Debunking Flat Earth Misconceptions
Due to Earth’s curvature, ships traveling over an ocean disappear from the bottom up. This fact is one of the first evidence to confirm the Earth is a sphere, and one of the first facts of which flat-Earthers had to invent various “explanations” for.
Some of the popular “explanations” are: refraction, perspective, zooming reveal distant ships and visibility limitations. None can explain away the fact.
Perspective is a relationship between the size of an object, its distance, and its apparent/angular size. The angular size is larger if the object is closer or larger.
Often, flat-Earthers would claim that we cannot see a distant object is not the result of Earth’s curvature, but because of perspective. In a way, it is correct to say that perspective might result in an object having angular size too small to be seen by our eyes. However, perspective alone cannot ‘hide’ a portion of an object, while revealing the rest of it.
A properly designed football field does not lie perfectly flat. Its middle portion is slightly raised to promote runoff of excess water. Without it, the field can become muddy & uncomfortable.
Some flat-Earthers conducted the perspective convergence ‘experiment’. They put a camera on the surface of a football field, and record a person walking away across the field. The person started to disappear from his feet first. Because they felt the football field is flat, they took the wrong conclusion that the person disappeared due to ‘perspective’. They were wrong. The field is, in fact, not perfectly flat. If it is perfectly flat, the person would appear fully at the end of the field.
Continue reading “Football Field and ‘Flat-Earth Convergence Experiments’”
We often see flat-Earthers create a ‘miniaturized physical model’ of a real object and present them as ‘proof’ in support of flat-Earth and against spherical Earth. Their M.O. is to observe if the model remotely resembles the actual object in a particular way. If it does, then it is enough for them to conclude the model describe how the real object works.
Conversely, if a real object cannot be miniaturized and still have the same behavior as the original object, they would conclude that the behavior of the original object doesn’t exist.
They would wrongly call creating such models “doing an experiment”.
Continue reading “The so-called “Experiment” Done by Flat-Earthers”
The apparent size of the Sun is practically constant throughout the day. This can only happen if the Sun is practically at the same distance all day.
In the flat-Earth model, the Sun is close to the surface at the distance of about 5000 km (3500 miles). The Sun is supposed to be moving in a circle, and it completes the circling motion once in a day. This fact should cause the Sun’s apparent size to change during the day. But it does not happen. The Sun’s constant apparent size is evidence that the flat-Earth model is wrong, and that the Sun is very far away.
Lake Pontchartrain is a lake in Louisiana, United States. There are power transmission lines about 24.27 km (15 mi) across this lake. They are practically straight, and each tower is uniform and has the same height, making these towers ideal for observing the curvature of the Earth.
They were first popularized by Soundly who presented evidence of Earth’s curvature using a series of photos and videos of the power lines in June 2017. As of now, the towers and other objects on the lake are probably the most popular Earth curvature tourism spot in the world.
Continue reading “Lake Pontchartrain Power Transmission Lines: Evidence of Earth’s Curvature”
Some flat-Earthers consider crepuscular rays as evidence that the Sun is not far. In their mind, the Sun is only about ±5000 km circling above us. In reality, the actual distance of the Sun is ±150 million km.
