It's not easy to prove anything on the internet, but it is possible to find unbiased evidence concerning the Earth's shape. I can't prove the shape of the earth by sitting here at the internet, but based on this one amateur video of a simple sunset-- made without the blessings of the priests of NASA-- I'm more liable to conclude that there is a curvature there, instead of a flat plane.
It is easier to do this with boats than with the sun. As the sun tends to peg the senors to the top.
So, we see the boat... sail over the horizon. It seems to disappear bottom first.
This is illusion because what we really see is the edges of things, and when the details start merging together, what we see is the hull of the boat and the sea becoming one.
However, we think we have seen the boat go over the edge, then we take out a zoom lens, and viola, we can see the entire boat again. If it went over the edge, then we should only see part of the boat.
Now, on ThemTube there is also a video that shows the sun shrinking as if it is just going further and further away.
This video was taken in Africa on a very dry, very clear day.
The videos of sun setting in the sea are very moist, very hazy (because of moisture in the air) days.
The sun getting bigger as it "sets" is an optical illusion because of this moisture.
But, anyway, this doesn't disprove, or say anything about my statement that things can be seen that are further then the curve of the earth would allow. We would have to be looking through the earth to see them.
Now, why we can see them needs to be determined.
It could very well be that light follows the curve of the earth.
I have seen the sunset videos wherein the sun seems to fade away along the horizon, but around the equator it drops straight down behind the curve without any such illusion. As for ships on the horizon, I have a decent lens on my own camera, but I can't personally test the ships 'setting' over the horizon because there's no ocean near me.
Speaking of lenses, there is atmospheric lensing, and the bending of light makes it difficult to know where any celestial bodies really are from down here on the surface. The atmosphere makes a lens, and depending on conditions, will bend light just like a giant spectacle.
Yep, and we really need to see some studies on that.
I know of stuff they do to account for up and down position shifts, but i haven't seen anything on the side-side effects.
We also have several, very distinct layers of atmosphere. It would be good to know what those things do to light rays.