# Flat Earther's looking for converts in Milton Keynes **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 1, 2019, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557 "2019-09-01T16:15:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Staggerlee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/staggerlee/32/3134_2.png) [@Staggerlee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Staggerlee)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/41 "2019-09-03T19:27:13Z")
I had to ‘defriend’ myself from an old university mate who, with the assistance of twenty years of weed-smoking in idyllic Bali, had taken on every conspiracy theory out there - and his contempt for science or even common sense was too much for me to bear. But his weird Earth-shape belief was that the Earth was a hollow sphere, with an opening at the North Pole which some pilot had once flown over (just the once presumably, very hush-hush). It makes me wonder whether he’s ‘graduated’ onto Flat Earth thinking with its recent resurgence. And what happens when a Flat-Earther meets a Hollow-Earther? ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/42 "2019-09-03T22:39:54Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > The thought occurred to me that it would be interesting to hear a Flat Earther explain how so many people managed to do so well navigating their way all over the flat Earth using a theory about its shape that is so wildly at variance with “reality”. It’s actually quite easy to navigate if you assume the Earth is flat (provided you don’t need to go over the edge. If you have a Mercator projection map, you only need to measure the heading you need to take, then stick to that heading. (You might need to do that several times if you need to navigate around land or something, but that’s true with any map.) You won’t go on the shortest route which, ignoring currents, would be the great circle route, but the navigation to get there works fine. It’s actually easier to plot a course than on a sphere. In the days before longitude could be measured accurately, it was common to sail to teh right latitude, then just sail due east or west. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/43 "2019-09-03T22:45:27Z")
> [@Staggerlee](#): > > I had to ‘defriend’ myself from an old university mate who, with the assistance of twenty years of weed-smoking in idyllic Bali, had taken on every conspiracy theory out there - and his contempt for science or even common sense was too much for me to bear. But his weird Earth-shape belief was that the Earth was a hollow sphere, with an opening at the North Pole which some pilot had once flown over (just the once presumably, very hush-hush). > > It makes me wonder whether he’s ‘graduated’ onto Flat Earth thinking with its recent resurgence. And what happens when a Flat-Earther meets a Hollow-Earther? You’ve heard about flat Earth. You’ve heard about hollow Earth. But have you heard about… [expanding Earth?](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Expanding_Earth) ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/44 "2019-09-04T02:00:16Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > It’s actually quite easy to navigate if you assume the Earth is flat … Right. But what if you assume the earth is round - as huge numbers of celestial navigators have done? This ought to fail badly on a flat earth - but it appears to have consistently worked well. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/45 "2019-09-04T07:14:48Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > I’ll pass on this one, based on having seen a high school physics book that showed a picture of an astronaut doing a spacewalk over this caption: > > “As you get further from the center of the Earth, gravity decreases - until, in outer space, you’re weightless!” > > Not quite as bad as embracing a flat Earth, but still pretty freaking bad. There’s nothing wrong with that sentence as a general description. It is not even in the same ballpark as a Flat Earth. Of course it is _incomplete_ and without going into orbital mechanics and the inverse square law of gravity it is never going to be a full explanation but I guess that’s what the rest of the text book is for. Which part do you think is bad or wrong and why? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/46 "2019-09-04T07:23:58Z")
If I lived in Milton Keynes, I’d probably start believing strange shit ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/47 "2019-09-04T11:54:49Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > You’ve heard about flat Earth. You’ve heard about hollow Earth. But have you heard about… [expanding Earth?](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Expanding_Earth) Yes. I once engaged with one of those idiots who had a YouTube video and asked him whether the Earth was adding mass from the outside, adding mass from the inside, or becoming less dense. He said it was adding mass from the inside. I asked how that worked. He deleted the whole exchange. Tsk. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/48 "2019-09-04T13:02:25Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Which part do you think is bad or wrong and why? Couple of problems with that caption: 1. On the surface of the earth, around 6400 km from its center, gravity is strong enough to give weight to everything that has mass. Is it plausible that increasing the distance by around 6% (low earth orbit) renders this negligible? 2. The weightlessness experienced in low-earth orbit has exactly nothing to do with any reduction in the earth’s gravity there. It’s a consequence of the fact that orbital motion is essentially “freefall”. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/49 "2019-09-04T13:46:48Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > Couple of problems with that caption: > > 1. On the surface of the earth, around 6400 km from its center, gravity is strong enough to give weight to everything that has mass. Is it plausible that increasing the distance by around 6% (low earth orbit) renders this negligible? > > 2. The weightlessness experienced in low-earth orbit has exactly nothing to do with any reduction in the earth’s gravity there. It’s a consequence of the fact that orbital motion is essentially “freefall”. But it didn’t say anything about an orbit did it? That gravity decreases with distance is an absolute fact and I would read “outer space” as meaning interstellar space rather than a low earth orbit. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/50 "2019-09-04T13:59:47Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > But it didn’t say anything about an orbit did it? It showed a picture of an astronaut in low-earth orbit. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/51 "2019-09-04T14:25:42Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > It showed a picture of an astronaut in low-earth orbit. OK, you just said it was an astronaut on a spacewalk but in any case the words themselves are not problematic. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/52 "2019-09-04T14:37:30Z")
Aren’t there a few buildings tall enough to see the curvature of the Earth? Burj Kalipha, errm, what was that building in Chicago? My $1.75 contribution to the thread; The Earth _is_ flat. Very much so… …from my ground level perspective ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/53 "2019-09-04T15:21:57Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > You’ve heard about flat Earth. You’ve heard about hollow Earth. But have you heard about… [expanding Earth?](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Expanding_Earth) It is, [but only on one side](https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Plate-Tectonics/Chap3-Plate-Margins/Divergent/Mid-Atlantic-Ridge). 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/54 "2019-09-04T15:36:17Z")
> [@DorkVader](#): > > Aren’t there a few buildings tall enough to see the curvature of the Earth? Burj Kalipha, errm, what was that building in Chicago? > > … Yeah, just about any tall building in Chi., especially overlooking the lake show it. I bet in any coastal city with tall buildings the idea of a flat earth will be a hard sell even for a child. Hell. even a tall building surrounded by corn fields would show it. Not to mention any view from an airplane. The flat earth idea is so wrong, even to someone with no scientific background, that there have to be ulterior motives in promoting it. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/55 "2019-09-04T15:36:39Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > I’ll pass on this one, based on having seen a high school physics book that showed a picture of an astronaut doing a spacewalk over this caption: > > “As you get further from the center of the Earth, gravity decreases - until, in outer space, you’re weightless!” > [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > But it didn’t say anything about an orbit did it? That gravity decreases with distance is an absolute fact and I would read “outer space” as meaning interstellar space rather than a low earth orbit. **Novelty Bobble** , how many astronauts do you think have been in [interstellar space](https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/interstellar/en/)? Zero. Only Voyager 1 has made it to interstellar space, and there are no astronauts onboard. 😉 > [@Xema](#): > > It showed a picture of an astronaut in low-earth orbit. > [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > OK, you just said it was an astronaut on a spacewalk but in any case the words themselves are not problematic. OK, **Novelty Bobble** , how many spacewalks (aka [EVA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extravehicular_activity)s) in the history of spaceflight do you think have been conducted that were NOT in low-Earth orbit? Answer: Out of the approximately [400](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacewalks_and_moonwalks_1965%E2%80%931999) spacewalks that have been conducted, just [four (4)](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/30909/zero-gravity-spacewalk-above-low-earth-orbit) have been conducted that were not in low-Earth orbit, all on Apollo missions. Two were conducted in lunar orbit on Apollo 15, and two were conducted on the return flights of Apollo 16 and Apollo 17. In any event, **Xema** ’s point is well-taken. The force of gravity in low-Earth orbit is something like 0.88_g_ (at the altitude of the International Space Station). Even at the orbit of the Moon, the force of Earth’s gravity is [1.62 m/s[sup]2[/sup]](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=force+of+Earth%27s+gravity+at+orbit+of+moon) (i.e. 0.165_g_). Even at that far distance, astronauts have not “escaped Earth’s gravity.” The reason that they are weightless in space is NOT because they are farther from the center of the Earth, where “gravity decreases - until, in outer space, you’re weightless!”. It is because they are in orbit and are in freefall. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/56 "2019-09-04T15:58:54Z")
> [@robby](#): > > **Novelty Bobble** , how many astronauts do you think have been in [interstellar space](https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/interstellar/en/)? I really think you are taking things far too literally. It is single sentence and one that…without a drawing, is absolutely fine. That is exactly what happens with the gravitational force and you could theoretically be far enough away from the earth that its gravitational effect is negligible and you are effectively weightless. It doesn’t say anything about earth orbits at all. Had it said “here is a picture of a modern-day spaceman in earth orbit…he is weightless” then that seems egregiously incorrect. The sentence as it stands? not so much. The world of scientific literature is full of what-if’s and thought experiments that, though technically correct, aren’t necessarily accurate reflections of how we experience the world currently nor examples of a situation we may ever be able to experience. I remember an early book of mine on space showing a little cartoon Laika with just a glass bubble over her head under a paragraph about early Soviet space exploration. Naturally, seeing as the caption was at odds with the picture I threw it in the fire as it was an affront to common sense with worthless scientific insight. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/57 "2019-09-04T23:03:41Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Had it said “here is a picture of a modern-day spaceman in earth orbit…he is weightless” then that seems egregiously incorrect. The sentence as it stands? not so much. And yet the sentence appeared just underneath a picture of a modern-day spaceman in earth orbit, who was quite obviously weightless. ---
**Author:** ![Fugazi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f08c70/32.png) [@Fugazi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fugazi)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/58 "2019-09-05T05:27:23Z")
“And this, my Liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped.” ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/59 "2019-09-05T06:53:44Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > And yet the sentence appeared just underneath a picture of a modern-day spaceman in earth orbit, who was quite obviously weightless. So the problem is with the picture and not the sentence? and, you have just committed a far more egregious error than the original sentence ever made. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557/60 "2019-09-05T12:57:37Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > I’m irresistibly reminded of a – fictional – episode set about a century ago, involving ultra-religious Flat Earthers. It’s in _The Emperor’s Coloured Coat_, one of John Biggins’s splendid series of novels featuring an officer in the navy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in that entity’s last years (when it had an Adriatic Sea coast). The hero, caught in the Far East by the outbreak of World War I, is trying – by whatever means come to hand – to get back to his homeland and his naval duties. > > In the Dutch East Indies, he manages to get passage on a Dutch ship taking Muslim pilgrims to Jeddah, the port for Mecca. All the ship’s officers are extremely fundamentalist and uncompromising Calvinists of the most strict and severe kind; they are convinced that the earth is flat – whether because of the sort of reasoning laid out above, or because they read Scripture as asserting that it’s flat, or a bit of both. The hero is initially concerned as to – with people of such a persuasion doing the navigating – where on the planet they are actually likely to fetch up. However, something of an anti-climax is revealed: it turns out that Flat-Earther navigational data and techniques are, rather boringly, not as far removed from conventional ditto as one might imagine. Jeddah is reached on schedule and without trouble. Actually if you delete a point from a sphere, the space that’s left is equivalent to a plane and has a flat metric. You could therefore built accurate navigational tables based on it. Of course, it is conceptually easier if you assume the earth is a sphere (or nearly so). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earthers-looking-for-converts-in-milton-keynes/839557.md?page=4)