Flat Earth Conspiracy

Most people who believe in the Flat Earth also believe in the Firmament. Flat Earthers also tend to be moon landing deniers. Since the Firmament and moon landing denials are such complicated subjects in themselves, I’ll be doing separate posts about them.

What baffles me is why anyone thinks there’s some big coverup by scientists who don’t want the general populace to know the true shape of the earth. What would be the reason for that? It makes absolutely no sense.

Artificial Satellite Theories

Conspiracists have a variety of theories regarding satellites – ranging from “they don’t exist” to “they do exist, but…”

Balloon Theory

How do satellites not fall down? Some believe that, since satellites don’t have a globe-shaped earth around which to orbit, they are being held aloft by balloons.

Remember the Chinese Spy Balloon? It’s payload weighed more than 2000 lbs. The balloon itself keeping the gondola aloft was 200ft tall and 168ft wide. The balloon was about 12 miles above the surface of the Earth, and could be seen with the naked eye.

Granted, satellites range from a few hundred miles to several thousand miles up. But some can be seen without a telescope when lighting conditions are right. A very great many of them can be seen with good binoculars and backyard telescopes. So take a look and try to find the balloons.

Consider this: There are more than 9,000 satellites. 84% of these are in Low Earth Orbit: i.e., between 310 miles and 650 miles up. Satellites can range from a few pounds to more than 40,000 pounds in weight. The balloons that would be needed to keep these aloft would have to be ENORMOUS. The sky would be so filled with them you wouldn’t be able to see much else above the clouds.

But it gets worse- balloons can’t stay inflated in thin atmosphere. Scientific balloons (usually for weather research), typically reach around 20 or so miles up. Once they get that high up, they burst due to the pressure differential. Researchers take advantage of this by attaching parachutes between the balloon and the payload. The payload gathers data as it’s going upward. Then the balloon bursts when it reaches the high altitude (which is much lower than where the satellites are). The payload then comes down, being slowed by the parachute. The instruments are recovered after they hit the ground.

So the balloon theory is out because it’s impossible.

Circular Path Theory

Rather than balloons, some people believe satellites follow circular paths as they fly over the flat Earth at an altitude higher than gravity reaches. They believe that gravity just shuts off somewhere up beyond 100 miles of altitude. If that were true, how would satellites “fly” in weightless conditions?

Don’t say something stupid like they carry fuel with them. It would be impossible for satellites to carry the amount of fuel that would be needed. Also don’t say something stupid like their solar panels provide energy. Their solar panels provide just enough energy to keep them functioning. They’re not big enough to provide extra energy for flying.

The reality is, a satellite follows it’s trajectory around the Earth because gravity and centrifugal force are keeping the balance. Gravity pulls the satellite downward, but the speed it’s travelling enables centrifugal force to push it away from the earth. A satellite is in constant free fall.

The “No Satellites” Theory

Some people believe there are no satellites. These people say ALL communications are routed through undersea and under ground cables. I have some questions for these people.

1. What are those things you can clearly see flying around above the atmosphere when you look through a telescope?
2. Military units, researchers and adventure seekers have various reasons for visiting remote regions hundreds of miles from civilization; places like jungles, deserts and the tops of mountains. It’s impossible that communication cables could have been buried to reach those locations, and there are no communications towers. If there are no satellites, how do their satellite phones and tablets work?
3. When you sign up for a satellite TV service (like DIRECTV), a receiving dish is mounted on your roof. Wires are routed from your televisions to the receiver. If there are no satellites, where does the TV signal come from? To carry that thought further, you can also get internet through the same wires going to the same receiver. Again, where does the signal come from?
4. Continuing with satellite internet, how do you explain the strings of Starlink satellites? They are very clearly visible with the naked eye.
5. If there are no satellites, what are the dozens of satellite manufacturers manufacturing? People get the engineering schooling and training to build them, hire on at one of the companies, and build some mighty complicated machines called satellites. Then these machines are launched into space. If they aren’t satellites, what are they?
6. A single satellite can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Most companies that use them have many of them. Some companies have invested literally BILLIONS of dollars in satellites. If something fake is being built, why would companies be throwing away prodigious profits just to fool the public that satellites exist?

It is true that most communications are routed through undersea and buried cables. Fiber optic cables are faster, more efficient and cheaper than satellites for data transfer. But satellites are used for communications in regions that don’t have cables, and also used for many other purposes, from military applications to research.

Satellite deniers believe that nobody actually launches satellites. All satellite photos are computer graphics. Things like GPS are done using an old WWII technique called LORAN. Except Loran hasn’t been used for years. It became outdated technology and the system was ended years ago.

How do flat-Earthers explain the ISS?

You can SEE the ISS. Use good binoculars or a telescope and take a look at it when it’s overhead. Most flat earthers claim it is a hoax. They claim it’s drones or helium balloons or some other nonsense.

The technology that would be involved in faking the ISS would far outstrip the technology being used to just build and maintain the real ISS in the first place.

The ISS follows a trajectory across the sky that only works if the earth is a sphere.

Time Zones

Some flat earthers think time zones don’t exist: time is the same for everyone all over the world. That’s a ridiculous notion.

If you get on a plane and travel east you will gain extra hours as you pass through the time zones. Conversely, if you travel west you will lose hours. This would be an impossible paradox on a flat Earth where the sun rises at the same time for everyone and everyone shares the same calendar date. Yet, countless thousands of flyers experience this every single day.

Most flat earthers think the sun travels in a circle above the earth, which is how time zones are created. This is a preposterous idea.

Make a big circle out of cardboard and mark the time zones. Click Here for a model to help you out. Use a flashlight to move the “sun” around. If you use a narrow beam, every spot will be in darkness most of the time. If you use a wide beam, every spot will be lit up most of the time. No matter what kind of flashlight you use, and how you manipulate it’s movement, you will never be able to duplicate the real life day/night cycles and time zones.

The Sun

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Of course, that’s how we perceive it. Actually, the globular earth is rotating. The sun on the equinox over the equator is following a straight line. From our vantage point on the ground, the sun appears to be moving directly across the sky throughout the day, starting in the east, and ending in the west.

After the sun disappears below the horizon in the west, how do flat earthers think it finds itself in the east the next morning without teleporting? If the sun moved in a circular path like flat earthers claim, it would never appear to move in the straight line that we observe.

On a flat earth, the sun would appear small in the morning, grow larger as it gets close enough to pass overhead, then grow smaller as it moves toward the west. Yet it stays the same size all day.

On a flat earth, the sun would also appear to be moving faster when it’s directly above than at the horizon. But of course it doesn’t. It moves at a steady speed throughout the day. This is only possible with a rotating spherical earth.

The Moon

Tides

Tides result from a combination of factors, such as the attraction of the moon and the centrifugal forces due to earths rotation around the barycenter, i.e. the common center of mass. National Geographic explains tides here in a reasonably simplified manner.

But of course, Flat Earthers reject the science. Flat Earthers don’t even all agree on what causes tides. They have a number of theories, all of which are so easily debunked, I don’t know how anyone falls for them. There are too many theories for me to cover them all, so I’ll use one example only.

Some Flat Earthers believe tides are caused by normal waves of the oceans. This is compared to a bathtub full of water. The tiniest movement will create waves on the surface, so that the water level is uneven.

The big problem with this is, tides correlate exactly with the position of the moon, which is why Tide Tables are possible. Ocean waves are caused primarily by wind currents, which can vary greatly day by day and hour by hour. Waves can also be affected by seismic activity, which is random.

Phases

The Flat Earth Society explains the moon’s phases like this:

“The Sun illuminates the Moon through the mechanism of its upwardly curving rays. At various points near the Sun, the Moon will be lit at various angles, causing the range of phases. When the Moon is close to the Sun the New Moon occurs, and when it is far from the Sun the rays are vertical at the Moon’s position, causing the Full Moon. The Lunar Eclipse happens about 2 to 5 times a year on an occasion where the path of the Full Moon wanders too far from the Sun, temporarily exiting the sunlight boundary. A lack of light causes darkness to manifest upon the lunar surface.”

Moon phases and lunar eclipses are indeed dictated by the position of the moon, the sun and the earth in relation to each other, but not in the way Flat Earthers claim.

Exactly one half of the moon is always illuminated by the sun. As the moon orbits the Earth, sometimes it’s closer to the sun than we are, putting it between the Earth and the Sun. And sometimes the Earth is between the moon and the sun. The amount of light we see reflecting from the moon depends on how it’s positioned relative to the Earth and the Sun.

A lunar eclipse results when the Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon at an angle that allows the Earth to cast its shadow on the moon. That shadow is always, always, always a circle, no matter where you are on the planet, no matter the timing of the eclipse. Always.

The Stars

In 1473, The Portuguese explorer Lopo Gonçalves traveled along the Atlantic coast of Africa and became the first European known to cross the equator. Soon, more navigators were crossing the line and establishing trade with the natives. These early explorers knew the Earth is round, and they understood what the Equator is, but they did not anticipate that the stars would be different! This caused some confusion until they got it all worked out.

As you travel south, approaching the equator, The North Star, Polaris, sinks lower and lower toward the horizon. Once you’ve crossed that boundary, you can’t see it at all — it’s blocked by the curve of Earth in that direction. What you see instead when you reach the southern hemisphere is the Southern Cross, a cluster of stars in the shape of a cross. In the northern hemisphere, the night sky rotates counterclockwise around the North Star. In the southern hemisphere, everything revolves around the Southern Cross in a clockwise direction.

This makes no sense if the earth is a disk with a dome of stars on top. The North Star would be visible from every position on the planet.

I’ll be doing a different post about the Firmament, but I need to mention it here.

Some Flat Earthers think that the stars are points of light on the dome. Others think the stars are outside the dome, but visible from inside. They have different ways of explaining why different constellations are visible on either side of the Equator.

The common theory claims that a separate cluster of stars is circling the edge of the Earth at a low altitude so that they are only visible south of the Equator. I haven’t seen anything explaining how a cluster of stars can rotate in the opposite direction from the rest of the stars. If the stars are attached to the dome, does that mean the dome is separated into two parts so the bottom half can move independently from the top half?

And to reiterate my earlier statement, this cannot explain why the North Star isn’t visible from everywhere. Although in researching for this post, I found Flat Earthers claiming that the reason you can’t see the North Star from the outer edge of the Earth is because you’re facing south. Ummmm… is there a reason a person can’t turn themself around and look toward the north? Of all the Flat Earth theories I’ve found, that has got to be the absolute stupidest one.

Flat-earthers try to explain their unexplainable assertions by using catchwords like “refraction” and “perspective”, but they’ve never been able to develop a theory that isn’t easily debunked.

One more item to cover concerning the stars. Flat Earthers claim that if the solar system is flying through the galaxy like astronomers describe, then the Earth would be moving away from the constellations we observe, and we would be seeing different stars every night. What a stupid thing to say.

The entire galaxy is spinning, and everything within it is traveling and spinning together. Picture cars on a freeway all moving at the same speed in the same direction. They don’t lose sight of each other.

Maybe you’ve seen the famous Solar System vortex video. It’s misleading because it’s incomplete.

A great video here demonstrates how the celestial bodies in the galaxy move in sync.

The Seasons

The Greek mathematician Oenopides was the first to discover and measure the Earth’s tilt. He came up with about 24 degrees around 480BCe using geometry and measurements of sun angles at several times of year.

Then in the early 1600s, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler more precisely measured the tilt at 23.5 degrees.

Earth’s tilted axis is what causes the seasons. When the North Pole tilts toward the Sun, it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Then as the South Pole tilts toward the Sun, it’s winter in the Northern Hemisphere. The image below demonstrates how this works.

Naturally, Flat Earthers reject this explanation. And like every other aspect of Earth science, they don’t even all agree on how the seasons occur. But a common claim is, the Sun moves in a spiracular fashion, as the following image shows. When it nears the North Pole, the northern hemisphere experiences summer. And when it moves further from the North Pole, the northern hemisphere experiences winter.

What Flat Earthers either don’t understand or choose to ignore is, their explanations of how the sun’s movement creates the seasons negates time zones and moon phases. That’s not surprising. They ignore all of their own contradictions. The reality is, no flat earth model can explain why the seasons are opposite in the northern and southern hemispheres.

Antarctica

In January 1773, Captain James Cook became the first European known to cross the Antarctic Circle.

Over the next 250 years or so, an increasing number of adventurers sought to explore the Antarctic. It’s a harsh and unforgiving land, even with today’s technology, but in those early days, with primitive equipment, a great many of these explorers perished in the attempt. But many did make it back out, even after traveling hundreds of miles inland.

Finally, in December 1911, Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach the South Pole. He and his team had travelled 829 miles (1,334km), over the frozen wasteland to get there.

All of these early explorers kept detailed written journals of their treks, describing everything they saw and experienced.

Flat Earthers don’t believe any of this. Do they believe those early explorers just made up everything they recorded in their journals?

Flat Earthers believe a wall of ice encircles the outer edge of the earth, and that military troops are posted around the perimeter of the ice wall to prevent people from going there and discovering that the earth is flat. Are Flat Earthers unable to understand how stupid that sounds? Oh, wait…

Flat Earthers claim that the Antarctic Treaty was instituted to establish this military presence. This is not at all what the Antarctic Treaty is all about. The Antarctic Treaty is a promise from the countries of the world to never conduct military operations of any kind there, and for no country to ever claim any part of that continent. Antarctica is to remain neutral territory for peaceful purposes. A few areas in Antarctica are off-limits to civilians, but these restrictions are for protecting certain scientific operations and fragile environmental features.

Flat Earthers will show photos of the supposed ice wall, but these are photos of ice shelves. An ice shelf is a thick platform of glacial ice floating on the ocean along coastlines. They not only occur around Antarctica, but also around the Artic and sub-arctic regions. The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf in Antarctica. It is fronted by a nearly vertical cliff between 15 and 50 meters above the surface of the water, and it’s more than 370 miles (600km) long. It makes a great photographic subject to “prove” the ice wall.

Flat Earthers will ask, if Antarctica is a continent, then why do commercial airliners take the long way around instead of flying across the southern continent? Are you kidding?

The southern hemisphere is rather sparsely populated at the southernmost ends of their respective continents, and South Pole overflights are unnecessary. Furthermore, ETOPS regulations restrict commercial airlines from flying over Antarctica due to scarce infrastructure and erratic weather. Even in the Antarctic summer, blizzards can pop up with little or no warning. If a commercial plane experienced an emergency situation (and weather emergencies would be frequent), there would be no safe place to divert to.

Besides scientists and researchers, over 100,000 tourists visit Antarctica every year. Most of these don’t go very far inland. While there are no hotels as such, there are several kinds of accommodations available, such as Luxury or Expedition cruise ships, luxury lodges, and for the more brave, outdoor campsites.

Plenty of activities await the adventurous tourist: kayaking close to icebergs and whales, visiting the submerged caldera at Deception Island, flying over Cape Horn and the Drake Passage, crossing the Antarctic Circle, joining a ski tour in interior Antarctica, and many more.

Those who like rugged death-defying treks may opt to walk to the South Pole. It takes several weeks. It’s dangerous, and now and again someone dies, especially when they choose to go solo.

More cautious travelers will fly to the South Pole in a charter plane. That’s how people get around in the interior of Antarctica when they’re not slogging along on foot. They fly.

Charter planes don’t have the same restrictions as commercial airlines. They are small, maneuverable and can quickly land in a tight spot if they need to. They also don’t have to stick to a strict schedule, which is understood by the passengers. If the weather is looking bad, they can delay their flight for a day or three or a week until it clears.

What do Flat Earthers think about all this? Do they believe that hundreds of thousands of ordinary people are dropping tens of thousands of dollars of their own money to engage in some elaborate hoax?

Some Flat Earthers have the financial means to book a trip to Antarctica. Why don’t they? It’s a funny thing, but in the course of researching for this article, I found numerous examples of prominent Flat Earthers who announced they would go to Antarctica to prove it’s not a continent. But strangely, they always find an excuse to back out. Are they that afraid of being proven wrong?

Bent out of Shape

Flattening the globe severely distorts the shapes of oceans and continents and the distances between them. Two cities that are 1000 miles apart in reality, might be 500 miles or 2000 miles apart on the flat earth. The longer the distance in reality, the more aberrant it gets on the flat earth map.

The continents and countries are so warped on a flat earth map, the actual airline and ship routes can’t match up properly. This also applies to past routes. For example, in WW2, the Japanese would have had to sail around a few continents, including the U.S. mainland, to reach Pearl Harbor.

The existence of Australia thoroughly debunks the flat earth every which way. No rendition of a flat earth map can get the shape correct, or the distance between Australia and other continents accurate. Because of this, some Flat Earthers have decided that Australia simply doesn’t exist, which is a patently ridiculous assertion.

Orrery or Not

An Orrery is one of those cool models demonstrating the motions of the Earth, Moon, and Sun. Some of them will have some or all of the other planets of the Solar System. A complex sophisticated model can accurately depict day and night, the seasons, lunar phases, and eclipses as we experience them in real life.

Nobody has ever been able to build a flat earth orrery that works like they claim that a flat earth is supposed to. Some have made attempts at them, but when they can get one element sort of working, they can’t add another without breaking the first one. Time zones, sunrise and sunset, moon phases, the seasons, and all the rest all cancel each other out. This alone should be enough to prove that a flat earth just doesn’t work.

Odds & Ends

Why is the earth the only flat planet, when all the other planets and their moons are round?

How does a flat earth explain stellar parallax? As the Earth orbits the Sun, a nearby star will appear to move against the more distant background stars. Astronomers can measure a star’s position once, and then again 6 months later and calculate the apparent change in position. This is only possible if the earth is revolving around the sun.

How do cyclones spin in different directions in each hemisphere? In the southern hemisphere these tropical storms are called cyclones and rotate in a clockwise direction, while in the northern hemisphere cyclones are called hurricanes or typhoons and rotate in an anti-clockwise direction. This would be impossible on a flat earth.

And another point: The higher you go, whether mountain climbing, flying or whatever else, the further you can see. If the Earth was flat, this would not be the case. Since ancient times lighthouses have been placed as high as possible so that they are seen from a further distance. If the earth were flat, that wouldn’t be necessary.

The fact that the prominent flat earth proponents have not chartered a private flight and traveled around the planet or tried to visit Antarctica is ample proof that the flat earth movement is a scam. The big hoax is not that scientists are trying convince the public that the Earth is a globe. Rather, the real hoax is coming from the charlatans who convince the gullible that the Earth is flat.

And lastly, for the Bible literalists who believe that nothing exists beyond the Firmament:

Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. This clearly indicates that there are heavens beyond the sky.