Planet or Plane?

An Unbiased Study of “Flat-Earth” Arguments

Welcome to the twenty-first century. Gravity doesn't exist, the Earth is flat, and if you think otherwise you're an utter fool! At least, according to a growing number of people. Like many others, I’m frustrated with the lack of scientific literacy that seems to be plaguing our society, but what bothers me the most is the debate over the shape of the Earth.

In my frustration, I’ve researched the topic and grouped together one hundred arguments supporting the flat-Earth hypothesis and shared what I’ve learned about said arguments here. Now I'm sure you're expecting the “how do people on the other side not fall off?” argument, don't worry, it's coming. Even though I feel like I'm the idiot right now, because of the things I'm about to explain, there were a few arguments that I did find genuinely interesting and required research to refute, so I hope you'll learn something too.

I call this an “unbiased study,” but in reality, everyone has his or her own biases, including me. But in my defence, it’s hard not to be biased against a theory when the most commonly cited scientist, Dr. Samuel Rowbotham, proves himself wrong.

However, I am not only sharing the occasional biased opinion but over a hundred facts, the one thing that I know can never be biased. Although these facts may be proven wrong over time, as of now they are what is accepted as fact, to my knowledge anyway.

Now I know you're all thinking, “Kaleb, shut up”, because I'm thinking it too. So sit back, relax, and decide for yourself whether or not Antarctica is filled with armed NASA guards protecting a giant wall around the edge of the planet, that prevents the oceans from running off into space.

Argument One: All amateur footage shot without widescreen shows a flat horizon, even at over 20 miles in the air.

Rebuttal One: The problem with cameras is that they don't have the same field of view as the human eye, and widescreen would be necessary to take a picture of a noticeably curved horizon. People argue that widescreen causes distortion and the horizon only appears curved. However, curvature in the horizon is easily detected from a high enough altitude by the naked eye. Also, the only time i’ve heard of widescreen being a problem is during flat-Earth debates, and never on movie night.

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Argument Two: While people claim to see the curvature of the planet through airplane windows, all airplane windows have been made curved to match the shape of the fuselage. This, combined with confirmation bias, causes people to falsely observe curvature of the planet. The fact that you can see the horizon at eye-level from 35,000 feet from both windows is proof of a flat-Earth, as you would need to look down to view the horizon.

Rebuttal Two: The curvature of an airplane’s window is not enough to cause so much distortion, if it were the airport wouldn’t appear to be square. Additionally, you cannot see the horizon at eye level from cruising altitude; this claim is not a fact, but an inaccurate observation. This can be easily proven with free apps on your smartphone, ones that use the phone’s built-in gyroscope to find true level. If you’re like me and don’t quite trust technology, bring a surveyor’s scope, which is a small ocular scope with a bubble level inside. While looking through the scope you are able to see exactly perpendicular.

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Argument Three: Water would not be consistently flat throughout Earth’s movements.

Rebuttal Three: It is true that still water is consistently flat, but oceans prove otherwise, not only with their view of the horizon but also with their waves and currents. The Earth’s rotation plays a major part in ocean currents; this is a phenomenon called the Coriolis effect, which was popularized by a French scientist of the same name. The Coriolis effect also plays a large role in weather. Even when there's no wind to cause a ripple in a still lake, this is in part due to the Earth’s movements, but we'll get more into the weather aspect later on. What causes the Coriolis-Effect is the difference in Earth’s rotational speed between the equator and the poles. This phenomenon will be used to debunk later arguments.

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Argument Four: If Earth were spinning some rivers would run upwards.

Rebuttal Four: Now this seems like a good argument, but some rivers do in fact run uphill, due to the force of Earth’s rotation. Sea level is not constant, and because the oceans bulge at the equator, all water flowing in its direction is fighting gravity with help from the centrifugal force of the planet.

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Argument Five: Canals and bridges are laid out, sometimes over hundreds of miles, with no allowance for curvature.

Rebuttal Five: This is not entirely true. While most structures have no need to account for the curvature of Earth, at a certain scale, it does need to be taken into consideration. The Verrazano Narrows Bridge in New York City, at 13,700 feet long, was designed with the curvature of the planet in mind. Because the towers are 693 feet high, and 4,260 feet apart at the base, they are one and five-eighths of an inch further apart from each other at their tips.

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Argument Six: The London and Northwestern Railway forms a straight 180-mile line, with the highest point at 240 feet above sea level. On a globe, the railway would form an arc rising 5,400 feet above London and Liverpool, peaking at Birmingham.

Rebuttal Six: The railway does indeed form an arc, in the same way the ground does. However, this would in no way alter Birmingham's height relative to sea level, nor it's height relative to London or Liverpool, if the highest point of the railway was 240 feet on a plane, it’s highest point would be equal on a sphere. While standing perpendicularly on the outside, or heel of an arc, at no point will any portion appear to rise upward.

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Argument Seven: Factoring in the curvature of Earth for railroads is not required.

Rebuttal Seven: Factoring the curvature of the planet isn’t required because the grade of the road is oriented to the ditch beside it. And I know this because I’ve built roads professionally, and surveyed them myself on occasion. As for railroad tracks, they’re not square to each other, just close enough to be butt welded with thermite, afterwards, they are ground smooth.

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Argument Eight: Experiments have shown that you can see lights across a distance that would be blocked by the curvature of the planet.

Rebuttal Eight: Not only could this be simple optical looming or another similar refraction in the atmosphere (like a Fata Morgana, which is caused by variations in air temperature that refract light near the viewers’ horizon), this could also be explained by light illuminating clouds or airborne particles. Never-the-less, this claim is unverified, presented with no supporting evidence, which makes it difficult to entertain.

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Argument Nine: If the Earth was a sphere, planes would veer off into space by flying in a straight line, making the use of rockets unnecessary.

Rebuttal Nine: This is another example of an extreme misunderstanding of even the most basic scientific phenomenon. A regular airplane works by displacing air pressure along its wings, which means most planes would have no chance of even getting close to space. If you tried to bring a plane to space, you would eventually hit a point where it would continue to stall with attempts to go higher, due to the lack of air supply. Air is not only needed for combustion to occur, but to support the aircraft. A pilot constantly dipping downward to account for the curvature of the planet is absurd, as an aircraft’s altitude won’t rise without receiving more lift. Furthermore, aircrafts don’t just fly straight; constant adjustments need to be made in order to maintain altitude and course. Try this: place a ruler on a table, and push it to the edge. Does the ruler amazingly remain horizontal until you push it completely off? Or does it dip down when there’s not enough to support it?

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Argument Ten: The experiment “Airy's Failure” proved the stars moved relative to the Earth.

Rebuttal Ten: Airy's Failure was the name for George Biddel Airy's Earth drag test, in which he used water-filled tubes to try and detect a change in stellar aberration, which is the apparent motion of celestial objects dependant on the velocity of the observer. Airy, along with his assisting observer, did not detect any difference between the tube with or without water, and thus concluded that stellar aberration is not caused by Earth. This is proof that photons behave as wave-particles; however, many geocentrists inaccurately use this as evidence the universe revolves around the Earth, an interpretation I still don’t quite understand.

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Argument Eleven: Oblers’ Paradox states that, if the universe were filled with stars, the night sky would be illuminated.

Rebuttal Eleven: I'll start this rebuttal by pointing out that this argument is in no way supportive of a flat-Earth model, just of a finite universe and the idea that astronomers are wrong. The most accepted explanation for this paradox is a phenomenon called “Cosmological Redshift,” which is a sort of visual Doppler effect. Because the universe is expanding, everything is getting further apart, causing wavelengths to be increased relative to an observer. This causes most radiation to fall into invisible spectrums and is theorized to be the source of the cosmic microwave background.

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Argument Twelve: The Michelson-Morley and Sagnac experiment failed to detect a change in the speed of light, in any direction, caused by Earth’s motion.

Rebuttal Twelve: In 1882, Michelson-Morley presented firm evidence disproving the existence of an aether by showing there is no detectable difference in the speed of light relative to Earth’s motion. This experiment surprised the scientific community, most of whom believed light needed the aether to permeate through. However, this has been resolved by Einstein himself, with his Theory of Special Relativity, which states that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant for all observers, regardless of relative speed of the light source.

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Argument Thirteen: Tycho Brahe famously argued that, throughout Earth’s orbit, there is no detectable change in the relative position of stars.

Rebuttal Thirteen: The stars definitely do change position relative to Earth as it orbits, I actually quite enjoy watching them move across the sky throughout the year. This is the reason why the north star is used for navigational purposes in the northern hemisphere; throughout the entire year, it’s the only star that remains in the same approximate location. I think that the simple fact that a person would accept someone else's argument without question, even one that is so easily disproven through simple observation of the naked eye, is insulting to our sentience abilities.

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Argument Fourteen: If Earth were spinning constantly it would affect projectiles, however, vertically fired cannonballs commonly fall back into the muzzle.

Rebuttal Fourteen: Earth’s rotation does affect projectiles, with the same phenomenon that affects water currents and weather. Distances less than approximately 100 yards aren't enough to be noticeably altered by the Coriolis effect, but Earth’s rotation needs to be taken into account for long-range firing solutions. Today, computers do these calculations, but as any veteran artillery crew member can tell you, Earth’s rotation does make a difference.

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Argument Fifteen: If Earth were a spinning ball, aircraft would be able to hover and wait for their destinations to come to them, and aircraft flying against the rotation of the Earth would reach their destinations faster.

Rebuttal Fifteen: This is another argument posed with a lack of scientific understanding. There are so many atmospheric conditions that affect flight, and even if you hovered, not only would you have to counter the 1,000 mph westward velocity aircraft have at takeoff, the craft still has to compensate for wind. The complicated mechanics of wind currents is the reason why expected flight durations in flat-Earth arguments are off. If a plane were to fly westbound along the equator, it would reach its destination sooner, despite Earth’s rotation. This is because the rotation of the Earth causes air to travel westward along the equator, carrying anything airborne in its jet stream. In mid-latitude travel, westward flights are longer than those going east; this is because Earth is rotating slower at these latitudes and causes a backdraft due to a difference in air pressure, which flows east. This eastward jet stream creates its own backdraft, which results in an opposite westward jet stream in the polar regions. Hovering to your destination would be possible, but is very implausible and would only ever be done to prove a point.

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Argument Sixteen: If Earth were a spinning ball, the Red Bull stratosphere diver would have landed off-target.

Rebuttal Sixteen: The Red Bull Stratos project was not merely sending a guy into the stratosphere on a whim, it was a culmination of efforts from a group of highly trained scientists over the course of seven years. To question how he managed to land on target is to question the aptitude of everyone on the team and is almost insulting, even to me, who had nothing to do with it. Not only were there practice runs, but the scientists also picked a specific date where weather disruption would be at a minimum in order to keep the balloon as close to target as possible. Additionally, as stated before, the aircraft will have a linear velocity after takeoff, causing it to continue traveling for quite some time at a similar rate to the ground. Afterward, the diver would have been able to steer himself through the air toward a preferred landing location, even before deploying his chute.

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Argument Seventeen: Gravity dragging the atmosphere in synchronicity with the Earth’s rotation is a nonsensical theory, and is disproven by raindrops, birds, and airborne particles, all of which would behave very differently if the atmosphere were spinning, due to the differences in rotational speed between the poles and the equator.

Rebuttal Seventeen: This is true, in regards to both the atmosphere being in sync with Earth and gravity being the force that drags it. The atmosphere isn't put into synchronous motion by Earth’s gravity, and if it was, what explains all the wind? The true culprit is actually a combination of things. There is a slight amount of friction between the ground and the lower atmosphere, which is caused by gravity, but this alone isn't what causes the complex motion of the atmosphere. We’ll go into more detail in the next argument.

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Argument Eighteen: If Earth were spinning at 1,000 mph, clouds wouldn't be able to move in different directions at different speeds.

Rebuttal Eighteen: This is just simply not true. Weather patterns are affected by so many variables, and the rotation of Earth is just one of them. Air currents are slightly affected by Earth’s rotation, but not by much. What causes the air currents and weather systems to develop is uneven heating of the Earth’s atmosphere, causing differences in pressure and density. This, in turn, forces the molecules to flow, similar to boiling a pot of water. Uneven heating works together with the preservation of angular velocity to create a very erratic movement in the atmosphere. Rotation only causes the Coriolis effect, which alters the trajectory of currents both north and south of the equator.

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Argument Nineteen: It is claimed that Earth is moving along several different axises, rotating, revolving, and oscillating all at once. Given that this has never been measured, it is absurd to think the Earth has ever moved an inch.

Rebuttal Nineteen: Similarly to flying in a jet with clear skies, you can't feel that you are moving. We can detect changes in our velocity, thanks to gravity-sensitive membranes in our inner ears, but our sensory organs aren’t equipped for sensing a constant velocity. However, we can detect Earth’s rotation with instruments. A team from TUM, BKG and Cambridge University successfully developed a method to detect the changes in Earth’s rotational wobble using ring-lasers. When light is fired through the rotating ring lasers, the co-rotating light has farther to travel, while the counter-rotating light has less. This affects the light’s wavelengths, and the differences in optical frequency is used to determine rotational velocity. Another experiment you can do at home is to create a Foucault Pendulum, which is a special pendulum that can swing in any direction. When given a heavy enough weight, the pendulum is able to swing for days at a time and, as long as there is nothing to change the angle of the pendulum, it will keep its trajectory while Earth moves beneath it. Eventually, the pendulum will appear to have completely changed direction when in reality it was the planet.

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Argument Twenty: If gravity is strong enough to keep structures and oceans on the bottom of the sphere, how could it be weak enough for birds and planes to fly?

Rebuttal Twenty: This is a perfect example of the logic that runs rampant throughout the flat-Earth community. In order to fly, all you need is to generate enough lift to offset your weight and drag. Planes and helicopters do this by using specially designed wings and propellers, which at proper speeds create a significant channel of low air pressure directly above the propeller or wing, and causes the aircraft to be pulled into this low-pressure channel. Hot air balloons fly by capturing a large amount of hot air in the balloon. Hot air has a lower density than the cool air around it, causing it to become buoyant and float up into the atmosphere, dragging the balloon and basket along with it. Birds use a combination of specially shaped wings, hollow bones and flapping to generate enough thrust to offset their weight and drag, which allows the bird to fly similarly to planes. Gravity isn’t weak enough to allow birds to fly, birds are strong enough to offset gravity.

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Argument Twenty-One: If gravity is strong enough to hold the oceans in place, how can fish freely swim through it?

Rebuttal Twenty-One: Gravity won't prevent something from swimming, just as it won't prevent something from walking through the atmosphere. All gravity does is pull things inward towards the center of it’s source; it does not hold things into place. Fish swim by generating a backward force using muscle movements, which propels them forward. There is likely a depth with a high enough pressure that fish wouldn't be able to swim properly, but they would likely never be able to descend to these depths in the first place.

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Argument Twenty-Two: Plane sailing and great circle sailing, the most popular sailing methods, use trigonometry based on a flat-Earth.

Rebuttal Twenty-Two: This argument is only half thought out. Plane sailing is a navigational method that uses math that assumes the ship is moving on a plane; however, it is only used for short-range navigations, and is slightly inaccurate even in its effective range. Great circle sailing, on the other hand, is a long-range navigational method that uses math that assumes the Earth is a sphere.

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Argument Twenty-Three: If the Earth were a sphere, latitudinal lines south of the equator would decrease in circumference. However, sailors navigating the southern polar regions assuming this method find themselves out of reckoning, more so the further south they travel.

Rebuttal Twenty-Three: The problem that presents itself with this “truth”, is the simple lack of references or sources. These people expect me and you to accept a statement without an argument, quite frankly, I find that offensive, and I'm sure any person in the habit of thinking for themselves would feel the same way. Getting on with my rebuttal: Upon studying the topic, I have found that, although Antarctica proved to be extremely hard to find, the sailors were not necessarily getting lost, they were getting forced off of their plotted courses by the extreme ocean and weather conditions that are present nearly year round in that extreme polar region. Just to complicate things further, many explorers who did manage to make it to continental Antarctica were greeted by some of the thousand foot high ice walls that surround much of the continent.

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Argument Twenty-Four: James Clark Ross routinely wrote in his journal about how his crew repeatedly became lost using common navigational techniques.

Rebuttal Twenty-Four: After reading through a memoir of James Clark Ross' expeditions, and sections published by the University of Calgary, I have yet to find a reference to this claim. However, the crew did struggle to find a route to Antarctica, not because navigational techniques had failed them, but because their routes were regularly blocked by ice.

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Argument Twenty-Five: During the US Navy Antarctic expedition commanded by Lt. Charles Wilkes, he wrote in his journal about finding themselves consistently east of his reckoned position, sometimes up to 20 miles in 18 hours.

Rebuttal Twenty-Five: After multiple searches, I have yet to find a published journal from Lt. Charles Wilkes. However, lots of biographies and memoirs of his expeditions exist, and never have I found a reference to Charles Wilkes being led astray due to conventional navigational techniques. That said, the two ships he was in command of, the USS Vincennes and the USS Porpoise, did find themselves quite far from their assumed position, but this was due to inaccurate maps of the region from that time. The USS Flying Fish was also lost for around a month, but the cited causes were damages due to the treacherous sailing conditions that impeded their ability to navigate. The USS Flying Fish, shortly after rejoining its fleet, was lost once again and never found, likely succumbing to the harsh sailing conditions of the Antarctic Ocean.

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Argument Twenty-Six: Many perfectly manned, equipped and conditioned ships have wrecked on shallow waters, in perfect sailing conditions, while being far out of reckoning; due to the difficulties of navigating the southern hemisphere with conventional techniques This misfortune is claimed to have happened to The Challenger in 1845.

Rebuttal Twenty-Six: This argument is derived from a quote by Reverend Thomas Milner, citing HMS Challenger and HMS Conqueror. Milner claims that HMS Challenger was wrecked along the African coast while believing it actually lay behind them. He insinuates the same happened to the HMS Conqueror. However, there are no documents of these occurrences. A ship named HMS Challenger did not wreck along the African coast in 1845, and the only HMS Conqueror to wreck did so in The Bahamas, far from the southern hemisphere.

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Argument Twenty-Seven: Practical distance measurements taken from “The Australian Handbook, Almanac, Shippers’ and Importers’ Directory” state the straight line distance between Nelson and Sydney is 1,550 miles, which is inconsistent with globe model measurements.

Rebuttal Twenty-Seven: The reason why the measurements seem so inconsistent appears to be due confusion between statute and nautical miles. I think all of these simple mistakes in seemingly every argument compromise the credibility of the whole hypothesis. It’s also claimed that the quoted handbook states that this is the “straight line distance,” however, that claim is completely false, as a plane can make the same trip with 200 miles less. This means that the measurements used in an attempt to mathematically prove globe-Earth measurements wrong, is extremely misrepresented. The same distance by plane is approximately 1,308 statute miles, which converts to 1,136 nautical miles.

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Argument Twenty-Eight: If the Earth is a ball, why aren't there any commercial plane routes over Antarctica?

Rebuttal Twenty-Eight: Because a Boeing 747 costs about $200,000 dollars to fuel, and holds up to 560 people. Assuming everyone paid $500 dollars for their ticket, the airline only has $80,000 dollars after refueling, and needs to pay all of the employees on that plane, as well as all cover the additional expenses involved. Layovers make room for more paying customers and result in more profit, but where are the paying customers in Antarctica? Seems like a poor business model for a conventional airline.

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Argument Twenty-Nine: Why do flights from Sydney to Santiago layover in California, as opposed to New Zealand or other southern hemisphere destinations?

Rebuttal Twenty-Nine: In reality, this is the same argument as the last one, and normally I wouldn't include the same argument in a different scenario, but I included this one just to help get into the mind of a flat-Earther. They suggest refueling in New Zealand or another southern hemisphere destination, however, the plane would have three-quarters of a tank by the time it got to New Zealand, so there is no point in refueling at this location, especially when the U.S. has the highest amount of air travel; from a business perspective, it’s where you would want to layover. And as for layovers in all of the other small island destinations that are hard to find on a map, like Tonga, there just are not enough customers for the stop to be worth it. Not to mention, most of these airports aren't even equipped to accommodate a 747, nor would they be able to. Also, you can just take a direct flight from Sydney to Santiago.

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Argument Thirty: It would be impossible to simultaneously have sweltering deserts and frozen poles; if energy from the sun can heat Earth after traveling 93,000,000 miles, another 4,000 wouldn't have a noticeable effect.

Rebuttal Thirty: The variations in heat aren’t from differences in distance. Rather, it is because less solar radiation hits these regions, which render them completely dark for months at a time. When the sun finally does shine, heat is reflected away from the ground by the ice and snow.

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Argument Thirty-One: If Earth were round, there wouldn't be such a difference between the two poles, and comparable positions between the North and South Hemispheres.

Rebuttal Thirty-One: The difference between the poles is mostly caused by altitude. The Arctic is very low to sea level, low enough to actually get insulated slightly from the surrounding water. This is in contrast to the Antarctic, which sits on an ice shelf a mile and a half above the sea. For the rest of the Southern Hemisphere, the temperature differences are simply from land to water ratios; water heats and cools slower than land does, which means the Southern Hemisphere is insulating itself far more than the north. This, paired with the distance between Earth and the Sun during the summer months in the Southern Hemisphere compared to summer in the Northern Hemisphere, causes drastic temperature differences.

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Argument Thirty-Two: There should not be such a contrast between animal and plant life between the Isle of Georgia and similar latitudes in Canada or Iceland.

Rebuttal Thirty-Two: The island of South Georgia is a tiny remote island about 100 miles long, 2,000 miles from South America. The simple location of this island invalidates this argument; Canada is part of the continental Americas, not a tiny cluster of islands a thousand miles from anything. It’s also argued that because Iceland is home to abundant native animal life, so should other remote regions in similar latitudes. However, Iceland claims that the only land mammal present when it was settled were arctic foxes, which were able to travel there on frozen ice.

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Argument Thirty-Three: There shouldn't be such a difference in light cycles between similar places in opposite hemispheres.

Rebuttal Thirty-Three: There only appears to be a difference, because of Earths axial tilt: the longest day in the north pole is the shortest in the south. At opposite ends of the year however, this is reversed.

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Argument Thirty-Four: If Earth were a globe there wouldn't be such a difference in twilight hours.

Rebuttal Thirty-Four: Just like daylight, opposite hemispheres of the planet also experience twilight for different durations, but at opposite times of Earth’s orbit this is reversed. The different hemispheres experience the same twilight hours, at opposite times of the year.

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Argument Thirty-Five: If the Sun circled around above, from tropic to tropic, around the North Pole, this perfectly explains all of the differences in climate and light cycles between the two poles.

Rebuttal Thirty-Five: That could be a possible explanation if it weren't for the differences in altitude and land to water ratios that we went through earlier, as well as the fact that the Northern Hemisphere only receives more light during its summer, which is inconsistent with the flat-Earth model.

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Argument Thirty-Six: The midnight sun is an arctic phenomenon that causes the sun to circle overhead, never truly setting for up to 72 hours. This could only happen at the poles, the fact it happens elsewhere proves Earth is flat.

Rebuttal Thirty-Six: This argument is just false. Both midnight sun and polar night can be experienced in any region within the polar circles of the planet, not just the poles. The poles, however, have extreme polar days and nights, for up to six months of the year.

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Argument Thirty-Seven: ‘The establishment’ claims the midnight sun is experienced in Antarctica, even though there is no unedited footage, and independent explorers aren't allowed to visit during the winter solstice.

Rebuttal Thirty-Seven: There are no tourist cruises in the wintertime because of all of the dangerous ice, but you are allowed to sail there independently year round. This doesn't matter though, because the midnight sun is only visible during the summer solstice. There's lots of footage of the southern midnight sun, and even though they are time lapsed, I wouldn't really consider it edited or pieced together.

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Argument Thirty-Eight: If Earth were a ball, taking 24 hours to complete a full rotation, then nights and days should have an identical duration year round.

Rebuttal Thirty-Eight: This would only be true if Earth rotated at an angle perpendicular to the sun, but it doesn't, it has an axial tilt varying between 22.1 to 24.5 degrees, causing variations in the daylight cycle.

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Argument Thirty-Nine: Dr. Rowbotham affixed flags five feet high along a shoreline, one at every mile marker, with six flags altogether. When peering through his telescope, there was no noticeable change in perceived altitude of the flags over the six miles.

Rebuttal Thirty-Nine: Assuming Dr. Rowbotham was on the equator, the overall distance between the flags was barely one-tenth of a degree, hardly enough to be able to clearly observe the curvature of the planet.

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Argument Forty: Near the shores of Waterloo, a few miles from Liverpool, Dr. Rowbotham stationed a telescope at six feet high positioned to observe a steamer leaving the Mersey River toward Dublin. They recorded that it took four hours before the mast of the ship disappeared behind the horizon, inconsistent with globe-Earth measurements.

Rebuttal Forty: I'm not even going to bother arguing math here, I'm just going to point out that Dr.Rowbotham documented observing a steamer disappearing behind the horizon, at a distance they claimed to be inconsistent with the globe-Earth model.

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Argument Forty-One: Across the Irish Sea from Douglas Harbour to Great Ormes Head is 60 miles, if Earth were a globe it would be hidden behind the horizon. Yet on a clear day from 100 feet, Great Ormes Head is visible from Douglas Harbour; when the shoreline would still be 1,472 feet below the horizon.

Rebuttal Forty-One: This is likely the effect of optical looming, especially since the Isle of Man is most visible with the sun behind it. When light bounces off of a faraway object, it can reflect off particles in the atmosphere, similar to the reflection on a long stretch of road. This reflection and refraction cannot only make things on the horizon appear much larger than they really are, but under the right conditions, light from something can actually be reflected to an observer behind the horizon line.

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Argument Forty-Two: Polaris appears to stay perfectly positioned throughout the entire year, regardless of of Earth’s various motions.

Rebuttal Forty-Two: The reason why Polaris appears stationary is because it is so closely aligned with the North Pole, but it does actually move. Polaris has only been the North Star for about 1,500 years, and it will reach its maximum declination in 2100. By the year 3000 Polaris will be replaced as the North Star by Gamma Cephei, and before Polaris, a star in the constellation of Draco was used as the North Star.

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Argument Forty-Three: Polaris should not be visible from anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere on a globe-Earth.

Rebuttal Forty-Three: This argument is correct, but misinformed. Polaris is not visible from the Southern Hemisphere, just as Sigma Octantis is not visible from the Northern Hemisphere.

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Argument Forty-Four: If Earth where a ball then the Southern Cross and surrounding constellations should all be visible from every point of longitude, on a single latitude, as is the case with Polaris in the Northern Hemisphere.

Rebuttal Forty-Four: The Southern Cross is 28 degrees further from the South Pole than Sigma Octantis, and it would not be visible from as wide a range as Polaris. Sigma Octantis, however, can be seen from a similar range as Polaris, but because of its dimness can be difficult to locate.

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Argument Forty-Five: Unlike Polaris, Sigma Octantis is not visible simultaneously throughout the Southern Hemisphere, as it is not centrally located in the sky and is not motionless. It is even impossible to observe with store bought telescopes, and there is even legitimate speculation as to whether or not it even exists.

Rebuttal Forty-Five: All of these different properties are because of Sigma Octantis’ angle of declination, and although it is only a single degree further from its respective pole than Polaris, it makes quite a big difference throughout the year. Although difficult to observe, it is not impossible and can be identified with the naked eye; and there is no legitimate speculation as to whether or not it exists, but there’s obviously speculation.

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Argument Forty-Six: Heliocentrists claim that the gradual declination of Polaris as the observer travels south is proof of a globe-Earth, however, this is just the star disappearing beyond the vanishing point of perspective.

Rebuttal Forty-Six: This observable phenomenon is not explained by Polaris traveling beyond a vanishing point, because it keeps its observable size and brightness throughout the entire distance traveled. If stars disappearing over a horizon were really just vanishing beyond perspective, they would slowly fade away into obscurity, not suddenly disappear. The light from stars travel millions of miles before hitting Earth, another few hundred or even thousand more miles being enough to cause the star to fade into obscurity is implausible.

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Argument Forty-Seven: Lots of constellations can be seen from a further distance than possible. For instance, Ursa Major, which is very close to Polaris, can be seen from many places in the Southern Hemisphere. Vulpecula can be seen from 90 degrees north down to 55 degrees south, Taurus, Pisces and Leo can be seen from 90 degrees north down to 30 degrees south.

Rebuttal Forty-Seven: It is true Ursa Major is visible from many places in the Southern Hemisphere, because at its centre it is about 34 degrees away from Polaris. Similar to other constellations listed, Vulpecula can be seen in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, but this is because its declination is about 25 degrees, putting the equator almost right in the middle of its visible range. Further defending globe-Earth models, because Earth is wider at its equator, Polaris, which is so closely aligned to the North Pole, is visible from 180 degrees. However, the other constellations listed fall quite a bit short; for example, Vulpecula only has a visible range of 145 degrees, and is visible for 10 degrees further north of the hemisphere than south.

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Argument Forty-Eight: The so-called South Pole is simply an arbitrary barber shop pole on the Antarctic ice, this ceremonial “south pole” is admittedly not the actual South Pole, however, because the South Pole could be demonstratively confirmed with the aid of a compass showing north 360 degrees around it, ‘the establishment’ uses the excuse that the geomagnetic poles are supposedly constantly moving, making verification impossible.

Rebuttal Forty-Eight: It is true that the ceremonial “south pole” is nothing more than a novelty, but I argue the fact that compasses work in general is proof of the actual existence of magnetic poles. The claim that the magnetic poles constantly move is not a mere excuse, the molten core of our planet is where our magnetic poles come from, and the core’s movement effects the poles’ positions. The reason why you can’t find an accurate location of the poles with a conventional compass is because the needle of the compass would be pressed up against the body of the compass, preventing its movement.

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Argument Forty-Nine: Ring magnets, like the type used in loudspeakers, have a north pole in the middle, and a south pole along the outer edges, which perfectly demonstrate the flat-Earth model.

Rebuttal Forty-Nine: Until recently, ring magnets were made of multiple wedge-shaped magnets aligned in a circular orientation. However, with modern technologies, we are able to produce neodymium ring magnets with poles in various orientations. This doesn't happen in nature however, and requires expensive specialized equipment.

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Argument Fifty: The Mariner’s Compass is a nonsensical instrument for use on a globe-Earth, it simultaneously points north and south over a flat surface, yet claims to be pinpointing two constantly moving geomagnetic poles at opposite ends of a sphere. If compass needles were actually drawn to the North Pole, the opposing needle would be pointing into space.

Rebuttal Fifty: The only reason why compass needles don't point downward is because the opposing end of the needle is counterweighted. For compasses produced in the Northern Hemisphere, the northern end is magnetized and the opposite end is weighted for balance. If you took said compass into the Southern Hemisphere, the weighted end would be pressed against the base of the compass and it would not be able to freely move. Either the compass would need to be magnetized with the opposite pole, or the magnetized end would need to be weighted to prevent it from being pushed upwards by the South Pole, which greatly overpowers the strength of the Magnetic North Pole in that hemisphere.

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Argument Fifty-One: There are no fixed east or west points, just as there is no fixed South Pole. The North Pole is the only proven fixed point on our Earth, with south being all straight lines outwards from the pole.

Rebuttal Fifty-One: Neither the North nor the South Pole are fixed; as mentioned earlier, they are constantly moving. However, the South Pole is a verifiable location, and the simple fact that a compass made in Australia is magnetized with the opposite pole is proof this pole exists.

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Argument Fifty-Two: Magellan’s and other east/westward circumnavigations of the planet are not proof of a globe-Earth; just as an architect’s compass can circumnavigate a central point and return to its original location, sailors traveling at a constant right angle to the north will return to their original location as well.

Rebuttal Fifty-Two: It is true that sailing east or westward around the world is not solid proof of a globe-Earth, unless it is proven that they sailed in a straight line. However, as mentioned earlier, one of two main navigation methods most commonly used by sailors is “plane sailing,” which uses non-spherical trigonometry based on right angles. Assuming these expeditions had decent navigators on board, they would have kept a mostly straight course in relation to their position, and still circumnavigated the globe.

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Argument Fifty-Three: Antarctica is most likely a well-guarded no-fly zone due to the impossibility of a north/southward circumnavigation of Earth, which is why there has never been a verified circumnavigation in these directions.

Rebuttal Fifty-Three: Antarctica is not at all a well-guarded no-fly zone. In fact, you could probably fly there today. There are, however, controlled airspaces and over flight height restrictions for certain research stations, but a no-fly zone can't be guarded in a demilitarized area. And there have been verified north/southward circumnavigations of Earth, here is an incomplete list of examples: Ranulph Fiennes and Charles Burton, Dick Smith, Bill Herrelson, and Aziz Ojjeh and his team.

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Argument Fifty-Four: If Earth were a globe, and time zones were caused by the uniform spinning of the planet, then every six months when Earth was on the opposite side of the sun, clocks would have to flip 12 hours to accommodate, day would become night and night would become day.

Rebuttal Fifty-Four: I think this is a fairly intelligent observation, although it was made with a lack of education. If Earth made a complete rotation exactly every 24 hours, than at the opposite end of orbit, light cycles would be reversed, but a full day isn't quite 24 hours, it's 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.1 seconds. Let's round down to 23 hours and 56 minutes, meaning for every 24 hours, our day is offset by 4 minutes. Now, over the course of a week, this offset grows from 4 minutes to 28, almost a half hour; after a month this offset grows to 124 minutes, just over two hours; after 6 months, our offset is 744 minutes, or 12.4 hours, which almost perfectly accommodates for what would be a gradual complete reversal of our light cycle. The remaining 24-minute difference is remedied through the use of leap years.

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Argument Fifty-Five: The idea that people and buildings are standing on the opposite end of the globe and all other impossible angles is a complete absurdity.

Rebuttal Fifty-Five: The idea is not a complete absurdity, but a necessity to explain an observable phenomenon that occurs around us at all times. There are two alternative flat-Earth theories I personally know of that explain the phenomenon of gravity, without the use of gravity. These two theories are very easily disproved, however. The first theory, is that gravity is an illusion caused by the flat-Earth being constantly propelled upwards by anti-matter, although this theory is discredited by flat-Earth believers’ own acknowledgment of planes not needing to adjust their altitude during flight: if Earth was constantly propelled upwards, and planes never adjusted their altitude once at cruising level, what stops the Earth from coming crashing into the bottom of the plane? The second theory I know of is gravity being explained by laws of buoyancy, stating everything sits on the ground because it is too dense to sit in the atmosphere; if that were true, we should be able to reach space by simply displacing fluid in the same way as a boat. Another problem with this explanation is the law of buoyancy doesn’t explain why things sink downward, as opposed to left or right. Buoyancy is a weight relationship between a fluid or a solid, fully or partially submerged in another fluid, but where did the weight come from if not from gravity?

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Argument Fifty-Six: There has never been an experiment showing an object massive enough to cause another mass to orbit it. If gravity was able to keep people on the underside of a spinning ball and allow the moon to perpetually orbit it, either people would be able to jump into orbit, or the moon would have crashed down a long time ago.

Rebuttal Fifty-Six: In actuality, Dr. Cavendish demonstrated gravity in the year 1798, using two 348 pound lead balls, and two 1.6 pound balls, suspended by wires and a torsion balance. The larger of spheres were fixed to a frame, while the smaller spheres had an independent suspension system affixed to a torsion balance, which is a pendulum-like apparatus used for measuring very weak forces. In his experiment, the smaller of the two spheres were actually attracted to the larger spheres, twisting the wires of the torsion balance. The torque on the wires was correlated with the weight of the small spheres to determine the gravitational force of the planet to an accuracy of within 1%. For the second half of this two-parted statement, it needs to be explained that you can't enter orbit vertically, you need to be traveling around the planet at a fast enough speed to miss the horizon as you perpetually fall because you are still at the whim of gravity. However, the Moon won't be crashing into us because it will actually escape our orbit one day, as it is receding from Earth.

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Argument Fifty-Seven: If Earth’s gravitational pull was strong enough to hold the Moon in orbit, then the Moon would not be able to affect the tides; and if the Moon did attract the water, nothing would stop it from being dragged right to the Moon.

Rebuttal Fifty-Seven: The Moon certainly would be able to affect the ocean tides, because its small gravitational pull slightly offsets the gravity of Earth, allowing the spin of the planet to essentially throw the oceans higher over the horizon. But in order to pull the water into the Moon’s orbit, the Moon’s gravitational pull would have to be able to completely defeat Earth’s, not just combat it.

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Argument Fifty-Eight: If the tides of the ocean were truly affected by the gravitational pull of the Moon, then the tides should be uniform and also affect lakes and ponds.

Rebuttal Fifty-Eight: The tides are uniform, however, they don't follow the daylight cycle. The tides rise about every 12 and a half hours, causing high tide to occur at different times throughout the year. The Moon does also affect inland bodies of water like lakes and ponds, however, because the water is more stationary, the gravity of Earth has better control over it. This, combined with the differences in volume, makes these tides virtually unnoticeable.

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Argument Fifty-Nine: It's claimed that other planets are spheres and therefore Earth must also be one. Earth is a plane, not a planet, so the shape of these planets has no bearing on the Earth beneath our feet. When observed through a telescope without prejudice, these star and planets appear as luminous discs, not spherical terra firma.

Rebuttal Fifty-Nine: Earth has never in modern history been observed as a plane, and as mentioned earlier, even Dr. Rowbotham observed the sphericity of Earth while attempting to disprove it. The Moon, Earth, and other planets appearing as discs are not evidence of them actually being discs; a ball looks like a disc as well. However, the simple fact that the different faces of neighboring planets can be observed is proof of their sphericity. Furthermore, if the Moon, stars and observable planets were discs perfectly facing Earth, what prevents the molten liquid from running off of Mars?

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Argument Sixty: The word “planet” comes from Old English “planete,” from Old French “planete,” from Latin “planeta,” from “planasthai,” meaning to wander, probably from “pele,” meaning flat, or to spread, and from the Latin “planum,” meaning flat, plane or level. They just added a “t” to our Earth plane and everyone bought it.

Rebuttal Sixty: The history of the word “planet” is in no way an argument against the sphericity of Earth. It is true that most agree that the etymology of the word “planet” comes from words from older languages expressing things similar to “flat,” or “spread out” land, but any simple observation of the world around you will prove that it is in fact spread out around you, and appears mostly level, but this is not evidence supporting a flat-Earth. Lots of words have origins that differ greatly from the way they are used today, for example, the word “audition” was originally used for any hearing, courts and doctors used to have auditions as well.

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Argument Sixty-One: It is claimed that the Moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun, and 400 times closer, and that the Moon orbits west to east, unlike how it appears. You can clearly see that the Moon and Sun are the same size and the same distance, and that the Earth is stationary, but according to the modern gospel of astrology this is wrong.

Rebuttal Sixty-One: It is true that the distance of the Sun from Earth is an estimation. Its distance can't be calculated via radar signals like other planets in our solar system, because it is not a solid mass but a mass of plasma. The distance is estimated by calculating Earth’s distance from Venus and using geometry to calculate the rest of the distance from the Sun. The Sun does appear to be the same size as the Moon, but because we can calculate the exact distance to Mercury, and we can observe Mercury passing in between the Sun and Earth, the only possibility that remains is that the Sun is equal times larger, and further than the Moon. As for the orbit of the Moon, it truly does orbit west to east, however, because the Moon orbits Earth in the direction the Earth rotates, and the Moon takes longer to orbit than the Earth does to turn, the Moon isn't able to keep up, thus appears to be slowly revolving east to west.

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Argument Sixty-Two: Paraphrasing a quote from Allen Dave: Imagine if the government and NASA had told everyone that they lived on a stationary, flat planet, and people tried to convince them that they lived on a spinning ball that was orbiting around the sun. We would be ridiculed for having no scientific evidence for this globe-Earth model.

Rebuttal Sixty-Two: The sphericity of Earth has been a commonly accepted model for over 2,000 years, and even though I could not find any references to early scholars being ridiculed for their claims of a globe-Earth, I think it would be pretty safe to say that there was some arguing over the idea. The difference between claims of a globe-Earth and claims of a flat-Earth is that one of the theories has supporting evidence. Not only has the sphericity of Earth been accurately calculated, modern technology allows us to observe the rotundity of Earth for ourselves, and some people have taken this to the step of circumnavigating the planet via the poles, as mentioned earlier.

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Argument Sixty-Three: Heliocentrists’ figures have always varied extremely throughout the years, whereas flat-Earthers have used sextants and plane trigonometry to perform the same calculations, and consistently get the same results for the distances and sizes of the Sun and Moon.

Rebuttal Sixty-Three: Sextants and plane trigonometry are not accurate in these situations. When using a sextant for celestial navigation, the accuracy begins to drop after only 0.1 nautical miles, and sextants aren't used for measuring the size of a heavenly body, just the height of clearly visible objects. Furthermore, when calculating height using a sextant, you need to know the distance to the object, which can't be accurately calculated with a sextant. Plane trigonometry cannot be used for this purpose either, because you are only calculating the height, width and hypotenuse of a vertical two-dimensional triangle, without factoring distance from the observer.

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Argument Sixty-Four: If the Sun was truly millions of miles away, amateur footage would not show such a large localized sun-spot above the clouds.

Rebuttal Sixty-Four: Most of the light passing through our atmosphere is diffused and scattered, creating a sort of ambient lighting. The spotlight effect on top of the clouds is simply caused when enough light passes directly through the atmosphere, without being scattered as much as the rest of the light. The reason why this happens to only such a small area relative to an observer is because of the convex shape of the sun.

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Argument Sixty-Five: The heliocentric model explains the seasons using the axial tilt of the planet, but during the winter season in the Northern Hemisphere, the Earth is closest to the Sun, yet still has colder average temperatures.

Rebuttal Sixty-Five: The differences in temperature, as already acknowledged in this pro flat-Earth argument, are caused by the axial tilt of the planet, not the distance from the Sun. As mentioned before, the distance from the Sun does, however, have an impact on the temperature of the planet, and this paired with the land to water ratio, causes the extreme climate differences between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

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Argument Sixty-Six: The fact the Sun and Moon reflect light in a straight line from the horizon to the observer is proof of a flat-Earth; if Earth were a sphere, it would be impossible for light to curve over the ball from horizon to observer.

Rebuttal Sixty-Six: This is not at all proof of a flat-Earth. The horizon is the point of obstruction, so there is no reason the light would be obstructed when casting a reflection on water toward an observer. When casting a reflection toward an observer, the Sun or Moon is always at least partly shining over the horizon, otherwise its light would not be directly visible.

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Argument Sixty-Seven: The fact sundials made thousands of years ago are still just as accurate as they were when constructed, is proof the Earth is stationary.

Rebuttal Sixty-Seven: The reason sundials are still accurate despite all of Earth’s motions is because its orbit is very stable, and expected to be so for millions of years. Even though Earth is slowly moving away from the Sun, the rate of this movement has not been enough to cause a noticeable change in the last 3,500 years.

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Argument Sixty-Eight: To paraphrase William Carpenter, “Why, in the name of common sense, would an observer need to fix his telescope to a stationary base to prevent movement, if the Earth the base is set it on is moving 19 miles a second?”

Rebuttal Sixty-Eight: The reason why telescopes should be stationary is because of the distance they observe; even the smallest variation in angle translates into an extreme difference in position over such vast distances. This being said, the Earth on which it is mounted does, in fact, interfere with astronomical observations, as any amateur astronomer can tell you. Telescopes designed for observing the surrounding universe have a component called an equatorial mount, which is intended to counteract the movement of the planet. The mount is aligned with the North or South Star, depending on the hemisphere of the observer, once aligned properly, the telescope is able to be rotated in a fashion that counters that of Earth.

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Argument Sixty-Nine: Paraphrased from “Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe,” by Samuel Rowbotham, “Take two carefully bored tubes, not less than six feet in length, and place them one yard asunder on the opposite sides of a solid frame, and adjust them so their axes of vision are perfectly parallel to each other. Now direct them to the plane of some notable star, a few seconds previous to its meridian time. Let an observer at one tube give a signal once the star becomes visible in the tube, to be repeated by the second observer once the same star becomes visible. The differences in observability of the stars prove they cannot be seen from two different places at the same angle, at the same time. Leave the tubes for six months and repeat the experiment, and the results of the same observation will be identical, proving that Earth has not moved at all.”

Rebuttal Sixty-Nine: Now, if you’re anything like me, then you might think that this argument is lacking in all credibility. Of course a star can’t be visible from two locations, at the same angle, at the same time. Furthermore, the constellations move throughout the year, this is a fact that is easily observable. You would not be able to observe most stars from a fixed point at opposite ends of the year unless you were in an extreme polar region. However, even if a suitable star was used, a difference of 186 million miles won’t be noticeable from over 25 trillion miles away.

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Argument Seventy: Modern astronomy maintains that the Moon is a solid Earth-like planetoid, which humans have set foot on, and is not self-illuminating, but reflecting light from the Sun. In fact, the moon has been proven largely transparent and completely self-luminescent.

Rebuttal Seventy: Fernando de Maghulane observed the solar eclipse on October 11th 1520, and his observations are used as evidence toward the translucent Moon argument, quite effectively it seems. Fernando observed that as the Moon passed across the Sun, the light from the Sun was still clearly visible, recording that the Sun gradually lost brightness as it shifted into a red colour. No part of the Sun was hidden, but it appeared similar to when observed through thick smoke. The reason the Sun is so visible during a total solar eclipse is due to a combination of the physical topography of the Moon, and the properties of light. The surface of the Moon is very rough, and a large number of light streams pass through its valleys and crevasses, reaching Earth. Once these obscured waves of light finally reach Earth, many of them are scattered and bounced back towards the Moon, which aids in causing the red hue.

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Argument Seventy-One: The self-illuminating Moon theory obviously has nothing to do with Earths rotundity, but is used in many flat-Earth arguments in attempt to discredit experts. It took a while to find a supporting argument, but eventually I found this one: The luminosity of the Moon is confined to half of its surface, understanding this simple fact makes it clear that the Moon is self-illuminating, and thus explains the different phases in the Moon’s cycle.

Rebuttal Seventy-One: The fact that the area which light on the Moon is confined to changes is hard evidence that the Moon is not self–illuminating. As mentioned before, the same face of the Moon can be observed throughout its light cycle, supporting the argument that this light is a reflection.

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Argument Seventy-Two: The Sun’s light and the Moon’s light exhibit too many opposite properties for them to be from the same source, sunlight is golden, warm and preserving; while moonlight is silver, cool and putrefying. This proves that sunlight and moonlight are different and opposite, as they would be in the flat-Earth Model.

Rebuttal Seventy-Two: The differences between the properties of sunlight and moonlight are caused by the differences in intensity. The Moon only reflects on average 12 percent of sunlight back toward Earth, which is a lot of infrared radiation that we aren't receiving during nighttime. During the day, the Earth absorbs lots of heat from the Sun, and this heat is convected throughout the atmosphere creating a higher ambient temperature, pair that with a clear summer day and water will begin to evaporate quite readily, which causes the preserving effects of sunlight. But this isn't achieved by sunlight alone, you also need to be in an area with low humidity; it will take me a lot longer to sun-dry food in Victoria, B.C. than it would in Kamloops, B.C. The lack of these properties in moonlight is not proof that moonlight and sunlight are different and opposite, it is only proof that very little of the Sun’s light is reflected. In fact, the light from the moon is not opposite at all, as it will still charge solar cells in the same way sunlight does, just a lot less effectively. This difference in efficiency even corresponds with the average percentage of sunlight reflected by the Moon, supporting the globe-Earth model. I would also like to note that the flat-Earth model has no explanation for why these two sources of light would be opposites in the first place, and all of the harmful effects are in reference to “wise-tales” from last century, like moonlight causing blindness.

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Argument Seventy-Three: The Sun’s light can be focused to create significant amounts of heat, focusing the Moon’s light in the same way creates no heat. The March 14th 1856 edition of the Lancet Medical Journal outlines the details for several experiments that proved concentrating moon rays can actually decrease the temperature of a thermometer.

Rebuttal Seventy-Three: There was no March 14th issue of The Lancet Medical Journal in 1856, and I don't appreciate being referred to a non-existent source, I spent a long time searching for it. There was, however, a March 15th issue, and a March 14th issue in 1857, and in neither did I notice anything about the Moon, because why would a medical journal be concerned with astronomy? You can read past issues of The Lancet Medical Journal for free at thelancet.com. Because we have zero details about this phantom experiment, I'm going to replace it with the only argument I've found from this century that argues the same point: Place an object partially in the moon’s light, and partially in the shade of something like a tree. After giving a few minutes to allow for the object to adjust to the surrounding temperatures, an infrared thermometer will show that the object is cooler in the moonlight. This argument has a few problems. The first is the insulative properties of the tree, which likely wouldn't be enough to feel, but surely enough to measure. Another problem with this experiment is how an infrared laser works; you aren't measuring the temperature at the laser, you are measuring the temperature in a circle around the laser, and the radius of that circle depends on our distance. The biggest problem with this experiment, however, is you'll receive a drop in temperature as you move from the tree regardless of how clear the night sky is, eliminating the moonlight as a factor.

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Argument Seventy-Four: The Moon could not be both spherical, and a reflector of the Sun’s light, because the Moon would need to be concave in order to have any area of incidence.

Rebuttal Seventy-Four: This argument is just misinformed; a perfect sphere will definitely have an incidence of reflection, just not as often as a flat or concave reflector. But the reason why the Moon reflects light toward the Earth at so many angles is because of the rough terrain of its surface, which is easily verifiable through unaided observations.

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Argument Seventy-Five: The Moon is largely transparent, this is observable in both day and night; in the daytime, the blue sky is visible right through the Moon, and during the night, it is possible to see stars and planets through the un-illuminated surface of the moon during certain phases. The Royal Astronomical Society has many such occurrences on record.

Rebuttal Seventy-Five: You aren't able to see the sky through the Moon, you are seeing the Moon through the sky; the sky is transparent, and light from the moon is able to pass through it. As for stars and planets being visible through the Moon, I’ve spent quite a bit of time searching through some of these mentioned pictures and videos, and not once did I see anything that looked like a star or planet; what I saw appeared to be digital noise, which people were convincing themselves were stars or planets. In photography, noise is the distortion of an image that usually appears as distorted pixels; high ISO settings, which are used for low-light environments, cause more noise by default. As for the occurrences recorded by The Royal Astronomical Society, these reports were submitted by readers, who likely were fooled by distortion as well.

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Argument Seventy-Six: Many people think that modern astronomy’s ability to accurately calculate eclipses is proof of the heliocentric model; however, eclipses have been accurately predicted as far back as 600 B.C., long before heliocentric models.

Rebuttal Seventy-Six: The ability to predict lunar cycles has nothing at all to do with the knowledge of the local universe, but observed patterns in the sky. Regardless of our astronomical knowledge, we would have eventually learned to predict eclipses, as long as we paid attention to them. Earth has also been theorized to be spherical since around 600 B.C., which is another misconception among flat-Earth believers.

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Argument Seventy-Seven: Heliocentrists claim that lunar eclipses are proof of a spherical Earth. This argument is rendered invalid because eclipses have happened, and continue to happen, while both the Sun and Moon are visible.

Rebuttal Seventy-Seven: As with most flat-Earth believers I've come across, this one seems to be confused about eclipses. Eclipses do happen all the time, but total eclipses rarely happen in any specific geographic location. Furthermore, for the Moon and Sun to both be visible during an eclipse, either it was a lunar eclipse, and the observer was outside of the area affected, or it was really a solar eclipse.

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Argument Seventy-Eight: People claim that ships traveling over the horizon is proof of a spherical Earth, however, this is just an illusion caused by distant objects blending into obscurity, causing the illusion of a sinking motion of a ship traveling over the horizon. However, after observing a ship sailing over the horizon with the naked eye, one can use a telescope and once again see the hull of the ship. This is because the ship did not disappear behind a horizon, rather it sailed beyond the vanishing point of perspective.

Rebuttal Seventy-Eight: This is a common claim among flat-Earth believers, but never once have I seen any video or photo evidence supporting it. I have, however, seen videos clearly showing a mast protruding from beyond the horizon. These claims are also compromised by the history of sailors reporting what they believed to be a ship sinking, to later learn the ship had returned to port safely and was simply covered partially by the horizon.

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Argument Seventy-Nine: Foucault's Pendulums are often used as evidence for the rotation of Earth, but closer investigation proves the opposite. Sometimes they swing clockwise, sometimes counter-clockwise, sometimes they fail to rotate, and sometimes they rotate far too much. The behaviour relies on two factors: initial force and the ball and socket hinge that are used.

Rebuttal Seventy-Nine: The swing of a Foucault's Pendulum is affected by latitude and will not swing the same in different locations; the latitudinal location of a Foucault's Pendulum can be accurately calculated from its swing alone. As for the initial force being one of the main contributing factors, Foucault's Pendulums are properly set by suspending them with a thread, which is then burned to remove all factors from the launch besides gravity. Foucault's Pendulums are active all over in order to make measurements and observations about the rotation of the planet, but even in the event that these are truly demonstrated to be false, the rotation of Earth is also measured by ring lasers, as mentioned in Rebuttal Nineteen, which are not subjected to the same outside forces as a pendulum.

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Argument Eighty: The Coriolis effect is often said to cause sinks and toilets to drain spinning in different directions in opposite hemispheres, however, sinks and toilets in the North and South Hemisphere don't consistently drain in the same direction, because this flow is affected by the shape of the toilet bowl or sink basin.

Rebuttal Eighty: The shape of a sink or basin does have the most effect on how it drains, but the effect of Earths rotation has been shown to effect many things, like running water. However, this is not evidence of either a sphere or a flat-Earth.

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Argument Eighty-One: People claim that if the Earth were flat, you would be able to use a telescope to see clear across the oceans. However, the air is full of precipitation, which interferes with long distance observations, making this impossible, although you are able to see much further than what should be possible on a sphere.

Rebuttal Eighty-One: The first part of this argument is correct, however, there has still never been proof of something being observed from a distance that would be blocked by the curvature of Earth. All of the examples used are observations of mountains, towers and landmasses across bodies of water, and none of these have ever been proven to be accurate.

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Argument Eighty-Two: People claim if the Earth were flat, the sun would always be visible. This is not true because the sun is only a few thousand miles away, and acts as a spotlight. Once it has moved over the horizon, daylight slowly fades until it completely disappears. On a sphere, the transition between day and night would be almost instant.

Rebuttal Eighty-Two: The characteristics mentioned above are not characteristics of a spotlight, nor would the transition of day to night be instant. If the Sun was a spotlight, then the day would be confined to a much smaller area, and once it passed overhead it would become nighttime almost instantaneously. Not only can you observe the Sun disappearing behind the horizon and not beyond the vanishing point of perspective, as it would in the flat-Earth model, the Sun is also observably spherical; if the Sun is a light-emitting sphere, it can't behave as a spotlight, because it's shining light in 360 degrees.

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Argument Eighty-Three: People claim that pictures of the Moon appearing upside-down are proof of a spherical Earth, however, time-lapse video shows the Moon rotates in the sky in such a way that you can take upside-down pictures of the Moon from anywhere at the right time.

Rebuttal Eighty-Three: The Moon appears to flip upside down throughout the day to night, but this is an illusion caused by the spherical Earth: as the Moon travels overhead, it rotates in near synchronization, causing you to see the same face from varying angles, as it travels 180 degrees around Earth.

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Argument Eighty-Four: Heliocentrists believe the Moon is a globe, even though it is clearly a luminous disc. We only ever see the same face of the Moon, and even observers in opposite polar regions see the exact same face of the Moon, just at different angles.

Rebuttal Eighty-Four: The Moon is clearly not a luminous disc, as close observations of the lunar daylight terminator line will show. As for people in opposite polar regions seeing the exact same face of the Moon, this claim is untrue. The face observed is similar, but in full Moon pictures taken from the Antarctic, you can see further north of the “Sea of Cold” than similar pictures taken from Arctic regions.

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Argument Eighty-Five: The ball-Earth model claims that the Moon orbits Earth every 28 days, yet it is plain to see that the Moon orbits Earth every day, and follows the Sun’s path.

Rebuttal Eighty-Five: This is a commonly made observation because, from a stationary position, the Moon does appear to orbit the Earth every day. However, this is not in fact what is happening. Earth spins in the same direction the Moon orbits, but Earth does so much faster, causing the Moon to appear to orbit daily.

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Argument Eighty-Six: Circular star trail photos should be impossible due to the speed of Earth’s alleged motion around the sun.

Rebuttal Eighty-Six: The reason it is possible to take circular star trail photos, despite the Earth’s motion, is because of the vast distance between us and the stars. Earth travels less than a single degree around its orbit in a 24-hour period, our closest star Proxima Centauri, is over twenty five trillion miles away. A single degree is impossible to observe unaided over a distance so extreme.

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Argument Eighty-Seven: Vast expanses of the planet have been shown to be completely flat. For example, an 80,000 square mile area was surveyed in Kansas and was shown to quite literally be flatter than a pancake.

Rebuttal Eighty-Seven: This is no more of an argument than the Grand Canyon and the continental shelves being proof of the planet being a valley, and topographical features vary far too greatly to use any single one as evidence for the overall shape of Earth. Prairies encompass a small amount of the planet, and even if Earth weren’t round, it would be very inaccurate to refer to it as flat.

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Argument Eighty-Eight: The Red Bull Stratos jump showed the same amount of curvature throughout the duration of the jump despite the wide-angle lens, while the indoor camera shows a perfectly flat horizon at 128,000 feet, which is only consistent with a plane.

Rebuttal Eighty-Eight: During the free fall of the Red Bull Stratos jump, the skydiver went into a violent spin for some time, and during his violent spin, you get a 360-degree view of the horizon showing Earth as a disc below him, but all that is seen of the Earth is vast expanses of desert, without an ocean, forest or tundra in sight. As for the camera view inside the cockpit, the horizon doesn’t appear to be quite flat, although it is close. This is simply because the doorway isn’t wide enough to encompass an obvious curvature of the planet.

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Argument Eighty-Nine: Our physics dictate the impossibility of a uniformly spinning ball.

Rebuttal Eighty-Nine: This argument is true, but presented with lack of information, and doesn’t support a flat-Earth model. Earths rotation is in fact slowing down, and it’s estimated that in 100 years, the length of a day will have increased by 2 milliseconds. One hypothesis claims this is due to the Moons relationship with our oceans: Earth rotates faster than the Moon orbits, creating friction between the oceans and their floors, acting similarly to brakes.

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Argument Ninety: If gravity were pulling the atmosphere in synchronicity with Earth, then there would be a point where the atmosphere would meet the vacuum of space. The effect of such a transition, however, would have disastrous results on a spaceship.

Rebuttal Ninety: As stated in Argument Seventeen, gravity dragging the atmosphere in sync with the surface of Earth is a nonsensical theory, and not at all how the atmosphere behaves.

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Argument Ninety-One: It is impossible for rockets or any type of jet propulsion to work in the vacuum of space because, without any atmosphere to push against, there would be no propulsion. Instead, the rockets and shuttles would be sent spinning around their axes uncontrollably.

Rebuttal Ninety-One: Here’s the basics of how a rocket engine works: rocket engines are designed with a cylindrical combustion chamber, and an exhaust port on the bottom. The combustion of the fuels exerts pressure throughout the combustion chamber and releases it through the exhaust. The pressure differences between the combustion chamber and the exhaust nozzle are what propel the rocket engine, as described by Newton’s third law of motion; every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

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Argument Ninety-Two: Rocket launches never go straight up, they are launched in a curve, and the successful ones have simply just flown out of view, landing in restricted waters to be recovered. There is no magic altitude where you will start floating away from the Earth, this is called science fiction.

Rebuttal Ninety-Two: The reason why rockets aren’t launched straight up is because they would come straight down. Exiting the Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t free you from its gravity, spacecrafts are launched in a curved trajectory in order to achieve orbit. All orbiting is, is a perpetual fall around the planet with a linear velocity high enough to ensure you keep missing the planet as you fall. And of course there is no altitude where you’ll magically begin floating away from the planet, you’re still affected by gravity.

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Argument Ninety-Three: All of NASA’s footage is faked using a variety of tricks, including wires, CGI, green screens, aeronautic maneuvers and swimming pools. Astronauts can be seen using disguised scuba gear and kicking their legs to move. One astronaut even almost drowned during a spacewalk. NASA admits to using swimming pools to train astronauts for spacewalks, but the consistent blunders, including air bubbles in space, are proof that this footage is false, and also filmed in pools.

Rebuttal Ninety-Three: This is one of those claims that just does not have any credible evidence. Yes, there is a large group of people debating the authenticity of the Moon landing, but we’re talking about all of the footage NASA has released here. The videos that show what are claimed to be air bubbles are most likely debris, and normally don’t behave as air bubbles. It is true that more than one astronaut has come close to drowning in space, but water is used as a coolant in modern spacesuits, and in rare cases, the coolant systems can leak into the ventilation. Spacesuits aren’t perfect after all, and during a training excursion, one astronaut actually received frostbite from a thermal vacuum chamber. As for the rest of the claims, they are all speculation, awaiting real evidence.

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Argument Ninety-Four: NASA claims that you can see the ISS orbit overhead, proving its existence. However, closer speculation through zoom cameras shows it to be some sort of hologram, synced with the ISS tracker, impossibly changing shape and colour when zoom is adjusted.

Rebuttal Ninety-Four: Depending on the strength of the telescope or camera, the images of the ISS you would receive would no doubt be distorted. It would take a fairly extreme level of zoom to get past the point where you would observe light bouncing off of it in a spectrum of colour overlaying what appears to be a satellite. There are, however, lots of very clear images taken of the ISS, many of which that have virtually no distortion.

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Argument Ninety-Five: The geostationary communications satellite was first created by Freemason science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, and supposedly became scientific fact just a decade later. Before this, radio, television and navigation systems were already working fine using ground-based technologies. These days, huge fibre optic cables connect the internet across oceans, cell towers triangulate GPS signals, and ionospheric propagation allows radio waves to be bounced without these science fiction satellites.

Rebuttal Ninety-Five: It is true that geostationary satellites were predicted by Arthur C. Clarke in 1945, however, this is no argument for satellites being a conspiracy; many great advancements in science have been inspired by works of science fiction. It is true that fibre optics are vastly more efficient than satellites, but satellites are able to communicate between virtually any location on the planet, without the need for stringing cables across the world.

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Argument Ninety-Six: Satellites are allegedly floating around in the thermosphere where temperatures are claimed to be upwards of 4,530 degrees Fahrenheit. The metals used in satellites, however, such as aluminum, gold, and titanium, have melting points of 1,221, 1,948, and 3,034 degrees respectively, all far too low to handle such temperatures.

Rebuttal Ninety-Six: Base metals would not be used, as there are much more suitable alloys, but we won’t talk about that right now, as there is an important difference that needs to be made between temperature and heat: Temperature is a measure of overall energy, while heat is a measure of absorbed energy. You can put a block of aluminum into a sauna set to 1,221 degrees, and the aluminum won’t melt until it absorbs the energy. This same scenario is basically what is at play with the ISS, and if it absorbed enough heat, it would most definitely fail. This is combated quite effectively, however, using heat pipes to conduct the heat away from exposed areas towards radiators, which release the energy back into the atmosphere. Additionally, satellite design takes special care to minimize the amount of radiation absorbed however possible.

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Argument Ninety-Seven: Satellite phones have been found to have reception problems in countries like Kazakhstan with very few cell phone towers. If Earth were a ball with 20,000 satellites, such blackout zones shouldn’t regularly exist.

Rebuttal Ninety-Seven: This is because Kazakhstan is a mountainous region; the same problem occurs in the Rocky Mountains. When you’re in a valley or mountain range, the mountain is interfering with the GPS signal, not a lack of cell towers. We can’t send radio signals through mountains.

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Argument Ninety-Eight: Satellite TV dishes are almost always positioned at a 45-degree angle towards the nearest ground-based repeater tower. If these dishes were receiving signals from satellites in space, they should be pointing more or less straight up to the sky.

Rebuttal Ninety-Eight: Satellites do not point toward a repeater tower, but toward the satellite that it is receiving a signal from; it would only point upwards if the satellite was directly overhead, but in most cases, it is not.

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Argument Ninety-Nine: People claim to see satellites with their naked eye, but this is ridiculous considering they are smaller than a bus and over a hundred miles away. Even with telescopes no one claims to discern the shape of satellites, but only describe a passing light, which could easily be any number of things, such as planes, drones or shooting stars.

Rebuttal Ninety-Nine: What you are seeing isn’t actually the satellite, but the sun reflecting off of the satellite. When searching for a satellite, it can be distinguished by a steady, straight trajectory, lack of additional lights, and its reappearance in a similar location. If telescopes are used to observe celestial bodies, I think they would see a plane or drone perfectly fine, leaving no speculation as to what was observed.

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Argument One Hundred: All the photographs we have of Earth depicted as a sphere are admittedly computer generated; The images produced from satellites are created from ribbons of imagery received from the many satellites orbiting Earth. As well as the admitted CGI nature of Earth photos, there’s a striking difference between the Earth’s features in many photographs. Many photos have also been taken of Earth from space stations that are full of evidence of Photoshop. There is even a documentary titled “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon,” that allegedly shows leaked NASA footage of the Apollo 11 crew using camera tricks for almost an hour, faking shots of a round Earth. In the documentary, these astronauts are said to be heard communicating over the radio on how to manipulate camera shots to achieve the desired effect. At the point Neil Armstrong claimed they were 130,000 miles from Earth, the photos appeared to only be taken from a few miles above the Earth.

Rebuttal One Hundred: It is true that the images received from satellites are generated from information, but it is done in the same way as your television or computer. Furthermore, the contrast between images is caused by many factors, from simply weather or season, to more extreme changes caused by erosion, volcanic activity and even human impact on the environment, all of which cause changes in the Earth’s appearance. Closer inspection of these satellite pictures will even show that they have not been edited to appear perfectly spherical, and do in fact have irregularities consistent with modern measurements. I went out of my way to watch the documentary mentioned and paid close attention to the alleged footage of the Apollo crew faking the pictures of the Earth, and what I found was a clip of Earth surrounded by nothing but blackness. The documentary stated that the image of Earth was not actually taken from the altitude claimed, and that the planet only appeared small because they blackened the shot and filmed the Earth from the opposite end of the ship, as the Earth covered the entire window. Taking note of the cloud formations, and the brown shading that one would assume to be landmass, the footage of Earth does appear to be taken from space, or at least a distance far exceeding a few miles. However, there is no way to discern whether or not the Earth did fill the entirety of the window’s view, and everything mentioned by the narrator regarding this scene was pure speculation with no plausible evidence at all.

Post Scriptum

The rest of the flat-Earth arguments are either to do with religion, Freemason conspiracy theories, people’s opinions, or anti-Semitism, none of which have any place in science. I tried very hard to put aside all of my biases towards flat-Earth believers when I started this, however, I feel that my bias has sadly been intensified by my research into the actual beliefs of these people. All I found throughout my review were handfuls of half-conceived thoughts, incomplete research, and blatant ignorance. What our world is growing into is truly amazing, and only in a world where information is as accessible as water could it ever be treated with equal disregard. But easily the most notable thing I have come across from my research is that flat-Earthers were at some point in their lives convinced that the Earth is flat, and if your parents aren’t flat-Earthers then I find it appalling. Many argue that our current model of the universe is being taught to make people feel less special; if we teach people that we are not the centre of the universe, and truly just inhabitants on a spec of dust in an endless void, all the significance is taken away from our existence. I believe this to be opposite of the truth: we are so lucky to exist, and our local world is filled with so many coincidences that not only make life possible, but so wonderful as well. If you need to be the centre of the universe to feel special, you obviously aren’t paying attention to what’s happening around you.

I argue that our planet is a concave icosahedron, for absolutely no reason at all.