Tag: moon

Phases and Side of the Moon

In the real world, the Moon is spherical. It doesn’t emit its own light; it gets its light from the Sun. The Moon is tidally locked, causing one side of it to be permanently turned towards the Earth. The lunar phase occurs because of the change in the position of  Sun-Earth-Moon with respect to each other.

Any flat-Earth model fails to explain many Moon-related phenomena. Flat-Earthers who insist on defending their misguided flat-Earth concept at all costs are forced to invent many “explanations” on how Moon-related events might happen on a flat-Earth.

Simple observation tells us that we always see the same side of the Moon, but the phase changes in a month-long cycle. These facts rule out the majority of the “explanations” invented out of thin air by flat-Earthers, including the “Moon emits its own light”, “half-sphere Moon” and the “transparent Moon” explanations.

References

The Moon in Daytime and the ‘Transparent Moon’ Misconception

Earth’s atmosphere scatters sunlight in every direction. Bluish colors are scattered stronger than reddish tones. As a result, the sky is glowing in bright blue during the day. The phenomenon is called the Rayleigh scattering.

Sometimes the Moon is visible during the day. The bright part of the Moon is bright because it is lit by the sunlight. On the other hand, its dark part does not receive sunlight, and thus barely emit any light. Because of these reasons, the dark part of the Moon is dominated by the blue color of the sky.

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Total Solar Eclipse, Drawn to Scale

Any diagram showing two or more celestial bodies is almost never drawn in the correct scale. The reason is that in most cases, any two celestial bodies are spaced too far away relative to their sizes. It is just not possible to draw them in the correct scale and still effectively describes what we want to explain. We don’t have much choice other than drawing them not to scale.

The perpetrators of flat-Earth disseminate the allegations that the diagrams were drawn not to scale because of evil intentions, and not because of legitimate technical reasons. Some people don’t understand this and fell victim to flat-Earth indoctrination.

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The Phase of the Moon and a Ball

The phases of the Moon depends on the position of the Moon relative to the Earth and the Sun. They occur because the Moon is spherical & lit by sunlight and that the Sun is very far away. Both imply that the Earth is spherical too.

The phases of the Moon according to observation cannot be explained in any flat-Earth model. Flat-Earthers had to invent various explanations to explain how the lunar phases can happen in the flat-Earth model. None can explain how a ball has the same phase as the Moon when seen from the same direction as we see the Moon.

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Apollo Mission Profile

The Apollo missions really happened and humans have actually visited the Moon. If someone fell victim to the flat-Earth conspiracy, then it would imply that they also fell victim to the Apollo moon landing conspiracy. But they are wrong. 

Someone usually fell for the moon landing conspiracy theory because of emotional appeals and confirmation bias, but also because of their ignorance of the Apollo mission profile itself.

The following is a very brief description of the Apollo mission profile, numbered according to the numbers in the illustration.

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Orion EFT-1, Apollo and the Van Allen Radiation Belts

On December 3, 2014, NASA published a video describing the Orion EFT-1 mission, narrated by a NASA scientist, Kelly Smith. The mission was the first unmanned flight of the Orion spacecraft.

Some unscrupulous flat-Earthers decided to turn the video into ‘evidence’ that NASA never went to the moon. They cut down the video to the ‘important’ parts and added in prejudicial narration and subtitles. There are countless of such videos on YouTube, and at some point, it was nearly impossible to search for anything educational about the Van Allen radiation belts on YouTube.

They are wrong. There are, in fact, two Van Allen radiation belts. Apollo traversed the outer belt that has lower radiation level in a hurry, while Orion was deliberately sent into the far more dangerous inner belt. They are named ‘belts’ precisely because they are like the real belts. It is possible to bypass the most dangerous parts of the belt, just like Apollo did.

Orion EFT-1 is not ‘evidence’ that the Apollo mission didn’t happen.

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The Illusion of Clouds Appearing ‘Behind’ the Sun or the Moon

Sometimes, we can see clouds appearing as if they are behind the Sun or the Moon. Obviously, this is merely an illusion. But some flat-Earthers regard this as ‘evidence’ that the Sun and the Moon are close and apparently closer than some clouds. They are wrong.

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The Apollo Missions and Van Allen Radiation Belts

Van Allen Radiation Belt is a zone of radiation encircling the Earth. To flat-Earthers, Van Allen Radiation Belt is ‘evidence’ of the impossibility of space travel. To the rest of us, the Van Allen Radiation Belt is one of the challenges which is not impossible to overcome.

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