Round earth theory vs flat earth theory
There are actually quite some people out there that rejects the paradigm that the earth is a spinning globe doing orbits around the sun, which again is doing orbits around the galaxy - ref @ceattlestrech, who initiated a discussion on it here:
I also stumbled upon the flat earth society wiki a useful resource for anyone that wants to explore this alternative paradigm.
If I understand it right, in the flat earth paradigm there is a massive conspiracy going on to hide the fact that the earth is flat. Under that paradigm, you basically can't trust things you read on the Internet - hence I will try to focus on the things I've personally observed and what you also can observe - plus some observations done by people I trust. Still, I can't help it, I also have to dwell a bit on how deep such a conspiracy has to run.
Navigation
Image source: Biblioteca General Antonio Machado
.jpg){kind=link}
I'm a sailor, unfortunately I don't have a sextant in my toolbox - but I do know the principles. With a decent timepiece and observing the angles to the stars one can find the longtitude - and by observing the angle i.e. to the polar star even without consulting a clock, one can find the latitude. Sailors in earlier times were pretty much dependent on the sextant and good timekeeping. Even without actively using the sextant, it's easily observed by me - I've moved some 1600 km south and indeed, the polar star is visibly lower on the sky here than in my former home town. Most of us should be aware of how this works out in the round earth paradigm. For those interested in how it's explained in the alternative paradigm, I'd recommend visiting the wiki.
On a related note, I've even visited countries much further south, and observed that the sun was almost right above my head - while in the north the sun is pretty low on the sky even in the middle of the day in the middle of the summer. Those southern countries experiences a rapid transition from day to night - while in the north there are often several hours of twilight. This is also covered by the round earth theory - one can relatively easily explore it by using a lamp and a globe. Now I'm staying north of the equator and are using the words "north" and "south" - I do suppose there are flat-earth-theories explaining this pretty well, but I also suppose those flat-earth-theories will break on the southern hemisphere. I've never been there, but there are lots of people that has experienced the polar day and polar night at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
Today we've abandoned the sextant, and we're using GPS instead. In the round earth paradigm, the GPS'es works by tracking multiple satellites and checking the time it takes for signals to reach from the satellite down to the receiver. As a bonus, the receiver also gets very accurate timing information. I'm wondering how the GPS technology works in the flat earth paradigm? Under the flat earth paradigm, there must be million of engineers out there that pretends the GPS units work by tracking satellites, while they secretly know there is some other magic/tech at play. And yes, I can personally attest that the GPS works pretty well.
Midnight sun
In my former home town we had like two months with the sun being below the horizon in the winter time, and two months with the sun above the horizon in the summer time.
Again, anyone can play a bit with a lamp and a globe and understand this using the round world theory.
Day and night
People were observing this in the pre-telecommunication era, as well, but today it's super-easy to check this out: while it's day at one side of the globe, it's night at the other side. Anyone can run up a video conference, even with some random dude found on the Internet. Oh, hi Peter, I hope I didn't wake you up?
Again, anyone with a globe and a flashlight can see how the round-earth-theory explains this, and astronomers can with great certainty predict exactly when the sun will rise and set on different latitudes. Also, one doesn't need to be an astronomer to be able to predict roughly when the sun will rise, set and be in the south at any location of the earth.
Circumnavigation
I do know several persons that have traveled around the globe and come back to the original point. Ok, the flat-earthers do have a point: it's also perfectly possible to travel in a circle on a flat map and come back to the original point. However, according to their world map it should be a very long trip to travel around the south pole. Well, again, they may have a point, sailing around the Antarctica is a big and dangerous trip indeed. In their paradigm it's impossible to cross the south pole, so a circumnavigation over the poles is pretty much impossible in this paradigm.
Quite some Norwegians have been exploring Antarctica, but I must confess I don't know anyone personally that have been doing a circumnavigation over the poles.
Sunsets and sunrises
Where does the sun go during the night? In the flat earth paradigm, if I understand it correctly, the sun is simply too far away to be seen during the night. I've seen quite some sunrisings and sunsets during my life - and what I see corresponds very well with the round-earth theory, but not at all with the flat-earth theory.
Solar and lunar eclipses
Image source: Wellcome Trust
"Round-earth" scientists are today able to predict with great accuracy not only when and where the next eclipse will be, but also exactly were on the globe it will be visible. I've witnessed this myself, in my youth I did an eclipse trip and ensured I was at the right time and location. I was to meet my (future) wife there, but for various reasons she missed it and didn't see the total eclipse.
If I understand the flat earth theory correctly, said scientists are all participating in some conspiracy, they do their calculations using the flat earth theory, but presents it as round-earth-science? I guess I'm just not sufficiently conspiracy-minded to believe in such things.
The "sunken ship"-effect
Out on the open sea, a boat in the distance will appear to be "half-sunken", i.e. only the mast visible. Weirdly enough, I can only once clearly remember to have observed this effect - arriving to Denmark by a big ferry - Denmark is a quite flat, so in the distance the big houses looked like if they were growing directly up from the sea.
Of course, it could be some optical illusion, and the flat earth society has an explanation to this phenomena as well.
Satellites
Ok, I've never been much interested in satellite TV, so I can't personally attest that one gets a signal if pointing the satellite dish towards a geostationary satellite, but not if pointing it somewhere else - and at my longtitudes one has to point the dish quite flat, so in theory the sender could be at the top of a mountain rather than from a satellite. Still, there are hundreds of millions of people in this world that has been pointing their satellite dishes up towards the sky to get TV signals.
My hometown in the far north was a good place to receive signals from satellites in Polar Orbit, of course I knew people working with satellites. I've also seen artificial satellites passing by on the sky. I think some weeks ago there was an announcement that the ISS would pass the moon or something like that - anyone wanting to check that the ISS exists, is flying over our heads and that we have a pretty good overview of where it is could just point their binocular towards the moon at that point. Sadly, I didn't.
I've also seen satellite photos. Amazingly, that half a decade ago American U2 pilots risked their life searching for the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Some years ago I had some idle time and was playing a bit with Google Earth - and incidentally found the Cosmodrome while doing so. According to the flat-earthers such satellite photos must be fake.
There are millions upon millions of people directly or indirectly working with satellites, according to the flat-earthers they must all be part of a big conspiracy.
Weather and tides
Wind, waves, tides and the golf stream current ... I have personally experienced all of those. I also know there exists trade winds making it easy to sail in both directions across the Atlantic and Pacific. Admittedly I haven't personally crossed the Atlantic nor the Pacific, but at least I've experienced that Denmark very often gets wind from the west and rarely from the east. Those things are easily explained through the Coriolis effect.
Last words
Consider quantum mechanics for a while - the theory flies in the face with what most people would consider sane - but it's still a very useful tool, it can be used for predictions.
Lets for a moment consider that the earth is round, but that it also is the center of the universe. Everything is relative, I don't mind that you choose to define the earth as the center of the universe, and I can't prove you wrong - but the mathematics describing the planet orbits etc in such a reference frame is extremely complex. If you're going to send a space probe to Jupiter, it's very much easier to do so based on a reference frame where the sun is the center of the solar system.
Lets for a moment consider that the earth really is flat, and that there exists alternative explanations on how all the above and more works, not involving the earth being a spinning globe orbiting the sun. Of course, anyone can see that the earth is flat, the round earth do indeed fly in the face for quite some people. I'll tell you what: it does not really matter! Even if the earth happens to be flat, the round-earth theory is a very useful toolbox, it gives useful predictions, it has helped people navigating on sea for many centuries, it still aids people navigating by makes GPS'es work, it brings TV-signals to peoples home, and the theory is even relatively easy to grasp and understand for non-physicists.
I may of course be very much biased through decades of indoctrination, but I find the flat-earth theories (as they are presented on the flat earth society wiki) to be ... rather complicated and twisted, and I seriously doubt that it's possible to make useful predictions through those theories.
The wiki lists some evidences that the earth is flat as a pancake, to be honest I haven't had the time to look through them. That's the case with any scientific theory, there will always be "evidences" against them - for instance, Galileo predicted that a big and a small iron ball would fall to the ground with the same speed and demonstrated it - but exchange the small iron ball with a feather, and obviously it falls much slower. Sometimes one can find a reasonable explanation, like, the reason the feather flies slower is due to air resistance (indeed, in Apollo 15 one of the astronauts did this experiment again with a feather pen, and demonstrated it fell with the same speed as a hammer on the moon), other times eventually the old theory gets scrapped and replaced with a new one (like, Newtons laws are superceded by Einsteins laws - but "Newtonian physics" are still very useful). I think the "evidences" against the round globe theory are very weak compared to the mass of evidences against the flat earth theory.
Conclution
If you seriously believe the earth is flat, I'm sorry to say that I seriously believe you're bonkers.
Postscriptum
I vouch that I will upvote any comment here rationally trying to argue for the flat earth theory, even if I think you may have gone bonkers.
I don't understand how the stars can still be the same in the sky if as we are told the Sun is moving through space. The Earth is moving around the Sun while also spinning around. Would not our view of the stars have changed to see others and not the same constellations? This thought confuses me.
How can you know the shape of the Earth by looking at the sky? Modern science cannot prove that the Sun is a physical object, this is only a theory.
To measure the shape of the Earth one measures the EARTH (lack of curvature, lack of spin) and not the sky.
Haha. No geography is done without a reference point.
Stars do "move" through the night sky as the earth rotates. This can easily be viewed by overexposing a camera to the night sky. You see star trails (the path the star takes during the exposure):
You can also see different constellations at different times of year due to the earth's revolving around the sun.
Image Source: https://pixabay.com/en/star-trails-night-long-exposure-828656/
I know they move position but what i am meaning is like 100 years ago they would see the same stars in the same positions we do today. Yet if everything is moving trough space at diffetent speeds and orbits how can we still see the same stars they would have to change?
The stars do move, but they're so far away that it would take thousands of years to be noticeable to the human eye. Astronomers can observe this movement by analyzing the shift in the wavelength of light emitted by the stars. Check the link below for a thorough.
https://www.quora.com/Do-stars-move-or-not
One cosmic year is at least 225 million years long, that's the time it takes for the sun to rotate around the galaxy. Also, consider that the other stars that we can see - all in our neighbourhood of the galaxy - are also moving in almost the same speed.
The stars do move indeed, but it takes hundred of thousands of years before the movements gets visible with the naked eye.
At the other hand, there is also the precession causing the stars to move in circles relative to the spin axis of the earth. The current polar star hasn't always been the ideal pole star, ref wikipedia
The trouble with most flat earth vs ball earth discussions, and this post, is that EVERYTHING you said, works just fine in either model.
When they changed from the earth being the center of the solar system to the sun being the center of the solar system, did any measurements change? NO.
And the thought about them hiding the truth about the shape of the earth is small potatoes.
There is a secret space program. You can watch it with special binoculars.
NASA was started by THE occultist. Occult meaning to hide.
Everything the schools taught you about science is wrong. Everything. And this can be traced back to the same people.
Now, boats disappearing "over the horizon" is completely debunked.
So, you watch a boat disappear into the horizon, and then you take out your binoculars and you can see the entire boat again.
This happens because our sight sees by detecting edges. As things get further away, the edges blend into each other. Very similar to showing something on a computer screen. As the object gets smaller and smaller, it gets more and more blurred together. Until it is all just one pixel which is a combination of all the colors.
The real flat earth proofs come from seeing things that should be beyond the curvature of the earth.
Like light houses, whose light can be seen, when it clearly is over the edge of the horizon. And not just a little bit.
Like pictures taken across lake Michigan on an exceptionally clear day.
How does satellites operate, if they are not rotating around the flat earth? Even assuming the sattelites moves in circles above a flat earth, the math would change dramatically, millions of engineers working with GPS systems must be aware that the earth is not round.
Measurements on a globe and on a paper map is not the same. Map makers always have problems projecting world maps down on paper, ref this XKCD comic strip
I must admit that the errors in measurements on the flat earthers map in northern hemisphere may probably not be measurable by a common pleb like me (except when trusting the GPS), but on the southern hemisphere the differences are dramatic! Antarctica surrounding all the world? That makes no sense.
Ok, so one actually needs a special permit to visit Antarctica legally - maybe someone is hiding something secret there? I would not believe so, at least some tens of thousands of people have been visiting Antarctica, some with and some without a valid permit.
that's mad is that euphemism widely used in oslo!? I thought it was just a English thing, loving the usage though and I'm sure your not a common pleb me old fruit your analysis is spot on btw
So, looking a bit on the map, I found one spot where one can sit on stable land, 33 nm away from the Færder light house, and look towards it with a binocular without obstacles in the way. Unfortunately I don't think I have the possibility to take up that challenge this year.
However, such an experiment won't really prove anything. For one thing, it may be that I won't be able to see anything due to the distance. For the second thing, the height of the light is measured at the highest water levels, hence at normal water levels one has to be even a bit further out. Then there is the indirect light - I will most likely be able to see light reflecting in particles/mist in the air. Light may also bend in the atmosphere. Perhaps I'm better off finding a smaller light house and observing it on a smaller distance. Anything less than 7 nm is moot anyway as I calculated in a comment somewhere else here. Everything beyond 5 nm tends to be a bit blurry anyway.
Here are some experiments already done.
http://coconutrevival.com/?p=2066
And the light not travelling straight is a really important measurement.
It truly appears that light follows the curvature of the earth... or the earth is flat.
You tried. Some things just can not be accepted by people. The light house picture from across lake michigan, can be explained several ways by both sides, so that is pretty much a wash, if it is provable the image was not altered, then the most plausible reason is that there was a temperature inversion, ow which I am sure being in the north you are quite familiar with the city in the sky mirages due to temperature inversions.
The north and south poles and and stars not moving or changing, why do people see different stars in the southern hemisphere if the earth is flat, and the stars do move in the sky it is just a long term prospect.
But the one thing none of the flat earthers have ever been able to answer is how did the continents come to be where they are?
I applaud your effort.
I love conspiracy thoeries.
It's not the conspiracy theories themselves that I like,
but rather trying to figure out what it is that causes
somebody to believe something that most would see
as far fetched. Time and time again, I have come to
realize that the thing that makes people believe anything,
even when faced with evidence that contradicts their
beliefs is confirmation bias. Because I know how powerful
this bias is, I like to challenge my beliefs, to look for
evidence that what I believe to be true is false.
I cannot tell you how many times I was wrong...
And, unfortunately, the confirmation bias becomes only stronger and stronger on the Internet of today. It should bring people together, instead it's bringing like-minded-people into different echo-chambers where their beliefs are only getting reinforced, not challenged. At Reddit and Steem, it feels perfectly rational to upvote things one agrees with and downvote things one disagrees with - and at Reddit, owners of a sub can also easily censor everything they disagree with. At Reddit it may cause subs to split (i.e. r/btc vs r/bitcoin), I've covered that in some blog posts here at Steem earlier.
Here on steem there are even financial motives causing people to generally try to agree as much as possible, and shy away from discussions.
I vouch that I will upvote any comment here rationally trying to arguing for the flat-earth theory. Updated the article to reflect that.
You are 100%. With the internet the way it is now (the way we use it), it is almost inevitable for echo-chambers to exist. That is why it is becoming increasingly important to challenge ones beliefs. The only thing we as individuals and as a collective need to realize is that as much as we know, the only thing we can know for certain is that there is much we do not know. It is a bit childish to downvote, flag or censor something just because it challenges what you believe to be true or right. Frankly, it is immature. The mature thing to do would be to consider that perhaps that person has some information that you do not have, and that perhaps if you were to look at the very thing you disagree on from a different perspective, it may change how you see it.
I am not for the flat-earth theory, and I too would be completely open to engaging in a rational conversation with somebody who is for flat-earth, only because I may learn something I do not already know, and at the bare minimum, it will help me understand them better.
I was interested to hear a rational the explanation for night time with a flat earth scenario. Are we saying it's because the sun was too far away in the sky?
We know the further away an object gets, the smaller it appears. The problem with that is the sun maintains a diameter of a 0.5 degrees regardless of where it is in the sky. This can be confirmed by anyone with a pair of solar viewing glasses. It indeed maintains that diameter all the way to the horizon, which is at a point it would be at the most distant it could be in a flat earth scenario.
I have a lot of Facebook friends and a select few of them are die-hard flat-earthers. At first I thought it was just silly and a little annoying, now it's becoming a plague. Where do these guys live? In a cave? I mean no disrespect but wow, it doesn't take a whole lot of looking up at the sky at night to see that there are things moving. According to Flat-earthers it's all just a big illusion/hologram up there. The sun is fake, the moon is fake, everything is fake except for the bible that most of them seem to cling to lol
I suppose you could some kind of sense of the midnight sun on the North Pole within the flat earth paradigm. Because it's just a flat disc, and in the summer, the sun just circles around in a very small radius around June 21st.
However, there is another pole here and a real elephant in the room, namely the South Pole. Imagine a flat earth where Antartica surrounds the entire disc, which is the most common flat earth model theory.
There is no possible way there could be midnight sun on this continent because at any time, the sun would be farther away from the opposite side of Antartica than any other point on the disc.
So, for the flat earth theory to hold any water in this case, it has to be a lie that Antartica even has midnight sun at all, or even that days are longer in Southern Chile or Argentina.
Exactly. At the other hand, Antarctica is restricted area, one cannot go there without a permit (except Jarle Andhøy), I haven't been there myself, so I cannot personally attest that there is no conspiracy going on there.
Yes, I have not been there myself, I must admit. But it should at least be possible to ask the people residing in Patagonia if they have bright summer nights. I'd be surprised if they said no :D
Or maybe see if there is a live webcam or something, and see if it's bright from September to March. But of course, that output can manipulated :P
Perhaps you know Kyrie Irving, the point guard of the Celtics, he is one of the famous faces of the flat earth theory. Infact that was where i heard about the so called conspiracy.
Now where is he is earn your upvote?
Anyway, I think it is the love of conspiracy rather than a actual fact that drives the theory.
This was brilliant btw.
Celtics, is that football?
No, basketball
The flat earth theory is probably born in a bored "scientist" mind to attract some media attention. It is enough to go to the NASA website or just search one google to see pictures with the earth being round and a lot of live videos also that are showing this. I am amazed though to see that the theory has many believers in it and it's very popular on the internet lately. I will check this post later on to see if there is someone on Steemit trying to prove to you that it's flat.
Well, unfortunately... you are dead wrong.
The flat earth theory was born because there are discrepancies in the ball earth theory.
Such as, if you can see a light house flashing, and it should be far below the horizon (you have to see through the earth to see it), then how do you handle this data? Ball earthers just ignore it.
Further, there are only a couple of pictures of the ball earth. All the rest of them are photoshopped.
Even further, none of them are the same. Just look at the difference in land mass in each of these "photos"
I do not believe we live on a ball earth or a flat earth. The truth is much more strange.
These pictures were taken if different time frames, different seasons, different weather conditions, and probably different distances from Earth so no wonder they don't look all the same.
I don't believe either that the earth is ball round but it's pretty close to it. Flat no way...
Yep, keep telling yourself that, because if you look to closely at these pictures, you will fall down a deep rabbit hole and have trouble believing anything that you thought you knew.
Differing distances? How on earth do you get the land mass to change dramatically in proportion to the circle that is the earth? As, many have commented on, try to do that with a globe. Try all the camera lens focal lengths, try all the distances you can.
I do not believe the earth is a ball, nor do i believe it is flat. The reality is much more radical, and science changing.
Please don't transfer your own falsities to other people. Thank you.
ROTFLOL
It has been proven that the earth is not a sphere.
So, please stop transferring your falsities to other people.
As far as I can obseerve, lighthouses that are meant to be seen from the distance are usually built at the top of towers, and even local lighthouses are typically raised above the sea.
In the sea map there may be information on how far the light house can be seen, like, one of our strongest light houses here in the Oslo fjord is Færder Fyr, the light is situated 47 metres above the sea level (on high water), and is supposed to be visible 19 nm away.
Now there is 60 nautic miles for every degree of curvature, meaning that at the distances where the light is supposed to either be too faint to be seen by sailors or below the horizon, the difference in curvature is less than half a degree.
How many metres of elevation is there between two points on a globe separated by half a degree? Long time since I've been doing geometry, I will try to find a pen and a paper and see if I can figure it out a bit later today.
After thinking for a while, I came to this approximation being "good enough". On big scales, it will give too big numbers:
where h is the elevation between two points due to the curvature, and l is the length between two points, measured as an angle in the tangens function.
So, let's calculate h(19 nm). In radians, 19 nm = 192pi/360/60 = 0.0055269. In metres, 19 nm = 19*1852m = 35188 m
Hence, h(19 nm) = 15.47m
Meaning that the light is supposed to be too faint to be seen long before it disappears due to the curvature. At least if my formula is right, which I believe it is.
Around 33 nm the light should become below the horizon.
A typical relatively big sailing boat will stretch 2 metres up from the water, meaning that at 7 nautic miles, only the mast should be seen. I will try to do some binocular observations next time I have the chance.
Here is also a collection of photos: http://www.businessinsider.com/best-photos-earth-moon-from-deep-space-2017-3
Is this allegedly live video stream also photoshopped?
The same way they always have, fish eye lens an edge blocking tool.
A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Moon:
A documentary of how the took the first earth photographs from space.
And if you can find one of the originals of the "Earth Rise" and then adjust the contrast, you will notice that the earth is a separate picture. There is a very discernible black square, where the black around the earth is different from the black supposedly seen from the moon. In other words, the photo was made up.
What is the flat earth theory on how this video was made?
Plus, you see the earth from 14:20 onwards. And it doesn't seem to be a fisheye lens.
I am not a flat earther.
However, all of these recent videos are believed to be filmed on a sound set at NASA or China or the Sonic Roller Coaster.
There are groups out there that take these videos apart.
Like, pointing out water bubbles during the space walks, incorrect reflections, etc.
Very interesting. Do you mean this? https://io9.gizmodo.com/5885322/if-you-have-50-million-this-roller-coaster-that-simulates-weightlessness-could-be-yours
Looks to me like this roller coaster is not yet even built.
And even if you had some tool to simulate weightlessness in the space station tour video, how on earth (pun intended) do you sustain that for 30 minutes?
If this video is fake, I'll take my hat off for NASA because that is brilliant.
I may have the name wrong.
It is just a passenger jet with no interior. And it flies in a sinusoidal path. So, on the downward side, everyone in the plane is weightless. There are all kinds of ThemTube videos with people doing all kinds of amazing things.
And there are videos calling out all kinds of errors in these productions made by NASA and china.
There really are air bubbles (because some are filmed underwater) and there are reflection and CGI errors.
What is the worst, is that there is a community that points out all these errors, and then NASA fixes them.
Mind you, photos can be manipulated, and you can't trust anything you read on the Internet :-)
If these were manipulated someone would have noticed. It's NASA after all. Over all yeah, you can't trust on anything on the internet.
NASA is a resourceful agency that are experts at manipulating photos and videos. I read so at the Flat Earth Society wiki :-)
At the other hand, I don't think so many poeople over such a long time would be able to keep such a secret.
When you want to prove your theory you can find thousands of childish reasons to do that and that's what this flat earth society is doing. I like conspiracy theories and some of them have been proved to be facts after all, but this one is far from convincing me. I've seen it in all kind of tweets, but I think it's just a discussion trend that will be forgoten by the next year. Then another thing will come out to "amaze" the public opinion. Meanwhile some seek minds destroy Sirya to show off their latest "war toys". You're right you can't trust anything on the internet so I trust that the earth is as round as it is for ages .
Compared to the theories of Erich von Däniken, where humans were created as a by-product of Aliens mating Apes, Flat-earthers are sober and sound.
Compared to anything else though... I always wonder where such theories spring from, when evidence is pointing so clearly into the opposite direction since thousands of years (the ancient greeks already knew the earth was round)?