Here I collect and elaborate a bit on a few proofs from my post, "Flat Earth 'Theory' -- Huh?"
These are examples, by no means exhaustive, of things anyone who takes a very little trouble can observe.
1. The sun rises and sets. When it sets in the eastern US, it is still visible in the western US. It is easy to prove to yourself that the sun really leaves "your" sky while it is still visible elsewhere. It is just as easy to prove to yourself that the sun is not a nearby body that simply moves nearer and farther: for most people, a dime held at arm's length is just big enough to cover the sun no matter what time of day you look at it. For a dramatic proof, telephone someone in Asia (or Australia, etc) and find out the time of day and position of the sun to compare with that in your location.
2. Likewise, the constellations that are visible in the western sky will not be visible in a few hours. You can plainly see they are not hovering low over a flat earth and moving nearer and farther, because they distance between the stars in a constellation would grow closer as they moved away. Further, the stars in the night sky now will not be visible in a six months (due to the earth's revolution around the sun). And the stars visible from the northern hemisphere are not the same as those visible on the same date from the southern. (I lived two years in the southern hemisphere and saw this for myself.)
3. The earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse is always curved. If they earth were flat, then an eclipse when the moon was near the horizon would have to be flat. Flat earthers imagine that the shadow cast on the moon is of some other (round) body. But even if such an object could remain undetected, it would unreasonable for it to coincide perfectly with the earth's motions with respect to the sun and moon, and these have been regular and predictable for centuries.
4. A ship headed away from you with a clear horizon will seem to "sink" as it gradually rounds the curve of the earth. (That curvature amounts to about 8 inches over a mile, but increases at an increasing rate with distance, amounting to about six feet over three miles, and 17 feet in five miles.) This has been a practical rough measure of distance among sailors for centuries.
5. There IS a horizon. On a flat earth, there would be no "edge" visible, since it would be impossible to see the thousands of miles necessary with all the haze of atmosphere, moisture, clouds, etc in the way. Instead, a six-foot tall observer standing with his toes lapped by the ocean's edge sees only about three miles to the horizon on a clear day.
6. Great Circle routes followed by airlines on long over-ocean flights often cover shorter distances than they could if the earth were flat. To take an extreme example, a flight around the world from southern Chile straight westward or eastward along the 54th parallel would be barely half as long as one around the equator--opposite the prediction of a flat earth model that imagines a north pole in the middle of the disk, with longitude lines radiating outward to an enormous southern "hemisphere" that ends in an Antartic ice wall at the edge.
7. One final sally--a matter of thought rather than observaton--and one that involves an old principle known as Occam's Razor. The only way to imagine that the earth's gravity wouldn't pull it into a sphere in the first place is to imagine that it mysteriously lacks gravity. (And an alternative flat earth WITH gravity would have everything on its surface sliding towards its center.) An earth without gravity must generate our weight by means of acceleration by the equivalent amount of 9.8 meters (or 32 feet) per second every second. And of course everything visible to us must have that same motion, or the difference would be obvious. That simple matter of everything in the universe except the earth having gravity violates the principle that the simplest explanation for all the facts is typically the true one. Forget about these tortured intellectual gymnastics necessary to escape from what's staring you in the face.
These are examples, by no means exhaustive, of things anyone who takes a very little trouble can observe.
1. The sun rises and sets. When it sets in the eastern US, it is still visible in the western US. It is easy to prove to yourself that the sun really leaves "your" sky while it is still visible elsewhere. It is just as easy to prove to yourself that the sun is not a nearby body that simply moves nearer and farther: for most people, a dime held at arm's length is just big enough to cover the sun no matter what time of day you look at it. For a dramatic proof, telephone someone in Asia (or Australia, etc) and find out the time of day and position of the sun to compare with that in your location.
2. Likewise, the constellations that are visible in the western sky will not be visible in a few hours. You can plainly see they are not hovering low over a flat earth and moving nearer and farther, because they distance between the stars in a constellation would grow closer as they moved away. Further, the stars in the night sky now will not be visible in a six months (due to the earth's revolution around the sun). And the stars visible from the northern hemisphere are not the same as those visible on the same date from the southern. (I lived two years in the southern hemisphere and saw this for myself.)
3. The earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse is always curved. If they earth were flat, then an eclipse when the moon was near the horizon would have to be flat. Flat earthers imagine that the shadow cast on the moon is of some other (round) body. But even if such an object could remain undetected, it would unreasonable for it to coincide perfectly with the earth's motions with respect to the sun and moon, and these have been regular and predictable for centuries.
4. A ship headed away from you with a clear horizon will seem to "sink" as it gradually rounds the curve of the earth. (That curvature amounts to about 8 inches over a mile, but increases at an increasing rate with distance, amounting to about six feet over three miles, and 17 feet in five miles.) This has been a practical rough measure of distance among sailors for centuries.
5. There IS a horizon. On a flat earth, there would be no "edge" visible, since it would be impossible to see the thousands of miles necessary with all the haze of atmosphere, moisture, clouds, etc in the way. Instead, a six-foot tall observer standing with his toes lapped by the ocean's edge sees only about three miles to the horizon on a clear day.
6. Great Circle routes followed by airlines on long over-ocean flights often cover shorter distances than they could if the earth were flat. To take an extreme example, a flight around the world from southern Chile straight westward or eastward along the 54th parallel would be barely half as long as one around the equator--opposite the prediction of a flat earth model that imagines a north pole in the middle of the disk, with longitude lines radiating outward to an enormous southern "hemisphere" that ends in an Antartic ice wall at the edge.
7. One final sally--a matter of thought rather than observaton--and one that involves an old principle known as Occam's Razor. The only way to imagine that the earth's gravity wouldn't pull it into a sphere in the first place is to imagine that it mysteriously lacks gravity. (And an alternative flat earth WITH gravity would have everything on its surface sliding towards its center.) An earth without gravity must generate our weight by means of acceleration by the equivalent amount of 9.8 meters (or 32 feet) per second every second. And of course everything visible to us must have that same motion, or the difference would be obvious. That simple matter of everything in the universe except the earth having gravity violates the principle that the simplest explanation for all the facts is typically the true one. Forget about these tortured intellectual gymnastics necessary to escape from what's staring you in the face.
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