Nah, that just proves that it’s circular. I can drive all the way around my city in an endless loop, but that doesn’t prove my city is a sphere.
You don’t really expect a Flat Earther to believe that navigation works, do you?
I think it’s a mistake to think that “flat earthers” as a group, have any sort of coherent model. They pick and choose bits of what to believe or just “distrust” the consensus view without actually coming up with a coherent model themselves (for obvious reasons).
But, yes: sailing around the world would not prove anything to a flat earther because there’s no coherent foundation on which to prove or disprove any claim.
Precisely.
Ref this:
We all recall the cartoon mentioned in this article: Then a Miracle Occurs… - Cafe Hayek
[The article itself is irrelevant to my point here. It was just one that had the cartoon I wanted without hotlinking.]
For a lot of folks their mental world is sort of like that blackboard. Except instead of a wall of logic and a small blob of miracle, instead there’s just a few constants scattered here and there and all the rest is little clouds of “and then a miracle occurs”.
And they don’t mind this state. Of course their mental life consists of momentary islands of disjoint facts (beliefs really) that cannot be combined in any way with any of the others. They happily hopscotch from belief lillypad to belief lillypad with no awareness that other ordinary humans actually connect ideas using consistent chains of thought called “logic”.
If called on it they get might defensive: “Of course I can think!” Confusing “remembering” and “emoting” with “thinking.”
Shame so many humans are like this. It seems an impoverished existence.
All humans are like this. Some are just more self aware and less accepting of it than others.
The Earth is a disc. The North pole is in the center. Antarctica is the “edge” of the disc. All the “maps” of the flat Earth I’ve seen are of this type. One of the “original” Flat Earth Society guys pointed to the UN flag as “confirming” their model. (Just remove the leaves and surround the edge with Antarctica.)
So, Antarctica is very, very special.
(I’d hate to be the round-Earth conspiracy odometer engineer for cars driven in Australia if their map were correct. The cars have to know if they are travelling N/S or E/W in order to fake the mileage to avoid trivial detection of that elongated E/W shape.)
Ouch! Yeah. Compared to boring old Mercator, the projection artifacts from that shaped map are doozies.
I keep thinking of that ancient Steppenwolf song Born to be Wild but with the chorus lyrics changed to “Born to be Contrary”. Doesn’t scan real well, but it sure tells the story of abject obstinance in the face of, well, a planets’ worth of evidence.
Technically, they could reach the antipodal point and turn around and retrace their path. Which is not around the world, but covers the same distance. Now it might be shorter to turn around due to the placement of continents. However, due to currents and prevailing winds, it’s likely to be faster to continue going straight around the world.
Along these lines, I thought a good race would be between Bermuda and Perth. Those two places are not exactly antipodal but close enough for a sailing race. Then have a second race back to Bermuda to complete the round-the-world bit. If you really need to make sure they go all the way around, you require them to check in at some port in between on both legs.
I’m really surprised by the lack of response to this post. I really think this might be the very best response for the OP:
But I think there’s a typo which confused people. It certainly confused me until I watched that video. It should not say “arriving in Kamchatka going north”, rather “arriving in Kamchatka from the north”.
Imagine telling a Flat Earther, “We can sail from a point in southern Asia, head southwest, and continue in a straight line without touching land, and eventually arrive at a point in northern Asia, arriving there from the northeast.”
Yeah, they’ll probably say the only way to do that involves telportation.
I’ve never seen one try to hand-wave why the stars rotate the opposite direction in the Southern Hemisphere, and circle a different part of the sky.(Yes, they continue to go from east to west, but that appears as counter-clockwise in the North, clockwise in the South.) Anyone know what the standard response is?
Eh, not too hard. They’d just say that the path is actually curving, and the curve is just too gentle to notice. And the direction as measured by compass bearing is definitely changing.
@Munch, they’d address the question about stars through the simple expedient of not understanding it. You’d be amazed at how many things you can explain by not understanding them.
I understand the video differently: You arrive at Kamchatka sailing north-ish, you come from the South having crossed the Magellan Strait between South America and Antarctica, where you switch from sailing South-ish to North-ish while keeping in a straight line.
The question for me is whether this is really a straight line, i.e. a great circle, or whether it is “only” a straight line in this particular representation of Earth. I tend to think it is a great circle, because it always keeps in the diameter of Earth pictured as a circle (I hope I am expressing myself clearly). But to accept that this route is a straight line (assuming it is) you need to take into account that the Earth is spherical, so this is not going to convince a Flatulearther. They would call it a circular argument (ha!). And I would agree!
I was wondering too. I hope to check on my globe when I get home.
Most definitions of circumnavigation of the globe will require crossing all the longitudes so crossing back wouldn’t cover it.
Starting and ending the trip at the same place isn’t always required but maybe that violates the antipodal points rule. Magellan is well known for attempting the first circumnavigation of the Earth but was killed in the Philippines before making it all the way. Some members of his crew managed to complete the journey after some time. Note that this was not a non-stop voyage, many stops were made along the way.
Well, yes, but @Chronos’s definition didn’t say anything about crossing lines of longitude.
Anyway, I really like the idea of a Bermuda-Perth-Bermuda race. the two are only about 40 or 50 km from being true antipodes. Bermuda is a big yachting port, so I’m somewhat surprised no one has created one.
Could expand @Chronos’s definition by requiring that you pass through two sets of antipodes, and that the antipodes must be at least 6,200 miles apart from each other (slightly less than 1/4 of the Earth’s circumference in case a small amount of wiggle-room is required).
Pretty sure that definition makes a great circle the shortest path.
I am not sure I am following. If you approached Kamchatka from the north, wouldn’t you be coming from Siberia/continental Asia? The graphic shows a marine approach from the SSE from the Pacific Ocean thru the Bering Sea, heading north-northwest toward the peninsula, no?
And what about the constellation Octans that sits around the south celestial pole? During winter nights people in a large chunk of the southern hemisphere can see it due south of them at the same UTC time. If you draw “south” from those points on the flat Earth map, the lines go in very different directions. On top of that, the angle the constellation is tilted at that moment depends on local time.
How do they explain it? “Look, if I spin a wet tennis ball very fast the water flies off?” Dude, did you run the formula for centrifugal force at the equator? Things at the equator weigh 0.6% less than at the north pole. Nothing’s flying off.
Nope. That track approaches Kamchatka from the southeast going northwest. But it’s still weird (on a non-spherical surface) to start out going generally southerly, then find yourself going westerly and then northwesterly all not having turned left or right at all. Great Circles are like that.
It is a fun cool bit of geo trivia. I would not have guessed one could draw such a line that long. And yes, @snowthx deserved more props for that find than they got. Bravo @snowthx! Good find!
But I don’t see how it addresses either of the OP’s questions aimed at debunking FHers. Yes, it’ll “blow their mind”. OTOH, on their fantasy map they can show you all sorts of amazing manuevers you can do, like circumnavigating the edge of the world. Or that Australia is 10x wider EW than it is tall NS. The fact you or I don’t acccept these “facts” and think they are tricks is very telling to them.
Like most conspiracy nonsense, the thing is internally consistent. It just fails wherever it touches the real world. Someone with their eyes screwed closed enough, so the real world never intrudes, can find the fantasy / conspiracy world even more real, and certainly more consistent and consistently entertaining.
The whole power of modern infotainment / propaganda is that by making the chosen false narrative more coherent than messy reality, it sells better than messy reality. To people raised on mass-market storytelling that is. IOW, most of us.
For them what don’t have the cash or physical space for a globe, Google Earth Pro is a free download.