For any 'hypothesis' to become theory, it has to stand up to scrutiny, note, on a personal and scientific level, flat earth is not even a hypothesis at the moment (or any moment). So in this article i will attempt to study the geography, geometry and physics of a flat model against a globe.
At first glance you will notice there is a great distortion of the southern hemisphere continents and countries. Also it looks identical to some cartographic representations, most notably the Gleason map and an Azimuthal equidistant map.Both represent a map of time zones in a 2d form of a 3d world. All paper maps are a 2d representation of a 3d world.If you have ever studied maps, you will notice that very early maps were incomplete and simplistic. Maps have developed since then to the maps we see today. This was achieved with naval and land based surveying with greater and greater accuracy as time ran by. To the point now that navigation between points is much easier and accurate. We know distances of all land masses and locations and this works under the globe model. But flat earth ?, there is no universally accepted map, but most advocates go for a gleason or AE map. It should be noted that flat earth proponents have had as long to survey the world as anyone else, thousands of years. There are lots of software out there, any OS, any type - astronomy, weather, GPS, simulation etc etc - hundreds if not thousands - all coded on globe earth geometry - and they work, just as you see in real life. How many flat earth simulations are there - err, none.
There are many many objects that we see in the sky over night and day and they move, or at least they appear to move. These are the sun, moon and the stars - I could also include the International space station, Satellites and comets, asteroids etc.
The sun, for most of us, we see everyday. It is obviously a ball shape, because no matter which direction you see it or how far it is, it remains a ball. If it was flat, you would only see it disc shaped if you were directly underneath it, if it was off to one side, or at an angle, it would appear oval, but it doesn't. We can watch it as it goes across the sky, we see it set and rise. But if you look at the flat earth map, and that the sun is placed between the tropics and equator and revolves around the earth on this 'circuit'. As soon as I saw this I saw many anomalies straight away. How does it explain night and day, how does it explain time zones and seasons.
Most flat earthers tend to go for the sun being 'local' and about 3,000 miles high. The extremes go between it changing between 5 - 10 thousand miles high, and some its just above, or in the clouds. If you look at the sun (with the proper filters) it is a perfect disc.Next we need to relate its size to what we see. The angular size of the sun should change quite drastically between its heights and distances,from my perspective of my location I should notice a difference in size of 40% ish. This could be worse for different locations such as extreme northern and southern locations.In all honesty, even if the sun is 'close' it should cover more of the earth in dusk, or twilight. Its the biggest, brightest object in the sky. Even if it didn't cover the world in dusk, twilight, we should be able to see it as a bright point of light at night, larger and brighter than the stars.
The moon, we can apply all the above the same way for the moon, except the moon gives us more clues in that it is textured and has phases. As the moon travels across the sky, it always shows the same features, some flatties say this is proof that it is also flat, not so because it doesnt matter from which angle you look at it, it is always circular - again, the only shape that does not change could only be a globe. Its angular size does not change by much, but it is more noticeable than that of the sun (supermoon etc). How the moon looks is different in different locations of the world, for instance in Australia the moons phases are reversed and so the face of the moon is also upended. The moon is also responsible for a solar eclipse, and earth is responsible for a lunar eclipse, it should be noted that the position of the moon is predicted for the utmost accuracy for every single location in the world and at solar eclipse it occurs exactly as predictions of the moon's movement and placement. On eclipses, it can be viewed differently on differing locations.
I have done some measuring and basic trigonometry to demonstrate how completely wrong the flat earth model is to reality regarding simple things like the day length, sun rise and set, including the direction that I see in reality compared to what I should see on a flat earth. I have calculated on the premise that most Flearthers say the sun is only 3,000 miles above a flat plane. Simple trig finds the actual distance from the ground to the sun, along with its angle from the horizon. Whilst I do not claim it is to exact scale, it is a good representation. I have done this on the most commonly used map flearthers present. Suffice it to say, there does not seem to be a definitive flat map or any model to match, plus not all flearthers agree on basic data - come on guys, you have had as long as everyone else has had to come up with one.
So, here is my little model.
This represents 2 days of the year for my location in the UK, 21st June and 21st December
The Suns represent the position of sunrise (east), Noon and set (west), The red arrows represent the direction that I should see the rise and set for a flat earth model, the green arrows represent the true direction (in relation to heading from my location). The suns have been depicted in a relative scale to their difference in angular size they would appear on a flat earth model. The difference in largest and smallest size would be very noticeable, with a reduction of up to almost 50%.
The data I calculated is as follows (a flat representation), of a 3,000 mile high sun
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On December 21st, my shortest day.
Distance to sun at rise and set = 6200ish miles, elevation angle of 25 degs at rise and set, elevation angle of 55 degs at noon.
On June 21st, my longest day.
Distance to sun at rise and set = 7100ish miles, elevation angle of 28 degs at rise and set, elevation angle of 30 degs at noon.
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Reality.
On December 21st, my shortest day.
Distance to sun at rise and set = a bloody long way, elevation angle of 0 degs at rise and set, elevation angle of 14 degs at noon.
On June 21st, my longest day.
Distance to sun at rise and set = a bloody long way, elevation angle of 0 degs at rise and set, elevation angle of 58 degs at noon.
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We can immediately see the problems here, the directions to sunrise and sunset are totally out by some 15 degrees.As the sun transits the sky at 15 degs per hour, all our days should be 2 hours longer. The degrees of elevation are well out of sync, on Dec 21st a flat earth sun at noon would be much higher, almost as high as June 21st in reality and June 21st should be almost half as high as reality. That is almost the opposite of reality. At those elevations to both sunsets and sunrises, they are high enough to NOT set or rise from. The flat earth sunrise and sunset on June 21st are furthest that the sun should be, but at 28 degrees there is no explanation that can account for the sun going below the horizon, coupled with the fact that all other positions will be CLOSER than the furthest view-able distance the sun should NEVER rise or set at all, it would be just be a continuous circular path around us. No amount of 'perspective' (a misunderstood perception 😉) or 'atmospheric lensing' (a none existent phenomenon) is going to shift a large body over 15 degrees lower than it is. Essentially, there should never be a night time with a flat earth sun. We should always be able to see it.
Lets take another example, longest day in the northern hemisphere around June the 21st. There parts of northern Europe, Northern Canada Alaska and the Arctic circle enjoy some 24 hour sun. In the southern hemisphere the longest day i about December 21st. There are no habitable land masses south enough to enjoy 24 hour sun, but Australia, south america have some nice extended daylight. The Antarctic, however, does enjoy 24 hour sun. But flatties say this is a myth. So all those resident scientists, conservationists and some 40,000 tourists each year have to be liars (really, come on).
In order for the sun to cover the land masses that it does, it has to 'morph' into different shapes. This representation below is itself problematic, for it to be more accurate, it would have to be like an inverted kidney shape. If it were a circular shape, as suggested by flatties, then the circular shape required to cover the expected land masses would be large enough to illuminate the earth for longer periods that it does.
There are added problems in the Equatorial regions, especially the equator. Throughout the year, countries in the equatorial regions have roughly equal length days and nights of 12 hours. This is an imposibilty on a flat earth as the directions of sunrise and sunset are due east and west. On the flat earth it should look more circular, coming from North east and going North west. On the equinoxes, if you were standing facing south in Nairobi (African city pretty much on the equator) the sun will be rising over your left shoulder, straight over your head, setting over your right shoulder, again, on a flat earth this would be coming from behind you, and going away behind you. For the rest of the world it is also different to what a flat earth would be.
As these were the simplest observations you can make, there is no reason why you should think the earth is flat - flat earth geometry does not fit reality, whereas globe earth geometry fits perfectly. Unless of course there is 'magic atmospheric deflecting mirrors in the dome coupled with the human eyes inability to see straight lines.
All these data points are verifiable (except the flat earth ones), if you want to visualise and confirm the suns path in your locality I highly recommend the following resources.
http://photoephemeris.com/
The photographers ephimeris. A highly popular tool for photographers, especially landscape photographers. I too often use it to check sun heights and directions so I can plan a shoot as to where and when i should be for the perfect lighting angle. I have used it lots of times, in many different countries. It is accurate and spot on. All programmed on globe geometry.
https://www.sunearthtools.com/dp/tools/pos_sun.php?lang=en
http://andrewmarsh.com/software/
A couple of really useful web apps detailing sun transits, configurable for your local area, if you live in a suburban area you could calculate over which buildings you can see the sun over at any time of day. Again, all programmed for globe geometry.
http://stellarium.org/
Although astronomy software, it can be used to visualise predicted paths of the sun throughout the day in your area.
I hope to cover the night skies shortly, as soon as I get my telescope equipment together and set up.
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