I was thinking about this topic, and how to “prove” that the Earth is spherical, and the conclusion I came to is: it’s very hard to demonstrate this, because most experiments require the observer to be in two, widely-separated locations. Since that is the case, any simple proof (like calling someone in Australia) is easily refuted by saying that the party to whom you are speaking is “in on it.” The proof I particularly like is asking how an Equatorial mount works on a flat earth, but once again, it requires traveling long distances to show the effect.
Eratosthenes got a pretty good estimate from observations.
About 1000 KM apart roughly, I think, from maps.
But there is little point in trying to demonstrate this to a flat-earther (or other cultist), since they have a watertight belief system. Anyone who disagrees with them is either deluded or a member of the conspiracy.
Some years ago, I was faced with coming up for a topic for my daughter’s school science project.
(Or course we all know that those are all done by the parents, if at all)… right …
And I was wondering if there were any ways, without a fairly well-equipped laboratory, to demonstrate a lot of fundemental results that are completely accepted by contemporary science?
Things like charge on the electron, size of an atom, speed of light… even atomic theory.
I couldn’t come up with anything that could be proved by ‘Kitchen Chemistry’ experiments.
Science as we know it has been built on a lot of cumulative research…
It’s relatively easy to observe that the earth’s surface is curved by projecting a level beam of light at a fixed height above a datum (water level in a large lake on a calm day)
Observe the projected beam from the other side of the lake and measure the height above the water level and you find that you have to go higher up to intercept it, because the earth’s surface has curved away over the distance.
Eliminate doubts about the water itself not being level by performing the same experiment in both directions simultaneously.
But proving the surface is curved isn’t the same as proving the earth is a globe, unless you do the experiment over and over across a large number of places
But putting on the loonie hat: who ever said that light travels in a straight line?
Why, even Einstein said it can curve!
Good point. Really, the answer is for the flat earthers to prove it’s flat.
(Interestingly a few of them have tried this and got results that prove it’s round. A smaller few abandoned flat earthism as a result)
I’d say that the best argument is that around 500 years ago people decided to accept a spherical earth when they wanted to cross an ocean because they knew that if they assumed a flat earth they would die. Die. They would never reach their destination and never return home. That’s incentive.
The fear of literal death kept the spherical earth and the equations of spherical geometry omnipresent in every culture and every endeavor since. Why? Because not doing so would lead to death. Ships would sink. Planes would crash. Bridges would collapse.
Flat earthism is all fun and games until someone tries to put it into practice. Then it’s a death sentence. Fortunately for them, nobody ever tries to put it into practice. Including them.
No problem there. Flat Earthers don’t believe in gravity. They say it is all density, so light curving due to gravity is right out.
This shows up at least once in each comment section of debunking videos.
I like “nothing to sphere but sphere itself.”
You’re assuming moderate intelligence, a fact not in evidence. Some pilot once jokingly responded to a flerfer asking about navigation that of course the earth is flat, and we’ve never heard the end of it.
I’ve seen some claim that globes only showed up in classrooms in the '50s, thanks to NASA. No response when I note that I went to elementary school in the '50s, and there were plenty of globes.
BTW, the flat earth map is based on the UN symbol, a map with the North Pole at the center. They used this projection to keep any member country from being at the center. My father used to be in charge of the UN flags in front of the Secretariat building around 1950. And the southern hemisphere is terribly distorted in the map, of course.
I most often see Gleason’s New Standard Map of the World from 1892.
The first globe of the earth was made in 1492, the Behaim globe.
I have wondered how Christopher Columbus thought he could sail from Spain to India going west if they knew the size of the earth?
He simply relied on false data and thought earth was much smaller than it is, against better knowledge of the time (and much former times, Eratosthenes again).
Bad information.
Columbus mistakenly assumed that the mile referred to in the Arabic estimate of 56⅔ miles for the size of a degree matched the Italian mile of about 1,480 meters, when it was about 30% longer. His estimate for the size of the degree and for the circumference of the Earth was therefore about 25% too small.[20] The combined effect of these mistakes was that Columbus estimated the distance to Japan to be only about 5,000 km (or only to the eastern edge of the Caribbean) while the true figure is about 20,000 km.
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The ships barely reached the eastern Caribbean islands. Already the crews were mutinous, not because of some fear of “sailing off the edge”, but because they were running out of food and water with no chance of any new supplies within sailing distance. They were on the edge of starvation.[21] What saved Columbus was the unknown existence of the Americas precisely at the point he thought he would reach Japan. His ability to resupply with food and water from the Caribbean islands allowed him to return safely to Europe. Otherwise his crews would have died, and the ships foundered.
It’s easy to talk yourself into something that has a major benefit to you. Reaching the Indies without having to go around Africa would have paid off well.
BTW Gould had a column about flat earth belief in the time of Columbus. A couple of monks published something about the world being flat, but no one paid attention to them.
It struck me that Dante has the world being a globe, with the Mountain of Purgatory on the opposite side of the Earth as Jerusalem.
But I guess he got funded by NASA.
I think this experiment is going to turn out a bit wrong, because there’s a density gradient in the air making its index of refraction vary with height, which will bend the beam. It’ll bend downward, not upward, so this effect can’t make a flat earth look round. But the numbers won’t work quite right. Not sure if this is a big enough effect to notice.
There’s a similar effect with sound which is pretty significant.
That’s a problem with many of these proposals. They’re often more complicated or involve more unanticipated effects than would be convenient for a simple proof.
I think if you make many trips with a marvelous spacecraft that can do things like hold positions at various altitudes (one mile, ten miles, a hundred miles, a thousand miles), with your FE riding along watching and measuring things and getting to specify what to try next, that would be quite convincing. And there’s no reason in principle this couldn’t be done, it would just require a much more marvelous spacecraft than we’ve seen yet.
Not so. And this idea and link were posted previously. Post 6-7.
He truly is the flattest earther
Maybe, but there’s a chance the flat earther on board would just say that it only looks round, due to refraction through the windows of the spaceship, or whatever other straw they could clutch at.
Also if I had a spaceship, I’m not very sure I’d fly off into space with a flerf on board. Might be a bit too unpredictable to meet my safety protocols
Yup, Curved windows/lenses/eyes make curved images!, It’s a projection!, The windows are actually monitors!, You’re using MK Ultra mind control! and the classic It’s Sea Gee Eye!
Sadly, no claims in the wild that I’ve heard that it’s all AI . . . yet.
You guys are still thinking too logically for a flerfer. Consider that they believe flying over Antarctica is impossible, despite there being actual flights that fly over Antarctica. They explain that by the fact that the windows on airplanes are video monitors showing CGI.
Same thing would apply for spaceship windows. Put them in a spacesuit and let them do a space walk and the same thing would apply to the visor on their helmet.