"
Legit question wrote:
not so much wrote:Maybe because they are not lying flat on the ocean with their eyes at sea level. Why can you see farther when you are higher up? Why does anything ever disappear over the horizon?
This is hilarious.
Lol, Lame. Is that the best you can do?
The eyes give us the illusion of ships disappearing over the curve. Great. Go to the beach and do it. Wait for a cruise ship or barge to disappear to your eyes. Then, go get a high-powered set of binoculars and TA DA! POOF! There it is again, looking just as it did before. Keep watching until you see it again appear to disappear. Then, assuming it's a nice clear day, go get a powerful telescope and check it again. TA DA! POOF! There it is again.
This is not possible if the earth is curved.
Refraction, very common especially over water:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/11/20/sunsets-are-quite-interesting"Fry shows the contestants a video of the Sun setting, and asks them to ring in when they think the Sun has completely set.
This is, in fact, correct! The Earth’s air bends the image of the Sun upward, so we can still see the Sun even though it is physically below the horizon. If we didn’t have air, daytime would be shorter. In fact, this effect works for sunrise as well, so we see the Sun rise before it’s physically cleared the horizon."
As for rivers, they are fed additional water throughout their route. It's not uncommon for sections of rivers to have little or no declination at the surface because of the addition of water from inflows of streams, tributaries and other rivers.