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20 Reasons We Know the Earth Is Spherical

26 points by hb20007 8y ago

grumpwagon 8y ago
It feel very silly that this article has to exist, but here we are!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
chopin 8y ago
Some of the reasons are not very compelling. Some thoughts: 4. Other planets are spherical: This rests on the premise that earth is also a planet. This is also the problem with no. 5. 8. Shadows of sticks: The earth could be flat and the sun could be small and close. 11. Gravity: This requires that the law of gravity can be derived independently from the fact that the earth is spherical. That's not easy.
- psalminen 8y ago
  > 11. Gravity: This requires that the law of gravity can be derived independently from the fact that the earth is spherical. That's not easy. This can be done by observing the motions of other planets/moons/stars/galaxies.
billpg 8y ago
Articles like this could be summarized down to "Because duuuh!" If you're an adult and the type of person who doubts the shape of the earth, I don't think anything a website says would convince you.
- _rpd 8y ago
  No, you haven't seen it with your own eyes. There's no need for argument from authority. There are several well reasoned arguments that the Earth is spherical (e.g., the shadow of the Earth is curved). It's proper to recite them.
  - Nadya 8y ago
    >There are several well reasoned arguments that the Earth is spherical (e.g., the shadow of the Earth is curved). That argument would prove the Earth is round - but not necessarily that it is spherical. A flat, round disc would also produce a curved shadow. To play devil's advocate - you would also need to prove that it is Earth's shadow on the moon and not the Sun's shadow. For an example, I made an HD image in paint [0]. [0] https://vgy.me/8xRkJv.png https://vgy.me/8xRkJv.png
    - _rpd 8y ago
      > To play devil's advocate - you would also need to prove that it is Earth's shadow on the moon and not the Sun's shadow. For an example, I made an HD image in paint [0]. Very nice! A great demonstration of how difficult it is to be explicit about all our assumptions.
zygotic12 8y ago
Nah mate. Flat innit.
colanderman 8y ago
I'm off the belief that (honest) flat earthers aren't of that belief due to lack of evidence, but rather due to lack of the trust framework necessary to have faith that those interpreting the evidence are interpreting it correctly. E.g. a lot of the presented arguments presuppose an understanding of geometry, and that it applies to our universe. But for most people, that amounts to trusting mathematicians and physicists, which is in turn founded on trust in the scientific system and ultimately logic itself.
- krapp 8y ago
  >I'm off the belief that (honest) flat earthers aren't of that belief due to lack of evidence, but rather due to lack of the trust framework necessary to have faith that those interpreting the evidence are interpreting it correctly. ...and yet the same people place absolute faith in arguments supporting the flat earth merely because it defies orthodoxy, and also believe the pseudo-scientific rationales behind them.
  - jerf 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure that if you take the set of flat earthers, subtract the people who don't really believe it and are just having fun being contrary, and then subtract out the mentally ill people, you're left with very nearly an empty set; I'm even more certain that if it's not empty, it's utterly negligible. So analyzing what they place faith in and why without reference to "mental illness" in most cases is probably a waste of time; the surface appearance of putting faith in this or that rationale is not the real story. We're talking about people who are legitimately broken in terms of their ability to understand the world and are often unable to engage with it properly in many other ways, too. As tempting as it may be to then pivot from my statements here and snark about people of a religious mindset different than yours, or ethical or political mindset different than yours, bear in mind that many such people engage with the world just fine. The sort of thing that we actually call mental illness is a qualitative cut above that sort of thing.
    - posterboy 8y ago
      You just called a bunch of people morons. Take that in for a second. There's thinly veiled circular reasoning in there somewhere, that amounts to saying that mental illness cannot be understood and these people must be mentally ill, implying this were so because you cannot understand them, but not giving any explicit opinion whatsoever. Ultimately you contradict yourself about their ability to engage with the world, too. This is polemic and very bad. Ultimately, the message was that thoughts and feelings of mentally impaired people do have no bearing on their illness, or if it did, you wouldn't care. Then why comment, if you don't care?
Assossa 8y ago
It's 2018, why do people still need convincing that the Earth is a sphere?
- netinmate 8y ago
  The Dunning-Kruger Effect
- _rpd 8y ago
  All people are born ignorant, even in 2018.
dragonwriter 8y ago
There Earth isn't spherical, it's spheroidal.
- growlist 8y ago
  Not sure why you've been downvoted, unless it's for pedantry. The Earth is indeed spheroidal, in fact an oblate spheroid - flatter at the poles and bulging at the equator due to the rotation of the earth. Modelling the true shape of the Earth is central to geodesy.
  - yaks_hairbrush 8y ago
    There's a danger in pedantry -- outsiders can mistake it for "see: there's no consensus that the earth is a sphere!". Having said that, the earth is not an oblate spheroid -- it's very slightly pear-shaped, and has all sorts of mountains and valleys. To paraphrase Isaac Asimov in his essay The Relativity of Wrong: "The earth is flat" is a pretty good model. "The earth is a sphere" is much better. And "The earth is an oblate spheroid" is just a bit better than that. So, let us consider the aim of the essay: to debunk the flat earth claim as many ways as possible. I think they did a pretty good job finding data for which the flat earth model is insufficient, but a spherical earth fits quite nicely.
  - Jyaif 8y ago
    You'd understand why he was downvoted if you had read the article.
  - nikdaheratik 8y ago
    Because the 2nd paragraph of the article uses that exact phrase. Which means that neither of you read the article.
- amp108 8y ago
  http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm > My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." -- Isaac Asimov
marcodave 8y ago
The very fact that someone spent its time and effort to write an article like this, means that the trolls have won.
- gmiller123456 8y ago
  I think it's disingenuous to think every Flat Earther is just trolling. People are donating money to the cause, probably by someone scamming them rather than people genuinely interested in science. I think it's important to at least give those people a starting point to find the truth rather than blowing them off completely.
chasing 8y ago
The Earth is clearly a torus.
MiddleEndian 8y ago
Just for fun: 200 Proofs Earth in NOT a Spinning Ball https://aplanetruth.info/2015/08/04/200-proofs-earth-in-not-a-spinning-ball/ https://aplanetruth.info/2015/08/04/200-proofs-earth-in-not-...
- Isamu 8y ago
  >If Earth were a ball 25,000 miles in circumference as NASA and modern astronomy claim, spherical trigonometry dictates the surface of all standing water must curve downward an easily measurable 8 inches per mile multiplied by the square of the distance. This means along a 6 mile channel of standing water, the Earth would dip 6 feet on either end from the central peak. Every time such experiments have been conducted, however, standing water has proven to be perfectly level. In fact I remember an old story of someone doing exactly that, taking up the challenge of a flat-earther. They set up surveying equipment with a scope at one end of a long placid lake, a pole at the other and one midway. When they looked through the scope at the far pole, the middle pole was clearly higher. "That doesn't prove anything," said the flat-earther, "level the transit." So they leveled the transit, and the middle pole appeared some distance below level, and the far pole some distance below that. The flat-earther declared this conclusively proved the earth was flat. You really cannot win in this situation.
JakeTyo 8y ago
It's not a sphere. It's an oblate spheroid.
woodandsteel 8y ago
I have thought a lot about why there are so many flat-Earthers, and I think I have figured out the main cause. For flat-Earthers who are sincere and not mentally disturbed, I think the problem is a general mistrust of experts and society in general. This is because we live today in societies that are so unnaturally large. Human psychology is designed for small foraging tribes where you know everyone personally, and so can determine how trustworthy they are. And furthermore, everyone is strongly motivated to be trustworthy because otherwise they would become social outcasts and could not survive. In large, complex societies like ours, you are continually being presented with claims by people you don't know personally and so it is quite possible to lose all trust in their truthfulness. This is especially the case in the US today where you have entities like much of conservative media that are actively working to cultivate mistrust. Unfortunately trust in experts is absolutely essential for a large society like ours to function, and so the problem is how to restore such trust. I think that is a very difficult problem.

26 points by hb20007 8y ago

grumpwagon 8y ago

It feel very silly that this article has to exist, but here we are!

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

chopin 8y ago

Some of the reasons are not very compelling. Some thoughts: 4. Other planets are spherical: This rests on the premise that earth is also a planet. This is also the problem with no. 5. 8. Shadows of sticks: The earth could be flat and the sun could be small and close. 11. Gravity: This requires that the law of gravity can be derived independently from the fact that the earth is spherical. That's not easy.

psalminen 8y ago
> 11. Gravity: This requires that the law of gravity can be derived independently from the fact that the earth is spherical. That's not easy. This can be done by observing the motions of other planets/moons/stars/galaxies.

billpg 8y ago

Articles like this could be summarized down to "Because duuuh!" If you're an adult and the type of person who doubts the shape of the earth, I don't think anything a website says would convince you.

_rpd 8y ago
No, you haven't seen it with your own eyes. There's no need for argument from authority. There are several well reasoned arguments that the Earth is spherical (e.g., the shadow of the Earth is curved). It's proper to recite them.
- Nadya 8y ago
  >There are several well reasoned arguments that the Earth is spherical (e.g., the shadow of the Earth is curved). That argument would prove the Earth is round - but not necessarily that it is spherical. A flat, round disc would also produce a curved shadow. To play devil's advocate - you would also need to prove that it is Earth's shadow on the moon and not the Sun's shadow. For an example, I made an HD image in paint [0]. [0] https://vgy.me/8xRkJv.png https://vgy.me/8xRkJv.png
  - _rpd 8y ago
    > To play devil's advocate - you would also need to prove that it is Earth's shadow on the moon and not the Sun's shadow. For an example, I made an HD image in paint [0]. Very nice! A great demonstration of how difficult it is to be explicit about all our assumptions.

zygotic12 8y ago

Nah mate. Flat innit.

colanderman 8y ago

I'm off the belief that (honest) flat earthers aren't of that belief due to lack of evidence, but rather due to lack of the trust framework necessary to have faith that those interpreting the evidence are interpreting it correctly. E.g. a lot of the presented arguments presuppose an understanding of geometry, and that it applies to our universe. But for most people, that amounts to trusting mathematicians and physicists, which is in turn founded on trust in the scientific system and ultimately logic itself.

krapp 8y ago
>I'm off the belief that (honest) flat earthers aren't of that belief due to lack of evidence, but rather due to lack of the trust framework necessary to have faith that those interpreting the evidence are interpreting it correctly. ...and yet the same people place absolute faith in arguments supporting the flat earth merely because it defies orthodoxy, and also believe the pseudo-scientific rationales behind them.
- jerf 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure that if you take the set of flat earthers, subtract the people who don't really believe it and are just having fun being contrary, and then subtract out the mentally ill people, you're left with very nearly an empty set; I'm even more certain that if it's not empty, it's utterly negligible. So analyzing what they place faith in and why without reference to "mental illness" in most cases is probably a waste of time; the surface appearance of putting faith in this or that rationale is not the real story. We're talking about people who are legitimately broken in terms of their ability to understand the world and are often unable to engage with it properly in many other ways, too. As tempting as it may be to then pivot from my statements here and snark about people of a religious mindset different than yours, or ethical or political mindset different than yours, bear in mind that many such people engage with the world just fine. The sort of thing that we actually call mental illness is a qualitative cut above that sort of thing.
  - posterboy 8y ago
    You just called a bunch of people morons. Take that in for a second. There's thinly veiled circular reasoning in there somewhere, that amounts to saying that mental illness cannot be understood and these people must be mentally ill, implying this were so because you cannot understand them, but not giving any explicit opinion whatsoever. Ultimately you contradict yourself about their ability to engage with the world, too. This is polemic and very bad. Ultimately, the message was that thoughts and feelings of mentally impaired people do have no bearing on their illness, or if it did, you wouldn't care. Then why comment, if you don't care?

Assossa 8y ago

It's 2018, why do people still need convincing that the Earth is a sphere?

netinmate 8y ago
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
_rpd 8y ago
All people are born ignorant, even in 2018.

dragonwriter 8y ago

There Earth isn't spherical, it's spheroidal.

growlist 8y ago
Not sure why you've been downvoted, unless it's for pedantry. The Earth is indeed spheroidal, in fact an oblate spheroid - flatter at the poles and bulging at the equator due to the rotation of the earth. Modelling the true shape of the Earth is central to geodesy.
- yaks_hairbrush 8y ago
  There's a danger in pedantry -- outsiders can mistake it for "see: there's no consensus that the earth is a sphere!". Having said that, the earth is not an oblate spheroid -- it's very slightly pear-shaped, and has all sorts of mountains and valleys. To paraphrase Isaac Asimov in his essay The Relativity of Wrong: "The earth is flat" is a pretty good model. "The earth is a sphere" is much better. And "The earth is an oblate spheroid" is just a bit better than that. So, let us consider the aim of the essay: to debunk the flat earth claim as many ways as possible. I think they did a pretty good job finding data for which the flat earth model is insufficient, but a spherical earth fits quite nicely.
- Jyaif 8y ago
  You'd understand why he was downvoted if you had read the article.
- nikdaheratik 8y ago
  Because the 2nd paragraph of the article uses that exact phrase. Which means that neither of you read the article.
amp108 8y ago
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm > My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." -- Isaac Asimov

marcodave 8y ago

The very fact that someone spent its time and effort to write an article like this, means that the trolls have won.

gmiller123456 8y ago
I think it's disingenuous to think every Flat Earther is just trolling. People are donating money to the cause, probably by someone scamming them rather than people genuinely interested in science. I think it's important to at least give those people a starting point to find the truth rather than blowing them off completely.

chasing 8y ago

The Earth is clearly a torus.

MiddleEndian 8y ago

Just for fun: 200 Proofs Earth in NOT a Spinning Ball https://aplanetruth.info/2015/08/04/200-proofs-earth-in-not-a-spinning-ball/ https://aplanetruth.info/2015/08/04/200-proofs-earth-in-not-...

Isamu 8y ago
>If Earth were a ball 25,000 miles in circumference as NASA and modern astronomy claim, spherical trigonometry dictates the surface of all standing water must curve downward an easily measurable 8 inches per mile multiplied by the square of the distance. This means along a 6 mile channel of standing water, the Earth would dip 6 feet on either end from the central peak. Every time such experiments have been conducted, however, standing water has proven to be perfectly level. In fact I remember an old story of someone doing exactly that, taking up the challenge of a flat-earther. They set up surveying equipment with a scope at one end of a long placid lake, a pole at the other and one midway. When they looked through the scope at the far pole, the middle pole was clearly higher. "That doesn't prove anything," said the flat-earther, "level the transit." So they leveled the transit, and the middle pole appeared some distance below level, and the far pole some distance below that. The flat-earther declared this conclusively proved the earth was flat. You really cannot win in this situation.

JakeTyo 8y ago

It's not a sphere. It's an oblate spheroid.

woodandsteel 8y ago

I have thought a lot about why there are so many flat-Earthers, and I think I have figured out the main cause. For flat-Earthers who are sincere and not mentally disturbed, I think the problem is a general mistrust of experts and society in general. This is because we live today in societies that are so unnaturally large. Human psychology is designed for small foraging tribes where you know everyone personally, and so can determine how trustworthy they are. And furthermore, everyone is strongly motivated to be trustworthy because otherwise they would become social outcasts and could not survive. In large, complex societies like ours, you are continually being presented with claims by people you don't know personally and so it is quite possible to lose all trust in their truthfulness. This is especially the case in the US today where you have entities like much of conservative media that are actively working to cultivate mistrust. Unfortunately trust in experts is absolutely essential for a large society like ours to function, and so the problem is how to restore such trust. I think that is a very difficult problem.