The Earth is Flat?

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TheCracker
I've seen the shadow of a globe-earth on a crescent moon.
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No, you haven't.

If the Earth casts a shadow on the moon, it's a full moon. That shadow makes an eclipse, not a crescent moon...

(I just had to be argumentative there for a minute. :) )

As for the question of receiving incontrovertible evidence that the Earth is flat and being able to accept that evidence, it would have to explain an awful lot of things I've listed twice before in this thread, and I can think of no model to explain those things that could possibly be simpler than spheres in orbits. Simpler is almost always better. Rube Goldberg -ism is not science! :)
 
wfooshee
No, you haven't.

If the Earth casts a shadow on the moon, it's a full moon. That shadow makes an eclipse, not a crescent moon...

(I just had to be argumentative there for a minute. :) )

As for the question of receiving incontrovertible evidence that the Earth is flat and being able to accept that evidence, it would have to explain an awful lot of things I've listed twice before in this thread, and I can think of no model to explain those things that could possibly be simpler than spheres in orbits. Simpler is almost always better. Rube Goldberg -ism is not science! :)
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Umm... new moon? Full moon is no shadow, at all, I believe.. :D
 
eran0004
It's still the full moon phase. The Earth's shadow only covers less than 1 degree of the Moon's orbit.
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I misread wfooshee's original post as that you couldn't have a partial eclipse on a full moon for some reason, but I realise what he was saying now, my bad. :lol:
 
I love how people be all like "I'm openminded because I can take a wacky idea and accept it without getting all hung up on stuff like whether it's bollocks or not, and y'all are closed minded because you've actually bothered to consider the evidence and come to a reasoned conclusion as to how things are."

There are so many basic observational flaws with every single flat earth description I've seen that I really question how anyone with more than seven neurons can actually get past the first five minutes without hitting something that makes them go "Hang on, that doesn't seem right". As someone that lives in the Southern Hemisphere, the big one for me is it not being able to describe how both the North and South Poles have periods of 24 hour daylight. The diagrams presented earlier in the thread do fine for the North Pole, but make it impossible for the South Pole. Also, you can walk across Antarctica, which sort of doesn't work if there's an edge down there.

The other option of course being that everyone in the world has lied flawlessly to you your entire life for no other purpose than to keep you in the dark about something that would seem to have no real effect on you either way. But I'm not that paranoid. Many are, but it seems tough to believe when the US has a President that will happily Tweet all sorts of inappropriate state information that Trump would actually manage to keep a Flat Earth conspiracy under his toupe.
 
I haven't read any of these posts, I'm just going to pretend no one is arguing that the Earth is flat.

My name is Josh, I have a B.S. in geological sciences and I am currently earning my masters degree in geological sciences. Geological sciences is the study of the Earth. If anyone is obligated to talk about this, it is me. I'm not going to sit here and argue for hours, I have better things to do. But, I would like to mention a few facts...

The Flat Earth society themselves admitted to Mars and the other planets being round. https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/259821-flat-earth-society-trolls-elon-musk-claims-mars-round

All the planets are believed to be formed at the same time. If so, why would one be flat and the rest be round?

You're probably wondering, how do we know the planets are all the same age. It is a scientific theory based on several SCIENTIFIC FACTS. One of which being ages on meteorites, rocks on the moon, and the oldest rocks known on Earth all correlating to 4.6 billion years ago. These dates are found through a mineral known as Zircon. Zircon, a tetragonal nesosilicate, has the chemical formula Zirconium Silicate (ZrSiO4). This mineral is often used for all types of research but it is most well known for geochronology (age) which is found by Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry.

How does that determine age? The age of zircons is often determined through radioactive decay of Uranium from zircon. Zircons contain trace amounts of Uranium. This Uranium naturally decays to lead. The rate at which this happens is constant between different zircon grains, and has been studied and tested repeatedly. When you do these tests, you find the oldest rocks on Earth, the moon and Meteorites are the same. This points to formation at the same time. Why would one planet form flat and all the others form round?

But, we don't have to even dive into science to prove the Earth is round. NASA has been in space, they see a round planet. What do they possibly gain from lying?

The Earth has a core which powers the magnetic field. If the Earth is flat, then what happens to the core? Without it, we would not have a magnetic field to protect us from UV rays?

How does plate tectonics work on a flat earth?

How do seasons work on a flat earth?

I can go on and on.... A flat Earth breaks the natural sciences. It makes no sense. Furthermore, NASA has observed the planet being round. Any notion of anything else is simply wrong and absolutely offensive as a scientist.
 
Why is this notion even a thing? How could you be so stupid to think that the Earth is flat? That's not how physics work people! A fact is a fact. You can deny it as much as you want but it will never change.
 
CLowndes888
Why is this notion even a thing? How could you be so stupid to think that the Earth is flat?
Click to expand...

Ultimately by being very selective with the evidence you choose and often by interpreting the evidence you accept in a way that beggars rational thought.
 
TheGeologist
But, I would like to mention a few facts...
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CLowndes888
A fact is a fact.
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Yeah, you want to be careful with words like "fact". It's certainly the case that there so many things here that Flat Earth can't even come close to touching (primarily because it's pseudo-science, which requires the rejection of contrary data), but ultimately with the scientific method, a fact is only a fact up until it isn't a fact any more.
Famine
Core of the scientific process is that there isn't really such a thing as a fact. There are observations, experiments, conclusions, and theories, but ultimately all knowledge is one disproof away from being wrong. There is always room for doubt, and never 100% proof.

All theories must account for all relevant knowledge. If new knowledge arrives that says previous knowledge, and theory, was wrong, the new theory must account for the updated knowledge.
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All of our knowledge has survived multiple, objective and rigorous tests, but ultimately all we're doing and all we've done is find a load of ways we can't prove it wrong, and refine our understanding to make better tests.

We're always one test away from finding out we're wrong, and although for many things, that's vanishingly unlikely we always have to remain open to the possibility it may happen - or we're no better than the peddlers of Flat Earth and other hooey.
 
Famine
Yeah, you want to be careful with words like "fact". It's certainly the case that there so many things here that Flat Earth can't even come close to touching (primarily because it's pseudo-science, which requires the rejection of contrary data), but ultimately with the scientific method, a fact is only a fact up until it isn't a fact any more.

All of our knowledge has survived multiple, objective and rigorous tests, but ultimately all we're doing and all we've done is find a load of ways we can't prove it wrong, and refine our understanding to make better tests.

We're always one test away from finding out we're wrong, and although for many things, that's vanishingly unlikely we always have to remain open to the possibility it may happen - or we're no better than the peddlers of Flat Earth and other hooey.
Click to expand...

I am using the word fact correctly. A fact is something that has been proven. It is proven that the Earth is round because we have seen it from space.

In general, scientists don't usually use the word fact. We create hypotheses and support them with data. Plate Tectonics is considered a theory, even after all the data to back it up. The same goes for most things in geology, as we can't put our eyes on interior Earth processes.

The Earth being round is fact however. We have people in the international space station... They can see it with their own eyes. That is as provable of a fact as anything. There is nothing to deny that.
 
Pythagoras (c480 BC), Herodotus, and Aristotle accepted the Earth as round. At the library of Alexandria, Eratosthenes, who developed the idea of latitude and longitude, calculated the circumference at 24,663 miles. But finally we can heave a great sigh of relief now that we have a geologist to tell us what the facts are. My father was a geologist, a petroleum geologist. He was a terrible father and provider, a great loser in the Texas oil patch.
 
TheGeologist
I am using the word fact correctly. A fact is something that has been proven.
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Mmmmmnot really, no. A fact in scientific terms is an observation held to be objective and independently verifiable.

"Proven" is a difficult concept too. The scientific method doesn't prove things. It disproves them - or fails to. Fail to disprove something enough, and enough different ways, and it becomes knowledge. Disprove it and it stops being knowledge.

We must always be open to the concept that what we know today we may not know tomorrow. There is nothing in the scientific method that says something can ever reach the status of unquestionably true.
TheGeologist
Plate Tectonics is considered a theory, even after all the data to back it up.
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Of course it is, but then you know as well as I do that a theory is the highest form of knowledge. A theory is the complete explanation of all observations regarding any given phenomenon, and is refined with each new observation and each new attempt to disprove a part of it.
TheGeologist
The Earth being round is fact however. We have people in the international space station... They can see it with their own eyes. That is as provable of a fact as
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And while I entirely concur that this is one of those things that has a vanishingly small likelihood of ever being disproven, we have to remain open to the possibility - however infinitessimally small - that it could be. Otherwise we're preaching, not learning.
 
TheGeologist
The Earth being round is fact however. We have people in the international space station... They can see it with their own eyes. That is as provable of a fact as anything.
Click to expand...

Famine
And while I entirely concur that this is one of those things that has a vanishingly small likelihood of ever being disproven, we have to remain open to the possibility - however infinitessimally small - that it could be. Otherwise we're preaching, not learning.
Click to expand...

The earth being round in the eye-witness testimony of some ISS astronauts does not make it fact any more than someone's account of seeing their dead father's ghost sit on their bed trying to tell them something important after he died. It's an eye-witness account.

The earth being round can be a conclusion drawn from observations, which does not make it fact. For example, if you were drawing the conclusion that because someone sailed heading east and arrived at the same longitude still heading east that the world must be round, you'd be drawing a conclusion of roundness from the observational facts of someone leaving heading east and arriving heading east.

On the otherhand, we have satellite experiments like GRACE that map out the earth's surface and gravitational field and "roundness" of the Earth is a direct measurement in the data itself. So in some cases, it can indeed be fact. It just depends on whether or not it is what is being directly measured in the observation.
 
TheGeologist
You're probably wondering, how do we know the planets are all the same age. It is a scientific theory based on several SCIENTIFIC FACTS. One of which being ages on meteorites, rocks on the moon, and the oldest rocks known on Earth all correlating to 4.6 billion years ago. These dates are found through a mineral known as Zircon. Zircon, a tetragonal nesosilicate, has the chemical formula Zirconium Silicate (ZrSiO4). This mineral is often used for all types of research but it is most well known for geochronology (age) which is found by Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry.

How does that determine age? The age of zircons is often determined through radioactive decay of Uranium from zircon. Zircons contain trace amounts of Uranium. This Uranium naturally decays to lead. The rate at which this happens is constant between different zircon grains, and has been studied and tested repeatedly. When you do these tests, you find the oldest rocks on Earth, the moon and Meteorites are the same. This points to formation at the same time. Why would one planet form flat and all the others form round?
Click to expand...
Actually, Mr. so-called-geologist, the oldest rocks we know of on earth, the moon and meteorites are not the same age and the moon likely did not form at the same time as the earth. The oldest rocks on earth are actually barely 4 billion years old, and even the oldest individual crystals, those hardy longlived zircons you described, are 150 million years+ younger than the earth itself. We actually infer the age of the earth from the age of the solar system, which is in turn derived from the age of meteorite inclusions that are nearly 4.6 billion years old.

So checkmate, oblate-spheroid-earthers!
 
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Liquid
By default, are flat earthers also deniers of the moon landings? They must be.
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Generally yes. Although I suppose technically you could believe that someone landed on the moon, just that they lied about what the Earth looked like while they were at it. It's damn near Olympic level mental gymnastics, which is why most just go for "moon landings are fake because you can't see the stars in the photos".
 
Imari
Although I suppose technically you could believe that someone landed on the moon, just that they lied about what the Earth looked like while they were at it.
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And doctored the photos.

In collusion with the Soviet Union.

Who never denied that the United States landed on the moon.

And who also must have been lying about the shape of the earth.

3-as08-14-2383a.jpg
 

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