A second critical piece to the Efimovich model is that the Earth is not the center of the solar system either. It is, according to "round Earth" theory, orbiting the sun at a radius of around five-hundred million kilometers. Were this the case, the Earth would be an accelerated object in circular motion around its sun. And thereby are the problems introduced. The Earth accelerating in circular motion would behave no differently than would a car taking a corner: loose objects (humans and animals would act like loose change or a cup of coffee on the dashboard) would slide around, or be thrown off completely. There would be an apparent centrifugal force on everything. During the day, when things would be facing the sun and therefore on the inside of the "orbit", buildings would be crushed and humans beings squashed like grasshoppers in a centrifuge. And at night, when everything would be at the outside, trees and buildings would be ripped from the ground and flung into outer space, and humans wouldn't stand a chance. Obviously, there is a flaw in Efimovich's "orbit" theory.
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Anonymous2008-02-04 0:58
Once again, picture in your mind a round world. Now imagine that there are two people on this world, one at each pole. For the person at the top of the world, (the North Pole), gravity is pulling him down, towards the South Pole. But for the person at the South Pole, shouldn't gravity pull him down as well? What keeps our person at the South Pole from falling completely off the face of the "globe"?
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Anonymous2008-02-04 0:58
As we begin to make this argument, we acknowledge beforehand that we are aware of the property of matter known as friction. Yes, we realize that whenever two surfaces are held together by any force there will be a static frictional force that will resist any motion by either surface in any direction other than parallel to the force. The example we are using is an extreme situation, and would involve the object in question to travel a considerable distance (tens of degrees of latitude) from the "top" of the planet.
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Anonymous2008-02-04 0:58
Using the "round Earth" theory, setting an object on the earth would be like setting grains of sand on a beach ball. Certainly a few grains would stay - right around the top, the surface is nearly horizontal - but when you stray too far from the absolute top of the ball, the grains of sand start sliding off and falling onto the ground. The Earth, if round, should behave in exactly the same fashion. Because the top is a very localized region on a sphere, if the Earth were in fact round, there would be only a very small area of land that would be at all inhabitable. Stray to the outside fringes of the "safe zone", and you start walking at a tilt. The further out you go, the more you slant, until your very survival is determined by the tread on your boots. Reach a certain point, and you slide off the face of the planet entirely. Obviously, something is wrong.
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Anonymous2008-02-04 0:58
In order to avoid the aforementioned scenario, (which obviously is inaccurate, as you very rarely hear of people falling off the face of the planet) we are forced to assume that, in the "round Earth" theory, there would be a gravitational field radiating from the center of the planet. All objects, be they rocks, insects, humans, or other planets would have, under Efimovich's theory, have a gravitational "charge" that would, under a certain alignment, cause them to be attracted to the center of the Earth. Unfortunately, like a magnet in a stronger magnetic field, it would undoubtedly require a long time to re-align an object's gravitational charge, were this the case. And so we go to argument four, which deals with difficulties in having different "downs" for different people.
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Anonymous2008-02-04 0:58
Now imagine, if only for the sake of argument, that the person on top and the person on bottom can both manage to remain attracted to the ground "below" them. What would happen if the person on one side decided to visit the other? Since the man at the North Pole has a different idea of what is down and up (and in fact experiences an opposite pull from the Earth's gravity) than the person at the South Pole does, when the denizen of the frozen Arctic visits his Antarctic counterpart, they will experience gravitational pulls exactly opposite of each other! The human from the North Pole will "fall up", never returning to the ground, and will continue falling forever into the deep void of outer space!
Jeepers, this is why we have to teach Jesub is Lorb in science class. At least with faith-based knowledge, you know you are right no matter what evidence there is one way or the other.
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mercoon2008-02-05 16:34
((Hmm... I'd put tl;dr... but this may be a chance to start a new meme...))
OK, too long. Cliff's Notes it for me.
You don't really have to read it. "Science" like this pretty much disregards any logical though, so anybody with half a brain can notice all the loopholes.
It's basically saying that because you can drop sand on top of a beach ball and it rolls off onto the ground, the earth should have the same properties, therefore all the people will fall off and float away into space.
The theory of a spherical earth is credible because the mathematical models we use to describe gravity have been very useful in predicting how space probes are going to behave. We could not send out space probes if the earth was flat. Of course, this would assume that these people believe that the NASA space program is a credible source of information.