Investigating 10 Things that Flat Earthers say! (Part-1)

Number one. One extremely problematic side effect of taking the globe and flattening it out into a plane is that gravity makes no sense, and there is no reason for things to fall to the ground. All objects accelerate towards the ground at 9.8 meters per second squared. That’s an indisputable fact, and it is also an indisputable fact that any acceleration requires a force to produce it. This is how cars drive, planes fly, people walk, cats jump, it’s how literally all motion works. But quite comically, most flat earthers don’t even do this. Most of you address this problem by simply listing two words. Density, and buoyancy. But these are not forces. Forces are vectors. They have a magnitude, which means a numerical amount, and a direction, which means they have to point somewhere.

Density is simply mass per unit volume, or how much matter sits in a particular space. It doesn’t point anywhere. And buoyancy is simply a measurement of an object’s tendency to float. This is trivial to prove. You say that objects fall down because they are denser than the air below them. Why down? Why not up? Or sideways? When you let go of a ball, there is air all around it. How does it know to fall down? Also, objects fall down when they are in a vacuum, which means there is no air below them. What’s happening there? Face the facts.

Things accelerate down towards the ground because of a downward force. That force is gravity, which pulls everything towards the center of the earth, which is its center of mass. Denser things displace less dense things because gravity exists. More mass means a greater gravitational attraction. This is clearly why things that are less dense than water float on water, again because gravity exists. Rocks are pulled down harder than water, which is pulled down harder than air. Some of your more popular retorts to this include wondering how oceans stay on the earth while birds and insects can fly.

It’s because birds and insects have wings. They flap them and generate an upward force. If that force exceeds the gravitational force, they go up. Oceans can’t do this, because oceans don’t have wings. Individual water molecules can evaporate and go up into the sky because they are so, so, so tiny. But when they get up to where it is colder and accumulate into clouds, they eventually condense back into liquid water, and guess what happens? They fall back down as rain. As for planes and other macroscopic objects, again, they go up only when a force is applied. When you throw a ball up into the sky, the force imparted on the ball by your arm is greater than the gravitational force, but as soon as it leaves your hand, no more force is being applied, and only the gravitational force is acting upon the ball, so that velocity gets smaller and smaller, hits zero, at which point it starts to fall, and it falls faster and faster until it hits the ground. Gravity. Gravity exists. Saying it is “just a theory” does nothing but display that you have no idea what a theory is.

Number two. Flat earthers all say “I shouldn’t see this thing, but I do, so the earth is flat.” Then to justify this claim, you all say the same thing, typically with no context whatsoever. 8 inches per mile squared. None of you have any idea what this means. You can’t derive it. You can’t calculate anything with it. You can’t make a prediction with it. You can’t tell me anything about this value at all. 8 inches per mile squared is not a valid way to measure earth’s curvature. If you understood math, you would immediately see that this “squared” on miles is totally out of place.

That’s because this is a parabolic approximation. This is for doing calculations with a parabola. It’s possible that you remember this shape from middle school algebra, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t. So where does it come from, and why do people use it? It comes from the flat earth bible, Zetetic Astronomy, and flat earth priests use it because they know it’s not accurate. It gives them incorrect values that they can use to claim that they shouldn’t be able to see something, when in fact they totally should.

Number three. All flat earthers say the same two things about water. The first is “water doesn’t curve”, and the second is “water finds its own level”. As for the first phrase, stating that water doesn’t curve is at least a coherent thought, however, it is dead wrong. Put a drop of water on a piece of wax paper, or a leaf. What does it look like? A freaking sphere! Isn’t that something. Water curves all the time. Water is not magic. It is subject to influence by external forces just like all other matter. With a spherical water droplet, that’s the electromagnetic force. Water molecules make hydrogen bonds with one another, which in this context we refer to as cohesive forces. That’s why water has a very high surface tension. And that’s why a water droplet remains spherical, so that it can maximize the number of hydrogen bonds that are formed, and keep the system at the lowest energy possible. So clearly and indisputably, water curves.

In this example it is due to the electromagnetic force. It is therefore quite easy to understand that it can curve under the influence of any force. Including gravity. The oceans conform to the curvature of the earth just like the land does, and for the same reason. This is why saying that “water finds its own level” is absolutely meaningless. You think that level means flat, as though on the globe model, water should just magically project into space at some arbitrary angle. In fact, level just means as close to the center of the earth as possible. What’s most hilarious is that even in the tool called the level, which only works because gravity exists, there is a curved bubble right in there. If the bubble is curved, what is the liquid, which is mostly water, doing around that bubble? It curves!

Number four. You are all quite perplexed about how earth’s atmosphere can exist next to the vacuum of space. Let’s take a moment and clear this up. A vacuum is any region where there is no stuff. Here there is stuff. Like air. In space, there is no stuff, or at least very close to no stuff. Space is essentially empty. That’s a vacuum. It is not a thing that sucks. Vacuums don’t suck. Earth’s atmosphere displays a gradient because gravity exists. There’s a lot of atmospheres right near the ground, and then as you rise, because fewer and fewer molecules will have enough kinetic energy to go so high, it gets thinner and thinner and thinner until there’s none left. Then you’re in space. It’s that simple.

To be continued ...