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I though the big crunch theory was that all matter would eventually start falling back towards the big bang's ignition point and form a great ball of matter that would form a unimaginably massive black hole which would then apparantly explode into a new universe.

Before posting this I would like to make a reservation:
1. I'm in no way a mathematician, so don't try to start an argument after you have read the following information.
2. I just remembered the statement about converging parallel lines and found this corroboration. If it is no corroboration (to your mind) see #1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_at_infinity

In projective geometry, any pair of lines always intersects at some point, but parallel lines do not intersect in the real plane. The line at infinity is added to the real plane. This completes the plane, because now parallel lines intersect at a point which lies on the line at infinity. Also, if any pair of lines intersect at a point on the line at infinity, then the pair of lines are parallel.

That's also a theory, these theories are not like Highlanders, there can be more than one as long as we can't definitely prove that one of them is correct. There is also the one where the universe expands until everything freezes. The crunch and the freeze are terrible for our offspring though unless they can one day escape to a parallel universe (provided there even is one) before they get burnt or freeze. I know, before that we will have to get off this planet either way, it's just why bother with children if it all just ends in a few billion trillion years or so anyway?

I think that is more a thought construct than actually true for real parallel lines.
See this related article for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projective_plane

As it says, it relates to painting, where you actually do let parallel lines cross in one point to create the illusion of three dimensions and so on. It is merely a matter of perspective though, take the following picture. You can see several lines that appear to meet in the middle if you'd draw them on and on, that appears to be the point at infinty. In reality they would not meet though if they are actually parallel, it is a matter of perspective. The guy in my last video seems to turn this into a related mistake when he paints a triangle over some light rays to "prove" that the sun is just hovering a few thousand meters above earth.
In mathematics it seems to serve some purposes that I won't research now because it would take too much time, it does not seem very relevant for the wrong "explanation" given by flat earthers though.



I will also apologize for not being good at explaining or understanding this in English, the terms are all different from the ones I learned in German so some concepts seem new at first but really aren't, or are they?

If two black holes collide you get a very big black hole I guess, one would have to be significantly bigger than the other.

musing is fun

Yeah, but I meant if the theory that every black hole is a new universe were true, two of them colliding would mean two universes collide. Doesn't sound pleasant to me.

I am just glad these things are way to complicated for me. Two movie tips for free if you are in a wtf-mood, 'Singularity' and 'pi'. In pi are some things that everybody who followed a basic course in arts about some things should be well-known, the neverending number that is pi and the 2/3 composition in everything. Really fun, great movies

Mathematics IS a thought construct, so in its world anything may be true when it serves some purpose and nothing is real.

That's why I suspect Einstein had a very naughty sense of humour when he said the sun is actually circling around earth. Everything can be made impossible to dismiss if you are really good at doing that. Someone who has no idea of formulas whatsoever can conclude that the earth is round just by watching a ship dissapearing at the horizon, you cant see it anymore it's gone. I wish I was smart enough to join the fun but I'm not. We can be creative with blunt tools that's all

Some of it can be applied to real world phenomena though, about some other parts I'm not so sure, that was the difference I tried to make.
I'm not the expert to ask when it comes to translating physical models to mathematics though.

As Wooly Mammoth already said, the idea was that movement is a relative thing that can depend on the observer.
Consider this:
Youtube Video

Now IMO the video is not entirely correct, because the "old" solar model is not wrong just because it does not take the movement of the solar system in the galaxy into account, it is simply a model from a different point of view, which is what Einstein meant. I'd also say the idea that the sun is dragging the planets along with it is fals because the entire galaxy and everything in it were probably spinning around from the start, so the planets would keep moving at 70k km/h if the sun suddenly disappeared, they'd just move in completely different directions based on the next stronger gravitational pull etc. I also didn't check whether the movement through the galaxy is at a 90° angle compared tothe "planetary disc" around the sun.

That said, it illustrates that movement is always relative to the observer. From a fixed point in the universe, the solar system moves really fast, when you look at earth from the sun, you see it spinning around, when you look from earth, you can easily think the entire universe spins around you, which is true if you define yourself as the central point of reference. Or in other words, when you run around in a computer game, what really moves on your screen is not your character, but the entire level around it. Because you are used to it, your brain thinks you move around in a world, but your character always stay at the same point of your monitor while the world around your character rotates and moves based on your inputs.
It is like in a train, where from your point of view, the train does not move, but everything outside does. For someone outside the train it looks the other way around. So in the same way, from our spinning earth it looks as though the sun revolves around us, but that's only because we don't feel that our planet moves since we move with it. I think that is what Einstein meant, if that is clear enough. I'm sure Montmorency, Seamus or someone else can say it more eloquently in three sentences.

Train is a nice example, if you ride a train that moves at the speed of time and you walk forward, are you really getting ahead of time then, or just the perception of time which is alsways relative. In the end our perception of time is only what we can see, that doesn't make it real it's only what we percieve. My socially cripled but incredibly intelligent brother could make sense to that, I really can't, he thinks I am just as smart as him but I'm not. What is time, I don'tknow

So.. you would basically need to gather a few of the more vocal flat earthers and fly them into space and circumnavigate the globe - and let them "experience" for them selves the roundness they so hate.

Not a bad idea, but I kinda like it that someone who is smart enough can actually prove that the earth is in fact flat and get away with it, it's like a very clever heist

They haven't proven anything. If they had, the earth WOULD be flat after all.

kudo's if they do, it only shows the limitations of the tools at our disposal

Yin and Yang?
Are you a wizard or a lizard?

You can not prove correct something that is incorrect.

Where is your playfullness and sense of humour, how hilarious would it be if someone can mathematically prove that the earth isn't round even when we all know it is. My brother 'proved' to me that 1+1 is in fact not 2, I caught him at a certain point but it took me a while but he almost had me.

I should have looked at the internet, believe me or not I cracked this one myself http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/57131.html

Been there, had that at the uni...

The point is just that you can't call it proof if it contains an error as Sarmatian just told you as well.
It's more like fake-proof and in the case of some flat earthers I seriously doubt they do it just for fun.
I have heard enough crazy ideas (e.g. the theory of relativity proves that we are all god / ghosts exist etc.) that people take very seriously that I cannot always suspect a joke every time anymore.

I don't think they actually believe it, could be wrong of course. But I think you can can proof something that is actually wrong if you are a clever cheater and I can see the fun in that. If they actually believe it it's still fun. I can make a mental map on how it could be done if you relativate spacetime and position, but math isn't my thing. I fully understand that it's not actually true but I bet someone can actually troll his way into making it is

I'm afraid you are. You wouldn't believe what some people believe.

Assume for a moment that the little part called "common sense" is absent in a brain, and that said brain wants the world/it's life to be more interesting than it actually is - then you can almost glimpse at the mental zone some people are in.

It seems to me that they are trying to convince us of their hypothesis (theory yet?) using what appear to be science, but not really following the rules of such.

Same as with my math example – for someone not familiar with the rules of mathematics, it seems to be accurate. It’s a mighty enterprise to falsify all existing theories of a spherical earth. And mind you – these are scientific theories viewed by peers. So they need to be proven false. Not only that – they need to come up with new theories, which by the scientific method, need to be reviewed by peers and experts on the fields in question. Take the gyroscope experiment they claim is proof of a static earth. This needs to be reviewed by those who are experts on the science of gyroscopes before going off on the interwebs with their proven empirical study.

Their origin is not too unfamiliar for a student of religion – where a book become the basis of a movement. The fact that the author of this book further wrote other publications exposing the true basis of this “theory” – a basis which remove all neutral position, exposes them and their hypothesis as nothing other than bible thumping thugs. I am not saying that scientists can’t be men or women of faith – but as soon as they drag in the infallibility of a man-written book from a time where science was an infant and most likely unknown to the authors (yes, plural), they no longer claim the neutral observer. All science must conform to the book who claims the earth has four corners. Which incidentally does not conform to the circle plate hypothesis of the flat earth society.

Lastly… what about summer solstice in Antarctica? Why can you see the sun up all day and all night if the sun is skirting the edge of Antarctica, which according to their hypothesis, circumnavigates the earth? This model should show the sun more or less the same as in winter solstice just higher on the sky since it is nearer (summer) – but as soon as the sun has passed your vantage point you should be in the dark about 12 hours until the sun comes again.

You mean sort of like this?

Some people just really want to believe something is possible, right?

You don't need to tell me that I grew up in the Dutch bilble-belt, there is some progress there as well though, dinasours actually existed but they were just too big too fit on Noah's arc so they died. They actually believe that I'm not kidding

Searching youtube for good debates against Flat Earth is difficult because they (Flat Earth adherers) has flooded the interwebs with their pseudo-science.

Good old youtube spyware suggested this for me:

Youtube Video

Not available in Germany...
I could post a German video of an astrophysicist who does a few TV shows, but that wouldn't help much I guess.
Funny thing is that one flat earther made a reply to said video and demonstrated that he had no clue what he was talking about.

Flat Earthers still believe in gravity, do they not?

Gravity of a substantial degree mandates spheroids. How hard can that be to accept?

goddidit

They believe in discs flying over their head because... well because! Gravity isn't gonna give them sleepless nights.

They do not believe in gravity. They postulate elecromagneticism as the basis of sticking to the surface of the earth.. the flat one that is.

Good debate info found here (one of the first I watched)

Youtube Video

One of the things the flat earther says is that they do not believe in anything they can't see or verify themselves and I am amazed that Stephan doesn't jump at this disrepancy, considering just minutes before, the flat earther claimed he went from atheist to theist. So... mr. flat earth - did you see god or verifiy the claim of a god's existence?

Will have to watch that discussion when I have an hour to spare or while I do something else.

But this is related and also funny:
Youtube Video

Also a/the related video with Neil deGrasse Tyson:
Youtube Video

Oh yeah, for his Burj Khalifa- example, there was a video that said there is a cone or sphere of light around the sun and when it gets dark in the evening, that's because the sun is so far away over flat earth, that you can't see it anymore because you can't see that far or so.

It is galling enough to teach year after year among a raft of students who, despite being reasonably bright, can be shockingly ignorant. And then to see people actively expending brain energy to achieve intellectual lemmingism.

AaaaaRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhh

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