Hey Forum,
I have been recently shown that this forum exists, which is great news for me. I have been having legitimate doubts about the earth being spherical. After so many notable figures came out and said they believed the earth was flat I decided to do some research myself. I have not found anything that has truly caused me to sway greatly in either direction, and was wondering if you guys could help.
Thanks,
A Doubter
There are several very large, grievous incompatibilities between any and all Flat Earth theories and observable fact, including but not limited to:
Sunset/Sunrise: In the Flat Earth model, the sun maintains a constant altitude of anywhere between 64 and 3000 miles, depending on who you ask. It traces huge circles around the central hub of the flat earth every day, making larger circles in summer and smaller circles in winter.
If this were the case, the sun would never touch the horizon, describing wide, flat ellipses across the sky and shrinking to a tiny dot of light before fading from sight entirely.
This is not the case - the sun maintains its size and disappears from bottom to top after tracing an arc of a circle over the course of the day.
Moon Phases: Similarly, in the Flat Earth model the moon also traces circles at the same altitude, completing its round either at the same speed as the sun or much slower, completing a full circuit in a month, or a combination of the two with the moon following the sun at a slower rate causing it to alternately swing ahead or lag behind. If the two bodies were at the same altitude, then from the ground we would not see the same moon phases: we would see the moon swing from waxing gibbous to waning gibbous at higher and lower latitudes, with observes at the equator seeing a permanent half-moon. We would also observe different moon phases from different latitudes on the same night.
This is not the case - while oriented differently to the observer's relative "up", we see the same phase from all latitudes and they precess in an orderly, predictable and cyclical fashion
Fading Horizon: In the Flat Model, the transparency of the atmosphere would be responsible for the horizon having a cutoff point between surface and sky. In this case, the horizon would fade out of view as more and more of the atmosphere would block out light from the distance, creating a slow fade towards invisibility as it receded into the distance even in the absolute clearest of conditions.
This is not the case - the horizon is a clear line at the point where the curve of the Earth begins to fall away from the limits of our view, with objects appearing to "sink" behind it as they mount the curve.
Pole Stars: In the Flat Earth model, all the stars wheel around one single, central point - the pole star, Polaris. While this is true in the northern latitudes, in the southern latitudes, this would mean that observers would see the same set of constellations but skewed, wheeling much faster overhead around the same central point, tracing the same kinds of ellipse traced by the Flat Earth Sun.
This is not the case - the southern hemisphere has its own pole star - Sigma Octantis - around which the southern polar constellations, which are invisible from most of the northern hemisphere, trace circles.
That is the tip of the unbelievably vast iceberg of problems that plague all Flat Earth models - and there is no one single model that the Flat Earth Society can agree on. Press any Flat Earth theorist about information on the wiki, the FAQ or a theory concocted by another member and they will turn on their sources in a heartbeat, saying they don't believe what any of the others say. It is terribly convenient for all models to forget about things like the sheer scale of the problem they are trying to tackle, the concepts of relative perspective and motion and basic precepts that underpin our understanding of the universe, like mathematics and physics.
They have no compelling arguments except "look out your window" and the simple, scientific argument against that is that what you see from your window does not represent the entire world.
This is a very large planet that we live on and Flat Earth theorists more often than not cannot appreciate how small they really are.
There is far more to be discovered, but I guarantee you that you will not find it here. Read some real scientific journals, go ask some people in person at universities or other centres of learning that have spent their entire lives studying how the world works and get some real understanding of the world we live in, because until the theorists on this site can at least agree on some explanations for the rather simple points made above, there will never be a Flat Earth model that accurately describes the true nature of our planet.
Stay scientific, Doubter.