Welcome to the Flat Earth Impossible According to Science post.
Many people believe in a flat earth. I believe we live on a round earth.
I have traveled at least 3 or 4 million miles by air to many parts of the world at different seasons of the year. I worked in the airline business most of my life.
If the earth was flat, I would not be able to observe the dawn on the horizon shortly after we reach altitude on a summer solstice day traveling on an Air Canada 787 Dream Liner to Europe from Montreal, Canada where the sun had just set an hour before. We were able to see the fading sunset on our climb out of Montreal up to altitude. Here is my sunset photo.
I have also seen the early morning dawn en route from Dallas, Texas to Santiago, Chile in the winter time when it is summer in South America. So I have experienced summer solstice sunrises at altitude in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
The photo below is just 2 hours after departing Montreal, Canada on the Air Canada 787 DreamLiner. We were about 1100 miles out over the North Atlantic Ocean en route to Frankfurt, Germany. You can see the sun is rising in the northern sky. The flight patterns swing on a semi polar route because the distance around the spherical earth is shorter the closer you get to the North or South Pole.
Don’t take my word for your flat earth belief. Here is an article written by Ethan Siegel in Forbes Magazine. The article link is at the bottom of the post. Ethan wrote a short bio here:
“I am a Ph.D. astrophysicist, author, and science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. I have won numerous awards for science writing.” Ethan Siegel
Flat Earth Impossible According to Science
1.) Lunar Eclipses don’t occur only at midnight. Take a look at the shape of the Earth’s shadow during a lunar eclipse, particularly during a partial phase. Do you notice how the Earth’s shadow always appears to be a piece of a near-perfect circle?
If the Earth were a flat disk, that means there’s only one possible orientation that the Sun-Earth-Moon alignment can take place in to create a circular (rather than elliptical) shadow: with the Earth’s “disk” perpendicular to the Sun-Moon plane. This means the Sun would need to be at the “midnight” position relative to the night side of Earth, and yet lunar eclipses occur at all different times depending on where you are on Earth. The flat Earth can’t explain that.
2.) Different locations on Earth experience seasons at different times. Ever notice how the summer in the United States corresponds to winter in Australia? Or how winter in Italy lines up with summer in Argentina? This is because the Sun’s rays, which are almost perfectly parallel, strike Earth at different angles during different parts of the year. If the Earth were flat, the Sun’s rays would always come in at the same angle, meaning that the USA, Australia, Italy, and Argentina would all experience the seasons the same exact way. The flat Earth idea can’t explain this.
3.) Different stars are visible from different latitudes. Look up at the night sky from a very high (northern) latitude location, and you’ll see the Big and Little Dippers, the bright orange giant Arcturus, and the Pleiades, among other sights. Yet if you head to the south pole, none of these celestial sights are visible, but you can see Alpha Centauri, the Magellanic Clouds, and the Southern Cross, all of which are never visible to most northern hemisphere skywatchers. If the Earth were flat, everyone on the night side of the Earth would see the same sky; this is another observation that the flat Earth can’t account for.
4.) You cannot see Kawaikini from the peak of Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea, the highest peak in Hawaii (the summit of the Big Island), offers incredible views. With nothing but the ocean around it, and a few other nearby islands, you should be able to see extremely far away. The island of Kauai has the seventh highest point in the Hawaiian islands: the peak known as Kawaikini. If you were to draw a straight line from Mauna Kea (elevation: 13,796 ft.) to Kawaikini (elevation: 5226 ft.) it would span a distance of 303 miles.
However, you cannot see one from the other, which you would absolutely be able to do if the Earth were flat. With a curved Earth of its measured radius, the line-of-sight limit for those two elevations caps out at 233 miles. Only with a curved Earth is one invisible from the other, and this is true for any two mountain peaks with clear line-of-sights from one to the other.
5.) Sunsets and sunrises happen at different times depending on your longitude. If the Earth were flat, then someone in New York and someone in Los Angeles would see the sun rise and set at exactly the same time as one another. But in practice, the difference is approximately three hours. Not only that, but at every point in between, the Sun rises/sets at a different time, something that could not happen if the Earth were flat. The fact that it can be evening in New York and late afternoon in Los Angeles, or morning in New York while it’s still before dawn in Los Angeles, is something that a flat Earth can’t account for.
If the Earth were flat, these five phenomena would be very different, and yet they are so simple to verify that any flat Earth believer cannot possibly doubt their veracity. Whether it changes anyone’s mind is up for debate, but without resorting to space, circumnavigation, or any advanced scientific experiments, you can experience a whole handful of phenomena that a flat Earth can’t account for.
With a flat Earth, we’d only get lunar eclipses at midnight, everywhere would have the same seasons, every location would see the same stars, all high mountain peaks would be visible from one another, and every place on your “side” of the Earth would see sunrise and sunset at the same time. Since these are false, so is the flat Earth.
If this helps even one person challenge their belief that the Earth is flat, it’s a remarkable win for knowledge. But don’t bet on it. Like the old saying goes, you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
Hope you have enjoyed reading the Flat Earth Impossible According to Science post. My blog has a thousand different posts about Health, Healthy Living and Spiritual Messages.
Healthy Living
Ethan Siegel’s post on Forbes is below:
Forbes Flat Earth Article