A Globie Writes

A friend has fallen down a conspiracy rabbit-hole. She started with Epstein, via Moon Shots, then flat earth. I conjured up this (incomplete) list of FE refutations off the top of my head, preserved here for posterity. I got a bit carried away...

Lied to? You are being lied to, not by basic geometry but by numpties on the Internet. Here, off the top of my head, no Googly Eyes: ten things flat earth cannot explain but globe can.

1. Sunrise and sunset:     

a) The observation - it rises and sinks.

b) Direction of same, especially anomalous in Southern Hemisphere (SH).

c) Sunrise and sunset times can be predicted with reasonable accuracy in both 'hemispheres' using spherical geometry (I have done this).

d) Sunrise/Sunset directions and times in SH are an exact mirror of those in NH, shifted 6 months.

e) Sun (and moon) don't get smaller as they set or bigger as they rise, as FE would predict.

f) Sun still visible from a plane when it has 'disappeared' from ground level.

g) (Same thing but reversing observers) a ground based observer sees sunlight on the underside of planes and clouds after it has 'set'. 

h) Sun does not set in Antarctica during summer.

2. Track of celestial objects.

a) The SH Sun should start off moving rightwards, then hang in the air, then start moving leftwards. Then reverse this behaviour later in the day. It does not. I've seen it. 

b) The rotation of stars around the North Star in the NH is exactly mirrored by anticlockwise rotation in the SH.

c) The planets track an eccentric course, sometimes reversing direction - 'planet' derives from Greek planētēs meaning 'wanderers'. These courses are entirely explained by orbitals, and hence...

d) ... these orbitals allow us to accurately predict where these wanderers are going to be. Eclipses, alignments... There is no FE geometry that allows such prediction.

e) Meteor showers. We get predictable annual events - we've just passed one: the Lyrids. Then there's the Perseids, Geminids... each on the same day every year. Because our orbit takes us through sundry comet trails, each once a year.

f) Meteorites in general. I mean, what the fuck are these to a flat earther? Bits of the firmament?

g) Parallax. Some stars (but not many) exhibit a regular annual shift in position relative to the majority, that are 'fixed'. Explained in conventional channels by our orbit round the sun, and some stars being closer than others.

h) FE has no explanation for the source of angular momentum or tethering of linear force that would be required to keep pushing the Sun and moon round a circular track.

3) Seasons.

a) Flat earth has no explanation for the basic fact of annual seasonal variation.

b) In particular, FE cannot explain why the sun would fluctuate its circular course between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn during the course of the year (see also 2h: both the circular track and the shift of that track would require a force, varying direction periodically to account for the shift in track. And that force is...?).

c) Variation in daylength. Days (measured by the time between solar noons) are not exactly 24 hours long all year. There is predictable annual variation due to the earth's orbit being elliptical. The effect of this is that the earliest sunset is a couple of weeks before the shortest day in NH, latest sunrise a couple of weeks after. Effect mirrored in SH (of course). If you take a photo of the sun at the same clock time every day, it traces a figure 8 in the sky, termed an analemma. FE cannot account for this.

4). Navigation.

a) A sextant would not work on FE. This has been used for many years to help sailors suss where they are.

b) There is an annual solo yacht race round Antarctica. It's 14,000 miles, and they travel clockwise, so effectively keep turning right. On FE they'd have to keep turning left, and the race would be 50,000 miles long...

c) The 'loom' of a lighthouse. Mariners see the track of the light before they see the light, and it depends on the height of that light above sea level. They have tables with all this in that allow them to more accurately triangulate position and avoid hitting them there rocks.

d) Tides. Sailors and others need accurate position of tide time and height, which is obtained using relative positions of sun and moon. No FE tide tables can be made, nor the ones we use explained. On FE, tides just... are.

5) (Sundries). That's a lot more than 10, and I expect you glazed over about 5 in, but here are some more...

a) If you smeared the mass of the earth out into a disc, it would naturally adopt a roughly spherical configuration, just as (albeit a different force) raindrops are blobs while the snowflakes they come from are planar. You'd have to do work to keep the earth flat. What resists this tendency to sphericity? Although of course...

b) ...Gravity. No account in FE.

c) Still... why doesn't the firmament fall down? It's a massive arch 24,000 miles across.

d) Gravitational lensing in deep space piccies. Cause, if gravity ain't real?

e) Foucault's Pendulum, Cavendish Experiment, Schiehallion, measurable gravitational anomalies, gravimeters. How's that all work?

f) Einsteinian relativity derives ultimately from globular, orbiting earth, in a way it would take too long to explain. But the mass-energy equivalence this predicts gave rise to the atomic bomb (not a Good Thing, but still confirmatory in a roundabout way).

g) GPS. How does that work then?

h) Satellite tracking and comms. Ditto. 

i) Satellite dish installers have them pointing towards the south (in NH) or north (SH). Why? They use apps to tell them where the satellites are, so small adjustments can be made based on location and spherical geometry. Are they in on the plot too?

I make that 30. Phew! Don't get me s...

Oh, and plate tectonics. And volcanoes, or magma more generally: why doesn't the earth cool down, if flat? Time zones get thinner as you travel south in SH, not fatter. Tunnel engineers have to allow for curvature. Sundials work in SH, if you just reverse the numbers and flip the gnomon. And so on, and so on, and so on, and so on...