Are there flat planets? Photo evidence of a flat earth - our planet earth is flat, not a ball and this is a fact

American rapper B.o.B is raising money for satellites to find evidence that the Earth is actually flat. On September 25, the federal TV channel REN showed an episode of Igor Prokopenko’s program, which states that filming from space is computer graphics, and the video with astronauts on the ISS is studio filming on chromakey with further processing. Society of Supporters flat earth regularly appears in news headlines. Who are all these people and what to do if they are trying to prove to you that the Earth is not a geoid or even a sphere - in the material of “Futurist”.

“If the Earth were a ball, the waters would flow down from it and people would die of thirst and plants would dry up. The earth, O most worthy and noblest of teachers and mentors, was and is in the shape of a flat disk and is washed on all sides by a majestic river called “Ocean”. The earth rests on six elephants, and they stand on a huge turtle. This is how the world works, O teacher!” - this is what the answer of Volka Kostylkov, the hero of the fairy tale “Old Man Hottabych” looked like at a school exam in geography. The teachers decided that the head of the astronomical circle and a diligent student was sick or worried, but in fact the culprit for Volka’s failure in the exam was a fictional character, a genie named Hassan Abdurrahman ibn Hottab, who was released after 3.5 thousand years of imprisonment in a bottle and decided to help to your savior.

A flat map of the Earth drawn by Orlando Ferguson in 1893. The map contains several references to passages from the Bible, as well as arguments against the sphericity of the Earth

It's hard to believe, but people who would rate such an answer as "excellent" still exist. The Flat Earth Society is increasingly making headlines. According to members of the society and their followers, the Earth has the shape of a flat disk with a diameter of 40 thousand km, in the center of which is the North Pole. The South Pole does not exist at all, and what we call Antarctica is an icy mountain that runs along the edge of the Earth, cutting it off from the rest of the world. Supporters of the theory support their conclusions with ancient maps depicting a flat Earth. They claim that all photographs and videos of the Earth from space are falsified by space agencies as part of a conspiracy theory - and in general, space does not exist. There is also no gravity within the framework of their cosmology: objects are attracted to the Earth, because it supposedly constantly moves upward with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s². And finally, there is no atmospheric pressure.

Who are all these people?

In ancient times, people really believed that the Earth was flat. This concept appears in the cosmogonic myths of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, in Hinduism, Buddhism and Scandinavian mythology. However, already early scientific research gave an idea that the Earth has the shape of a ball. For example, Aristotle in 330 BC. e. provided evidence of the sphericity of the Earth. In particular, he noticed that the starry sky looks different at different latitudes.

In the Middle Ages, views on the structure of the Universe were varied. In the writings of the church fathers, the Earth appears either as a pancake or as a ball, hovering over the sea under a spherical dome, and in illustrations from the book of Cosmas Indicopleustos, the surface of the planet is inscribed in a tabernacle - a camp tent where the church could be located - and the Sun rises from behind big mountains and goes after her. However, Ptolemy's idea dominated: the Universe is a closed system, in the center of which is a stationary spherical Earth, surrounded by nine rotating heaven-spheres, which are located one above the other. This idea is reflected in Dante's Divine Comedy.

However, there have always been people who claimed that the Earth is flat. As a rule, these were religious fundamentalists, illiterate people or charlatans. In 1956, Briton Samuel Shenton created the International Flat Earth Society (IFERS), better known as the Flat Earth Society. The organization was to become the successor to the Universal Zetic Society, which was founded by the English writer Samuel Rowbotham. This man, who lived in the 19th century, lectured for a long time on the flat Earth under the pseudonym Parallax and wrote the book “Zetetic Astronomy - The Earth is not a Globe.” During one of his lectures, in which he could not explain why the masts of ships remained visible on the horizon while their hulls disappeared, he had to flee. And in one of the experiments, he falsified the results, saying that the lighthouse lantern on the horizon was completely visible, although in fact only half of it was visible. Contemporaries called him a charlatan, but noted his wit and skill as a storyteller.

Shenton deeply embraced Rowbotham's ideas. Shortly before the launch of the first satellite in the USSR, he said: “Will sailing around the Isle of Wight prove that it is spherical? It’s the same with these satellites.” Because of the space race, the ideas of society did not gain popularity. But with the arrival of a new president, journalist Charles Johnson, the flat Earth theory gained many supporters. Johnson acted as a professional media man: the Apollo program became an information source for popularizing the ideas of society. Society leaders publicly claimed that the moon landing was a hoax, filmed in Hollywood from a script by Arthur C. Clarke or Stanley Kubrick. The society gained several thousand supporters and existed until Johnson's death in 2001. It was later revived by Samuel Shannon's namesake, Daniel, as a website.

In the United States, flat Earth ideas were championed and propagated by religious fundamentalists such as John Alexander Dowie and Wilbur Glenn Voliva, who led the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, founded by Dowie in 1895. In one of Russian speaking groups Flat Earth supporters on VKontakte write that the community was created “to counter pseudoscience that encroaches on the foundations of the biblical world order” and is called upon to fight everyone who preaches “atheism and obscurantism.” They describe their worldview as “Scientific Orthodoxy.”

At the same time, many church representatives criticize their views. Thus, the Tsargrad TV channel published critical material about Igor Prokopenko’s film “But the Earth is Flat!”

With the advent of popular Internet services such as YouTube and Twitter, it has become much easier to spread such ideas. Previously, members of the public had to drop leaflets, but now it is enough to post a video or post a tweet.

"We're glad to see the gender bias in flat earth representation disappear. Just look at this badass woman!"

Rapper B.o.B. started posting tweets in support of the flat Earth theory last January. In particular, he wrote that if the Earth were spherical, the horizon would be curved, but this is not the case in reality. The young man believes that all the videos and photos from the ISS and footage from cosmic bodies escopes were shot with a wide-angle lens (fish-eye), which distorts the real contours of objects.

Science popularizer Neil deGrasse Tyson responded to B.o.B’s tweets and began explaining to the musician that it’s all about the low viewing angle.

However, the musician was not convinced. The rapper recorded the song Flatline, where he appears as a man who revealed the truth about the flat Earth to the world and therefore became the number one target for the intelligence services. B.o.B included a recording of his opponent’s lecture in which Tyson talks about the sphericity of our planet. And he recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to launch satellites that would photograph the Earth and test its shape. The rapper does not have a concept for satellites, but he managed to collect $2,136 out of 1 million.

Basketball player Shaquille O’Neal also voiced his views on the shape of the Earth, following his colleague, Cleveland Cavaliers player Kyrie Irving. However, Irving later said that he was just joking and did not think that his words would be taken seriously. But O’Neill is confident that he is right.

"I drive from Florida to California all the time, so it's flat for me. Because I don't move up and down at an angle of 360 degrees, I don't feel gravity and all that nonsense. Have you seen all these buildings outside of Atlanta? Are you saying that China is below us "That's not true. The earth is flat," O'Neill said on the Internet radio station podbay.fm.

The solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 led to numerous YouTube videos showing how the details of the eclipse proved that the Earth is flat.

And a scandal recently erupted in Arab scientific and educational circles when a Tunisian graduate student attempted to defend a thesis claiming that the Earth is flat, stationary, at the center of the Universe, and is 13,500 years old.

On September 25, the federal TV channel REN showed an episode of Igor Prokopenko’s program dedicated to the flat Earth theory. It says that filming from space is computer graphics, and the video with astronauts on the ISS is studio filming on chromakey with further processing. As stated in the film, flat earthers even launched a rocket, and it broke through the dome, but no one at NASA believed them.

Andrei Bukharin, presented in the credits as a “science popularizer,” appears as an expert in the program. In fact, this man is engaged in astrology. He has his own website, on which he tries to popularize astrology as an exact science - while modern science denies the effectiveness of its methods, and in the American evaluation system "Science and Engineering Indicators" astrology is completely the standard of pseudoscience.

How to argue with them?

Only the most basic arguments are given here.

“The horizon is straight, but photographs with a curved horizon are shot with fish-eye.” It just seems to us that the horizon is straight. We are on the surface of the planet, and our height is too short and our eyes are too narrow to perceive the curvature of the line. But it can be seen from an airplane window or from the roof of very tall buildings.

"Photos and videos of space are fake!" It turns out that not only the leaders of NASA and Roscosmos are involved in the global conspiracy, but also ordinary cosmonauts who personally broadcast from the ISS, and amateur astronomers who photograph deep space objects and other planets without any remuneration. Strange logic. Flat Earthers often cite the following video as an example of the use of chromakey. Indeed, chromakey of this kind is used as a substrate for 3D animation. However, the grid looks different: the cell sizes in it are different. A video grid is used to video record the trajectory of objects against a clear background.

“There is no gravity, the Earth is simply moving upward with universal acceleration.” Suppose that if a person jumps, the Earth will not pull him back (there is no gravity), but will itself rise up. Then how do birds, insects and airplanes fly? After all, according to this theory, nothing can remain in the air for a long time, since the disk is constantly rising.

"The sun is located only 4,800 kilometers from us and has a size of approximately 51 kilometers." How then to explain the change of seasons and the duration sunny day, as well as climate zones? The Earth's surface would always receive the same amount of heat and light.

“How can planes land on a runway if the Earth is round and constantly spins on its axis? By the time they land, the runway would be far from the intended landing site.” Atmospheric pressure drags along everything that is in its field of action. That is, everything that enters the atmosphere flies along with the surface of the Earth.

"There is no atmospheric pressure." Invite your opponent to climb the mountains and monitor his well-being at high altitude. After this, you can solemnly read him a school physics course.

"The moon is a hologram." At this point, you can apologize to the person and end the conversation. Let him consider you a conspiracy theorist - it’s more fun.

Flat earth. Our Earth is a concentric disk, thus making it a flat earth. And many, having heard this information, immediately begin to claim that this is nonsense and stupidity. But in fact, not only Vedic literature indicates that our planet is not spherical. In addition to the Vedas, this is indicated in all folklore, oral, folk tales of all countries around the world. Before the Christian era, all people knew that the Earth was shaped like a disk.

And for this reason, when some new astrologers appeared, who claimed that the earth was spherical, they were burned at the stake. Those. Controversies arose between the new astrologers and existing sacred concepts. On the one hand, people appeared, degraded in their development, who came into conflict with the existing concept. On the other hand, those who kept the existing concept that the earth is flat, but they also degraded and could not explain it.

A modern person can make the argument that if you constantly walk in one direction, you can go around the earth and return to the place where you started. But modern people don’t know that you can create the illusion of movement, you can distort time. From old fairy tales you can see how various creatures, such as a goblin or a kikimora, confuse the heroes in such a way that they walk in circles in one place, although it seems to them that they are going straight in one direction.

Modern man does not take into account the influence of other living beings, they do not take into account what is allowed to them by other, higher living beings. We are all under the control of the Earth, and do not see that the earth is flat.

The earth is Living being Very high level. And this living being allows us to see as much of the Earth as corresponds to our level of consciousness. For example, fire also allows us to see types of fire and forms of fire that correspond to our level of consciousness, etc. Living beings of these levels act the same way as we do, for example, limiting their children in some way so that they do not harm themselves or others.

At his paid lectures, he spoke about the fact that our Earth is a motionless flat disk, that the Sun is only 400 miles from us, and also “about the triumph of the ideas of the Bible over the wretched theories of wicked scientists.” According to eyewitnesses, Rowbotham was an ardent debater and often attacked not only his opponents, but also his supporters during debates. In addition to lectures, Rowbotham organized paid public experiments similar to the experience described above, “convincingly demonstrating that the curvature of the Earth does not exist.”

For other unique materials and videos about the Flat Earth, see the “Evidence for a Flat Earth” website at this address:http://zemlayploskay.blogspot.ru/
Samuel popularized his experiments and theories by publishing in 1849, under the pseudonym Parallax, a sixteen-page brochure with the “laconic” title - “Zetetic Astronomy. A description of several experiments that prove that the sea has a completely flat surface, and the Earth is not spherical!”

All these three objects - a circle, a telescope and a black stripe - were above the water at the same height. If the Earth were flat, then the black stripe on the target and the circle on the peg would coincide. However, they did not coincide: the circle turned out to be higher than the stripe. Moreover, the discrepancy between these two marks exactly coincided with the calculated size that the scientist derived from the radius of our planet.

However, all this did not make any impression on the “flat-earthers” present during the experiment, led by William Carpenter - John Hamden did not dare to take part in the experiment. In his place, he sent his secretary, who assured everyone present that the circle and the strip were on the same level. And the discrepancy observed through a telescope is a consequence of aberrations (i.e. errors) of its lenses.
The judge of this betting experiment, Editor Walsh, ruled that Mr. Wallace had won and awarded him the award, despite the vociferous protests of William Carpenter and his angry associates. They soon filed a lawsuit against the “fraudster” Wallace.

Three judges, having heard the statement of claim, refused to rule on a scientific issue that “does not fall within the purview of state law.”

In 2011, the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion received an unexpected result during a survey: 32% of Russians argued that the Sun revolves around the Earth, and not vice versa.

However, the court ruled that the bet had no legal force, so Mr. Hamden, who did not recognize Mr. Wallace's measurements as reliable, should get his money back.

But this did not dampen the rage of Carpenter, who launched a “campaign for justice”, which took the form of brutal persecution of Wallace, which lasted as long as 16 years! Thus, the “flat earthers” sent letters with threats and insults to Wallace’s wife and children, and also notified all listeners of his lectures that they would be considered accomplices of the “fraudster.”
Ultimately, Wallace took his name to court, and Carpenter was sentenced to a year in prison. But, having been released, he soon resumed his persecution of Wallace.

As a result, Wallace was almost completely ruined by legal costs and driven to nervous exhaustion. Well, Carpenter emigrated to America, where he continued to ardently preach Rowbotham’s flat Earth ideas.

"Flat Earthers" on the far side of the planet

In America, Rowbotham's ideas were adopted by John Alexander Dowie, who founded the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church at the beginning of the 20th century. The idea of ​​a flat earth was far from the most savage of Dowie's ideas. Even the most primitive savages have medicine. And Dowie forbade his followers to take any medicine or see a doctor. All ailments in his organization were treated only with prayers (“spiritual healing”).

These practices - “spiritual healing”, “healing by faith” - are still very popular among charismatics (neo-Pentecostals). According to the beliefs of these American sects, a person’s wrong thinking is the cause of all his troubles and illnesses. You need to create in your imagination an image of health and wealth, and then preach it to yourself and others: “I am healed, I am healthy! I am successful, I am rich...” And the ephemeral image will become a tangible reality. But you can’t talk about your problems. Because, having spoken out loud about the existing problem, a person will remain with it, creating his own reality with a word. That is, charismatics force a person who falls into their sect to deny out loud any unsightly reality (illness, poverty), and in return loudly preach what they want (health, wealth). With the help of such a simple psychological trick, charismatic spiritual leaders successfully manipulate ordinary sectarians.

Led by Dowie, the “flat earthers” founded the settlement of Zion on the shores of Lake Michigan in 1905. This city was ruled autocratically from 1906 to 1942 by Wilbur Glenn Voliva. And all the years, the “overseer” of Zion, Voliva, forced his subjects to believe that the Earth was a motionless flat disk, the center of which was the North Pole, surrounded by an ice wall, and beyond it was hell. The Sun and Moon are small and not far from us. Wilbur tried unsuccessfully to take this creed outside of Zion.

Society of "flat minds" today

The World Zetetic Society was revived in 1956 by Samuel Shenton under the name the International Flat Earth Society. When they showed him photographs of the Earth from orbit, Shenton smiled ironically and said:
“It’s easy to see how photographs of this sort can fool an ignorant person.”
As for the American landing on the Moon, then, according to Shenton, documentary, which immortalized this fact, was filmed in Hollywood from a script by Stanley Kubrick or Arthur C. Clarke. This version of the main “flat earther” is very popular.
And here’s what the “screenwriter” Clark himself said:
— A ridiculous theory that the Americans were not on the Moon, and that I allegedly made the film about the Apollo 11 landing with Kubrick. All these conversations are conducted by people who are not idiots at all, but pretend to be idiots - the most dangerous type. Oh, by the way, since I wrote the script for this film, why haven’t I been paid for my work yet? For fun, I even sent a letter to NASA with this question.

People have long known that the Earth is round, and they are finding more and more new ways to show that our world is not flat. And yet, even in 2016, there are quite a few people on the planet who firmly believe that the Earth is not round. These are scary people, they tend to believe in conspiracy theories, and it's hard to argue with them. But they do exist. So is the Flat Earth Society. It becomes funny just thinking about their possible arguments. But the history of our species was interesting and quirky, even firmly established truths were refuted. You don't have to resort to complicated formulas to dispel the flat Earth conspiracy theory.

Just look around and check ten times: the Earth is definitely, inevitably, completely and absolutely not 100% flat.

Today people already know that the Moon is not a piece of cheese or a playful deity, and the phenomena of our satellite are well explained by modern science. But the ancient Greeks had no idea what it was, and in their search for an answer, they made some insightful observations that allowed people to determine the shape of our planet.

Aristotle (who made quite a few observations about the spherical nature of the Earth) noted that during lunar eclipses (when the Earth's orbit places the planet exactly between the Sun and the Moon, creating a shadow), the shadow on the lunar surface is circular. This shadow is the Earth, and the shadow cast by it directly indicates the spherical shape of the planet.

Since the Earth rotates (look up the Foucault pendulum experiment if in doubt), the oval shadow that appears during each lunar eclipse indicates not only that the Earth is round, but also not flat.

Ships and horizon

If you've been in port recently, or just strolled along the beach, looking at the horizon, you may have noticed a very interesting phenomenon: approaching ships don't just "emerge" from the horizon (as they would if the world were flat), but rather emerge from the sea. The reason that ships literally “come out of the waves” is that our world is not flat, but round.

Imagine an ant walking along the surface of an orange. If you look at an orange from a close distance, with your nose to the fruit, you will see how the ant's body slowly rises above the horizon due to the curvature of the orange's surface. If you do this experiment with a long road, the effect will be different: the ant will slowly “materialize” into your field of view, depending on how sharp your vision is.

Change of constellations

This observation was first made by Aristotle, who declared the Earth to be round by observing the change of constellations when crossing the equator.

Returning from a trip to Egypt, Aristotle noted that “stars are observed in Egypt and Cyprus that were not seen in the northern regions.” This phenomenon can only be explained by the fact that people look at the stars from a round surface. Aristotle continued and stated that the sphere of the Earth “is of small size, for otherwise the effect of such a slight change of terrain would not have manifested itself so quickly.”

Shadows and sticks

If you stick a stick into the ground, it will provide shade. The shadow moves as time passes (based on this principle, ancient people invented sundials). If the world were flat, two sticks in different places would produce the same shadow.

But this doesn't happen. Because the Earth is round, not flat.

Eratosthenes (276–194 BC) used this principle to calculate the circumference of the Earth with good accuracy.

The higher you go, the farther you can see

Standing on a flat plateau, you look towards the horizon away from you. You strain your eyes, then take out your favorite binoculars and look through them as far as your eyes can see (using binocular lenses).

Then you climb the nearest tree - the higher the better, the main thing is not to drop your binoculars. And again look, straining your eyes, through binoculars to the horizon.

The higher you climb, the further you will see. Usually we tend to associate this with obstacles on Earth, when the forest is not visible for the trees, and freedom is not visible for the concrete jungle. But if you stand on a perfectly clear plateau, with no obstacles between you and the horizon, you will see much more from above than from the ground.

It's all about the curvature of the Earth, of course, and this wouldn't happen if the Earth were flat.

Flying an airplane

If you've ever flown out of the country, especially somewhere far away, you might have noticed two interesting facts about airplanes and the Earth:

Planes can fly in a relatively straight line for a very long time without falling off the edge of the world. They can also fly around the Earth without stopping.

If you look out the window on a transatlantic flight, most of the time you will see the curvature of the earth on the horizon. Best View there was a curvature on the Concorde, but that plane is long gone. From Virgin Galactic's new plane, the horizon should be completely curved.

Look at other planets!

The Earth is different from others, and that is undeniable. After all, we have life, and we have not yet found planets with life. However, all planets have similar characteristics, and it would be logical to assume that if all planets behave in a certain way or exhibit specific properties - especially if the planets are separated by distance or formed under different circumstances - then our planet is similar.

In other words, if there are so many planets that formed in different places and under different conditions, but have similar properties, most likely our planet will be one. From our observations, it became clear that the planets are round (and since we knew how they formed, we know why they are shaped that way). There's no reason to think our planet won't be the same.

In 1610, Galileo Galilei observed the rotation of the moons of Jupiter. He described them as small planets orbiting big planet- and this description (and observation) did not please the church, since it challenged the geocentric model in which everything revolved around the Earth. This observation also showed that the planets (Jupiter, Neptune, and later Venus) are spherical and revolve around the Sun.

A flat planet (ours or any other) would be so incredible to observe that it would overturn almost everything we know about the formation and behavior of planets. This will not only change everything we know about the formation of planets, but also about the formation of stars (since our Sun must behave differently to accommodate the flat Earth theory), the speed and movement of cosmic bodies. In short, we don't just suspect that our Earth is round - we know it.

The existence of time zones

In Beijing it is now 12 am, midnight, no sun. It's 12 noon in New York. The sun is at its zenith, although it is difficult to see under the clouds. It's one thirty in the morning in Adelaide, Australia. The sun will not rise very soon.

This could only be explained by the fact that the Earth is round and revolves around own axis. At a certain point, when the sun is shining on one part of the Earth, it is dark on the other end, and vice versa. This is where time zones come into play.

Another point. If the sun were a "spotlight" (its light shining directly on a specific area) and the world was flat, we would see the sun even if it wasn't shining above us. In much the same way, you can see the light of a spotlight on a theater stage while remaining in the shadows. The only way to create two completely separate time zones, one of which will always be in the dark and the other in the light, is to have a spherical world.

Center of gravity

Eat interesting fact about our mass: it attracts things. The force of attraction (gravity) between two objects depends on their mass and the distance between them. Simply put, gravity will pull toward the center of mass of objects. To find the center of mass, you need to study the object.

Imagine a sphere. Because of the shape of the sphere, no matter where you stand, there will be the same amount of sphere underneath you. (Imagine an ant walking on a glass ball. From the ant's point of view, the only sign of movement will be the movement of the ant's legs. The shape of the surface will not change at all). The center of mass of a sphere is at the center of the sphere, meaning gravity pulls everything on the surface towards the center of the sphere (straight down), regardless of the object's location.

Let's consider a plane. The center of mass of the plane is at the center, so the force of gravity will pull everything on the surface towards the center of the plane. This means that if you are on the edge of the plane, gravity will pull you towards the center, and not down, as we are used to.

And even in Australia, apples fall from top to bottom, not from side to side.

Photos from space

Over the past 60 years of space exploration, we have launched many satellites, probes, and people into space. Some of them returned, some continue to remain in orbit and transmit beautiful images to Earth. And in all the photographs the Earth (attention) is round.

If your child asks how we know the Earth is round, take the trouble to explain.