Just been watching this guy and he has raised some genuine questions on whether the earth is a sphere. Been racking my brains for an answer but have not manage to come up with any. Can anyone help????????
The guy's a complete idiot....
He says 900mph at the equator is a high speed. It's not. How quickly we see an object change position in our field of view depends on the object's velocity AND its distance from your eye. Like I can throw a ball at you at 30mph and if you narrowly miss it, it seems to move so much faster than looking at a plane 30,000 ft up in the sky (it looks so slow right ?).
So at a distance where you can see the roughly the entire planet (like you see a ball), you would have to be several thousand kilometers away from it. At that distance, 900mph is going to look almost static unless you keep looking at it for maybe hours. In movie scenes, they get to show you a few seconds at best. You just can't tell if its spinning that easily.
Now the plane pointing downwards problem :
For every 1 mile of earth you gain 8 inches of height right ? So lets say I'm at 30,000ft altitude going straight. If I keep going straight I should end up gaining altitude and now my altitude should be 30,000ft and 8 inches. To stay at 30,000ft, I will need to point my plane downwards a certain angle. Let's calculate that angle using trigonometry :
key points :
-1 mile converted into inches in 63,360 inches
-Just look at the triangle to the right. I cut it in half for ease in illustration.
The result ( the angle that the airplane should be pointing downwards relative to horizontal) comes out at 0.007 degrees.
That angle is so small, you almost never notice it. The curvature of the earth (due to it's huge size) is very very little. That is why you never notice it. To give you a better idea of how small this angle is, on the pilot's screen, he doesn't see the angles with a decimal point. After 20, comes 21. And not 20.1 , 20.2 , 20.3 etc...
And they need to keep the aircraft pointed upwards very very slightly to counter gravity depending on speed. The slower the plane, the higher the angle. In any case, the curvature of earth is so less, that you can never really notice it as a pilot.
And shame on this person who is calling himself a structural engineer.