Science Advocacy
Science Advocacy
It feels like we have covered most of the major “proofs”, so let’s wrap this up with one last push! Click here for part 1, part 2, and part 3.
16) The Navigation proof. If the Earth is round, how come boats and planes don’t account for it in their navigation? They just go straight!
This is just not true. First of all, planes traveling long distances fly what is commonly referred to as “great circle routes“, which absolutely account for the curvature of the Earth, allowing them to fly shorter routes than a traditional straight line. This is why you’ll find no airline pilots who think the Earth is flat (besides the fact that they see the curvature of the Earth from their cockpits at work) – they account for the curvature of the Earth every day. We’ve already covered why planes don’t account for the curvature of the Earth in terms of altitude (part 1 proof 4).
Boats don’t generally take great circle routes because they have to worry about things like not hitting land or other boats, currents, and wind, and they are more likely to be traveling near the equator, where circle routes don’t really help. You know what they use to navigate? GPS, which is based on satellites, which wouldn’t exist if the Earth was flat and gravity was a lie. Also, in high latitude navigation (in the arctic), sometimes the GPS satellites are blocked by the curvature of the Earth and other methods need to be employed. Another means of maritime navigation in use since the 1700’s is the sextant. Many ships still carry one today as a backup to GPS-based navigation. Navigators take the refraction of light by the lower atmosphere into account when using a sextant – something you would not need to do on a flat Earth.
17) The Architectural proof. Railroad lines, canals, and large buildings don’t take into account the curvature of the earth, so it must not be true.
OK, let’s start with railroad lines – why would they need to take the curvature of the Earth into account? They just follow the topography of the ground, going up and down hills as needed. I have seen some flat Earth posts in which people calculate how much higher the railroad line would be in the middle based on the curvature of the Earth, but that is illogical. Since gravity is constant across the surface of the Earth, altitude is determined by height above sea level, and is not altered by where you are on an arbitrary route across the curved surface of the Earth. You don’t need to take the curvature of the Earth into account when estimating the mileage of track you would need either, because the miles traveled are by definition miles across the curved surface of the Earth. Think about wrapping a ribbon around a tennis ball – railroads are like that.
Same thing for canals. Some flat Earthers like to point out that the Suez canal is 100 miles long with no locks, and that the water in the middle would be over 1500 feet high based on the curvature of the Earth and would all flow out of the canal. You can’t think about it that way – gravity is constant across the curved surface of the Earth, except for hills, of which there are none on the surface of the canal. The surface of the water is convex, not flat, and is at a constant height (ignoring tides and currents) across the length of the canal.
Buildings are another matter: most are too small to take into account the curvature of the Earth. As long as the load-bearing supports are truly vertical, they will directly oppose the force of gravity. There are a couple of exceptions, though. First, long suspension bridges often do take the curvature of the Earth into account – the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, for example. A second example is large particle accelerators. These are miles long, and the high energy particles they study need a truly level path that cannot tolerate any curvature of the Earth. This is challenging because almost all modern methods of assessing altitude are dependent on sea level, and this follows the curvature of the Earth. So these large accelerators do have to take the curvature of the Earth into account and dig down deeper into the Earth in the “middle” to keep the path for the particles completely flat. Here’s an explaination of how the folks at CERN are taking this into account for the planned 100 km Future Cicular Collider.
18) Conspiracy theories
Every photograph or video ever taken that proved the Earth is a sphere is fake.
Really?
A “Conspiracy theory” is defined as a theory that explains an event or a set of circumstances as being the result of a secret plot by unusually powerful conspirators. Depending on how you see things, there probably have been some conspiracy theories over the course of history that turned out to be true. However, the modern use of the phrase is most often associated with theories that are considered “fringe”, on the border (or often way beyond the border of) something that makes any logical sense.
None of the conspiracy theories proposed by flat Earthers make any logical sense at all, and for this reason, we will not spend any more time here discussing the myriad of ways they can be quickly disproved. However, I will point out that a crazy theory stating that most of the educated world is lying to you about something is not “proof” of anything at all, beyond perhaps the gullibility of the person supporting this theory. Even if you are willing to believe that NASA’s actual mission is to mislead the entire world about the shape of the Earth at great expense and for no particular reason at all, that doesn’t tell you anything about the shape of the Earth – maybe it’s actually a triangle?
Flat Earthers seem to gravitate towards conspiracy theories that focus on things that most people never see. Here are some examples:
While the conspiracy theories above might be easier to swallow for some because most of us don’t travel to the moon, space, or Antarctica, some theories take things a step further, clearly challenging things we take for granted. These are ridiculous, and a willingness to believe them requires a break from reality that probably warrants therapeutic intervention:
OK, we are done with the flat Earthers for now. If we missed one, drop us a line, and please, PLEASE challenge anyone who tells you the Earth is flat with facts. Education is the name of the game!
