you put a laser one meter off the ground and you fired the laser beam out over the desert like the mojave da,est perfectly flat for miles and miles and miles. if you fired that laser beam, you'd find out the laser beam over here, it looks like to people it's pointing up. but it's not pointing up here. it's just that the earth is curving under. let me give you a fact that a geography teacher can tell you about. if you go out 8 kilometers, that's 8,000 meters this way, you'll find out there is a five meter vertical drop. you will be 5 meters higher than you were over here. we live in a world that for every 8 kilometers you go out, tangent-wise, there's a 5 meter drop. that's all i'm saying. but that 5 meters turns out to be interesting, because we've learned something about 5 meters, gang, haven't we? what have we learned about 5 meters? let's suppose we take this laser, throw it away and we put a cannon, a cannon, newton's cannon. we'll put it right here and we fire a cannonball. is that cannonball gonna follow that straight, straight path? the answer begins with an n. hc? how come? because i