Hey everyone, so with the first two videos
in this miniseries, I demonstrated how anyone can prove to themselves conclusively that
the earth is a sphere by looking at objects in the sky and thinking with their brains. Those objects were the moon, and the stars. So for this one, let’s get even simpler,
and talk about manmade objects in the sky. That’s right, airplanes. Continuing with the theme of requiring precisely
zero science to show that flat earth is the dumbest hoax on the entire internet, one thing
that anyone can do to prove the earth is a sphere is to look at commercial airline flights. Let’s revisit the flat earth map, or the
thing they pretend isn’t their map, but it totally is, because they can’t make a
map, so they just use this. Embarrassingly for them, this is actually
an azimuthal equidistant projection of the globe. That’s right, the flat earth map is a map
of the globe, taken from the perspective of looking down at the north pole, and flattening
out its surface into a plane so that a three-dimensional surface can be shown in two dimensions. That’s why everything is distorted, with
no consistent scale. Secretly, flat earth priests know what this
is, and they know it doesn’t work, but they’re dumb and lazy and can’t come up with anything
better, so they stick with this and simply deflect anytime these facts are brought up. Now, the further away from the center you
go, the more significant the distortion, so problems really arise in the southern hemisphere. That’s where the flights come in. Here’s South America. Here’s Australia. Pretty far away, huh? If this map was taken to be precisely to scale,
which it would be if the earth was actually flat, then they’re as far away as two places
can get. Let’s say we wanted to fly between Santiago
and Sydney. If the earth was flat, which way would we go? Well the straight line path would go up across
all of South America, all of North America, over Alaska, and then continuing all the way
until we get to Sydney. So do any airlines actually fly between these cities? Yes, they do. This airline flies between Santiago and Sydney
four times a week. But which way do they go? Do they follow this straight line? Nope. They do the whole thing over the Pacific Ocean. Here’s how that trip looks on a globe. It takes 14 hours and 15 minutes going west,
and 12 hours and 25 minutes going east. On a flat earth, that route would look like
this. An absurdly long and totally unnecesary arc. For comparison, how long does it take to fly
between New York City and London? It’s about 7 hours going east and about
8 hours going west. Now, you tell me. Does it make sense that a plane would travel
this enormous arc in less than twice the time that it would take to travel this teeny tiny one? Not even a little bit. First of all, the fact that these are arcs
at all is totally nonsensical. Planes don’t constantly turn slightly left or right. They lock into a flight path and go straight. Flat earthers like to whine about how planes
don’t constantly dip down to match the curvature of the earth, but that’s because they have
no clue how planes work, since they maintain constant altitude, and altitude conforms to
the curvature of the earth. So, how do flat earthers deal with this information? Well, for the longest time, they simply denied
that these southern hemisphere flights exist at all. The flights are a nail in the coffin for flat
earth, so they would just lie and say there aren’t any. But since anyone can find out that they definitely
do exist in about ten seconds of googling, some of them have had to start coughing up explanations. The most popular of these is to pretend that
the wind is responsible. Again, this is because flat earthers are lazy. Small differences in flight times going east
vs. west occur because planes fly with or against wind currents. So they just take this concept and bring it
to an absurd conclusion. They will evoke currents of several hundred
miles per hour, which would be a world record hurricane, and pretend that the plane is somehow
traveling twice as fast as usual without anyone noticing. There are several problems here. First of all, this boost from the imaginary
wind still isn’t anywhere near enough. This arc is stupid long. The plane would have to be going several thousand
miles per hour, and planes don’t do that. Second, this flight goes both directions. East and west. How does the wind know which way the plane is going? Most days there are planes going opposite
directions simultaneously. Does each of them have a little personal tornado,
like in Wizard of Oz? Flat earthers have suggested things as stupid
as personal domes such that everyone gets their own set of stars, so sadly, this wouldn’t
even be the dumbest thing they’ve ever said. But as you can see, there’s no way around this. These flights exist. They are not traveling this insane distance,
because this is a projection of the globe without a consistent scale. The problem with the projection map they push
as reality is that as we go towards the south pole on a globe, the latitude lines are clearly
getting shorter and shorter. But on this flat representation, they are
being represented as longer and longer, so distances get more and more distorted the
further outwards you go. That’s why pretending this is a real map
is stupid, and that’s why flat earth priests pretend the southern hemisphere doesn’t exist. It ruins everything for them. As for their whining that flights don’t
travel over Antarctica, well, there’s no reason for them to do that. The shortest path, which we call a great circle,
for any common route doesn’t pass directly over Antarctica. Some get pretty close. Like Johannesburg to Melbourne. If it were to be flown, Johannesburg to Christchurch
would nick the edge of Antarctica. But this isn’t a regular flight. Why? Because the latter isn’t a major city, so
not enough people would be interested in the flight so as to make the route profitable
for an airline. In fact, there are very few large cities in
the southern hemisphere in general. Because of the way the continents are distributed
around the earth, 90% of the human population lives in the northern hemisphere. But much to the dismay of flat earth priests,
the southern hemisphere still exists, and its existence is single-handedly enough to
make them cry like toddlers that found out the easter bunny isn’t real. So that’s it. Airplanes. Ask any airline pilot what the shape of the earth is. When they’re done laughing at you, they’ll
tell you it’s a sphere. And no, this moron doesn’t count. He used to lie and say that he’s a commercial
pilot, but then he got exposed by a real pilot. Then he tried to hide the fact that he lied
about it. It was hilarious. I’ll link to the video all about this incident
below, in case watching him accidentally prove the earth is a rotating sphere on a Netflix
documentary wasn’t enough, and you want to laugh some more at this stupid, hopeless moron. To everyone else, I hope COVID ends real soon
so that we can all visit our favorite places around the globe once more. I’ll see you next time.
