Shadow casting by a Mountain
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  • 230 points PacquiaoFreeHousing

    https://preview.redd.it/3nqzvb0xdk6g1.png?width=540&format=png&auto=webp&s=b84215eac180f7ccb7882b94090a02b45c035053

    clearly someone strong did that

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    18 points Lubinski64

    Two emperors of the sea clashed

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    4 points RddtRBnchRcstNzsshls

    Caped Baldy

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  • 115 points loztriforce

    The mountain is Rainier, maybe around Bonney Lake or so

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    28 points AmbassadorSugarcane

    Yep, looks like my childhood growing up in the Puyallup Valley area

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    25 points R_V_Z

    Or as it's known as currently, Puyallup Lake.

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    14 points AmbassadorSugarcane

    Was just skimming Google maps for the nostalgia and seeing all the flood notices. Yikes, be safe everyone!

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    4 points Traegs_

    Yup, it's been raining almost nonstop for a few days now. Finally let up this morning.

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    9 points Skyecatcher

    Moved to the East Coast, but will forever love my Puyallup hometown

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    4 points loztriforce

    PTown represent!

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    1 points hooberry8

    Active volcano not mountain*

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    17 points loztriforce

    I mean yeah, but a volcano is a type of mountain.
    We have a saying around here, “is the mountain out?”

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    10 points hooberry8

    lol I’m just saying, when you can say volcano or mountain it’s always cooler to say volcano! I’m local too 🥳

    https://preview.redd.it/pt1u8uk0jl6g1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b0266a2995ff8e5127e67b9d58ab9fabbbac38c0

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    5 points ReticulateLemur

    I'm always disappointed when they have to put the mountain away because of the weather.

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    1 points tensionpneumo42069

    Nope. Thats North Sister in Oregon, photographed from a neighborhood in NE Bend. Pilot butte in the bottom left is a dead giveaway.

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    3 points loztriforce

    It's Rainier, I see it all the time and I live very close to where the pic was taken.
    Here's another sunrise/shadow shot I took that was taken very close to OPs pic

    https://preview.redd.it/6vgdgyl7tm6g1.jpeg?width=3264&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a227d9f012d16c4f8285bf83d7814c2269a8c550

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    3 points tensionpneumo42069

    Oh its sunrise, that clinched my wrongness lol. Super looks like Pilot Butte in NE Bend, which would be a sunSET.

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    1 points Funny-Piano-666

    Yup, my thoughts exactly!

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  • 136 points Positive_Actuary_282

    There's like a million natural phenomena that can't be explained in flat earth theory. They always find a way

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    26 points bummerlamb

    I had a buddy fall into flat earth theory ages ago and I can’t help but continue to think of personally-viewable ways to refute that bonkers “theory”. Clouds and the way light retreats from them has been on my list for a long time, but this illustrates a similar concept so beautifully.

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    5 points Spartan2470

    You might have replied to a bot. "OP" (Positive-Actuary_282) just copied/pasted /u/CornfireDublin's previous reply to the top comment.

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    2 points CornfireDublin

    damn lmao I don't even think the original comment got that many upvotes. plus I think it was more relevant (at least I hope so)

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    13 points Andy_B_Goode

    Huh?

    Flat Earth is nonsense, but I don't see how this refutes it. It's not like they don't believe in sunsets.

    To me the clearest argument against Flat Earth is that if the Earth is flat you should be able to see all the way across the ocean (eg from Europe to North America).

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    20 points cerulean__star

    This is an upward pointing shadow created by the sun and the mountain meaning the angles required to create this can't be recreated in a flat earth model

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    0 points Carl_Bravery_Sagan

    No, you could recreate the shadows even in a flat earth model.

    Stick a flashlight a meter behind a water bottle and then move a piece of paper between 1 and two meters after the water bottle. You'll see the shadow grow and shrink. This has nothing to do with the curvature of the earth. It's the same for the shadow caused by the mountain.

    ETA: It's troubling that so many people think this image disproves flat earth theory. The same kind of critical thinking and analysis of evidence that flat earthers lack is something that you lack if your analysis of this image is that it's incompatible with a flat earth. OK, I gave flat earth people too much credit. Apparently they think the sun is like some overhead spotlight and not something that actually goes on the other side of the disk. If you believed that the sun actually went below the horizon, then flerth falls apart even easier anyway. So, yes, you can't really make this kind of shadow (or plenty of other shit) if the sun is purely over the mountains. Like, a whole bunch of stuff would be different...

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    3 points octobercaddisfly

    The shadow wouldn't change its plane, though, i.e., the shadow wouldn't go from appearing on a wall to appearing on the ceiling.

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    3 points 0neDayCloserToDeath

    Behind, like at the same height as the bottle?

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    -4 points Carl_Bravery_Sagan

    I was treating it as being at the same height as the bottle, here, but flat earth theory doesn't prevent the sun from being at a different height as the mountain. The angle is more to do with any object creating a shadow whose size differs based on how far away that shadow comes after the object, regardless of the height of the light source. Think how shadow puppets are bigger on the wall than your hand actually is.

    ETA: I didn't realize flerth people were dumber than I thought. They actually do believe that the sun truly never goes below the horizon, and the horizon is apparently some edge to the light of the sun. Holy crap I regret learning what these people actually believe and how they explain this shit. I thought they just had like a disk earth and sunsets still happened but apparently it's even more bizarre.

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    7 points 0neDayCloserToDeath

    But for a shadow to be above an object, a portion of the light source must be below the object casting it.

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    -2 points Carl_Bravery_Sagan

    While true, that's not relevant to why there's an angle. The angle is because of parallax.

    Even if you believe the sun needs to be at least partly below the mountain to create such an angle (which, yes, it would need to be partially below it to cast a shadow on a cloud ceiling. I was not treating the sun as a point light source and "at the same height" just meant centered such that the sun's center is at cloud height level, which isn't true anyway at sunset, leading me to my next point...) the sun being below the mountain and below the horizon is completely compatible with a flat earth model. These guys may be conspiracy theorists, but they still "believe" in sunsets.

    The reason why I was treating it as "at the same height" was that the cause of the angle is not because of a height difference as you claim, but because the object has width. This is fundamentally how parallax works. If your light source is just an eensy weensy half second degree below the ceiling you want to cast the shadow on, it will still have an obvious angle. The fact that the sun is below the object is not the cause of there being an angle.

    You can demonstrate that to yourself with your cell phone flashlight and a flat table. The flat table mimics the cloud ceiling. Put your flashlight such that the center of the flashlight is at the same height as the bottom of the table and a little bit away from your finger. When you look under the table, you'll see a shadow that has an angle to it. This angle is caused by the parallax effect because your finger has width.

    ETA: not to mention, the apparent angle shadow caused by the mountain is exaggerated by the perspective of the camera, and is likely an even bigger contributor to the angle in the image. I really think these things are helpful to prove to yourself with models. Take a ruler or something and look at it from an angle and slightly below. Even though the lines are parallel, they'll appear to have an angle if you took a picture. The best proof against flat earthers is to either take a plane right and see the slight curvature (it's really only very slight because the earth is huge...) or convince yourself by the fact that lunar eclipses always have the same shape.

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    3 points 0neDayCloserToDeath

    The angle is because of parallax.

    No. Parallax involves apparent relative motion from different positions. This is a singular, still image.

    the cause of the angle is not because of a height difference as you claim

    I didn't claim that.

    I don't know why you are going on about angles. I wasn't talking about angles at all. I was addressing the shadow being at a higher altitude than the object casting it.

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    1 points Carl_Bravery_Sagan

    I didn't realize that flat earth people actually don't believe that the sun ever goes below the earth disk. So I thought they were saying the apparent angle that the shadow makes is what proves the earth is not flat. Yeah, OK, the notion of a shadow illuminating the tops of clouds after the sun appears to have set (and actually, just how sunsets even appear to happen) is just totally impossible if -- as I've now just learned flat earthers apparently believe -- the sun is some weird spotlight where the "cone" of light precisely ends at certain points but is actually always over the disk earth.

    I gave these people too much credit. The spotlight explanation just makes no sense that I never even wondered how they explain all the unexplainable things that flat earthers would have to simultaneously believe, even if they're incompatible.

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    3 points Bubbly-Travel9563

    That's not parallax and every "accepted" flat earth model does show the sun as an overhead point light source as that's needed to explain why half the planet is dark at a time. Not one of their models affords the potential angles you're trying to explain could exist regardless of if you're scenario would otherwise be viable because I get where you're coming from completely. But It's like arguing that a front drive racecar would have superior lap times because it can travel the shortest distance in a given lap without taking into consideration the cornering speed you lose having drive tires be steering tires which is why every top tier racing series is rear or 4/Awd. The explanitive model breaks when the all of the accepted models are taken into account even with potential. "If my grandmother had wheels.." and all.

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    2 points Carl_Bravery_Sagan

    They don't see the sun ever being at an angle that's basically at the horizon at some point? I'll have to look into it more (regrettably)

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    2 points Carl_Bravery_Sagan

    Holy crap. I just learned what they actually believed. I thought they just thought the earth was flat but that the sun still went below the horizon. Apparently it's some sort of spotlight and even some people believe there are invisible mirrors involved or some shit.

    There goes my faith in humanity...

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    2 points Carl_Bravery_Sagan

    Oh, and regarding "parallax", I was mistaking the guy's point about "the angle" this whole time. I never even conceived that flat earthers might not think the sun actually goes below the horizon. I thought for sure they did believe at least that, so I thought the "angle" the original guy was referring to was how the shadow the mountain casts appears to get wider the further away from the mountain it is and not... apparently... the angle of the spotlight sun to our perceived horizon.

    So parallax came in because the reason for the shadow seeming to expand partly can be explained in reality by parallax -- in fact it somewhat is expanding -- but since the sun is so far away, that effect should truly be negligible at this distance, so the real reason is just a trick of the eye. The shadow that should be cast is almost perfectly parallel.

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    5 points Muppetude

    you should be able to see all the way across the ocean (eg from Europe to North America).

    I’m sure they’ve concocted some pseudo-scientific explanation for that. I know they’ve done so to explain why when a ship approaches from the horizon, you see the mast first as opposed to the larger features of the ship. I can’t remember exactly what their argument was other than it being profoundly stupid.

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    5 points StarReaver

    You're not thinking this through properly. Flerfs don't believe in sunsets the way the rest of us understand sunsets. They know that when it is day in part of the world, it is night in the opposite part of the world - they can't deny that. That means the Sun can never go below the plane of a flat Earth, otherwise everyone would be in night at the same time. Flerfs think of the Sun as small and local like a flashlight that moves in a circular path above the Earth between the Tropics.

    The picture refutes that idea because the picture is only possible if the Sun is below the tangent plane at the mountain's location. The Sun has to be lower than the elevation of the mountain and that contradicts a small, local Sun orbiting above the plane of the flat Earth.

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    2 points Andy_B_Goode

    Ah that does make sense! Thanks for explaining that.

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    2 points bobbymcpresscot

    Their argument for this is their misunderstanding of the word perspective. Europe is too small to see from North America. But if you had a strong enough camera or telescope you could see it.

    Ignoring the fact that eventually haze from the atmosphere would make this impossible, while the buildings can get too small to see you usually can’t see all of them because the curve of the earth is in the way 

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    1 points Present_Value_4352

    Is that baker?

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    20 points AmbassadorSugarcane

    Looks like Rainier to me

    Edit: now that reddit decided to let me attach my view for reference

    https://preview.redd.it/qty46truuk6g1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b826f18f25323745f1326820418b90294645b0c6

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    1 points Lil_ah_stadium

    Where is this?

    I saw almost the same thing yesterday over Utah county, but there were more shadows.

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    6 points theinklings

    This is Mt Rainier in Washington state!

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    1 points kaisadilla_

    tbh nothing about shadows casted by the sun makes sense in flat earth. Just get a friend in a different place of the world to work with you in recording the shadows casted by the sun at a specific moment in time and how they evolve and good luck finding an explanation about how a sun over a flat disc could create that combination of shadows in different parts of the world.

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    -2 points offspect

    Name a natural phenomena you'd like me to refute. This mountain is clearly within the disc and the sun is not.

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    7 points largePenisLover

    It's only fun when it's done by someone who is sincerely believing flat earth things.
    Otherwise it's just having a little debating skill and some imagination.

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    3 points HalepenyoOnAStick

    the sun has to be in the disc, because somewhere else on the disc, the sun is directly overhead.

    so the sun is both below the clouds and is able to cast a shadow upwards onto the underside of the clouds and several thousand miles in altitude directly overhead of someone else.

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    3 points Jonnyflash80

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    1 points HereToHelp9001

    What is space

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    1 points bobbymcpresscot

    You know how if you put your palms a foot apart but facing each other, that’s a space. There is nothing between your palms, but technically you have a bunch elements that make up the air that we breathe?

    Outer space is a lot like that. It’s just an area of extremely low pressure with a bunch of trace elements zipping around.

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    1 points HereToHelp9001

    No it's a projection on the sky box

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    1 points bobbymcpresscot

    Oh where is it getting projected from?

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    2 points HereToHelp9001

    Our minds man

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    1 points bobbymcpresscot

    Ah yes the azimuthal grid of vision. How could I have forgotten.

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  • 30 points Spartan2470

    Here is a higher-quality version of this image. Credit to the photographer, /u/Organic-Squirm, who took this in Orting, WA in November 2022.

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    9 points AmbassadorSugarcane

    Such a picturesque little town. Still can hardly believe I was fortunate enough to grow up there.

    https://preview.redd.it/l99rcqntwl6g1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e68a7274a6eaf43b93e40ae50b3a48c6cb8bda3

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  • 12 points NYCHReddit

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  • 8 points forchuse

    Love that Mt. Rainier shadow. Got a few photos of that myself from a while back. Here's one of them:

    https://preview.redd.it/zorsqarjjl6g1.jpeg?width=3264&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e18117f19dc31e77e40641aaa3a57303936ea02b

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  • 6 points CrazyMinute69

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    3 points theboyd1986

    Every time I write this word.....

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  • 5 points donnymioli

    That’s not “a mountain” that’s Mt Rainier. Put some respect on it

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    4 points Aquatic_Ambiance_9

    Ta-quoma if we're gonna put some respect on it's real name. That's what people called it for 20,000 years, who the hell was Rainier to the mountain

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    4 points Traegs_

    It actually has many different indigenous names.

    1. taqʷuʔman
    2. təquʔmən’
    3. taquʔmən
    4. taqʷuʔmaʔ
    5. təqʷuʔmaʔ
    6. təqʷuʔməʔ
    7. taquʔma
    8. tax̌uʔma
    9. təx̌uʔma
    10. tax̌uma
    11. təqʷuʔbəd
    12. təqubəd
    13. təqʷubəʔ
    14. təqubət
    15. xʷaq’ʷ
    16. t(xʷ)xʷaq’ʷ
    17. dəxʷwak’ʷ
    18. nəxʷwək’ʷ
    19. nšʔaʔk’ʷiyqł
    20. ya lamətay

    Most of these are different dialects of Cowlitz and Lushootseed.

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  • 5 points DependentBubbly4640

    That is so cool!🤩

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  • 4 points kflipz

    https://preview.redd.it/gabh9smukl6g1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d3bb5c22b501574ed5e5892d3b6330017f098278

    It's pretty cool to see when you're standing on one

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  • 4 points 318318318

    https://preview.redd.it/gywjdxpv9m6g1.png?width=1908&format=png&auto=webp&s=30b986320572bdd0ba0af7acdf5ef67d80eabb4b

    From Harstine Island

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  • 3 points Eichmil

    Is that a MorningLightMountain?

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    5 points circle_is_pointless

    Now I want to read Pandora's Star again

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    2 points shadezownage

    I really need to read this book, I just constantly hear about this entity and it must be memorable.

    Similar to how "Nostalgia for Infinity" is like...I suddenly want every online username to be that

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  • 3 points That_Pin7136

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  • 3 points Optimal-Shelter7844

    looks like the mountain just turned off a part of the sky

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    3 points Valliac0

    Like a reverse-lighthouse.

    A dark-house?

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    1 points recyclar13

    web.mit.edu/kolya/misc/txt/dark_suckers

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  • 3 points timid_turtle_

    I miss living in Washington so much 🥺

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  • 3 points AmBaToG00n

    I got another shadow trick too

    https://preview.redd.it/tg4x7b5t5n6g1.jpeg?width=1070&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9bc6279709145ee08eef94f0b2a927127c132f31

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  • 2 points A11J06

    Looks unreal. Absolutely beautiful.

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  • 2 points hummus_is_yummus1

    Rainier.

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  • 2 points Brandonjf

    All things serve the beam

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    1 points slouchingninja

    You say true, I say thankya

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  • 2 points Jealous_Acorn

    Here's how it looks in Aguadilla, PR! This photo is with the mountains behind me.

    https://preview.redd.it/yaylywsszl6g1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7da7c445e8831dc65fe9027498122794e86d0db7

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  • 2 points Murderlach

    All things serve The Beam.

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  • 2 points XTRSleep

    Good graphics! What GPU?

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  • 1 points NooBiPlez

    Nature's clocktower

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  • 1 points johanas25

    🤯

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  • 1 points Heroic-Forger

    Sunset Mountain Shadows sounds like the name of an emo band.

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    5 points stupidinternetname

    In this case it would be Sunrise Mountain Shadows.

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  • 1 points cuddlydana

    beautiful

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  • 1 points MemoryKeepAV

    Like the inversion of Sauron's gaze

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  • 1 points laughingcolorss

    Looks like the mountain just turned off part of the sky.

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  • 1 points cottagecheezecake

    Positively glorious. Thank you for sharing

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  • 1 points Agearmen

    What a fabulous shot!

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  • 1 points Cristiano1

    Such a perfection

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  • 1 points Naviios

    Too bad all the houses and cars are in the shot

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  • 1 points that_Bob_Ross_branch

    This reminds me of that one video of the dad talking about how the mountain near his town casts a shadow on the village and how they resort to a vitamin d spray because the village gets no sun at all and while he's recording this, his baby is going absolute nuts in its stroller and almost falls out, it's super cute

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  • 1 points Ok-Werewolf8491

    geological aura farming

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  • 1 points ashigaru_spearman

    All things serve the beam.

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  • 1 points ENelligan

    Night is the shadow of the earth unto itself.

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  • 1 points Sufficient_Hunt_3752

    Where?

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    1 points Hrogoff

    Mount Rainier, Washington State.

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  • 1 points KingMirek

    Which city is this?

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    1 points loztriforce

    Orting WA

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  • 1 points center_mentor_101

    I’m guessing one punch man was there 👀

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  • 1 points --Icarusfalls--

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  • 1 points Educational_Cold2439

    beautifulll

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  • 1 points Good_Twist647

    This looks unreal, almost like someone sliced the sky in half.

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  • 1 points AffectionateNarwhal

    Pierce Co, WA

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  • 1 points player1wulf13

    I work on the puget sound and I get amazing morning sunrise photos like this all the time of mount Rainer its amazing to see

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  • 1 points Kumaa7

    Havenz way it is but u can't go there u can just watch

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  • -1 points TimeBlindAdderall

    https://preview.redd.it/7md7034fhk6g1.jpeg?width=492&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=387614337c72a67db8540984b29774d6d531ca60

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  • 0 points jerryleebee

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  • 0 points Acceptable_Foot3370

    Cool, we have the same effect in Florida at sunset sometimes, but of course, they are caused by huge cumulus clouds, not mountains

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