We live on a lumpy globe, yet there are a growing amount of people who believe that the earth is a flat disc. That's right people, a growing number!
If you are not aware of the Flat Earth Society, then let me enlighten you; or should I say endarken? I am fairly sure the Flat Earth Society was started off as a joke, a kind of; let's see if we can use science to prove the world is a disc, even though it's not, and we can't, kind of joke.
In order to make the world flat, you have to tinker with physics and reality a fair bit, for instance gravity no longer works the way Einstein and Newton told us it does, and the way we observe it working on a daily basis.
The problem with people who believe this fallacy encounter, is that they also believe there is no way of proving that the world is round without actually flying up to space and circumnavigating the globe. This in itself is a fallacy of thinking, so I feel it is my duty to show you exactly how you can prove the world is round all by yourself, without the help of the largest space agency on earth.
However before I do that, let's explore how the spreading of misinformation can damage society, and leave us all worse off.
The Weapon Of Information
The human brain has evolved to take advantage of shortcuts, in fact this isn’t exclusively a human trait, all animals have built in cognitive shortcuts which allow them to make snap decisions that might otherwise cause costly delays in decision making.
In the rest of the animal kingdom, a shortcut may be represented by a simple aural or visual clue. Like when a female turkey hears a certain frequency squeak, it instantly tries to mother the thing that the sound is emanating from. The bird will do this, even if the thing making the noise, is a stuffed leopard [CITE SOURCE: Cialdini influence]
As human beings, we are no less susceptible to these shortcuts than our animal cousins. The only difference is our shortcuts have evolved at a social pace as well as a biological one.
So a new mother is still triggered by the sound of a baby crying, however we also have developed social shortcuts which we follow on a regular basis.
Social shortcuts can take many different forms but they all perform the same function, and that is to help ease the ever increasing cognitive load that our brains are under.
So one such social shortcut we use on a regular basis is appearance; of course we’ve all heard the adage don’t judge a book by its cover, referring to how we shouldn’t always form opinions based on looks alone.
However appearance is one of those social shortcuts that enable us to make quick and useful decisions.
So if you are approached by someone in a suit, as opposed to somebody dressed in rags, your reactions to that person comes from a suite of standardised responses held in your brain, for people in suits.
Of course human society being what it is, means that there are people out there who are constantly trying to take advantage of these social shortcuts in order to manipulate you into doing something.
This is the reason public facing salespeople wear suits, in order to instil a feeling of trust. It is also the reason why you’re more likely to get an upgrade on an aeroplane if you wear a suit (just saying!).
The Power Of Wrong
Imagine you have been in a plane accident and have crashed into the pacific ocean. Luckily you have come down near a deserted island, and you and 300 of your fellow passengers manage to make it to safety.
Now lets suppose that there are no doctors or scientists amongst the passengers and crew, in fact none of you have any survival skills at all. As you all start to explore the island, you come across various things that will help the group survive.
As a group you make decisions on how to use the survival tools based on what people have either read or heard about, or watched on TV, or the internet, meaning all skills are at least secondhand.
After a few weeks, you have all miraculously managed to survive, you hunt animals in the forest, catch fish in the sea, and every day a fresh beacon is made on the beach to try and catch the attention of any potential rescue planes or boats. All what you have done is a testimony to the human spirit, and what you all collectively remember from Google.
Now let’s imagine that one day you are out for a walk on the beach, despite your predicament, you are actually enjoying the feeling of the hot sand sliding between your toes as you walk. You round the bend at the far end of the main beach and you pass under some palm trees; there to your absolute disgust, you discover the person in charge of gathering fresh water urinating in the supply.
You are shocked and appalled, you start shouting at the offender, and ask the man why he has been relieving himself in the water supply.
He replies that because the group has been lacking certain vitamins and nutrients, due to its restricted diet, he does a wee into the water to supplement this. He then goes on to tell you, that like everything else that has gone on before, this decision was come to by consensus.
Nobody in the group has the direct biological knowledge to know if drinking diluted urine would replace vitamins and nutrients, or indeed if they were missing them in the first place. However enough people remembered from the internet, that drinking urine was beneficial.
You are outraged, and go to the rest of the group to tell them. To your surprise, most of the survivors are completely aware of what the man has been doing.
They say that they remember reading something on Google once about drinking your own urine in a situation whereby you’re lost.
You explain to them that perhaps that would be if you’re stranded and have no access to fresh water, which doesn’t account for the situation you all currently find yourselves in. You also point out that due to the amount of salts found in urine, which will ultimately dehydrate you, and the fact that it's a waste product, are also reasons not to drink pee pee.
Unfortunately for you, you’re asked if you are a scientist or have a degree in biology; when you answer no , the group simply do not believe you have the credentials to be arguing with their Google acquired wisdom.
There is no internet access on the island, and so when the group ask you to prove your version of the truth, you can’t.
The only thing you can do, is to source your own fresh water; to make things slightly better a breakaway group of about 25 people come with you, although this still represents less than 10% of the people on the island. It just so happens that more of your fellow castaways believe that drinking urine is not only beneficial, but necessary.
So it doesn't matter that you know that drinking your own urine, much less the urine of others is not beneficial, and is not healthy in the slightest, in fact the exact opposite. The fact remains that you are in the minority, and so the truth is determined by how many people are repeating a statement.
The original colony had several fertile males and females of childbearing age and so after years of not being rescued it grows from 300 to 450. Then after 20 years on the island, the first grandchildren are being born, and 20 years after that, great grandchildren.
You now live in a world, where everyone drinks everyone else's urine because it's good for them.
disclaimer: Drinking your own or any other person's urine is not beneficial for you in any biological way. It is not espoused as a survival tactic by amongst others, the US Army and the British SAS.
The Dividing Classes
Just before I go on, I want to just make clear that I'm not ridiculing anyone for their beliefs, as I've tried to illustrate above, as we isololate ourselves on internet islands where pretty much everyone believes the same thing, based on secondhand evidence. Then anyone can be led to believe anything.
That being said, I do realise that there are different categories of flat-earthers, they will range from people who have just heard about it, read up on it, and then decided it was true. Right through to someone who has been into it for a very long time, and has publicly declared so on various platforms, and everyone in between.
How long you have believed in something, will have a correlating effect on your emotional attachment to that fact. Finding out something you've only just learned isn't true is not that big a deal, as compared to something you have held to be true your whole life.
So I'm assuming that if you are somebody who is 100% certain that the world is flat, and that all space missions and images from satellites and probes are fake and have publicly stated those assertions on many occasions, then you are heavily emotionally invested in being right, and no doubt you will reject the evidence I shall present below.
If however you are somewhere in between not sure, and absolutely certain, then there is a chance that you may play along with me, and do the experiment below for yourself, and accept the findings as evidence to a round earth, and therefore real space missions and the rest.
A Case For Shadows
For this experiment you will need:
A couple of lolipop (popsicle) sticks
A large ball, at least basketball size, hopefully beach ball.
A bright lamp
White Card
Superglue
A tape measure
Your Eyes
Step 1:
Place 2 lollipop sticks onto a piece of card about 20 centimetres apart.
Step 2:
Position your powerful lamp above the sticks and turn on the light. Make sure the lamp is directly above both sticks and casts no shadow.
Step 3:
Pick up the card and bend it around your ball, so that it takes on a rough ball shape. Then glue the card onto the ball.
Step 4:
Place the ball with the card and lolly sticks in the same place as step 2, This time, notice the way it is impossible to manipulate the ball so that neither stick has a shadow when sitting directly under the light.
Summation: It is possible for a light source to cast no shadow over two distinct objects on a flat plane. However once the plane is curved, it is no longer possible for the light to be directly over both at the same time, due to the curvature of the ball.
The angle created by the top of the shadow and the top of the object can be used to work out the circumference of a globe, as long as the distance between the two original points are know.
This is what the ancient Greek librarian Eratosthenes did in the 3rd century BCE, when he heard that once a year, the sun hit the bottom of a certain well in Seine at 12 noon, indicating that the sun was directly ahead at that time.
He knew that Alexandria did not have the sun directly above it at this time, so on that day he measured the length of shadow cast by a pole, and calculated the angle of the shadow being cast. He then used his (incorrect) knowledge about the distance between the two cities (5,000 stadia) to estimate the circumference of the earth (250,000 stadia, approx 46,246 km).
Eratosthenes was pretty close to the figure we have today (40,075 km), and would have been a lot closer, had he had the exact distance between the two cities.
Conclusion: This experiment describe the differences between how light behaves in relation to objects placed on a flat surface, and a curved one.
If the experimenter finds the same discrepency between shadow angle on earth, then the only conclusion to come to is that the earth is not flat and is curved in at least the region the experimenter is viewing. The fact that this experiment can be recreated at any two, sea-level, longitudinal points on earth, indicates infinite curvature, or to put it another way; the earth is round.
Notes:
i.) The experiment can be done with tooth pics and a golf ball, however this is much more fiddly.ii.) The paper does not have to be stuck on the ball, as one can simply measure out the same distance used in step 2.
iii.) The guidline of 20 cm is just that, a guide, the distance between the two sticks, whilst maintaining a point of no shadow over both sticks, will depend on the type and power of your lamp.
SO ARE YOU A FLAT-EARTHER? DO YOU BELIEVE THAT THERE IS SOME KIND OF CONSPIRACY TO COVER UP THE TRUE SHAPE OF OUR PLANET FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON? OR MAYBE YOU TRIED THE EXPERIMENT AND NOW START TO BELIEVE WHAT WAS DISCOVERED THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!