Is The Earth Flat?

Since the notion of a flat Earth seems to have arisen in popularity, I thought I’d go through one of the most comprehensive 8-hour videos on the topic to see what they are basing this idea on. It is titled, What On Earth Happened?

This is not a spiritual or self-help topic but since I’ve been accused of being brainwashed by my round Earth belief, I thought I’d defend my reasons for my position. I know how easy it is to brainwash a person so I always seek to be an open-minded skeptic on all beliefs. I have more than 150 graduate credit hours in psychology and more than 100 college credit hours in all the sciences including chemistry, physics, biology, and Earth science, and I have been trained to be objective and am always looking at data points before coming to a conclusion.

In the following discussion I started from a completely neutral viewpoint thinking maybe people adhering to a flat Earth, have something of value to say. What follows are my comments as I went through the video. The 8-hour video is composed of a dozen separate segments, but my times noted in my comments are based on a continuous 8 hour video.

The author of the video presents a mixture of historical information that we can think is plausible but then conflates it with the flat Earth notion. He throws out a lot of interesting scientific information that makes him sound like he knows science, but his conclusions do not follow objective science. Practically everything he says is faulty logic and faulty interpretations. However, since some of what he says is possibly true, it is natural and easy to assume the rest of what he says might also be true. This is how people are brainwashed into cults.

It is quite difficult to extricate yourself from beliefs you have accepted as true. Drawings, artwork, and maps from centuries ago are not proof of anything other than people’s beliefs and ideas from that time. Quoting mythology and religious texts likewise prove nothing, yet he does that dozens of times. Almost every scientific topic he mentions in his video is far from truth and in most cases absurd. Most of his assertions are unfounded conclusions in his own mind that are quite ridiculous and barely worth even commenting on.

A basic question to ask is does it make sense that the planet is flat? A flat earth defies observable nature. A sphere is the most efficient geometric shape there is and that is why rain drops form spheres. Anyone with binoculars or a small telescope can see Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars, and Uranus and they all appear spherical. How and why would the Earth be an exception?

1. He states that no person has a direct experience that the Earth isn’t flat. See Carl Sagan explaining how the ancient Greeks proved it is round (video on YouTube). Carl Sagan goes on to explain that the sun is so far away that the rays are parallel when they reach the earth. Sticks at different angles to the suns rays will cast shadows at different lengths. Eratosthenes knew the distance between Alexandria and Syene was 800 kilometers, he knew this because he hired a man to walk the entire distance so that he could perform the calculation. 800 kilometers times 50. Is 40,000 kilometers. So that must be the circumference of the earth. So that must be how far it is to go around the earth. Which turned out to be the right answer. See the two-minute video for the full explanation and how the experiment proved the Earth is spherical. Here’s the link: Carl Sagan Round Earth.

2 .NASA doctors the pictures. Because some are photo-shopped doesn’t mean they all are. One explanation is they did send people to the moon, but according to some               insiders they also filmed back-up video and stills on a Hollywood set in case they needed the pictures and videos. Some of those pictures were released and show                       obviously they were filmed on a stage. It’s a mistake in logic to reject all the pictures because some are faked.

3. At 41 minutes he states, “water does not bend,” in reference to pictures of a curved Earth. However, water does bend. That is what a raindrop does. Cohesion and gravity enable water to bend, so his argument is fallacious.

4. At 42 minutes he states that when building roads, railroad tracks, and bridges engineers never take into count the Earth’s curvature. This is not true. Many roads in Kansas have what are called correction curves. Many of the roads in Kansas run in straight lines, and every 24 or so many miles they have a curve to adjust for the Earth’s curvature.

5. Why don’t we feel the spin of the Earth since it is said to spin at 1000 mph as well as traveling at high speeds through the galaxy, etc. The answer is quite simple: Everything is moving together and therefore relative to everything we have contact with it is moving with us. For instance, when you are riding in a car everyone in the car is moving at the same speed, so you can toss things to another person and it goes right to them rather than curving; however, if you threw something to someone on the side of the road you would see the object appear to curve. Movement is only noticed if there is a relative difference between people or measurements.

He states at 45:45 that if the Earth were spinning a helicopter would only need to hover and wait for the Earth to move beneath it. This is one of the more unfounded things he says because since everything is moving on the Earth including in the atmosphere the Earth would not appear to move under the helicopter.

At 45:50 he states that if the Earth were curved pilots would have to continually adjust their altitude to follow the curvature of the Earth. This is another unfounded argument for the same reason as the helicopter example.

In addition, commercial pilots are well aware of what is called the “great circle route,” which refers to planes wanting to fly from LA to London fly north over the arctic rather than in a straight line if the Earth were flat. Due to the curvature of the Earth a straight line would make the trip longer. The “Great Circle Route” is the shortest course between two points on the surface of a sphere. The great circle route is actually the most direct flight path but it appears to be a circle when drawn on a flat map.

At 49:40 he brings up a similar argument that if the Earth were spinning at 1000 mph everything would fly off the Earth and there would be tremendous winds. That is not true as everything is revolving at the same speed so relative to everything on Earth there is no movement and gravity holds everything to the surface of the Earth.

6. 51:20. He claims there is no gravity, but there is differing density. He states if gravity were true birds couldn’t fly and humans couldn’t lift their legs. Of course, everything has a density but what causes things to settle out is due to gravity and the stratification is based on their density. How would something be drawn to the bottom of the glass unless a force of gravity is pulling it.

Experiments have been done in which two dense objects are attracted to each other indicating that matter itself has a gravity pull toward other objects. All matter has density and a gravitational attraction for other items; however, since many items are extremely small compared to the Earth and other planets we don’t notice the attractive force of small objects, but it can be measured scientifically.

He uses the analogy of a submarine rising and sinking in the ocean based on air in their ballasts. This is a completely different thing from gravity, but is based on the increase or decrease in the overall density of the submarine relative to the density of the water. The submarine’s density will vary depending on how much air the submarine holds in its ballasts.

at 54 min he says if gravity were real then all objects would have an attraction to all other objects, but this is not observed. Of course not, because they are far too small to have a significant attractive force.

At 55 minutes he goes off on denying the claim that the moon’s gravity exerts a pull on the Earth’s oceans causing tides. He says since the Earth is so much larger than the moon it would pull the moon in rather than the moon pulling the water. The moon moves in orbit around the Earth precisely because the Earth exerts a continuous pull on the moon. If both Earth and moon were stationary then gravity would cause them to crash into one another. Of course, he just stated he doesn’t believe in gravity. What causes celestial objects to revolve around one another is the pull of gravity. In a sense, they are continually falling toward each other, but centrifugal force keeps them from crashing into each other.

7. 1:00 His arguments about the rising and setting sun are a real stretch in logic. He shows video of the sun on the horizon but does not take into account the atmospheric distortion that affects perception. He doesn’t seem to recognize atmospheric distortion which makes the sun appear to change size as it moves through the sky.

8. 1:05 He says crepuscular rays show angles rather than straight lines proving the sun is not very far from earth. The apparent perception of the suns rays being on angles is due to the position and perspective of the person viewing it. The clouds are relatively close to an observer on the Earth compared to the vast distance of the sun from the Earth.

9. 1:08 He states that if the moon were reflecting the sun there would be a single spot on the moon not the entire moon being illuminated. This can be easily demonstrated with small balls and a light source. The entire surface of the ball is illuminated and that is what we see when we look at the moon, not a small spot. For an Earthly example, when you look at the ocean from a plane you can sometimes see the sun reflected from a spot, but the entire visible ocean is also illuminated. This is what happens if s ball has a shiny surface. If it doesn’t have a shiny surface, which the moon doesn’t, then you don’t see a spot of light. If there were an ocean on the moon you’d see a spot of light in addition to the entire moon being illuminated just like in the example of the sun reflecting off the ocean.

10. 1:09 He says “stars” are sometimes seen in front of the moon. There can be space debris, asteroids, meteors, satellites, and even UFOs that pass in front of the moon. These have all been observed by amateur astronomers using 10-16 inch telescopes. What is seen between Earth and the Moon are certainly not stars.

The eclipse example using a flashlight is ridiculous. The moon being much smaller is easily able to block out the sun which is much farther away.

11 He states only a flat earth is the only explanation that the North star is always in the same position. However, this is not true. The north star does change, but it is over very long spans of 26000 years. This is called precession. Different stars will serve as the north star over time. The positions move about one degree every 73 years so Polaris will be the north star in our lifetime. He says the stars above are moving and the flat earth is stationary.

12. 1:50 He makes a big deal about the star of David which is also a star of the Rothchilds and Molech. He equates it with 666. The star is actually a two dimensional representation of the merkabah which is two three-sided pyramids one pointed up and the other pointed down. Like many symbols this one has been hijacked from ancient understandings of the light body surrounding the physical body. This is similar to what Hitler did with the swastika which is a “holy” Tibetan symbol.

13. 3:08 He asserts the Roswell crash was a false flag. He states we never went to the moon and can’t because the Moon isn’t a sphere. He basis this on a statement by the science guy who said the Earth is a closed system and you cannot leave Earth (3:16). I must assume this statement is taken out of context. It has long been recognized that the Earth is a biosphere and when you rise above the atmosphere it is inhospitable for human life; therefore we “cannot leave Earth” [without taking life support from the Earth with us].

That said, the science guy isn’t the best or only authority on science. Before Colonel Philip Corso died he published a book (The Day After Roswell) detailing how he was given the task of reverse engineering technology from the Roswell crash. That is the explanation of why we have seen such a rapid increase in technology since that crash. I guess you could reject his testimony as a conspiracy theory, but he seems more credible than uncredentialed flat-Earthers.

14. 3:18 The amateur rocket reached 73 miles and stopped. He says it hit a dome, but the video looks more like the rocket just stopped. It does not appear to me to have hit anything. It looks to me like it ran out of fuel.

If nothing can leave Earth what about the skylink satellites which can be seen circling? What about the space station? What about the Hubble telescope and all the pictures? Now they just launched a much larger telescope, the James Webb, which is much farther from Earth…approximately a million miles. You can’t just say all of these facts are untrue without offering objective proof.

15. 3:33 The planets are self-luminous. What? You can plainly see them in a telescope and they are not self-luminous. They do not look like a light source like the sun. They are obviously reflecting the sun’s light.

He says the stars are fake and that’s why they all don’t twinkle the same. The twinkle isdue to atmospheric irregularities. If they all twinkled at the same rate that would indicate they are fake.

16. 3:38 He follows a rocket launch and says the plume is due to scraping the dome. This is a very weird conclusion. The plume changes as the rocket rises through layers of atmosphere that have different characteristics. Why would companies and countries be launching rockets every week if they just bounce off a dome?

17. 3:44 He says comets don’t travel but are stationary in the sky. The comets appear somewhat fixed in the sky due to their enormous distance from Earth usually many millions of miles. They are moving, it is just that they are so far away they seem to move very little day to day. His interpretation of the illuminated tail of the comet is there is light coming through a crack in the dome. That is a ridiculous and very big stretch of the imagination without even the smallest data to support it.

18. His explanation of why rainbows are curved (3:40) is faulty. Rainbows appear curved due to the angles from which they are viewed. We live in a 3 dimensional world not two dimensions. I shouldn’t need to elaborate on this as it is patently obvious.

19. 3:54 reference to the firmament is simply a reference to the upper atmosphere not a dome. It has characteristics due to it being many miles wide and having a variety of gases and suspended matter that refract light in a variety of ways. He is projecting his definition on the word as if it is a fact

20. His assertion that the Majestic 12 document is fake (Bogus his word), is refuted by several credible sources who have found supporting documentation including the names of the members. He throws out his opinions as if they are facts. Linda M. Howe researched this extensively and talked to a number of insiders who confirmed the document is legitimate. Stan Friedman also came to the same conclusion and he was a respected physicist and UFO researcher. I guess it comes down to who you believe on this issue. What this has to do with his flat Earth notion is beyond me.

21. 5:06 Opposing electric fields created by coils cause an aluminum plate to levitate. He says, “Think about it. If gravity actually existed then this would not be possible.” No, the levitating plate is in spite of gravity because there is a strong field created in the plate. One has nothing to do with the other.

22. 5:18 He states you can see the dome (firmament) at the top of a sprite caused by lightening. The atmosphere is composed of layers determined by temperature and density of the gases and the so called firmament in the picture is simply the illumination caused by charged ions stratifying in a layer. Once again, he gives no scientific basis for this assertion. He further states that the sprites are what cause thunderstorms, when the opposite is true.

23. 5:27 He states petrified wood could not be created when wood is buried under mud since he says it would decay. This is usually true, but there are some rare and special circumstances when plant material is buried by sediment and protected from decay due to being cut off from oxygen and organisms. Then, groundwater rich in dissolved solids flows through the sediment, replacing the original plant material with silica, calcite, pyrite, or another inorganic material such as opal which sometimes gives petrified wood a crystalline structure. The result is a fossil of the original woody material that often exhibits preserved details of the bark, wood, and cellular structures. This is relatively rare and depends on a number of specialized circumstances which is why you don’t find petrified wood everywhere.

24. 5:43 He then goes on to assert that Devil’s Tower in North East Wyoming is a giant petrified tree that was cut down. He also says that most mesas are giant trees that were cut down. Because something looks like something familiar doesn’t mean that it is what you think. For instance, clouds often take the form of animals, but they are just cloud formations. In any case, I don’t know what this has to do with the Earth being flat. this is called Pareidolia which is a generalized term for seeing patterns in random data. Some common examples are seeing a likeness of Jesus in the clouds or an image of a man on the surface of the moon.

25. 5:46 He says rocks are just fragments from very old silicon-based trees. That is a very large unfounded speculation with no evidence to support the assertion. He says volcanoes around the ring of fire on the Pacific rim are waste piles from mining operations on what is now the Pacific ocean floor which was originally all silicon and not water. I can’t even begin to speculate on how he comes up with this as it is complete speculation with no foundation.

“They” mined the silicon and harvested the giant silicon trees. “Carbon based life was never intended to be.” What fact is that based on? He says a creator would have never favored carbon over silicon for the basis of life. This is a fabricated religious belief that a supernatural being created everything that way, but there is no evidence to support this claim. This is complete fiction woven with speculation from his imagination.

26. 5:52 Some mountains appear to have been gauged by large machinery such as the wave rock in Australia. He says what we see with many mountain formations are the scars of rotary excavations creating quarries. He says, ravines, cliffs, and valleys including the Grand Canyon are actually what remain from ancient excavations. I’m not following what his point is about this, but it is a very far stretch of imagination to explain geological features that have other more rational explanations.

Showing a lot of pictures of geological formations does not prove causation. What does this have to do with a flat Earth? He states it demonstrates how we’ve been lied to about everything, but that doesn’t prove his flat Earth assertions, and nor do a lot of pictures prove anything.

I don’t know what his point is about showing pictures of archaeological restorations such as Stonehenge. He implies the restorations are covering up some truth about the structures, but I do not see any manipulation of facts by the reconstructions. With regard to Stonehenge they simple put the stone back where they originally were.

27. 6:00 He covers a variety of historical incidents which raise questions such as how were structures built with stones weighing hundreds of tons. This like much of the ancient astronaut shows bring up many unanswered questions about Earth’s past, but they do not support his premise the Earth is flat.

28. 6:28 He says craters on Earth are caused by eruptions from within the Earth not meteorites. This could be true of some craters, but he has to assert that all of them were formed this way in order to support his flat Earth belief. Then he goes from that assertion to Michael Cremo’s research on Forbidden Archeology that shows how true history has been covered up. By conflating the two topics it gives the impression that the first assertion must be true since much of history has been suppressed. Most craters were formed by meteorite hits as fragments have been found in most craters. The one in Arizona is an exception and it is speculated that the meteor vaporized on impact, which seems more plausible than his idea that it is actually a crater formed by gas and matter exploding from within the Earth. There is no evidence of that.

29. 7:04 Old Maps. The last part of the video starts with a summary of Gerardus Mercator in 1569 who created world maps some of which are still used today. No explanation of where he got his information is presented in the video, but his drawings are assumed to be true, but I can’t think of a single sane reason to assume that.

All the quotes from the Bible, other ancient texts including mythology and current movies prove nothing. Who knows what these people were writing about thousands of years ago. It’s all speculation. So much of it is metaphor and symbolism.

28  He says at 7:52 the auroras at the Northern latitudes are due to light escaping from the inner Earth. Once again there is no basis for this conclusion when a much more reasonable explanation is science based.

29.  How does he explain were a flat earth came from with a dome over it? There is nothing in nature that can explain it, in fact, it defies nature and science. Therefore, he’s left with some supernatural superstition that some being or God created it that way for some purpose. He refers to this as the divine creator and intelligent design and creation. He refers to Fibonacci’s sequence as the fingerprint of god. The implication behind his entire presentation is that the only thing in existence is a single planet and everything we perceive, as stars and planets in space are projections on a dome. These fabrications are impossible and therefore require extraordinary stretches of the imagination in an attempt to explain them.

Truth Does Not Fear Investigation (2017 Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nFwPDZF_Z8&t=202s

6:00. Proposal:  You can prove the Earth is flat yourself by going to the ocean and seeing that boats do not follow a curve.
Answer: While this proposition is presented as if the speaker is being scientific, he is anything but. A six-foot tall person standing on a beach can only see about 3 miles over the ocean which is far, far too small a distance to perceive the curve from a sphere as large as the Earth. We tend to think about water forming large flat sheets, but the surface of a large body of water is not actually flat at all — it follows the curvature of the Earth due to gravity and cohesion. Because of the curvature of our planet, the distance between you and the horizon when you look out over the ocean depends on your height above the surface of the water.

4:00. Proposal: He states that NASA uses fish lens cameras to make the Earth appear round.
Answer: Maybe they sometimes do, but the Earth is so large that from any vantage point looking at the horizon with a relatively narrow field of vision the Earth can appear relatively flat. There are many pictures of astronauts working outside the International Space Station with the curvature of the Earth showing. If they were using a fish eye lens the astronauts would be distorted and they are not. It is not rational to assume all pictures and videos are CGI or photo-shopped.

Another YouTube video titled: 16.4-Mile Laser Test Confirms Earth is Flat

Answer: He says the laser is not a mirage because you can see the laser light. Something similar happens at sunset every evening. The sun’s disk is actually below the horizon although it still appears to be above the horizon. This is due to atmospheric distortion which acts somewhat like a lens and bends the light. The same phenomena also often makes the sun and moon appear much larger at sunrise and sunset. If there were no atmosphere and only a vacuum you’d see the sunset earlier than viewing it through the atmosphere.

16:00. Due to the lens effect of the atmosphere occasionally entire cities are seen over large bodies of water that should not be visible with straight line observations. This is the well-known mirage effect that bends the images that are below the horizon and make them appear to be above the horizon. Differing densities of the atmosphere can bend light making things below the horizon appear to be above the horizon. Saying it is not a mirage doesn’t magically make it not be a mirage. Mirages are quite common and most people have seen them on hot pavement in the summer making it appear there is water on the road ahead. In some cases people even see cities in the mirage which are clearly out of the line of site because they cannot be seen when the mirage effect is not activated due to atmospheric effects such as high temperatures on a hot day or atmospheric temperature inverssions.

17:50. All satellites are myths.

Answer: So what are those things I see flying overhead such as Elon Musk’s 5G sattelites which you can clearly see in a line overhead. Also, the International Space Station is easily seen going overhead. You can put an app called Space Launch Now on your smart phone or tablet where you can see all the launches from all nations every week. You can watch them live or recordings. All the nations and commercial industries sending up satellites are not faking these launches.

30:00. The logo for the UN shows a flat earth. How else could you possibly represent all nations on Earth in a log0? If you used the image of a globe you’d only see 1/2 the Earth. When anything is represented on paper it represents something three dimensional in two dimensions so, of course, it is shown flat. The same as any map. This is so blatantly obvious does it really need further explanation?

31:00. Antarctica is not a continent. No one is allowed to go there because they don’t want anyone finding out what is beyond it. There is a 300 foot wall that is called Antarctica, but the ice wall is actually the edge of a flat Earth.
Answer: Many scientists have gone to Antarctica by multi-nation treaty so no one country owns it. However, there are areas off limits which is said to be due to secret programs. Old maps only show what many, but not all, people believed at the time, and that does not make them factual. Does this really need a further explanation?

There seems to be no end to the unsubstantiated and lack of logic the flat earthers have. It is almost like a cult at this point and no logic seems to penetrated their convictions. Here is another video:

Notes on What On Earth Happened?     Part 13 – Down The Rabbit Hole

Most of this video is based on ancient stories and mythologies of which we may never know the true explanations. In any case, there is so much speculation that it makes the whole argument groundless.

He starts by referencing maps from 1500s but by his own admission no one knows what those maps were based on. Given the sources of information at that time the maps would include inaccuracies and speculations. Some of the old maps are based on even older maps and no one knows the sources of them, much less what they were based on. How did people produce maps hundreds and thousands of years ago if not from reports of sailors? Given the sailing ships they used, in accuracies of measurements, and speculations they put into their maps, there is no way they would be accurate.

In any case, they are not reliable for accuracy and are certainly not proof. Some of the old maps show mythological creatures surrounding a flat earth. For instance, there is a map of a flat Earth on the back of a Turtle. Are we to apply any credibility to that? Similarities between ancient maps is likely due to referencing same or similar source material. He implies the conspiracy of a spherical earth goes back at least to Galileo who figured out the earth goes around the sun.

This whole idea of a flat earth is rooted in crazy religious beliefs based on misinterpretations of Biblical scriptures dating back over 4000 years ago.  Much of those scriptures are subject to endless controversy over interpretations, so they are not a reliable scientific source. He says it himself; history is filled with symbolism, mythology, metaphors.  “History is a corruption. The truth has been shattered, fragmented, mythologized, and scattered.” You could certainly apply the same argument to the creation of a Flat Earth story.

Looking at nature itself should be enough to discount this flat Earth idea as a sphere is the most economical geometric figure. For instance, rain drops are not flat or square. Why not? Internal attractive forces of cohesion cause them to be spherical unless distorted a little by falling from the sky.

You can look up in the sky and see the moon is a sphere as well as the planets. You can see them rotating in a telescope. They are not flat. Why would the Earth be flat unless a God created it to be an exception to everything else in the Universe?  The flat Earth proponents believe the Earth is the center of creation. There is no evidence to support this notion, and there is observed evidence to the contrary.  To say that the moon, planets, and stars we see in our sky are hologram projections or stationary objects suspended like artwork is so ridiculous and irrational it isn’t even worth commenting on.

It is wild speculation to say Google maps is purposely hiding what is at the North Pole. Google maps are digitally rendered graphics gathered from multiple sources. They are not photographs but graphic constructions based on a variety of sources.  It is quite possible the google map graphics of north and south poles are distorted but that doesn’t prove the earth is flat.

All cultures have spoken of an ancient sacred land called shamballa by Hindus and hyperborea by the Greeks. The proves nothing as they are myths, but they may be based on some evidence of cultures living in the inner Earth. Greeks said the hyperboreans were giants living in the Earth. These stories may apply more to 4^th dimensional realms than physical, as there are a number of stories in secret space program testimony that the beings who live in the inner Earth are 4^th dimensional which is how they go through solid rock, and appear and disappear. In any case, I don’t know what this has to do with a flat earth. This is not a logical argument. Trying to take mythological stories and apply them to what is familiar to us today is like trying to force a square peg in a round hole. There’s probably some truth buried in the stories, but they are hardly evidence of a flat earth,

The rest of the video is more myths and stories as if that is evidence. Ancient myths became foundations for newer myths and fiction. He even references Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and the Wizard of Oz. One fiction built on another, but hardly proof.