Over the years, I’ve seen lots of people trying to give examples of how we know the Earth is round. You’ve seen ‘em: ships sailing over the horizon disappear from the keel up (which is actually a good one), or shadows cast at different parts of the Earth have different angles (which is how the Greek Eratosthenes determined the size of the Earth to excellent accuracy).
Those are fine, but to me unsatisfying. I haven’t observed the Sun shining straight down a well at noon in Egypt, for one, and who has the patience to watch a ship sail away?
Ah, but here I sit in my mom’s sunroom in Sarasota, Florida. The temperature is peaking near 80 F, while at home I believe the high will be closer to 35. That’s certainly an indirect indication that the Earth is not only round, but also tilted!
But even that won’t do it. After all, a clever (if there is one) geocentrist might say, maybe the climate is simply different on different parts of the disk-shaped Earth.
But in this day of jet travel, direct evidence of a globular Earth is trivial. The night before I left Boulder, I got a good look at Orion hanging in the sky over my southern horizon. Last night, after US Airways had spent an entire day bending me over, I went outside to stretch, and saw my old friend the Mighty Hunter once again. Orion was noticeably higher off the horizon.
Boulder is at a latitude of 40 degrees north. Sarasota is at 27*, a difference of 13 degrees south. From Boulder, the belt of Orion is about 40 50 degrees off the horizon when it reaches its highest point in the sky in the south (called the culmination), so a change of 13 degrees is pretty obvious. Orion is about 15 degrees high, so that puts Rigel (Orion’s knee) where I’m used to seeing Betelgeuse (his armpit). Any amateur astronomer worth their salt would notice that!
This is pretty conclusive that we live on a round planet. Unless we live on the edge of a geocentrist’s disk, that means the Earth is a sphere. Or close enough, anyway.
*I’ll add that the first time I ever saw Canopus was from Sarasota. It never gets above the horizon for people living north of about 38 north latitude, and from Florida it gets just high enough to see. Canopus is the second brightest nighttime star (after Sirius), so that’s a pretty cool thing to see. Took me a few minutes to figure out the first time I saw it, too.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Another great example is the requirement for timezones. Modern communication technology allows anyone to talk to people of differing timezones and find out that dusk and dawn will occur at different GMT times for different zones. That covers the longitudinal aspect of a spherical planet.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:32 pm
US Airways had you bend over? What kind of flight was that?
“Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Welcome aboard US Airways Flight 123. I’m your Captain, Ben Dover, and assisting me on todays flight will be my co-pilot, Phil McCrakin. Today we’ll be cruising at 33,000 feet, where you’ll get a good view of the curvature of the earth. Thank you for flying US Airways, now sit back, relax, and we invite you to enjoy the in-flight movie, ‘Snakes on a Plane.’
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I always thought the Foucault pendulum was cool, myself. Of course, that’s more proof that the Earth is spinning, but the Earth being spheroid I think is reasonably implicit in that.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Here’s a much, much simpler proof, that’s easy to implement, and can readily convince the most obtuse person. If you’re on the east coast, call someone on the west coast just after sunset. If you’re on the west coast, do the opposite, call someone on the east coast three hours before sunset. Hand over the phone to the ’round earth unbeliever’ telling him to ask the person at the other end of the line to describe precisely where the sun is. What’s that? The ’round earth unbeliever’ sees the sun at one place with respect to the horizontal ground, while the person he is talking to sees it completely elsewhere (while still on horizontal ground). Conclusion? The two surface of ground are not parallel. Actually, they’re 45 degrees apart!
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I’m lousy with constellations. I wouldn’t recognize Orion if he shot me in the tuchus with an arrow.
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
If Boulder is at 40, then the belt is nearly 50 off the horizon when it culminates, since it’s almost at the celestial equator.
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Hi Phil,
Shouldn’t the culmination for the Belt of Orion (near the celestial equator) at 40 degrees north latitude be about 50 degrees above the horizon instead of 40?
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Don’t be silly, we all know the earth isn’t round.
It’s an oblate spheroid.
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
It kind of screwed me up the first time I went to Florida…We were out on the edge of the Keys, and it was nice and dark (unlike the second time…Orlando. Yuck), and Jupiter had jumped up nearly straight overhead. I had to turn completely around to see some constellations. Very confusing for someone who’d never spent the night more than 3 degrees north or south of home!
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Ah, but unfortunately, the FE’ers I have talked to (don’t ask) ascribe refractive properties to our atmosphere to explain the observation that stellar positions change with latitude (sigh).
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:41 pm
You all are wrong, wrong wrong, its the slowing of time and light be the magical field around the disk on top of the four elephants on top of the great turtle that causes all of these observable events.
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Just fly in a jet plane…look out the window… the curvature of the earth is quite obvious.
OK… if you want to prove it really fancy:
Let’s say you…. own a watch and you fly into a different time zone. This whole conspiracy about earth being round is getting more and more convincing. The longer the journey the greater the effect (*not counting the jet-lag which speaks for itself) . USA to Japan is great… but a journey from USA to Australia… (you are also reversing seasons).
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Another proof will be evident on February 20 during the total lunar eclipse. As The Moon passes into Earth’s shadow, it will be evident that the shadow’s edge is curved. QED: The Earth is round!
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Refractive properties would also change the position of the stars relative to each other. Some would get closer together as you change latitude while others would get farther apart. That doesn’t happen.
Also, if you look at one of those extremely long-exposure photographs of the stars around one of the two poles (the ones where you see the stars as streaks) you see nearly perfect circles for their paths. If the atmosphere had refractive properties like they describe then the stars’ “motion” would be stretched along one axis and squished along another. So refraction can’t explain it.
Further, it would mean that the planet has a refractive index that changes as you change latitude. Such a difference would be easily measurable because the refractive index since the amount of radiation reflected into space depends on optical impedance. Such a difference would be easily measurable. Then let them argue that there is different amount of energy reaching different latitudes, that is why temperatures generally drop as you get away from the equator. Then you can point out it would need a lower refractive index at higher latitudes and thus you would have less light reflected and higher temperatures. This, obviously, is the exact opposite of what we see.
Finally, as you go to higher latitudes stars to the north get higher in the sky, but stars to the south get lower. Refractive effects cannot explain this. Stars in all directions should move in the same direction (up or down). Since refraction only happens at the boundaries between two media, and we are already in the atmosphere, thickness changes would not affect that.
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:52 pm
No, it proves the Earth is disk-shaped. Everyone knows that.
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I was reading an article yesterday about Virgin Galactic and its proposed launch site in Sweden. My partner said he thought that rocket launch sites were traditionally near the equator (Cape Canaveral, French Guiana, etc) because the oblate shape of the earth means that it’s easier to reach escape velocity there. Is this the case? The article I read didn’t give reasons why Virgin was considering a Scandinavian launch site except that your $250,000 ticket includes a night in the ice hotel and a flight through the Aurora Borealis…
February 3rd, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Launch sites tend to be close to the Equator to take advantage of the spinning Earth. You get an extra mile/second relative to the center of the Earth that way. The oblateness of the Earth is also due to spin, but the launch site is not related to the oblateness except that they are both due to spin.
And oops about the culmination height. I fixed it. I got things upside down (or at least sideways in my head).
February 3rd, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Here’s another good one. A friend of mine went to Australia and brought back a calendar. The phases of the moon were indicated on it, and the first quarter moon looked like the third quarter and vice-versa, when compared to a north hemisphere calendar. Flat earthers can’t possibly explain that.
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:15 pm
The Earth is ROUND?!
Unbelievable…
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:18 pm
If you take a long drive on a North-South axis — during Spring Break, say — take note of people’s satellite dishes. They will be pointed closer to the horizon the farther from the equator.
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Nah, you gullible spherical-Earthers have been fooled by the conspiracists who pretend the stars are a long way away. As any fool knows, the stars are carried on a crystal sphere which has a radius of just a few thousand miles. You moved closer to the centre of Earth’s disc, so of course Orion will appear higher in the sky as you’re more directly beneath it.
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Thanks for clearing up something for me. If I may be allowed to go slightly off-topic, my other interest of garden railroading sees me buying Kalmbach’s Garden Railways Magazine six times a year. In it, they use the concept of “hardiness zones” for purposes of selecting plants that will grow successfully in your area, so you don’t go planting stuff on your garden layout that looks good for two weeks and then drops dead. I was trying to work out how Brisbane would fit in with the system of hardiness zones as used in Garden Railways. As Brisbane is about 27 degrees 30 minutes south of the Equator, I can now say that as far as the hardiness zone goes, think Sarasota, Florida.
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Is this proof really necessary? I mean, are there people out there who honestly don’t believe the Earth is round?
February 3rd, 2008 at 6:02 pm
As any fool knows, the stars are carried on a crystal sphere which has a radius of just a few thousand miles.
Uh, oh, THAT must have been the ’shattering’ noise I heard when 2007 TU24 came by.
(just can’t get rid of that pain in the asteroid, can we?)
J/P=?
February 3rd, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Yep, I saw Canopus for the first time when I lived in the Virgin Islands and regularly when I lived in Florida (very close to Sarasota). You should be able to see the top of the Southern Cross from there as well if you stay up late enough tonight…you can see the entire Southern Cross from the Florida Keys…you have to plan your time there to attend the Winter Star Party some time!
February 3rd, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I am given to understand that the fact that the Earth was curved in the North-South direction was known in neolithic times. Traders who travelled long distances had noticed the same phenomenon that you had. That it was a sphere had been deduced by (perhaps) Pythagoras once it was realised that an eclipse of the Moon was the shadow of the Earth, cast by the Sun on the Moon, It doesn’t matter what angle the Sun strikes the Earth, the shadow is always round.
February 3rd, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Hey Phil, and everybody,
I’m a fellow skeptic, whose trying to take a post-punk approach to science podcasting.
I was hoping you guys would check out my podcast:
http://mindcore.podbean.com/
February 3rd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Keydetpiper asked: “Is this proof really necessary? I mean, are there people out there who honestly don’t believe the Earth is round?”
Sadly, yes, there are people who honestly believe it. More importantly, perhaps, there are many more people who don’t know how to prove the Earth is round. If such people were confronted by a person who presented convincing sounding arguments to the effect that the Earth was flat, they wouldn’t know how to contradict them. So what, you might ask? This knowledge (or lack thereof) would mark the person as potentially a little more gullible than the rest, and potentially a target for a swindle.
For me, the great proof of the Earth’s roundness involves using a straight flat canal. Even over a kilometre or so, the curvature of the surface would be apparent.
February 3rd, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Bah, there is a much better argument!
If the earth was flat, then astronauts would have taken pictures of the giant elephants sitting atop the even larger turtle that are carrying the earth! Because that is mandatory for disc shaped worlds!
But no such photo’s, thus it is a sphere. Or well… a tilted ovoid more. But not flat either way.
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Keydetpiper: “Is this proof really necessary? I mean, are there people out there who honestly don’t believe the Earth is round?”
Whether or not anyone think the earth is round this is still an important post with an important point to make!
In this post, Phil shows us how the basic principles of scientific inquiry can lead you to correct conclusions about the world around you, and how those conclusions and the data you used to arrive at them are not specialized, or difficult to understand.
Phil is showing you that anyone, anywhere, anytime can “Do Science” or be a scientist. All you need is your eyes, your brain, same basic critical thinking skills and a desire to understand the world around you.
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Canopus itself was used by the ancient Greeks (Eratosthenes I think or maybe Hipparcos) as evidence the Earth is round.
Canopus could be seen from the Egyptian city of Alexandria (if memory serves) which the Greeks were familar with and sometimes visited – but not from Athens .. (ditto)
Incidentally, the Southern Cross was apparently visible in ancient times from Jerusalem due to the effects of precession (the Earth’s slow top-like wobble) .. The Greeks knew of it but considered it part of Centaurus.
The Sourthern skies are unquestionably better – Sirius, canopus and Alpha Centauri are all inthe southern stellarhemisphere -and form Adelaide we can see all the brightest stars down to about the 31st or 33rd … Plus we get to see the Carinae nevbula, Omega Centauri and 47 Tucane – &the Magellanic clouds!
Not meaning to rub it in – much!
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Of course we miss out on Polaris the pole star uphere in Oz as opposed to down there in the US-Europe etc .. But never mind. The South Celestial Pole is easy enough to locate anyhow – hold one outstretched arm to the Pointers (Alpha & Beta Centauri) & the other to Achernar and bring your arms together and you’re there ..
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Doesn’t it suck that all the brightest stars are only viewable from the Southern Hemisphere?
Well… for those of us up here, anyway…
February 3rd, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I used to drive at least once a year from my hometown in Northern Indiana to the Straits of Mackinaw, a trip of approximately 300 miles northward. Between the two points all celestial objects would shift southward by about 4 degrees. It was quite delightful.
February 3rd, 2008 at 8:07 pm
You don’t even need the sky to figure out Earth is spherical.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correction_line
“Because the east and west edges of townships (range lines) are meridians of longitude, they converge towards the North Pole. Therefore, the north edge of every township is slightly shorter than the south. Only along the base lines do townships have their nominal width from east to west. The two townships to the north of a base line gradually narrow as one moves north, and the two to the south gradually widen as one moves south. Halfway between two base lines, wider-than-nominal townships abut narrower-than-nominal townships. The east and west boundaries of these townships therefore do not align, and north–south roads that follow the survey system have to jog to the east or west. These east–west lines halfway between base lines are called correction lines.”
The occasional jogs on the north-south ‘grid roads’ are a mystery until you understand the geometry involved. A great example of this is the boundary between Manitoba and Saskatchewan, if your map is large enough to show that it jogs slightly at regular intervals.
February 3rd, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Is it just me, or does Phil sound a little concerned in this post? Like he’s trying to re-assure himself.
It’s as if he’s saying, “No, really, seriously, I’m pretty sure the earth is spherical. Look, see? Check out this evidence! No REALLY!” lol
Who – besides a handful of fringe wackos and some random Congolese pygmies – actually questions this fact?
February 3rd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Apparently TV stars:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherri_Shepherd#Criticized_statements
February 3rd, 2008 at 8:54 pm
“Doesn’t it suck that all the brightest stars are only viewable from the Southern Hemisphere?” Not at all alfaniner for those down here in the south
As far as I can see the only things you have better in the northern sky are a pole star, and the brightest planetary nebula and nearby spiral galaxy. Everything else is better down here.
I have the pleasure of taking 35 gifted and talented upper high school students studying the ‘Cosmology Distinction Course’ here in NSW Australia away for five days this weekend on a tour of all the major telescopes in northern NSW. We spend the nights stargazing with several telescopes under wonderful dark skies at Coonabarabran, near the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope.
As these students are rather keen and capable, albeit with not much prior knowledge in astronomy, we like to give them some challenges. I think I may include Phil’s question as a task to ponder on. Guaranteed to generate some discussion.
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Beche-la-mer,
Since Virgin Galactic is currently planning sub-orbital flights anyway, I don’t think the assistance (or not) of the Earth’s rotation is a big concern. In fact, I understand they will be flying back to their point of origin. Also, seeing the aurora from sub-orbit would be wicked-cool. I’ve spent some time up in Kiruna and seen the Ice Hotel and overall it’s not a bad area to visit. I wouldn’t want to spend a winter there, though.
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:52 pm
“Who – besides a handful of fringe wackos and some random Congolese pygmies – actually questions this fact?”
It’s important that people not just “know” that Earth is round. It’s rather critical that they understand what it is empirically that points to Earth’s roundness. I consider a public who believes in our planet’s sphericity for no better reason than that it’s a popular fact to be every bit as ignorant & medieval as a flat-Earther.
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Skidoo, Speaking as a Congolese pygmy, now living in Canada, I’m offended by that comment. As every Congolese pygmy knows, the Earth, or Motherworld, as we traditionally call it is a globe supported by 4 Bonobos. (Not U2 singer Bono, he just thinks he holds the world up).
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:15 pm
And to follow on from what Mark Martin said, consider this news story:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=375074
A quarter of Britons think Winston Churchill was a mythical figure, and about half think Sherlock Holmes was real. Survey of 3000 people.
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Max Faginon 03 Feb 2008 at 3:25 pm
“Ah, but unfortunately, the FE’ers I have talked to (don’t ask) ascribe refractive properties to our atmosphere to explain the observation that stellar positions change with latitude (sigh).”
In Jan & Feb 2007 I photographed each months full Moon rising. On the horizon it is noticeably oval shaped, but within a few degrees the Moon is its circular old self. If refractive properties were causing stars to appear & disappear even the constellations would be distorted everywhere we looked in the sky & there would be nothing familiar for us to look at.
Chris.
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
The freakiest experience I had when visiting the US (from Australia) was seeing the full moon and Orion flipped over (upside-down from my perspective, though really the right way up at least in regard to Orion). A very brave friend in Ohio was letting me drive her car, and I suddenly pulled up on the side of a country road and just stood there gaping. it was my first and only time outside Australia, and that image of the full moon and orion flipped over came awfully close to just snapping something inside my brain. I recovered, but wow, a very powerful reminder that I had traversed very close to the opposite side of a massive sphere in space.
The funny thing was that my friend whose car I was driving just didn’t get it. I couldn’t assemble the right words to explain it. Even funnier, when I got home a couple of friends didn’t understand how it worked, and I got very adept at drawing a diagram to explain how it works.
February 4th, 2008 at 12:07 am
I see Canopus just about every night. But I still remember the first time I saw the big dipper!
February 4th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Seeing Orion *upside down* in Australia clinched it for me. Only then did I really feel like I was down-under!
February 4th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Dr. Plait,
Your instinct about the shadows was a good one. Eratosthenes’s result depends on the world-geometry you bring to bear on the problem. Anaxagoras used Eratosthenes’s observations (sun straight overhead at Alexandria, 7.5 degrees off course at Syene) to show that 40,000 stadia was the altitude of the Sun over a flat Earth.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:31 am
But that only works for two measurement. If you make more measurements than that you will see it is only consistent with a nearly spherical object. The rate of change of the shadow length as you change latitude is very different between a spherical Earth and a flat one. You would only need three data points to determine this.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Yeah, the upside-down full moon was the strangest thing about visiting New Zealand. Driving on the left I could handle, but the upside-down moon was just weird.
Oddly, it never struck me when I was in Chile (Cerro Tololo) as a child. I guess the image of the moon hadn’t been burned into my brain as much at that age. Or I was just too much in awe of all the cool telescopes and enormous condors and getting to drive those little electric carts around to pay attention to the sky.
Also, Kate is right:
I would add that equally as important are all the other suggestions for proofs that have been offered in the comments. We’ve got dozens of forms of evidence just off the tops of our heads, they’re all independent, and they all point to the same answer. This, we need to explain to the creationists, is what we mean by “theory”. Everything points to it being true, and nothing contradicts it. We are open to new evidence, but any new explanation first has to fit with all this existing evidence.
Science. It works, bitches!
February 4th, 2008 at 9:39 am
OK, this is one of the weirdest blog posts I’ve ever read.
February 4th, 2008 at 9:50 am
I first saw Canopus from the Los Angeles area. You really can see it from there … if you (a) get away from the city lights, (b) find an absolutely flat southern horizon, and (c) lower your expectations a bit. It appeared about as bright as a third- or fourth-magnitude star close to the zenith (again, away from city lights). Many people would probably never notice it unless they were specifically looking for it.
Then, a few years later, I went to Peru to see a total solar eclipse and then I saw Canopus as it was meant to be seen. Same thing for Sirius — it is *much* brighter when it’s overhead than when it’s at most 35 degrees up.
February 4th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Is this something anyone should even spend time “proving”. I mean, there really isn’t much of a way to convince people who believe in something as non-sensical as the Earth not being round. It’s like trying to convince Hoagland that there isn’t a Death Star like space station in the moons of Saturn. These people are crazy and make a hobby out of ignoring evidence.
I say, chalk up as lost. Science doesn’t want those people back anyway.
February 4th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
On my first visit to Argentina, I asked if we could stop somewhere where I could look up at the stars. When I looked up, I was dizzy and quite uncomfortable for more than a few moments. There was nothing up there that looked right – like I had been dropped into some distant galaxy. Even though I knew it would look different, I still had this visceral reaction that everything was wrong. I count that as one of the special experiences of my life, and one that most people probably wouldn’t understand.
I was also shocked when a traveling companion from the US, with a PhD in a physical science (don’t recall which discipline), did not know that fuzzy band of light in the sky was the Milky Way. Maybe growing up in a rural town where I could could see it every clear night made it important to me, but I thought anyone interested in science would have picked up on that sometime or other.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
The shape of the Earth is not “round,” ie spherical, nor is it an oblate spheroid.
The Earth’s shape is a (or rather THE) Geoid.
Or is that just TOO pedantic?
February 4th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
DocGonz asked: “Is this something anyone should even spend time “proving”.”
I think so. The funny thing is that I still remember the class in 3rd Grade (when I was
in which our teacher explained that the Earth was round, and here were the proofs. I vaguely remember it as an issue I simply hadn’t thought about before, but the fact that I remember it over 30 years later shows it must have meant something to me at the time.
In the larger scheme of things, remember, we always have to teach children these things. They won’t learn it otherwise. And hopefully by teaching them *how* we know such things, it might encourage them to use similar methods of thinking on other issues, too.
February 5th, 2008 at 12:11 am
There is the odd chance that the heliocenterist viewpoint that was pushed on the world by the Jesuits during the “enlightenment” is wrong, and that the earth is stationary , rotating, and wobbling with the sun planets and stars all rotating around earth..
February 5th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Lugosi said:
“I’m lousy with constellations. I wouldn’t recognize Orion if he shot me in the tuchus with an arrow.”
Lugosi, I have a fairly clear pic of Orion on flickr here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22177653@N03/2137686999/
February 5th, 2008 at 1:18 am
Come on Phil, teach the controversy!
February 5th, 2008 at 8:05 am
@ Mike J: That would require that they travel faster than the speed of light.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Mike J.,
If geocemtrism were correct, no one would be able to navigate interplanetary spacecraft as they actually do: applying Newtonian (and Einsteinian) principles in an approximately heliocentric model. Probes to Mars would need to negotiate all those nasty epicycles!!!
February 5th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Mike J said:
“There is the odd chance that the heliocenterist viewpoint that was pushed on the world by the Jesuits during the “enlightenment” is wrong, and that the earth is stationary , rotating, and wobbling with the sun planets and stars all rotating around earth.”
No, there isn’t.
Relativity aside, there is no consistent framework by which we can fit the observed facts to a view in which the Sun, planets and stars orbit the earth. Plus, it makes no sense based on what we know about gravity and the masses of the Earth, the Sun and other stars.
February 7th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Hey! I like watching boats sail…
March 4th, 2009 at 10:45 am
With all of the observations and evidence for a round(Geoid/sphereical) earth that rotates on a tilted axis and revolves around our sun, it should be easy to come to a conclusion that a round earth is the best model we have. I do give the flatearthes one pat on the back for questioning accepted science though; if we believed in everything we were told without any doubts, their would be a lot less knowledge in our minds. I do think perception has a lot to do with this controversy. Realisticaly speaking if you can think it, it probably exists in some far off dimension or universe somewhere, and perception is all that seperates us from other dimensions/plains of existence, so perhaps we all observe things slithgly different on a mass scale? Who’s to say that the earth is round or flat, maybe it is both depending on your perception and the vantage point of that perception. Really I belive the earth is round, square flat, trpazoidal, rectangualr, and triangular etc… all at the same time, it just tkaes the right perception to see/prove it.
It is a little wierd that no one brought up any good arguments agaisnt the round earth, e.g. Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley experiment involving calculating the speed of the earth relative to the fixed “Ether”. In a sense, they would emit a light pulse, and calculate how far it “trailed” behind the earth, much like tossing a napkin out the window of a moving car to calculate the car’s speed. It was assumed that, if ether existed, the light pulse would fall back in one direction, giving the physicists a tangible “absolute” speed of the earth. Their calculated speed: Zero.They were baffled by this, wondering how the Earth could be sitting in one spot, while every aspect of the teachings of Grigori Efimovich indicated that the planet must be orbiting its own sun, and therefore must be moving at least with a critical orbital velocity. Moving quickly to avoid having to admit that they were wrong, they were able to instead “infer” from their results that the ether must not exist, and that light must propagate through no medium at all (impossible for a wave by the very definition of a wave). Their inference was generally accepted by the scientific community (save a few notable exceptions, including Hendrik A. Lorentz) and the “ridiculous” notion of ether was thrown out.
March 4th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
One of the oldest proofs of the Earth’s shape, however, can be seen from the ground and occurs during every lunar eclipse. The geometry of a lunar eclipse has been known since ancient Greece. When a full Moon occurs in the plane of Earth’s orbit, the Moon slowly moves through Earth’s shadow. Every time that shadow is seen, its edge is round. Once again, the only solid that always projects a round shadow is a sphere.
I’d like to add a side note that always gets me to laugh. Every time one of these flatearthers feels high and mighty, they tell round-earthers to prove a round earth to them. Well try to prove anything to me beyond a reasonable doubt and you will more than likely fail. Anotehr point is how easy they come up with arguents that have no merit, like refraction being responsible for the difference in appearance of celestial bodies from their “flat earht” well if refraction is whats going on, the sky ould look alot fucking different-There are endless examples of flat-earthers trying to support thier arguments in the guise of knowledge, however they have no actual basis of proof to justify such arguments.
If you really believe in a flat earth try proving it using the scientific process, you will fail-Now I’m not saying that the earth is this or that, just that the best model we have of understanding our observations of the earth is that it is in fact round, untill observations say otherwise you flatearthers are outta luck.
By the way any of you flat-earthers ever been in an airplane? Ever been outside of your own towns, or are you afraid you will fall off the edges???