Never work
If this petition were to actually work, it wouldn't be an hour before some wisecracker started a similar petition to do the same with our politicians.
A campaign has been started on the Change.org petition website to prevent Amazon founder Jeff Bezos from returning to Earth after his upcoming jaunt into space on 20 July. Bezos is scheduled to be launched 100km up for a brief, suborbital trip on the first manned flight by his New Shepard rocket, operated by the Blue Origin …
When I read the headline, I thought this would be a poor-spirited attempt at a joke. Having read the text of the petition, I'm not so sure anymore. Sure, it's the kind of thing a fifteen-year-old trying to be funny without watching what actually funny people do might write, but unfortunately there are people who say the same sort of thing in absolute seriousness.
"...there are people who say the same sort of thing in absolute seriousness."
Like everyone, for example. Including Douglas Adams, whose B Ark captures quite accurately our collective fantasy of being rid of the useless, the insipid, the burdensome, and the obnoxious. There's nothing wrong with feeling hatred for someone who's earned it, nor with openly insulting them or wishing them ill. The line is crossed when one actively and purposefully causes physical harm. This doesn't even approach that standard.
I agree that it's poorly written and disappointing. Lex Luthor is a fictional character. The Knights Templar and Free Masons are a gag that's been running for centuries. Epstein, well, I don't know what happened there but it stinks to high heaven, at best; the conspiracy theorists are very probably right on that one.
As for "flat earth deniers", we've already had one story about a guy (Mike Hughes) who built his own spaceship for the purpose of proving the planet is flat. It didn't go well, and not because some conspiracy brought him down.
None of these things have any obvious connection with Mr Bezos. I assume it's just a weak 2-minute effort at humour. *shrug*
It's nothing to do with science, mainstream or otherwise. The essential attribute of scientific assertions is that they are empirically falsifiable. Some scientific assertions can be affirmatively proved, but most cannot and there is no requirement that they be so. The most general and therefore most useful theories cannot be affirmatively proven because doing so would require exhaustive observation (which may itself be impossible) over infinite or impractically large domains. A single counterexample is however sufficient to disprove at least some part(s) of the theory, requiring its reformulation or replacement.
That Earth is an approximately spherical more or less solid body rather than a 2-D surface in flat space is not a matter of science. It is not a hypothesis or even a theory; it's an affirmatively proved fact that has been known with certainty for millennia and backed in the last century by continuous and exhaustive direct observation. There is no "non-mainstream" alternative hypothesis waiting to be disproved, only a small number of people who choose not to believe something that is known with absolute certainty to be true. It is also not a general theory but a specific instance of a fact. A corresponding scientific theory, one that is easily disproved (and in fact is false) would be that all solid objects in space are approximately spherical. A more interesting theory would be that all solid objects greater than a certain mass are approximately spherical: this is probably true, and it depends on the physical nature of the materials comprising the object.
It's important to distinguish affirmatively proven instances of facts, scientific assertions such as those made in hypotheses and theories ("mainstream" or otherwise), and assertions made by pseudoscience. Flat-earth is pseudoscience; it makes the non-disprovable assertion that the planet is flat in a way that is by construction impossible to detect. Any attempt to detect the flatness invariably fails not because Earth is not in fact flat but because of some conspiracy to thwart it, instrument failure, etc. This is essentially religion, not science; some people prefer the term "junk science" to pseudoscience. The Amazing Randi wrote at length about pseudoscience and the critical distinction from actual science. Importantly, "mainstream" is a value judgment; most successful hypotheses begin life outside the mainstream and enter it as meaningful attempts to disprove them add to the accumulated evidence in their favour. At some point they become mainstream theories if they're sufficiently successful, but whether or not an assertion is "mainstream" has nothing to do with whether it is scientific. Falsifiable but unfalsified hypotheses are not pseudoscience merely because they are unpopular or unfashionable.
I'm pretty sure that most "flat-Earthers" don't actually believe Earth is flat, they just get a charge out of infuriating others by pretending to insist upon it. There are probably a few unfortunate exceptions. But one doesn't have to subscribe to mainstream science to know the shape of the planet.
"I'm pretty sure that most "flat-Earthers" don't actually believe Earth is flat, they just get a charge out of infuriating others by pretending to insist upon it. "
Well, yes. The few vocal flat-earthers I know are also vocal disciples of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Of course it's canon! FSM ≈ Flat Surface Model, as any fule no.
"As for "flat earth deniers", we've already had one story about a guy (Mike Hughes) who built his own spaceship for the purpose of proving the planet is flat. It didn't go well, and not because some conspiracy brought him down."
That's what they want you to think.
If you believe in a flat planet, then those who disagree with you are denying your flat earth belief. The petitioner either believes in that or is pretending to, so calls people deniers when they believe in the facts. It seems to be correct phrasing of a crazy idea to me.
I am a oblate spheroid (semi-)denier!
If you take the Earth and shrink it down to the size of a regulation pool ball then for 'roundness' it would be within the manufacturing limits of a regulation pool ball. Though not smoothness.
https://ourplnt.com/earth-smooth-billiard-ball/
So you could use the Earth in a game of planetary pool!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Hole_(Red_Dwarf)
.
Let me put it another way....
When you get in your car and drive do you account for the fact that travelling at a different velocity and/or changing altitude (driving up a hill) will alter the rate at which time passes for you?
So why do people get all 'oblate spheroid' when someone says that the Earth is round (when they actually mean sphere), yet don't start waffling about relativity and time dilation when everyone agrees on what time it is?
"When you get in your car and drive do you account for the fact that travelling at a different velocity and/or changing altitude (driving up a hill) will alter the rate at which time passes for you?"
I don't personally, no, because I don't need to: in my own frame of reference, time continues to pass at the usual rate. If I have radio devices that need to communicate with things in other frames of reference, like satellites, then yes they do take that into account. They have to. Usually, time dilation and Doppler effect associated with normal driving speeds and surface elevation changes aren't large enough to materially affect the timing of today's electronics; they fall within the established margins. Things that move much faster or in gravitational fields or greater variation do take it into consideration.
Is actually from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. His spaceship crashed on Mars, and he was able to use his rescue pod to hop over the next planet where the strange ape-like beings still though digital watches were a neat idea.
Still they had successfully landed on their moon. How much harder would going to the next planet be? All he had to do is hitch a ride on one of those rockets with a few extra spare parts. But decades after they landed on the moon, they had gone exactly nowhere.
So he developed a payment system for the local version of the sub-ethanet, and used the profits to build his own rocket to get him to Mars, known locally was the BFR.
If Bezos is indeed a flat earth denier then seeing (and orbiting) a round thing will just enforce that denial, not make it "difficult to maintain the position" like the article states. Just saying.
(I know. Negatives of negatives and all that. Or maybe the author of the article just didn't get the joke.)
... on second thought, it is of course possible that the author of the article is jesting on a level more advanced than I was able to appreciate and indeed assumes that a flat earth denier will be converted when he sees the flatness from space and makes a futile attempt at orbiting it.
No, I'm not referring to Bezos but to this conspiracy theory Neanderthal who wants him dead and thinks a petition is the way to do it. Sounds like all the other conspiracy morons who blame their own inadequacies and failures on some conspiracy, rather than admitting that they are too stupid/lazy to succeed.
This is incitement and the perp should be changed . Going around stating in a public forum, that you want somebody to be killed and that others should help you is incitement to murder and should be treated as such. Or perhaps you think that Jose Ortiz is being ironic or maybe I've od'ed on 2000AD.
> Going around stating in a public forum, that you want somebody to be killed and that others should help you is incitement to murder and should be treated as such
Owning shares in Boeing-Lockheed-Martin-General-Dynamics or BAe-Thales ?
voting for killing a few more 100,000 Afghans/Iraqis to make this year's dividend targets
It doesn't re-enter because it doesn't get to orbit. There is a big difference between getting 100km up and falling back and getting 100km up AND doing 10km/s horizontally.
This rocket is doing the same as a 1945 V2, although with a payload that does more damage to the workers of London
Honestly, it's hard to pick just one person from the list that seems to keep growing the longer I consider it. Trump (any of them but preferably Sr), Putin, Kim Jung Un, Mitch McConnell, Marjorie Taylor Greene (she thinks California's fires are started by Jewish lasers up in space so let's give her a chance to see them for herself, though something tells me even by seeing there are no such things, she'd still believe it). Pretty much anyone that comes to mind are those that are corrupt, despicable heartless people that want to take society down dark paths that will cause humanity much suffering and possible extinction. But then I transcend, be the better person that I know I am and despite knowing that they should be punished for all the evil deeds they have been part of, wishing harm to another human is not right and DEFINITELY not who I am. Besides, the universe will make sure they get what's coming to them sooner or later and it'll do it in a much better fashion than I could ever come up with.