What if the Earth really was flat?
We've known that the Earth is round for thousands of years. By the fifth century BC, most Greek writers had accepted the idea.
Plato taught it to his students and his successor Aristotle confirmed it based on his observations of the Stars. Around 240
BC Greek astronomer Eratosthenes, chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria,
Even managed to calculate the Earth's circumference with startling accuracy, as well as its axial tilt.
But what if the Earth was actually flat instead?
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Of course the idea that the earth is flat has adherents even today. The belief has spread thanks to the advent of social media, and
celebrity advocates such as rapper b.o.b
And Tila Tequila. A common argument from flat earthers is that we should trust our senses. The earth seems flat ,so we should discount
testimonies to the contrary. Moreover,
they argue some ancillaries to around Earth are counterintuitive.
Planes on a level course don't fly off into space. And rivers don't run up. In this video,
we're going to go out on a limb and assume that
scientific consensus about gravity,
tectonic plates, our magnetic field and the Sun is basically correct... and then imagine what the world would be like if we swapped out a
round Earth for a flat one. First off, gravity would perpetually drag all of us - including b.o.b
And Tila Tequila - toward the center of the disk,
Identified by most flat earthers as the Arctic. The oceans, if such there were, would coalesce at the center of the planet
Leaving Earth a gigantic
Waterworld in the middle, and a barren desert around the edges. While you'd feel a downward pull at the disk center,
you'd feel a more sideways force elsewhere. The further out
you were, the more difficult walking outward would become. Assuming there was still plants and trees,
they'd all be crooked due to negative gravitropism - a fancy term for describing how stems grow in the opposite direction to gravity.
Right off the bat, we can see that Earth would look and feel very,
very different. Earth's tectonic plates and the outlines of its continents would also change drastically.
On a flat Earth, plate boundaries would follow smooth rounded paths at the edges of the disk rather than matching up.
Furthermore, plate movement at these outer edges wouldn't cause reactions in their
counterparts, nor would the outlines of the continents match up - since the land masses would never have been joined together, as in the ancient supercontinent
Pangea. There goes all that fossil evidence for shared flora and fauna. And, if we assume a flat Earth without Technic plates at all,
well, a lot of the planet's geological features such as mountain ranges would also disappear.
We could kiss the Rockies, the Alps, the Andes and the Himalayas goodbye. A flat Earth would be smoother, with
unrecognizable continental borders. A flat Earth would also be seasonless. Earth
experiences seasons due to its curvature and axial tilt. When the northern hemisphere is tilted
towards the Sun, the Sun's rays hit that area of the planet at a more direct angle -
resulting in summer. When the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun, the rays hit it at a less direct angle -
resulting in winter.
However, if the Earth were flat the sun's rays would hit every area of the planet at the same angle -
resulting in uniform temperatures and a consistent season.
Australia and North America would be hit in the exact same manner and both would experience the exact same
temperatures. On the upside, what we round earthers call the poles might also be warmer and much more hospitable.
Speaking of the Sun, the Earth's rotation would plunge the entire world into periods of total darkness. Or, if we were locked into synchronous
rotation, always facing the Sun,
well,
the Sun would just circle around in the sky
neither rising nor setting. We wouldn't get to enjoy all that daylight though because we'd all be fried alive.
Earth's magnetic field protects us from the Sun's solar wind and it's generated by a complex process involving electric currents in the planet's core.
Assuming a flat Earth doesn't have a rotating core at its center, Earth wouldn't have that protection.
Ask Mars how things went without a magnetic field.
NASA's maven mission recently concluded that Mars once held abundant water,
but at some point it lost its magnetic field.
This allowed solar winds to rip away its atmosphere. Without our magnetic field the same thing would happen to us.
In sum, on a flat Earth, humans and forests alike would be dragged toward the center of the planet where all our water would coalesce.
Earth's basic geography would look completely different.
There wouldn't be seasons and every area of Earth would experience similar
temperatures. And our atmosphere would be stripped away by solar winds, leaving the planet completely
radiated. But, suppose that all our scientific theories about gravity, tectonic plates, the solar orbit and our magnetic field were false.
Imagine that there was some alternative explanation for all these features and that the current scientific
consensus was really a smokescreen, to convince us all, for some odd reason, that the world was round.
It would be the most expansive and most expensive conspiracy theory to ever exist.
It would mean that all the photos, videos and scientific proofs of the Earth being round were fake. And
Everyone - experts institutions and governments - were all part of it.
Astronauts must be actors and teachers are either duped or part of the conspiracy. Even airlines must be in on the joke, fudging flight paths.
Direct 12-hour flights from Santiago to Australia must be fake.
In fact,
some flat earthers have suggested that Australia isn't even real. Which, to be honest, might be a head scratcher if you live in Sydney.
Whether a flat Earth followed the same basic rules of physics or an entirely new set,
it would be a strange and extremely dysfunctional world. So, we can thank our lucky stars that it's extremely, extraordinarily improbable.
What do you think?
Is there anything we missed?
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