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Flat Earth
The fault in our stars Pseudoastronomy |
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Adding epicycles |
Epicyclists |
“”Tila Tequila
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—Michael K.[1] |
Flat Earth (also known as the Flat Earth myth, the Flat Earth theory, Globe Skepticism, Globe Denial, flat-Earthism, Earth shape theory, less commonly platygeism, and intelligent geography for parodists of intelligent design) refers to the pseudoscientific belief that the Earth — which the vast, vast majority of the population imagine in their heads as this big spherical thing (or oblate spheroidal thing, pedants) — is actually a geocentric flat disk. Yes, people actually do believe this, although this belief usually involves some form of religious fundamentalism. Modern flat earthism revolves around a quasi-religious, cult-like system of gurus collaboratively grifting their marks.[2]
Flatlining brain activity[edit]
The Character of flat-earthism[edit]
The flat Earth conspiracy cult/grift, and interaction with its proponents can be described with following concepts:
Fractal wrongness[edit]
If the flat-Earth model were correct, we would need to throw the majority, if not all, of our current knowledge of science clean out the window, especially physics, geology, and all of astronomy. While some fields such as medicine might not be inherently incompatible with the shape of Earth, fractally wrong flerfs[note 1] also tend to oppose things like vaccines, COVID masks, gender studies, etc.
Ad hoc reasoning[edit]
When confronted, they typically have their own explanations for their views. The "evidence" they provide is ad hoc and generally pulled out of their asses. The piecemeal rebuttals do not actually work together to form any model, and they admit it:
Flat Earth Dave admitting flat earthers do not have a model |
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The only aim of the rebuttals is to delay to shift the burden of proof. This forces everyone in the cult to memorize statements and to fake understanding, which in turn explains why most flat earthers have a tendency to talk very similarly to each other, and often cite the same sources and arguments and repeat the same—
Thought-terminating clichés[edit]
Endlessly repeated statements and tautologies like "Water can't stick to a ball", "Gravity is just a theory", or "Pressurized gas needs a container" serve two meanings: The cult leaders use these as recruitment propaganda, and cult members usually scream them as a response to the cognitive dissonance they feel when challenged.
Gish gallop[edit]
Those the cult looks up to (the gurus running the grift) are in charge of defending the community. These gurus are faced with the impossible challenge of beating reality, and its nasty bias that favors logic, college-level math, and peer-reviewed, sound science, so the gurus resort in rhetorical tactics, especially Gish gallop. The tactic is also imitated by the cult members fighting off their cognitive dissonance.
Unified conspiracy theory[edit]
If the flat Earth was true, hiding it would require the most elaborate conspiracy in the entire world.
The conspiracy would employ tens of millions of people. It's obvious that we would need the involvement of every major government entity - especially (though by no means limited to) their militaries and almost 200[3] space agencies. Essentially, every professional and amateur astronomer, physicist, geologist, meteorologist, rocket scientist and engineer, architect, pilot and politician in the past five hundred years would have to be in on it. All work they put out, every course, lecture, seminar, and talk, every paper and book, every project, every video, would be built on a lie. It would also mean the Moon landings never happened. Who else would have to be involved? All shipping companies, all airline companies, any transnational company that moves their goods around the world, odometer manufacturers (who would be VERY DEEPLY involved), satellite TV providers. Oh, and let's not forget about cartographers. Furthermore, all of these people need staff, tools, facilities, entire supply chain systems, and they'd be producing meaningless junk, decade after decade.
This conspiracy would also be completely pointless. Life for the vast majority of the human population would not be changed in any way if the Earth were revealed tomorrow to be a giant hockey puck instead of a sphere an oblate spheroid. What would be the point of spending all of this time, effort and money into making people think that the shape of the Earth is different? If you ask a flat earther about this you won't get much of a response. Some might claim that it is "to hide God", which is stupid: there are much simpler ways of accomplishing that, like simply suppressing religion.
Revealed flat earth would not change the local politics, at all. We have unused resources sitting around us, right now, in much less adversarial conditions than the supposed Ice Wall (Antarctica on flerf model). On the other hand, would the the Ice Wall hide behind itself a fully automated luxury communism, there would be no need to oppress this world. If the resources were truly limitless, why not bring everyone there? If the point is to maximize global wealth disparity, why aren't people being shipped from the Ice Wall paradise to our world? In either case, millions of people would uphold this conspiracy without reaping any of its benefits, and not one of them is complaining about it. There are no flat Earth whistleblowers. No one concerned with the well-being of 3.5 billion poor people missing out on the resources. Not a single student is puzzled by and calling out the supposed indoctrination, or making noise when they finally drop the bomb: "We've been lying to you about everything your whole life." Nobody has fought the power. That is, until now.
The supposed, hundreds of years old, perfect plot, is now being exposed by a few high-school drop-outs making YouTube content. And for some reason, the co-conspiring governments don't want to deploy their literal assassination squads, like the ones in Russian Alpha group, and GRU Unit 29155,
Mossad's Kidon,
CIA's SAC,
or North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau
. Russia has murdered hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in a pointless war over resources, but disappearing the tally count of about 200,000 flerfs (or just their cult leaders) is too big of a hassle. Finding all targets at the same time wouldn't even be too hard, given that Flat Earth Dave's app tracks and leaks the precise geolocation of every flat earther using the app, whether they've opted in to its friend-finder feature or not.
Considering all this, it really goes to show how big of a tinfoil hat you'd have to be wearing in order to block out that much of reality.[4] Even fucking Alex Jones thinks flat earthers are ridiculous.
Projection[edit]
Last but not least, flat Earthers have an extreme tendency to hypocritically project everything wrong with their cult, and life, to their surroundings:
- Religion: They are not the ones relying on blind faith, it's the science that's a religion, and that's trying to hide… …God.
- Oppression: They are not the sheep being exploited by their cult leaders, we are.
- Individuality: They claim fierce independence, yet they parrot their leaders' thought terminating clichés.
- Orthodoxy: They're not pushing an agenda, they're just asking hard questions. Also, anyone questioning their world-view, (even gurus capable of integrity and introspection like Jeranism), is immediately branded a government shill.
- Source criticism: They're not the ones taking anything at face value, but TruthSeeker42069 knows what's up.
- Knowledge: In fact, all of science is wrong — except the part they managed to gain an intuitive grasp over during primary school. They're not too dumb to get the rest of it, "it's just where the lies begin".
- Reasoning: They don’t need to be told what’s true, they’ve got ‘common sense’, which is absolutely different from when the scientific community uses their head when building the body of knowledge.
- Testimony: They claim science is all about blindly trusting what others have written about, but the 1600 year old Bible is a 100% reliable source.
- Progress: Mainstream physics is a hoax — except when it's busy sputtering
atoms onto silicon wafers
to build processors that render the very videos questioning its validity.
What the Flat Earth movement is really about[edit]
“”The shape of the Earth might actually be the least important belief of Flat Earth.
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—Dan Olson[5] |
While debunking flerfs' lies hits all the right spots of fun and not too easy, all of it fails to address the nature of the Flat Earth movement. Dan Olson's video essay In Search of a Flat Earth discusses among other things the nature of Flat Earth, and it may very well be the greatest analysis of the cult out there. You should watch it at least until Part 2.[note 2]
In Search of a Flat Earth |
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Like Olson points out, "flat Earth aims to simplify world, the complexity of which has exploded". As Thomas Winship who wrote Zetetic Cosmogony (a corner-stone of flerf crankery) said, "Modern astronomical teachings affirms [—] that the stars and are worlds and suns, some of them equal in importance to our own Sun himself, and others vastly his superior; that these worlds, inhabited by sentient beings, are without number and occupy space boundless in extent and illimitable in duration" So the flerfs are also narcissistic and concerned about feeling of them and their God being the center of the world; If the world is bigger than mankind can ever explore, then we're not the point, and then there is no God, and then death will really mean my end, and that thought is scary.[note 3]
Flat earth is a cult, and with that comes the cults' power dynamics. The cult provides a simple system, where the truth is what the flat earthers make it out to be. The cult leaders state one must "empty their cup to be able to refill it", which signifies how fundamentally incompatible the belief system is, and how the cult expects entire rewriting of the individual's understanding. In the cult environment, the societal chaos is replaced by orthodoxy towards the central doctrine. As long as the doctrine is not challenged, it allows very lively brain-storming to fill the gaps and to explain why the cult's central thesis is true: simple "proofs" of why the Earth is flat, who are "they", and how and why are "they" hiding the true shape.[note 4]
Thus, flat Earth provides a liberation from the school-years era of "oppression", where wrong (or just dumb) ideas, or wrong connections between ideas, were called out. This creates a breeding-ground for crankery, and repels any, and all logical people. This in turn creates a walled garden for narcissistic grifters, to leech off money and admiration from uneducated, gullible, and desperate people. The cult's ultimate currency is not innovation, but loyalty, and in exchange, the marks (slang term for suckers) get to experience belonging, community, meaning, and (at long last,) a sense of superiority. The extreme anti-establishment nature repels any and all established education, which shields the central narrative. As Olson said, fact checking serves as a filter to keep counteracting forces out. This benefits the grifters and the marks enjoying their illusion.
The inconsistent and contradictory ideas do not matter to flerfs. The goal is not to establish the objective truth. Like QAnon, flat Earth treats facts (and lies) as game pieces to attain the real goal. As Olson points out, "flat earthers' goal is to un-explain the world, as real explanations impede with their politics". As Olson said about QAnon, "the goal is to find filler to justify support for authoritarian policies directed at people they already don't like", with the aim of making systemic issues go away by silencing those pointing them out.
As the true believer flerfs' goal is to "red pill everyone" to give them "personal sovereignty and newfound belief in God", Occam's razor is repurposed from "accept the simplest model that explain all phenomena", to "optimize the number of thought terminating clichés needed to deflect critique, and to avoid cognitive dissonance that would break group cohesion": a weaponized version.
However, as on organizational level modern flat Earth was never much more than an instance of the online grift, "redpilling everyone" mainly served to maximize the number of marks, and lack of action frustrated flerfs. Because of this, Flat Earth also served a function in the radicalization pipeline, and it did that exceedingly well.
The QAnon conspiracy promised "The Storm" and "The Great Awakening", basically a fascist new world order. As fascism is more or less just "society as a cult", many flerfs believe they can thrive in it with the one resource they have an endless supply of: loyalty. After QAnon nabbed most of the flerfs, the flat Earth movement has been a shadow of its former self, consisting mostly of active members' circle-jerk webinars and conventions, and the grifters operating on whoever chose to remain in the cult, or whoever happens to stop by on their way through the radicalization pipeline.
Relativity of wrong[edit]
Isaac Asimov used the idea of a flat Earth in his essay The Relativity of Wrong to make a point about the progress of scientific knowledge.[6] He pointed out that the notion of a flat Earth is wrong, but the idea of a spherical Earth is also wrong, as the shape of the earth is better described as an oblate spheroid (because the Earth is wider than it is tall, flattening out at the poles while bulging around the Equator). Asimov went on to say how these theories aren't equally wrong (and believing such a thing as a flat Earth is "wronger than wrong") but that they do have use.
An architect working on a small building site would have no use for "Spherical Earth Theory" and would assume the ground is flat, a designer of novelty globes wouldn't need to compensate for the oblateness of the earth, but those sending satellites into orbit do (in fact the distortion has quite a dramatic effect on inclined orbits).
Modern flat earthery tends to be not even wrong, however.
Flattening their arguments[edit]
Here's the situation: either all of established science is completely wrong, or all of time cube flat Earth theory is completely wrong. This isn't a false dilemma — the two mutually exclude one another! So, which one could it be? Well, take a wild guess.
Flat Earth debunk warm-up |
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Arguments for a flat Earth[edit]
Before proceeding, keep in mind that the following arguments are, in fact, quite real. Remember that for your sanity's sake.
But roads are flat![edit]


Our first facepalm. A common trope in flat earther literature is that roads, canals, etc. are built flat — not taking into account the curvature of the earth.[8] There are a number of issues with this:
- Surveyors ignore curvature when surveying a project with relatively short baselines because the error from ignoring curvature is minuscule. They do, however, consider curvature in creating small-scale maps.
- For a mile-long baseline, the drop will only be 8 inches. The length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle with one leg of 5280 feet and the other leg of 8 inches is 5280.00004209 feet. The error in length is 0.013 millimeters. See also:
Curvature drop calculus | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Using the exact equation for curvature drop from Advanced Earth Curvature Calculator
with
where
we get the following table:
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- This error is so small that if you built a road going all the way around the earth, using one mile long baselines, the total error in length would amount to 1.05 feet.
- Surveyors can measure Earth's curvature on roads using "reciprocal vertical/zenith angles".[9][10][11] That is, measuring the zenith angles between two points. "If the earth is flat the sum of the zenith angles will be 180°", but the sum of theses angles is more than 180° and "the distance between the two points can be used to calculate the radius of the earth".[12]
- Some construction projects actually do take into account the curvature of the earth, such as Japan's Proton Accelerator Complex[13][14] and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).[15]
- Some roads can be seen curving around the Earth surface, for example Lake Pontchartrain Causeway
[16] and the interstate 80 of the Bonneville Salt Flats
(how ironic).[17] Flerfs like Dubay have claimed there's too little curvature at the start, and too much curvature at the end, proving he doesn't understand what the "²" in "8 in / mi²" formula means: Exponential growth.
- Of course, those useless projects are all just designed by people in on the conspiracy. Checkmate, losers!
But water is always level![edit]


1. See above.
2. Flat earthers wrongly assume that a "level" surface is the same as a "flat" surface and they often use a dictionary entry as evidence for it. But of course, just like creationists (which they often are) misusing the word "theory", flat earthers ignore the context in which they are talking (basically physics, topology and surveying). Merriam-webster.com defines a "level" as: "conforming to the curvature of the liquid parts of the earth's surface". The thefreedictionary.com defines a "level surface" as: "(Physics) an equipotential surface at right angles at every point to the lines of force". As in civilengineeringx.com is explained: "a surface parallel to the mean spheroid of the earth is called a level surface and the line drawn on the level surface is known as a level line. Hence all points lying on a level surface are equidistant from the centre of Earth." So yeah, water is indeed level and not flat. This point has been understood for centuries and Universal Cyclopaedia from 1894 put it this way:
“”A level surface is ordinarily conceived as a plane, but it really represents a certain equilibrium of attractive and rotational forces, and is always curved. As the surface of the earth is rugose, and as the bodies of rock immediately beneath the surface vary in density, and therefore in attraction, the level surface has local irregularities, undulating gently in every part. When account is taken of these undulations the level surface is called a geoid, to distinguish it from the ideal terrestrial spheroid to which it approximates.[18]
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3. If we were to assume that water is always "level" (that is, as flat, never curving and always at the same altitude) then on a flat Earth the ocean tides would be impossible. In all parts of the world, they should rise and lower equally. This is obviously not the case. So, even on Discworld, water would still be not "level". Nevermind that flatties don't have coherent explanations for the tides. To quote Bill O'Reilly: "Tide goes in; tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that".
4. See Alfred Russell Wallace's improved replication of Rowbotham's Bedford Level Experiment.
5. See Dan Olson's Lake Minnewanka Curve Experiment.
6. See Jesse Kozlowski's experiment below:
Cooper River Lake Curve Experiment |
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Jesse Kozlowski is a surveyor who has been debunking flat Earthers by basically doing his job. As mentioned in the prior section, Kozlowski uses "reciprocal vertical/zenith angles" to prove the curvature of the Earth. In this case, by measuring with a theodolite the reciprocal angles of two different targets at 7,311 feet from each other in the Cooper River Lake with the same elevation, using the water as the level reference. On a flat Earth the angles of these targets would sum up not more than 180º, and thus there would be no reciprocal vertical/zenith angles. However, Kozlowski measured that the sum up angle of these two targets was higher than 90° with a zenith angle higher than 1º. |
- TLDR:
True level only exists in cartoons |
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One common escape hatch that flat earthers do, is claim that "water can't bend or stick to a sphere". More on that here.
But Kansas is flatter than a pancake![edit]
Often cited is a topographical paper where a geodetic survey (which is “a survey of a large land area in which corrections are made for the curvature of the earth’s surface” by the way...)[19] was done on Kansas and established it has a flatness ratio of 0.9997 while a pancake comes in at 0.957.[20]
Once again, flat earthers don't think big nor understand scales. Kansas is 410 miles wide, which is 1.65% of Earth's circumference, or just 5.93º of arc. Yeah... There can be pancakes less flat than that... In any case, what geologists mean by “flat” is often “smooth”, as the opposite of "relief".[21] To compare on a bigger scale, if Earth were shrunk to bowling-ball size, Mount Everest would be about half the size of a grain of salt (0.15 mm).[22]
But the Sun is inside the clouds![edit]
In the search for any proof of a local small local sun, flat earthers have encountered pictures and videos where the Sun appears to go through some clouds while also being partially covered by other clouds. This therefore proves the Sun must be as low as those clouds and inside them!
Yes... They are serious about this.
Some clouds are thicker than others, thus, some clouds let more sunlight go through them. Thus, the illusion of the Sun being inside a cloud. Once again, flat earthers are confused by the Sun glare and camera exposure.[23]
But even without analyzing these pictures, with just an itty bitty tiny amount of critical thinking, we can bring some more glaring problems than the Sun itself:
- At those small altitudes why hasn't anything crashed to it? Do pilots swing and miss it on their routes?
- According to this claim the Sun would be 10 miles up. But many flat earthers (like Samuel Rowbotham
) have said it's 3000 miles up! And some even outside the dome!!![note 5]
- And, lastly, if the Sun is inside those clouds, WHY DOESN'T IT EVAPORATE THEM INSTANTLY? IS THE SUN COLD???
But star trail photography proves that the earth doesn't move![edit]

Although the theory isn't necessarily geocentrist (as one can technically still adopt a heliocentric worldview while holding to a belief in a flat Earth), flat earthers almost always fall into that camp.
One particular claim is that long-duration star trail photographs do not show any movement of the stars other than that caused by the Earth's rotation, the flat earther's reasoning being that, if the Earth is moving so fast around the Sun, the stars should appear smudged. This claim is symptomatic of all flat earthers' false assumptions about the distance between us and celestial objects, or their inability or lack of willingness to perform basic math. This is most likely because Spherical trigonometry and astro-trigonometry are exact sciences, which only work in a spherical environment.[24] Assume a star trail photograph of the nearest star is taken for 12 hours on a 10,000-pixel-wide camera. The Earth would travel about 1,287,000 km during that time. The nearest naked-eye visible star is Alpha Centauri, which is 4.34 light-years (41 trillion kilometers) away. The star would appear to move 0.018 pixels.[note 6]
The stars in Flat earth model run into all sorts of problems:
- Only a subset of stars is visible, anywhere: There are 2 points to capture star trails and see a star that appears to not move in the sky. These are the famous Polaris in the north and Sigma Octantis in the south (though neither lies exactly on our celestial axis, and in fact neither are permanent. In the Egyptian's time the North Star was actually Thuban and not Polaris due to wobbles in the Earth's rotation). All the stars in the sky rotate around these 2 points which are completely opposite of each other. These are called the Northern and Southern circumpolar stars.
- Northern stars' trails would appear elliptical: Due to the perspective, star trail photography on northern hemisphere would have circular paths only below north pole. The further from the north pole one moves, the more elliptical the star trails would become. Still, flerfs have zero issue claiming the stars just rotate on different axis depending on latitude, and provide no explanation how that's possible. Or some, like Eric Dubay lie with images that have been stretched to make them appear elliptical. For comparison, here are originals: top left, middle left, bottom left, top right, middle right, and bottom right (video, see 00:11).
- Flat Earth south is in all directions: A person looking at Sigma Octantis from South America would have to be looking in the opposite direction of a person looking at the same star in Australia.
- Southern star trails don't work: The flat Earthers claim the reason Sigma Octantis shows up in all directions, is it takes turns in where it appears. As night time moves around the pizza land, the stars follow it. In other words, in the flat Earth model, Sigma Octantis orbits the north pole. This completely debunks the flat earth model, as the southern sky star trails show Sigma Octantis remains relatively still.
- Star trails switch direction on southern hemisphere: While star trails in the northern hemisphere show that stars revolve around Polaris counterclockwise, in the southern hemisphere they revolve around Sigma Octantis clockwise. Also, if the camera is looking at the celestial equator, the stars move in parallel straight lines. All of this can be easily explained by the rotation on a round Earth, but it is impossible in a flat Earth "dome". (Even Answers in Genesis admits this much![25])
- Equatorial mounts are needed: Contrary to what flerfs like Dubay quoting William Carpenter have claimed, astronomers have to compensate for the curvature of the earth in the form of equatorial mounts,
and have done so since the late 1700s. Equatorial mounts are used for polar alignment
in which the axis of rotation of the telescope is aligned with the axis of rotation of the Earth, and rotated in the opposite direction to eliminate apparent movement. On a flat Earth, the polar axis would always be directly perpendicular to the plane of the planet - but a round Earth requires it to be tilted at an angle equal to the latitude of the observer. See Dave McKeegan's video for more in depth explanation why equatorial mounts make zero sense on a flat Earth.



- Stellar parallax exists: Over longer time periods astronomers can observe the apparent movement of nearby stars caused by Earth's orbit around the Sun, though it is quite small. Still, stellar parallax would not exist at all if Earth was the flat immovable place flerfs claim it is. In astronomy, the parsec
is defined as the distance where a star will appear to move back and forth by one arc-second over the course of a year, meaning they measure the precise differences in angles needed to aim a telescope directly at certain star while Earth is on either side of the Sun during its full orbit (for example aiming on the summer solstice and winter solstice and calculating the parallax based on those minute differences). While light-years are what the public generally thinks in when thinking of astronomical differences are are far, far more widely used in popular science publications, parsecs are the preferred unit of distance by astronomers due the ease of making calculations with them, acting as a sort of a metric light-year (coincidentally, the ratio between the length of a foot and meter (1:3.28) is almost the same as between the light-year and parsec (1:3.26)).
But Polaris can be seen from the Tropic of Capricorn![edit]
Cries Eric Dubay.
To Quote Astronomy magazine's article on the topic, "Under typical atmospheric conditions, this adds 0.57° to an object’s altitude, so Polaris would barely show up from 1.23° south latitude."
“”Although Polaris is also known as the North Star, it doesn’t lie precisely above Earth’s North Pole. If it did, Polaris would have a declination of exactly 90°. Instead, our navigational beacon currently has a declination of 89.34°. The difference, 0.66°, would be Polaris’ peak altitude if viewed from the equator, and the latitude south of the equator from which the star would scrape the horizon — if Earth had no atmosphere. But our blanket of air refracts starlight, causing an object near the horizon to appear higher than it really is. Under typical atmospheric conditions, this adds 0.57° to an object’s altitude, so Polaris would barely show up from 1.23° south latitude.
|
—Astronomy Magazine[26] |
So Dubay is just blatantly lying. The burden of proof is on him, and he's free to travel to southern hemisphere to make history by being the first one ever to witness Polaris from the Tropic of Capricorn.
But all stars gradually decline when moving away from the North pole![edit]
Says Eric Dubay. Let's see what really happens, first on a hemispherical dome (perfect sphere cut in half), and then a flattened one. In all cases, the observation will be done from the edge of the firmament.
Hemispherical dome
Let's assume the pizza land's radius, i.e. distance from north pole to firmament is 20,000 km. If Polaris is attached to the firmament, it will be visible at
angle. It will not disappear.
The distance at which Polaris would appear to be at 10° above the horizon, is
The distance at which Polaris would appear to be at 1 arc-minute above the horizon, is
Flattened firmament
But perhaps God doesn't have to care about structural integrity, and the peak of the firmament with Polaris glued to it, is right above the Sun, at 3,000 miles, or 4,828 km. Now, Polaris will be seen at
angle. It will not disappear.
The distance at which Polaris would appear to be at 10° above the horizon, is , which is outside the firmament.
The distance at which Polaris would appear to be at 1 arc-minute above the horizon, is which is 43 times further away than the Moon in the globe model.
If you think this problem can be made to go away, by saying the firmament is much larger, then that only raises polaris, and it should appear higher on all latitudes.
But Sigma Octantis can not be seen with publicly available telescopes![edit]
Claims Eric Dubay. {wpl|Sigma_Octantis|Sigma Octantis} has apparent magnitude of 5.47. The Limiting magnitude of stars in dark suburban areas is about 5. Thus, Sigma Octantis is barely visible with naked eye. As explained here, the star can be photographed with roughly 30 second exposure time. Also, telescopes not only zoom in, they also gather more light than the human eye, making objects brighter. Thus, Sigma Octantis that's already barely visible with our tiny pupils, absolutely can be seen with a store bought telescope.
But the moonlight is cold![edit]
Dubay tried to describe moonlight as pale and cold, and based this on the idea that when its concentrated with a lens, it doesn't exhibit the slightest sign of heat.
As explained by Henk Schuring here, like Earth, the Moon receives about 340W/m², and it reflects from that roughly 8%, or, 27W/m². That energy emits in all directions, and once it reaches Earth, approximately 0.00044 W/m² is left. The Moon lights up in thermal camera videos too, so the heat coming from the Moon is not nothing, like Dubay claims.
The flerfs have claimed moonlight actually cools Earth. They did an experiment about this which showed lower temperatures under moonlight, than under a canopy. However, as explained by Dave Farina [here], and demonstrated by GreaterSapien here, the experiment was a faulty party trick as it did not control for other effects by making similar temperature comparisons during the eclipse. The issue with the experiment was, it didn't account for the fact the canopy was trapping warm air, that's lighter, under itself.
To argue his case, Eric Dubay — for perhaps the first time in his life — cited an actual journal, The Lancet, that in 1856 published an article titled "Morbid Phenomena of Lunar Light". Dubay however conveniently left out the fact, that on the first page of the article, right column, line 7, it says the distance of moon is 240,000 miles. So clearly something is wrong with that article. Most of the articles published in early decades of The Lancet were checked by the editor, Thomas Wakley, who was surgeon, not a physicist. Thus, perhaps it was not such a bad idea journals standardized peer-reviewing published articles in the 1950s?
To summarize, the moonlight has no cooling effect, and it's warming effect is so small it's only detectable with purpose-built instruments.
But the Moon is transparent![edit]
Flerfs often claim the Sun is transparent because you can't see all of it all the time. The lit up part of the Moon is always on the side of Sun. The part of Moon that doesn't get light cast upon it, stays in the shadow. What remains in the shadow receives very little or no light from the Sun, and because the Moon is blocking the stars, those lights do not come through either. Because of this, that part of the Moon is roughly as black as space. Nothing is discriminating the shadow of the Moon from the nonexistent light coming from deep space, so both get colored blue because blue light waves from the Sun get scattered more than other colors. Some parts of the Moon's surface will scatter some light, and so those parts appear to hover in the sky-blue.
Eric Dubay has claimed the Moon sometimes shows stars through it. This is laughably bad. Firstly, the sky is full of stars, why is only one visible? If this is the case, Why aren't flerfs posting hundreds of videos showing this every time the Moon is visible and it's not full moon? A much more plausible explanation is a hot pixel, or a satellite the solar panel of which is reflecting light from the Sun. This happens all the time.
But there are eclipses where both the Moon and the Sun are visible so it can't be Earth's shadow that eclipses the Moon![edit]
Yes, these are called selenelions, and it happens with every eclipse. It just requires that the observer happens to stand in a spot perpendicular to the Sun-Earth-Moon line, i.e. where-ever it's sunrise or sunset during the eclipse. Those people can then see both objects because atmospheric refraction bends the light from behind the curve.
Dubay has claimed the refraction can't bend Earth's shadow over the Moon. This is willful misinterpretation if not straight up deceit on Dubay's part. The light around things bends. Shadow is absence of light, so shadow does not bend.
During the lunar eclipse, the atmospheric refraction causes lights to bend from the edges of the Earth, and the light that bends the least, is red, as it's in the lowest visible wavelength. The rainbow also bends the red light the least so it's on top. Red light doesn't bend enough around Earth to avoid Moon, so it hits the Moon coloring it Red. See this video for more information. The moon will reflect the red light it receives, and that light gets bent back around Earth to the observer, who sees the moon higher than it is. For an illustration, see here.
Dubay also lies some more by saying the Selenelion should be visible 180 degrees around Earth — basically from the Sun's zenith point during the total lunar eclipse Again, it can only be seen at the points that are 90 degrees from the lunar eclipse.
Finally Dubay misrepresents the "8 inches per mile squared formula" — the crudest approximation available, that doesn't take into account refraction, and that works poorly on longer distances such as the radius of Earth — as an applicable formula to evaluate the Selenelion, which results purely from refraction. The correct formula is provided under "Curvature drop formulas" drop-textbox of this section.
But the horizon is always at eye level![edit]
Rather, it looks like it is. Ignoring for a moment the fact that an eye-level horizon would have to rise two meters over the distance between itself and the observer, the thing about Earth is it's actually quite big (no, seriously!).
There are two kinds of the horizon: Astronomical horizon (the horizon at the eye level) and true horizon (the line that visually divides the Earth and the sky). Because the Earth is a sphere, the true horizon always lies below the astronomical horizon, or the eye-level. The angle between them is the dip of the horizon. The higher the observer, the larger the dip of the horizon.
Actually, if you're ever out at sea, you can quite easily observe that it is, in fact, not at eye level. From your eye, point an object toward the horizon, then keep it stationary and look along it the other way. You should be looking at a point slightly above the opposite horizon, demonstrating that it really is slightly below eye level.
Indeed, from a height of 3 metres above sea level, assuming an Earth radius of 6371 km, the horizon is about 0° 3′ 20″ (0.0556° if you don't speak arcminutes) below eye level.[note 7]
If we are at a significant altitude from the surface (like on top of a mountain or on an airplane) we can observe the dip of the horizon with a precise instrument like a theodolite[note 8] (or even a bottle of water for crying out loud!).[27]
Videos showing horizon drop |
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But the distance of horizon is determined on clear weather by the power of our vision![edit]
This comes from Eric Dubay.
So, here is some 4K drone footage from a very clear day in Fiji. Notice that—
- From the ground it can be observed the drone is moving backwards, increasing distance to the horizon.
- The drone is gaining altitude, while rising up. This also slightly grows the distance to the sea's surface at the horizon.[note 9]
- From the ground it can be seen that more objects appear to left and right of the field of view, thus, the drone is not optically zooming.
- Since the drone is moving backwards, and since it's not optically zooming, there's nothing that would make it see further.
- Therefore, by Dubay's logic, the horizon should be retreating.
And yet, the video shows, that as the drone gains altitude, the space between the furthest cliffs on left, and the horizon, quadruples. This is only explained if the drone brings more sea into vision from behind the curve.
But the asteroids are fake![edit]
Because it makes very little sense heavy objects fly through the firmament (that supposedly keeps out the heavenly waters above), flat earthers do not believe asteroids are real. E.g., Mark Sargent has said they were fired by the powers be, out of boredom. As a proof of this, flat earthers have circulated images of mysterious spheres that fell from the sky, and that even made the news. The flatties claimed these are actually the thing people see when they see asteroids, and that the hollow cavity of the spheres had contained the fuel that powers the flight, and/or that burns to create an illusion of an asteroid burning during its atmospheric entry.
The spheres turned out to be upper stage Hydrazine propellant bladder tanks. The ones that look like giant balls of yarn, are composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), that wrap carbon fiber around the tank to increase it's tensile strength, while saving weight.
Agena, an upper stage used to place satellites into orbit has its Hydrazine tanks visible. Installed COPVs can be seen here.
But the Coriolis effect is fake![edit]
The effect is real, but some equatorial tourist traps have grifters performing crank demonstrations of it. Tubs do not demonstrate the Coriolis effect, they only show which way the chaotic system caused the whirlpool to form. The real Coriolis force affects winds, and the winds affect the ocean currents.
For a brief explanation what the Coriolis Effect is, see this video. The Coriolis force is the result from Earth's rotation, so naturally, flerfs will deny it exists at all. Some will argue it is not a real force, and they're right in that it is what's known as a fictitious force. However, that doesn't make it, or its cause, any less real.
Showing the Coriolis effect from the ground is next to impossible, because even the largest tornadoes sometimes rotate in the opposite direction. Commercial airplanes don't fly near the storms, so the option remaining is satellites. Weather satellite feeds show the cyclones rotating counter-clockwise on northern hemisphere, and clockwise on southern hemisphere, proving Coriolis effect without breaking a sweat. As always, flatties deny those feeds as CGI, because of course they do.[note 10]
[edit]




Of course, pilots are taught and trained to navigate on spherical Earth [30][note 11] and they openly admit Flat Earth is stupid [31] (especially when they are not harassed by them). [32]
Global Navigation for Pilots - Read it and weep Flat Earthers. |
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Flat earther's "proof" of pilots using a "Flat Earth map" for navigation is showing how flight paths on their map make "more sense" than some other map projection. This argument completely ignores:
- The logic (shortest path between origin and destination) behind great-circle routes
orbiting Earth's center (which only make sense on a globe), which e.g., the Mercator projection shows as an arc.[note 12] For long flights, this deviation from a "straight line" becomes quite notable; transcontinental flights often go near or through the polar regions, since that's the shortest route on a spherical Earth.[33][34]
- The market behind airline flights (there are fewer long-distance direct flights because they are expensive, especially in the southern hemisphere, where only 10–12% of the global population live, so there's low demand).
The argument also backfires for flight routes in the southern hemisphere, because while a globe's latitude rings constrict approaching the pole, the Flat Earth stretches them longer near the rim, thus making those routes longer than they are.[35]
This also applies to sailing navigation. Ships also follow such routes when they can, but of course they have to adjust for land barriers, ocean currents and so on. All this is constant disproof of a flat Earth, since if Earth was flat these routes would be longer and take more travel time.[note 13] Of course, that's what They want you to think. The only real flat earther responses to this are just flat-out denial, or assertion that every single pilot, ship captain, and so on is part of the massive conspiracy and faking all these itineraries and end up wasting tons of fuel and mileage.[note 14]
Consider for example Operational Navigational Charts:
Operational Navigational Chart |
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Operational Navigational Charts |
In the end, cartography would be trivially easy on a flat Earth, but the fact that no accurate scaled map of the whole world exits (and can't ever exist) debunks it by itself (See also the failed International Map of the World project.)
[edit]
Claims Eric Dubay. {wpl|Transglobe_Expedition|The Transglobe Expedition|} did just that in 1979-1982.
But NASA's secret documents admit the Earth is flat and non-rotating![edit]

These cited NASA (apparently NASA is a trustworthy source for flat earthers now...) "secret" documents (that can easily be found on Google) often are flight dynamics studies and simulations from the 90-80s[38][39] or even the 50s.[40] These papers stated those assumptions to simplify their mathematical calculations (especially since they didn't have fancy computers like today) as a form of an ideal model
.
“”The need for linear models of aircraft for the analysis of vehicle dynamics and control law design is well known. These models are widely used, not only for computer applications but also for quick approximations and desk calculations.[38]
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Ideal models are very useful and widespread in science (see for example an ideal gas or an ideal pendulum
). Tho technically wrong, they are accurate enough for practical purposes at that scale (see again: Relativity of wrong).
For example, some other assumptions are "a rigid aircraft of constant mass" and a "stationary atmosphere",[38][39] which neither exists.[41] The documents might as well have assumed a spherical cow and flat earthers would believe it too. Ironically, these papers also assume gravity, which (spoilers!) flatties don't believe...
In any case, there are flight dynamics that assume spherical models too,[42] so there isn't really a point here, just a red herring.
But the radio waves can travel too far![edit]
In his Feb. 5, 2025 crank video Eric Dubay discussed Guglielmo Marconi's Sept. 1930 radio transmission from Poldhu, UK,
to Sydney, Australia. Dubay claimed high transmission power and sophisticated antennas alone, allowed radio signals to travel the 12,000 mile distance.[note 15] Dubay then turned his crankery to 11 and spouted this insanity:
“”Using the official Earth curve calculator, the calculation determined that based on a spherical Earth model, the receiving antenna in Australia would have to be approximately 7,893 miles below the horizon. This prompted me to investigate the feasibility of such an extremely distant radio transmission scenario using an AI Chatbot, based on a spherical earth model.
Question: Can you envision a scenario where radio signal could be transmitted and received successfully, despite being 7,893 miles below the spherical Earth's horizon? Answer: The concept of a radio signal traveling 7,893 miles below the horizon of the spherical Earth, is far beyond the capabilities of radio signal transmission for this distance. The curvature of the Earth poses a physical limitation under direct line of sight for radio signals. As the Earth curves, objects or signals beyond the horizon are not visible or receivable due to the obstructed view. While techniques like antenna height, signal amplification, and atmospheric can extend the range of radio signals to some extent, they can not overcome the fundamental limitation imposed by the Earth's curvature, especially at distances this remote. |
—Eric Dubay[43] |
Dubay provided no evidence his language model had even produced the answer. However, as explained by page 15 of this paper,
“”In 1923, the state of the art Marconi super-station in Australia broadcast on ultra long wavelength, from 20 steel masts, each 244 metres (800ft) high, and 1000kW power output. A year later, Marconi sent transatlantic transmissions from Poldhu to New York using a short wave of 37 metres and just 17kW of power. Short waves, it turns out, are reflected remarkably well by the ionosphere.
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Dubay is basically lying his ass off, and at the same time, shifting blame to a language model for getting it wrong, if he even used one. This is why academics never rely on language models when checking facts.
The technique of bouncing radio signals off the ionosphere is called a skywave (or, skip), and it's been used since the 1920s. Also, having reserached Marconi, Dubay should have learned, that Marconi was the first to show radios could communicate beyond the curve.
But there are whistleblowers![edit]
In his crank video about whistleblowers Eric Dubay quote mines presents following flat Earth "whistleblowers":
- Robert Simmon
Robert Simmon, the creator of the 2002 Blue Marble
image. Dubay claimed Simmon had said that "NASA's Earth images are not photographed, but in fact, photoshopped, and created completely through CGI artistry. My job is mostly taking data sets and making pictures out of them. The Earth is photoshopped, but is has to be". Similarly in another interview, he summarized: "My role is to make imagery from Earth sciences data. I turn data into pictures". The reason this is done was explained over ten years ago in a Quartz article. Briefly, NASA's earth observing satellites are in low earth or geostationary orbit, so they can't snap a photo of the entire Earth. Individual frames are combined in an image editor, creating a "flat map" to wrap it around a ball, and the gaps in sea that result from this photo are filled in. So already lying about the satellite imagery being CGI. Ironically, Simmon admitted that the "hard part" of all of this was making that "flat map" of the entire (we wonder why would that be hard on flat Earth).[44] So. Not a great start, Eric.
- Matthew Boylan (AKA Math Powerland)
Dubay describes Boylan as follows: "A hyper-realist painter, and vocal flat Earther, who claims to be a former NASA Operational Graphics Manager, has also blown the whistle. Saying that NASA's sole reason for existence, is to propagandize the public, and promote the false heliocentric model of the cosmos. He claims to have done various projects, photoshopping images of the Earth, stars, and planets, and has relayed anecdotes about meetings with NASA officials where they openly admitted the entire hoax, and laughed hysterically at the brainwashed zombies who unquestioningly believe their televisions."
Boylan's stand-up routine condemned NASA for creating concept art for its missions. NASA has a long list of images created by artists. Each of those is marked with "(Artist's Concept)". If Boylan thought that was lying to the public, it's on him. Having brought nothing with him as a proof of the conspiracy, leaves us with with Boylan's word. How much is that worth? Boylan seems like someone with the integrity of a man who makes fun of crippled people.
Also, as shown by the documentary Behind the Curve, given that there's a massive feud between Boylan and Mark Sargent wrt the cult's internal power dynamics. The documentary explains, how Boylan, who titled himself "the originator", larped a pretentious artist who didn't give interviews, and who completely lost his marbles after Sargent took his place as the face of the movement. Boylan started calling Sargent a government shill. To quote Sargent: "Matt wanted to be the king of flat Earth, but he wanted to do it in his own terms." Boylan became a drama queen who rejected invitations to the cult's meetings, and who posted rants that accused Sargent of working for Warner Brothers that "has a deal with pentagon and the CIA". According to the filmmakers, Boylan refused to appear in the film without "receiving $5000, 12% of profits, creative control, a guarantee that he'd be featured in 25-50% of the film, and that Neflix support his unverified claim that Mark Sargent is secretly a Warner Brothers executive using an alias." The filmmakers continued: "We were unable to meet his demands."
This shows Boylan has been more concerned about what's in it for him, and getting back at those who try to outshine him, than collaborating and exposing the "lie". It's almost like he knows it's a grift.
In the film, Boylan claimed he was the one who originally inspired Edward Snowden to blow the whistle. Snowden, who left his girlfriend and upper middle-class life, who actually endangered his life to reveal an actual conspiracy, who delivered documents to journalists, and who has shown he doesn't tolerate grifters, might disagree with Boylan's assessment.
- Igor Petrovitš Volk
Dubay: "In a live 2014 television interview with Bulgarian News-7, soviet cosmonaut Igor Petrovitš Volk, awarded the hero of the Soviet Union medal, said outright, that, quote: ' We have never been to space, and if somebody claims otherwise, it is not true '."
As can be seen from the full interview (with automatically generated subtitles on), the topic is existence of extraterrestial life. Both the interviewer and Petrovich clearly show they have a tongue-in-cheek, and the context of what Petrovich said, is clearly "we do not talk about what we see in space and if anyone asks, we deny even having been there". The context was not that humans have never been to space.
- Buzz Aldrin
Dubay: "Buzz Aldrin, visibly inebriated in a 2015 interview with an eight-year-old girl named Zoey, at the National Book Festival in Washington DC, was asked ' Why hasn't nobody been to the moon in such a long time? ' After a pause, he answered, That's not an eight-year-old's question, that's my question. I want to know, but I think I know. Because we didn't go there, and that's the way it happened. And if it didn't happen, it's nice to know why it didn't happen, so in the future, if we want to keep doing something, we need to know why something stopped in the past that we wanted to keep it going."
The quote is accurate, but a) the emphasized word gives already disproves what Dubay is implying, and b) he's quote-mining as usual, and lies by omission. The full answer continues:
"Umm. Money. Is a good thing. If you want to buy new things, new rockets, instead of keep doing the same thing over, then it's going to cost more money, and other things need more money too, so having achieved what the president wanted us to do,[note 16] and then what thousands, millions of people in America, and millions of people around the world" — You know when we toured around the world after we came back, the most fascinating observation as we -- was signs that said "we did it", not just us, not just America, but we, the world, different country, they felt like they were part of what we were able to do and that made us feel very good.
Last but certainly not least, were Aldrin a flat Earth whistleblower, would he have punched a "fellow activist" in the fucking face?
- Mirosław Hermaszewski
Dubay: "Even more recently, in a live 2019 television interview, the first and last Polish astronaut and national hero Mirosław Hermaszewski, 40 years after his flight to space when asked ' you have been there, is the earth really a sphere hanging in outer space? ', he shockingly replied ' Earth is flat, as some have suspected. I didn't expect this question, but I assure you it is flat. '"
As FlatEarth.ws points out:
"In the interview, he received some ridiculous questions, and he answered them with equally ridiculous answers in a joking tone, including the question at the end of the interview where he was asked if Earth is flat. The General was surprised by the question, but he decided to play along and answered “it is flat” for a hilarious ending. […] Unfortunately, as with many other cases, flat-Earthers are not aware they are being ridiculed in the interview, and take the General’s statement as serious."
As can be seen on the video, the journalist interviewing Hermaszewski asks him if he ever came across a UFO, to which Hermaszewski responds with "I can't tell you everything, especially not on camera", but he fails to keep his straight face. The next question is about the shape of the world, to which Hermaszewski replies "it's flat".[note 17]
Arguments for a round Earth[edit]
This isn't an exhaustive list, but a collection of arguments that don't answer flat Earthers' questions, and that don't refute their more narrow arguments.
The Sun's apparent size stays almost constant year-round in analemmas[edit]
An analemma is a diagram that shows the position of a celestial object on the sky at the same time of the day, every n days. The diagram can be created as a composite image that combines individual photos of the Sun at the same time over a year. The movement of the Sun in the analemma is caused by the Earth tilting on its axis, shifting the position of the observer relative to the sun.
In the flat Earth model the Sun is 32 miles in diameter, and 3000 miles high. With a little bit of math we learn that the Sun moving from one tropic to the other, would change the angular size of the Sun by 45.23%.
However, as can clearly be seen from the timelapses, the Sun remains fairly the same size over the course of a year. This alone debunks the flat Earth model.
In reality, the Sun's diameter is 865,000 miles,[45] and it's closest distance (perihelion) is 91,400,000 miles, and farthest distance (aphelion) is 94,500,000 miles.
This results in the size change of roughly 3.85%, which is consistent with the observations of small changes in Sun's size in the composite images.
The sun's angular size change math for flat earth |
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1. The Angular size formula
Where d is diameter of the Sun (32 miles) and h is distance from the observer to the Sun. 2. The distances: (directly above one tropic) (directly above the opposite tropic 3222 miles away.) 3. Angular size difference: (closest point) (farthest point) 4. Difference in angular size between 0.61° and 0.42° is roughly
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The Sun's angular size change math for globe earth |
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2. The Sun's angular size at perihelion:
3. The Sun's angular size at aphelion:
4. Angular size change is
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The sunset can be re-experienced by gaining altitude[edit]
The Flat Earth model states that the sunset results from the Sun moving away from us. Yet, we can easily bring the Sun back into view by going only higher:
Flat Earthers claim the reason we can see further as we rise higher, is because the change in perspective increases the angular size of the objects on the ground. This completely fails to explain the Sun re-appearing. In the flat Earth model, the Sun is obviously always higher than the drone, thus, increasing altitude would actually reduce the angular size. If you don't believe us, try filming the bottom of your table, and raise the camera slowly: do you see more of that bottom?
Eric Dubay shared a video that gives the impression that Sun can be zoomed back into view, but the high precipitation level is creating some extreme blooming. The video fails because it did not use a solar filter to remove the bloom. This is of course objectively false anyway, as demonstrated by Wolfie6020 with — once the flerfs' go-to DSLR — the Nikon P900:
Flat Earth - P900 Maximum zoom does not change the time of Sunset |
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Below is the side-by-side comparison of the original footage. |
Mountains cast shadows to clouds only on a globe[edit]
A photo taken by Reddit user PCloadletter26, shows a sunrise, that casts Mount Rainier's shadow to the clouds. If the Earth was flat, the Sun would never be above the cloudss.
In his rant, Eric Dubay tries to claim the that the sunlight was reflected from the Earth's surface to clouds. The photo is taken from 47°14'51"N 122°26'07"W. This begs the question, what is causing the specular reflections? The nearest body of water due East, is Lake Michigan at 1700 miles (2,700 km).
In one illustration (bottom left) Dubay tried to claim that the shadow could be drawn to the clouds by a Sun that's above the mountaintop. This makes no sense, as in that case the Sun would just light the cloud. The shadow would only be cast to the ground. The light behind the mountain does not hit the mountain before it transits through the cloud so there won't be a shadow in the cloud either. Dubay then constructed a massive strawman about sunrise casting a growing upside down shadow that doesn't break shape as the Sun gets higher. This is bullshit of course, as seen in the video below:
Mount Rainier sunrise |
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The moon only works on a globe[edit]

In the Flat Earth model, the moon revolves above the Earth. The moon's declination ranges from +28.72° to -28.72°. Thus, as the moon transits over the flat Earth, different people could observe different sides of the moon at any given time. Furthermore, on the equator, people could observe the moon's leading and trailing sides as it passes over them, with every subsequent trailing side shot showing more of the top and hiding more from the bottom.
Moon face angle measurements show Earth is a globe |
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We can easily show the Moon's angle depends only on the latitude. First, we'll first grab a screenshot of the Moon from two timelapses from two known locations:
An image editor will show the Santa Cruz horizon is tilted 0.544° counter-clockwise, so we correct it first. We then tilt the photos according to their latitudes:
And would you look at that: |
Some flerfs argue that the reason everyone sees the same face of the moon, is because it's two-dimensional like a large pizza. This would mean people would due to perspective, see it as elliptic whenever it's not right above their head.[note 18]
The reason why The Moon is sometimes seen upside down is according to Dubay, that the Moon spins around its axis as it transits over the night sky. This is an absolutely ridiculous claim. Were it the case, all these time-lapses these individual words link to, should show at least a little bit of rotation.
Dubay has claimed the Moon can't be reflective, because then it would only reflect sunlight from a single point on the sphere. This assumes a perfect, mirror polished planet, which it obviously isn't. There is another type of reflection called diffuse reflection, where the light is scattered at many angles due to the rough surface. The overwhelming majority of surfaces we see are such.
Dubay also co-signed Bible's claim that the Moon is self-luminescent, which is obviously not the case, as a self-luminescent surface would not show shadows exclusively on the same sides of the craters from which direction that is lit up.
Another claim from guess who, is that it's a NASA conspiracy that the moon just happens to rotate at the exact rate it revolves, and that's why we never see the opposing side. Sprinkling conspiracy dust over a normal astronomical things doesn't make the conspiracies. The fact is, given enough time, every object in the sky orbiting one another will become tidally locked. The mechanism is explained here. The Moon is slowing Earth's spin in a rate that extends day by 0.0017 seconds every 100 years. If the Sun didn't swallow earth in 5 billion years time, Earth would stop spinning because of the Moon, and thus be also tidally locked, in 50 billion years time.
There are direct flights between Australia and Southern America[edit]
Flat earthers do not have an actual map with scale. Their best approximation is the azimuthal equidistant projection of the globe Earth. Under this map, the distance from Santiago, Chile to Sydney, Australia is roughly 5.3 times longer than the US is wide (2,800 miles), i.e., 14,840 miles. Flat earthers like Eric Dubay say the route makes sense. Excluding the fact one can't see land during the direct flight, Dubay misses the point that the longest range aircraft
is the Boeing 777-200LR with range of "only" 10,809 miles. Thus, flat Earthers claim there are no direct flights from Australia to South America.
Dubay also claimed long haul planes can hide their path by travel much faster than the advertised speed, especially during long haul flights. However, air resistance increases as a square of the headwind. Going twice as fast would cut flight time in half, but it would burn four times the fuel, cutting the haul distance by 50%.
As seen here, there are direct flights. If you need convincing, here's a time-lapse of flight from Santiago, Chile, to Sydney, Australia.
QF28 Santiago-Sydney Timelapse |
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Flat earther Jeranism tried to explain Sydney to Santiago route was possible with the southern jet stream, however, as Dave Farina points out, the jet stream does not solve the planes being able to cover the distance in both directions. There is some effect from the wind, in that the flight time from Sydney to Santiago is 12h 35 min, and from Sydney to Santiago is 14h 40 min. But that's again, not enough time to cover the almost 15,000 mile route, let alone the conspiracy hiding route across the Pacific Ocean.
Thus, these flights can only be explained if the Earth is a globe: In the globe model, the distance from Santiago's airport to the one in Sydney, is just 7060.3 miles.
Arguments against a round Earth[edit]
So where's the curvature?[edit]
A lot of flat earthers attempt to disprove the globe model by using pictures taken from high above the earth with a flat horizon, thereby "proving" that the earth is flat: after all, if the earth is round you should see the curvature of the earth.
The problem, once again, is that Earth is really big, at least compared to us tiny human beings. The pictures that flat earthers tend to provide as evidence are "only" captured from high altitude balloons that are barely, if at all, even considered to be in "outer space" (and in some cases, possibly even lower than that). Such heights are almost negligible compared to the radius of Earth, which is why the horizon still appears mostly flat.
However when we provide pictures of a curved horizon, they make unfounded claims like that the gear used to take the picture warps the horizon, causing it to look curved. Throwing their logic right back in their face by claiming that their pictures are the faked ones typically results in — as when this is done to any conspiracy theorist — the old Windows error ding emanating form their cranium.
Really, the fact that there even is a horizon to begin with should prove the earth to be round by itself, since if the earth were truly flat, a sufficiently advanced telescope ought to be able to see all the way to Madagascar from Alaska.[note 19] Instead, what actually happens, is we fail to see the lower parts of distant objects like buildings, and we see ships sailing into the distance disappear hull-first (the observation that first tipped off the ancients themselves).
Eric Dubay has claimed: "If a ship's hull is 10 feet above the water, it will disappear from the innated eye at 6 miles. This has nothing to do with the supposed curvature of the Earth, and everything to do with the common law of perspective." This begs the question, why is the stern/stem edge of the hull, that's closer to the observer than the ship's bridge, disappearing first? Shouldn't the thing that's closest to the observer remain visible the longest? Only on globe Earth model does the hull disappear first, because it's not about the resolvability of distant objects, but about the obstruction imposed by the curve.
Dubay has also claimed that flat Earth will also have distant people disappear feet first. So here's some 4K footage from the Bonneville salt flats to show that's not the case:
4K footage from Bonneville Salt Flats |
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Finally some cars with trailers with protruding wheels visible. It's easy to see the wheels never disappear, everything just reduces in size due to perspective. |
More footage showing the curve:
Bobby Shafto's spirit level experiment |
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Flat Earth debunker Bobby Shafto was able to photograph and measure the curvature of the horizon using a flat plank as a reference like Samuel Rowbotham This same effect can be done even in commercial aeroplanes.[46] |
Views of Earth's curvature |
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Lego bricks prove it just looks like there's curvature![edit]
A video shows lego bricks showing curvature on a flat surface. The experiment was co-signed by Eric Dubay in this video.
It's immediately clear, that the photographer is extremely careful to not show the table from high altitude to not reveal the game. Also, small increases show vertical bright lines in some frames of the video which can not be explained by specular reflections from the matte chair behind the table. The conclusion, that's shared by this debunk, is that the table consists of three segments that bend, and introduce slight curve. It's also evident from the original video's green bottom highlight at this point that looks like a lazy approximation, but is actually pretty much exactly what's going on.
When the experiment was reproduced without hiding the shape of the table, the curve suddenly disappears. Flerfs are of course free to show this again, this time without poor camera work, and with surfaces that are shown to be flat, with brick towers that are 1) proven to be equally tall, and 2) aligned to not create sideways curvature. We globers won't be holding our breaths.
So why is "X distant object" visible when it shouldn't be?[edit]

According to Flat earthers, there are distant objects (like buildings or mountains) that shouldn't be visible because they would be hidden under the horizon due to the curvature,[48] yet they are (some of them party visible, like half of it under the horizon... We wonder why).
Perhaps this might be the best shot flat earthers have used to disprove a globe. Unfortunately, since these are verifiable claims, they can be examined and always fall apart because they often either fail to use the correct formula or miss important factors in their "calculations".
Curvature drop formulas |
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![]() Pythagorean proof of curvature for a ball with a radius of 3,959 miles (using AutoCAD 2015 with 15 digit precision). This chart, while technically not entirely inaccurate, is often abused by flat earthers to calculate the expected amount of obstruction when it is unsuitable for such purposes and takes into account neither the observer's height nor atmospheric refraction.[49] The basic formula: Flat earthers often use the formula "8 inches per mile squared". This formula is copy-pasted from Rowbotham's Zetetic Astronomy (Chapter 2). It is derived from the theorem of Pythagoras by taking a tangent line of 1 mile on a circle of radius 3963 miles. The drop would be about 0.000126 miles or 7.98 inches.[50] However, Rowbotham's formula describes a parabola, not a circular surface, thus it has an error rate of less than 1% up until 800 miles.[51] ![]() This diagram compares calculations of the "horizon drop," or curvature of the Earth, using the Pythagorean Theorem vs. the 8" per mile squared "rule." It shows that the 8" "rule" is off by 21% from the Pythagorean calculation at this distance (3,960 miles), and demonstrates that the 8" rule is inherently inaccurate.
A more accurate formula from earthcurvature.com:
where (h) is the drop in curvature over a distance (d) where (a) is the arc angle of the distance (0.009° * (d)) and (r) is Earth's radius. While technically not entirely inaccurate, these two formulas fail in two things.
An even more accurate formula used in omnicalculator.com considers this factor:
where (a) is the distance to the horizon, (h) is the observer's height at sea level; and (r) is Earth's radius. With this in mind, let's do a comparison of these three formulas. At a literal altitude of sea level (that is literally 0 feet) we should have at 10 miles:
As you can see, these formulas get very similar results. However, we don't live lying down on the ground at the beach. So we need to assume some observer's height—higher than 0 at least. If we take into account 100 feet for the observer's altitude, then, according to "omnicalculator.com," the hidden height is now 0 because anything at 10 miles is visible since the horizon should be 12.25 miles away. |
The most crucial factor that flat earthers often ignore is the observer's height, which makes a huge difference. The higher you are the further you see. This is the reason why ancient sailors climbed the masts of a ship to see boats and lighthouses in the distance, or why the Sun sets later the higher you are (two phenomena that flat earthers can't explain).
Sometimes flat earthers do take the observer's height into account and still use this point. This is, of course, a form of a desperate "black swan" case argument, "an exception to the rule" (the fact that this is exception and not the rule pretty much suggests a flat Earth is non-sense), which ultimately fails because *surprise surprise* there is another big factor they missed... (*drumroll*): Atmospheric refraction, which can make light rays curve with a radius seven times the Earth's surface. This happens when light hits a pocket of cold air or a hot draft of rising air, bending the light from the object that would usually hit the ground, going around the Earth's surface and reaching to the observer's eye.[52] This cases can be easily distinguished because they look incredibly distorted.[53][54]

Flat Earth "Black Swan" example |
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The photo of the oil platforms (Picture 1) is the most popular example of the "black swan" argument that flat-earthers use.[58] In a nutshell: There are two oil rigs at 9.41 miles and 6.21 miles away, but the horizon appears behind both rigs. This picture was taken at an altitude of 1 feet. According to the calculations from above, the distance to the horizon should have been 2.72 miles, and the oil platforms shouldn't be completely visible. Conclusion: Earth ain't ball. Checkmate globers! First, two glaring problems that even Answers in Genesis have noticed (yeah... AiG... we kid you not)[59] are that:
Now, getting more technical. The photo (Picture 1) is clearly an extreme example of atmospheric refraction. Contrary to flat Earth opinion, this is nothing but a "black swan" in modern physics but a well-understood phenomenon since the times of Gauss and beyond. As mentioned above, air refraction can bend the light of distant objects, making them go around the horizon and reach further than normal conditions. Mick West[60] and Walter Bislin[61] have taken this important factor into account in more sophisticated calculations for their simulations. In this case, as Walter explains, in (Picture 1) there is "temperature inversion", a layer of cool air between warmer air which increases the refraction coefficient (k). "This is the cause of the different strechings and compressions and the waves in straight structures like the cranes. A positive temperature gradient above the ground (cool ground, warm air above) causes additional looming In a spectacular Shyamalan's plot twist style, some flat-Earthers have claimed that it is actually (Picture 2) the refracted picture! Why? Because the oil rigs are under the horizon! And we can't trust our senses for that... Ignoring this brilliant excuse, flat-Earthers have tried to invent new fancy physics to explain that picture (like "atmospheric magnification") but never test it. However, Mick and Walter have tested and shown in their simulations that for (Picture 2) to happen on a flat Earth due to refraction there must be a negative temperature gradient of "−15°C per 100 m throughout the whole atmosphere", which "is physically impossible" (especially on a sunny day like in the picture). One final nail in this black swan coffin: Bob the Science Guy has also shown that even in (Picture 1) about 15 feet are missing for the left oil rig and 5.5 feet for the right oil rig, which is expected on a spherical Earth.[62][63] RIP Flat Earth "Black Swan" |
TLDR; most flat earthers' examples:
- Use wrong distances,
- Forget the observer's height,
- Ignore the effects of atmospheric refraction,
- Cherry-pick footage,
- Confuse the distant objects for others (like mountains for clouds... seriously),[64] or
- Have no way to verify the information for their picture evidence (and sometimes there isn't even a picture, just a trust me bro).
In the end, debunking every example flatties can throw at you can feel like a whack a mole game. When one "calculation" is disproven, two more appear (see Gish Gallop). This process can be very exhausting. So, if you happen to be arguing with some flattie right now, we highly recommend you Walter Bislin's online curvature simulator, which accounts for all these factors (eg. target inclination, observer's height and atmospheric refraction). See bellow:
The correct hidden height formula |
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The last thing that's missing from the formulas above is, as we already said, the atmospheric refraction. According to FlatEarth.ws, this is accounted for in the following Walter Bislin's formulas: If the distance along Earth's surface is known:
If the line of sight distance is known:
where
The refraction coefficient |
Use this weapon wisely.
So why isn't "X distant object" leaning away from us?[edit]
The further a distant object, like a building, is away from us, the more it leans due to Earth's curvature. However, as it has been mentioned before, the Earth is REALLY BIG and flat earthers can't understand scales. That's why many of them think any distant building should look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In reality, for any object to be tilted just ONE DEGREE by the curvature of Earth it should be around 69 MILES away (*nice*). For an example of the math, see Dan Olson debunk Alaska's leaning Mt. McKinley.
But Scientists have changed their answer about the distance to the Sun![edit]
Lies Eric Dubay by omission. The world is complex, and the tools to make observations evolve over time, and so, the accuracy of our knowledge improves. The article "How Did We Find the Distance to the Sun?" by Morgan Rehnberg gives a good explanation on why it was so hard. In the 2nd century BCE, The Greek astronomer Hipparchus invented parallax, and he calculated the distance to Moon with an accuracy of 7%. As shown here, the Greek astronomer Aristarchus used used nothing but basic trigonometry to calculate the size of Earth, Moon, and Sun, as well as their distances. The error was large, but the exact angle to Sun during half-moon could not be determined with the tools of the period. Over time the accuracy improved by almost 250x. The next improvement had to wait until 1761, when the very rare occurrence of Venus transiting between Earth and the Sun would happen again. Bob the Science Guy explains the topic here, and the resulting distance to the Sun was off only by 3%. Radar was wasn't invented before 1935, and since it was a military thing, it was kept in secret until the WW2 ended. Radar astronomy became a thing in the 1960s, and it has then been used to improve on the measurements. Michael Toon has linked to multiple papers here if you want a deep dive.
So why are there no REAL photos of the Earth?[edit]


There are. It's just that flat earthers can't tell the difference between a composite and a photograph.
One argument used frequently by flat earthers is that there are no real photos of the earth. E.g., Eric Dubay has claimed a Blue Marble photo shows copy-pasted segments, therefore the Earth is flat. This is downright misleading.
- As the Wikipedia says here,
that 2001-2002 image is a composite. More precisely, a 3D rendering of MODIS
composited surface & cloud data. NASA has never claimed the image is a photo taken from space.
- Why would the Illuminati, that's supposedly generating the images with CGI to hide the shape of Earth, create duplicate clouds? Also, if it's a mistake, why wouldn't they have at least ten guys hired to check every photo carefully? That would not be too expensive considering the purported 50 million dollar daily budget.
- There are many photos of the Earth including photos which predate the equipment required to create fake images. For example, here is the original Blue Marble, taken by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972. Flat earthers often confuse it with the 'fake' from 2002 . You can even see scanned 35-mm film in the Apollo image archive.[65][66] The next true-color photo of the entire sunlit face in one shot was taken 50 years later by the DISCOVR satellite.[67][68]
Of course, they use this argument while all their flat earth pictures are claimed to be real, despite being computer generated or edited themselves. Their argument works better against them.
Flerfs like Dubay have complained about there not being photos from the Moon, where Earth and stars are visible at the same time. The reason is, Earth can be 50 times brighter in the moon's sky than the full moon is on Earth. Also, the Sun that's illuminating the moon's surface will be very bright, and since the point of these photos has been to photograph the Moon and Earth in the same photo, i.e., two bright objects, the film speed, i.e., it's ASA/ISO sensitivity, has been selected to be relatively fast, to ensure neither the Moon or Earth are overexposed. This will mean that dimmer objects will not be visible. The only way to prevent this, is to use HDR composite images, which a) did not exist back in the day and that wasn't added to Photoshop before version CS2 released in 2005, and b) using HDR would make flerfs scream about CGI, so the whining is nothing more than arguing in bad faith by Kafka trapping.
Dubay has also claimed NASA photoshopped the word "SEX" into clouds, and Disney's Pluto (the dog) onto Pluto (the dwarf planet). The simple reason these appear, is the same as why sometimes clouds look like animals etc.: pareidolia.
So why do continents cover different areas in photos of the globe?[edit]
The amount of Earth you can see actually changes the closer you move, somewhat counterintuitively, even when you can see the edges. This can not be demonstrated on a 2D surface such as computer screen, so don't test it with Google Earth. Try it with globe model or literally any ball. Draw something on it, and then look at the sphere from near and far, and witness stuff at the edges disappearing as you move closer. And before you argue that doing so changes the angular size Earth has on your face but the NASA photos have same sized Earth each, understand that what the images of Earth taken from space show depends on the distance. However, any two images of the sphere can be scaled to be the same size on screen, and thus, they will look different. Because both have round edges, you can't really tell how much is disappearing behind the globe model's curve. You do agree the curve is at least present in the sphere you're holding, right? RIGHT?
So why are there no REAL photos of all the orbiting satellites?[edit]
Fun fact! Right now, as you are reading this, there are thousands of aeroplanes flying in the sky.[69] Quick question: Do you see them? No? There you go. Still, one can falsify the flat-Earth concept on any clear night an hour or two after sunset by observing satellites in the sky with a telescope.[note 20]
Flat earthers don't stop considering the ridiculousness of asking for a picture of all satellites from outer space. Most satellites on Earth are the size of a car, and they orbit miles away from each other. We can't barely see a car from a distance of 5km (3 miles), and satellites orbit anywhere from 160km to 2,000km (100..1,200 miles).[70] Only big massive satellites like the International Space Station (orbiting at 418 km or 260 mi) or the Tiangong Space Station (which are the size of a football field) can be seen more clearly and there are many detailed pictures of them from Earth. Flatties will reject these satellites with excuses such as
- The satellite hangs from a balloon! (balloon satellites
have balloons many times time size of the satellite above them. Why can't we see the balloon?)
- The satellite is a hologram! (Then how can they block light when they pass through the Sun and Moon?)
- The satellite is on a ballistic trajectory! (Why not just use balloons like they're sometimes using anyway? Where are the leaked images of the stack of turtles? )
Btw. "No satellites, therefore flat" is not even wrong...
But NASA's photos of planets are fake CGI![edit]
Says Eric Dubay. A Nikon P1000 has pretty good 125x optical zoom. However, the 1/2.3" sensor is about the same size as the one in your iPhone. However, here's some folks who know how to use their P1000 to shoot planets, by putting it on a solid mount, and adjusting the focus to infinity:
Still think planets are just hazy dust in the firmament? Then dump your Nikons and buy a real telescope like astrophotographers do:
- Pictures of planets taken with a Nikon P900
- Pictures of planets taken by astrophotographers
Very similar to NASA right?
So why is there no ISS footage of satellites or space debris?[edit]
The flat earthers have complained about the ISS live footage not showing occasional satellites or space debris flying past the camera. Firstly, the number of debris larger than 1cm is 670,000 and, the number of debris objects larger than 10cm, is 29,000.[71] As explained by Dave McKeegan in his video about satellites, the surface area of space at ISS altitude is 7.77✕10⁸ km², which makes stumbling on an object extremely rare. Practically all major space debris is being tracked, and when their trajectory brings them even close to ISS, it is considered an emergency. Space junk has also hit the ISS, and the ISS has adjusted its orbit to avoid space debris, many times.
As for satellites, when the lighting conditions are correct, satellites are trivial to see.
So why is the Moon the same apparent size as the Sun?[edit]
They're not. That's why an annular solar eclipse is a thing. The angular diameter of the Sun varies between 0.527° and 0.545°. The angular size of the Moon varies between 0.489° and 0.568°. So they are close, but not the same. If the Earth were flat, the Sun would be the same size at the same time of day, but analemmas do not show that.
So why did Neil DeGrasse Tyson say the earth was pear shaped?[edit]



This argument from authority is used often by flat earthers to claim that the scientific community is lying. Neil deGrasse Tyson has been quoted saying, "Earth is not only oblate — wider at the equator than pole-to-pole, but pear shaped — slightly wider just south of the equator."[72]
But in reality, Tyson was describing the fact that just as the earth is technically not an exact sphere, it is also not technically an exact oblate spheroid either. For most purposes, it is perfectly fine to think of the earth as a sphere (or an oblate spheroid, or a pear-shaped oblate spheroid), but in some contexts, such as when searching for oil deposits, it becomes important to account for even tinier gravitational anomalies.[73] In such cases, a world map called a geoid is used.
The reason the earth appears as perfectly spherical in most photos is that the difference is extremely small.[74] Just for scaling, if we could grab the entire Earth with our hand it'd be as round as a billiard ball (although not a good one).[22] Nevertheless, careful pixel measurements of images from space show that Earth's equatorial diameter is about 0.3% wider than its polar diameter.[75]
So why did Neil DeGrasse Tyson say "stuff is flat" regarding Red Bull Stratos?[edit]
Yes, Tyson said in regards to Felix Baumgartner's Red Bull Stratos
jump that: "At that height, you don't see, you don't see the curvature of the earth [...]. You just don't. That stuff is flat!". He pointed to a 20" inflatable beach ball that Felix Baumgartner would have been about 2mm above the surface of this globe.
In reality, Neil DeGrasse Tyson was wrong. A curvature would still be visible at 38.9694 kilometres (24.2145 mi). To be fair, the curve wouldn't be very big, but it would still be there. And there are even pictures of it, and Felix himself has gone on record declaring he saw Earth's curvature.[76][77] In other words, the fact that Neil was wrong doesn't help your case flatties. It's ironic that they now trust Neil's words and not Felix's, right?
The most common reply from flat Earthers like Eric Dubay is that in the Red Bull Stratos jump GoPro cameras with fish eye lenses were used, thus distorting the horizon. Instead, we should look at the camera inside the cabin, where moments before Felix jumped the horizon was visibly flat when he opened the shuttle door.
Firstly, while it is true Red Bull used GoPro cameras, flat Earthers forget this footage can be easily corrected with editing software. And guess what happens? The curvature is still there. Granted, it is very very very small, but it's still there. Flat Earthers sometimes try to cheat by "correcting" the footage until the horizon looks flat instead of adjusting for the camera settings. The problem for them is that now everything but the horizon is distorted.[78]
Secondly, Dubay is basically cheating, again, expecting to see the Earth's curvature in the shuttle door because it is literally cropped by it. Unfortunately for Dubay, there was also a window next to the door shuttle and if we look the horizon in both the window and the shuttle, a tiny curve is visible. A tiny one, but a curve anyway.
So how can water stick to a spinning ball?[edit]
This is a surprisingly common question, and reveals how unwilling flatties are to do a single mathematical calculation. On a rotating sphere, all points in a longitude have the same angular velocity, but as the latitude tends to 0, the tangential velocity increases to its maximum, and so does the centrifugal force. A point on the equator travels 40,075 km (Earth's circumference) in 86,164 s (a sidereal day), yielding a linear speed of 0.465 km/s, or 1,674 km per hour! Everything should fly into space, right? No.
Centrifugal acceleration can be derived to be:
where r is the radius and ω is the angular velocity. With an equatorial radius of 6.3781×106 m and rotational period of 86,164 seconds (ω = 7.292×10-5 s-1), an object at the equator must be accelerated 0.0339 ms-2 downwards to stay on Earth. Although gravity varies from place to place, this is far exceeded by the approximate 9.8 ms-2 provided by gravity.
For anything to fly upwards, either gravity would need to be of what it is currently, or a (sidereal) day would have to be shorter than 5066 seconds (1 hour, 24 minutes and 26 seconds) long.
But really, perhaps the best way to demonstrate the stupidity of this one is to ask the flathead to dunk themselves in water and then spin in a circle at the rate of one revolution per 24 hours.
So why can't we feel Earth's rotation affecting us?[edit]
The centrifugal acceleration is a force that reduces how heavy gravity makes us feel by 1/290. If the Earth suddenly decided to double its spinning speed, a 70kg person would feel themselves 1.39%, or just under 1kg lighter. Because the earth spins at constant angular speed, we don't feel changes in the force it wants to eject us.
The lateral g-forces an individual feels when cornering around the axis of the Earth is the same as making an average (10m radius) turn in a car at the speed of 0.582m/s or 2.1km/h, which less than half of walking speed. That's why you don't feel it.
See calculations |
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1. Centripetal acceleration due to Earth's rotation: where and :
2. Lateral g-force:
3. Equivalent speed in a car turn: For a car turn with :
|
So why can't we feel the cornering forces as we turn around the Sun?[edit]
The lateral g-forces an individual feels when cornering around the Sun on Earth is the same as making an average (10m radius) turn in a car at the speed of 0.243m/s, which is the walking speed of an elderly person. That's why you don't feel it.
See calculations |
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1. Centripetal acceleration of Earth's orbit: where and :
2. Lateral g-force:
3. Equivalent speed in a car turn: For a car turn with :
|
So why can't we feel the cornering forces as we turn around the galaxy's center?[edit]
The lateral g-forces an individual feels when cornering around the Milky Way (our galaxy) at the orbital speed of our Sun, is the same as making an average (10m radius) turn in a car at the speed of , which is the speed of a slow mollusk. That's why you don't feel it.
See calculations |
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1. Centripetal acceleration of the Sun's orbit: where and
2. Lateral g-force:
3. Equivalent speed in a car turn: For a car turn with :
|
But those values add up! We're spinning like crazy![edit]
Even if we assume all three speeds are perpendicular to maximize their effect, the total effect of rotation around the earth's axis, going around the Sun that's going around the Galaxy, we get the car cornering force, that matches the speed of
which is way too weak for us to properly notice it.
If you still don't believe us, try standing up and swinging your arm fast. You can feel the centripetal force pack blood into your fingers. Next, assuming your arm, when measured from the mid-point of the shoulder joint, to tip of the finger, is 30 inches, or 75cm, try rotating your other arm at a rate where one revolution takes 28 seconds. That's very close to the total cornering forces our Earth's spin around its axis, Earths orbit around the Sun, and the Sun's orbit around our galaxy, when combined, create. Can you feel the blood packing to your fingertips? No? Thought so.
But Sundials wouldn't remain accurate due to all the movement![edit]
Argues Eric Dubay.
Dubay claims that "Earth's, the Sun's, and the Moon's revolving, rotating, wobbling, and spiraling motions would make the Sundials inaccurate".
This is an attempt to overwhelm the mind of the listener with irrelevant information.
- A moon dial
is about telling the phases of the Moon, so we can ignore that as completely irrelevant.
- The Sun revolving around Milkyway does not play role at all, as sundials are about the relative movement between the Sun and the Earth.
- Since the spiraling motion is relative motion of the Sun and Earth observed from the CMB's rest frame (i.e., if nothing in the universe affected you), we can ignore that too.
So now we're left with Sun and Earth.
- The Sun's rotation around its axis takes 27 days, but since we know Sun doesn't have dark days, can ignore that completely.
- The Milankovitch cycles
are about Earth's axial tilt varying between 22.1° and 24.5° (so at most 2.4° variance) which is barely noticeable. Secondly, the wobble cycle takes 41,000 years. Meaning in 43,000 CE, it will have reset itself to current position. Also, Since the axial tilt shifts 0.013° per century, and because, according to Wikipedia,
the sundial is only 3,500 years old, the total change in the axis direction has been 0.35°, barely noticeable. Installation errors of ancient sundials are likely around 0.5°-2°.
- The Earth's rotation around its axis determines the length of the solar day. Because the Moon is slowing Earth's rotation slowly, Earth's day length grows by 1.8ms every century, or, 49.3 nanoseconds per day. The Sexagesimal
system and thus the concept of seconds have existed since ancient Sumerians came up with it, 5000 years ago. The sundials have existed for 3,500 years, during which days have grown 6.3 seconds longer. During the times sundials were regularly used, they were perfectly adequate to measure time. Ancient Egyptians had average life expectancy of 25 years for males and 37 for females. So days getting 0.67 milliseconds longer during their lifetimes played no role. No hourglass has ever had that kind of resolution, and measuring things as a function of time had to wait until Galilei's pendulum experiments in the 1582. So again, historically, the sundial was practical for daily use, but in modern world, it's unable to keep track of absolute time. Scientific experiments require precise measurement. Extremely fast computer systems need to be kept in sync aroudn the world with atomic clocks. Also, humans live on different time-zones, and the solar time a sundial tells won't be the same in two adjacent cities, let alone inside one's country.
- The largest error The Earth's revolution around Sun determines the season due to the axial tilt exposing different areas of the Sun. Ignoring the absolute time discussed above, if we'd still live by solar days and if we didn't care about each day getting 49 nanoseconds shorter, the only thing the axial tilt would do, is affects the altitude of the Sun. Due to the elliptic orbit of Earth around the Sun, as per Wikipedia
, the Sun's speed in the sky varies, and thus sundials can be up to 16 minutes too fast or slow depending on the time of the year. So it's not accurate. However, since the Orbit doesn't really change, the error doesn't accumulate except for the slowdown of Earth around in its orbit. As seen in this article, the gnomon of the sundial is adjusted to be parallel to Earth's rotational axis. So the speed has changed by 1.05 micrometers / second since the sundial was invented. Since this is visible on Earth only as the absolute length of each season growing by nanoseconds each year, it doesn't matter. It's detectable, but not by a sundial.
But in absolute terms, we are going really fast, why can't we feel it?[edit]
A commercial airplane travels at 700km/h, yet for most of the trip, it doesn't feel like it. The mechanoreceptors of the human body respond to pressure. We feel the airplane seat pushing us as we accelerate due to a force affecting us, just like in a car or a bus. During landing, we feel the forces that decelerate us: the friction from our bench that stretches our skin, and the pressure in our hands as we lean against the backside of the seat in front of us. But during flight, when the plane is moving at a constant speed, the sensation of movement disappears aside from hearing the humming of the engines.
The much bigger sense of speed we feel in a convertible with its top-down moving at constant speed comes from the breeze, i.e., the air that's not part of the closed system inside the car, which is hurtling by our ears. We also associate the sound of the car's engine (which is close to us) with speed, and we feel the vibrations coming from the tires. We also see objects around us passing through our field of view very fast.
The Earth's entire atmospheric system is revolving and moving at the same speed as the ground. For the same reason a hairdryer works normally (independently of cruising speed) inside a car with a top, wind can blow independently in Earth's closed atmospheric system while that system flies through space. The reason space doesn't cause a breeze that would a) mess up Earth's air currents, and b) help us sense the speed at which we traverse, is because space is a vacuum and the planet is thus not moving against some space wind. For this same reason, our planet does not need a firmament as a "windshield" for us to not feel space. On the side facing the prograde direction, the atmosphere remains in place as there is no space headwind compressing the air mass from above, and because the Earth is not accelerating, nothing is compressing the air mass from "below". All of the matter, including the gasses in the Earth's atmosphere have had its orbital speed ever since earth formed, 4.54 billion years ago. Furthermore, there is also no engine needed that would make a noise, and no tires are vibrating against some space road. The objects in space are so large and distant we lack any experience to estimate how fast they're moving in the absolute sense. The low angular velocity is throwing our perception off, as it makes them seem to be almost still. For the same reason we can't tell the speed of a car just by looking from its side window how our viewing angle of a mountain in the horizon changes (although if one knows the distance of the mountain and the distance of trees closer to the road they can calculate their speed exactly by measuring the parallax of the objects passing by). So with nothing to cue us about the absolute speed, no wonder we can't feel ourselves hurtling through space.
So why don't people on the Southern Hemisphere fall off?[edit]

We kid you not, flatheads actually use this argument enough — believe it or not — to warrant us mentioning it. Lady Elizabeth Blount (1850-1935), returning from a trip to Australia, stated in a sworn affidavit that the people there did not hang by their heels. QED: The Earth cannot be a globe. It truly says a lot about the level of education of flatheads that use this argument, because this is something that most people get taught in freaking kindergarten.
The reason people in the southern hemisphere don't fly off into space in the direction defined by the Earth's south pole is the same reason people in the northern hemisphere don't fly off into space in the direction defined by Earth's north pole. "South" does not equal "down" any more than "north" does. Even in the flerf' own model, south means "towards the rim of the pizza land", and north means "towards its center". "Down" means "in the direction gravity is pulling," and thus "up" and "down" are meaningless concepts outside of the context of some object's gravity well. What is "down" for someone at the south pole is "up" for someone at the north pole. Most maps and globes are just printed with north always facing the top because it's easier for everyone using them if the four cardinal reference points always go in the same direction, and they just picked north because the trend was started by those egocentric pricks that were historical Europeans.
Maybe the most stupid and simple way to make them understand the idiocy of their "argument" is to pick up a ball and ask them what part of it is "up" (or "down"). If they do point to any part of it, just turn the ball "upside down" and ask them again. Now what flatties? You have only two options. Either "up" (or "down") is the part you pointed out first, even though it's now inverted (thus admitting "up" or "down" as absolute concepts are arbitrary); or what you pointed out first as "up" is now "down" and vice versa (thus proving "up" or "down" are relative concepts, to the ground in this case). If it is the former, then that begs the question why is that place "up" (or "down") and things must fall towards it. And if it is the latter, then, do you guys imagine there's ground under a spherical Earth? What?
The confusion might result from flerfs' inability to see the world from other peoples' point of view, or, from their limited spatial reasoning skills. One way to think about this, flerfs, is to realize that your experience about being upside down might be strongly associated with say, playground experiences: 1) you feel the thing you're hanging from with your legs and your hair and clothes hanging, 2) you feel blood is packing to your head, and 3) you see things around you upside down. None of those are present on southern hemisphere. Earth is pulling you towards itself so you can stand. Earth is pulling blood away from your head, and everything else is being pulled too, so they're in the right orientation so they don't seem upside down. Try to imagine yourself to the other side of a globe, and think about how everything's being pulled towards earth and how it's masking your ability to reason about your position in the space's inertial frame of reference.
So why don't rivers flow uphill?[edit]
Yes. Same argument as before.
Yes, really, they actually say this.[79]
Yes. Your mind isn't playing tricks on you, we just got done taking the time to explain this to people who, evidentially, don't get it. TWICE.
Yes. Rivers don't flow UP hill.
Yes. All rivers flow DOWNhill and rivers (like the Nile River) do flow NORTH because, as Bert & Ernie say:
How can a pressurized atmosphere exist next to a vacuum?[edit]
Flat earthers, like creationists (which they often are) love to misrepresent the second law of thermodynamics, claiming that Earth's atmosphere violates it if it is not contained by some "dome". What they're asking is basically why the Earth's pressurized atmosphere doesn't equalize with the vacuum of space without a protective barrier.
We'll answer this question with another question: where's the barrier between high-pressure sea-level air and low-pressure mountaintop air? As height increases, air pressure and concentration decreases, approaching zero after a certain height. Meaning, even if the earth was flat, the atmosphere would have to end at some point.
This is due to the scientific illiteracy of flat earthers who can only imagine the vacuum on space as a literal vacuum cleaner. It does not “suck” the air. Flat earthers associate the word “suck” with “vacuums” but it’s a misnomer. That’s not what actual vacuums do. That’s what vacuum cleaners do. What they really do is use a centrifugal pump to create a pressure differential, and the higher pressure air in the room then expands to fill the empty space through the hose, at very high speed. However, gravity pulls the air back down, so we can breathe air.[80] As the Earth traverses its orbit, the atmospheric particles around the Earth reach a hydrostatic equilibrium where the compression resistance of air cancels out the compression force of gravity. Gravitation pulls the atmosphere in so the amount of gasses that escape
Earth on the trailing side of its orbit remains minimal.
It's odd. Nobody with even a microgram of sanity would deny that things fall, not even flatheads. But all of a sudden, when atmospheric pressure and the vacuum of space are being discussed, that "things fall" aspect of reality suddenly doesn't exist to flatheads.
Gravity does not exist[edit]

Yes, flat earthers are gravity deniers, and for a good reason: it would make their world collapse into a sphere and the trajectory of falling objects would become increasingly tilted inwards in the "Southern latitudes" (i.e. if we keep travelling to the edge). Hence, they must attribute falling to other causes.
- Density and buoyancy:
The most wrong explanation they have come to, is that things fall due to density and buoyancy, which is as good as saying that they fall due to colour. Density is the amount of mass within a volume, it's not even a force and cannot even cause acceleration as a result; and buoyancy is indeed a force but requires gravity on its very formula, so that's a non-starter. Alternatively, considering that acceleration towards the ground is a function of density is at odds with empirical evidence: a feather and a bowling ball reach the ground at the same time in the vacuum.[81] Without air resistance, everything experiences the exact same acceleration when it falls. Also notable is the fact that they rarely explain why being denser should make an object move at all, let alone why it should always do so in the same specific direction.
Eric Dubay's "explanation" was: "There is vertical pressure gradient, and that defines the direction." This explanation is a non-starter. Due to the pressure gradient, the pressure below the object is slightly higher than above it, and thus the higher pressure actually pushes the object up, not down. This is why objects less dense than air, such as helium balloons, are pushed up (buoyancy beats gravity). Also, Dubay's explanation was circular: it failed to explain why the air that supposedly pushes objects down, gets itself pushed down to create the pressure gradient (Hint, Eric: the cause starts with g). Even worse, his answer failed to explain the one thing it was supposed to explain: Why THAT direction in particular?
As for the vacuum, Dubay claimed the "infinite density difference between an object and vacuum causes the object to fall down", which is weird, because he just said it was the air that was pushing stuff down. How does nothing push stuff? Or, why is stuff always running away from nothing into the direction where dirt lives? Dubay and flerfs fail to acknowledge that density is a property of a physical object, it doesn't create a force that has an inherent direction. Flerfs also fail to realize that if this was the case, and density does make things fall, then the Sun, Moon, and stars would all come crashing down to Earth. But don't worry, those objects are held in the sky by M A G I C K.
- Everything accelerates "up":
The Flat Earth Society has proposed that gravity is the result of the earth accelerating at ~9.81 m·s-2 in the "upwards" direction. However, this fails to account for the variation of gravitational acceleration across the surface of the earth from the mass distribution within. E.g., during The Final Experiment (see below), Critical Think's weight experiment showed close to four gram deviation when weighing a 1kg mass first in Brisbane, Australia, and then in Union Glacier, Antarctica. There's also no explanation as to what energy keeps this acceleration going, as said required energy tends towards infinity the longer it goes on. All celestial bodies would have to be comoving as well, to avoid Doppler shift and all the other quirks of relativistic motion.
- Electromagnetism:
Some flat earthers, such as the YouTube channel GlobeBusters,[82] have suggested that it is the electromagnetic force that causes people to fall to the Earth. This is quite similar to hypotheses posited by Electric Universe cranks. This runs into multiple problems, however. For one, if it was the electromagnetic force pulling objects to the ground, then objects of different charges would react differently to this force – for instance, neutrally charged objects would not be affected by the electromagnetic charge of the Earth. Another fact that casts doubt on this suggestion is the fact that the acceleration due to gravity g is constant for all objects in a vacuum at sea level, regardless of mass. However, this would not be the case if the electromagnetic force was the force that pulled objects towards the Earth. Let us consider that, the electric force exerted on an object of charge q that is within an electric field E is:
It can be shown that the electric field of a uniformly charged flat disk (which is what flatheads think the shape of the Earth is) is dependent solely on the distance from the disk z, the surface charge density σ, and the radius of the disk R.[83] The important thing to note here is that the electric field is not dependent on the mass m of the object.
Newton's Second Law states that a=Fnet/m, where a is the acceleration of the object, m is the mass of the object, and F is the force exerted on the object. Thus, it stands to reason that if the electromagnetic force was the force that pulled objects towards the Earth, the acceleration of an object in free fall would be ae = Fe / m. Thus, we would get:
However, this would mean that that acceleration of an object in free fall would depend on the mass, even in a vacuum. This is blatantly false, as we know from experiments dropping objects in vacuum chambers that the acceleration of all objects in free fall in a vacuum is the same regardless of the object's mass.[84] Thus, the electromagnetic force cannot possibly be the force pulling objects to the Earth.
From Newton's law of universal gravitation Fg = Gmearthmobj/r2 for an object on the Earth. Since g = Fg / mobj, mobj would cancel out in our law of universal gravitation, and thus g = Gmearth / r2 is a constant at sea level that is not dependent on the mass of the object. Thus, the acceleration due to gravity is the same for all objects at sea level.
Gravity exists, however, and flerfs like Dubay claim it hasn't been shown on Earth. This is a lie. In fact, it has been shown in countless repetitions of the Cavendish Experiment.
But there are no experiments showing pressure gradients can be created[edit]
Barks Dubay. We are standing on it. Another can not be made on Earth as our planet will obviously interere with its gravity. An experiment such as this requires performing it in space, and the flerfs deny it exists and thus, any and all data is CGI. So, nothing but another Kafka trap. To flerfs: Show us how to conduct the experiment in a way that has a reasonable chance of success.
But they fake the ISS footage with Zero-G planes![edit]
Dubay, who claimed this, used a graph by the Zero-G company, that shows the Zero-G phase of the plane lasts for 25 seconds, during which the plane climbs from 32,000ft to 33,000ft. That's 1000ft of climb for 12.5 seconds and drop for another 12.5 seconds. You can continue to drop as long as you like until you die.
The Zero-G phase happens when Earth's gravity pulls the plane down at exactly the same rate as its passengers, effectively canceling their weight. During this time, the plane continues upward until it hits the peak of its arc. At mid-point of the 25 second experience, the plane will start to fall. At that point its speed is 0m/s. After the fall part of the zero-G, 12.5 seconds later, the plane will be losing altitude at 12.5s ✕ 9.81m/s^2 = 122.6m/s.
According to the graph Dubay showed, the plane is at 32,000 feet, or 9,750 meter altitude at that point.
We can do some basic physics and get the ISS footage filming time before everyone dies in a horrible plane crash:
So just shy of 1 minutes 10 seconds to film the footage. So, here is a just under SIX MINUTES LONG, continuous shot from the ISS. Here is some more if you feel like it.
"Why not just climb higher with the plane?"
OK. We can calculate the height of the fall to that would allocate 5 minutes of continuous filming time while falling:
441.5 km is… …the flying altitude of the ISS. So. If we could fly a plane that high to fake the footage, why not put a fucking space station there while we're at it?
The ISS should be melting in 2000 degree C thermosphere![edit]
Claims Eric Dubay.
High temperature does not necessarily burn you. Boiling water burns you badly in less than a second. But the same temperature steam from a kettle won't burn you in one second. At the thermosphere, there's roughly a few billion atoms / ft³. The temperature of those atoms is roughly 1000 Kelvins. So yes, hot stuff, but almost nonexistent amount of it. As per this Forbes article, "the outside of the ISS can reach temperatures as high as 250 degrees F (121 C) on the sunny side and as low as -250 degrees F (-157 C) on the shady side." None of the metals Dubay listed melt at these temperatures.
But Rockets do not have anything to push against in space![edit]
Claims Eric Dubay.
As the third Newton's law states: "If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces have the same magnitude but opposite directions."
As can be seen here, it's enough to push something away from you to move forward. You don't have to push on solid mass. As can be seen in this video, ejecting gas at high speed works too.
How can Earth pull such massive oceans?[edit]
Earth's gravitational field is not a strongman trying to hold on to everything. Earth's gravitational field is closer to a hole (In fact it's modeled as such). A hole doesn't have to do a lot of work for stuff to fall into it. What comes too close to it, will fall into the hole. After that, it takes a space rocket to climb out of that hole. Now, all of Earth's water is chilling in that gravity hole, so it's not going anywhere.
Another way to view this is this: Each water molecule is tiny, and weights about 0.0000000000000000000000299158 grams. Thus, each water molecule will experience about 0.0000000000000000000000002935 Newtons of pull due to gravity. There's roughly 46292400000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 water molecules on Earth. But again, Earth's gravity because is more of a hole than strongman holding on to them. If you want a strongman analogy, Earth has basically infinite tiny tiny hands that never get tired, holding on to one tiny water molecule each.
How can Moon override Earth's gravity and create tides?[edit]
This question comes from none other than Eric Dubay.
The simple answer is, because the Moon has quite a bit of mass too, 1.2% of Earth's mass.[85] Earth may be much heavier, but that doesn't mean Moon and Earth do not exert gravitational force to one another. Moon's gravity is just smaller.
All pairs of object in space have a shared center of gravity (called barycenter) that can be calculated. As shown by Dr. Becky here, the Earth-Moon barycenter is so close to Earth, it's actually inside of it — 4,671km from Earth's geocenter towards the Moon (~3/4 way from the center to Earth's crust).
Note that the center of mass does not have to be inside an object. When Jack and Rose spun around holding hands on Titanic, the center of gravity was somewhere between them. The same can happen between two objects in space. Thus, the barycenter itself does not necessarily pull anything towards itself on its own, but it makes it easier to think about how both the Earth and the Moon affect things they pull.
Because water is a liquid, its molecules can move relatively freely. Because of this, the water molecules find their level around the barycenter. This causes the bulge on the Moon's side, that on open ocean is about one meter high. [note 21] At the surface of the bulge, the gravitational pull of the Moon and Earth cancel out, and thus a limit is set to bulge height.
Because Earth's own center of mass rotates around the barycentre, it's again, like Jack spinning with Rose on the lower decks. This centrifugal force causes the water to bulge on the opposite side of the globe. The height of the bulge is defined by the distance where gravity is cancelled out by the centrifugal force.
"Why do lakes not have tides?" asked Dubay.
They do. It's just much less water, so the effect is hard to see. Even the Great Lakes have tides of about 5cm (2 in) [86]
"But tides are caused by the gentle and gradual rise and fall of the earth from the bosom of the mighty deep", continued Dubay.
So much for the flerfs' stationary ground. Anyway, since there's exactly zero evidence of this, it's up to Dubay to go to the nearest seaside shore, and use an accelerometer or seismograph during the tide to show there's an earthquake everywhere that we can't see or feel. If needed, here is Sabine Hossenfelder explaining how a spring can be used to detect the shoreline rocks accelerating up or down with the tides, no matter the frame of reference.
How is that gravity can cause planets to revolve elliptical orbits around a single center of attraction?[edit]
This questions comes from Eric Dubay. Thank you Eric for your question. We do not have an answer ready for you, but please stay on the line. Someone will be with you shortly.
How can Earth drag atmosphere along but birds and bugs can fly? Why can Humans jump despite air pressure?[edit]
We can't believe this needs to be explained but just in case Dubay is serious with these, here we go.
Large birds are quite heavy, so gravity affects them more. As can bee seen here, an Albatross will have to work hard to take off. A Common Loon will work even harder. Some large birds have stronger muscles and wings which makes it easier for them, e.g., the Andean Condor. The smaller Peregrine Falcon is the fastest bird out there.
Large bugs, like the Goliath Beetle struggles with taking off. Small bugs, on the other hand, have small muscles and wings, but as they're also very lightweight, gravity doesn't affect them as much. Small bugs can accelerate, and fly at ridiculous speeds, the record holder being the 12mg heavy Horse Fly, that accelerates at about 25G, and that has top speed of 145km/h.
Air moves, because it has viscosity. If you do not know what that is, see this video. The viscosity of air has another term, air resistance, that sets limits to how fast we can ride our bicycle. The viscosity of olive oil is 56.2 mPa·s, water is 1.0016 mPa·s, air is 0.0000185 mPa·s. Can you make all the water in a glass swirl, by rotating a pen in it one full circle? No? Try 10. How about now? You can also use the edges to set the liquid in motion, like here. Air will do that too, just, at slower acceleration because of its lower viscosity. Because the Earth, its atmosphere, all bugs, and all birds have same angle speed around Earth's geo center, there is no relative movement so Earth's rotation doesn't affect birds or bugs flying. Winds are air currents that result from temperature differences, and those do indeed affect flying things, sometimes quite a bit.
Humans can fight off gravity with relative ease for brief moments. This is because the muscles have small amounts of their main fuel, ATP that enables explosive movements like jumping. When ATP runs out, we make more from our creatine phosphate
stores. More energy is fed to this system from the body's glycogen stores. Too strenuous exercise, or running out of glycogen while e.g. cycling up-hill, will make gravity quite real.
The pressure of air will not affect it's viscosity nearly as much as temperature does. Compare e.g. fridge cold honey with the one left on a table overnight. Next, increase the air pressure inside the honey bottle by squeezing it hard from the sides and cap, turn the bottle upside down, and see how much that affects how the honey can move through the air.
As for pressure preventing jumping, the pressure is all around us, so it's not preventing jumping more than air resistance will. An extremely high pressure air would be really cold, and liquid form. Air is 70% Nitrogen, the -196°C liquid form of which has 1/30 the viscosity of room temperature water. We can still move in water that's liquid although running in it is difficult. Moving in liquid nitrogen would be 30 times easier than moving in water, if it didn't instantly freeze us to death.
In reality, the air around us is helping us jump, by a little bit: Since humans are roughly as dense as water, a 100kg individual will displace roughly 0.1 m³ of air. Air has density of 1.2kg/m³, so that individual will displace 0.12kg = 120 g of air. The air creates a buoyant force (that's why helium balls go up), which makes the individual 120g lighter.
But how can long jump be longer than the height to which I can jump?[edit]
Eric Dubay wonders. Gravity does not inhibit your ability to move around Earth's core. It only inhibits moving away from the core. You can jump up or up and forward. Long jumper jumps further when they get some inertia to move forward, by running. At the jump face, the forward directed inertia moves the jumper forward, and the jump motion pushes the athlete forward and up, so it adds two speed components. The long jumper will be in the air exactly as long as determined by the vertical speed component taht the jumper has when their feet stop touching the ground. The formula for that airtime is (excluding air resistance) where v is the vertical lift-off speed in meters per second. If the time of flight is say 1.2 seconds, and the long jumper's total horizontal movement speed is 8m/s, then the distance covered during the jump will be 8*1.2 = 9.6 meters. Dubay could really have benefited from taking high school physics class.
Why do cannonballs shot towards the zenith fall to the same place and not Westwards?[edit]
In his video Eric Dubay talks about experiments that have tried to prove Earth's rotation by firing cannons towards the zenith. According to Dubay, the cannon balls with their on average 28 seconds time of flight land "within few feet of the cannon, sometimes back to the muzzle." He then states that If Earth was a globe, its orbital velocity of 600-700 mph at the testing latitude of England and America, where the tests have been performed, the cannonball should fall 8,400 feet behind [West] of the cannon."
Dubay does not quote exact experiments. According to this paper, the most famous experiments by Marin Mersenne and Pierre Petit
took place in late spring of 1638 in the surroundings of Paris — not England or America.
The experiments failed to prove Earth was rotating. However, Galileo's famous Large Ship thought experiment, of which you can watch a tl;dr video here, explained logically relativistic
motion. Basically, when the cannon was fired up, the cannonball retains its tangential velocity.
However, as explained here, due to Coriolis force, there will be a small deviation. A 10 second fall time would cause 10cm deviation. Another estimate estimates that with zero drag, the Coriolis force at the equator would lead to 8m deviation, but notes that air resistance would reduce it substantially. The cannonball thus will definitely not fall 8,400 feet West, like Dubay claims.
Why do cannon balls fired East not have more range, and those fired West, less range?[edit]
Classic Dubay, missing out on 400 years of scientific progress.
That actually happens, from the PoV of inertial frame of reference. If you don't know what that is, watch this brief tutorial by Dave Farina. Basically, if you could hover above Earth without being influenced by it at all, and put markers that hover in the air and stay in the inertial frame of reference, the cannon ball would fly further East when fired East, and vice versa.
ELI5 on why this is the case |
---|
Imagine a train with glass walls, going on tracks that go from East to West. The train is traveling East. You're on that train, facing the front (where the locomotive is). Before you is a wast basket, 3m away. Right at the moment when you pass a marked telephone pole outside the train, you throw a ball into the basket. Let's say it takes exactly 1 second for the ball to hit the basket. Then you repeat the experiment. This time, you are facing towards the back of the train, and the basket is again 3m in front of you. You throw the ball at the telephone pole mark, and 1 second later the ball hits the basket. To you the experience was the same. The ball traveled 3 m in one second. But to a person looking at your actions from outside of the train, from South of the tracks, i.e. they're facing north and the train travels from West (left) to East (right). Exactly one second after they see you throw that ball, they will also see it hit the ground. In the first example, because the train is going East and the ball is thrown East, the ball is moving East faster than the train. So one second later it will land on the train's floor, and at that moment the bystander stops the time, and they go draw a chalk line above the track tie that's below the ball. In the next experiment, to the bystander, the ball that's thrown West will still move East, but slightly slower. The moment it hits the floor the bystander again stops the time. This time the ball has not moved as fast as the ball in the first example, so it will not have traveled as far in one second time. The bystander will draw the chalk line to different track tie. So, even though you threw the ball exactly 3 meters in both cases, the marks on the track ties are different. Now, replace the train with Earth, and bystander by guy hovering in space untouchable by Earth's forces, observing. Also, replace you throwing the ball with cannon firing a cannonball. Same exact principle. To the bystander, the cannonball will fly further when it's fired East, because the Earth's rotation gives it more speed. But since the cannon and target are fixed to the ground, the target is floating away from the cannon at the same speed, so flying East does not give advantage in the battlefield. Similarly, if the cannon is fired West, to the inertial observer, the West moving cannon ball is actually moving East, but slightly slower than the target that's moving East faster. The frame of reference will always appear still to the observer. If you'd attach a Go-Pro to the target, it would look like the cannon ball is flying towards it from the distance. On the other hand, if the Go-Pro is attached to the cannon ball to make it the observer, it would look like the world is flying towards the ball. This feels really weird and that's normal, we're used to seeing we're not the center of the world, and we move in our world, rather than us moving Earth around by walking still. Why then would it be the case Earth is still, and not a massive cruise ship going around the Sun? |
Dubay also misrepresented the case by implying revolving Earth would not influence cannons. Dubay effectively lies by omission, by not being transparent about the fact, that Earth's rotation, and the resulting Coriolis force was known to influence cannon shots' accuracy in the 17th century. See the image on the right.
But if someone digs through the Earth, they will come out the other side with their feet up![edit]
This lovely thought experiment comes from Dubay.
Suppose two people start digging at the same time. They dig to the center of Earth, and by the time they reach the geocenter, their feet sill still face each other. They shake hands and climb out the opposing guy's hole. The gravity immediately starts to pull them towards the geocenter. Why would they climb out of the 3,963 miles (6,378 kilometers) deep hole in the ground, feet first? Dubay apparently trusts the reader to have zero spacial reasoning skills to realize, that to climb up, i.e. outwards from the center of Earth, humans usually orient themselves head towards the direction of travel, and feet towards where they're coming from: the geocenter. So again, if you climb down the hole that goes through the Earth, at the center you'll feel like you're in space or Zero-G. You then grab onto the ladders. Initially it feels like you don't weigh anything, and slowly as you walk up, gravity gets stronger as more of Earth is behind you pulling you down, and less of Earth is in front of you, pulling you up.
Why isn't there a 12 hour night and day everywhere?[edit]
Strangely asked by Eric Dubay, who already knows the answer, but doesn't think too highly about the fact. What's unclear is if he knows flerfs have themselves measured the tilt with a Ring Laser Gyroscope.
But NASA means "deceive" in Hebrew[edit]
Why do you need evidence when you can play word games, right!?
...
(*Sigh*) Anyway. Firstly, nasa or nāśā in Modern Hebrew means "to lift, carry or to take."[87][88][89][90][91] Nāšā' does mean "to delude or deceive" but it's pronounce as "naw-shaw"[92] because "is indicated in the transliteration by the diacritic above the s, that's called a caron" as bible scholar Dr. Dan McClellan points out.[93] That's why it's also written as "nâshâ" or "nasha".[92][94] The closest word to "deceive" would be nashar which doesn't even sound like NASA. McClellan also claims this word never appears in the Bible either.[93] And that's not to mention that NASA is an acronym, not a normal word. Keep in mind that this is supposedly a secret Satanic/masonic organization that apparently managed to fool the world's population via very elaborate conspiracies yet leaves obvious clues in its very name as to what its true intentions are. Not to mention... are bible scholars also paid by NASA too? It's also really interesting that flat earthers found a Hebrew word that sounds vaguely similar to "NASA", and decided that's where the name came from.
How can Polaris maintain its alignment straight above the North Pole?[edit]
Wonders Eric Dubay. It doesn't. Dubay makes it seem like Polaris is the chosen star to show North. It's not. The axis of Earth's rotation will always point to something. The closest star to each pole is called a pole star.
As explained by Mozibur Ullah here: "In Europe, it was named Polaris in the Renaissance from the Latin Stella Polaris or pole star when it approached the celestial pole to within a few degrees. In Antiquity it was not close enough to the celestial pole to be used for navigation and the whole constellation was used. In Old English it was called scip steorra, or ship star." The scientific designation of Polaris is Alpha Ursae Minoris.
In 3000 BC, around the time of ancient Egypt, Thuban was the North pole star. In 1000 BC, it was Beta Ursae Minoris (Kochab).
Alpha Ursae Minoris (Polaris) became the North pole star in roughly 500 CE. By 3000 CE, Gamma Cephei (Errai)
will take its place, and the title passes to Iota Cephei
at roughly 5200 CE.
So it wasn't God who put it there to guide ships. It's just the best available pole star in our age.
So why does negligible increase in distance towards the Sun cause such temperature difference at the poles?[edit]
Another great question from Eric Dubay. The interplanetary dust cloud absorbs negligible amount of Sun's radiation, so it's not the distance that defines the amount of Sun's radiation. It's the angle at which the sunlight reaches Earth, as explained by Dave Farina here. One would think flerfs know about this since its in their own story too.
So why isn't climate, flora and fauna on North Pole and Iceland not similar to Antarctica?[edit]
Eric Dubay asks.
Antarctica is a continent. Polar cap is a big floating block of ice with snow on top. Water acts as a heat reserve during winter, and it warms less during summer. Also, the Gulf Stream carries warm sea water from the Gulf of Mexico towards the polar cap which further warms it. Iceland is land, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, and near the Gulf Stream, so it gets to enjoy a bearable climate and some flora and fauna.
North Pole has no plants, because plants like to grow in soil, which ice isn't, and animals do not read brochures about where else the globe has similar conditions, and make arrangements to move there. Why would Polar bears evolve on the Antarctica just because it's cold there?
But planes never fly through Antarctica even though it's a shorter route![edit]
In his video Dubay misrepresents the problems Antarctica poses to flights, as a conspiratorial excuse of saying it's "cold". He does not consider the logistical problems of rescue missions. Should a plane make an emergency landing to Antarctica, it most likely does that because of poor weather. Saving people in up to -80°C temperatures, with strom winds increases the effect of wind chill to catastrophic levels. Antarctica is larger than the entire US.
Then there's the rescue mission. A plane that crashes into sea can be rescued by a boat. There's no runways where to land on the Antarctica (outside places like the Union glacier camp.) Helicopters like Airbus H225 have range of roughly 830 miles. That's not enough. For longer range extraction missions, the US army developed the V-22 Osprey, but those are grounded because they seem to drop on their own due to design flaws even with clear skies, let alone a whiteout with its high winds and ridiculously cold temperatures.
But boats who try to go to Antarctica get turned! They're hiding something![edit]
The video clip in Dubay's illustrated audiobook shows a tiny, tiny fishing boat outside the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Australia that gets told by a navy boat, and tries to imply the fishing boat was on its way to Antarctica, 3080 km (1910 miles) away. Even properly dressed, equipped and supplied expeditions have frozen to death in the Antarctica. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current causes insane waves.
So why is there a "dome" in Antarctica?[edit]
Some flat earthers have attempted to cite the 1958 Encyclopedia Americana which states that there is "a dome 13,000 feet high" in Antarctica. And yes! There are domes in Antarctica! Geographical ice domes
... and "I do not think it means what you think it means"...[95]
So why is travel banned to Antarctica? Why is there no 24 hour sun?[edit]
See the chapter below.
The Final Experiment[edit]
A decisive incompatibility between the flerf and globe models[edit]


“”If the Earth were actually a spinning globe revolving around the Sun, the only place such a phenomenon as the Midnight Sun could be observed would be at the poles. […] The establishment claims the Midnight Sun IS experienced in Antarctica but they conveniently do not have any uncut videos showing this, nor do they allow independent explorers to travel to Antarctica during the winter solstice to verify or refute these claims.
|
—Flat Earther Eric Dubay (signing the flat Earth death sentence without knowing it) in his 56th and 57th "proof" for "Earth is not a Spinning Ball" (2015).[97] |
Due to Earth's axis tilt, the daytime length changes for different seasons and in the polar regions the Sun is completely visible for a whole day. This phenomenon called midnight sun can be seen during the summer solstice at the north pole and during the winter solstice at the south pole. Close locations to the poles have also long periods of sunlight (for example, in Ushuaia, the world's southernmost city, there are 17 hours of sunlight during the solstice).[98] Since there's only one pole on the flat Earth model and Antarctica is basically an ice wall (presumably protected by white walkers...), a 24 hour Sun in Antarctica during December pretty much debunks the closest thing flerfs have ever come to a unified model (that explains seasons, day/night cycle, daylight variations etc).
So, for years, flat Earthers like Eric Dubay, Flat Earth Dave, Nathan Oakley, Jeran Campanella, and Austin Whitsitt have preached the supposed nonexistence of midnight Sun in Antarctica. The flat Earthers have also called every single time-lapse proving the Antarctic midnight Sun that they've seen, fake. E.g. here's Eric Dubay doing that.
For this is an easily verifiable claim and travel to the antarctic regions is accessible, it has been proposed flat Earthers go there and prove their claim. Many have expressed their desire to go, including Mark Sargent, Eric Dubay (twice), Nathan Oakley, David Weiss, Dean Odle, and Alex Stein, but as an escape hatch, they've often said--
But you can't go there![edit]
“”Each observer […] shall have complete freedom of access at any time to any or all areas of Antarctica.
|
—Article VII, Paragraph 2 of the Antarctic Treaty![]() |
This argument is used by many flat earthers (e.g. Eric Dubay) as "proof" that Antarctica surrounds the Earth, and that the Powers that be, Illuminati, New World Order bad government people don't want us to know about it.[99] And once again, it relies on circular logic.
In reality, this is downright false: travel is not banned to Antarctica, and there are even commercial cruise ships that travel there,[100] and people travel by land across Antarctica surprisingly frequently.[101][102] So much so that there are entire wikipedia pages about it,[103] circumnavigation world records[104][105] and even various job application offers[106][107][108][109] and travel websites (maybe they should book a ticket and leave their basements for once).[110][111][112]
Flat Earthers often claim the Antarctic Treaty System prevents regular people from entering,[note 22] often by military force,[note 23] thus proving that they have never actually read the treaty. Some often complain by showing news articles of people getting arrested while trying to get to Antarctica. What flat earthers forget is that while the treaty does not prevent tourists "they do require an appropriate permit from a Treaty Party" (which are around 56 countries in 2023).[113][114] Who knew that one would need proper documentation for traveling to or living in a foreign place, right? Let's try crossing the US border without a visa and see what happens!
Another claim is that no airlines go through Antarctica. This is also a lie. The reason flights cross the Arctic more often than Antarctica is because the latter almost doesn't have infrastructure in case of an accident (the closest countries are South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina, which are thousands of kilometres away).[115] Also most of the world's population lives in the northern hemisphere, so it would be very expensive and impractical for airlines to do so.[116][note 24]
The expedition[edit]
In 2024, pastor Will Duffy proposed "The Final Experiment" in which he offered a free trip to Antarctica to one flat earther (later, two), and one flat earth debunker.
His idea was simple, to have both Flat earthers and the grift's debunkers go to Antarctica during southern polar night, to see if the Sun was actually up for 24 hours, and have both parties independently document the observation in an undeniable way.
The invitees[edit]
The invited Flat Earthers were David Weiss, Eric Dubay, Jeran Campanella, Mark Sargent, Odd TV, Nathan 'child beater' Oakley, Austin Whitsitt, Dave Murphy, Tanner Stewart, Matt Long, Flatzoid, Taboo Conspiracy, Eddie Bravo, Santos Bonacci, Kaleb FE, Beyond The Imaginary Curve, Sean Griffin, Scott Manley, Ken Heidebrecht, Sean Hibbeler, Robbie Davidson, Darryle Marble, Bryce Mitchell, and Globebusters.
The invited Flat earth debunkers were SciManDan, Dave Farina, Dave McKeegan, Michael Toon, The Creaky Blinder, Craig McNeill, Wolfie6020, Red's Rhetoric, Globey McGlobeface, Globemann, Bob The Science Guy, Mr. Sensible, Professor Stick, Astrokobi, Michael Jones, Chuck Nice, Mike Winger, Scott Manley, Mick West, Dr. Blitz, Planarwalk, Danny Faulkner, Ruslan Karaoglanov, and Whereswally.
Many globe earth proponents accepted Duffy's proposal. DaveMcKeegan and Mark Herman received a free trip, and CriticalThink, Michael Toon crowdfunded their tickets and paid roughly 12 and 8 thousand dollars respectively out of their own pockets. GlobeyMcGlobeface, George Demitropoulos, and Jay Baanvast also started their own crowdfunding campaigns but didn't raise enough money in time.
On the flipside, almost every notable flat earther (David Weiss, Eric Dubay, Mark Sargent, Nathan Oakley, Dean Odle, and Volker Meyer) chickened out.[118]
Flatzoid would later claim he was not invited, so, here's a video of him admitting he was invited. He also complained about not receiving an invitation via email, and after having been pointed out that he didn't have his email listed on his YouTube channel, he added it there later to cover up the inconsistency, and got caught.
The golden ticket scam[edit]
As no flerfs were willing to claim their free trip, Duffy announced that a wealthy benefactor had offered to pay the trip to any not-yet invited flerf, who verifiably had been in the cult for at least two years. The candidates for the draft were Brian Leake, Cassidy, Chris Crumb, Jeff Schmidt, Josh Monday Christian, Lisbeth Acosta, Rizlawdon, Shauna Salzetti, Trent, and Wynand. The winner was Lizbeth Acosta.
However, the benefactor, going by the name Bharti Rajput, disappeared, and thus turned out to be a scammer. The scammer had also tried to appear as someone who would pay the flat earther CC to go to Antarctica. Later, the scammer outed himself on Flatzoid's live show, under the pseudonym Flat Earth philosopher. The scammer's identity was later traced to the flat earther Arpit Sharma.
As a response, Duffy organized a Gofundme for Acosta's ticket, and raised 7,242 USD. A benefactor named John Bolton offered to pay the rest of Acosta's ticket.
The travel[edit]
During The Final Experiment in December 2024, three flat earthers (Jeran Campanella, Austin Whitsitt, and Lisbeth Acosta), three flat earth scam debunkers (Dave McKeegan, Michael Toon, and Critical Think), and Mark Herman (Candace Owens' director), traveled to Antarctica.
Timelapse videos of traveling to Antarctica |
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The primary experiment[edit]
The primary experiment was to record the 24 hour sun, which the team did, thrice.
A second, 24-hour timelapse from team flerf |
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A third, 36-hour timelapse from the camp-site |
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The secondary experiments[edit]
During The Final Experiment, an Australian flerf debunker going by the pseudonym Critical Think, performed an experiment where he calibrated a precision scale in Brisbane, Australia, and measured his set of weights to weigh 1000.01 grams. He then predicted the scale reading with the same weights to be 1003.80g grams at Union Glacier Antarctica,[119]. Once there, he performed the measurement and got the reading of 1003.82g.[120] Upon return from Antarctica, back in Brisbane, the scale measured the weights to weigh 1000.02g.[121] To make the values easier to compare, here they are in a table form:
Location | Measurement (grams) |
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Brisbane (calibration) | 1000.01 |
Union Glacier (prediction) | 1003.80 |
Union Glacier (measurement) | 1003.82 |
Brisbane (calibration check) | 1000.02 |
This means the gravitational constant is larger in Union Glacier. This result proves the Earth's gravity is not explained by the flerfs' idea that the Earth is flat disk accelerating upwards at constant rate. Were that the case, all parts of Earth would have to accelerate at same rate to avoid tearing the Earth apart. Critical Think thus proved the earth is a globe.
The bitching and whining[edit]
To the surprise of no one, flat earth grifters immediately grasped for straws trying to debunk the TFE videos. Some have done an about-turn and claimed the antarctic midnight Sun proves nothing or even proves a flat earth! Thus retracting all these years of denial.[122] Here are their arguments debunked:
"Time-lapse is a series of images, not a video!"[edit]
Here are the real-time videos. Enjoy!
Real-time video recording of the antarctic midnight sun |
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Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 |
Another real-time video recording |
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Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 |
PS: What is the definition of video, if not "a series of images"?
"The video is from Greenland!"[edit]
The distance from Punta Arenas, Chile, to 800km inland of Greenland, is 13,574km. Covering that in three hours would mean the plane flew at 4524.7 km/h, which is more than twice the cruising speed of the Concorde. How did a Boeing 757
ALE uses fly to Greenland over five times it's normal cruising speed of 858 km/h? How did Greenland that's in North, have a 24 hour Sun during December?
"The video is from the northern hemisphere from June!"[edit]
Then why is the Sun going counter-clockwise? Why are there mountains when there are none in the Arctic? How would it have been streamed live if it had taken place in June?
"The video is reversed!"[edit]
Then why are footprints appearing, and not disappearing from the snow as the videos progress?
"The video was recorded inside a studio!"[edit]
Given that there are videos from the scene
...shot with 360° cameras, ... |
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...live streamed with 360° pan...
...showing a skiier hundreds of meters away pass the expedition...
...showing the participants take a scenic flight over the camp on a Twin Otter...
...shot with multiple cameras facing each other, streaming live, ... |
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...and shot with a drone climbing up to 4,921 ft (1,500 meters) height... |
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one must ask: where, and how big is the studio?
"The studio set used a green screen!"[edit]
The mishap of Will Duffy forgetting his home studio chroma key setting on in his camera[123] actually showed there was no green screen. This is because what appeared on the clothing was the TFE logo. If a green screen had been in use to create an antarctic background, the antarctic scenery would instead have appeared on the green section of clothing, and not the TFE logo.
The crew followed with a live stream where they displayed green objects while wearing blue clothes,[124] proving no chroma key was used.
This claim was so embarrassingly stupid even Flat Earth Dave swapped teams for a minute to debunk it, by saying "They're clearly in Antarctica", and "It's clearly just an issue. Will Duffy is using his same phone, or computer, that he uses for his live streams, and he has it set with green screen filter on. […] Anyone who's made a video with that on there. Take it down. Redo it. Say something else. Be intelligent. "
"The studio set used a Mandalorian style LED wall!"[edit]
Just see for yourself how well the LED walls produce shadows to humans on the stage. Now imagine something like that being used during the live streams. There would've been no sharp shadows at all. And yet.
"The studio set used spotlight to create the sharp shadows!"[edit]
Which studio light allows setting paper on fire with a magnifying glass?
"The studio set used fake snow that doesn't leave footprints!"[edit]
Some areas have compacted snow with a frozen crust that can be hard to step on, so you can walk on without breaking through it. In fact, the snow was intentionally compacted to make it easy to walk and run on. This can also be seen from the Antarctic Ice Marathon 2024 footage, that took place at Union Glacier on December 13, 2024.
Many other areas that aren't as well compacted, show footprints visible. The timelapses above show footprints appearing, and the Marathon footage shows soft snow and lots of footprints in the trail.
Hollywood has had soft artificial snow where footprints can be made for almost 80 years. If this really happened in a studio and soft snow was expected, why didn't the Illuminati fake it?
Also, why not use real snow? Why didn't the budget of 'them', who have literally one job, allocate real snow? Not exactly difficult or expensive thing to come-by, given that the flat earth model implies it's below 0°C at the Ice Wall. The Ice Wall is probably in a place where it snows, as "Perennial ice on land originates from compaction and recrystallization of snow and other forms of precipitation under the weight of successive layers that have accumulated year after year."[125] Ski resorts even make real snow from real water. So why use poor quality, rigid, fake snow that reveals the global conspiracy?
Finally, here's some videos that show real-time imprints in snow from shoes, shoes, toe tapping shoes, mountain bike wheels, shoes, and more shoes.
"The studio set had no audible or visible wind!"[edit]
This hogwash comes from Eric Dubay.
The day was calm, but at times, the wind was audible, really audible, visible, audible and visible, audible and visible, audible and visible, audible and visible, audible and visible, and audible and visible.
The Marathon footage also shows flags waving gently in the wind.
"The studio set was not cold because breath isn't visible! Whitsitt used a vape!"[edit]
Seeing your breath has nothing to do with how cold it is but with a combination of temperature AND humidity. During the southern summer, Antarctica can reach 18ºC/64ºF (especially on that sunny day) and the humidity tends to be very low due to its extreme cold and dry conditions (it's quite literally a desert). Mind you take the lighting and settings of the camera into account. In any case, there is vape-free footage of them with their breaths visible.[126]
Breath can also be seen in the Antarctic Ice Marathon footage, again, again, and again.
The cold temperature is also evident from Campanella's GoPro lens fogging up as he enters the common room tent.
PS: Yes. Whitsitt vapes... so... therefore it's fake? Y'all gonna try harder than that flatties.
"The studio set lighting caused shadows to point in opposite directions!"[edit]
The shadows are correct. Willful ignorance of perspective and crepuscular rays does not debunk reality.
Crepuscular rays in action |
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To prove it's just perspective, try taking a screenshot at any point in time, and draw a line in Paint from the tip of the shadow, to the center of the Sun. See how the tallest point of the person/object casting the shadow hits the line, every time.
"The Sun was a studio light that shined against McKeegan's Sun tracking camera's side!"[edit]
This was noticed by Flat Earth Banjo. However, as shown by Dave McKeegan here, the camera mount had actually already stopped tracking the Sun at that point, and as it was automatically turning the opposite direction to untangle cords, the Sun light began to shine on the side of the camera.
"The Sun was too high at midnight!"[edit]
Flat Earth Banjo also claimed the Antarctic midnight Sun was at too high compared to Arctic midnight sun at Svalbard. However, as shown here, Banjoman lied about screenshot from Antarctica being from midnight, when it was in fact from mid day.
"The Sun was a hologram, faked using multiple projectors!"[edit]
This insanity came from none other than David Weiss (Flat Earth Dave). He claimed this explains the apparent squishing of the Sun in the video.[127]
Just putting a lamp in the sky would consume an insane amount of power. The Sun Calc shows the amount of irradiance at Union Glacier on Dec. 15, 2024, was 657 W/m². The human face is roughly 400cm² or 0.04m², thus the Sun irradiated roughly 26W to their faces which is a sane value. The lower bound of fake Sun distance was claimed by Weiss to be 4.27 miles = 6871.89 meters. A little bit of napkin math shows such heat source would need a 390 GW power source.
The napkin math |
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I = 657 W/m² r = 4.27 miles = 6871.89 meters P = 657 × 4π × (6871.89m)² P ≈ 657 × 4π × 47222872.17m² P ≈ 389877014365.25 W ≈ 390 GW |
The largest nuclear reactor produces 1.6GW of electricity, so the lamp would require merely 244 such nuclear reactors.
Since obviously no lamp suspension system was visible, Weiss claimed the tech used was aerial/volumetric graphics rendered with with a focused femtosecond laser.[128]
It's real tech and really cool, but terribly inefficient. E.g. the Tangor 300 IR high power femtosecond laser consumes 300W to produce a 3mJ = 0.003W ball of plasma. The efficiency for produced light is thus roughly 0.001%, and the required input power is 100,000 times more than the output power. So you would not need 244 nuclear reactors, you would need 24,400,000 nuclear reactors to power the thing.
The total amount of power would be 39,000,000,000 MW per second, and at bulk discount of 1USD / MWh, the cost to lie to a few nobody flerf YouTubers was mere 39,000,000,000 USD / hour, or 1,404,000,000,000 USD to fake the 36 hour Sun timelapse.
A single Taishan nuclear power plant takes roughly 48,000m² of space. 24,4 million such reactors would require 1,171,000km² of area. That's roughly the entire South Africa. Nuclear power plants employ 650 people on average, each. Operating 24.4 million nuclear power plants requires 15,860,000,000 employees. That's very close to twice as many people as there are on Earth. That would mean everyone is in on the conspiracy... twice.
Another thing to consider is, how has the cost-benefit analysis by the Illuminati planning team missed the orders of magnitude less expensive options? E.g., they could've bribed flerfs with say, billion dollars each, or for even less money, they could have just disappeared the flerfs into an Antarctic GITMO,
and covered the whole thing up.
The alternative is, Weiss cut himself with Occam's razor: An Insta360 camera will cause slight distortion at its edges, as Dave McKeegan demonstrated here. Especially, the recording shows the camera also distorted mountains.
"The Sun was a NASA Sun simulator!"[edit]
Yes the flerfs really said that.
The extremely compact "Sun simulator" they pointed at, is the Solar Thermal Propulsion Test Facility's mirror array, and it is located in the Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville Alabama.
Solar thermal propulsion works by redirecting solar energy to heat a propellant. Thus, the device is not even a lamp that simulates sunlight, it's a small solar thermal power plant that absorbs sunlight.
An easy way to prove the expedition photographed the real Sun, is the sunspots of the photos taken of the Sun at the scene match those in photographs taken by volunteers around the globe at the same time.
"The Sun was merely a reflection in the firmament!"[edit]
If on the other hand it's the one and same Sun visible both from Union Glacier and Australia, one must ask, how can the concept of local Sun (responsible for day/night) still work? How does light travel across the world when the flat earth model explicitly claims it can only travel so far.
The Sun was the result of caustics from the firmament![edit]
One of Eric Dubay's videos touched upon the flerfs crank application of caustics. He has NOT made the claim regarding TFE, at least yet, but made this claim ten months prior. The claim is, when the light hits the dome just right, the sunlight supposedly lights up the entire Antarctic region, while keeping a section of Earth dark. This optical effect requires—
Also, as explained by Bob The Science Guy, the coffee cup caustics would have also required not just the reflected Sun, but the original Sun to be visible on Union Glacier.
"The Sun was a locally experienced reflection from a superfluid dome ceiling compartment!"[edit]

This crankery comes from Joseph Hanvey, and it was co-signed by Eric Dubay and Mark Sargent.
Firstly, Hanvey is known for deleting his failed popcorn bowl experiments after failing to make the Sun go counter-clockwise, many (we count eleven, Will Duffy counts sixteen) times.
Hanvey's bowl experiments |
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Hanvey's second model required a reflective backdrop for the transparent firmament. The flash-light Sun was outside the firmament which makes the model invalid. Also, the video from inside the firmament shows the Sun still going clockwise when viewed from below. In the Antarctica, the Sun moves from right to left. Based on critique by Duffy and others, Hanvey deleted the video. Hanvey's third model shows the light moving again, clockwise. Hanvey deleted the video a few hours later. Hanvey's fourth model had a crossed piece of tape to show a compass, and after dumbing it down for the viewer, Hanvey dimmed the room, and showed the light again moving clockwise. Few hours later, Hanvey deleted the video. Hanvey's fifth model again, had the light moving clockwise. The same model's clarification video had tape with text "To west <- From East", on the outside of the popcorn bowl, on camera's side facing the camera. *sigh* The spacial reasoning skills of flerfs really amaze sometimes, as Hanvey clearly couldn't figure out reading those texts from the inside of the bowl, would show the arrow pointing right, i.e. clockwise when observing from the surface of the pizza land. Regardless of hemisphere, facing towards North (in this case, towards the backside of the tape in question, that's on the opposite side of the dome) will have the East be towards one's extended right arm. Hanvey deleted this video too. Hanvey's sixth model had new color tape and new arrows. And it shows again the light moving clockwise. Hanvey also deleted this video. Hanvey's seventh model had new color tape and new arrows. This time, he had realized reality was wrong, because the East and West were flipped from reading direction. The camera is lying on the ground, but the light would still move clockwise if the observer would stand up. Hanvey deleted this video too. Hanvey's eight model had the flashlight inside the dome. Seeing that it had four reflections of the Sun in the firmament, Hanvey deleted this video also. Hanvey's ninth model moved the flashlight again outside the dome, had a new tape with East and West again mixed (unless he wanted to show how they point to someone inside the dome). The video again showed the light moving clockwise. He deleted the video. Hanvey's tenth model again, showed the Sun moving clockwise. Hanvey removed this video too. Hanvey's eleventh model replaced the dome with a sphere and claimed there was no way Sun could've moved counter-clockwise. He didn't bother turning a sphere representing the Sun, clockwise and flipping the supposed Earth upside down while retaining direction of Sun. Hanvey deleted this video too. How goes the saying, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." |
Hanvey's Dubay-approved model uses "superfluid ceiling". How the techno-babble of zero-viscosity ceiling works as a two-way mirror gets no explanation, but apparently the sky is made of cryogenic, that is, less than 2.17 K (−270.98 °C) helium-4 (the alternatives would be things like helium-3 and Bose-Einstein condensate, which require even colder temperature and more explanation.) It remains unclear how that helium is not oozing from the sky, given that superfluids are the only thing in the known universe that don't care too much about containers: they just climb up the walls. Also, given that it's thermal conductivity is extremely high, how the firmament it is surrounded by is also kept at cryogenic temperatures, remains another mystery. The most likely reason this special material is needed, is to avoid getting too many nasty questions. I mean, how many experts on condenced matter physics
do you come by in your daily life?
Anyway, as the video clearly shows, Hanvey's -- at this point who the fuck cares how manyth -- model, has the Sun also rotating clockwise. Who would've guessed.
"The Sun was the Satan himself. He also cleared the weather!"[edit]
This non-falsifiable brain fart comes from pastor Dean Odle, a flerf who was invited to TFE. Funny how his imaginary sky daddy is too powerless to stop his imaginary angel of shenanigans.
Asserted without evidence, dismissed without evidence.
"The Sun is mirrored in the south. Use a southern hemisphere compass as northern compass shows you the mirrored motion of the Sun!"[edit]
This crankery comes from Tomb of El-lumination.
The basic point is, a compass that makes you face the wrong direction, will cause the Sun to change its direction. This is why famously ceiling fans change the direction it spins, as you alternate between facing opposite ends of the room, and looking up from each position. Except no, wait, of course it doesn't.
Also, there is no "southern hemisphere compass" that even points in the opposite direction. The people living on the southern hemisphere will want to know which way is south as much as people on northern hemisphere. The only difference between southern hemisphere compasses is the balancing: Because the magnetic field curves to point to the magnetic poles, it causes the compass needle to tilt. Northern hemisphere compass will have a weight on its south facing tip, and vice versa (the video shows northern hemisphere compass at Antarctica). This ensures a freely rotating needle and thus, a functional compass.
Finally, the idea that compasses are talismans that change what's observed on the sky is just as bat-shit crazy as it sounds. For the same reason, the video is the single worst offender of word salad and techno babble out there, from "Earth runs on cold fusion" to "The sun becomes the hermaphrodite and full moon and the Sun mate and create spiritual children". How goes the saying: "The medicine only works if you take it."
"The Sun dial experiment's measurements only work on flat earth!"[edit]
This deep-fried meme grade, hairball of an argument was coughed up by Nathan Oakley.
The central point was, one can not measure the elevation angle of the Sun on a globe, and that at any point of interest on the globe, the Sun's elevation angle is done against flat plane.
Here Oakley argues the similarity of both models being able to take a plumb line, put a right-angle tool against that to get the astronomical horizon, and then measure the angle between that and the Sun, proves the Earth is flat. It simply proves neither. Similarly, just because you can put a line perpendicular to the astronomical horizon line to define the x and y axis of a plane that point intersects with Earth, and do math with it, doesn't make Earth flat.
There might be more to this, but since Oakley does not really publish videos that explain topics, only hours long discord group calls where he rehashes the same geometry memes over and over, while being an absolute fucking piece of shit, we might never know.
"They removed their left shoe by bringing an extra boot outside, as a freemasonic ritual to reveal they consider Antarctica a holy place and to signify their solemn obligation to keep the flat Earth a secret!"[edit]
The video revealing the freemasonic ritual |
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Yes, it's all over now. Good job flerfs. You've done it.
"Will Duffy said lying is not immoral. Therefore TFE was a lie!"[edit]
The circulating soundbyte shows Duffy saying: So please, I beg you. We have to stop claiming that the ten commandments prohibit lying. That's not true. The ten commandments prohibit bearing false witness against your neighbor. Okay. We finally get to my conclusion on the matter of lying and deception. And that is this. After carefully looking at the both sides of the debate, and after taking a VERY deep dive into everything I could possibly find in scripture regarding lying and deception. I have come to the conclusion that neither lying or deception are inherently immoral.
This argument is essentially "He doesn't think all lying is bad, therefore he lies about the shape of Earth.", i.e., circumstantial ad hominem. Caring about the fairy tale book that is Bible in general is one thing, but the quote-mined part requires the full context.
The title of Duffy's sermon was not "I can lie about anything, right?", but "Lying and deception, are they always wrong?" Duffy's very first argument was to criticize the notion that it's wrong to lie to save another human being. He criticized Father Pine, who had said, that lying to Nazis to protect Jews from the Nazis, was evil. Duffy then takes another example known as Kant's axe: "If an axe wielding murderer comes to your door and he demands to know the location of your friend, then you are obligated to tell him."
He then makes a notion that deception can be done by not telling the whole truth, i.e. via lie by omission (a practice flerf grifters will have no trouble recognizing, as one doesn't have to go further than this very example, of quote-mining Duffy's thoughts on this very topic). For this Duffy uses an example of someone telling their ex-loved they still secretly love, that they're not _dating_ their now spouse, to keep their options open. He then argues that premeditated nature of deceit makes it worse than a lie told in a hurry, and criticizes people for thinking deceit is less wrong, all the time. Next, Duffy reads related Bible verses to show lying and deceit are not valued differently, and that both are generally condemned in the Bible. Only then, Duffy talks about the ten commandments: First, he tells he also mistook "bearing false witness" to mean all lying, and that he later realized, it actually prohibited giving false testimony. He based his reasoning on Deuteronomy 19:16-17 (ESV).
Only after all the reasoning above, Duffy says the quote-mined section.
The very next sentence the quote-miners cut, said: "If that wasn't clear. Sometimes a lie or deceit are not only necessary, but they're the right thing to do. I will now explain the reason that I realized throughout this process why we are still having this debate today, and then I will explain why lying and deception are sometimes the right choice to make."
Duffy then notes that, if in society killing people to save lives is deemed right, then so must lying be. He then criticizes the notion that it was right for a police to shoot an armed man man who fired gun outside a Jewish school in Memphis, Tennessee, but that it's wrong to "lie to the Nazis if they showed up at your house and asked if you're hiding Jews in the attic." Filtering out all these examples of protecting Jews from the Nazis really goes hand in hand with the flerfs' Nazi sympathies.
Next point Duffy made, was that the notion of "Man has a right to the truth", can not override "man's right to life". Direct quote: "There are circumstances where it is justified to kill someone else in order to protect yourself and in order to protect others. The "right to truth" argument fails to recognize that lying and deception are justified in order to protect yourself and others just like killing can sometimes be." Duffy then shows how Bible can be quote-mined to show lying is always a sin, and to show killing is always a sin.
Next, Duffy discussed stealing. He says that the commandment to not steal does not apply in e.g. cases where you take someone else's first aid kit to save a human life, or when you steal food to not die of hunger. Had flerfs not missed this, they probably would have also projected that it's Duffy who is a professional con artist making his money by stealing every penny he owns.
Duffy ended with "And I'm sure people are now going to claim that I encourage people to lie and deceive and because Will encourages people to lie and deceive, you can't trust Will. All I can say there is this. Who I am as a person is I have to call it as I see it. That's just who I am. And this is exactly how I see it in the Bible. And to deny that, I would be lying to myself."
Duffy's full sermon |
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"It's NoT An EXpeRimEnT, MerELy aN ObSErVaTIon!"[edit]
Yeah, Dubay really said that.
Anyway. A scientific experiment usually means using a model to predict what will happen [hypothesis], putting a chain of events (that either supports or disproves the hypothesis) into action, and then observing and documenting the results for future peer review, publication, reproduction etc.
Since Dubay has himself said the chain of events, that is, how the world goes about, will never result in a 24 hour Sun in the Antarctic at any time of the year, the definitive authority in flerf crankery has finally hammered down his goalposts, which gives the experiment the power to disprove the hypothesis of his flat earth model.
As for the chain of events, since the Sun doesn't really need a nudge to get up in the morning, the procedure is already in action, and recording the observation in the correct place, at the correct time of the year, gets the job done.
Complaining TFE is just an observation, leaves out the rather tedious preliminary work of sending a 5.97×1024 kilogram land mass to orbit a 1.99×1030 kilogram gas giant at 107,000 km/h, at 23.5 degree axial tilt. Good thing the setup phase happened almost by coincidence, over a brief 4.6×109 year time period. Almost enough time to binge watch Corrie.
With the observation of the chain of events now being documented in nothing short of stellar fashion, the experiment has completed, and disproved Dubay's hypothesis. Dubay naturally moved the goal posts again, by crying about how the Sun's documented orbit outside the Flat Earth Model's orbital family supposedly doesn't tell anything about the shape of the Earth. This shows flerfs can learn. In this case, Dubay learned a basic principle of grifting: make unfalsifiable claims instead of falsifiable ones.
"Looking at the sky can't tell you anything about the shape of the ground you stand on!"[edit]
While trying to grasp for straws, again, flat Earthers like Dubay have accidentally shot at their foot with this assertion, because the only way to hold that claim is to admit the sky both on a flat Earth and a spherical round Earth would be indistinguishable. If it wouldn't then the sky can and DOES tell you the shape of the ground on! Of course, the sky would obviously look totally different on a flat Earth and flatties know this since they have been using for years examples of celestial observations as proof (see, as example, their star trails claim from sections above).
Dubay's cries after TFE were exceptionally hypocritical, given that just under fifth (39/200) of his crank "proofs" in his book "200 Proofs Earth is Not a Spinning Ball!" were attempts to infer the shape of the Earth from celestial observations. Three of the claims in the book (#53, #56, and #57) were either directly contradicting TFE, or complaining about such experiment missing.
Dubay's 39 incorrect celestial observations to tell the shape of the ground |
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17. "Olber's Paradox, 19. "If the Earth revolved around the Sun, Tycho Brahe should have been be able to see stellar parallax (relative motion between stars as the earth moves)." This requires a telescope, but Brahe died seven years before the telescope was invented. Today, anyone can see a timelapse of stellar parallax. 53. "The Longest summer days in the North are much longer than those in the South." Directly falsifiable, and falsified by TFE. 54. "In the North dawn and dusk come slowly and last far longer than in the South where they come and go very quickly." Earth spins at constant rate, the dawn and dusk take equal amount of time. Also, flat Earth has no dawn (sunrise) and dusk (sunset). 55. "Sun's orbital speed is higher during Southern summer." Measurable on the tropics, no such measurement data to prove this. 56. "If the Earth were actually a spinning globe revolving around the Sun, the only place such a phenomenon as the Midnight Sun could be observed would be at the poles." Again, debunked by TFE. Also, north pole has no mountains in it, and yet we have timelapses showing mountains and 24 hour arctic Sun. The actual boundary where 24 hour Sun can be seen, is the polar circle. 57. "The establishment claims the Midnight Sun IS experienced in Antarctica but they conveniently do not have any uncut videos showing this" Again, directly falsifiable, and falsified by TFE. 58. "The Sun is not visible during Southern polar night, which is impossible in the globe model." Again, wrong. The axial tilt causes opposite polar circles to be lit depending on which side of the Sun the Earth is. It takes six months to get to the other side. 59. "It is said that the rotation takes twenty-four hours and that its speed is uniform, in which case, necessarily, days and nights should have an identical duration of twelve hours each all the year round." This would be the case if the Earth's axis wasn't tilted, like it isn't in Dubay's book illustration. But the axial tilt has been confirmed even by flerfs themselves, so there you go. 97. "We can't see, feel, or hear, or measure the Earth move in the universe". We can measure it, we can't see ourselves move because of the frame of reference is on Earth, and flerfs automatically dismiss any photo outside of Earth as CGI. We obviously can't hear it because moving in space doesn't really have anything to make rubbing sounds. 98. "The distance to Polaris is between 323-434 and light years. If astronomers can't be sure of distances to stars, their theory needs re-examining.". Dubay doesn't understand the syntax of 323-434 meaning 323 is the new, more accurate measurement. "[…] it is impossible for heliocentrists to explain how Polaris manages to always remain perfectly aligned" Polaris is not perfectly aligned with the pole. The parallax of Polaris 99. "Viewed from a ball-Earth, Polaris, situated directly over the North Pole, should not be visible anywhere in the Southern hemisphere." Polaris isn't at the pole, and atmospheric refraction is a thing. On the contrary, all stars should be visible in flat earth model, yet Polaris is invisible below 20 degrees South latitude. Also, weirdly, the flat Earth model states that local Sun exists because light can only travel so far, yet we can see the supposed stars from outside the firmament on all sides, even the lowest stars just above the horizon, but not the stars we see when we go South. 100. "If Earth were a ball, the Southern Cross and other Southern constellations would all be visible at the same time from every longitude on the same latitude." It is, and Dubay has to pretend it isn't because there is no one South in flat earth, i.e. the longitudinal lines never meet in the South. 101. "Unlike Polaris, however, Sigma Octantis can NOT be seen simultaneously from every point along the same latitude". The star isn't very bright but it can be seen with a telescope. "The direction in which stars move overhead is based on perspective and the exact direction you’re facing, not which hemisphere you are in." To swap the clock hands' direction from clockwise to counter-clockwise, the required change in perspective is walking to the other side of the clock (assuming transparent clock face), and facing it. You'll be facing the opposite direction. This also happens when you instead of looking to South, look to North. 102. "[…] the declination of the Pole Star or any other object is simply a result of the Law of Perspective on plane (flat) surfaces." The stars disappearing behind the horizon don't disappear into a single vanishing point, and at no distance does the Polaris' angle go negative in the flat earth model, where Polaris will remain the highest star despite distance from the North Pole. 103. "There are several constellations which can be seen from far greater distances over the face of the Earth than should be possible if the world were a rotating, revolving, wobbling ball. For instance, Ursa Major […]" Same argument as Polaris in 99. 104. "The constellation Vulpecula can be seen from 90 degrees North latitude, all the way to 55 degrees South latitude." Same argument as Polaris in 99. 105. "Aquarius and Libra can be seen from 65 degrees North to 90 degrees South!" Same argument as Polaris in 99. The title "200 proofs" is a joke. We hear Dubay also does induction proofs by showing the property holds for each natural number, separately. 112. "The Sun creates local solar noon. On the opposite side of Sun, day would be night and vice versa". The Earth reaches the opposite side of Sun in 365.25/2 = 182.625 solar days, or 4383 hours. Living in a society, we do not care about the point in space where Earth is exactly on the opposite side of the Sun. That point will be exactly 4,383 hours from now, and then, it will be the time 182 days and 15 hours from now. And since 15 is pretty close to 12, it will be roughly the opposite time of the day. Who cares. The society doesn't have to adjust the clock for arbitrary points in Earth's orbit. It relies solely on the rotation of the Earth which dictates when it's day and night. We only care about that, because unlike Dubay, we have places to be during the day. It plays no significance in our lives if the work day starts 6am at point 0° on Jan 1, and then on second of July at the same time, Earth will have moved 180.37° instead of 180°. On Jan 1 it might still be dark, yet we get up anyway, and in July, the Sun will have risen before us. Again, who cares. After full 360° lap around the Sun, time will have advanced 364 days and 30 hours, or 365 days and 6 hours. The extra six hours accumulates over four years into 24 hours, and that's why we have leap years. 115. "The Moon is visibly orbiting the Earth, and hasn't crashed into it." The Moon's orbital velocity is just slightly too large for a stable orbit, and the moon is actually escaping Earth at the rate of 3.8 cm per year. The Sun will swallow Earth long before Moon escapes from Earth. 119. "When looked at with an unprejudiced naked-eye or through a telescope, the fixed and wandering stars appear as luminous discs of light, NOT spherical terra firma. The pictures and videos shown by NASA of spherical terra firma planets are all clearly fake computer-generated images, and NOT photographs." Refuting evidence as CGI is not proof the evidence is CGI. 121. "When you observe the Sun and Moon you see two equally-sized equidistant circles tracing similar paths at similar speeds around a flat, stationary Earth." Yes, and ants actually grow in size when you kneel down to take a closer look. Objects' size in space is not determined by eye-balling them, but from parallax, redshift, and TFR. 124-125. "Crepuscular rays prove Sun is 30 miles wide and 3000 miles away." The book illustration implies the Sun is actually inside the cloud, which contradicts with known altitude of clouds, and flying altitude of planes that often fly through clouds. 127. "The fact that the Sun and Moon’s reflections on water always form a straight line path from the horizon to the observer proves the Earth is not a ball." The surface deviations of not-perfectly-still water varies much more than Earth curvature. 129. "Why are telescopes on built on solid stone bases if the Earth moves?" The Earth does move, and equatorial mounts 131. "[…] the Moon is observably not a solid body, it is clearly circular, but not spherical […] the Moon has been proven largely transparent and completely self-luminescent, shining with its own unique light." Why does the Moon display shadows around the edges of its craters? 134. "The Moon itself cannot physically be both a spherical body and a reflector of the Sun’s light." An object doesn't have to be a dish or mirror polished for it to reflect light. Anything we can see reflects light. 135. "The Moon is self-luminescent and transparent". Same as 131. No proof provided for transparency. 137. "For the Sun’s light to be casting Earth’s shadow onto the Moon [Eclipses], the three bodies must be aligned in a straight 180 degree syzygy". No pictorial evidence is provided of lunar eclipse and fully visible Sun at the same picture. 143. "If the Sun were 93 million miles away and the Earth a spinning ball, the transition from daylight to night would instead be almost instantaneous as you passed the terminator line." The atmosphere scatters light, and sunset happens relatively quickly. 144. "Time-lapse photography shows the Moon itself turns clockwise like a wheel as it circles over and around the Earth." The timelapses taken by amateurs show the Moon wobbling, and not turning like a wheel. 145. "If the Moon were a sphere, observers in Antarctica would see a different face from those at the equator, yet they do not – just the same flat face rotated at various degrees." This is just Dubay gas lighting. Otherwise Dubay could show pictures of the dark side of the moon taken from the Southern hemisphere. 146. "It is plain for anyone to see that the Moon orbits around the Earth every single day!" From the frame of reference of Earth it may look like that, but that's not a valid proof. 147. "The ball-Earth model claims the Sun is precisely 400 times larger than the Moon and 400 times further away from Earth making them “falsely” appear exactly the same size. Once again, the ball model asks us to accept as coincidence something that cannot be explained other than by natural design." The size is not exactly the same, hence why there's a 'ring of fire' around the moon during a solar eclipse. 148. "Stars come to meridian four minutes earlier every 24 hours." Yes, solar day is four minutes longer than sidereal day. 149. "Throughout thousands of years the same constellations have remained fixed in their same patterns without moving out of position whatsoever." Yes, significant movement of distant stars is measured in a very long time-frame. 150. "If Earth were a spinning ball it would be impossible to photograph star-trail time-lapses turning perfect circles around Polaris anywhere but the North Pole." Then how is the polaris so low in Arizona? Why is there no photos showing elliptic trails that would result from the perspective, if the stars are supposedly rotating above the north Pole.? 151. "Star trails should be wonky if Milky Way flies 670,000,000mph, Sun 500,000mph around Milky Way, Earth 67,000 mph around the Sun!" Quoting absolute numbers is meaningless. Including in them the Galaxy's speed that all the surrounding stars are part of is deceptive. Calculate the parallax, the expected angular speeds and the cornering force we should be experiencing, and get back to us, Eric. |
This hypocrisy leaves flat Earthers with a big dilemma: Either
- Continue claiming celestial observations tell nothing about the shape of the Earth, and thus both admit hypocrisy, and destroy all said flerf observations as proof for a flat Earth (e.g. sunset, eclipses, timezones, star trails, etc.), or
- Admit celestial observations can tell the shape of the Earth, and thus admit The Final Experiment, and destroy the flat Earth.
Pick your poison flatties.
Why haven't people ever filmed the 24 hour Antactic Sun before? Why are there so many 24 hour Arctic Sun videos?[edit]
In his video essay Dave McKeegan explains that there's more countries that are in the arctic circle, and that the travel to see the Arctic midnight Sun doesn't cost 40,000 USD. McKeegan points out that very few people visiting Antarctica come specifically for the Sun. Most people who come to Antarctica are there either because they are working, or because they take part in an event or expedition that takes their full attention. Capturing a timelapse reliably requires constant monitoring of the filming gear. That being said, he also showed there are plenty of timelapses that flerfs have either ignored, or called out as fake:
- Antarctica 24hr Sunlight VR 8K (2022)
- August Moon (2020)
- Frostbytes: 24hr Fisheye Sun Antarctica and New Zealand (2019)
- What does the sun do at the Pole !? (2018)
- Antarctica 24-hour Sunlight Timelapse VR (2017)
- THE POLAR NIGHT | 9 month timelapse at the South Pole | 4K60 HDR (2016)
- Frozen South: Antarctica 24 hour Sun 4K (2015)
- 24 Hours of Sunlight at the South Pole, Antarctica: Time Lapse Video of Sun Going in Circle (1999)
TFE footage was the first one to hit most flerfs' eyes, because it's the first time their gurus can't dismiss it. Unlike the timelapses that came before, TFE footage was specifically recorded to withstand scrutiny by conspiracy theorists with their forensic loupes (McKeegan elaborates the methods in the video below). This meant that flerf gurus had to actually do something: control the narrative, and explain away the footage to maintain their grift.[note 25]
Dave McKeegan - Flat Earthers think the 24 hour Antarctic sun hasn't been captured before |
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"All of the above! There's just too many discrepancies!"[edit]
The experimentation method of TFE is also falsifiable. One valid, logical argument on why flat Earth model supports a midnight Sun in the Antarctica would be enough to render it void. Grasping for straws, desperately throwing everything at it hoping something sticks, isn't a good look for flerfs. A pile of zeroes is still a zero.
The only reason the pile of zeroes is being built in the first place, is to create material for the Gish gallop and piecemeal rebuttal defenses, and to build a collection of meme format propaganda that can be spammed over and over to mass-recruit new suckers into the grift cult.
The Glober Experiments[edit]
The Cavendish Experiment (1797)[edit]
The experiment[edit]
The Cavendish Experiment by Henry Cavendish
was the first measurement of gravity between two objects in a laboratory.
The basic idea of the experiment was to suspend two lead 0.73kg spheres attached to a 6ft (1.8m) wooden rod, that was suspended from a wire that resisted torsion. Next to this object, two 348 pound (158 kg) lead spheres suspended on a separate rod. As the larger balls were moved in close proximity of the smaller ones, they would attract each other. By knowing the measuring the angle of the rod, and by knowing the twisting force for that angle, Cavendish determined the gravitational force between the objects. For more details, see Wikipedia.
The bitching and whining[edit]
As always, flerfs like Eric Dubay just both misrepresent, and lie blatantly about the experiment.
Dubay's first claim is, that the experiment "has been widely criticized by the scientific community" which straight up contradicts with what he blurts out a bit later, that "the experiment went down in history as a great success".[note 26] The truth is, the experiment was an amazing achievement, as said here by Richard Feynman. Dubay lies on:
"No one has ever been able to relpicate the Cavendish experiment in over 200 years"
YouTube has tons of amateurs doing it but that would be too easy to dismiss. Here's experiments done with proper scientific instruments:
Here are some more replications, JFC! There's too many of them! AAAAAA!
Vibrations: Next Dubay claims that it's not possible to interact with the system without interfering it, and that Cavendish himself had to deal with annoying oscillation. The oscillating movement is obviously visible in the replication, but it slowly dies out. The fact there is oscillation is however required to calculate G (which is what the experiment was about).
Electromagnetism: Dubay then complains about lack of control experiment because electromagnetism could have been responsible. What he failed to realize, is that lead is diamagnetic, i.e. it can not be magnetized, because it's 82 electrons are in the configuration [Xe] 4f¹⁴ 5d¹⁰ 6s² 6p², i.e., it doesn't have unpaired electrons that would allow it to be magnetized.
Static Electricity: Dubay then states that because "the balls might be magnetic, thus they might attract each other via static electricity", and especially, that "this can not be controlled for". However, since lead conducts electricity, simply grounding the balls, or making them touch will balance out the electric charge between them. Static electricity has been demonstrated and controlled for a long time, as can be seen in this old film, that uses a metal mesh to block the static electricity between a water bottle and sand bag used in place of the lead balls. (The video provides much more debunking wrt static electricity being the cause, so watch all the way to the end). Modern research grade systems are grounded. So, it's actually trivial to control.
Foucault's Pendulum (1851)[edit]
Background[edit]
The movement of the pendulum was first noticed by Vincenzo Viviani, an Italian scientist in 1661. In his hand-written note he describes the motion:
“”We observed that all the pendulums from one thread deviate from the first vertical, and always in the same direction, i.e., according to the lines AB, CD, EF, etc. from right to left of the back parts, etc.
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—Vincenzo Viviani (1661). |
Wikipedia states that Viviani never realized the connection to Earth's rotation, but considered it a nuisance.
The experiment[edit]
Foucault's Pendulum was a device invented by Léon Foucault that demonstrates the Earth's rotation.
The device consisted of a heavy pendulum that was suspended form high ceiling. When put in motion, the pendulum does what pendulums do, it swings back and forth. But over time, it's precession, that is, plane of oscillation changes due to Earth's rotation around its axis.
The bitching and whining[edit]
In his crank video Eric Dubay shares thoughts from himself, Samuel Rowbotham, William Carpenter, and Lady Blount
. Since Dubay is the only one alive, it's only fair to assume he co-signs the thoughts of the ones he quotes.
Dubay described the experiment as straight up "pseudoscience". He quotes Blount, who complained about the absolute speeds, talked about the experiment as a show. Dubay then quoted Carpenter, who has trouble grasping relative motion by laughing at the idea that earth moves under the pendulum, and who then made false claims about the pendulum's precession of being opposite of what it should be. The mocking description of the experiment with the backdrop of street-charlatans' tricks is nothing but argumentum ad ridiculum.
"Foucault's Pendulums do not uniformly swing in any specific direction!"
Dubay rambles on to his first point: "Sometimes they rotate clockwise, and sometimes counter-clockwise. Sometimes they fail to rotate and sometimes they rotate far too much."
Immediately, Dubay misrepresents what the pendulum experiment is about. The pendulum wasn't supposed to always run in the same direction, like he implies. It's about the pendulum's precession direction and speed:
The direction of the precession depends on the latitude:
- The pendulum rotates clockwise on the northern hemisphere, always.
- The pendulum rotates counter-clockwise on the southern hemisphere, always.
- On the equator, the pendulum doesn't rotate. It doesn't fail to rotate like Dubay describes it, it's expected to not rotate there.
- The claim that the pendulum rotates too much wasn't given any proof so Hitchen's razor it is. The most the pendulum ever rotates is 360 degrees in 24h, at the poles, and it has been demonstrated at the South Pole.
The speed also depends on the latitude. It increases when moving from the equator to either pole, where the precession is 360° / 24h.
The rotation direction can be altered!
Dubay then tries to imply the experiment setup is not reliable: "Scientists who have repeated variations of the experiment have conceded time and again that quote "it was difficult not avoid giving the pendulum some slight lateral bias at starting. The behavior of the pendulum pendulum actually depends on 1. the initial force beginning its swing and 2. The ball and socket joint used which most readily facilitates circular motion any other.""
An image on the video claims the pendulum is "completely adjustable so one can control gravity". The only thing the device's manual says is adjustable, is the fucking feet. If your laundry washing machine prefers being level, why wouldn't a 6,570 USD scientific instrument that is basically an advanced swinging plumb line? The pendulum's bottom position triggers a switch that maintains a timing circuit that actuates the electromagnet that helps maintain the pendulum's amplitude. The device does not control or counteract gravity, it counteracts air resistance that's slowly slowing the pendulum down.
Dubay is however right when he says adding sideways motion will cause the precession to be faster. This can be seen e.g. in this painting video that uses the motion to create a pendulum rosette.
What Dubay conveniently leaves out, is that a simple method of sending off the pendulum, without any lateral movement, was figured out long ago. The pendulum was tied to a pole with a string, and the string was then cut by burning it. Burning was done because e.g. scissors/knives would have disturbed the system. Fire weakened the string until it tore itself in the direction of tension, i.e., in the direction the pendulum was supposed to travel. The pendulum was introduced in 1851, and in Le petit Parisien article about the experiment's 50 year anniversary, the illustration shows this method as already in use. Today, even amateur experiments do this when they want accuracy.
Furthermore, modern implementations of the pendulum use what's called a Charron ring, which actually reduces any elliptic movement. Page 3 of this article shows a thick metal ring called 'B'[note 27], bolted into three metal rods. When the pendulum swings to a side, its wire will always hit the ring. If the pendulum has any sideways movement, it will cause friction between the wire and the ring, which will then eat the sideways momentum. Once the sideways moment has been eliminated, the Charron ring merely acts as a pivot point that doesn't alter the direction itself. The original paper of the Charron ring can be found here.
The Charron ring can also be seen also in miniaturized versions. Section 2.1.3 of the manual: "In order to prevent elliptical motion, a [Charron] ring is used in Foucault's pendulum."
The Charron ring prevents elliptic motion even in versions that use electromagnets to maintain the amplitude of the swing. One method to do this is called parametric excitation, which sounds fancy but basically something any kid can do, and they do almost intuitively, when they pump a swing without touching ground, by pulling on the chains when traversing up. This shortens the chain slightly, and increases their speed and amplitude. Similarly, the magnet shortens the pendulum slightly at the right moment (the floor has an electromagnetic switch that detects when the pendulum is right above it).
Dubay cranks on:
"If the alleged constant rotation of the Earth affected pendulums any way, then there should be no need to manually start pendulums in motion!"
The Earth's rotation affects the precession, not the amplitude. The method to increase the pendulum's speed was already discussed above, and we don't see Earth operating that electromagnet to create parametric excitation. Besides, even parametric excitation requires a little bit of initial speed. Imagine a kid trying to pump the swing after they've merely sat on it. They'll mostly just wobble about until they manage to get enough speed.
Next, Dubay quotes Rowbotham:
["There's too many variables to account for!"]
"First, when a pendulum constructed according to the plan of Mr. Foucault is allowed to vibrate, it's plane of vibration is often variable, not always. The variation, when it does occur, is not uniform, is not always the same, in the same place, nor always the same either in its rate or velocity or in its direction. It cannot therefore be taken as evidence for that which is inconstant cannot be used in favor of or against any given proposition. It therefore is not evidence and proves nothing."
["This does not prove causality!"]
"Secondly if the plane of vibration is observed to change, where is the connection between such change and the supposed motion of the Earth. What principle of reasoning guides the experimenter to the conclusion that it is the Earth which moves underneath the pendulum and not the pendulum which moves over the Earth. What logical right or necessity forces one conclusion in preference to the other."
["Ball joint ruins everything!"]
"Thirdly, why was not the peculiar arrangement of the point of suspension of the pendulum specially considered in regards to its possible influence upon the plane of oscillation? Was it not known, or was it overlooked, or was it in the climax of theoretical revelry ignored, that a ball-in-socket joint is one which facilitates circular motion more readily than any other"
The variable plane of vibration could not be more vague an argument. The speed of precession changes by latitude. The non-uniform variation place and timing is not explained. Changes in precession speed? Small changes in airflows in the demonstration room might explain small variations. The velocity of the pendulum varies with the amplitude, and this doesn't convey measurement error to any extent. The direction of precession is also devoid of all context. Did Rowbotham also mean it changes on the opposite side of equator? If not, what? Also, small inconsistencies do not matter. We're not interested in the amplitude of the pendulum, or the pendulum's speed, or the pendulum's frequency that depends on the length of the wire it hangs from.
The precession direction and speed are all that matter, as with properly initialized experiment, pendulum weight, length, or start amplitude, do not change what's observed. Science is not unclear about the expected precession direction claim:
- Northern hemisphere: clockwise precession,
- Southern hemisphere: counter-clockwise precession, and
- Equator: no precession.
In fact, science is so confident about the causality between the experiment and Earth's rotation, it has a formula to predict the exact precession rate:
where
- is Earth's angular velocity , and
- is the latitude
This is the "globe earthers'" claim. All flerfs need to do, is prove the formula wrong in a controlled experiment. But they never will, because they know it will go just as well as TFE did.
As for the "ball-in-socket joint is one which facilitates circular motion more readily than any other", it's extremely unclear what Rowbotham actually wanted to see used. If the pendulum was attached to a swivel that did not allow lateral movement, it would have prevented the precession mechanically. Both Rowbotham and Dubay failed to name a better option, that does not prevent the pendulum from demonstrating what it should be allowed to demonstrate, and then explain why it's a better option.
Why would the ball-in-socket joint induce sideways motion itself? Kickbikes wheels do not restrict the kickbike going forward, should the kickbike be propelling itself forward on its own? Why do loose ball bearings not roll about on their own when left unsupervised?[note 28]
And finally: Flerfs have never provided an explanation for the phenomenon on their model. If the Earth is flat, why is it that by moving the apparatus towards the edge of the pizza-land, slows the precession until, on the other side of the pizzaland's equator, the precession magically changes direction. The Sun and Moon can't be the reason, given that their distance above the experiment does not change the precession rate.
Aether drift experiments[edit]
Airy's Failure (1871)[edit]
Michelson-Gale experiment (1925)[edit]
Michelson-Morley experiment (1887)[edit]
Dan Olson's Lake Minnewanka Curve Experiment (2020)[edit]
Full experiment (28:07) |
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Dan Olson's Minnewanka Curve Experiment is one of the most well documented reproductions of the Bedford Level experiment in recent history.
Olson documented everything. Starting with the camera, according to Olson,[129] its specs were
- Blackmagic Pocket 4K
- 2.6k 16mm sensor crop mode (2688x1512px)
- FoV sensor area of 12.5mmx7mm
- 120 fps framerate
- 180° shutter speed
- 4ms exposure interval
The horizontal FoV was 2.48°.[130]
The camera would be attached to a jib with linear height adjustment range 0.1m to 1.5m.
Olson also documented the data needed to make evaluating his testing methods possible, and to make his experiment reproducible:
- Olson recorded the video from Lake Minnewanka, 51°14'32.29N 115°29'37.18W to be precise.
- The camera was the pointed at the opposing shore's treeline at 51°16'44.91N 115°24'42.35W.
- The distance between the camera and its target was 7.04km.[131]
Olson then performed the calculations.
Using Earth Curvature Calculator, he determined that the curvature over that distance is
He then performed trigonometric calculations and made, like proper science expects, a prediction based on an independent variable:[132]
- From the 1.5m height, the target would show all but 0.54 meters of the shoreline.
- From the 0.1m height, the target would show all but 2.7 meters of the shoreline.
Essentially, as the camera would be lowered from 1.5 meters to 0.1 meters (the independent variable), meters of shoreline would disappear behind the curve.
Which it without any question did:
The values above also work with Walter Bislin's Advanced Earth Curvature Calculator, where dragging the observer height slider (in blue) all the way to left (to 0.1m), makes a 2.16m tall target object disappear behind the curve.
The bitching and whining[edit]
After performing the experiment Dan Olson showed the results to a flat earther community group he was in. Predictably, they complained about factors that Olson had already taken into account (waves, boat size, etc.) and after all of that, they told him:
“”Well. You must have done it wrong. You did something wrong. Pray about it and do it again!
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— Dan Olson's In Search Of A Flat Earth from (34:17) to (34:26) |
Yep. No kidding. They literally asked him to pray for the curvature to go away...
The Flerf Experiments[edit]
Every once in a while, flat earthers do try to actually walk the talk, and perform experiments themselves to disprove globe and confirm their pizza land.
Samuel Rowbotham's Bedford Level Experiment[edit]
The Crank[edit]
Samuel Birley Rowbotham, the father of modern flat earth crankery, was an elementary-school dropout, snakeoil salesman with no medical degree,[133] and who got several people killed with his phosphorus based cure-all "medicine". He also accidentally poisoned one of his children, who then died. At the age of 46, he married a 15 year old girl with whom he produced 15 children.
The Crank Experiment[edit]
The experiment took place at the Old Bedford River (map, street view), that is 6 miles (9.66km) long and roughly 10 m (30ft) wide.
Rowbotham estimated the drop over 6 mile distance to be 8 inches per mile. This is acceptable, as the approximation formula produces only 0.6mm of error at three mile mark.
The curve was observed at 8 inches (20.3cm) altitude. The target was a boat that had a flag on it, the tip of which was at 3 feet (91 cm) height from the water. Rowbotham claimed the boat was visible entire time, and that in the globe model, the mast should have been 11 feet (3.4m) below his line of sight.
The Refutal Experiment[edit]
In 1870, Alfred Russel Wallace, a naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist, an illustrator, and a qualified surveyor,
took one John Hampden's 500 pound wager (63,500 USD, inflation adjusted to Dec '24), to replicate the experiment.
Wallace removed errors from Rowbotham's experiment. He didn't go hang about in the canal, or use flimsy boats. To ensure used replicability, he used known locations. The observation point was the Old Welney Bridge (52°31'10"N 0°15'03"E).
Wallace first wanted to set a sight line to minimize the effect of refraction. The sight line was set to the top of the Welney bridge's railing. The distance from the top of the iron parapet of the bridge, to the surface of the water below it, was 13ft 3in = 403.86cm. The sight line's target point would at the Old Bedford Bridge (52°27'05"N 0°09'46"E) that was 6.00 miles (9.66 km) from the Welney bridge's observation point. Because the bridge was made of bricks, Wallace had to mark the sight line. This was done by attaching a 6 feet wide by 3 feet tall white cotton cloth, with a large black horizontal line, to the side of the Old Bedford Bridge. The height of the cloth was set so, that the bottom of the black line also sat 13 feet 3 inches (403.86 cm) above water.
Wallace then placed a stick in the exact middle point between the two bridges, i.e., 3 miles from both bridges. The stick had two large red discs. The middle point of the upper disc was also set at altitude of 13 feet 3 inches (403.86 cm). The second disc was 4 ft (121.92 cm) lower, i.e., its middle point was 9 feet 3 inches (281.94cm) above water.
With the Setup, Wallace made the prediction:
If the Earth was flat, (Fig. 2), then, when observing the sight line with a telescope, the upper disc will be at the same altitude as the sight line.
If on the other hand, Earth was round, (Fig. 1), then the middle point of water would bulge, and upper disc would be 5 ft 8 in (172.72 cm) higher, and since the lower disc was only 4 feet below the upper one, even that one would be above the sight line. Wallace estimated atmospheric refraction to cause roughly 8 inches (20 cm) inches of deviation.
The observed result showed obvious curve:
Today, flerfs like Eric Dubay lie by omission by telling the story of all Rowbotham's experiments, but they do not even mention Wallace's experiment that revealed flerfs' party trick.
The bitching and whining[edit]
According to wikipedia, Hampden who lost the bet, refused to accept the result. He wrote pamphlets that called Wallace a cheater, and like a good charlatan, sued Wallace to get his money back. He was also imprisoned for libel and for threatening to kill Wallace.
Darryle Marble's spirit level experiment[edit]
In 2017, Darryle Marble tried to prove the Earth flat by taking a spirit level to a plane.
At the cruising speed of 450 knots, the plane has to adjust its pitch by one degree every 8 minutes. Human pilots make less than half-a-degree corrections every few minutes. Modern autopilots make 0.1 degree corrections at the rate of roughly 10-20 adjustments per minute. These adjustments are imperceptible to human senses.[134] In Marble's video, the spirit level's bubble absolutely does not stay still. The pitch compensation for the Earth's curvature is drowned in other disturbances from turbulence etc.
Marble also seemed to assume the change in pitch would remain constant, because he expected to see the bubble constantly move towards the other end of the spirit level. This completely fails to understand that in the globe model, gravity is always towards the ground, i.e. the geocenter of the Earth, and thus, the spirit level, when propped to the angle that's perpendicular to the zenith, will not detect the curvature. This is because the gravity well that affects the spirit level changes constantly as the plane travels along the curvature.
So because the spirit level can not detect plane's orientation in the inertial frame of reference, and because the documented bubble movement in the video easily explains 0.1 degree autopilot corrections to pitch, this experiment fails to disprove globe.
Jeran Campanella's flashlight experiment[edit]
During the filming of the 2018 Netflix documentary Behind The Curve, Jeran Campanella, yes, the same Jeranism who later went to Antarctica with The Final Experiment group, recreated the Bedford Level Experiment with a flashlight, and he managed to prove the Earth, a globe.
Bob Knodel's RLG experiment[edit]
During the filming of the same documentary, another flat earther, Bob Knodel, bought a 20,000 USD ring laser gyroscope (RLG) to measure the drift caused by the Earth's rotation . Knodel proved Earth to be, a globe.
Mike Hughes' rocket experiment[edit]
In 2018, "Mad Mike" Hughes launched himself to the sky on a home-made rocket, in the hope of documenting the non-existence of the curve.
Hughes reached the height of 1,875 feet which just under 5% of commercial airliners' cruising altitude (38,000ft). Needless to say, the altitude was not enough to show the curve. Still, the experiment proved beyond any doubt Hughes had the largest balls in the entire flatsphere.
Hughes died in a subsequent attempt in February 2020.[135]
David Weiss' peer-reviewed experiment[edit]
In February 2025, Flat Earth Dave agreed to design and take part in a rigorous, bipartisan, scientific experiment, with Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, with the goal of getting it published in a peer-reviewed, accredited journal. The preliminary idea was to measure the curve with a straight flying plane's altitude, as a function of flying distance. Weiss did his best to weasel his way out of this one, but in the end, couldn't find an excuse. The experiment design meeting will take place in June and August, 2025.
Meanwhile, Michael Toon, who hosted the episode above, is reportedly searching for an extra-long measuring tape to size up Weiss' long face.
The scoreboard[edit]
Adding to the experiments by flerfs
- the two experiments done at TFE (24 hour Sun recording, and the scale measurement), and
- the Bedford Level Experiment replication by Dan Olson,
we get to the scoreboard.
Proved The Earth Flat | Proved The Earth Globe | Failed to Disprove The Globe | Failed to Disprove Flat Earth | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Flerfs | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
Globers | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
Total | 0 | 5 | 2 | 0 |
Why the confusion?[edit]
On certain length scales, the earth certainly is flat — the ground on what we like to call flatland certainly doesn't look like it has any significant curvature in everyday life. In a mountainous (or even just hilly) region, the local geography is so variable that discerning a curve would be even more difficult. As a result of this, a common sense interpretation of a flat Earth can be reached pretty quickly.
A Mathematician might explain this appearance with the statement that "the earth is 'locally' flat". This may be the reason that Cockney Mathematians coined the term 'local yokels' as rhyming slang for platygeists.
In ancient history[edit]
Very early Egyptian and other Middle-Eastern civilisations portrayed the earth as flat land suspended in an ocean, and with a "roof" of some kind over it. This is particularly reflected in some of the prose that made its way into the Bible and has been used to justify flat-Earth beliefs today.
Ancient Chinese astronomy makes no mention of any roundness of the earth; indeed some depictions even made it square. In Siam (now Thailand), the flat-Earth idea was part of Buddhist scripture until the 1800s, as part of the Traiphum cosmography.[136] However, most religious scholars considered it as a metaphorical description. It's unlikely that this was ever taken painfully literally in Siam, even before King Mongkut (the one of The King and I fame) officially introduced more modern geography during his reforms and westernization of the country.
In Western science and theology, the notion that the entire world really was flat was discredited the moment it was properly considered and looked at, and it had faded by the time of classical Greek philosophy. Pythagoras suggested that the earth was round, and Aristotle provided convincing evidence for it in Ancient Greece, although the main source to suggest that Greeks before Aristotle thought the world was flat is Aristotle himself. Around 240 BCE, Eratosthenescalculated the circumference of the earth to an impressive degree of accuracy. By the Roman Empire the sphericity of Earth was not in serious dispute (however some rejected it, like the epicurean poet Lucretius[137] and the christian apologist Lactantius
[138], which they both used the "upside down people" argument). By the Middle Ages, Catholic Church's most beloved of scientific theologians, Thomas Aquinas, was advancing the earth's roundness as a fundamental of logic.[139]:19,45
In ancient pseudohistory[edit]


The idea that everyone used to believe that the earth was flat until only very recently, mostly due to the influence of religion, is essentially a complete myth. A Greek Egyptian by the name of Eratosthenes not only proved the world was round, but calculated its circumference with an error of less than 2%, and even did it in the third century BCE. This is often brought up as an example of how secular enlightenment has triumphed over unfounded religious dogma; indeed, some theories state that this is the reason the myth is so popular.[140] Another possible reason for the myth may be the existence of various Flat Earth Societies in the 19th century.
In the Anglophone world, the myth is believed to originate with the novel The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving, which perpetuated the false idea that Columbus sailed around the globe to prove that it was round and not flat. In reality, all that was at stake with Columbus' journey and those of his contemporaries was the size of the earth — it was Columbus' egregious underestimation of the earth's size in combination with an overestimation of the length of Asia by 5,000 miles (8,046.72 km) by Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli in 1474[141] that led him to theorize that reaching the Indies from the west was feasible. The Spanish Court's reluctance to fund his voyage was based on an estimate of the earth's circumference that much more closely agreed with modern measurements, but was substantially larger than the figure Columbus had come up with. In other words, it was the King and Queen who were right, and Columbus who was wrong.
To be fair to Columbus, Toscanelli's map put Cippangu (Japan) near where the western part of Mexico was in the real world; so even with the earth the correct size, Columbus was still working from erroneous data. It was only by a stroke of luck that Columbus found a "New World" where he had thought Cippangu was; otherwise, he and his crew would have died of starvation. Umberto Eco paradoxically summarized this point in his essay "The Force of Falsity": because Columbus's critics were right, they were wrong, and because Columbus was wrong, he was right — but only thanks to the serendipity of America.
It was widely known that it would be physically possible to get to Asia by going west (disregarding the then unknown Americas), if you could carry sufficient supplies. What prevented anyone before Columbus from trying to go around the world was uncertainty regarding the circumference of the earth and Toscanelli's measurement of Asia. If either of those calculations were off in the wrong direction, the ships were not large enough or fast enough to get from Europe to Asia by traveling west before the food and fresh water supplies on board ran out. Furthermore, with Bartolomeu Dias sailing around the tip of Africa in 1488 the Europeans already had passage (albeit a long and tedious one in a region known for fearsome storms) to Asia.
In modern history[edit]


Given this history, it should come as a surprise to anyone that any human being existing in the developed world right now should still consider the idea of a flat Earth probable. Since the mid-1800s, notably via the Flat Earth Society, modern pseudoscientists have been trying to prove that the earth is flat. As evidence continues to mount, even in modern times, against the flat Earth (such as the fact that we can now orbit the planet and view it from a distance or circumnavigate the globe ourselves in an aircraft), the idea is beginning to take a turn for the silly.[143][144]
English inventor Samuel Rowbotham (1816–1884), under the pseudonym Parallax, published a 16-page pamphlet, which he later expanded into a 430-page book, Earth Not a Globe, expounding his views based on his literal interpretation of several Biblical passages. Under the model proposed by this book, the earth is a flat disc with the North Pole at its center and the south "pole" extending all the way around the outer edge (in other words, there was no true south "pole"). However, the alternate theory that the North Arctic is the surrounding ice wall is a similar idea. This outer edge is also guarded by a 150-foot-tall wall of ice. (Remember, at the time this was written, no expedition to Antarctica had yet reached the South Pole.) After his death, his followers founded the Universal Zetetic Society which published a magazine Earth Not A Globe; however, the society slowly declined after World War I.
The Flat Earth Society (also known as the International Flat Earth Society or International Flat Earth Research Society) was founded by Englishman Samuel Shenton in 1956.[145] Shenton initially accepted the globe theory of the earth, and indeed suggested his own innovation on how to make use of the earth's rotation.[146] This involved raising an airship into the sky and then holding it stationary. After a few hours of the earth's rotation, the airship would be over America. It could then be lowered, making transatlantic transport extremely fast and cheap, in one direction at least. He went as far as to write to the British government, urging them to use this method. The ridicule and indifference that he received persuaded him that perhaps the atmosphere might rotate with the planet, as suggested by the lack of constant thousand-mile-an-hour winds at the equator, or at any altitude above it.
No, only kidding. Actually, Shenton concluded that the earth could not be rotating, and that there was a conspiracy (for no defined reason) to hide this fact.
This conspiracy blossomed to include everyone in every government, civilian pilots (post-war) and/or GPS manufacturers (1960s), everyone in every telecommunications industry, everyone in the southern hemisphere (the difference between the currently-accepted globe and flat Earth map are so massive below the equator that they would be difficult to ignore) and anyone using an odometer on a trip between any four landmarks. Also included in the conspiracy are thousands of supersoldiers keeping ordinary citizens from witnessing the Ice Wall, which surrounds the flat Earth (one begins to wonder if Shenton felt that the best way to change a lightbulb was to hold it in place and get 300 other people to spin the building). As for what lies beyond the Ice Wall, the Flat Earth Society has this to say:
Beyond the 150 foot Ice Wall is anyone's guess. How far the ice extends; how it terminates; and what exists beyond it, are questions to which no present human experience can reply. All we at present know is, that snow and hail, howling winds, and indescribable storms and hurricanes prevail; and that in every direction "human ingress is barred by unsealed escarpments of perpetual ice," extending farther than eye or telescope can penetrate, and becoming lost in gloom and darkness. Some hold that the tundra of ice and snow stretches forever eternally."[147]
The FES is now defunct, but was still active in 1980 under the leadership of (the now deceased) Charles K. Johnson.[148] There is another modern Flat Earth Society with Daniel Shenton as its president, mainly notable for having its first member be synthpop musician Thomas Dolby, whose only qualification for such is that he made a rather good album called The Flat Earth. While much of Dolby's work is famously inspired by his love of science, this album's eponymous song uses the shape of the planet as a metaphor for how human decisions shape the world we create.[149] After listening to this album, Daniel Shenton apparently failed to notice the metaphor and instead began to wonder whether the planet might actually be flat.[150] Although he still accepts modern science such as evolution and global warming, he somehow reconciles them with his flat earth beliefs.[151][152]
Online resurgence[edit]
Sadly, the flat Earth model is gaining popularity — or at least more vocal proponents — via the Internet, especially on various nutcase-enabling platforms like YouTube.[153] The starting point for the resurgence can be considered to be flat earther Mark Sargent's first YouTube video FLAT EARTH clues Introduction he uploaded in February 2015. The central arguments of the video are about
- There existing no 360 degree camera footage from outside the ISS (there now is),
- There being no non-composite images of Earth (there is a whole album, and another), and
- There being no straight flights from South America to Australia (there is).
Funnily enough, the video also confirms the existence of pressure gradient which proves gravity exists, and which disproves the firmament, as pressurized containers have equal pressure regardless of altitude.
Flat earth seems to be rooted in complete and active suspicion of all authority and an assumption that Mainstream Science™ is just one big, faceless monolith — spreading lies to keep the public in the dark about, er... Some nefarious end! NASA, being part of the Illuminati according to the flat earthers, is possessed of infinite money and control while at the same time being so incompetent they leave easily-spotted mistakes in their propaganda that expose the whole thing. Flat earthers like Jeranism make videos filled with a mix of Gish Gallop and creative misunderstanding, willful ignorance, and flat (hah!) denial of facts and evidence to the contrary.[154]
The flat earth movement shares many of the same beliefs and goals as the Alt-right, and have even adopted Alt-right memes into their online presence. They created a variant of Pepe the Frog called "Fepe," or "Flat Earth Pepe."[155]
Fundamentalist endorsements[edit]
Motives for advocating a flat over a round Earth despite evidence to the contrary vary. Many young-earth creationists who think it's 6,000 years old don't go so far as to say that it's not round.[156] However, there are some particularly nutty evangelical flat earthers.[157]
Modern geocentrists make a point of distancing themselves from the flat-Earth belief. Charles K. Johnson based his flat-Earth belief on a hyper-literal interpretation of the Bible (asserting that Jesus' ascent "up" into Heaven is proof of a flat Earth, since a round Earth would have no "up" or "down").[158]
A flat-Earth movement also exists within fundamentalist Islam, based on a literal interpretation of several Qur'anic verses (see the "Religious views" section below).
While we're on the subject, a common claim by people who arrive at flatheaddery from the Religious Fundamentalism direction is that the globe is a lie propagated by the Satan-controlled media in an attempt to draw people away from the Bible. Although one would think that if Satan had that kind of power, then they'd simply ban Bibles outright.
To demonstrate the error in thinking of these people (who have apparently never heard of metaphors or hyperbole), let's look at a passage likely very near and dear to their hearts: God setting his bow in the sky after Noah's flood to celebrate his promise never to do that again. According to Hyperliteralist logic, this means that every rainbow ever (even ones produced from garden hoses) is actually all the same specific object, an actual warbow that might potentially be seized by human hands and used to fire arrows one day.
Celebrity endorsements[edit]
The rapper B.o.B., who has had several hits including "Nothin' on You" and "Airplanes", outed himself as a flat earther in 2016 and released a diss track called "Flatline" aimed at astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. Tyson's nephew, who is also a rapper, released a counter-diss track in response.[159] Astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss wrote in Slate such views can be useful — even if grotesque — when they can be used to check our assumptions. He proposes three clear reasons why the Earth is round: the time zones, the seasons, and the Global Positioning System.[160]
Confusing their ball game proficiency with an understanding of spheres in general, four NBA players also come out as flat earthers, including Shaquille O'Neal.[161] (He was joking.)
Tila Tequila has also endorsed flat earthery[162] — which seems contradictory, considering she's also endorsed Hitler,[163] whom we don't think was a flat earther.
In November 2024, another rapper, Lorenzo Dechalus (prof. Lord Jamar), expressed his flat earth crankery on Godfrey's podcast and offered to debate Neil deGrasse Tyson.[164] The heavyweight champion of astrophysics was unavailable, but, on January 15, 2025, during a 20 minute "debate" with Professor Dave, Dechalus got his ass handed back to him.[165]
Christian flat Earth apologetics[edit]
“”Even a layperson today can observe that the earth is not flat.
|
—Answers in Genesis (even they look smart next to flat earthers!)[166] |
“”When I first became interested in the flat-earthers in the early 1970s, I was surprised to learn that flat-earthism in the English-speaking world is and always has been entirely based upon the Bible.
|
—Robert Schadewald[167] |
Many Biblical literalists claim the Bible disproves evolution and other scientific theories prima facie. Since there is no real debate about the shape of the Earth, these passages call Biblical literalism into question. The irony of flat earthers encouraging people to stop blindly accepting what they've been taught and do their own research has not gone unnoticed, considering that the primarily cited origin of flat earth ideas is indeed the Bible.
In numerous passages, the Bible claims that the earth is a flat disk and/or rectangular, usually implicitly. Whether or not the Bible "really" says this is often debated — but if the Bible was written by people who lived in societies who were unaware that the earth is a more or less spherical object which orbits the Sun, then we would expect this view to be reflected in their writings. Presumably, God's concern would be the salvation of their souls, so it's difficult to see why clearing up the true shape of the Earth would be important for that endeavor.
Biblical flat-Earthism is very rarely accepted. Wilbur Glenn Voliva even offered $5000 as a prize for anyone who can prove that Earth is not flat. Of course, his predictions about Earth ending in 1923, 1927, 1930, and 1935 also failed.[168] Teaching about spherical Earth was banned in the schools of Zion, Illinois, at that time.
Former President of the United States Jimmy Carter mentioned flat earthers in passing (though he was actually speaking against mandatory teaching of creation science):[169]
“”There can be no incompatibility between Christian faith and proven facts concerning geology, biology, and astronomy. There is no need to teach that stars can fall out of the sky and land on a flat Earth in order to defend our religious faith.
|
Appeals to the Bible[edit]
What the Bible actually says about a flat Earth is clearly a matter for debate amongst Christians. But it is certainly both instructive and amusing to read how some Christians clearly see a flat Earth while other Christians attempt to dismiss their claims as poetry, dreams or something which is "obviously" not to be taken literally.
The king seeing all the earth[edit]
- "Daniel 4:10-11. In Daniel, the king “saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth… reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth's farthest bounds.” Only with a flat Earth could a tall tree be visible from "the earth's farthest bounds" — this is impossible on a spherical Earth, or is the tree a rocket?
Theological rebuttal: The strength of Daniel 4:10-11 as an argument for a flat Earth is considerably reduced by the fact that this part of the Book of Daniel recounts a dream experienced by the Assyrian king of Babylon. Thus, it does not necessarily refer to an actually existing tree or make any statements about real cosmology. This interpretation would seem to indicate that biblical literalists do not even know how to read the Bible properly. This is also quote mining.
Jesus seeing all the kingdoms[edit]
- Matthew 4:8: "Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain [spaceship?], and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world"
- Luke 4:5: "And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time."
Theological rebuttal again: The strength of using Matthew and Luke as flat Earth claims is reduced by the fact that "kingdom" is a human construct. If you classify all the places on Earth that you can't see from that particular location as "not kingdoms", such as barbaric tribes and non-monarchies, it can be fitted within that description. However, how the devil knows that those places are not ruled by kings (again, the concept of "king" is also a human concept) is not exactly clear.
You could also go with the idea that Satan simply showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world over the course of a trip around the equator or in sequence, because the text does not imply that they were shown together.
Yet another possible interpretation is that only kingdoms in the then known world (southern Europe, northern Africa and western Asia) are meant, which could be seen from a point in space not far above the surface of the Earth. Take your pick, flatheads.
The earth is a circle[edit]
- Isaiah 40:22: "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth (Earth’s orbit?), and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy (map), and spreads them out like a tent to live in."
Jews and Christians use this quote to "prove" that the Bible implies that the earth is spherical, although the word is "circular", and may refer to the perception of a 360 degree panoramic view. Some scholars point out that Isaiah never uses the Modern Hebrew word for sphere Kadur, anywhere.[170] It is not clear to Theists whether this is relevant, because the interpretation of the word Kadur in the Bible is disputed by Theists. This line probably does refer to a flat model of the earth, since an alternative translation is "He sits enthroned above the vault of the earth," a reference to the firmament.
The passage describes the Heavens as like a canopy, not the Earth. This interpretation would seem to indicate that Biblical literalists do not even know how to read sentences properly.
Some non-flat-earth Christians maintain that this entire text is intended to be poetic in nature, as it talks about God holding the dust of the earth in a basket. Either this, along with everything else, is meant to be a metaphorical description, or God has a really big basket.
"Four Corners"[edit]
- Isaiah 11:12 "And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners [north, south, east and west] of the earth."
- Revelation 7:1 "And after these things I saw four angels standing on four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree."
As with the Daniel quote, modern Jews and Christians, who have been educated by Science, don't take this literally; to them the events described in Revelation are a series of visions, rather than an accurate description of the world (which would indicate that you shouldn't take the Holy Bible literally). Another interpretation of this verse is that four corners of the earth don't refer to literal four corners but to cardinal directions, which is further supported by the description of the four winds which are commonly referenced by their cardinal direction. An additional consideration is that Leviticus 19:27 refers to the "corners of the head"; this means that either A)the authors of the Bible had no problem with using the word "corners" non-literally while discussing round things (which would give the absurd implication that they used idioms and figurative speech just like everyone else ever), or B) The Ancient Israelites had heads like Minecraft Characters (in spite of all fossil evidence to the cont-- Oh wait...). Take for example the modern idiom "The Ends of the Earth." If Isaiah or Revelation had been written today, then this would be the phrase used, and then thousands of years later fundies would take this as proof that the earth is shaped like a string or rope.
Even ignoring all the above rebuttals and debate amongst Christians about what the Bible "really" says, there's still the issue that if we are indeed meant to read the Bible this hyper-literally, then that would imply that when Jesus said we were to be "like doves," that he meant we were to grow feathers, eat mostly seed and fruit, regurgitate crop milk, and make mostly cooing noises.
The problem, of course, is that the very people who insist the Earth is flat because of (their) literal interpretation of the Bible, when pressed on the above points, retreat to a non-literal interpretation of those points, thereby undermining their whole argument that the Earth is flat because the Bible literally says it is. Essentially, they can pick and choose what parts of the Bible are hyper literal or not.
Islamic flat Earth apologetics[edit]
Some Islamic fundamentalists possibly believe the earth is flat, using a literal interpretation of several Qur'an verses. In fact, medieval Muslim scholars, like Christians of the same era, readily accepted Greco-Roman astronomy and used a Ptolemaic geocentric model of the universe with a spherical Earth.[172][173] This would make modern Islamic flat Earth apologetics a step backwards. In 1966 the supreme religious authority of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abd al-Aziz Bin Baz, is rumored to have declared "The earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving of punishment." However historians such as Robert Lacey believe that this quote was misinterpreted (and that Ibn Baaz was actually asserting that the Earth doesn't orbit around the Sun — but not that the earth was flat).
Mohammed Yusuf, founder of terrorist group Boko Haram, stated that the Theory of Evolution as well as spherical Earth teachings should be rejected because they are against Islam.[174] In a 2007 TV debate, an Iraqi Astronomer, Fadil Al-Sa'd, tried hard to push the ideas that the earth is flat and Qur'anic verses also support that the Sun (also flat) is much smaller than Earth and revolves around it.[175]
As in all cases of proof-via-scripture, it's just a question of making flat earthery fit by cherry picking your preferred translation so it fits your pre-existing beliefs.
Appeals to the Qur'an[edit]






- And (remember) the Day We shall cause the mountains to pass away (like clouds of dust), and you will see the earth as a levelled plain, and we shall gather them all together so as to leave not one of them behind.
The Muhsin Khan and Shakir translation seem to use "levelled plain"; other translations, apart from Yusuf Ali, which says "level stretch" rather than "levelled plain", which clearly suggests that God is f@#king punching mountains flat like the badass he is the Earth is a disc.
- Who has made earth for you like a bed (spread out); and has opened roads (ways and paths etc.) for you therein; and has sent down water (rain) from the sky. And We have brought forth with it various kinds of vegetation.
Translations again disagree on this. Like a "carpet" and like a "cradle" are also popular.
- Who has made for you the earth like a bed, and has made for you roads therein, in order that you may find your way.
Other translations of this "like a bed" indicate that it's metaphorical, with "resting place" being the most popular use. The Dr. Ghali translation still uses "cradle" in place of bed.
- Till, when (such a one) comes to Us, he says [to his Qarîn (Satan / devil companion)] "Would that between me and you were the distance of the two easts (or the east and west)" a worst (type of) companion (indeed)!
One presumes that this is a tacit admission that there is an absolute point marked "east" and a point marked "west" which isn't possible on a globe because it wraps around. It's not entirely possible on a flat Earth, either as there is no fixed reference. In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, set on a flat disc, they use radial co-ordinates of "hubward" (meaning toward the centre) "rimward" (towards the outside) and "turnwise" and "widdershins" for clockwise and counterclockwise respectively. Analogous with east and west on a globe, there are no fixed points on this reference frame.
- Have We not made the earth as a bed,
Only Muhsin Khan says "bed". The rest are "expanse" or variations of it. Dr Ghali continues with "cradle". One has to ask, if someone walked up to you and said that the Earth is like a bed, wouldn't one usually think they meant it was a small, warm, and comfortable thing you sleep in and which a parent lovingly prepares for their child? "Flat" is usually quite far down the list of words associated with beds, and indeed if one wanted to describe something as flat, they usually pick something much closer to two-dimensional, such as parchment.
- And after that He spread the earth;
Ironically, the flat earthers would have been better off with Dr Ghali here, as he is less ambiguous about it: "And the earth, after that He flattened it (for life)."
The irony strikes back[edit]
Faking photos[edit]
Some flat earthers, who dismiss all photographs of space as fake ― without giving any criteria for what would constitute a genuine one, other than incredulity ― have been known to use deceptive means for making their case. Essentially, they have done the very same thing that they accuse others of doing. The image at the right is among the first that one finds upon searching for “flat earth” in Google Images.
Convincing, right? Not so fast. The alleged photo cannot be found in the NASA archives, because it was done by YouTube user Danny Wilten. It just showed how the Martian landscapes captured by spatial probes could be photoshopped from one taken in Ireland, not that such a thing actually had taken place.[176] To date, no photo of Mars has been shown to correspond to one taken on Earth,[177] which would be the relevant proof. But it also raises the question, what exactly do these space deniers expect to see on other worlds? Do they expect other rocky planets to be radically different from barren places on Earth? But more importantly, if these photos are so evidently fake, why bother lying? And even if they are fake, it doesn't necessarily mean that the earth is flat. Absence of evidence doesn't mean evidence of absence.
Using spherical Earth mathematics[edit]
In his video "Flat Earth Dave's App Massive Security Breach" Michael Toon revealed he had been sent a decompiled version of Flat Earth Dave's app Flat Earth Sun & Moon Clock. The app's friend finder feature was found to determine distance of friends by using the Haversine formula,
which "determines the great-circle distance between two points on a sphere given their longitudes and latitudes." This proves Flat Earth Dave is fully aware of the Earth being a globe. The decompiled source code also revealed a plethora of security issues that affected all of its 203,793 users.[178] These issues were also analyzed my Dave McKeegan two weeks later.[179] McKeegan showed source code from the app that uses the Earth's obliquity (axial tilt)
as one of its constants.
Another example of flatties using spherical Earth mathematics is flat earther Shane St Pierre's model, which basically an outright plagiarized copy-paste of Walter Bislins' Flat Earth Dome Model, both code and text. Flat Earth debunker JB Aerospace has not only shown in Shane's plagiarized code uses heliocentric parameters such as "RadiusEarth: 6371.0, // km" and "DistSun: 149600000.0, // km" but JPL ephmerides, which are NASA's calculations of the orbits of celestial objects based on observations that flat Earthers reject (such us spacecrafts observations), and physical models which flat Earthers also reject (like Newtonian physics).[180][181] Walter not only noticed and called out Shane for doing a "flat Earth James Somerton" but he updated his simulator by adding those previous heliocentric parameters as variables, which if it were changed then "the App fails and makes wrong predictions", like with the Final Experiment for example. (See: Flat Earth Dome Model only works Based on the Heliocentric Model).
Insecurity for you, insecurity for me[edit]
In his Feb. 7, 2025 follow-up video[182] Michael Toon revealed a security researcher had tried to report the app's vulnerabilities to Weiss, but the support email Weiss had given Google did not exist. Toon also showed the app claims to collect no data at all, but it clearly did collect PII. It thus violates both Google's ToS, and GDPR, especially as the server is hosted in Finland. Weiss misrepresented the publicly accessible data as "hacker who had gotten into the API, and he claimed all leaked data was publicly shared with other users" except the password. Weiss claimed they had changed everyone's passwords and notified users about the issue. Weiss called the whole thing a "nothing burger by anti-flat earth trolls". Instead of looking into mirror about his failure to deploy any, let alone modern password hashing practices, Weiss blamed users, who might have re-used the password in other services.
Next, Toon showed the application included the user's location inside every uploaded packet, even if the user did not opt-in to the app's friend finder feature, and that this information is tied to the user's name and email without their consent. He showed an e-mail by Weiss where he blamed globe earth proponent "trolls" for the data breach. Weiss claimed to have "enlisted an A-Team that had fixed the security problems, and prevented the use of the service's API. When Toon invited Weiss to join a live stream event to defend his app, Weiss responded with a cease and desist notice which basically threatened Toon with a SLAPP lawsuit. The demands were to "Cease and desist from making or promoting false statements regarding the breach", and "retract any prior statements that falsely suggest more than 100 users were compromised."
According to Toon, the following day (on Oct. 17, 2024) Weiss received complaint on X from user who had received same reset password over email. This is wrong on so many levels. The user is never supposed to receive a password over email. They should be sent a link with a rapidly expiring token that allows changing the password. As Toon commented to the user, it was only possible if the server still stored the passwords in plaintext, i.e. without any protection. Weiss later sent a new message to his users telling them their passwords were changed, but they could continue the current app session without logging back in with the new password. Toon then revealed the reason the app could do that, was the app doesn't perform password verification even upon new connections that lacks the session token. Instead, merely spoofing the user_id
or the device_id
of a user, was enough to login to someone else's account, read their messages, or impersonate them in the conversations. Furthermore, both the user_id
and the device_id
were available via the public API meaning what the server accepted as a password, was available on the server even if passwords were hashed. Another massive issue Toon highlighted, was the app's location accuracy was so high it allowed determining many users' home addresses. Weiss' "mitigation" strategy to these issues was obfuscation: he only changed the API domain name. He also put the service behind Cloudflare, which only protects from DoS attacks — a non-issue.
Finally, to highlight the absolutely batshit crazy level of lack of security, Weiss' included his personal $DOME shit-coin PRIVATE KEY in the source code of the application, that he shipped to his 200,000+ users.
On Feb. 6, 2025, after the industry-standard 90 day notice period, Toon and his team of security professionals published their findings on GitHub.
For now, all the vulnerabilities remained unfixed.
Antisemitism[edit]

“”What you see? Was I right?
The Earth’s fucking flat - holocaust denied Hitler was cool and not a bad guy Talmudic Jews have control of your mind |
—Eric Dubay - Once You Go Flat Rap" |
Flat earthers have often complained that NASA had ex-Nazi collaborators working for them, such as Wernher von Braun. This was indeed true (see Operation Paperclip
)[183] but ultimately this is a poor reductio ad Hitlerum argument in the end: "Why should I trust a space agency on its topics of expertise, if it also has antisemites in it?"[note 29] Fortunately, almost all of those scientists are dead or retired now, so that worry is unsubstantiated. The irony is that, bizarrely, many popular flat earthers have spread some kind of antisemitic conspiracies themselves.[184] Even Answers in Genesis (in an astounding stopped clock moment) noticed this.[185] So if they were really worried about Nazism, they could excise the ones in their
cult community.[note 30] Here are some examples:
- Edward Hendrie, who in his book The Greatest Lie on Earth: Proof That Our World Is Not a Moving Globe constantly blames Jews, "communists" and "Zionists" for everything, who "control the mass media, which they use to propagandize the people into pushing the politicians into doing their bidding against God and his anointed"[185] (he may as well have titled his book Mein Kampf 2.0). Hendrie has also written two entire books accusing jews of replacing "God's commands with Satan's Babylonian dogma" by founding communists and rising Hitler into power (we kid you not)[186] and ordering 9/11...[187] He is an antivaxxer too.[188]
- Yoga instructor Eric Dubay's infamous YouTube video 200 Proofs Earth Is Not a Spinning Ball mentions The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his 198th "proof",[189] features literal "Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition
" propaganda posters and mentions the antisemitic book "Freemasonery and Judaism" of Léon de Poncins
.[190] He is also a Holocaust denier [191] who claims "Jewish-controlled mainstream media" has "painted an evil picture of Hitler"[192] and wrote two raps about it (which it isn't a lot but it's weird he did it twice, right?):
“”Nazis took on the Jews and they lost
Germany knew just exactly what it’d cost They made the ultimate sacrifice for us Their voices are screaming from the grave listen up Hitler shut down the Rothschild banks! |
——Eric Dubay - Goyim Revolution" |
- In Joe Rogan's podcast, the flat earther Eddie Bravo hints that there's a worldwide Jewish "globalist" conspiracy.[193]
- TV personality and social media influencer Tila Tequila
expressed her belief in flat Earth[194] and antisemitism many,[195] many,[196] MANY,[197] times.
- The Argentinian New World Order, 9/11 truther, flat earther conspiracy theorist Iru Landucci cited the (well-known antisemitic hoax) book "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in one of his conferences.[198]
- [199] Flat Earth internet influencer "Kaleb.fe"[200] has been called out in TikTok for sharing antisemitic content.[201][202][203][204] During the 2023 Israel–Hamas war Kaleb doubled down on the now antisemitic-friendly social media, owned by anti-flat Earth but antisemitic sympathizer Elon Musk, formerly known as Twitter. He stated to "wake up my fellow brothers and sisters to flat earth, after I will wake them up to the evil that is Jewry"[205][206] by quoting Hitler and sharing BitChute's neonazi great replacement shitty documentary Europa: The Last Battle.[207][208]
- Whoever this guy is.
In some way, this is unsurprising too, since a flat Earth would require some kind of New World Order conspiracy theory. They often land not far away from the oldest grand conspiracy in the book: the International Jewish / Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory.[209] After all, if a spherical Earth is fake, what else is fake? Maybe the Holocaust? Am I right B.o.B.?[210]
“”Do your research on David Irving
Stalin was way worse than Hitler |
—B.o.B - Flatline![]()
|
Common counterarguments that do not refute flat earther claims[edit]
Just because the thing you're trying to prove happens to be correct doesn't necessarily mean that the "proof" you're trying to use is valid. As such, some of the arguments people use against flatheads have almost as little thought put into them as the ones the flatheads themselves use. Stay away from these arguments. Inverse stopped clocks will be handed out at the ticket booth.
The shadow the Earth casts on the Moon is round![edit]
This one is more nuanced than it first appears, prohibitively so. Ordinary moon phases are caused by the Sun shining directly upon the lunar sphere from various angles: we see its horizon swivel around. Aristotle observed that during eclipses a bit of Earth gets in the way and casts a shadow on the moon that is always curved to some extent, from our perspective on Earth.
“”How else would eclipses of the moon show segments shaped as we see them? As it is, the shapes which the moon itself each month shows are of every kind straight, gibbous, and concave — but in eclipses the outline is always curved: and, since it is the interposition of the earth that makes the eclipse, the form of this line will be caused by the form of the earth's surface, which is therefore spherical.
|
—Aristotle, On the Heavens[212] |
On the other hand, for a coin held in front of a flashlight (flat Earth with Sun below, moon above): oblique lighting squashes that shadow more severely before warping further onto the same spherical moon.
Contrasting eccentricities to characterize fractions of Earth's silhouette isn't worth it.[213] Much less entertaining the flat model where an always-above Sun emits upwardly-curved light across the sky at the moon.
Eratosthenes's shadows proved a round earth![edit]
Eratosthenes's experiment assumed a Sun sufficiently large and distant that its rays are near-parallel when they reach earth. Guess what happens when you swap that for a small and near sun?
But the moon landing![edit]
Gravity would pull a disk that big into a spherical shape![edit]
If someone is dumb enough to deny a fact as basic and demonstrable as the shape of the Earth, then do you really think they're going to accept a concept as advanced as an intangible cosmic force that even scientists don't fully understand yet? People knew that things fell long before Newton, and those who thought to ask why came up with their own explanations. As it is, the most popular flathead explanation (that actually makes sense anyway) for spilled milk not hovering midair is that the earth is constantly accelerating upward at 9.8m/s^2.
Proof by humor[edit]
“”Me: The Earth is 71% water
Scientist: Yes. True. |
Reverse Flat Earth conspiracy theory[edit]
Another crank belief that is gaining just as much, if not more, momentum in the tubes as the flat Earth itself is its mirror image conspiracy: the Reverse Flat Earth Conspiracy Theory (lame title, but we'll think of something else later). As you may have guessed, the idea here is that the flat Earth theory isn't merely false, it's actually a fake conspiracy that was made up by the powers that be to make "genuine" truth seekers look bad.[215] Unsurprisingly, however, said clowns who make this unfounded claim often believe in other sorts of crankery that are almost as moronic as the flat Earth itself. Actually, if you haven't guessed, this is the whole point. The point is to knock down the flat Earth as "obviously" wrong to give their own form of crankery credibility. At least one conspiracy loon who rejects the flat Earth even says space itself is a hoax![216]
In short: no, you do not get any bonus points for rejecting the flat Earth if you regurgitate other sorts of crankery and conspiracy bullshit. Looking cute like the kitten near the dinner table doesn't cut it, so don't try it.
Helping Flerfs[edit]
“”I have a mental illness that makes me think that people will change their minds if I present the correct arguments with the appropriate facts and data.
|
—@Dialectiks [217] |
As with all grifts with a cult-like structure, there are two parties. Those making the T-shirts, and those buying them. The grifters selling the T-shirts can not be convinced to stop. Like Upton Sinclair said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." The grifters lack the skill set, job experience, and connections to maintain their current lavish lifestyle in honest jobs. They would also be giving up their narcissistic supply. They've already lost the only thing they stood to lose: their reputation. Thus, they have zero incentive to look for something better out there.
Similarly, the marks, almost never wish to learn the truth. What is actually happening is something comparable to spiritual bypass, where the flerf is actively avoiding their mental health issues, difficult life situation, or dissatisfaction in life, by escaping into a fantasy world where they are the protagonist fighting "the real powers that be". In this case, according to flerfs, the ones that have hidden free energy the Christian God, spirituality, scientific knowledge, and easy access to hidden natural resources that any average Joe can just pick like dandelions. Or not.[note 31]
The cult group has usually long since replaced any real friends and family, and led to loss of job and the place in the normal society. With nothing to go back to, majority of the flerfs would rather die, than accept their entire identity is based on a lie, and return to their void of objective reality. Thus, the marks are almost never available to be convinced. Especially via internet feuds. This is evident from when flerfs are asked "What would convince you that you're wrong?", their most common answer is "Nothing". This shows their belief is unfalsifiable both from the viewpoint of arguments (impossible requests and endless goal post shifting), and from the viewpoint of faith ("Flat Earth is Gods truth, and I choose to believe, and refuse the overwhelming counter-evidence"). Scammers have known since the late 19th century, that once the mark sees the scam as something that's going to make them better off, they can not be convinced by knockers (=debunkers). They refer to this state of mind the mark has, as the fever.[218]
As the flat earther Mark Sargent said, "flat earth is the last conspiracy people will believe". This has some truth to it, in that were it true, everyone would have to be in on it against the flat earthers. Flat earth is also the boundary between "harmless" crankery, and political radicalization: For many, the next step was QAnon.[219] There are no woke flat earthers, and dedicating resources to help flerfs sends an awful message to every not-awful person that could use the help.
Flerf marks are the symptom of a failed education, social work, and mental healthcare systems, and thus at the root, the only solution starts with corrective public spending policy.
Flat Earth memes and propaganda[edit]
Don't worry, we're not so sure, either.
Step 1. Tell people the earth is flat. Step 2. End the New World Order. Done. Easy.
"Premise: The UN went out of their way to get all the world's nations in one single big family picture as a symbol for peace, brotherhood, and unity. Conclusion: The UN is keeping secrets from us.[note 32]
1960's agency logo art = 1980's TV art = global conspiracy?[note 33]
How can you explain different angles and image quality of the composite images of the world, if the globe is a globe and taken with different equipment and at different distances and compositing softwares? Hm?[note 34]
It's not like people can believe in Christ and God without believing in a flat Earth. No way.
- Flat Earth with Sun moon and stars.png
If NASA knew the earth was flat, would they tell you?[155]
...but where is Jon Snow?
Yeah... Because why bother buying a telescope am I right?[note 35]
- Real photos of wandering stars and the Sun taken using the nikon p900 and canon sx60 versus NASA's cartoon ball planets.jpeg
See also[edit]
- Bedford Level experiment
- Owen Benjamin
- Cellular cosmogony
- Fixedearth.com
- Flat Earth Society (website)
- Geocentrism
- Hollow Earth Theory
- Michael Hughes
- New Swabia — the part of Antarctica explored by Nazis
- Peter Sweden
- Science of Discworld
- Fun:Scientific Geoterrapinism
Further reading[edit]
Rebuttals of flat earth conspiracies[edit]
- The Globe: How the Earth Became Round, James Hannam (Reaktion books, 2023) ISBN 9781789147582
- Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything, Kelly Weill (2022, Algonquin Books) ISBN 9781643752198
- How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason, Lee McIntyre (2022, MIT Press) ISBN 9780262545051
- Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas about Our Planet, Donald R. Prothero and Michael Shermer (2020, Red Lightning) ISBN 978-1684350612
- The Earth Is Not Flat, Gordon S. Brooks (2016, Createspace) ISBN 978-1530207923
- Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, Christine Garwood (2008, Thomas Dunne books) ISBN 978-0312382087
- Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians, Jeffrey Burton Russell (1997) ISBN 978-0-275-95904-3
Scientific papers against a flat earth[edit]
Yes. They do exist... Real scientist did in their free time what flat earthers should have done in the first place: making predictions with their models. (Spoilers: they all fail).
- Boyd, John P. (2020-03-27). "Meteorology and Oceanography on a Flat Earth" (PDF). arXiv:2003.08541 [physics].
- Boyd, John P. (2022-05-20). "Polaris: The Mathematics of Navigation and the Shape of the Earth" (PDF). arXiv:2206.07491 [physics].
- de Marez, Charly; Corre, Mathieu Le (2020-01-06). "Can the earth be flat ? A physical oceanographer's perspective". arXiv:2001.01521 [physics].
- Tort, A. C. (2014). "An exercise on Gauss' law for gravitation: The Flat Earth model". Physics Education. 49 (6): 629–631. doi:10.1088/0031-9120/49/6/629. ISSN 0031-9120.
- Kuzii, Olena; Rovenchak, Andrij (2019-05-01). "What the gravitation of a flat Earth would look like and why thus the Earth is not actually flat". European Journal of Physics. 40 (3): 035008. doi:10.1088/1361-6404/ab0bba. ISSN 0143-0807.
External links[edit]
- Modern flat Earth beliefs
- Flat Earth International Conference 2017, 2018, 2019
- The Flat-Earth Bible (archived copy)
- Flat Earth Lunacy — a Flat Earth debunking blog (archived copy)
- FlatEarth.ws — another Flat Earth debunking blog
- The Flat Earth Society
- The Flat Earth Wiki
- The International Square Earth Society (Note: This page is a deadpan parody)
- Is the Earth flat? (archived copy)
- Vsauce does a piece on the subject
- hbomberguy also did one
- Zetetic Astronomy. Earth not a Globe by Samuel Rowbotham, full text at the Internet Sacred Text Archive
- 100 Proofs that the Earth is a Globe
- Flat Earth convention sketch
- Folding Ideas, In Search of A Flat Earth
- Apollo Image Archive
- Wikipedia archive of photos of Earth from space
- Dave Farina - See the 'Flat Earth Debunks' playlist
- TFE Expedition - See 'The Final Experiments' playlist
- Dave McKeegan - flat Earth debunker
- Michael Toon - flat Earth debunker
- SciManDan - flat Earth debunker
- RedsRhetoric - flat Earth debunker
Notes[edit]
- ↑ Flat earthers are often referred to as flerfs, or flatties.
- ↑ To a newcomer the video will appear overreaching, but it ages like fine wine as you get familiar with the rabbit hole, that is, as you learn to understand the cult.
- ↑ Each of us has 13.8 billion years more experience about being unalive, so, what's so special about death anyway? Could it be it means flatties wasted their only life on our planet grifting losers or just being one?
- ↑ This is similar to how QAnon's drops were "decoded" by the hivemind to come up with suitable evidence.
- ↑ Flerfs state they have a functioning method to calculate the distance of the sun with basic trigonometry, but they have yet to deliver.
- ↑ Round earthers are just trying to pull the wool over the eyes of thinking people with math!
- ↑ If you really care, the declination from a height h above a circle with radius R is
- ↑ Flerfs agree agree theodolites are accurate.
- ↑ Think Pythagorean theorem where hypotenuse grows as height leg grows.
- ↑ Note: Saying something is CGI does not prove it's CGI anymore than saying "Bible is the true word of God", makes it the true word of God.
- ↑ Software used by pilots for planning flight routes such as ForeFlight, SimBrief, or SkyVector don't use the "flat earth map" (in fact, they use a globe).
- ↑ A "straight line" on a flat Mercator projection
is, in fact, not the shortest path, but a path of constant bearing relative to true north, called a loxodrome (or rhumb line
).
- ↑ No one is stopping the flerfs from walking and measuring e.g. the east-west direction length of Australia, and proving the length is much more than the claimed 5,100km. People have done that,
and it's not like the flerfs who aren't participating in more meaningful things in society, don't have all the time in the world.
- ↑ The meaning of "straight line" depends on the type of map. Projections involve trade-offs to preserve different features. Azimuthal equidistant projection
— resembling a fish-eye lens — instead shows great circle routes as straight, but only from the center; everything else is distorted. Flat earthers copied the shape of landmasses from an azimuthal equidistant map centered on the North Pole and — since they deny there's a globe to project from — deny there's any distortion.
- ↑ Dubay doesn't check his facts, it's actually 10,800 miles.
- ↑ Basically, there was no funding, as the dick measuring contest between the US and USSR moved to the next thing (space stations like Salyut,
Skylab,
and Mir
), and because there's been very few reasons to go back there, as explained here.
- ↑ To flerfs: Do you really think he would have wanted to end the interview with anything but the funniest answer possible?
- ↑ Try moving a dining plate over your head if you don't believe us.
- ↑ But don't get started on that track in a debate, otherwise, you're going to spend your whole afternoon talking about perspective, light refracting from air, the parallax effect, mirages or GoPro cameras, or how even something as basic as a video of a ship disappearing bottom-first beneath the horizon is supposedly faked.
- ↑ A handy way of knowing when and where to look for them is Heavens Above or any other website or software supporting satellite tracking.
- ↑ Tidal forces pushing large amounts of ocean water to narrow passages at the coastline will make the tides locally often much higher than the open ocean bulge.
- ↑ "Nowhere in the treaty is stated that regular people are not allowed to enter Antarctica".
- ↑ The literal first article say "Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only. There shall be prohibited, inter alia, any measures of a military nature" for crying out loud!
- ↑ The remoteness of the poles and the very low temperatures means that special equipment and protocols are required for such things as rescue plans, communications, and the potential of jet fuel to freeze.[117]
- ↑ No wonder this list of TFE debunks is so long.
- ↑ This is intentional. Cults like flat Earth contradict themselves all the time as a litmus test to ensure the members are willing to accept anything the cult leaders say. It's not about truth, it's about loyalty to the leader.
- ↑ Who says engineers can't be creative?
- ↑ Note to self: Test this with the damned 10mm sockets just in case.
- ↑ Call us when NASA starts taking a position favorable to Deutsche Physik, then we'll hear you out on this one.
- ↑ It seems that for many flat Earthers the problem with nazis is that they worked for NASA rather than they are nazis.
- ↑ To any flerf reading this thinking all of this is crazy: Try taking 30 days off the flat Earth world completely, and be alone with your thoughts about the state of your life and mental health. When you realize how uncomfortable you are, realize it proves the point: Flat earth is an escape and an excuse to procrastinate fixing all the things actually wrong with your life.
- ↑ Also, why do global conspiracies always go out of their way to put their iconography in such prominent public places, anyway?
- ↑ It is true, though, that astronauts shouldn't apply to NASA, because why would you apply for a job you already hold?
- ↑ The first picture is not a composite, but a photo taken from Apollo 16 in 1972.
- ↑ Honestly, sometimes it makes you think if Nikon use flat earthers as a bizarre adverticement for their cameras.
References[edit]
- ↑ "Rapper B.o.B Is A Flat Earth Truther", DListed 1.15.16.
- ↑ "Flat Earthers: What They Believe and Why". Scientific American.
- ↑ Awesome Map of Space Agencies Around the World by Nancy Atkinson (June 26, 2012) Universe Today.
- ↑ Dolan, Eric W. (2023-06-14). "Flat-earthers are overconfident about their own scientific knowledge but exhibit low scientific literacy, study finds". PsyPost. Retrieved 2023-06-14.
- ↑ Olson, Dan (September 11, 2020). "In Search Of A Flat Earth". Folding Ideas.
- ↑ Answers in Science on The Relativity of Wrong
- ↑ Pilling, Michelle (Feb. 24, 2012). "Overlooking the Bonneville Salt Flats from Wendover, NV. Very noisy, no tripod". Via flickr.com
- ↑ Architects & Engineers for Flat Earth Truth. atlanteanconspiracy.com, 13 July 2016.
- ↑ Johnson, A. L. (2008). "Do reciprocal vertical angles have a role in Geomatics?". Survey Review. 40 (309): 285–293. doi:10.1179/003962608X325358. ISSN 0039-6265.
- ↑ "Determining the Shape of the Earth with Zenith Angle Measurements". Walter Bislin's Blog-En.
- ↑ Kozlowski, Jesse (2020-06-09). "Reciprocal Zenith Angle Projects". Jesse Kozlowski, Surveyor. Retrieved 2024-08-26.
- ↑ "Confirming the earth is spherical using reciprocal zenith angles". MCToon. 2019-10-14. Retrieved 2024-08-26.
- ↑ K. Mishima, N. Tani, and M. Sirakata, Survey and Alignment of J-PARC. slac.stanford.edu, 2006.
- ↑ Kenji Mishima and Norio Tani, Geodetic Survey Work on High Intensity Proton Accelerator Facility. IWAA2004, CERN, Geneva, 4-7 October 2004.
- ↑ Peter Kenyon, Designing a 100km collider tunnel for CERN. tunneltalk.com, 10 December 2014.
- ↑ Jesse Kozlowski (2022-06-17). What We Saw Through Soundly's Telescope From My 15th Floor Window At 5pm On Dec 10, 2017. Retrieved 2025-02-02 – via YouTube.
- ↑ "The Curvature of the Earth - Bonneville Salt Flats (from West Wendover)". Retrieved 2023-08-24.
- ↑ Johnson's Universal Cyclop:dia: A New Edition. A. J. Johnson Company. 1894. p. 887.
- ↑ "Definition of GEODETIC SURVEY". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2023-04-29.
- ↑ "Zero Gravity: The Lighter Side of Science". www.aps.org. Retrieved 2023-04-29.
- ↑ "Relief. Project.geo.msu.edu". project.geo.msu.edu. Retrieved 2023-04-29.
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 Nevres, M. Özgür (2017-08-17). "No, Earth is not as smooth as a billiard ball! [Here's why]". Our Planet. Retrieved 2023-04-29.
- ↑ "The Illusion of Clouds Appearing 'Behind' the Sun or the Moon". FlatEarth.ws. 2018-03-18. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
- ↑ P.E. Robinson (23 March 2003). "Introductory Astronomy: Parallax, the Parsec, and Distances". YouTube.
- ↑ Flat Earth-Star Trails by Danny R. Faulkner (October 12, 2016) Answers in Genesis (archived from June 9, 2021).
- ↑ Astronomy Staff (Dec. 14, 2018). "Is Polaris visible from the Southern Hemisphere?". Via astronomy.com
- ↑ Dip of the Horizon FlatEarth.ws.
- ↑ https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/alexander-gleasons-map-of-the-world-does-not-prove-the-earth-is-flat-idUSL1N31S27S/
- ↑ Why all world maps are wrong Vox.
- ↑ "Pilots Are Taught to Work With the Fact Earth is a Sphere". FlatEarth.ws. 2020-10-01. Retrieved 2023-04-02.
- ↑ "Proving The World is Flat!". Retrieved 2023-04-02.
- ↑ "Asking Pilots". FlatEarth.ws. 2021-05-30. Retrieved 2023-04-02.
- ↑ Cartography Guide - Map Projections Axis Maps.
- ↑ Cox, J. (June 24, 2013) Ask the Captain: Why don't planes fly in a 'straight-line?'. USA Today. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
- ↑ Professor Dave. "Destroying Flat Earth Without Using Science - Part 3: Airplanes". Retrieved 2023-04-02.
- ↑ Schiefer, Sandy. "Library Guides: Maps and Geographic Information Systems: Air Navigation Charts". libraryguides.missouri.edu. Retrieved 2023-04-03.
- ↑ "I tricked DAVE aka DITRH Into Offering Millions For Map He Already Owns!". Retrieved 2023-04-03.
- ↑ 38.0 38.1 38.2 Staff, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (1988). Derivation and Definition of a Linear Aircraft Model (PDF). Independently Published. ISBN 978-1-7309-8974-2.
- ↑ 39.0 39.1 Antoniewicz, Robert F. (1988). User's Manual for Interactive LINEAR: A FORTRAN Program to Derive Linear Aircraft Models (PDF). National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Scientific and Technical Information Branch.
- ↑ Administration, United States National Aeronautics and Space (1959). INVESTIGATIONS OF NEW RADAR-DATA-REDUCTION TECHNIQUES USED TO DETERMINE DRAG CHARACTERISTICS OF FREE-FLIGHT VEHICLE. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
- ↑ Aircrafts do bend a lot, especially on the wings, and consume their fuel during flight, so their mass decreases over time. Regarding the "stationary" atmosphere, tornados exist so...
- ↑ "Flight Dynamics: the Assumption of Flat & Non-Rotating Earth for Simplification". FlatEarth.ws. 2020-08-02. Retrieved 2023-03-31.
- ↑ Dubay, Eric (Feb. 5, 2025). "5 Real-World Flat-Earth Proofs". Via youtube.com.
- ↑ [Robert Simmon – AKA Mr. Blue Marble https://www.nasa.gov/people-of-nasa/robert-simmon-aka-mr-blue-marble/]
- ↑ NASA. "Our Sun: Facts". Via nasa.gov.
- ↑ "Magnifying Images Vertically to Reveal Earth's Curvature". FlatEarth.ws. 2020-01-31. Retrieved 2025-02-02.
- ↑ Toronto FlatEarth.ws.
- ↑ Of course, on a flat Earth even Mount Everest should be visible from any location (needless to say, it isn't).
- ↑ "Earth's Curvature Calculation". FlatEarth.ws. 2018-10-18. Retrieved 2023-01-06.
- ↑ https://mathcentral.uregina.ca/qq/database/qq.09.97/dyck2.html
- ↑ "Comparison of Rowbotham's formula and the correct formula". Via online-python.com
- ↑ "Distance to the Horizon". aty.sdsu.edu. Retrieved 2023-05-10.
- ↑ "Distance to the Horizon & the Black Swan Observation". FlatEarth.ws. 2020-03-11. Retrieved 2023-01-07.
- ↑ "Simulation of Atmospheric Refraction". walter.bislins.ch (in Deutsch). Retrieved 2023-05-10.
- ↑ Bret, Mark (August 3, 2016). "443 KM | Finestrelles, Pyrenees – Pic Gaspard, Alps" Via beyondrange.wordpress.com
- ↑ FlightMuj (August 9, 2017). "Explained: 443 km distance- mountains visible.". Via betabunk.org
- ↑ Bret, Mark. "Visibility facts - Refraction" Via beyondrange.wordpress.com.
- ↑ "Distance to the Horizon & the Black Swan Observation". FlatEarth.ws. 2020-03-11. Retrieved 2025-01-19.
- ↑ Answers in Genesis. (February 5, 2021) The Black Swan: Evidence the Earth Is Flat?
- ↑ "Flat Earth and Refraction with Oil Platforms Hillhouse and Habitat". Metabunk. 2020-03-08. Retrieved 2025-01-19.
- ↑ "Strong Refraction Simulation and Reality for 2 Oil Platforms". walter.bislins.ch (in Deutsch). Archived from the original on 2024-05-18. Retrieved 2025-01-19.
- ↑ Bob the Science Guy (2022-03-02). Final Analysis of the Black Swan Still a GLOBE. Retrieved 2025-01-19 – via YouTube.
- ↑ See also BlueMarbleScience. Sleeping Warrior Still Can't Science!
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAQd9DVfoSQ&ab_channel=SciManDan
- ↑ Apollo Image Archive, apollo.sese.asu.edu.
- ↑ Blue Marble 35-mm AS17-148-22727 tothemoon.ser.asu.edu.
- ↑ Blue Marble 50 Years Later epic.gsfc.nasa.gov.
- ↑ Yulsman, Tom (Jul 21, 2015). A Spectacular View of Earth Unlike Any Seen Since 1972 Discover Magazine.
- ↑ "Here's How Many Planes Are in the Air at Any Given Moment". Travel + Leisure. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
- ↑ "Visualization of Satellites and Space Debris". FlatEarth.ws. 2019-12-17. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
- ↑ European Space Agency (ESA). "How many space debris objects are currently in orbit?". Via esa.int.
- ↑ "Neil deGrasse Tyson on Twitter". Twitter.
- ↑ Detailed gravity, magnetics successful in exploring Azerbaijan onshore areas. Oil and Gas Journal
- ↑ Charles Q. Choi (12 April 2007). "Strange but True: Earth Is Not Round". Scientific American.
- ↑ "If the earth is a oblate spheroid why isn't this evident in NASA images from space?". Quora.
- ↑ Wade’s Underworld (2021-05-08). Felix says he saw the CURVATURE of the EARTH during red bull space jump. Retrieved 2025-02-02 – via YouTube.
- ↑ Baumgartner, Felix (2012-12-23). "Felix Baumgartner on falling from space". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-02-02.
How many people have had the opportunity to see the curvature of the Earth below and a completely black sky above?
- ↑ https://flatearth.ws/felix-baumgartner#more-3668
- ↑ "If Earth is spherical, the Nile River would have to flow uphill to compensate for the curvature of Earth. Is this proof that the Earth cannot be spherical?". Quora.
- ↑ Misconception about the Second Law of Thermodynamics. flatearth.ws.
- ↑ Bowling ball and feathers dropped at the same time in a giant vacuum chamber, ABC 11
- ↑ Response to Globebusters - The Earth Still Isn't Flat by Professor Dave Explains (May 22, 2019) YouTube.
- ↑ Electric Field of Line Charge by C. R. Nave, HyperPhysics, Georgia State University.
- ↑ Bowling ball and feathers dropped at same time in giant vacuum chamber, ABC 11
- ↑ Dobrijevic, Daisy; Sharp, Tim (Feb. 7, 2022). "How big is the moon?". Via space.com
- ↑ NOAA "Do the Great Lakes have tides? ". Via noaa.gov.
- ↑ "H5375 - nāśā' - Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (kjv)". Blue Letter Bible. Retrieved 2023-07-28.
- ↑ "Nasa' Hebrew Meaning - Old Testament Lexicon (KJV)". biblestudytools.com. Retrieved 2023-07-28.
- ↑ "Hebrew Word of the Week - Nasa'". www.hebrew4christians.com. Retrieved 2023-07-28.
- ↑ "Strongs's #5375: nasa' - Greek/Hebrew Definitions - Bible Tools". www.bibletools.org. Retrieved 2023-07-28.
- ↑ "Strong's Hebrew Search: Nasa". biblehub.net. Retrieved 2023-07-28.
- ↑ 92.0 92.1 "H5377 - nāšā' - Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (kjv)". Blue Letter Bible. Retrieved 2023-07-28.
- ↑ 93.0 93.1 Is Satan Using NASA to Deceive Us All? by Dan McClellan (Apr 29, 2023) YouTube.
- ↑ "What Does NASA Mean In Hebrew? | World Events and the Bible". worldeventsandthebible.com. Retrieved 2023-07-28.
- ↑ See Dome A
, Dome C
, Dome F
- ↑ "Midnight Sun in Both Polar Regions Proves Spherical Earth". FlatEarth.ws. 2018-01-01. Retrieved 2024-08-26.
- ↑ Rebuttals to Eric Dubay’s “200 Proofs Earth is not a Spinning Ball” Midnight Sun (56) – FlatEarth.ws
- ↑ https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/argentina/ushuaia?month=12#:~:text=The%20December%20solstice%20(summer%20solstice,year%20is%20around%20this%20date.
- ↑ Antarctic Circle Travel Ban Enacted. Why? What is going on Around Us (November 16, 2016) Aplanetruth.info.
- ↑ the totally awesome cool groovy and worth checking out Intrepidtravel travel website is not at all sponsored by us
- ↑ People Cross Antarctica All the Time. It's Still Crazy Hard by Sarah Fallon (02.01.16 11:00 am) Wired.
- ↑ Splettstoesser, John F.; Headland, Robert K.; Todd, Frank (1997). "First circumnavigation of Antarctica by tourist ship". Polar Record. 33 (186): 244–245. doi:10.1017/S003224740001473X. ISSN 1475-3057.
- ↑ List of Antarctic expeditions
- ↑ McLemore, Andrew (2022-06-12). "Australian Woman Circumnavigates Antarctica in Record Time » Explorersweb". Explorersweb. Retrieved 2023-03-19.
- ↑ "First circumnavigation of Antarctica in a sailboat south of the 60th parallel". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 2023-03-19.
- ↑ "The USAP Portal: Science and Support in Antarctica - Jobs and Opportunities". www.usap.gov. Retrieved 2025-02-02.
- ↑ "Find a job, work in Antarctica". www.coolantarctica.com. Retrieved 2025-02-02.
- ↑ "Jobs in Antarctica". British Antarctic Survey. Retrieved 2025-02-02.
- ↑ "Application process for jobs in Antarctica". jobs.antarctica.gov.au. 2024-12-17. Retrieved 2025-02-02.
- ↑ "Antarctica Cruises: Best Price and Service Guarantee!". www.antarcticacruise.com. Retrieved 2023-03-19.
- ↑ "Antarctica Adventure Cruises". Liveaboard.com. Retrieved 2023-03-19.
- ↑ "Antarctica Cruise Deals | Check Our Top 10 Expeditions". oceanwide-expeditions.com (in español). Retrieved 2023-03-19.
- ↑ "Visiting Antarctica". GOV.UK. 2023-08-17. Retrieved 2023-08-23.
- ↑ "The Antarctic Treaty Explained". British Antarctic Survey. Retrieved 2023-08-23.
- ↑ See ETOPS
.
- ↑ "Antarctica, Military, Illegal Visits, Airline Fly-Overs, Hidden Secrets". www.coolantarctica.com. Retrieved 2023-08-23.
- ↑ "Polar Route Operations", Boeing Aero magazine, Quarter 4 2001, page 11-21, archived on 2001 November 16
- ↑ Professor Dave Explains. "Flat Earthers are Desperately Dodging a Free Trip to Antarctica "
- ↑ CriticalThink (Nov. 24, 2024). 'The Final Experiment Preparation - Test Run #1'. Via YouTube.
- ↑ CriticalThink (Dec. 16, 2024). 'Critical Think takes weight measurements at Union Glacier'. Via YouTube
- ↑ CriticalThink (Dec. 24, 2024). "Calibration check on return from The Final Experiment in Antarctica". Via YouTube.
- ↑ Professor Dave Explains. Flat Earthers are Having a Meltdown Over the Antarctica Trip and 24-Hour Sun
- ↑ Duffy, Will (Dec. 15, 2024). "It's Midnight in Antarctica!". Via YouTube.
- ↑ Duffy, Will (Dec. 15, 2024). "There Are No Green Screens in Antarctica (Here's Proof!)". Via YouTube.
- ↑ Encyclopedia Britannica "ice formation". Via britannica.com.
- ↑ Dave McKeegan Does #Vapegate and 'No breath' destroy 'The Final Experiment'?
- ↑ SciManDan (Jan. 31, 2025). The Most Ridiculous Flat Earth Explanation You'll Ever See. Via YouTube.
- ↑ Ochiai, Yoichi (June 22. 2015)- "Fairy Lights in Femtoseconds: Tangible Holographic Plasma (SIGGRAPH)". Via YouTube.
- ↑ Olson, Dan (Sept. 19, 2020). "Specs of Olson's camera" Via YouTube.
- ↑ Olson, Dan (Sept. 19, 2020). "Diagonal FoV of Olson's camera" Via YouTube.
- ↑ Olson, Dan (Sept. 11, 2020). "Filming location map". Via youtube.com
- ↑ Olson, Dan (Sept. 19, 2020). [1]. Via YouTube.
- ↑ which makes it even funnier when Eric Dubay calls Rowbotham a doctor.
- ↑ Wolfie6020 (Sept. 22, 2016). "Do aircraft change attitude to follow the curvature of the Earth?". Via YouTube.
- ↑ Doubek, James (Feb. 23, 2020). "Daredevil 'Mad' Mike Hughes Killed In Crash Of Homemade Rocket". Via npr.org
- ↑ Thongchai Winichakul
, Siam mapped: a history of the geo-body of a nation (1995), pp. 20-43
- ↑ "Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, BOOK I, line 1052".
- ↑ Lactantius, The Epitome of the Divine Institutes, Chapter XXXIX - Of Various Philosophers, and of the Antipodes.
- ↑ Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians by Jeffrey Burton Russell (1991) Praeger. ISBN 0275939561.
- ↑ Stephen Jay Gould. The Late Birth of a Flat Earth. In Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History
- ↑ "Point of View" The Day the Universe Changed
- ↑ Natalie Wolchover, Ingenious 'Flat Earth' Theory Revealed In Old Map. LiveScience, 23 June 2011.
- ↑ Flat Earth Society FAQ
- ↑ "John1992" (2011). "People still think the earth is flat?". Giant Bomb website.
- ↑ SF Hub — The Flat Earth Society Archive Archive copy at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Garwood, Christine. "Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea". MacMillan (2007).
- ↑ The Ice Wall Flat Earth Society.
- ↑ The Flat-out Truth: Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud! Says This Prophet by Robert J. Schadewald (1980) Donald Simanek's page, Lockhaven University (archived from March 31, 2008).
- ↑ Thomas Dolby interview 1984. futsal1958, YouTube, 2013.
- ↑ The Earth is flat? What planet is he on? text
- ↑ The Earth is flat? What planet is he on? at The Guardian
- ↑ Flat Earth Society, interview with Daniel Shenton, President of the Flat Earth Society
- ↑ Diaz Ruiz, Carlos; Nilsson, Tomas (16 May 2022). "Disinformation and Echo Chambers: How Disinformation Circulates in Social Media Through Identity-Driven Controversies". Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. 42: 18–35. doi:10.1177/07439156221103852. S2CID 248934562.
- ↑ Carlos Diaz Ruiz, I watched hundreds of flat-Earth videos to learn how conspiracy theories spread – and what it could mean for fighting disinformation. theconversation.com, 27 June 2022.
- ↑ 155.0 155.1 Aric Toler, “No Safe Spaces on the Flat Earth” – Emergent Alt-Right Inspired Flat Earth Online Communities. bellingcat.com, 7 June 2017.
- ↑ They Think the Earth is Flat? Answers in Genesis, 9 August 2008.
Unlike young-earth creationism, flat-earthism is not scriptural and has no profound theological implications. There are (mostly poetic) passages that could be cited by flat earthers, such as Revelation 7:1, which refers to the 'four corners of the earth' — but these are most clearly interpreted as figurative.
- ↑ For example, consider the apocalyptic end times World's Last Chance group, that provides a pile of steaming flat earth bullshit wrapped in weird evangelical terminology.
- ↑ Robert J. Schadewald, The Flat-out Truth: Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud! Says This Prophet. Science Digest, July 1980. Archived from the original at lhup.edu.
Johnson's beliefs are firmly grounded in the Bible. Many verses of the Old Testament imply that the earth is flat, but there's more to it than that. According to the New Testament, Jesus ascended up into heaven.
- ↑ Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson Drop the Mic in His B.o.B Rap Battle
- ↑ How a Celebrity’s Silly Belief in Flat Earth Can Be Useful by Lawrence Krauss
- ↑ "So, apparently Shaquille O'Neal is a flat-Earther, too".
- ↑ "Neil DeGrasse Tyson Gets Into A Rap Battle With B.o.B Over Flat Earth Theory".
- ↑ "Yikes! Tila Tequila Was Removed From Celebrity Big Brother for Pro-Nazi Views".