If Planets Were Pizzas

this video is brought to you by world anvil good morning interweb so way back in 2015 half a decade ago i made a video called if planets were donuts ever since i've wanted to make a follow-on video about flat planets alas peak flat earth hysteria rained so i taught better of it fortunately the flat earth conspiracy is at the time of this recording all but a dead meme so i figure now's my chance to talk about flat planets in the context of sci-fi and fantasy world building plan is to break down the flat earth model by category outline and explain what's wrong with their hypotheses and then speculate as to what possible variations might be open to us as world builders let's world build most flat earthers either implicitly or explicitly believe in a thing called zeteticism it's a nonsense term made up by the infamous sheridan samuel robottom in his 1865 book zetetic astronomy earth is not a globe i know this because despite my better judgment i purchased the book worst 99 pence i have ever spent on the face of it synthetic thinking sounds legit but under hud it's a deeply anti-scientific huberistic worldview that is tantamount to if i personally perceive a thing to be a certain way it necessarily is that way to robotham and other flat earthers the earth appears to them to be flat therefore it is the sun appears to evolve around the earth therefore it does planetary science orbital mechanics astronomy astrophysics nah that's all just quote speculative imaginary not tangible scheming the flat earth model is rooted in this misguided zeteticism although no flat earther is consistent in their synthetic outlook as we'll soon see it feels like we're living on a non-rotating flat plane so according to the flat earth model we are flatheaders imagine the earth as a non-rotating circular disc with the north pole in the center the consonants radiating outwards and antarctica wrapping around a circumference forming a 50-60 meter high ice wall that holds the oceans in why this configuration well i guess some bright spark stumbled across the azimuthal equidistant projection and thought wow purdy not this as a multi-liquidism projection mind remember kids northern hemisphere chauvinism must always be maintained and yes the flat earth map is a projection of a sphere i know the irony in reality flat planets cannot exist naturally so if you want to have one in your setting it's going to need to be constructed aliens gods whatever as long as it's not a naturally occurring body as such flat planets can be made any size shape or thickness square circle bestagon who cares gravity is the reason flat planets can't exist naturally gravity will crush any planetary scale mass down into a sphere this is why all flat earthers simply state that gravity doesn't exist instead they say that what we call gravity is actually just density and buoyancy so like a rock drop from a height because it's denser than air will always fall down no not that down no no yes that down healing balloons float upwards because of the buoyant force which in no way shape or form is reliant on gravity whatsoever abject nonsense and doesn't offer an explanation as to why the earth is flat a minority of flat earthers assert that the effects of gravity are actually caused by the flat earth accelerating upwards so the rock doesn't so much fall to the ground the ground falls to the rock this is also nonsense and also doesn't explain why the earth is flat and anyways what causes this acceleration what are we accelerating towards answer who knows simply dismissing a fundamental force is silly and will lead to major problems down the road so let's assume our constructive flat planet has been built to be gravity resistant but gravity still acts on it as normal if our flat planet were perfectly homogeneous gravity would act on it like so it's vectors always pointing to the center of mass unlike the flat earth model this would make both faces of the disk potentially habitable in the center of each face everything would feel quite earth-like however moving towards the edges would feel like climbing up and down increasingly steep slopes because the direction of gravity's pull will be constantly changing supposed to always point back to the center of mass the planet would look like this sure but would feel more like this these ascents and descents may feel too extreme to undertake so inhabitants on one face may never meet those on the other maybe they are totally unaware of each other's existence maybe they are able to infer each other's existence or maybe they have the tech needed to tunnel through to the other side in all cases imagine the rich cultural implications of such a setup a fun taught experiment would be to take things to infinity there is no center of mass on an infinite plane so the gravitational field will be uniform always pointing perpendicular to the plane and no matter how far away you go from the plane you'll still always record the same gravitational acceleration but the really fun thing is that standing on an infinite plane would feel like standing on the interior of a hollow sphere see gravity causes light to curve on earth this deflection is very very very very very slight on an infinite plane the distances are extreme therefore the deflection is also extreme light from this really really really distant point will eventually curve back to the plane our brains perceive light as having traveled in straight lines so this point will appear to have come from somewhere in the sky therefore assuming no obstructions like planets or stars the entire sky will be filled with images of the surface of the plane infinite flat earth equals infinite hollow earth how cool is that without gravity holding onto an atmosphere and oceans is impossible so the flat earth model fords the idea of a dome or firmament a hemispherical structure enclosing the flat earth this is unsatic no flat earther has ever seen this dome first hand again a small minority of flat herders take this dome thing and really run with it using it to explain tides and plate tectonics they see the dome as spherical the flat earth lies in the middle floating atop an ocean vibrations caused by the earth bobbing up and down on the surface of this ocean caused the tides tectonic activity is caused by the buildup and release of tension as the flat earth scrapes up and down the dome firmament glass bobble thing all of this is clearly ridiculous our flat planet has regular gravity so it will be able to hold on to oceans and an atmosphere sorta sands dome air and water will pool as close as possible to the center of gravity so we might expect to see a rim continent a central ocean dotted with land masses and a central atmospheric bubble defining the habitable and uninhabited regions of our flat planet this means one might be able to literally walk out of the atmosphere and into space pretty dope tides would be explained by the gravitational interactions of a moon plate tectonics however will be a problem on earth plate tectonics occurred due to the relative movements of the crustal plates over the molten upper portion of the mantle our flat planet doesn't have a rotating iron core or molten mantle so no plate tectonics no recycling of important chemicals and minerals no new landmass creation and worst of all no magnetic field this means our unshielded flat planet will have zero protection from stellar winds and cosmic radiation its atmosphere will be prone to being stripped away and our flat planet inhabitants will be bombarded by ionized radiation we could suspend this belief here and say that the atmosphere and oceans will hang around long enough for inhabitants to engineer a solution to the problem of atmospheric loss and we could also say that they have evolved to cope with the bombardment of ionized particles this is admittedly silly but definitely less silly than invoking a space snow globe the sun and the moon appear to evolve around the earth so in the flat earth model they do orbiting around the north pole moving between the tropics over the course of a year apparently the sun begins a journey at the tropic of capricorn and spirals polewards towards the tropic of cancer gradually slowing down as it moves forward when it reaches the tropic of cancer it reverses course spirals rim word and speeds up rinse and repeat when the sun is over the tropic of capricorn it's the winter solstice when it's over the equator we have the spring or autumnal equinoxes and when it's over the tropic of cancer we have the summer solstice the moon apparently follows a similar path except it doesn't speed up and slow down i think this is how flathearters explain how the sun and moon can be seen in the sky at the same time honestly though i'm not sure from a physics standpoint this all makes no sense further the sun and the moon appear to be the same size therefore in the flat earth model they are they appear to be close to earth therefore they are some estimate both to be about 50 kilometers in diameter and about 5 000 kilometers away from earth the sun acts like a spotlight only illuminating an arbitrary portion of the disk so as to maintain the day night cycle we see and the moon appears to emit its own light therefore it does why do the sun and the moon orbit in these spirals what causes the sun to slow down and speed up in its orbit so was to maintain a constant 24-hour day what is the sun if not a star what causes it to act like a spotlight how does the moon emit light again who knows and really who cares zeteticism am i right the sun and moon don't rise or set on the flat earth because they orbit above the plane instead the apparent setting of the sun and moon is explained using a misapplication of perspective as the sun and moon move away from the observer they will appear to shrink in the sky and vanish this despite clear synthetic evidence to the contrary but remember we can pick and choose when to be synthetic so as to confirm our pre-existing conspiratorial beliefs this geocentric model is incredibly unrealistic low mass stuff orbits high mass stuff not the other way around so let's have our flat planet spin about its axis and orbit a normal non-local star just like earth does the sun unlike earth our flat planet won't have seasons tilt or not and all parts of the disc would receive the same heating so the entire planet would have the same climate there will probably be some temperature variations due to the differences in atmospheric thickness by latitude but i suspect these effects will be negligible our flat planet can also have a non-local moon just like earth and everything will be more or less earth-like tides eclipses etc the setting and rising of these bodies would also be like on earth now if you really wanted to maintain geocentricism you can do something like this albeit it'll have to be justified by magic or divine intervention or something again the sun and moon are non-local here in this scenario the day night cycle on a geocentric flat planet will be equal to half the orbital period of the star so if the star were to take one earth year to orbit the flat planet days and nights will be six months long even if we place a geocentric flat planet as close as possible to the lowest habitable mass star possible we'd still be looking at a minimum of about 40 earth day days and nights and in all cases there would be no seasons i mean over geological time sure seasons would occur due to orbital procession but they'd last for a long long time and all of the flat planet would experience the same season at the same time also given that the day night cycle is caused by the orbit of the star there's no need to have your geocentric flat planet rotate on its axis like the star any moon would need to by definition orbit the geocentric flat planet if placed on an inner orbit eclipses would occur but always along a specific path assuming of course negligible orbital eccentricity and orbital inclination and finally the setting and rising of these bodies will be like on earth albeit they'll only set and rise once per orbit when we look at the night sky all the background stars look like tiny little lights therefore in the flat earth model they are they also appear to be embedded on the dom firmament thing therefore they are to the northern hemisphere chauvinist polaris the north star appears to be the only stationary light therefore it is all the other stars orbit around this planetarium style in concentric circles therefore they do this makes the flat earth and polaris the only two stationary objects in the whole entire universe aren't they special now it's unclear to me as to whether the prevailing idea is that the dome rotates and the stars are fixed on the dome or that the stars rotate and the dome is fixed either way it's all nonsense five of these tiny lights appear to wander the firmament tracing out spirograph like orbits therefore they literally do in reality these five lights are the naked eye planets mercury venus mars jupiter and saturn and their apparent motion is a consequence of their orbits and the heliocentric model in our heliocentric model the background stars and planets will work just like they do in our solar system in our geocentric model the background stars will again by definition need to orbit the flat planet if our geocentric flat planet doesn't spin and these stars are on distant enough orbits which they will be they will appear to be eternally fixed and stationary no star trails so that was that the flat earth model and some space pizza ramblings done if you're interested in hearing more about flat planets particularly from a geoengineering angle go check out isaac arthur's megastructures flat hearts it is an absolute banger you will love us laters good morning interweb this video is brought to you by world anvil the ultimate world building platform for game masters and writers world anvil is a browser based set of world building tools that will help you create organize and store your creations interactive wiki-like articles maps calendars historical timelines and family trees world anvils got it all they even have an rpg campaign manager and full-blown novel writing software try world amble today for free by clicking the link in the description that way they'll know you've came from this video big thanks to world lampa for sponsoring the show world anvil the ultimate world building platform and tt rpg campaign manager this video is also brought to you by you the patrons in particular johann schwadka spencer brownlee alexander roper andrew p chahil john hoeyer rip the passe and world anvil i hope you all enjoyed and until next time ed girls

Channel: Artifexian

Views: 41,065

Rating: 4.9369326 out of 5

Keywords: Artfexian, worldbuilding, conlanging, flat earth, flat planets, science

Id: UIp5F5WVS_8

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/or_hid]

In the world I am building, the entire universe consists of just one planet that is flat and infinite, but it wraps around itself (it is a quotient space - a topological torus - formed by gluing together the opposite edges of a bestagon), so it is compact. Moreover, a third dimension it added as a cone is formed over that bestagon. Gravity is a force on this universe, pulling everything towards the base of the bestagon, forming the lithosphere at the bottom and atmosphere at the top. Actually another cone filled with antimatter is placed at the apex of the first cone - forming an hourglass shape - so the apex glows with annihilating particles, illuminating the sky.

[u/sirthomasthunder]

The flat earth "model" lol

Isn't it in LOTR mythology that it was originally flat but then it got rounded out?

[u/draw_it_now]

The flat planet orbiting the sun at 10:10 be like "WeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeee"