The earth is flat. Seriously? Why am I giving any space in my head to this notion?
Because people are finding out that they have been lied to about history. So now they don’t believe anything that we’ve been taught. Even physics is coming into question. People don’t understand real, hard science enough to defend or understand their position.
“Have you seen the Earth's curvature from airline cruising altitudes?” I thought so, but 70,000 feet is the magic altitude where you can begin to see the curvature. The earth is that big. And our windows on the flight deck have natural curvature built in.
“Prove it, then. If you haven’t seen it, how do you know?” Because I’ve flown to and from Japan hundreds times.
Flying from the west coast of the United States over to Japan, we flight planned the route by actually drawing it on our charts. We also displayed the route for the passengers. It looked like a curved line. “Why aren’t we flying straight across the Pacific Ocean?” they asked repeatedly.
Because it is thousands of miles longer to fly over the wider part of the globe. Flying up north, over the smaller part of the sphere we call Earth, we save gas and time. You can prove it with a piece of yarn and a globe, which I do when I go in to talk to kids at schools and camps.
If that doesn’t prove the world is smaller at the “top” or north pole (and south), I don’t know what does. It isn’t a checkerboard. It isn’t flat. But people don’t really understand cartography, either, so maybe this won’t convince them.
“But there are pilots online who say the world is flat,” disbelievers say.
Pilots who disagree must have flown north/south flights or short east/west domestic trips. Or they are stupid. Or they are pulling your chain. They didn’t fly a route that showed them the curvature like I always did. Once you do, it’s like kindergarten with crayons. The flight path is that obvious.
Moving on to time zones. Yes, we made them up. But we did not make up the daylight hours and night as you get closer to the poles. We did not make up the 4-5 hours of daylight in parts of Alaska in the winter. Or the twenty-four hours of daylight in the summer. This is completely due to the earth on an axis rotating.
Solar and lunar cycles are not made up. Seasonal patterns of constellations, and different constellations in the southern hemisphere than the north is not make-believe. We’ve seen it year in and year out. Even eclipses prove the world is round.
Remember, early sailors feared they would fall off the world's edge. How was that disproven? By circumnavigating the globe. The world doesn’t just end. Governments can’t make everyone promise not to say that there’s an ice wall around the world’s edge. This isn’t Game of Thrones. Besides, people do fly over the North Pole. People sail and fly around the world, using longitude to do it. Ship navigational systems operate on data of the earth being round, and barges literally go through the Panama Canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
Multiple astronauts have filmed from shuttles and space stations. Yes, the Google pictures seem to have the same cloud layers. They can’t photograph the entire earth in one frame… it is rotating/moving. It’s not just one picture copied repeatedly – it is a compilation of many photos. A composite.
What happens to the sun and satellites when they reach the edge? Is it like a giant flashlight—a typewriter carriage zooming back to the other side? I don’t think so. We are not in a snow globe and won’t hit the wall. The notion is preposterous, proving to me that we need to do a better job teaching our children.
David Sobel wrote a great book on Longitude. It’s short and riveting. Really.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_(book)
There’s also a great book by Eric Metaxas titled “Is Atheism Dead?” It uses science and mathematics to prove how perfect our Earth is. And that it is a planet, not a snow globe…
Great article Kathy - as always intelligent and informative. I especially appreciated the graphic which shows the ancient Hebrew understanding of the universe. I have a Bible which has a similar picture and it is intriguing to contemplate "the waters above the firmament". I've surmised that to be a protective bubble around the earth at the beginning of creation, one which provided a perfect atmosphere and climate. A perpetual "garden", one with no weeds and even friendly dinosaurs. :)