackrabbit10

@ninalanyon @Repete @TBIman

Wait a second. Use this scenario in your equation.
Take the Round Earth, flaten it out, multiply by 10, 15 or even 20 times and what do you mathematical equations tell you?
@TBIman has a point. Gravity is still a theory.
My problem is, while your math adds up on a round globe, there are no mathematical equations at all to support a flat Earth?

I'm just asking questions here.

@ElwoodBlues Dude in what reality do you live? In one where we spin but do not know it?

@TBIman We spin on the axis of the poles about once every 24 hours. You seem to think that "the firmament" rotates about the Earth once every 24 hours, but the opposite is true. "The firmament" is fixed and the Earth rotates.

I live in the reality where every one except you knows the Earth spins about the axis thru the poles. Everyone but you, dude.

That's why stars that are dozens of light years away appear to rise and set every night. We rotate. All the stars and constellations and galaxies don't rotate about us. We rotate. Everyone but you, knows this dude.

@calicuz One that has been demonstrated to be as near perfect as we can measure. The word theory is a jargon word in science, it means a description of reality that accords well with experiment. The word that describes what sceptical laymen mean when they sneer that something is a theory is hypothesis.

Maxwell's equations that describe electromagnetism are a theory, we use it to design transformers that keep the lights on and radios that broadcast television, quantum mechanics is a theory that we use to design transistors used in computer chips. All of these theories are quite stunningly precise and reliable.

In science, all theories are regarded as potentially wrong. For instance we now know that Newton didn't get it quite right and Einstein's Theory of General Relativity has replaced it as the best description we have of how masses attract each other. However, Newton's theory is still good enough for NASA to use it to send probes to the edges of the solar system and beyond.

@calicuz Are you talking about a circular disk shape object? Sort of a flattened sphere? Maybe 10 or 20 times the mass of the Earth?

For such an object, the force of gravity would be directly towards the center of the object. So, near the center, gravity would be "downwards" and the ground there would feel level. The farther you move towards the edge of the disk, the more "centerwards" gravity would pull. Thus, at a point well off-center, towards the center would feel strongly downhill, and farther from center would feel strongly uphill.

Thus, any liquid on the thin disk or flattened sphere would flow strongly to the center. And any loose material, rocks, dirt, etc. would be pulled "downhill" towards the center. All this material would build up near the center and form a rough spherical zone at the center. And this buildup near the center would exert stronger gravity towards the center.

Over eons of time, even solid rock slowly flows and deforms. The relentless gravity towards the center would slowly deform the bedrock to flow towards the center. Over eons of time, it would reform itself into a sphere, with the heaviest (densest) material at the center of the sphere, and less dense material at the crust.

These are the forces that have shaped every planet and moon in the solar system to be roughly spherical.

Another way to look at it is this: given a random collection of many many lumps of mass moving at small random velocities, the lowest energy configuration of that collection of lumps is a sphere with the densest lumps at the center.

Layers of rock deformed over eons

@jackrabbit10 Who said anything about an edge? If there is an edge it's far beyond where we are allowed to explore.

@ElwoodBlues looks like a beef roast,,

@TBIman you must be getting lot of fun out of this,,back in the 1960es,when the L,S,D was pure,,,I thought the earth was ship, in the ocean of space,, ⛵

@jackrabbit10 No. I receive no fun or pleasure from this. My intention is just to get people questioning what we were told by our kindergarten teachers at an age when we still believed in Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.