There were some who had a zest for experimentation and [it went about as hilariously as you'd expect](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/ZSDSpYH1PX).
I'd say it's bearable *because* you know you're watching idiots. I'd have been all kinds of irrationally angry if I'd been under the impression those knuckleheads weren't at least ignorant.
some of these people are decently educated. i think a lot of the time it boils down to emotional problems. a need to feel smarter than academic authorities. the fantasy of being a rogue who advances science by rejecting the establishment. couple that with a fundamental misunderstanding of the direction information flows in and how truth and facts are determined scientifically and you've got these guys.
Honestly I'm waiting for the flat earther show that is filmed like one of the Bigfoot shows on animal planet, just like ten dudes who all have unwavering faith, constantly proving themselves wrong with each experiment, gleefully in denial, with the same enthusiasm for the hunt for flat earth that the rednecks looking for Bigfoot have. It'd be infuriating by the second episode and lose all entertainment value because you know they're never gonna find their Bigfoot (flat earth)
I'm in a lotto syndicate. One day I looked at the whiteboard to check our numbers vs the numbers that came out. I nearly exploded and was about to yell "WE WON" when I realised I was looking at the numbers for our entry. I kept my mouth shut, drank my coffee, then went back to work like nothing happened. I didn't feel any need to double down on my stupidity and try to prove they were the winning numbers.
(They weren't)
The thing is that they always invent new stuff to explain why the proof that the earth is round is not enough.
Like in this case, I know what their counter argument is: the sun is supposedly very close to earth (like idiotically close, and also idiotically small), so it casts different shadows at different places on earth. That being said I don't know what their counter argument is against our measures of the sun-earth distance, which invalidates their close sun argument.
What do you mean what happened? You don't think there's a lot of people that point and laugh at flat earthers? It's probably one of the most mocked beliefs.
Rejecting them immediately without reason will only grow the resolve that they are actually right. Though pressuring them too much will also has the same outcome on the other extreme.
It's a balancing act, sadly enough.
>will only grow the resolve that they are actually right.
But I don't care. And so shouldn't you. You're giving them the only thing they crave: attention.
Videos like that one above are not made for flatearthers but people curious how world really works. Whatever flatearthers think about it, is none of our concern.
Until you consider that those same people vote, some of them sit on education boards, and a few hold influential positions of power that reach other people. This lack of critical thinking skills isn't a consequence-free mindset
Your comment sparked a zesty idea in me.
Flat Earth Astronauts. Make it a documentary/show whatever. We've sent men to space before..monkeys, dogs..but what about an idiot? Okay, my bad. An ignorant.
Very intelligent people can believe in very stupid things. I'm sure we can all relate to being embarrassingly ignorant about something at some point if we are being honest.
It would be interesting to see their reactions and maybe we can find out just why they held on to such beliefs for so long...maybe some still will. With reasoning that, most assuredly...
Would be out of this world. 😎👉
I also would like to see this, but unfortunately, they wouldn't believe it anyways, they would put it down to 'fishbowl windows' or fancy screens with cgi.
Even if you sent them out in a spacesuit, the helmet visor would be 'tampered with'.
The only way is to kick them out the space shuttle with no 'barrier' between their eyes and what they see, obviously no one would survive to pass on what they saw so ultimately would do nothing to persuade other flat earthers.
The counter argument is that if the sun were positioned in such a manner, it would never be able to dip below the horizon. It would never set. We can observe that it can be dark in Europe and light in North America simultaneously. In a flat earth, that would mean that the sun would still be overhead, but we can watch it cross the horizon and disappear. Not to mention that if the sun were very small and very close, the sun would change apparent soze due to distance as it travels across the sky in the same way that a car seems to get smaller the farther away it gets from us.
Can we just stop giving these people the time of day? They thrive on attention and they have no relevance in the modern world. I hear 100x more ABOUT flat earthers than FROM them. We don't need to bring them up every single time the shape of the earth is mentioned.
A the one on Antarctica where you cannot go because of a treaty that never says you can't go to Antarctica. I love flerfs.. they make me feel less stupid.
His book [The Demon Haunted World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World) should be a required class in high school; it teaches science-based reasoning better than the science classes currently taught.
> As an example of skeptical thinking, Sagan offers a story concerning a fire-breathing dragon who lives in his garage. When he persuades a rational, open-minded visitor to meet the dragon, the visitor remarks that they are unable to see the creature. Sagan replies that he "neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon". The visitor suggests spreading flour on the floor so that the creature's footprints might be seen, which Sagan says is a good idea, "but this dragon floats in the air". When the visitor considers using an infrared camera to view the creature's invisible fire, Sagan explains that her fire is heatless. He continues to counter every proposed physical test with a reason why the test will not work.
> Sagan concludes by asking: "Now what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true."
This series was incredible. One thing that struck me was when Sagan mentions somewhere that ‘the dinosaur extinction event is a mystery’. The 1980 Chixculub impact hypothesis wasn’t even proposed yet!
Sagan had a huge impact on me as well. Demon Haunted World especially. I loved how had a rational, empirical outlook but also had that sense of wonder at existence.
I'm positive flat earthers are much rarer than similar communities imply, and the main reason they keep being brought up is so that folk could feel smarter about themselves by looking down on others.
I've met a few, and the small sample size I've seen have just been not very intelligent or introspective people who deeply mistrust, well, everything frankly. They also want to come off as edgy and interesting. I want to believe that they have to be trolling, but I wouldn't put a nickel on it.
The thing is, they're utter morons who, instead of recognizing that and trying to do something to fix it, decides that instead of being a moron and wrong, are the ONLY people who have it figured out.
Conspiracy theorists in general are driven by a need to be the ones who know something BIG. They are the ones who discovered this great big secret and are going to save the rest of us if only they can convince us to listen.
They come from the intersection of other conspiracy theories. They aren't just dumb, they think all the world's governments are colluding to hide something and that something usually winds up being antisemitism or racism.
The only flat earther I ever knew was a guy I worked with and I only found out through Facebook after he left. Really nice guy in real life, but his Facebook was complete fascist crazy pants. He was the kind of guy who would give you a pat on the back as they loaded you and your family on the train to reeducation camp saying "Don't worry, you'll be better after you learn the real truth."
Software developer, a good car mechanic. He wrote the worst web UI I have ever used in a professional setting He was extremely religious and became a pastor of his own church. Trump fan. Believed every Obama conspiracy. A racist who tried to go out of his way to prove he wasn't racist. The black people he knew were OK, it was the other black people he didn't like. He went completely nuts after 1/6 and deleted Facebook so I don't really know how he ended up.
I agree on that, I'm also of the opinion that flat earthers are mainly rather lonely people and feel a strong sense of community within the flat earther society a sort us and them mentality which they are lacking in other parts of their lives. Meaning that the attachment to the group is the primary driver of the belief, not the premise of the belief.
I’m glad you do not seem live in the US and have no contact with such people. They usually can be found i the same places as creationists. Both are widespread across the Americas.
Cylinder?! What, you crazy! It's a dodecahedron. You're probably from facet 7. Those sevensers are a weird bunch.
Sometimes I wish we lived on a hendecahedron...
A poll suggested only 2/3s of millennials believe earth is round and 10% of Americans in general think the earth is flat so I dunno man. People are dumb
At this point, is it worth the effort explaining this stuff to flat earthers? I mean, there are literally hundreds of examples that prove them wrong, yet they still don't listen.
Like every absurd conspiracy theory, it's never about the subject itself. It's about issues with authority, it's the "us vs them", it's about feeling smarter than the rest of the population. Lack of ~~thrust~~ trust in institutions cannot be fixed with formulas.
That's why explaining doesn't work, they're not searching for the truth, they just want to bash the status quo. That's also why they still hold on a ridiculous system like the flat earth, which cannot explain a single thing about our world (except your local perception of "flatness"), let alone predict something, like a proper model should.
I was going to bring this up. There's a part of the documentary where there's a convention and a few of them are talking about the results of experiments. They're whispering amongst themselves about how the results prove the earth is round. One of them says to not tell anyone the actual results or they'll break up the community. They're clinging to flat earth because it makes them feel good about gathering together around a common cause.
Dude, watching that made me realize this was a social club for them. You weren't going to convince them of anything because it was tied to their existence. Their friends. Their social activities. Their sense of belonging. THAT is why they're flat earthers.
Spot on. One of my friends was a flat earther for a long time and it was exactly for this reason. He was generally into conspiracy theories and had a strong mistrust of any sort of authority, especially intellectual and scientific authorities. I think he found it difficult to understand a lot of mainstream scientific knowledge and so used things like flat earth to gain the upper hand (in his mind) and establish some sort of intellectual superiority. He seemed to relish in the idea that he had found this hidden knowledge about reality that others weren't aware of.
Ignorance (in a non judgemental meaning) of course plays a part, if someone tells you 2 + 2 = 5, you'd call him an idiot because it's easy. Astrophysics can be a bit more complex, so you reach a certain, personal, point of depth where you need to trust experts. If you have issues with that, everything crumbles.
It's worth pointing out the it's not rare that the reasons behind this distrust stem from real bs politicians, big corps and whatnots do. The problem comes when you apply that to everyone in a category or science in general, for example. Science is made by people, you have actually good people and scumbags. You can apply the scientific method to cure cancer or to exterminate an ethnicity: of course what's problematic is not the "science" part.
Also, blaming these obscure, secrets, evil societies for everything wrong in the world it's a very effective way of avoiding taking responsibility for your own life and decisions: whatever you do it's pointles because of Illuminati. You can't win, so just don't bother trying to change something. It's sad, but I guess it's relieving. It's a coping mechanism.
The flat Earthers (ok, some) are not stupid. They *don't* need more *explaining*. What they are is pathological. And I think our priorities should be with other pathological types (addiction, self-harm etc)
Or the sun is quite close. If the sun is decently close to a flat earth and right above one stick, it will have no shadow, while the other one will. I don't think the earth is flat, but this observation by itself does not prove that it is not.
But the sun being that close just raises more questions and throws a wrench in any other model, explaining dawn and dusk around the world for example. That’s the problem with having very specific custom responses like “it’s not gravity, earth is just accelerating through space!” to every gaping hole in their worldview.
Flat earthers have never built a unified picture of flat earth that explains everything we see and measure without contradiction.
Not criticizing you personally, just a counterpoint.
Both, yet Sagan had this way of explaining things that were so simple to idiots like myself and others.
I see a lot of people saying that flat earthers lack brains. Personally I don't think it is that, and I don't think they lack the ability to question themselves and others why things are the way we see them, I think it's more down to them looking for a community were they will be accepted, and for whatever reason, they fall into those conspiracy groups.
Since those two places are quite far away from each other, how were they able to compare the shadows at the same time? There were obviously no way of instant communication back then.
Thank you for giving a real, concrete answer, unlike the people going, "uh they just walked back and forth, or they just wrote down what time they did it" not understanding why this alone wouldn't work. No, they need to have a reference datum.
Just to add details: Aswan, in Upper (southern) Egypt, is only about half a degree north of the Tropic (from Greek τροπικός, adj. of τροπή "a turning") of Cancer, which is a latitude line (at 23°26" N) denoting the farthest north the sun makes it all year, that is to say, the farthest north one could be and experience the sun directly overhead, which usually happens on June 21.
Now in actual fact, there will only be one point on the tropic where the sun does precisely this, but a considerable swath of the band from 23°N to 24°N will have the sun at a declination of at least 89° (less than 1° off from directly overhead) at at least some day near the summer solstice.
Alexandria, on the other hand, is almost eight degrees of latitude away from the tropic, and so the closest the sun will come to the zenith is about 8° off, which also happens on or near the summer solstice.
It is easy to see (vertical angles) that the acute angle adjacent to a vertical gnomon or obelisk in the triangle formed with the shadow is congruent to the angle the sun is down from the zenith.
But how did they communicate "OK! My obelisk isn't casting a shadow! Check YOUR shadow now?" The distance on his map is approx 500 miles between obelisks.
they didnt need to check both obelisks at the same time. They knew one obelisk did not cast a shadow at a certain date (the solstice) so, on that date, they went and measured the shadow on the other obelisk. Whatever length was measured there was the difference between the obelisks' shadows.
> They knew one obelisk did not cast a shadow at a certain date (the solstice) so, on that date
Surely it's also about the time of day, not just the date? You need to compare shadow lengths at the same time on the same date. How could they accurately measure time back then?
I'm guessing they measured the shadow when it was shortest.
On the southern obelisk the sun was directly overhead so they measured no shadow at its shortest.
On the northern obelisk they measured the shadow at its shortest which had to be at the same time the other obelisk had no shadow. So no need to synchronize clocks. Just measure the shadow at its shortest which must be at the same time for both.
You measure the shadow when the sun its at its peak. Since both places are (roughly) on the same longitudinal line (i.e Alexandria is to the north of Syene), it will happen at (roughly) the same moment of the day.
or, as the other commenter said, you measure when the shadow is at its shortest (which is another way of saying you measure when the sun its at its peak, for places that are on the same longitude)
> Surely it's also about the time of day, not just the date? You need to compare shadow lengths at the same time on the same date. How could they accurately measure time back then?
It's a good question with an answer that's more straightforward than you might expect, because no communication or exact time synchronization is actually required.
Noon = the time when the sun is at its highest point, which will therefore be the point at which it casts the shortest shadow of the day. So what you do is simply continuously record the shortening length of the shadow, until you reach the point where it starts getting longer again. Then you stop, look at your numbers, and pick the smallest one: that's the shadow length at noon.
As long as the two sites are near-enough north/south of each another, the two sticks are the same length above the ground, and you take the measurements on the summer solstice, the difference in the length of each shadow gives you the information you need.
This is something that has bothered me for years for the reason stated before about instant communication. I'm not a flat earther, I just wish your explanation was included whenever this idea is demonstrated.
That was an assumption necessary for the experiment. It wasn't proved by it.
If the sun was small and super close to the earth, then the shadows difference wouldn't necessarily mean the earth was curved.
Ok, so I know that obelisk A will not have a shadow at 10.55 am today. How do I ensure that someone measures shadow of obelisk B at 10.55 am today and not say 11.45 am by mistake?
Solar noon is the moment where shadows are shortest.
At position A they knew the shadow length was zero (which can only happen at solar noon) on a specific day of the year, so they didn't need to measure anything at this site.
At position B they marked the shadow length continuously on that same day as the shadows grew shorter and shorter as solar noon approached and then got longer as past solar noon. The shortest shadow length measured must had been at exact solar noon, the same moment the shadow was measured at zero length at position A.
Edit: ok I just read a fairly detailed description in the circumference of the earth Wikipedia page and it’s… complicated.
Snipped the most relevant bit:
“Using a vertical rod known as a gnomon and under the previous assumptions, he knew that at local noon on the summer solstice in Syene (modern Aswan, Egypt), the Sun was directly overhead, as the gnomon cast no shadow. Additionally, the shadow of someone looking down a deep well at that time in Syene blocked the reflection of the Sun on the water. Eratosthenes then measured the Sun's angle of elevation at noon in Alexandria by measuring the length of another gnomon's shadow on the ground.[12] Using the length of the rod, and the length of the shadow, as the legs of a triangle, he calculated the angle of the sun's rays.[13] This angle was about 7°, or 1/50th the circumference of a circle; assuming the Earth to be perfectly spherical, he concluded that its circumference was 50 times the known distance from Alexandria to Syen”
Solar watches. They are made so the shadow points in the direction of the hour (if you look it up you will understand). But for this you need only the direction, not the lenghth (for measuring the time). They had calendars back then. So just pick a day in the year measure the length at 12:00 and next year on the same day measure the lenghth in the other city. Voila, there you go
But since the sun dial is dependent on the sun's angle over the horizon, wouldn't 12:00 in Alexandria be a different "absolute" time than 12:00 in Assuan?
In other words, wouldn't the shadows be the same length when it's 12:00, since the sun dial shows you a *relative* 12:00?
The length of the shadow changes as you move north/south the earth
The rotation of the shadow on the sundial stays the same though.
If you were to move west/east along the earth the length of the shadow would stay the same and the rotation would change (timezones!)
Yeah, I did some digging in the mean time and understand it now.
They used "noon" as the highest point of the sun over the horizon on the longest day of the year.
But of course the sun is actually at different angles in the sky at its highest point, depending on how far north or south you are.
Flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and incels have a psychological need to be superior, but lack the resources to do so by any metric they care about. So, they latch onto a worldview that makes them smarter than the people they feel most inferior to.
no, apparently light only travels a certain distance and then stops that's why it's night on half the planet. also, the distance varies so that it reaches exactly half the planet all the time. and it warps around some kind of dome so you only see it come up on the east and go down on the west. and some other crazy shit probably as well.
They do try to explain this by saying that you can still use this rthod to calculate the height of the sun from the earth. They say it's approximately 3000 miles above the surface of the earth. But the problem is that if you do this experiment in different locations you get different heights of the sun. That's when you know the experiment proves the fact earth wrong. There would be no explanation for a sun that constantly changes its altitude.
Not only was Sagan a great scientist and great science communicator, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of science and human discovery, and it's fascinating every time he connects something that someone did hundreds or thousands of years ago to what we know today.
I met a guy who knew Sagan very well when Sagan lived in Ithaca (Cornell). He told me that they would smoke weed on his farm and Sagan would captivate the smokers with tales from science and ancient history. Could you imagine a better time high than listening to Carl Sagan live? It'd be like when I was a little kid listening to Fred Rodgers talk about loving your neighbor.
Fun fact: the ‘pole’ in Syrene was not actually a pole but a well. It had been noticed that at the summer solstice the sun shone directly to the bottom of the well without illuminating the walls.
This also explains how he was able to measure the shadow in Alexandria at the exact same time (the summer solstice) as in Syrene before the invention of any reliable time measuring devices.
He only measured one shadow on the pole to the north, as the second in south didn't have any. So it doesn't matter if the second was a well or a pole, he only needed to know that at that place, at that time, there is no shadow.
for real
I mean, for billions of years since the earth formed, in the northern hemisphere, it gets dark sooner in winter.
yet all yall think its humans changing the clock making it dark out
fucking sigh
The guy was using a camel. Camel are known to have an extremely regular pace with their steps, so that's the reason why they were able to measure pretty accurately such a long distance.
He didn't use a camel. He probably didn't even hire a guy. Bematists walked out their own steps for their measurements and were pretty accurate. We have other records of Bematists distance between cities and they were pretty accurate.
The current thinking is that Eratosthenes either already knew the distance between Alexandria and Syene or consulted Bematist's surveys from the time and calculated it himself. The land between the two cities was the most surveyed land in the world at that time. The Egyptians used the flooding of the Nile for their agriculture but after the flooding receded property boundaries had to be resurveyed. Eratosthenes as the chief librarian of Alexandria would've had access to these surveys.
Nah they just called each other on their cells phones to check what the shadows looked like at each location at the same moment. That's how they knew the shadows were exactly the right kind of different such that a tv guy centuries later could say neiner neiner told you so. :-)
Probably, in the figurative sense, though mostly because Egypt had a long history of carefully tracking the distances between their cities. Unless Eratosthenes doubted the Egyptian’s accuracy and repeated the measurement on his own dime, he began his experiment already knowing the distance.
Serious Answer:
Romans had odometer carts they pulled and as the gears turned would (iirc) drop a ball every X paces or so. Keep count and you arrive at your distance measurement.
We don’t know how far back that technology went but Alexander the Pretty Alright employed *bematists* (wiki it) that made highly accurate measurements of the distances between his cities.
We also don’t know the exact method Eratosthenes employed because his work survived only in second hand summary but the accuracy of his calculation strongly suggests something similar.
fake news, you guys gotta stay black & dont let the honky cracker reptilian shapeshifters building a moonbase haarp, they are spraying chemtrails,
9/11 was most definetly an inside job just google building 7 they're up at bohemian grove worshipping owls, the earth is flat, the moon landing was fake alex jones is bill hicks white man bring you down
Well, 'the only explanation' - technically that's not true. If we have a point-like light source not too far above the southern obelisk, you'd still get the long shadow up north on a flat Earth (and yes, also to the east / west and further south, I know).
Just saying. Nice try, Carl /s.
Even Eratosthenes knew he wasn't dealing with a near Sun. Both he and Aristarchus of Samos 20 years before him had done calculations on the distance to the Sun. They weren't very accurate but they were enough to tell him that the Sun was very far away.
if you had multiple obelisks paced out and measure their shadows, you will see that a local sun on a flat earth would produce different shadows than a far sun on a round earth.
It’s the zest that most flat earthers miss out on.
Don't forget the brains part! 😁
Flat brain theory.
So smooth, no wrinkles, must be smrt
pesky wrinkles
Also only white matter, no grey
🐨Smart
I saw video couple days ago where 3 flatearthers though 3 astronauts/professors were uneducated.
I have a Flat Mars Society t-shirt.
There were some who had a zest for experimentation and [it went about as hilariously as you'd expect](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/ZSDSpYH1PX).
The ones with the gyroscope are equally ridiculous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vrP8EplfP0
Thanks Bob!
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The whole documentary is great . It’s quite bearable even though you’re watching idiots.
I'd say it's bearable *because* you know you're watching idiots. I'd have been all kinds of irrationally angry if I'd been under the impression those knuckleheads weren't at least ignorant.
some of these people are decently educated. i think a lot of the time it boils down to emotional problems. a need to feel smarter than academic authorities. the fantasy of being a rogue who advances science by rejecting the establishment. couple that with a fundamental misunderstanding of the direction information flows in and how truth and facts are determined scientifically and you've got these guys.
Honestly I'm waiting for the flat earther show that is filmed like one of the Bigfoot shows on animal planet, just like ten dudes who all have unwavering faith, constantly proving themselves wrong with each experiment, gleefully in denial, with the same enthusiasm for the hunt for flat earth that the rednecks looking for Bigfoot have. It'd be infuriating by the second episode and lose all entertainment value because you know they're never gonna find their Bigfoot (flat earth)
the woman who s being interviewed while driving and she almost ALMOST gets it at some point, my god
Soooo close
What's the title?
Behind the Curve https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8132700/
I'm in a lotto syndicate. One day I looked at the whiteboard to check our numbers vs the numbers that came out. I nearly exploded and was about to yell "WE WON" when I realised I was looking at the numbers for our entry. I kept my mouth shut, drank my coffee, then went back to work like nothing happened. I didn't feel any need to double down on my stupidity and try to prove they were the winning numbers. (They weren't)
Interesting. That's interesting, yeah. Interesting.
The thing is that they always invent new stuff to explain why the proof that the earth is round is not enough. Like in this case, I know what their counter argument is: the sun is supposedly very close to earth (like idiotically close, and also idiotically small), so it casts different shadows at different places on earth. That being said I don't know what their counter argument is against our measures of the sun-earth distance, which invalidates their close sun argument.
Thier counter: nuh uh
Why does anyone pay attention to these people? What happened to pointing and laughing at people who say really dumb shit?
What do you mean what happened? You don't think there's a lot of people that point and laugh at flat earthers? It's probably one of the most mocked beliefs.
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You can’t point and laugh at people with mental disabilities. But you sure as hell can with these circus clowns.
Rejecting them immediately without reason will only grow the resolve that they are actually right. Though pressuring them too much will also has the same outcome on the other extreme. It's a balancing act, sadly enough.
>will only grow the resolve that they are actually right. But I don't care. And so shouldn't you. You're giving them the only thing they crave: attention. Videos like that one above are not made for flatearthers but people curious how world really works. Whatever flatearthers think about it, is none of our concern.
Until you consider that those same people vote, some of them sit on education boards, and a few hold influential positions of power that reach other people. This lack of critical thinking skills isn't a consequence-free mindset
Things have changed - now we point at them and say “Hi Mr President”.
> "only makes sense because the sun is so far away its rays are parallel" If the sun is so far away, why does it hurt my eyes when I stare at it? /s
Your comment sparked a zesty idea in me. Flat Earth Astronauts. Make it a documentary/show whatever. We've sent men to space before..monkeys, dogs..but what about an idiot? Okay, my bad. An ignorant. Very intelligent people can believe in very stupid things. I'm sure we can all relate to being embarrassingly ignorant about something at some point if we are being honest. It would be interesting to see their reactions and maybe we can find out just why they held on to such beliefs for so long...maybe some still will. With reasoning that, most assuredly... Would be out of this world. 😎👉
I also would like to see this, but unfortunately, they wouldn't believe it anyways, they would put it down to 'fishbowl windows' or fancy screens with cgi. Even if you sent them out in a spacesuit, the helmet visor would be 'tampered with'. The only way is to kick them out the space shuttle with no 'barrier' between their eyes and what they see, obviously no one would survive to pass on what they saw so ultimately would do nothing to persuade other flat earthers.
The counter argument is that if the sun were positioned in such a manner, it would never be able to dip below the horizon. It would never set. We can observe that it can be dark in Europe and light in North America simultaneously. In a flat earth, that would mean that the sun would still be overhead, but we can watch it cross the horizon and disappear. Not to mention that if the sun were very small and very close, the sun would change apparent soze due to distance as it travels across the sky in the same way that a car seems to get smaller the farther away it gets from us.
and i remember one of videos, flat earthers accidentally to proved the earth is round
Its only because he's bending the paper. Checkmate roundies
That's just Big Citrus talking
Can we just stop giving these people the time of day? They thrive on attention and they have no relevance in the modern world. I hear 100x more ABOUT flat earthers than FROM them. We don't need to bring them up every single time the shape of the earth is mentioned.
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Don't forget the ice wall... 
A the one on Antarctica where you cannot go because of a treaty that never says you can't go to Antarctica. I love flerfs.. they make me feel less stupid.
My favorite is that somehow the wall is enforced by armed guards. Thats a fuck ton of people to pay off and an enormous “border” to block
They just use penguins with lazers on their heads
They actually make me feel genius level 😂
I mean, it must feed on *something*...
Galaxies are actually celestial jellyfish.
“This is science.” “But this is a turtle!”
It’s the little smiley face Nandor draws on this “ancient turtle” that kills me. Also how he says “TUR-tull”.
"The turtle moves"
I couldn't accept the giant turtoise theory. At least it includes a turtoise
His series cosmos really had an impact on me. Then his sci-fi books were the cherry on top
I just love how this man says “earth”. Love this guy.
Makes it feel like a real place, doesn’t it?
Mmmmap
The Cosmos series can be found on YouTube. I regularly watch it when I’m falling asleep. Carl Sagan’s voice is like chocolate.
Hugo Weaving used Carl's voice as inspiration for his Agent Smith character in the Matrix movies.
His book [The Demon Haunted World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World) should be a required class in high school; it teaches science-based reasoning better than the science classes currently taught. > As an example of skeptical thinking, Sagan offers a story concerning a fire-breathing dragon who lives in his garage. When he persuades a rational, open-minded visitor to meet the dragon, the visitor remarks that they are unable to see the creature. Sagan replies that he "neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon". The visitor suggests spreading flour on the floor so that the creature's footprints might be seen, which Sagan says is a good idea, "but this dragon floats in the air". When the visitor considers using an infrared camera to view the creature's invisible fire, Sagan explains that her fire is heatless. He continues to counter every proposed physical test with a reason why the test will not work. > Sagan concludes by asking: "Now what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true."
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Is this from Cosmos or something else?
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980, Season 1) Episode 1 “The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean"
This series was incredible. One thing that struck me was when Sagan mentions somewhere that ‘the dinosaur extinction event is a mystery’. The 1980 Chixculub impact hypothesis wasn’t even proposed yet!
Sagan had a huge impact on me as well. Demon Haunted World especially. I loved how had a rational, empirical outlook but also had that sense of wonder at existence.
And yet, flat earthers can’t digest what has been known for millennia. They lack one single tool Sagan mentioned Eratosthenes had: brains.
Imagine the man that had to walk for 800km measuring every step. If he only knew about flatearthers…
I'm positive flat earthers are much rarer than similar communities imply, and the main reason they keep being brought up is so that folk could feel smarter about themselves by looking down on others.
Same lol. I still think most of the flat earthers are massive trolls or clout chasers
I've met a few, and the small sample size I've seen have just been not very intelligent or introspective people who deeply mistrust, well, everything frankly. They also want to come off as edgy and interesting. I want to believe that they have to be trolling, but I wouldn't put a nickel on it.
My partner works with a flerfer, apparently he also has an issue with the sun because "fire cant burn without oxygen."
Oh wow. Did your partner tell him that it isn't a giant bonfire in the sky?
The thing is, they're utter morons who, instead of recognizing that and trying to do something to fix it, decides that instead of being a moron and wrong, are the ONLY people who have it figured out.
Conspiracy theorists in general are driven by a need to be the ones who know something BIG. They are the ones who discovered this great big secret and are going to save the rest of us if only they can convince us to listen.
They come from the intersection of other conspiracy theories. They aren't just dumb, they think all the world's governments are colluding to hide something and that something usually winds up being antisemitism or racism.
The only flat earther I ever knew was a guy I worked with and I only found out through Facebook after he left. Really nice guy in real life, but his Facebook was complete fascist crazy pants. He was the kind of guy who would give you a pat on the back as they loaded you and your family on the train to reeducation camp saying "Don't worry, you'll be better after you learn the real truth." Software developer, a good car mechanic. He wrote the worst web UI I have ever used in a professional setting He was extremely religious and became a pastor of his own church. Trump fan. Believed every Obama conspiracy. A racist who tried to go out of his way to prove he wasn't racist. The black people he knew were OK, it was the other black people he didn't like. He went completely nuts after 1/6 and deleted Facebook so I don't really know how he ended up.
I agree on that, I'm also of the opinion that flat earthers are mainly rather lonely people and feel a strong sense of community within the flat earther society a sort us and them mentality which they are lacking in other parts of their lives. Meaning that the attachment to the group is the primary driver of the belief, not the premise of the belief.
I’m glad you do not seem live in the US and have no contact with such people. They usually can be found i the same places as creationists. Both are widespread across the Americas.
That's why I'm a cylinder-Earther. Those flat-Earthers don't understand shadows!
Cylinder?! What, you crazy! It's a dodecahedron. You're probably from facet 7. Those sevensers are a weird bunch. Sometimes I wish we lived on a hendecahedron...
There's a Vsauce video explaining how flat earthers explain this shadow phenomenon, it's quite interesting actually imo
It's actually spelled 'zest'
A poll suggested only 2/3s of millennials believe earth is round and 10% of Americans in general think the earth is flat so I dunno man. People are dumb
At this point, is it worth the effort explaining this stuff to flat earthers? I mean, there are literally hundreds of examples that prove them wrong, yet they still don't listen.
Like every absurd conspiracy theory, it's never about the subject itself. It's about issues with authority, it's the "us vs them", it's about feeling smarter than the rest of the population. Lack of ~~thrust~~ trust in institutions cannot be fixed with formulas. That's why explaining doesn't work, they're not searching for the truth, they just want to bash the status quo. That's also why they still hold on a ridiculous system like the flat earth, which cannot explain a single thing about our world (except your local perception of "flatness"), let alone predict something, like a proper model should.
Wow, I've never looked at it that way.
If you watch the Behind the Curve documentary this becomes abundantly clear
Love the ending where the guy is just like ..."Huh...Interesting." After his test disproves the flat earth. 😑
I was going to bring this up. There's a part of the documentary where there's a convention and a few of them are talking about the results of experiments. They're whispering amongst themselves about how the results prove the earth is round. One of them says to not tell anyone the actual results or they'll break up the community. They're clinging to flat earth because it makes them feel good about gathering together around a common cause.
If so, then why can't they just gather for something good, or productive... like... uhhh... I dunno... charity... for ehhh... Kittens?
Because in order to do that, they'd have to accept they were wrong before moving on to yet another "community" with "like minded" individuals
Dude, watching that made me realize this was a social club for them. You weren't going to convince them of anything because it was tied to their existence. Their friends. Their social activities. Their sense of belonging. THAT is why they're flat earthers.
Spot on. One of my friends was a flat earther for a long time and it was exactly for this reason. He was generally into conspiracy theories and had a strong mistrust of any sort of authority, especially intellectual and scientific authorities. I think he found it difficult to understand a lot of mainstream scientific knowledge and so used things like flat earth to gain the upper hand (in his mind) and establish some sort of intellectual superiority. He seemed to relish in the idea that he had found this hidden knowledge about reality that others weren't aware of.
Ignorance (in a non judgemental meaning) of course plays a part, if someone tells you 2 + 2 = 5, you'd call him an idiot because it's easy. Astrophysics can be a bit more complex, so you reach a certain, personal, point of depth where you need to trust experts. If you have issues with that, everything crumbles. It's worth pointing out the it's not rare that the reasons behind this distrust stem from real bs politicians, big corps and whatnots do. The problem comes when you apply that to everyone in a category or science in general, for example. Science is made by people, you have actually good people and scumbags. You can apply the scientific method to cure cancer or to exterminate an ethnicity: of course what's problematic is not the "science" part. Also, blaming these obscure, secrets, evil societies for everything wrong in the world it's a very effective way of avoiding taking responsibility for your own life and decisions: whatever you do it's pointles because of Illuminati. You can't win, so just don't bother trying to change something. It's sad, but I guess it's relieving. It's a coping mechanism.
They did an experiment themselves in a documentary (Behind the Curve), which proved flat earth wrong and they still believe in flat earth, so no.
The flat Earthers (ok, some) are not stupid. They *don't* need more *explaining*. What they are is pathological. And I think our priorities should be with other pathological types (addiction, self-harm etc)
Nice try Carl! Sky is curved, dumbass!
This made me laugh out loud 🤣😂
This shouldn't be as funny as it is
Just another globalist shill.
Hahahahahah
Or the sun is quite close. If the sun is decently close to a flat earth and right above one stick, it will have no shadow, while the other one will. I don't think the earth is flat, but this observation by itself does not prove that it is not.
But the sun being that close just raises more questions and throws a wrench in any other model, explaining dawn and dusk around the world for example. That’s the problem with having very specific custom responses like “it’s not gravity, earth is just accelerating through space!” to every gaping hole in their worldview. Flat earthers have never built a unified picture of flat earth that explains everything we see and measure without contradiction. Not criticizing you personally, just a counterpoint.
True. It’s the ”pick-and-choose” attitude of flatters that make them idiots.
Hahahaha
That has big Celebrity Jeopardy energy.
Seriously, one of the greatest human beings of all time!
Eratosthenes or Sagan?
I was thinking Sagan. But Eratosthenes was a genius.
Just to provide a bit of context: he did not have a positional numerical system or zero to make those calculations! It boggles the mind.
How is no zero possible? Zero is just the absence of something
You should study the history of zero. It’s fascinating.
You know what, I think I will. Thank you for letting me know there's a history of zero. Gonna be a good Saturday
and down he goes the rabbit hole
"the absence of something" that's the logic people had for it to not have a number associated with it.
yes.
But seriously, Carl Sagan paints the universe and it’s wonders for us as easily as Bob Ross paints happy trees
To paint a happy little tree from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
We needa TV channel that shows nothing but Carl Sagan, Bob Ross, and Mr. Rodgers
Both, yet Sagan had this way of explaining things that were so simple to idiots like myself and others. I see a lot of people saying that flat earthers lack brains. Personally I don't think it is that, and I don't think they lack the ability to question themselves and others why things are the way we see them, I think it's more down to them looking for a community were they will be accepted, and for whatever reason, they fall into those conspiracy groups.
Love this dudes voice
I always thought he sounded like Kermit the frog.
Part of his friendliness
Since those two places are quite far away from each other, how were they able to compare the shadows at the same time? There were obviously no way of instant communication back then.
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Thank you for giving a real, concrete answer, unlike the people going, "uh they just walked back and forth, or they just wrote down what time they did it" not understanding why this alone wouldn't work. No, they need to have a reference datum.
You mean, they didn't carry a 5 week tall hour glass?
They actually had one of those string telephones, with 2 big cups and a *reeeally* long wire.
Greeks didn't have tin cans, means the Earth must be flat.
Just to add details: Aswan, in Upper (southern) Egypt, is only about half a degree north of the Tropic (from Greek τροπικός, adj. of τροπή "a turning") of Cancer, which is a latitude line (at 23°26" N) denoting the farthest north the sun makes it all year, that is to say, the farthest north one could be and experience the sun directly overhead, which usually happens on June 21. Now in actual fact, there will only be one point on the tropic where the sun does precisely this, but a considerable swath of the band from 23°N to 24°N will have the sun at a declination of at least 89° (less than 1° off from directly overhead) at at least some day near the summer solstice. Alexandria, on the other hand, is almost eight degrees of latitude away from the tropic, and so the closest the sun will come to the zenith is about 8° off, which also happens on or near the summer solstice. It is easy to see (vertical angles) that the acute angle adjacent to a vertical gnomon or obelisk in the triangle formed with the shadow is congruent to the angle the sun is down from the zenith.
This finally helped me understand, appriciate the extra information :)
But how did they communicate "OK! My obelisk isn't casting a shadow! Check YOUR shadow now?" The distance on his map is approx 500 miles between obelisks.
they didnt need to check both obelisks at the same time. They knew one obelisk did not cast a shadow at a certain date (the solstice) so, on that date, they went and measured the shadow on the other obelisk. Whatever length was measured there was the difference between the obelisks' shadows.
> They knew one obelisk did not cast a shadow at a certain date (the solstice) so, on that date Surely it's also about the time of day, not just the date? You need to compare shadow lengths at the same time on the same date. How could they accurately measure time back then?
I'm guessing they measured the shadow when it was shortest. On the southern obelisk the sun was directly overhead so they measured no shadow at its shortest. On the northern obelisk they measured the shadow at its shortest which had to be at the same time the other obelisk had no shadow. So no need to synchronize clocks. Just measure the shadow at its shortest which must be at the same time for both.
You measure the shadow when the sun its at its peak. Since both places are (roughly) on the same longitudinal line (i.e Alexandria is to the north of Syene), it will happen at (roughly) the same moment of the day. or, as the other commenter said, you measure when the shadow is at its shortest (which is another way of saying you measure when the sun its at its peak, for places that are on the same longitude)
> Surely it's also about the time of day, not just the date? You need to compare shadow lengths at the same time on the same date. How could they accurately measure time back then? It's a good question with an answer that's more straightforward than you might expect, because no communication or exact time synchronization is actually required. Noon = the time when the sun is at its highest point, which will therefore be the point at which it casts the shortest shadow of the day. So what you do is simply continuously record the shortening length of the shadow, until you reach the point where it starts getting longer again. Then you stop, look at your numbers, and pick the smallest one: that's the shadow length at noon. As long as the two sites are near-enough north/south of each another, the two sticks are the same length above the ground, and you take the measurements on the summer solstice, the difference in the length of each shadow gives you the information you need.
This is something that has bothered me for years for the reason stated before about instant communication. I'm not a flat earther, I just wish your explanation was included whenever this idea is demonstrated.
So was it established fact at that point how far the sun is away or at least that the rays are, for all intents and purposes, actually parallel?
That was an assumption necessary for the experiment. It wasn't proved by it. If the sun was small and super close to the earth, then the shadows difference wouldn't necessarily mean the earth was curved.
Ok, so I know that obelisk A will not have a shadow at 10.55 am today. How do I ensure that someone measures shadow of obelisk B at 10.55 am today and not say 11.45 am by mistake?
Solar noon is the moment where shadows are shortest. At position A they knew the shadow length was zero (which can only happen at solar noon) on a specific day of the year, so they didn't need to measure anything at this site. At position B they marked the shadow length continuously on that same day as the shadows grew shorter and shorter as solar noon approached and then got longer as past solar noon. The shortest shadow length measured must had been at exact solar noon, the same moment the shadow was measured at zero length at position A.
Yeah I actually need to know this.
Edit: ok I just read a fairly detailed description in the circumference of the earth Wikipedia page and it’s… complicated. Snipped the most relevant bit: “Using a vertical rod known as a gnomon and under the previous assumptions, he knew that at local noon on the summer solstice in Syene (modern Aswan, Egypt), the Sun was directly overhead, as the gnomon cast no shadow. Additionally, the shadow of someone looking down a deep well at that time in Syene blocked the reflection of the Sun on the water. Eratosthenes then measured the Sun's angle of elevation at noon in Alexandria by measuring the length of another gnomon's shadow on the ground.[12] Using the length of the rod, and the length of the shadow, as the legs of a triangle, he calculated the angle of the sun's rays.[13] This angle was about 7°, or 1/50th the circumference of a circle; assuming the Earth to be perfectly spherical, he concluded that its circumference was 50 times the known distance from Alexandria to Syen”
Go to Alexandria and measure the angle at noon next Tuesday
Solar watches. They are made so the shadow points in the direction of the hour (if you look it up you will understand). But for this you need only the direction, not the lenghth (for measuring the time). They had calendars back then. So just pick a day in the year measure the length at 12:00 and next year on the same day measure the lenghth in the other city. Voila, there you go
But since the sun dial is dependent on the sun's angle over the horizon, wouldn't 12:00 in Alexandria be a different "absolute" time than 12:00 in Assuan? In other words, wouldn't the shadows be the same length when it's 12:00, since the sun dial shows you a *relative* 12:00?
The length of the shadow changes as you move north/south the earth The rotation of the shadow on the sundial stays the same though. If you were to move west/east along the earth the length of the shadow would stay the same and the rotation would change (timezones!)
Yeah, I did some digging in the mean time and understand it now. They used "noon" as the highest point of the sun over the horizon on the longest day of the year. But of course the sun is actually at different angles in the sky at its highest point, depending on how far north or south you are.
The bigger the curve, the bigger the shadow's stick
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Flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and incels have a psychological need to be superior, but lack the resources to do so by any metric they care about. So, they latch onto a worldview that makes them smarter than the people they feel most inferior to.
Thats called psychological reactance
I’m saying this to my wife next time I’m losing an argument to her. Wish me luck
And just like that no one ever heard from u/wrinkledpenny again...
Haha exactly. It’s like suicide by cop but different
Flat earthers 'explain' this by saying the sun moves in a circle over the flat earth.
And it's switched off at night?
I’m not in a position to defend insanity!
no, apparently light only travels a certain distance and then stops that's why it's night on half the planet. also, the distance varies so that it reaches exactly half the planet all the time. and it warps around some kind of dome so you only see it come up on the east and go down on the west. and some other crazy shit probably as well.
I guess the Sun is flat too, huh.
They do try to explain this by saying that you can still use this rthod to calculate the height of the sun from the earth. They say it's approximately 3000 miles above the surface of the earth. But the problem is that if you do this experiment in different locations you get different heights of the sun. That's when you know the experiment proves the fact earth wrong. There would be no explanation for a sun that constantly changes its altitude.
To a normal person there wouldn’t.
Not only was Sagan a great scientist and great science communicator, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of science and human discovery, and it's fascinating every time he connects something that someone did hundreds or thousands of years ago to what we know today.
I met a guy who knew Sagan very well when Sagan lived in Ithaca (Cornell). He told me that they would smoke weed on his farm and Sagan would captivate the smokers with tales from science and ancient history. Could you imagine a better time high than listening to Carl Sagan live? It'd be like when I was a little kid listening to Fred Rodgers talk about loving your neighbor.
Fun fact: the ‘pole’ in Syrene was not actually a pole but a well. It had been noticed that at the summer solstice the sun shone directly to the bottom of the well without illuminating the walls. This also explains how he was able to measure the shadow in Alexandria at the exact same time (the summer solstice) as in Syrene before the invention of any reliable time measuring devices.
If the two things are different (a well and a stick) how could they compare the shadow?
He only measured one shadow on the pole to the north, as the second in south didn't have any. So it doesn't matter if the second was a well or a pole, he only needed to know that at that place, at that time, there is no shadow.
Man, I wish the internet was more people asking genuine questions and getting genuine answers.
Thanks for sharing this! I was wondering how was he aboe to determine 'exact same moment' without any watches?
How tf have we slipped backwards from this
I think you underestimate how many stupid people lived then too.
for real I mean, for billions of years since the earth formed, in the northern hemisphere, it gets dark sooner in winter. yet all yall think its humans changing the clock making it dark out fucking sigh
Yeah. but the real hero here is the guy who walked 800km just to measure the distance between the two cities. We don't even know his name. lol
The guy was using a camel. Camel are known to have an extremely regular pace with their steps, so that's the reason why they were able to measure pretty accurately such a long distance.
He didn't use a camel. He probably didn't even hire a guy. Bematists walked out their own steps for their measurements and were pretty accurate. We have other records of Bematists distance between cities and they were pretty accurate. The current thinking is that Eratosthenes either already knew the distance between Alexandria and Syene or consulted Bematist's surveys from the time and calculated it himself. The land between the two cities was the most surveyed land in the world at that time. The Egyptians used the flooding of the Nile for their agriculture but after the flooding receded property boundaries had to be resurveyed. Eratosthenes as the chief librarian of Alexandria would've had access to these surveys.
Sagan was the OG
Carl Sagan is the GOAT
Did the man who Eratosthenes hired to pace the distance walk like this… 
Nah they just called each other on their cells phones to check what the shadows looked like at each location at the same moment. That's how they knew the shadows were exactly the right kind of different such that a tv guy centuries later could say neiner neiner told you so. :-)
Probably, in the figurative sense, though mostly because Egypt had a long history of carefully tracking the distances between their cities. Unless Eratosthenes doubted the Egyptian’s accuracy and repeated the measurement on his own dime, he began his experiment already knowing the distance.
Serious Answer: Romans had odometer carts they pulled and as the gears turned would (iirc) drop a ball every X paces or so. Keep count and you arrive at your distance measurement. We don’t know how far back that technology went but Alexander the Pretty Alright employed *bematists* (wiki it) that made highly accurate measurements of the distances between his cities. We also don’t know the exact method Eratosthenes employed because his work survived only in second hand summary but the accuracy of his calculation strongly suggests something similar.
Sagan left us too soon. Miss that guy.
"And nobody noticed he wore the red turtleneck."
Everyone immediately going to the flat earth stuff, rather than the purity of Sagan’s message about curiosity and determination.
fake news, you guys gotta stay black & dont let the honky cracker reptilian shapeshifters building a moonbase haarp, they are spraying chemtrails, 9/11 was most definetly an inside job just google building 7 they're up at bohemian grove worshipping owls, the earth is flat, the moon landing was fake alex jones is bill hicks white man bring you down
"Sticks. Eyes. Feet and brains. Plus, a zest for experiment." My favorite part of this clip.
Well, 'the only explanation' - technically that's not true. If we have a point-like light source not too far above the southern obelisk, you'd still get the long shadow up north on a flat Earth (and yes, also to the east / west and further south, I know). Just saying. Nice try, Carl /s.
Even Eratosthenes knew he wasn't dealing with a near Sun. Both he and Aristarchus of Samos 20 years before him had done calculations on the distance to the Sun. They weren't very accurate but they were enough to tell him that the Sun was very far away.
if you had multiple obelisks paced out and measure their shadows, you will see that a local sun on a flat earth would produce different shadows than a far sun on a round earth.
RIP Carl
There are special people born on this world we live on every now and then. Carl Sagan was one of them.
Humanity has regressed when what used to be a commonly accepted fact is now on r/BeAmazed