Is The Earth Flat? | Earth Lab

ladies and gentlemen I'm here today to hopefully answer a long debated and very controversial question is the earth flat well no no it's not believe it or not though some people still don't agree with this flat earthers as they are known a part of a group of people who for a number of reasons believe that the earth is flat not only that but this well hidden secret is part of a global conspiracy to enslave humanity Oh probably shouldn't use that word global and so as a believer in actual science it's my duty to present some evidence that I think points to the more widely accepted view that the earth is spherical or at least an oblate spheroid like this melon see you later so where to start well two and a half thousand years ago when your worldview barely extended beyond your own village the earth indeed must have looked very flat there were a number of ideas floating around at the time for instance the Egyptians in 800 BC thought that the world was a flat disc floating in an infinite ocean the ancient Mediterranean had more of a 3d view with the early Greek philosopher Alex Amanda suggesting that the earth was a short fat cylinder with a flat top meanwhile the Chinese thought that we lived on a square floating inside a spherical heaven like the yolk inside an egg all excellent ideas but all totally unfounded that is until back in the third century BC Aristotle made some pretty revolutionary observations observations that bring me to my first experiment boy bring me my melon looking out to sea in the clear Mediterranean skies Aristotle noticed that ships that sailed out beyond the horizon didn't just get smaller until they couldn't be seen they actually disappear from the bottom first leaving only the mass visible the only way that that was possible was if the ships were disappearing down a hill or since there are no Hills at sea down the far side of a vast curve the curve of the globe next Aristotle observes that the constellations visible from Egypt were different to those in Cyprus surely if we lived on a flat earth we would all be to see the same stars above us the fact that they changed when you traveled north or south could only be explained by a curved surface that offers different views from the heavens so with evidence for a spherical burg mounting support began to grow and by the Middle Ages it was accepted as fact the round earth theory was further strengthened by advanced navigation during oceanic exploration followed by flight and in the last 70 years space flight in 1972 astronauts returning from the moon on the Apollo 17 mission took a photograph that had become one of the most reproduced images of all time the earth in all its spherical glory the Blue Marble of course you could argue that any photographic evidence of a spherical earth in space on a product of an elaborate conspiracy or just that any assumptions of a curved surface have arisen from misinterpreting the evidence you think that with modern navigational techniques oceanic exploration flight spaceflight photos from space photos from the moon and even photos sent back from probes millions of miles from our planet that this would be proof enough and then as the Sun planets exoplanets and even our own moon all visibly rotating spheres surely earth must follow this seemingly Universal trend there's only one way to find out why during a lunar eclipse the Earth passes between the Sun and the moon the result being the Earth's shadow is cast upon the moon like this if you look closely you can see the shadow has a slight curve to it that curve is the clue to the shape of our teracles earth almost undeniable right well not for a flat earther instead they argue that there's no evidence that the shadow is even created by the earth and that the shadow could come from any celestial body intersecting the light between the Sun and the moon I think I need a moment and relax there's no point in getting riled up there's plenty of other evidence for a spherical earth time zones the center of gravity thousands of images taken from telescopes and spacecraft and they all point to the same result but I'll admit it's tricky to test these without a rocket and a lot of cash and all I've got is a melon ah hurricane did you know that large storms spin in different directions depending on which hemisphere that they are in yep very strange in the northern hemisphere hurricane spin counterclockwise and in the southern hemisphere they spin clockwise this is caused by something called the Coriolis effect it's all because we live on a giant spinning ball melot no melon melon melon that's a man the Earth spins on its axis at just over a thousand miles per hour and because the earth is a sphere the surface at the equator is actually traveling much faster than the surface at the poles just like my ciy merry-go-round this dip into speed means that the moving particles making up large bodies of air and liquid have different angular momenta depending on how close or far away they are from the earth axis and so like a melon they change direction relative to the motion of the earth let's see that again super slow ball when cold air flows towards the equator from the poles deflected sideways adding up to a huge mass of spinning air that we call a hurricane now to be fair you could observe the Coriolis effect on a flat spinning disk however all the Hurricanes would spin the same way only on a sphere where you have two penises can this effect cause the wind to travel in both directions it's the same reason why in theory water drains in different directions in the northern and southern penetrative but drains directly down at the equator and it's also why Phil can't catch one melon so there you go some fairly good melon based evidence for a spherical earth I think you will agree and hopefully it's swayed you if you were wavering towards Flat Earth 3 if not good luck trying to figure out how all the water stayed in and how the Sun sets and and why we haven't found an edge yet and how the caesars working well just about everything but hey enough about what I think what about you is the earth flat square resting on the back of a giant turtle let me know in the comments below and as always don't forget to subscribe for more science videos [Music]

Channel: BBC Earth Lab

Views: 241,615

Rating: 3.6594532 out of 5

Keywords: is the earth flat, is the earth round, flat earther, flat earther conspiracy, flatearther, flat earth conspiracy, flat earther debunk, flat earther debunking, round earth theory, flat earth theory, bbc earth lab, bbc earth, bbc

Id: xVMFOvxaxW8

Length: 6min 49sec (409 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 06 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/ohmysweetbabyjesus]

Sad that this was deemed necessary.