From the seashore the horizon is only about 3 miles away. Maybe he’s been there, saw some far-off ship disappearing, and thought it was dropping through a giant trapdoor.
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Eratosthenes calculated the planet’s circumference around 200 BCE with remarkable accuracy. He also calculated the Earth’s axial tilt. That time period is notable for not having things like spacecraft and satellite imagery.
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What about that time Alexander the Great flew into the heavens in a basket pulled by hungry gryphons, until he was high enough to see the whole world beneath him? Or are you going to ignore that account just because it doesn’t appear until half a millennium later and has gryphons in it?
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This very good article tries to explore the psychology of conspiracy theorists by talking to one of them.
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The Egyptians knew the world was round, and had the closest calculations re: her size until the 20th century.
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I’m curious whose calculations you mean if not Eratosthenes, who lived in Egypt but was from the Greek colony of Cyrene.
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Yeah, I recall the first time I learned this, back when Carl Sagan said it on PBS.
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I thought I’d read about their having figured it out sometime during the New Kingdom, but Gogoling is telling me otherwise.
Accuracy is important to me, so I’ll make sure I know what the hell I’m typing about before posting. Sorry.
not /s
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The weird thing about flat earthism is that it is so easy to disprove by various different experiments anyone with a basic knowledge of geometry can devise. Yet whenever a flat earth science team does one of those experiments, rather than accept the results, they begin to confabulate reasons why they are false.
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I will suffer fools and the genuinely stupid, but not the willfully ignorant.
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While I can also thing of better uses, I can also think of many worse uses for my tax dollars than giving this man a one way trip to space.
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One way trips to space are relatively cheap.
Just adapt the payload of one of those stupid ISP satellites to something with a viewing port and limited air and no comms etc.
Money well spent.
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The best is when a flat earther does the experiment properly, discovers the curvature of the earth, and immediately starts working around it.
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There is none here. Logic is anathema to these people - like Kryptonite.
(It would be nice if that were actually a real effect!)
@Kilkrazy - can confirm - it is a very good article deserving of a few minutes of anyone’s time.
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Oh, come on. Gryphons aren’t real; everyone knows that. Any anecdotal story of a flight from that era that wasn’t powered by wyverns is obviously a lie.
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One way rocket? Nope. Full Jules Verne space cannon or bust.
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I’m guessing it is a purity test, “You must be willing to swallow this much bat shit crazy nonsense to live in this country.”
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A reasonable response to this question might be: “Has it been proven that the Earth is flat?”
No. No, it has not.
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