Here again the full letter of J. William Cooke, quoted by Ladislaus in Reply #31, since the last time I forgot to upload the images (which originally are from Lady Blount's "The Midnight Sun").
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Dear Sir,
I know there are still a few persons who profess to believe that the Earth is a plane and stationary, whilst the sun revolves round it, but I did not know that any of them had printed such utter rubbish as in the pamphlet you so kindly sent me. This is the first of their publications I have seen and I am much obliged to you for it. I suppose some of them have written something a trifle more plausible than The Midnight Sun, and it would interest me to see a really plausible explanation of their theory. As to The Midnight Sun, the author has not the slightest idea of modern theories, etc., e g.: in his diagram on page 7. As a fact the sun at its farthest north declination, passes overhead at the tropic of Cancer, and according to accepted theory “overhead” means a contination of a line joining the observing station with the Earth’s centre. The position of the sun therefore should be on a prolongation of E F and at an enormous distance away. Placed thus, what becomes of the difficulty of seeing it from M, in a direction somewhat resembling M Q ?
As to the theory of the sun’s rays just reaching through our atmosphere to a certain distance, it is too funny for words. An action of this kind must be gradual and must vary with the constitution of our atmosphere, if we are to accept any verified facts of optics whatever. In this case the length of each day will be determined by the state of the atmosphere! Besides apply the simplest mathematics to the case. On page 9 : suppose the sun is running round the inner circle O R Q. See how his motion would appear to an observer at G. With centre G and radius G N draw a circle cutting O R Q in X and Y. Then when the sun reaches X it would be just rising to the observer at G, when at R it would be noon, and sunset at Y. But in one hour’s motion from X its apparent angular movement at G would be almost nil and this would gradually increase until it would reach a maximum at noon and then decrease. Now nothing is so certain as that the sun moves through equal angles in equal times, so this consideration alone would absolutely demolish the theory.
I need not go on, but what about the stars? I honestly believe that many who profess to believe (!) in this nonsense do not even know that every star in the sky describes a circle round the celestial pole every 24h. Ask some of them for fun, if you come across any.
The fact is that the writer of the book on Norway could easily have worked out all his statements of facts in his study, and if he used the ordinary theories they would be as correct as if he observed them, and probably more so, because the small error of observation would be eliminated, e.g., the 4th par. on page 3, “the nearer any point,” etc., evidently has been written in this manner, for the observer has not certainly visited the Pole or has remained remarkably reticent about it.
One more word. I believe the confusion of the term “level” with “straight” or “plane” has given rise to no end of error. The sea is, on the whole, level but certainly not plane. The level of anything is measured by an instrument which depends upon the action of gravity and when we state that two points are on the same level we mean that they are subjected to the same gravitational pull, or in other words are equi-distant from the Earth’s centre. This, however, would be above the level of these paradoxers.
Yours faithfully,
W. ERNEST COOKE.
Topic: Debunk of a Flat Earth without using science but only empirical observations (Read 20725 times)