Really Strav, you're not doing your case any favors with arguments like this.
As I mentioned before the force of gravitational attraction is a function of the two masses and the distance between them. Trillions of gallons of water has a lot of weight, an air bubble has virtually none. ETA: The use of the masses of two objects to calculate the gravitational attraction requires that an air bubble floats, simply because the force pulling the water to the earth is greater than the force pulling the bubble to the earth, therefore the water is "trying" to get to a lower point than the bubble. That then leads to the issue of whether the bubble can pass through the water (which explains why you can get bubbles "floating" in rocks but not in water).
Your comment earlier about the ball of paper and the sheet of paper is also far too simplistic to be useful, simply because you've created an invalid comparison that introduces another variable (in this case air resistance) into the equation. You might as well ask why something falls faster through air than through heavy oil.
Why would the fact that air resistance exists constitute an "extra variable" to make it an "invalid comparison"? You said that gravity is the function of two masses and the distance between them. Would you like to think that air resistance and aerodynamic drag do not exist just because they don't fit your overall argument?
" Trillions of gallons of water has a lot of weight, an air bubble has virtually none. "
Here we go again. Weight does not effect whether an object rises or falls. An air balloon carrying several people into the sky has a lot more weight than a piece of paper or even an air bubble - yet it rises.
The air bubble will rise in the water medium, because it is less dense than the water.
The paper will fall in the air medium, because it is more dense than air.
The paper will fall faster in the air medium if it's crumpled into a ball - has it taken on weight? No. Has it's mass changed? No. Has "gravity" suddenly become stronger? No. All that changed was it's shape, causing it to be less buoyant in the air.
Regarding your reply to my post earlier about commercial aircraft not flying over Antarctica, your comparison with the ISS isn't useful either. Astronauts visiting the ISS would have to accept a much higher degree of personal risk than someone getting on a plane for their annual fortnight in Florida. The observation (no planes fly over Antarctica) might support your theory but doesn't do so unequivocally. It's perfectly possible that no flights pass over Antarctica because of safety concerns in the event of a plane crash, as I mentioned earlier. The observation arguably supports both theories in equal measure, so doesn't work as support for either.
It's perfectly valid and useful. The only reason that Antarctica is not flown over (the official reason) is due to very low temperatures. The extremely low temperatures are caused by relative proximity to the sun on that area of the Globe, so we are told. And yet there seems to be no issue with temperature whatsoever for the ISS orbiting the whole earth. Not on the heat side (way closer to the sun at that elevation during daytime), nor on the cold side (way further away from the sun during nighttime).
If you could demonstrate that commercial aircraft did routinely fly over Antarctica then it would disprove the flat earth theory, but the absence of such flights doesn't prove it. It's the whole "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" thing again.
Yes, it would disprove it - but the fact that they do not is not absence of evidence - especially seeing as that if we lived on a globe aircraft companies would routinely fly over Antarctica simply because between certain locations - it is the shortest route and uses the least amount of fuel and man hours.
If you could demonstrate that commercial aircraft routinely flew over the ice wilderness of the Arctic circle but did not fly over the ice wilderness of Antarctica then you'd arguably have more support for the flat earth theory but even then you'd need to show that a route over Antarctica would not only be the most effective route in terms of distance but also in terms of overall commercial viability (which also includes things like passenger volume, size of plane required to make the journey etc). If a route along the lines of Melbourne to Buenos Aires looks like it would be best routed over Antarctica, but only six people wanted to make the flight every day, that would explain the reasoning behind going via somewhere else with higher volumes. To give a very loose analogy, if you look at the map of the UK it might not be immediately obvious why you'd want to change at Basingstoke if you were taking the train from Southampton to Reading. And the truth is you wouldn't really, but might not have a lot of choice. It's not that the route doesn't exist, merely that presumably passenger volumes are such that no train operators actually run trains that way. But going from Southampton to London is a profitable service, and the local shuttle service between Basingstoke and Reading is presumably profitable. So you put the two together even if, from a purely geographical perspective, it does appear to make little sense to have to change trains part way.
Well I don't know the numbers of people traveling between locations where the shortest most convenient route is over Antarctica, so I cannot assume as you have.
But anyway, such things do not explain why no one but "designated persons" can even GO to the supposed geographic south pole. Look it up - it's in International Treaty. The people you see visiting the "south pole" aren't even going to the real one, they've set up a ceremonial site that isn't the real south pole. I've looked at the companies that host such trips - you have to sign and agree to not going into restricted areas. One of those restricted areas is where the geographic south pole is supposed to be!
