In the 1950’s the question “Is the Earth flat or round?” emerged. To this day this question is still relevant to society and so I’m writing to those who aren’t sure and to those who don’t believe the Earth is round. Many flat-Earth theorists don’t trust conventional physics. Most of us know that if we drop an object, it will automatically fall. But 10% of people believe the earth is flat and use gravity as one of their examples. Flat-Earth believers don’t trust scientists and don’t trust the evidence that’s been proven. This can involve echo chambers, when everyone believes the same thing and there’s no outlier with a different opinion.
Let’s talk about the lunar eclipse. During the lunar eclipse, we see the sun and the moon surrounding the earth, portraying a shadow of the Earth on the moon. When the shadow moves across the planets the shadow can be seen as round, not flat. Under the assumption that if the Earth was flat, we would have the ability to see long distances. But, since we’re only on ground level, the human eye cannot directly see into space and other planets. This is because there is a curve to the landscape, concluding that the Earth is round. Shadows would be the same length anywhere you go, only if the Earth was flat. Which means the sun would hit the Earth at the same angles, but that’s not what’s happening here. If we were to place the exact same poles in 2 different locations, the shadows wouldn’t be the same because of the way the sun hits it.
Now, time to get into time zones and faces. The sun sets at different times and that means different places too. The way the sun displays itself in different locations depending on where you live. So if the sun sets at different times that’s why we have different time zones but also one face of the Earth is facing the sun and the other isn’t. Let’s take New York and Beijing for example, New York is 12 hours ahead. So when the sun is out in New York, it’s dark in Beijing. What’s happening here is, the Earth is rotating around its axis.
But let’s consider if the Earth was a cube and it wasn’t rotating like a sphere, we would have 6 oceans, because there’s 6 faces of a cube. The way the Earth would usually rotate would not be like the cubed Earth, the atmosphere wouldn’t be reaching any corners of the Earth. The way gravity works should also waver, gravity would be most powerful at the most secure faces of the cubed Earth. The farther we are away from the centers of the cubed Earth, the more we will feel pulled down to the Earth and the closer we are to the centers we would feel the highest gravitational pull.
But could the Earth be flat and round? Let’s use a plate for instance, if you lift it above a bigger plate the shadow on the bigger plate would be round but the shape of the smaller plate to be flat. If the smaller plate is flat, and it was rotating like the Earth does it’ll look different during the day or night. It can either look like a line or an oval, as it’s rotating. But the shadow of Earth on the moon during an eclipse is always circular. Concluding that the Earth is round.
Although the Greeks did discover the shape of the Earth, people are still questioning science. Not everyone is trusting the evidence and the data that’s been proved. If there are people that aren’t trusting science then what does that entail? If the people of this society are anti science, what does this say about society?
Photo Credits: GoodFon (Verminaard)
Camille Stephen-Marist-DMSF Class of 2028