Here's a puzzle for you...

[Manc33]

Wait I messed up, the football sized ball would have all of the centrifugal force of the entire globe.

[Mick F]

At the equator, the Earth's surface is traveling at about 1,000miles an hour.

If I jump into the air, why don't I go SPLAT into the wall?

[beardy]

Mass is not directly related to diameter for a start.

With a mistake that fundamental, cant really waste time on the rest.

[axel_knutt]

The question is: How does gravity manage to keep everything the same weight all over the Earth in such a way that it perfectly counterbalances the centrifugal force?

It doesn't. Gravity is 9.8322m/s/s at the north pole, and 9.7803m/s/s at the equator. Out of that difference, 0.0337m/s/s is attributable to centrifugal force.

[Manc33]

At the equator, the Earth's surface is traveling at about 1,000miles an hour.

If I jump into the air, why don't I go SPLAT into the wall?

Relative motion.

How is the atmosphere magically stuck to the Earth?

In magically sticking the atmosphere to the Earth with gravity, we then of have the small matter of the atmosphere spinning faster and faster the higher up you go (a plane at 30,000 feet would be "turning with the Earth's atmosphere" faster than a plane at 10,000 feet) then just at the point of its maximum spin at the edge of space, it magically changes from a non-vacuum into a vacuum where nothing is moving and it all becomes floaty. A non-vacuum staying connected to a vacuum and maintaining itself as a vacuum for thousands of years without one ever becoming the other is, apparently, possible.

How does a plane fly along maintaining altitude without flying into space and without continually tipping its nose down? Flying at 500 MPH in a flat line would have the plane in space in no time (under 1 hour) and "tipping the nose down" the whole time isn't a thing among pilots, whenever they are asked about it. This is only possible if every single flight computer were programmed that way, or were just told to go off the sea level, but there's none of this endless tipping going on lol. As far as I know this isn't the case and pilots don't have to factor it in - but don't end up in space.

[beardy]

When you fly, you take your angle from the horizon. So your nose automatically "dips" because you are pointing it at something which is itself dipping exactly the right amount to keep you flying around the earth.
Not that anybody would have the slightest idea that this is happening as the difference between the angle of going around the world and going off into space in a straight line, is too small to notice.

[661-Pete]

Relative motion.

How is the atmosphere magically stuck to the Earth?
(etc. etc.)

How does a plane fly along maintaining altitude without flying into space....
(etc. etc.)

Manc33,

I can do no better than refer you to this authoritative site which will certainly provide you with answers to all your questions. They even have a forum you might consider joining up! (I am already registered - under a different name...)

[Manc33]

Relative motion.

How is the atmosphere magically stuck to the Earth?
(etc. etc.)

How does a plane fly along maintaining altitude without flying into space....
(etc. etc.)

Manc33,

I can do no better than refer you to this authoritative site which will certainly provide you with answers to all your questions. They even have a forum you might consider joining up! (I am already registered - under a different name...)

That's a satirical site though, its founder decades ago never believed the Earth was flat, he just pretended he did, the site is seemingly only there to come up with absurd theories to throw people off.

For example they say the Earth is a disc accelerating upwards at 1G, when other people researching the flat Earth theory say there isn't any such thing as gravity and there doesn't need to be, it was merely "invented" to bolster the theory of heliocentricity.

They kinda have a point when there's no actual proof any force of gravity exists and it cannot be demonstrated. Its odd how we stick to science most of the time but invent unproven stuff and incorporate that into science as though it were real.

I will refer you back... to Eric Dubay's book.

[661-Pete]

That's a satirical site though, its founder decades ago never believed the Earth was flat, he just pretended he did....

Are you so sure? Why not go and ask him...

(oops - sorry! You'll need a time machine*. Samuel Shenton died in 1971 and Charles K Johnson in 2001)

Never mind: ask the guys currently running the forum what and whether they - er - believe...

*No time machine? I'm anticipating your next question, which will probably be along these lines:

Assuming technology will continue to advance in future generations, at some time in the future humans are bound to develop a working time machine. In that case, why aren't we being visited all the time by time-travellers from the future?

[sjs]

I can do no better than refer you to this authoritative site which will certainly provide you with answers to all your questions. They even have a forum you might consider joining up! (I am already registered - under a different name...)

I've ventured there a few times. What proportion of posters there really believe what they post, do you think?

[sjs]

They kinda have a point when there's no actual proof any force of gravity exists and it cannot be demonstrated.

Go on then, I'll bite. What do you mean? Don't my bathroom scales demonstrate the force of gravity exists? Or are we in the realms of general relativity?

[Manc33]

I mean you can't build a machine to demonstrate the force of gravity. We just have to "believe" it exists (wait, this is meant to be science!) because somebody says it does. All such a machine needs to work is really heavy weights and really good bearings. It would in theory be able to just start spinning up all on its own with gravity making it move, thus proving the "force". Scientists talk about this force, but demonstrating it? Forget it.

Leo Ferrari started the "Flat Earth Society", not Shenton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Ferrari

Some of the first words are:
"...founding member of the parody organization..."

Shenton started the "International Flat Earth Research Society" (a serious society) before the "Flat Earth Society" (a satirical society).

The Flat Earth Society was set up afterwards in an attempt to make the International Flat Earth Research Society look stupid and drown them out with their far bigger and more famous flat Earth society... now why would they do that?

Same thing is happening now, Eric Dubay comes out with a load of "proofs" of a flat Earth and all these other guys come out of the woodwork to grab hold of the message and tell you all sorts of other stuff that doesn't even really tie in with the flat Earth theory, which Dubay never does. Sophisticated, but not quite sophisticated enough. I mean there's people researching it that don't know what they are talking about, people that do know what they are talking about and lying, then a handful that know what they are talking about and are honest. Guess which ones get listened to all the time - it ain't the honest ones. They just work it between themselves, that's why the Flat Earth Society just grows and grows while being a satirical website and others that are researching it for real get ignored, I mean to the point that they aren't even being laughed at, not because what they say is necessarily untrue even - but because everyone gravitates towards the Flat Earth Society instead, probably because they have never even heard of the other one - which is the whole aim.

So the bigger question is why did a flat Earth society get setup to drown out another flat Earth society? Why is everyone reading up on some stupid satire website about this stuff if other people like Shenton wrote books that preceded all of that with nothing but serious research?

On a lighter note, the funniest thing I ever saw on that FES site was on their FAQ, probably 7 or 8 years back, that tried to answer how they would make all those GPS units with altered software, their answer was something like "All it would take is one guy to check them over and say that one is alright, that one is alright, that one is alright..."

[beardy]

I mean you can't build a machine to demonstrate the force of gravity

You could but you dont need one, the only reason that gravity isnt always displayed around you through the acceleration of objects is because they have reached equilibrium (resting on the ground).
Just pick up a bottle and let it go, it will accelerate towards the great big mass near to it (the Earth).

We only have trouble explaining why it happens, no problem at all demonstrating that it does happen.

[Manc33]

I mean you can't build a machine to demonstrate the force of gravity

You could but you dont need one, the only reason that gravity isnt always displayed around you through the acceleration of objects is because they have reached equilibrium (resting on the ground).
Just pick up a bottle and let it go, it will accelerate towards the great big mass near to it (the Earth).

We only have trouble explaining why it happens, no problem at all demonstrating that it does happen.

Density and buoyancy already accounts for why objects fall or rise when surrounded by other objects.

Its just that we have been conned into believing gas is something radically different from a solid or a liquid. Gas is another solid, just a really low density one.

We call a certain portion of all of these density differences settling down amongst each other "falling" simply because it is observed as such. It can just as easily be a gas rising. The material inside a helium balloon is less dense than the surrounding material. That is the official answer, its basic physics - but then where does gravity come in and why does it need "adding on" to that?

When you add the fact that there's no demonstrable proof and that it doesn't need adding onto already known laws of density and buoyancy - Houston we...

[sjs]

Newton, then Einstein and more recently Hawking, all decent clever chaps and keen on gravity. Good enough for me. Oh, and I'm confident that if I paid Sky my satellite TV would work (the satellite staying in orbit by gravity).