So here I am, browsing the webz like I usually do, and I come across a curious Youtube video called something like '100% Undeniable proof the Earth is flat!' And needless to say I felt compelled to watch it and see if I had stumbled across a time traveling 14th century pope. I found the contents both mildly amusing and slightly frustrating. Some of the arguments included 'How did we not find out about Pluto and the estimated 200 dwarf planets that might be in our system hundreds of years ago?' as well as things like arguing about the distortions of the Earth in NASA and ESA videos. They are convinced the Earth is actually flat and the sky with all the stars in it are actually a big hologram, plus their theories also include suggesting the sun is not gigantic and far away, but instead is smaller and much closer. They claim that 'They' (The term used for astronomers keeping these 'secrets' from us) are hiding facts from us to hide land and other silly stuff like that. Apparently time-lapse videos are fake and so are space shuttles as their landing gear wouldn't survive the heat upon re-entry.

Now I don't know if they're actually stupid or just desperate for some limelight, but they both make me laugh and want to kill myself by suffocation in the process. These people don't know anything about what they talk about. I heard one guy saying that you never see stars directly on the horizon, which is total bullshit because I've been out and seen it with my own eyes. You can also look at high exposure photos for that sort of thing. I am not kidding, these people exist!

Link- A main preacher for this theory -Link

My responses to these people:

"Ok, so if the Earth is flat, explain to me how I can walk from one coast in Antarctica to another via the south pole without changing direction."

"We couldn't see Pluto and the dwarf planets all those years ago because they are very small and most don't reflect much light to spot with crappy old telescopes. They barely managed to make out Neptune and Uranus as planets never-mind Pluto. Their orbits are slower than ours, so they are often obscured by each other, the sun or shadows. And finally, most of those extra dwarf planets are probably in the Kuiper Belt behind Pluto. I'm not surprised we never found them."

"So if the Earth is flat, explain the Coriolis Effect, constant downward pulling gravity and seasons."

"Those two videos were NOT recorded at the same altitude, you're just a fucking idiot."
And finally...

"So 'they' are a group composed of every professional astronomer, space agency, pilot, mathematician, amateur astronomer and astronaut there ever has been and is now? That's gotta' be millions of people who all know how physics works keeping it a secret from people who don't know how physics works for no reason other than to hide land you'll never even see or be able to use from us, right? Sounds legit."

How does this work? Do you think the Earth is actually flat, and if you do, why? Discuss in the comments.

My favorite video on the theme 'proved' the earth was flat because there aren't regularly scheduled direct airline flights from Australia to South America.

If that's true (and I have no reason to believe it's not), it's economics, not because it isn't possible. I couldn't get a direct flight from Lansing MI to Edmonton, AB, because why would there be a direct flight?

I assume that the people who make these videos are either idiots or trolls.

4633658

'How did we not find out about Pluto and the estimated 200 dwarf planets that might be in our system hundreds of years ago?'

Because the telescopes of centuries ago weren't as good as the telescopes of today, and our means of recording and interpreting the data we got by using them weren't as effective as those we have today. Plus, centuries of observation between then and now. One sees more things when one takes more time looking.

And needless to say I felt compelled to watch it and see if I had stumbled across a time traveling 14th century pope.

The Roman Catholic Church, especially after the development of the medieval universities, was quite aware that the world was round. The roundness of the world was discovered and proved by Hellenistic astronomers in the first half-millennium BC, and never forgotten by the educated. What they didn't realize was that the Earth orbited the Sun, rather than the other way round. Some of the Ancients had thought this, but the theory had never caught on.

I heard one guy saying that you never see stars directly on the horizon, which is total bullshit because I've been out and seen it with my own eyes.

It's of course more difficult to see stars directly on the horizon, because you're looking through more air (something which would be even more true the less the curvature of the surface), there's more sky-glow from human sources, and there are all sorts of objects which might get in the way of the observation.

We know that Equestrian Earth isn't flat either, because we've seen that it's depicted on globes in Twilight's quarters.

4633658
I came across these idiots from a Vsauce video, and then I sent them links to Wikipedia pages about the things that would only happen if the earth was round, and then explained how there would have to be some sort of combination of teleporters and high mass artificial satellites to make the earth flat but still have people walk from coast to coast on Antarctica or sail from South America to Asia, fly from North America to Africa, and how the Earth's mathematically measurable circumference

Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth without leaving Egypt. Eratosthenes knew that at local noon on the summer solstice in the Ancient Egyptian city of Swenet (known in ancient Greek as Syene, and now as Aswan) on the Tropic of Cancer, the Sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead. He knew this because he had been told that the shadow of someone looking down a deep well in Syene would block the reflection of the Sun at noon off the water at the bottom of the well. Using a gnomon, he measured the Sun's angle of elevation at noon on the solstice in Alexandria, and found it to be 1/50th of a circle (7°12') south of the zenith. He may have used a compass to measure the angle of the shadow cast by the Sun.[16] Assuming that the Earth was spherical (360°), and that Alexandria was due north of Syene, he concluded that the meridian arc distance from Alexandria to Syene must therefore be 1/50th of a circle's circumference, or 7°12'/360°.

His knowledge of the size of Egypt was founded on the work of many generations of surveying trips. Pharaonic bookkeepers gave a distance between Swenet and Alexandria of 5,000 stadia. Some say this distance was corroborated by inquiring about the time that it took to travel from Syene to Alexandria by camel. Carl Sagan says that Eratosthenes paid a man to walk and measure the distance. He rounded the result to a final value of 700 stadia per degree, which implies a circumference of 252,000 stadia. Some claim Eratosthenes used the Egyptian stade of 157.5 meters, which would imply a circumference of 39,690 km, an error of 1.6%, but the 185 meter Attic stade is the most commonly accepted value for the length of the stade used by Eratosthenes in his measurements of the Earth, which imply a circumference of 46,620 km, an error of 16.3%. It is unlikely, however, that Eratosthenes got an accurate measurement of the circumference of the Earth, given three errors in the assumptions he made:

That Alexandria and Syene lie on the same meridian.
That the distance between Alexandria and Syene is 5000 stades.
That the Earth is a sphere.

If we repeat Eratosthenes' calculation with more accurate data, the result is 40,074 km, which is 66 km different (0.16%) from the currently accepted circumference of the Earth.

Seventeen hundred years after Eratosthenes' death, while Christopher Columbus studied what Eratosthenes had written about the size of the Earth, he chose to believe that the Earth's circumference was much smaller. Had Columbus set sail knowing that Eratosthenes' larger circumference value was more accurate, he would have known that the place where he made landfall was not Asia, but rather a New World.

of 40,074 km, we know that travel from America to Asia would take much longer if the earth was flat due to a larger circumference.

4633658

"Ok, so if the Earth is flat, explain to me how I can walk from one coast in Antarctica to another via the south pole without changing direction."

You're just assuming this, but you haven't actually tried it.

They don't believe the Earth is flat. It's just a mental exercise. They're having fun with it. It's a new universe to explore, much like MLP universe is. Fun.

4633718
Follow the link to StarsAreSouls's channel. You do not do as many videos in that manner as he has done just for fun.

4633700

It's of course more difficult to see stars directly on the horizon, because you're looking through more air (something which would be even more true the less the curvature of the surface), there's more sky-glow from human sources, and there are all sorts of objects which might get in the way of the observation.

Yeah, that's what the rest of us think anyway. Even though you can see Venus and Jupiter rise from the horizon at late evening where I live at certain times of the year. For some reason these guys seem to think that means the sky is fake, and is actually a huge hologram. How does that even work?

4633658

Also in on the conspiracy are the Foucault pendulum gnomes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum ). Which means it all makes sense!

4633718
4633729
4633690

Flat-earthers are genuinely insane.

NASA is a conspiracy to hide the fact that the earth is flat.

All videos of space are CGI, even the ones from the 60's.

The planets in the sky do not exist, telescopes don't really work.

The list goes on and on and on about how everything is a lie, when, if you knew anything about how optics, telescopes, and physics work, you can see that everything they point out is their version of a misunderstood reality.

4633690 Guess what... There were direct airline flights from South America to Australia through last year. Do these people even know recent events!?

4633658

Do you think the Earth is actually flat, and if you do, why?

Do you actually think you're going to find Flat-Earthers in a forum made for science-loving geeks?

We know that Equestrian Earth isn't flat either

Those globes are ancient superstition! Cultural artifacts!
Everypony knows that Equestria is only accurately depicted on a flat map.

4750789

Everypony knows that Equestria is only accurately depicted on a flat map.

With a big hole in the middle for a pony to poke their nose through.

~Twi

4750844
The famous Chasm of Puddinghead.

Scientists and explorers to this day seek to prove its existence. No success yet, but it's sure to be there.

4634581 I recently got into a YouTube tussle with one who didn't believe in gravity. I fear he was serious. And apparently I'm a shill... Apparently there are a lot of other shills too. This might explain the federal budget deficit.

I suppose as quackery goes, 'tis relatively harmless quackery. As long as it doesn't lead someone to shoot up a planetarium or some such fool thing.

4750450

Do these people even know recent events!?

That's part of the hoax. They claim there are direct flights, but you can't ever actually get on one of those planes.

. . . Yeah.

4752905 Hey, if he doesn't believe in gravity, that means he was just making a joke.

Right?

4753664
I really, really wish he was. He says that "density" explains everything (how it does that without gravity being involved is apparently an exercise for the reader).

4753934 Maybe he's following Aristotle's hypothesis that denser substances will naturally gravitate toward the center of the universe? (Note that Aristotle posited the round earth as being at the center of the universe. Random Youtuber would have to amend Aristotle to say something like denser substances naturally gravitate down. Or toward the infinite stack of tortoises that's under the flat earth. Or whatever.)

4753960 That might be it. He didn't say (he stopped responding after I asked him to explain the Cavendish experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_experiment ). Apparently the conspiracy goes way, way back. :)

I'll just leave the out there, too. One flat earther who seems decently prominent on You Tube is Eric Dubay. But I won't click on his videos, even for funsies, since seeing a little of one of his other videos, "Adolf Hitler vs The Jew World Order."

I am in no way kidding.

My story Horizon Rising has its first chapter posted.

There are a lot of different flat earth models out there. If you just do a casual search of the topic you won't really find much interesting and the main voices that speak the loudest have a tendency to dominate on youtube and google which pushes other flat earth models and concepts out of the spot light. There's also a lot of infighting with people calling each other shills, etc. This seems to be mostly done by Eric Dubay. I think he's a very demented individual. There are other people out there though that are more interesting and level headed.

I have found the whole flat earth subculture and speculation to be very interesting. I am still int he process of researching the ideas for my fan fiction.

As far as gravity goes in general flat earthers I have heard so far say that gravity as we know it was only theorized to explain why we don't fall off of a ball earth. Supposedly in a flat earth system there is a real up and a real down.

I joined Eric Dubay's forum briefly to ask what accounts for the directionality of up and down if gravity is not present to pull one in a certain direction. In other words, I wanted to ask why things didn't just as easily "fall" up or sideways for that matter from our perspective. Why is the ground down?

I got instantly banned from his forum. Apparently I'm a baller earth shill for asking a legitimate question about his model. I wanted to know how he thought it worked.

I have listened to interviews where it is implied that density is what determines up and down... as in dense things sink and less dense things float, but I still haven't found any decent explanation from any of them for why heavy things sink "down" and why less dense things float "up". I also haven't seen any good explanation for what keeps the sun and moon suspended in their motions above the earth.

I feel like I'm missing a piece of the puzzle here that would help me to understand their concepts. I will continue to try to research this. I want my fiction to represent the flat earth ideas fairly and without ridicule even if I don't personally subscribe to them.