Flat Earth "Theory"

Someone recently asked me to respond to a video series detailing "proof" that the Earth is in fact not a sphere, but a flat plane. The narrator's argument is that we inhabit a cosmic snow globe roughly equivalent to what's described in Judeo-Christian scripture and other religious texts. It was over an hour and a half of video, so it took me a while get through all 11 parts, but I eventually did, and even managed to take some notes. Unfortunately, parsing the fallacies and poetry into something I can assemble a response to is taking much longer. (Yes, poetry. The Tower of Babel is presented as evidence.) So, stay tuned for that, there will be another entry on this subject at a later date. For now, simply enjoy and consider the following videos of our round world spinning through space.


Here's a time-lapse video taken by the Galileo spacecraft back in 1990, as it passed by on its winding, slingshot path to Jupiter. No stars are visible in the background, but that's a contrast issue - the sun's light reflecting off the foreground object is so bright it washes out the other light sources that could have appeared. It has to do with exposure levels, but that's a separate topic.

Here's another, briefer time-lapse from the ISS, showing the sun disappearing behind the curved horizon. Again, no other stars are visible, but that's still connected to our sun's own brightness.

I should point out that the difference in brightness from our perspective is not because our sun is actually brighter than the other stars, but because they're so far away. By the time their light reaches us, it's spread out over a much broader area.

This one is from the ISS again, but it's much more highly edited. Different perspectives and positions are shown, including the Auroras of cosmic rays being dispersed by the earth's magnetic field. It's very beautiful. There are some shots that show stars in the background, and I'll admit that I don't know whether they were added in post-production or if it has to do with a different quality of camera, but even if they were added artificially, they are true NASA footage.

Astronaut - A journey to space from Guillaume JUIN on Vimeo.

Notice that as continents pass into the distance, they do not recede toward a single point, as they would if you were passing over a flat plane and they simply got too far away for human eyes. Instead, theyvanish over the horizon long before that happens, as is consistent with a round, spinning world.

Here's the Messenger spacecraft's perspective, as it left the earth on its way to Mercury. Its trajectory was interesting as it allows the video to show clearly the boundary between day and night, as the world turns and continents dive into the Earth's own shadow.