After all, the trick in this trick question is making it about where the sun is in a geometric sense, and light speed should be taken into consideration. The contestants are of course wrong, but how wrong is Fry when he says “this is the time the sun has actually set” and the sun is just touching the horizon?

The really interesting thing here would be the native’s reaction to extra-planetary visitors, given that their world is “obviously” the inside of a sphere and solid rock in all directions…

Oh, and as a driver in New Zealand, I’m not sure what Alan is on about, either. And I do wear sunglasses.

I’m scratching my head over this one. Was the world on the inside of a sphere?

Bahahaha!!! I’ll have to try and dig that one up on Youtube.

Maybe the reason that many British shows don’t work when re-made for the US is because this attitude is not just restricted to Alabama?

I’d like to say it’s not, and in fact, there are plenty of places where such slogans might be par for the course. But yes, there are wide areas where people seem to have a much narrower view of what is socially acceptable. Only a tiny fraction of those people are going to result to brandishing rocks and guns, but still, they exist.
And they vote. Oh, do they ever.

My description would be: on an airless earth, the path of the image of the sun would be over your head when the sun is below the horizon. However, the presence of the atmosphere causes atmospheric refraction. The result is that the atmosphere bends the image path so that it comes *down* to where you are. Even if I reverse the process, I imagine that my viewing path is bent *down* below the horizon.

Oddly enough – it feels overly haughty to refer to the “image is bent up” – because that’s only how *you* see it. I find that I get far less confused if I take myself out of the process, and just try to understand what is happening without treating myself as a preferred observer — because, as Copernicus instructs, there is no preferred point from which to observe.

An observer sitting off to the side (say in a parallel orbit with the earth, but 30 degrees along) would see something different, and an observer on the sun itself would see something different again. And they are ALL correct.

There is no independent objective ‘now’. That’s why it’s called the theory of relativity.

1) Ringworld. (Larry Niven?) A giant artificial planet, one big ring with a diameter roughly equal to Earth’s. Rotating at a speed sufficient to produce gravity. With the planet that shape there is no night, so giant squares are also in orbit.

2) Dyson sphere. Similar to Ringworld but a full sphere. Part of the idea is that it would be collecting the entire output from the sun, a massive source of energy to supply the needs of the world and it’s inhabitants.

“Well…I actually put this down as one of those “trick questions,” that’s relies upon a misconception of the definition rather than anything actually clever.”

That’s what QI usually does; you don’t get points for being correct, just for being interesting (even if you go off on a tangent from the question asked). What’s more you lose points for giving the obvious, but wrong, answer, which is why the alarms went off when Phil Jupitus pressed the buzzer as the top of the sun disappeared below the horizon.
You can see the same thing in the clip Crystal (#37) linked to; Stephen Fry asks ‘How many moons does the Earth have?’ and Alan Davies answers ‘One’, setting off the bells and klaxons.

Still, any little-known fact stated by Alan Davies is very likely to be false.

By the way, the names of the panel members are (left to right) Phill Jupitus, Alan Davies, Ronni Ancona and Robert Webb.

“Regarding horizons, in his novel, “Game of Empire”, the late lamented Poul Anderson created a world which had no horizon, claiming that he had done so on the basis of established scientific principles, and that it would only take a comparatively minor change in the Earth’s size, and related criteria, to produce the same effect here…….”

I seem to remember a long time ago, maybe in the 50s or early 60s, there was an article in Popular Science (I think), relating to what we might see on some other planets, due to their different atmospheres, pressures and even the size of the planet.

I remember one example, and the staggering concept that there would, (could) be a view that would just go on, and on, and on to the zenith, not unlike a version of the effect a fisheye lens has on the perspective of any view at which we looked. I imagined it to be as if WE, the viewer, were literally at the bottom of the world, no matter where we actually were on that planet.

Obviously the Zenith would be at Infinity, and the detail would be lost of course. I also imagine it would be akin to looking from the bottom of a teardrop – from inside, and the light would just be reflected around. How light would enter initially, I have no idea, but it did cross my mind.

Sorry I can’t be of any more help with regard to the precise article, or who the author was.

Asimov? Sagan? Bradbury? Or the Editor of the magazine? No idea!

Ivan.

Yes, you are seeing the Sun where it was eight minutes ago, but how much different is that than where it is now? If you think “well, just wait eight minutes and see where it is in the sky then”, you’ll be wrong. Most of the change in its apparent position is not due to the Sun’s motion but due to the Earth’s rotation. If you could see the Sun against the background of stars, you’d see that it doesn’t actually move very much at all in eight minutes. In fact, it takes a little over 365 days for it to make a complete circuit, so in a whole day it’s moving less than a degree. (If I’m thinking about this right. Monday morning mental math. Not ideal.) Light speed cannot realistically be a factor.

Here’s what I don’t get: After apparent sunrise, when do we see the sun its actual place?

Check the NOAA graph that BA posted above. You’ll see that the refraction goes to zero when the elevation is at 90 degrees. So, it’s always “wrong” unless it is directly overhead. (Well, it’s always “wrong” by 8 minutes, but that’s another story.) And, it doesn’t “jump”. Rather, the refraction slowly lessens as the Sun goes from sunrise to local noon, and then slowly increases towards sunset.

I suppose you could measure this effect by timing how long the Sun takes to travel its diameter near sunrise/sunset, and comparing that to local noon. Given the NOAA chart, I would expect the Sun to appear to move slower near the horizon than at noon.

Thanks Phil.

“On ‘Top gear’ for example they can slag off a bad car without fear of the manufacturer pulling any advertising.”

… and even if they did, advertisers have far less say in the content of programs here in the UK than they do in the US.