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A throwdown between a rapper and an astrophysicist centers on whether the Earth is a vault of heaven , a scientific question that was purportedly settled in the third 100 B.C.
Rapper - singer Bobby Ray Simmons Jr. ( have sex as B.o . B ) released a track called " Flatline " on Monday ( Jan. 25 ) , dissing take down astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson after the two had engaged in a Twitter argument over Earth ’s anatomy , which B.o . B spirit to be flat . In the course , B.o . atomic number 5 hollers , " Aye , Neil Tysonneed to loosen up his vest / They ’ll probably save that human one Hades of a check , " and even imbed part of a talk by Tyson in which he says , " So it ’s not actually a celestial sphere , it ’s an … it ’s oblate , it ’s officially an oblate spheroid . "
In this depiction of what a flat Earth would look like, Antarctica is represented as a layer of ice surrounding a disc-shaped Earth.
earthly concern ’s pumpkin-shaped spherical - ness was determined long ago . While the ancient Greeks were among the first to discern that the Earth is a sphere , there were still mass who did n’t think it could be lawful , because , well , face around . The footing is mat and plainly so all the direction to the horizon . [ Religion and Science : 6 vision of Earth ’s Core ]
This common - sense logical thinking is , in part , what motor more modernflat - Earth beliefs . In the last century a whole high society — the Flat Earth Society — has grown up around it . The 19th - century version was call the Zetetic Society , which eventually disbanded .
So what do level - Earthers really consider ? A look at the Flat Earth Society website pass on some answers here . Their model of the Earth looks something like the logotype of the United Nations , with the North Pole at the center . The Earth is a round disc , circumvent by an water ice wall ( Antarctica , which the U.N. logotype does n’t show ) . The sun and moon are each about 32 miles across , and hang about 3,000 miles above the surface of the Earth .
Gravity does n’t enter into their literary argument , because categoric - Earth cosmology say the whole disk is accelerate at exactly 32 feet per second in the " up " direction .
Earth ’s seeming flatness
There are several business of evidence , though , that the Earth is round . But first , we can appear at why it seem flat , and why that misled people for so long . [ solid ground from Above : 101 Stunning Images from Orbit ]
The Earth is a celestial sphere about 24,000 miles ( 38,624 kilometers ) around at the equator — a middling big number relative to a person ’s visual ability . To calculate the distance one could expect to see , multiply the diam of the Earth ( about 7,917 miles , or 12,742 km ) by the height of the person ( or building , or batch one is bear on ) and take the square root . For a 6 - ft - tall soul standing on a beach , that works out to about 3 miles . ( A more rough - and - ready version of this says the horizon in mil will be 1.22 meter the square base of the height in feet . ) This is also why the distance one can see get down bombastic the higher up you go .
This assumes a dead spherical Earth ( it is n’t ) and no refraction of visible light from the standard atmosphere ( there is some ) . But as a oecumenical estimate this works pretty well , and explainswhy the Earth looks flat : The " drib " on the horizon due to the major planet ’s curvature is only a few foot per sea mile .
There are other crease of grounds , and that gets us to the ancient Greeks . Specifically , a man cite Eratosthenes , who experience in Syene , Egypt . On the summer solstice , Eratosthenes had seen that a well had no shadows : the sun was at its zenith . He deduced that if the Earth were spherical , he could reckon out the planet ’s size of it by checking the slant of the sunshine at some other location , assuming the Dominicus was so far away that its beam were fundamentally parallel . So , in about 240 B.C. , he had someone measure the distance between Syene ( modern - twenty-four hours Aswan ) and Alexandria , and retard the slant of the sun at both locations . He launch a little , mensurable difference in the slant , and calculated that the Earth was 24,662 to 28,968 miles in perimeter , according to scientists today . He was amiss , but not by much .
By about A.D. 1 , the estimation of a globose Earth was pick out as a affair of course almost everywhere ; Native American astronomer were convince , and Moslem scholar used the conception to calculate the direction and length to Mecca , agree to the work of David A. King , a former prof of the history of science at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Berlin .
Even ChristopherColumbus knew the Earth was round — the old story of him ingest to convince anyone otherwise is a myth ( popularized by Washington Irving in a life of Columbus ) . The real trouble was that his estimates of the length toChinawere too low-toned . coeval think his mission was suicidal , because the crews would die of thirst scatty stumbling on a hitherto unnamed germ of fresh water ( as noted by Samuel Elliot Morrison , who pen a Pulitzer - Prize winning life history of Columbus in 1942).Ferdinand Magellan , of course , defeat the flat - Earth idea once and for all by sail all the direction around the world .
Flat - Earthers
The modern matte - Earthers can trace their intellectual lineage to a man name Samuel Rowbotham ( 1816–1884 ) . He release a book on the flatness of the Earth called " Zetetic Astronomy : Earth Not a world . " When he died those theme lived on , as a cleaning woman named Lady Elizabeth Blount founded the Universal Zetetic Society . The society petered out after World War I. The current Flat Earth Society is headed by a man named Daniel Shenton , and has a site outlining experimentation that purportedly showthe Earth is insipid .
One such experiment involves using a 6 - sea mile length of duct to show that the Earth is not , in fact , round , quarrel the old go through that ships ' hulls vanish below the celestial horizon and would not if the Earth were not curved . It ’s called the Bedford Level Experiment . A help of Rowbotham ’s used a telescope to watch over a boat rowing out ; since the Cordell Hull of the sauceboat remained visible even though it was 6 knot distant , it was ab initio taken to prove that the observation of ship ' hulls was wrong , and a trick of perspective . The naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace repeated the experiment , and learn into account the deflection of the atmosphere , by setting his sight parentage higher . He showed that , yes , in fact , the Earth is a sphere , as published in Nature in April 1870 .
One other way to show that there ’s a horizon is , in fact , witha ripe telescope . If the Earth were categoric , then even if perspective made it hard to resolve objects near the horizon ( it does ) , then with a decent scope one should be able-bodied to see , for lesson , the Welsh sea-coast from Boston . But you ca n’t ; no matter how good the scope is , Europe never comes into view .
That aside , flat - Earthers have come up with some other — rather ingenious — " trial impression " that the Earth is compressed . One is the distances around the Southern Ocean . The flat - earthly concern model says that the distance between , say , Melbourne , Australia , and Santiago , Chile , should be corking than the space between New York and Beijing . Melbourne is 7,002 mi ( 11,268 km ) from Santiago , while New York is 6 , 824 mile ( 10,982 kilometre ) from Beijing . Rowbotham gives some distance estimates in his leger ; the trouble is they are just wrong : " From near Cape Horn , Chile to Port Philip in Melbourne , Australia the aloofness is 9,000 knot , " Rowbotham writes . It ’s really 5,681 statute mile . Rowbotham ’s figure would apply to a flat Earth , but he assumes that at the showtime . give the distance estimation aside , he presume the longitude are separate by 143 degrees ; the actual figure is about 149 arcdegree .
If the travelling length does n’t give Earth ’s curve away , eclipses surely would : An interesting artifact of Eratosthenes ' figuring is that if you strike the Earth is flat the flesh for how high the Dominicus would be matches the radius of the Earth — in this example , you sham that the sun ’s rays are not parallel ( asEratosthenesdid ) but are emanating from a spherical sun a short length aside . But the fact thateclipseshappen give the game away ; if the planet were flat there would be nothing to retch a shadow , say , across the sun or moon . The Flat Earth Wiki say it ’s a " shadow object " and posit that the reason nobody has ever image this behemoth aim on Earth is that the sun ’s glare blots out everything else in the sky during the day . batch of people have observedVenus , for example , during the 24-hour interval ( it ’s hard , but it can be done ) . If there were some phantasma object big enough — remember flat - Earthers think the moon is some 32 Swedish mile across — it has to find a style to be invisible during both twenty-four hours and night . [ See Photos : ' Lost ' Astronomy Plates Show Historic Eclipse and More ]
That links to another publication : The Pole Star puzzle lower in the sky as one travel south , and finally dips below the apparent horizon . If the Earth were flat no matter how far you go , Polaris would never get below the horizon at all , nor would new stars become visible as you travel to the south – they sure as shooting would not rise above the horizon at a constant pace of 1 arcdegree for every degree of parallel of latitude traveled south , because of the geometry of a flat Earth , and monotone sky .
Flat - Earthers swear incisively that , though : The stars are actually only 3,100 miles above us , and ascertain Polaris approach the horizon is a trick of perspective . So as you locomote south , more issue forth into view . But were that the case , you would not see stars coming over a horizon ; the southern sensation would look bunched together in a kind of shiny band that pass over the southern sky — on the button because of perspective . ( This strike a flat sky as fight to a dome shape , which is the only way the argument can work . )
consort to flat - Earth cosmogeny , Antarctica is really an deoxyephedrine paries that keeps the water in the ocean in billet , and thatNASAemployees ( among other administration conspirators ) are guarding the place to keep people out . Explorer Roald Amundsen was manipulate it ( or badly false ) , and understandably the dozens of military expedition to the region were all in on the conspiracy to hide the edge of the Earth , accord to flat - Earth impression . The moon missions , by the way , are a hoax , and GPS satellites are rigged somehow to show the Earth is circular , though it ’s unclear how they could stop anyone from flying or sweep in focus that would disprove that .
In addition , if the Earth were accelerating enough to create the illusion of gravity , then finally it would draw close ( but not quite hand ) the speed of light , according to the theory of relativity . More interesting , the mass would continually increase ( proportional to the quietus of the universe ) . But flat - world cosmogeny does n’t seem to admit graveness , so it ’s also not clear-cut whether they bribe Einstein’s theory of relativity at all .
