9 ms·

Proving Earth is a globe

74 points by dsego 4y ago

bobleeswagger 4y ago
[flagged]
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  Say more if you don’t mind; it seems like the opposite to me. I perceive (sense) a flat earth, but outside of my perception it is demonstrated to be a globe.
  - bobleeswagger 4y ago
    > I perceive (sense) a flat earth, but outside of my perception it is demonstrated to be a globe. I like the word demonstrated. It helps to illustrate that it is wholly possible that the demonstration is an illusion, the same way it is possible that our perception is an illusion.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      Can we just cut to the end of this, embrace solipsism, and move on with our days?
- teraflop 4y ago
  You might as well say: "What we perceive the earth to be made of rock, but it's actually made of whipped cream outside of that perception?" The shape of the earth has innumerable physical consequences, all of which we observe and measure to be consistent with it being approximately spherical. If you want to say that it behaves in every observable way like a sphere, but somehow is "really" flat, then the definition of "reality" you're using is not a very useful one.
  - bobleeswagger 4y ago
    [flagged]
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  That's why you don't just rely on your senses. You rely on stuff like measuring and mapping and putting satellites in orbit around it. And so we know. No, it's not "flat outside that perception". It's a globe, full stop.
  - bobleeswagger 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - monkey_monkey 4y ago
      Yes it's a nice belief and also a fact. Too bad that you think there's any other possibility that has anything to do with reality
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      > Too bad you think that isn't possible. I believe that isn't possible? I believe that it isn't possible that it's a globe? Say what? Either you have become incoherent, or you are trying to ascribe to me ideas that I categorically do not hold. Don't try to put words in my mouth. That's very much uncool. It's even worse when you're completely wrong.
      - bobleeswagger 4y ago
        What a weirdly defensive reply for calling out your incapability to entertain an idea without believing it yourself. Enjoy the matrix, friendo.
- zacharyvoase 4y ago
  What if your family has been replaced by very realistic-seeming impostors?
  - labster 4y ago
    What if GP post was dead all along?
  - bobleeswagger 4y ago
    That sounds a lot grander than a misperception of illusion.
karaterobot 4y ago
> Flat earth grifter Jeran Campenella What's the basis for calling him a grifter? I don't know anything about the guy, but grifting usually involves tricking people for money, which includes both receiving money and knowing you're being deceptive. Just based on this story, his behavior is consistent with a guy who is wrong but refuses to admit it, even to himself. That's not a grifter, that's something much more common! And while I know nothing about this particular guy, it's relevant because calling people names and making fun of them usually just makes them more entrenched in their position. It makes them less likely to admit they were wrong. If the goal is for the guy to say "yep, I've been making a huge mistake" and then try to get him to help spreading the correct information to the people who listen to him, then there needs to be room for him to do that safely, with a minimum of public humiliation. I just don't like the tone of mocking and condescension. "Interesting" could be a good start for someone changing their mind, if handled right.
- pazimzadeh 4y ago
  I agree with you, although he's had four years to start changing his mind and all he's done is delete his video?
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    At the risk of sounding blunt: this point is irrelevant towards his being a “grifter” or not.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Nobody is under any obligation to treat confidently wrong morons with kid gloves. If they’re raising money based on obvious lies, it helps nobody but the grifters to dance around the fact. There’s this weird HN obsession with high minded Aristotlesque norms of inquiry when the plain fact is that these people lie for money and do actual damage in the process. cf every Covid “doctor” selling garlic / HCQ / IVM / whatever else will make them millions of dollars.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > It makes them less likely to admit they were wrong. I'd venture that someone who believes in a flat earth - despite an abundant array of evidence which doesn't require advanced science or abstract thought to interpret - has already passed the point of no return and they're either 1) horribly deluded and only therapy can help them or 2) a grifter and nothing will get them to change their stance as long as they can milk it. > calling people names At some point, there isn't anything else you can do but call someone "deluded" or "deceptive". If you knew someone who went outside every day and said the sky was neon green[1], despite all the evidence and your entreaties, you'd soon give up and retreat to one of those two positions, no? [1] I'm hoping there's no medical condition which transposes colours in a synaesthesic-type fashion. But that would be obvious in other situations...
neilk 4y ago
Some techies and artists I know made some art at Burning Man to demonstrate the curvature of the earth over several miles. It was called Straightedge. A good pic of it. https://www.flickr.com/photos/derewecki/21429018995 https://www.flickr.com/photos/derewecki/21429018995 You might protest this doesn’t really show anything. Here of the project organizers discusses the difficulty of comprehending it from a photo. https://www.reddit.com/r/BurningMan/comments/3n4nux/does_anyone_have_a_good_pic_of_the_straightedge/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BurningMan/comments/3n4nux/does_any... It was probably best experienced by biking along the entire thing. The same group of folks has been making bigger and bigger art for years. One of them (I can’t remember) said “we made art so big it disappears.”
- irrational 4y ago
  If I was a flat earther, I would say, “Maybe the land there naturally slopes down and it has nothing to do with the curvature of the planet. After all, if you did the same thing starting from the summit of a mountain, the 2 lines would also diverge over 2 miles.”
  - jojobas 4y ago
    If only there was a device to measure whether your actually are on a slope, perhaps all the bricklayers of the world would be eager to use it.
    - irrational 4y ago
      True, but over 2+ miles? Laser level would work, if the laser was powerful enough.
      - jojobas 4y ago
        Something like this should do. https://www.istecnik.com.au/digipas-precision-digital-levels/dwl3000xy-dwl3500xy-dual-axis-precision-levels/ https://www.istecnik.com.au/digipas-precision-digital-levels...
      - 4y ago
notahacker 4y ago
I wonder how many people believe in refraction calculations and the principle of scientific experimentation and also believe the earth is flat... Though the construction of this experiment reminded me of this historic attempt to prove the flatness of the earth I should probably remember to replicate on my boat next time I pass through. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Level_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Level_experiment
- gs17 4y ago
  I'm more impressed by the guy who decided the result was that it was curved the other way.
jlas 4y ago
What really amuses me about flat earthers is how much science they are willing to invalidate. For example pretty much all of geology would have to be rediscovered under a flat earth model.
- labster 4y ago
  Big Science pays geologists to be round earthers, so what do you expect? Follow the money and then you’ll see. In fact, round earth theory is holding science back. The Earth only appears to be curved because spacetime under the flat plane is curved by gravity. This is how there can be four simultaneous days in one 24 hour day. Flat Earth/Time Cube Dual Unification Principle will revolutionize physics, as any true FETCDUP believer will tell you.
freitzkriesler 4y ago
At first I enjoyed flat earth as a mental exercise in going through "settled" science and creating experiments to prove or disprove them. However, flat earthers have a flawed understanding of several concepts. Differences in lense focal point and mirages in particular are the biggest misunderstandings they carry which they will berate you until you give up. Here's an even simpler experiment. There's a flight from Perth Australia to Santiago Chile. On a round earth the flight time works, it doesn't on a flat earth. The old adage goes: when you wrestle with a pig, you get muddy.
- neilk 4y ago
  Some of the original flat earth theorists seem to just be playing around, having fun with the idea of scientific authority. One of them explained gravity by positing the earth was a flat disk accelerating upwards at 9.8m/s^2, forever. Where is the energy coming from? Why isn’t the atmosphere stripped away? Why isn’t earth white hot or achieving relativistic speeds? These problems can be dealt with enough special pleading and creative physics. They can stay one step ahead of their critics, forever. I got very into studying flat earthers for a while. The fundamental contradiction is that they claim to be resisting authority but for their claims to work you have to take more and more on faith and accept that there are unresolvable mysteries. Which is actually what they’re more comfortable with! They are usually in some sort of cult, or an authoritarian version of a mainstream religion.
  - chungy 4y ago
    I've never been sufficiently convinced that most "flat earthers" are actually serious about it. The movement seems to consist of a large ratio of people claiming such just to troll.
    - mistermann 4y ago
      That's my intuition too, I think it's hilarious how worked up people get.
      - 4y ago
mmh0000 4y ago
Weird timing. I just watched an interview [1] with some expert flat-Earth scientists. Their arguments are compelling. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nZZtKuWY5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nZZtKuWY5E
NKosmatos 4y ago
Really? Another scientific blog post debunking the flat earth stupidity? These people don’t understand basic scientific principles, are they going to be persuaded by a post filled with maths, trigonometry and valid statements? I fail to see how such posts help the situation, these troubled and mislead souls won’t have their minds changed by posts like this.
- petee 4y ago
  At this point i think its more about helping prevent more people falling to the hoax. The better, and more easily explained, the larger the audience that can see through the lies, and understand why.
jiggawatts 4y ago
A very good analysis of this whole thing is "In Search Of A Flat Earth" by Folding Ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44 Essentially, professing absurd beliefs is a sort of shibboleth to demonstrate in-group membership. The absurdity is the point, because it differentiates them from outsiders. Normal people make true or factual statements all the time, that's not a good differentiator! The statements need to be false and/or absurd to function for their intended purpose. The Flat Earth mythos isn't even that outlandish compared to mainstream religions, and well within the same wheelhouse as the type of beliefs used to identify the in-group in cults. Scientology comes to mind, but there are many others. I highly recommend watching the entire video, because there is a lot more to the phenomena than I initially suspected.
- tzs 4y ago
  I remember reading a kind of similar thing about religious rituals and rules in a game theory book. In many religions the church provides a lot of social support and benefits to members and they want those benefits go to people who actually believe in their religion. The book included a cartoon showing a man eating a hamburger at a church picnic, with a thought balloon that said something like "I can pretend to love Jesus for a free hamburger!". Requirements like tedious rituals you must regularly attend or various intrusive rules you must follow your personal life impose a significant cost on joining the church. The guy who will pretend to love Jesus for a free hamburger might think twice if the deal is that he has to forgo sex until marriage for free hamburgers. The idea then is that the rituals and rules impose a high enough cost that it isn't worth it just for the benefits and support the church provides. Only people who actually believe--the kind of people that would join even if they weren't getting a social network and physical benefits from it--will put up with the rituals and rules.
  - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
    Churches with food pantries will feed anybody who walks in off the street and tells them they are hungry.
    - 4y ago
Aardwolf 4y ago
When sitting on a balcony with a straight balustrade on a hill next to the ocean, it's pretty noticeable the horizon is round, and not a straight like the balustrade is. This must have been noticed in ancient times too
- jsweojtj 4y ago
  Which part of the horizon of the ocean was lower than another? I'm asking if looking East would be higher than South?
  - Aardwolf 4y ago
    This was looking west, and left part of view was lower than center oart. On right side of the view the ocean was blocked but I expect it to be lower there too (so highest in center of view)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jamesgill 4y ago
Likely familiar to this crowd, but Carl Sagan's explanation on Cosmos of Eratosthenes' discovery is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8cbIWMv0rI&ab_channel=carlsagandotcom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8cbIWMv0rI&ab_channel=carls...
- rugina 4y ago
  That explanation irks me a lot because it implies Eratosthenes knew the Sun was so far away, the rays reaching the earth are practically parallel. And while it might sound a like a detail, the whole calculation depends on it. If you presume the Earth is flat and the Sun not that far away, Eratosthenes was calculating the distance to the Sun.
  - zardo 4y ago
    Wouldn't observing that shadows at noon do not change as you travel east-west rule that out?
Julesman 4y ago
That's not where the burden of proof lies, of course. We don't have to prove that. I know that's probably some kind of intended humor or levity or irony or something. But it's important, none the less, to point out that the burden of proof in this discussion lies squarely on anyone arguing otherwise. Here's the truly ironic point. By the numbers FAR more people argue against it, largely for clickbait and views, than advance the notion. And what does that mean? It means that "flat earth" IS the argument against it, if you get my drift. If everyone just stopped talking about it, no one would care at all. In fact it's all the people arguing with it that make it a thing. Let's just stop. But cool article. No dig on the author. Just something to think about.
adsfqwop 4y ago
Researching flat earth and flat earthers forced me learn a lot about how we can prove globe earth in various interesting ways. One cool device I discovered is the Gyrotheodolite. It's a north-seeking gyrocompass, used in mining where GPS is not available and a magnetic compass would be too inaccurate. The north-seeking effect happens only because the earth is round and rotates the way it does. Without this rotation, the gyrocompass would not work. Hence the earth is round and it rotates. QED. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrotheodolite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrotheodolite
- scotty79 4y ago
  I learned about pendulous vanes from videos debunking flat earthers.
- Karellen 4y ago
  I think an equatorial mount/platform is one of the best devices for demonstrating it. It's possible to cobble a simple one together out of pretty basic parts, or even scrap. It's just a turntable set at an angle, which you can mount some kind of pointer/viewfinder/camera on. The demonstration comes in that it has to be set up so that the axis of the turntable is at an angle to the ground equal to your latitude (at 0°lat it has to be horizontal, at 90°lat vertical), and the direction of the tilt is towards a pole (north in the northern hemisphere, south in the southern). You can then fix your webcam or whatever to the turntable, pointing at any celestial object (star, moon, sun - but don't look directly at the sun!) and see that you can follow any of them at a constant rate of approx 15° per hour, for days. You can follow when and where the object goes below the horizon, and predict when and where it will rise above the horizon again. All of those requirements, from the tilt angle being equal to your latitude, to the requirement to point the tilt north/south, to the constant rate of rotation, and the direction of rotation depending on whether you're in the north or south hemisphere, are easily explained by the shape of the earth, and make no sense in any flat earth model. And they're easily checked. You might need a few collaborators to check the results at different latitudes, but there seem to be plenty of flat earthers out there. Also the slightly different rotational speeds needed to track the sun (~1°/day) and the moon (~4°/day) vs that of all of the stars also follow from the heliocentric model of the solar system, and not whatever alternate bonkers cosmology someone has pulled out of their ass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_mount https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_mount https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_platform
m3kw9 4y ago
If you are a flat earther this isn’t gonna do it. What will do it is if they get launched to space and see it gradually turn circular, even that they may say it’s an optical illusion if they really have an ego
stephen_g 4y ago
The concept is very interesting, and fun illustrations, but it would be nice if there was a metric version. I just have extremely little intuitive idea how big or small these units (inches or miles) are…
scotty79 4y ago
Where does the refraction come from? Temperature gradient? I'm a bit surprised that "usual" factor for it works so well. It doesn't harm the result though. If the earth was flat then there should be pretty much no refraction if the level is always 17ft
thiht 4y ago
I can’t believe we’re back at proving the Earth is round because of a few nutcracks who desperately need some attention.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
This reminds me of the MIT study on the efficacy of tinfoil headgear: http://web.archive.org/web/20100708230258/http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100708230258/http://people.csai...
lisper 4y ago
Three things that I rarely see mentioned in discussions of this topic: 1. Flat and round are not a dichotomy. Flat is just the limiting case of round as the radius approaches infinity. 2. Carl Sagan got it wrong in Cosmos when describing the reasoning used by Aristarchus. It is not enough to observe different shadows in different locations. To show the earth is round you also have to show that the sun is very far away. Aristarchus actually had some evidence for that, but his estimate of the distance to the sun was off by a factor of 20. In any case, Aristarchus obviously did get it right, but his argument at the time was not the slam-dunk that Sagan makes it out to be. 3. There is a slam-dunk argument that the earth cannot be flat: time zones. Flat-earthers explain time zones by saying that the sun shines its light in a sort of cone pattern, but this cannot account for the fact that the sun sets below the horizon at different times in different places. On a flat earth, if the sun goes below the horizon, that has to happen at the same time for all observers.
- Karellen 4y ago
  > Flat is just the limiting case of round as the radius approaches infinity. Reminds me a lot of Asimov's "The Relativity of Wrong": > Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-Earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, terribly wrong, absolutely. But it isn't. The curvature of the Earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-Earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That's why the theory lasted so long. [...] > The curvature of such a sphere is about 0.000126 per mile, a quantity very close to 0 per mile as you can see, and one not easily measured by the techniques at the disposal of the ancients. The tiny difference between 0 and 0.000126 accounts for the fact that it took so long to pass from the flat Earth to the spherical Earth. [...] > To put it another way, on a flat surface, curvature is 0 per mile everywhere. On Earth's spherical surface, curvature is 0.000126 per mile everywhere (or 8 inches per mile). On Earth's oblate spheroidical surface, the curvature varies from 7.973 inches to the mile to 8.027 inches to the mile. > The correction in going from spherical to oblate spheroidal is much smaller than going from flat to spherical. Therefore, although the notion of the Earth as sphere is wrong, strictly speaking, it is not as wrong as the notion of the Earth as flat. -- Isaac Asimov, 1986 https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
- 4y ago

74 points by dsego 4y ago

bobleeswagger 4y ago

[flagged]

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
Say more if you don’t mind; it seems like the opposite to me. I perceive (sense) a flat earth, but outside of my perception it is demonstrated to be a globe.
- bobleeswagger 4y ago
  > I perceive (sense) a flat earth, but outside of my perception it is demonstrated to be a globe. I like the word demonstrated. It helps to illustrate that it is wholly possible that the demonstration is an illusion, the same way it is possible that our perception is an illusion.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Can we just cut to the end of this, embrace solipsism, and move on with our days?
teraflop 4y ago
You might as well say: "What we perceive the earth to be made of rock, but it's actually made of whipped cream outside of that perception?" The shape of the earth has innumerable physical consequences, all of which we observe and measure to be consistent with it being approximately spherical. If you want to say that it behaves in every observable way like a sphere, but somehow is "really" flat, then the definition of "reality" you're using is not a very useful one.
- bobleeswagger 4y ago
  [flagged]
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
That's why you don't just rely on your senses. You rely on stuff like measuring and mapping and putting satellites in orbit around it. And so we know. No, it's not "flat outside that perception". It's a globe, full stop.
- bobleeswagger 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - monkey_monkey 4y ago
    Yes it's a nice belief and also a fact. Too bad that you think there's any other possibility that has anything to do with reality
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    > Too bad you think that isn't possible. I believe that isn't possible? I believe that it isn't possible that it's a globe? Say what? Either you have become incoherent, or you are trying to ascribe to me ideas that I categorically do not hold. Don't try to put words in my mouth. That's very much uncool. It's even worse when you're completely wrong.
    - bobleeswagger 4y ago
      What a weirdly defensive reply for calling out your incapability to entertain an idea without believing it yourself. Enjoy the matrix, friendo.
zacharyvoase 4y ago
What if your family has been replaced by very realistic-seeming impostors?
- labster 4y ago
  What if GP post was dead all along?
- bobleeswagger 4y ago
  That sounds a lot grander than a misperception of illusion.

karaterobot 4y ago

> Flat earth grifter Jeran Campenella What's the basis for calling him a grifter? I don't know anything about the guy, but grifting usually involves tricking people for money, which includes both receiving money and knowing you're being deceptive. Just based on this story, his behavior is consistent with a guy who is wrong but refuses to admit it, even to himself. That's not a grifter, that's something much more common! And while I know nothing about this particular guy, it's relevant because calling people names and making fun of them usually just makes them more entrenched in their position. It makes them less likely to admit they were wrong. If the goal is for the guy to say "yep, I've been making a huge mistake" and then try to get him to help spreading the correct information to the people who listen to him, then there needs to be room for him to do that safely, with a minimum of public humiliation. I just don't like the tone of mocking and condescension. "Interesting" could be a good start for someone changing their mind, if handled right.

pazimzadeh 4y ago
I agree with you, although he's had four years to start changing his mind and all he's done is delete his video?
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  At the risk of sounding blunt: this point is irrelevant towards his being a “grifter” or not.
mikeyouse 4y ago
Nobody is under any obligation to treat confidently wrong morons with kid gloves. If they’re raising money based on obvious lies, it helps nobody but the grifters to dance around the fact. There’s this weird HN obsession with high minded Aristotlesque norms of inquiry when the plain fact is that these people lie for money and do actual damage in the process. cf every Covid “doctor” selling garlic / HCQ / IVM / whatever else will make them millions of dollars.
zimpenfish 4y ago
> It makes them less likely to admit they were wrong. I'd venture that someone who believes in a flat earth - despite an abundant array of evidence which doesn't require advanced science or abstract thought to interpret - has already passed the point of no return and they're either 1) horribly deluded and only therapy can help them or 2) a grifter and nothing will get them to change their stance as long as they can milk it. > calling people names At some point, there isn't anything else you can do but call someone "deluded" or "deceptive". If you knew someone who went outside every day and said the sky was neon green[1], despite all the evidence and your entreaties, you'd soon give up and retreat to one of those two positions, no? [1] I'm hoping there's no medical condition which transposes colours in a synaesthesic-type fashion. But that would be obvious in other situations...

neilk 4y ago

Some techies and artists I know made some art at Burning Man to demonstrate the curvature of the earth over several miles. It was called Straightedge. A good pic of it. https://www.flickr.com/photos/derewecki/21429018995 https://www.flickr.com/photos/derewecki/21429018995 You might protest this doesn’t really show anything. Here of the project organizers discusses the difficulty of comprehending it from a photo. https://www.reddit.com/r/BurningMan/comments/3n4nux/does_anyone_have_a_good_pic_of_the_straightedge/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BurningMan/comments/3n4nux/does_any... It was probably best experienced by biking along the entire thing. The same group of folks has been making bigger and bigger art for years. One of them (I can’t remember) said “we made art so big it disappears.”

irrational 4y ago
If I was a flat earther, I would say, “Maybe the land there naturally slopes down and it has nothing to do with the curvature of the planet. After all, if you did the same thing starting from the summit of a mountain, the 2 lines would also diverge over 2 miles.”
- jojobas 4y ago
  If only there was a device to measure whether your actually are on a slope, perhaps all the bricklayers of the world would be eager to use it.
  - irrational 4y ago
    True, but over 2+ miles? Laser level would work, if the laser was powerful enough.
    - jojobas 4y ago
      Something like this should do. https://www.istecnik.com.au/digipas-precision-digital-levels/dwl3000xy-dwl3500xy-dual-axis-precision-levels/ https://www.istecnik.com.au/digipas-precision-digital-levels...
    - 4y ago

notahacker 4y ago

I wonder how many people believe in refraction calculations and the principle of scientific experimentation and also believe the earth is flat... Though the construction of this experiment reminded me of this historic attempt to prove the flatness of the earth I should probably remember to replicate on my boat next time I pass through. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Level_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Level_experiment

gs17 4y ago
I'm more impressed by the guy who decided the result was that it was curved the other way.

jlas 4y ago

What really amuses me about flat earthers is how much science they are willing to invalidate. For example pretty much all of geology would have to be rediscovered under a flat earth model.

labster 4y ago
Big Science pays geologists to be round earthers, so what do you expect? Follow the money and then you’ll see. In fact, round earth theory is holding science back. The Earth only appears to be curved because spacetime under the flat plane is curved by gravity. This is how there can be four simultaneous days in one 24 hour day. Flat Earth/Time Cube Dual Unification Principle will revolutionize physics, as any true FETCDUP believer will tell you.

freitzkriesler 4y ago

At first I enjoyed flat earth as a mental exercise in going through "settled" science and creating experiments to prove or disprove them. However, flat earthers have a flawed understanding of several concepts. Differences in lense focal point and mirages in particular are the biggest misunderstandings they carry which they will berate you until you give up. Here's an even simpler experiment. There's a flight from Perth Australia to Santiago Chile. On a round earth the flight time works, it doesn't on a flat earth. The old adage goes: when you wrestle with a pig, you get muddy.

neilk 4y ago
Some of the original flat earth theorists seem to just be playing around, having fun with the idea of scientific authority. One of them explained gravity by positing the earth was a flat disk accelerating upwards at 9.8m/s^2, forever. Where is the energy coming from? Why isn’t the atmosphere stripped away? Why isn’t earth white hot or achieving relativistic speeds? These problems can be dealt with enough special pleading and creative physics. They can stay one step ahead of their critics, forever. I got very into studying flat earthers for a while. The fundamental contradiction is that they claim to be resisting authority but for their claims to work you have to take more and more on faith and accept that there are unresolvable mysteries. Which is actually what they’re more comfortable with! They are usually in some sort of cult, or an authoritarian version of a mainstream religion.
- chungy 4y ago
  I've never been sufficiently convinced that most "flat earthers" are actually serious about it. The movement seems to consist of a large ratio of people claiming such just to troll.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    That's my intuition too, I think it's hilarious how worked up people get.
    - 4y ago

mmh0000 4y ago

Weird timing. I just watched an interview [1] with some expert flat-Earth scientists. Their arguments are compelling. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nZZtKuWY5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nZZtKuWY5E

NKosmatos 4y ago

Really? Another scientific blog post debunking the flat earth stupidity? These people don’t understand basic scientific principles, are they going to be persuaded by a post filled with maths, trigonometry and valid statements? I fail to see how such posts help the situation, these troubled and mislead souls won’t have their minds changed by posts like this.

petee 4y ago
At this point i think its more about helping prevent more people falling to the hoax. The better, and more easily explained, the larger the audience that can see through the lies, and understand why.

jiggawatts 4y ago

A very good analysis of this whole thing is "In Search Of A Flat Earth" by Folding Ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44 Essentially, professing absurd beliefs is a sort of shibboleth to demonstrate in-group membership. The absurdity is the point, because it differentiates them from outsiders. Normal people make true or factual statements all the time, that's not a good differentiator! The statements need to be false and/or absurd to function for their intended purpose. The Flat Earth mythos isn't even that outlandish compared to mainstream religions, and well within the same wheelhouse as the type of beliefs used to identify the in-group in cults. Scientology comes to mind, but there are many others. I highly recommend watching the entire video, because there is a lot more to the phenomena than I initially suspected.

tzs 4y ago
I remember reading a kind of similar thing about religious rituals and rules in a game theory book. In many religions the church provides a lot of social support and benefits to members and they want those benefits go to people who actually believe in their religion. The book included a cartoon showing a man eating a hamburger at a church picnic, with a thought balloon that said something like "I can pretend to love Jesus for a free hamburger!". Requirements like tedious rituals you must regularly attend or various intrusive rules you must follow your personal life impose a significant cost on joining the church. The guy who will pretend to love Jesus for a free hamburger might think twice if the deal is that he has to forgo sex until marriage for free hamburgers. The idea then is that the rituals and rules impose a high enough cost that it isn't worth it just for the benefits and support the church provides. Only people who actually believe--the kind of people that would join even if they weren't getting a social network and physical benefits from it--will put up with the rituals and rules.
- PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  Churches with food pantries will feed anybody who walks in off the street and tells them they are hungry.
  - 4y ago

Aardwolf 4y ago

When sitting on a balcony with a straight balustrade on a hill next to the ocean, it's pretty noticeable the horizon is round, and not a straight like the balustrade is. This must have been noticed in ancient times too

jsweojtj 4y ago
Which part of the horizon of the ocean was lower than another? I'm asking if looking East would be higher than South?
- Aardwolf 4y ago
  This was looking west, and left part of view was lower than center oart. On right side of the view the ocean was blocked but I expect it to be lower there too (so highest in center of view)

deleted 4y ago

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jamesgill 4y ago

Likely familiar to this crowd, but Carl Sagan's explanation on Cosmos of Eratosthenes' discovery is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8cbIWMv0rI&ab_channel=carlsagandotcom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8cbIWMv0rI&ab_channel=carls...

rugina 4y ago
That explanation irks me a lot because it implies Eratosthenes knew the Sun was so far away, the rays reaching the earth are practically parallel. And while it might sound a like a detail, the whole calculation depends on it. If you presume the Earth is flat and the Sun not that far away, Eratosthenes was calculating the distance to the Sun.
- zardo 4y ago
  Wouldn't observing that shadows at noon do not change as you travel east-west rule that out?

Julesman 4y ago

That's not where the burden of proof lies, of course. We don't have to prove that. I know that's probably some kind of intended humor or levity or irony or something. But it's important, none the less, to point out that the burden of proof in this discussion lies squarely on anyone arguing otherwise. Here's the truly ironic point. By the numbers FAR more people argue against it, largely for clickbait and views, than advance the notion. And what does that mean? It means that "flat earth" IS the argument against it, if you get my drift. If everyone just stopped talking about it, no one would care at all. In fact it's all the people arguing with it that make it a thing. Let's just stop. But cool article. No dig on the author. Just something to think about.

adsfqwop 4y ago

Researching flat earth and flat earthers forced me learn a lot about how we can prove globe earth in various interesting ways. One cool device I discovered is the Gyrotheodolite. It's a north-seeking gyrocompass, used in mining where GPS is not available and a magnetic compass would be too inaccurate. The north-seeking effect happens only because the earth is round and rotates the way it does. Without this rotation, the gyrocompass would not work. Hence the earth is round and it rotates. QED. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrotheodolite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrotheodolite

scotty79 4y ago
I learned about pendulous vanes from videos debunking flat earthers.
Karellen 4y ago
I think an equatorial mount/platform is one of the best devices for demonstrating it. It's possible to cobble a simple one together out of pretty basic parts, or even scrap. It's just a turntable set at an angle, which you can mount some kind of pointer/viewfinder/camera on. The demonstration comes in that it has to be set up so that the axis of the turntable is at an angle to the ground equal to your latitude (at 0°lat it has to be horizontal, at 90°lat vertical), and the direction of the tilt is towards a pole (north in the northern hemisphere, south in the southern). You can then fix your webcam or whatever to the turntable, pointing at any celestial object (star, moon, sun - but don't look directly at the sun!) and see that you can follow any of them at a constant rate of approx 15° per hour, for days. You can follow when and where the object goes below the horizon, and predict when and where it will rise above the horizon again. All of those requirements, from the tilt angle being equal to your latitude, to the requirement to point the tilt north/south, to the constant rate of rotation, and the direction of rotation depending on whether you're in the north or south hemisphere, are easily explained by the shape of the earth, and make no sense in any flat earth model. And they're easily checked. You might need a few collaborators to check the results at different latitudes, but there seem to be plenty of flat earthers out there. Also the slightly different rotational speeds needed to track the sun (~1°/day) and the moon (~4°/day) vs that of all of the stars also follow from the heliocentric model of the solar system, and not whatever alternate bonkers cosmology someone has pulled out of their ass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_mount https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_mount https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_platform

m3kw9 4y ago

If you are a flat earther this isn’t gonna do it. What will do it is if they get launched to space and see it gradually turn circular, even that they may say it’s an optical illusion if they really have an ego

stephen_g 4y ago

The concept is very interesting, and fun illustrations, but it would be nice if there was a metric version. I just have extremely little intuitive idea how big or small these units (inches or miles) are…

scotty79 4y ago

Where does the refraction come from? Temperature gradient? I'm a bit surprised that "usual" factor for it works so well. It doesn't harm the result though. If the earth was flat then there should be pretty much no refraction if the level is always 17ft

thiht 4y ago

I can’t believe we’re back at proving the Earth is round because of a few nutcracks who desperately need some attention.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

This reminds me of the MIT study on the efficacy of tinfoil headgear: http://web.archive.org/web/20100708230258/http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100708230258/http://people.csai...

lisper 4y ago

Three things that I rarely see mentioned in discussions of this topic: 1. Flat and round are not a dichotomy. Flat is just the limiting case of round as the radius approaches infinity. 2. Carl Sagan got it wrong in Cosmos when describing the reasoning used by Aristarchus. It is not enough to observe different shadows in different locations. To show the earth is round you also have to show that the sun is very far away. Aristarchus actually had some evidence for that, but his estimate of the distance to the sun was off by a factor of 20. In any case, Aristarchus obviously did get it right, but his argument at the time was not the slam-dunk that Sagan makes it out to be. 3. There is a slam-dunk argument that the earth cannot be flat: time zones. Flat-earthers explain time zones by saying that the sun shines its light in a sort of cone pattern, but this cannot account for the fact that the sun sets below the horizon at different times in different places. On a flat earth, if the sun goes below the horizon, that has to happen at the same time for all observers.

Karellen 4y ago
> Flat is just the limiting case of round as the radius approaches infinity. Reminds me a lot of Asimov's "The Relativity of Wrong": > Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-Earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, terribly wrong, absolutely. But it isn't. The curvature of the Earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-Earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That's why the theory lasted so long. [...] > The curvature of such a sphere is about 0.000126 per mile, a quantity very close to 0 per mile as you can see, and one not easily measured by the techniques at the disposal of the ancients. The tiny difference between 0 and 0.000126 accounts for the fact that it took so long to pass from the flat Earth to the spherical Earth. [...] > To put it another way, on a flat surface, curvature is 0 per mile everywhere. On Earth's spherical surface, curvature is 0.000126 per mile everywhere (or 8 inches per mile). On Earth's oblate spheroidical surface, the curvature varies from 7.973 inches to the mile to 8.027 inches to the mile. > The correction in going from spherical to oblate spheroidal is much smaller than going from flat to spherical. Therefore, although the notion of the Earth as sphere is wrong, strictly speaking, it is not as wrong as the notion of the Earth as flat. -- Isaac Asimov, 1986 https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
4y ago