Latest / Lost Civilizations: Ancient Aliens & Forgotten History / FLAT EARTH – What If They’re Actually Right?

Transcript

FLAT EARTH – What If They’re Actually Right? · Lost Civilizations: Ancient Aliens & Forgotten History

• 0:00
  Imagine waking up tomorrow morning, you get out
• 0:04
  of bed, you walk over to the window,
• 0:06
  and you look outside.
• 0:08
  What do you see?
• 0:09
  Houses, trees, roads, perhaps the ocean, if you're
• 0:14
  lucky.
• 0:15
  But there is one thing you probably don't
• 0:18
  see.
• 0:18
  You don't see a giant ball.
• 0:21
  And what if you don't feel the ground
• 0:24
  moving under your feet?
• 0:26
  Still, all your life you have been told
• 0:28
  that you live on the surface of a
• 0:30
  huge globe, a globe that is spinning.
• 0:33
  At the same time, it's moving around the
• 0:35
  sun.
• 0:36
  The Sun is moving through the Milky Way,
• 0:39
  and our entire galaxy is moving through space.
• 0:43
  But right now, where you are sitting?
• 0:47
  Everything feels completely still.
• 0:49
  So let's do something a little dangerous.
• 0:51
  For a moment, let's forget what we learned
• 0:53
  in school.
• 0:54
  Not because it was necessarily wrong, but because
• 0:58
  something does not become true just because a
• 1:02
  teacher told us it was true.
• 1:05
  And it does not become false just because
• 1:07
  somebody on YouTube says the opposite.
• 1:11
  So in this episode, I want to try
• 1:13
  something different.
• 1:14
  I want to take Flat Earth seriously, not
• 1:17
  as a joke, not as a story about
• 1:20
  stupid people on the internet, but as a
• 1:22
  hypothesis.
• 1:23
  Because if we really believe in thinking for
• 1:26
  ourselves, then we should be able to be
• 1:30
  allowed to ask a very simple question.
• 1:33
  How do we actually know that the Earth
• 1:36
  is round?
• 1:37
  Not NASA, not the government, not a school
• 1:40
  book, us.
• 1:42
  How can you and I know?
• 1:45
  And even more important, is the Earth really?
• 1:50
  If the Earth really were flat, how would
• 1:53
  we find out?
• 1:55
  Welcome back to the rabbit hole.
• 1:58
  Flat Earth has an image problem.
• 2:02
  Just saying the words makes many people smile.
• 2:06
  A Flat Earth?
• 2:07
  Of course not.
• 2:08
  Case closed.
• 2:09
  But that reaction is actually interesting.
• 2:13
  Imagine asking someone, how do you know that
• 2:18
  the Earth is round?
• 2:19
  A lot of people will answer, because we
• 2:22
  have pictures of it.
• 2:23
  Okay, where do those pictures come from?
• 2:27
  Satellites, space agencies, astronauts.
• 2:31
  But what if the person you're asking does
• 2:36
  not trust space agencies?
• 2:40
  Then we have a problem, because the argument
• 2:43
  becomes circular.
• 2:45
  NASA says the Earth is round, but how
• 2:47
  do we know that NASA is telling the
• 2:49
  truth?
• 2:50
  Because NASA shows us pictures of the round
• 2:53
  Earth, but those pictures are exactly what the
• 2:56
  other person is questioning.
• 2:59
  That does not mean that the pictures are
• 3:01
  fake.
• 3:02
  It simply means the argument will not convince
• 3:05
  somebody who already doubts the source.
• 3:10
  And this is where the Flat Earth becomes
• 3:12
  more interesting, because the more serious supporters, they
• 3:17
  will simply not say, the Earth is flat.
• 3:21
  They will say, forget the authorities, forget the
• 3:24
  pictures, go outside and look for yourself.
• 3:28
  That actually sounds scientific.
• 3:30
  Observe, measure, test, repeat.
• 3:34
  The problem comes later, because what do those
• 3:39
  observations actually show?
• 3:43
  Let's begin with one of the strongest intuitive
• 3:47
  arguments.
• 3:49
  If the Earth is spinning, why can't we
• 3:52
  feel it?
• 3:53
  At the equator, the surface of the Earth
• 3:56
  is moving about 1000 miles per hour.
• 4:02
  That sounds incredibly fast.
• 4:05
  If I was sitting on top of a
• 4:06
  car moving 1000 miles per hour, I would
• 4:09
  probably notice.
• 4:11
  So why don't we fly off the Earth?
• 4:15
  Why don't we feel the wind?
• 4:18
  And why can't a helicopter simply take off,
• 4:21
  stay in one place and wait for the
• 4:23
  destination to move underneath it?
• 4:26
  The last question appears again and again in
• 4:28
  the Flat Earth videos.
• 4:30
  At first it sounds reasonable, but imagine that
• 4:34
  you are on an airplane.
• 4:36
  You get out of your seat.
• 4:38
  The plane may be traveling more than 500
• 4:41
  miles per hour.
• 4:42
  You jump.
• 4:44
  Do you land at the back of the cabin?
• 4:47
  No.
• 4:48
  You land almost exactly where you started.
• 4:50
  You, the air inside the cabin and the
• 4:53
  airplane are already sharing the same movement.
• 4:57
  We don't easily feel constant speed.
• 5:02
  What we feel is the change in movement,
• 5:05
  acceleration, braking, turbulence.
• 5:08
  The same basic idea applies to Earth.
• 5:11
  The atmosphere is not standing still while the
• 5:14
  planet spins underneath it.
• 5:17
  The atmosphere is a part of the system.
• 5:21
  So a helicopter does not lose the Earth
• 5:23
  motions just because its wheels leave the
• 5:27
  ground.
• 5:29
  It is really no stranger than throwing a
• 5:33
  ball into the air inside a moving train.
• 5:36
  The ball does not fly to the back
• 5:39
  wall.
• 5:40
  But then comes the next question.
• 5:43
  Okay, maybe we don't feel the rotation, but
• 5:47
  can we measure this?
• 5:49
  And this is where things get interesting.
• 5:55
  In 1851, a French physicist named Léon Foucault
• 5:59
  had a simple problem.
• 6:02
  How could he show that Earth was rotating
• 6:05
  without looking at the stars?
• 6:07
  He hung up a heavy weight from a
• 6:09
  very long wire, a giant pendulum.
• 6:14
  If the Earth was not rotating, the direction
• 6:17
  of the pendulum swing should stay the same
• 6:21
  compared with the floor.
• 6:23
  But if the Earth was turning underneath it,
• 6:26
  the direction should simply slowly appear to change.
• 6:31
  And that was exactly what happened.
• 6:33
  Foucault's pendulum became a direct physical demonstration of
• 6:38
  the Earth's rotation.
• 6:39
  No photographs, no NASA, no satellites, just the
• 6:43
  pendulum.
• 6:44
  And there it becomes even more interesting.
• 6:47
  The rate of change depends on your latitude.
• 6:51
  The effect is strongest at the pole.
• 6:53
  At the equator, the pendulum behaves differently.
• 6:57
  That is exactly what we would expect on
• 7:00
  a rotating globe.
• 7:02
  Now, this does not make every Flat Earth
• 7:04
  argument disappear.
• 7:06
  You can still suggest another force, an electromagnetic
• 7:10
  field, movements in the sky, something else affecting
• 7:14
  the pendulum.
• 7:16
  But now our alternative model has a problem.
• 7:19
  It does not only have to explain the
• 7:21
  pendulum, it also has to explain why the
• 7:24
  effects change with latitude exactly in the way
• 7:27
  a rotating Earth predicts.
• 7:30
  And this is where we are getting started.
• 7:35
  We need to go back to England.
• 7:38
  One second.
• 7:40
  I'm back.
• 7:42
  We need to travel back to England, to
• 7:45
  the 19th century, to a man named Samuel
• 7:48
  Burley Row Bothaddam.
• 7:51
  In the modern Flat Earth movement, the man
• 7:54
  is a kind of a spiritual grandfather.
• 7:57
  Row Bothaddam is a very good candidate.
• 8:01
  He sometimes wrote under the name Parallax.
• 8:05
  And he developed what he called strategic astronomy.
• 8:11
  The basic idea is actually quite reasonable.
• 8:14
  Start with observation, not theory.
• 8:17
  Look for yourself.
• 8:19
  Test it yourself.
• 8:21
  Row Bothaddam was most famous experiment took place
• 8:28
  at the Bedford Level.
• 8:31
  It is a long straight stretch of water
• 8:33
  in eastern England.
• 8:35
  The idea is simple.
• 8:37
  If the surface of the Earth curves, a
• 8:40
  distant object should slowly disappear behind that curve.
• 8:45
  But if the water is flat, you should
• 8:48
  still be able to see the object.
• 8:51
  Row Bothaddam made observations along a stretch about
• 8:54
  six miles.
• 8:56
  And he concluded that the water was flat.
• 8:59
  Therefore, the Earth was not a globe.
• 9:02
  The Bedford Level experiment became one of the
• 9:05
  foundations of the modern Flat Earth thinking.
• 9:09
  But the story does not end there.
• 9:12
  In 1870, another experiment was carried out, this
• 9:16
  time by Alfred Russel Wallace.
• 9:19
  If that name sounds familiar, there's a reason.
• 9:22
  Vallis developed ideas about evolution through natural selections,
• 9:28
  independent of Charles Darwin.
• 9:31
  Vallis changed the setup on the experiment.
• 9:34
  And he considered a very important problem, atmospheric
• 9:39
  refraction.
• 9:41
  Light does not always travel in perfect straight
• 9:44
  lines through layers of air with different temperature
• 9:48
  and densities.
• 9:50
  Over water, this can become extremely important.
• 9:53
  That is why we sometimes see mirages.
• 9:56
  Objects can appear to float, ships can look
• 10:00
  stretched, the horizon itself can look different.
• 10:05
  Vallis' result was consistent with a curved Earth.
• 10:09
  And there's an important detail, because Bedford Levels
• 10:13
  shows us something central in the entire debate.
• 10:17
  It is not enough to look.
• 10:19
  We also need to understand what happened to
• 10:22
  the light that we are looking through.
• 10:32
  Maybe the most important Flat Earth question is
• 10:35
  this.
• 10:35
  Where is the curve?
• 10:37
  If the Earth is a globe, shouldn't we
• 10:41
  be able to see it?
• 10:43
  It sounds reasonable.
• 10:44
  The Earth has circumference about 25,000 miles.
• 10:53
  That means that the curve over a short
• 10:55
  distance is very small.
• 10:58
  Imagine an ant standing on a giant beach
• 11:01
  ball.
• 11:02
  If that ball were thousands of miles wide,
• 11:06
  the area around the ant should look flat.
• 11:09
  That is exactly what we should expect.
• 11:12
  But Flat Earth supporters point to photographs taken
• 11:15
  across very long distances.
• 11:18
  Buildings, mountains, ships, objects that, according to simple
• 11:22
  online calculations, should be hidden behind the curve.
• 11:27
  Some of those photographs are really interesting.
• 11:31
  But once again, the atmosphere creates a problem.
• 11:35
  Refraction can make a distant object appear higher
• 11:40
  than they really are.
• 11:42
  Temperature inversions can create extreme optical effects.
• 11:47
  And this is where both sides often make
• 11:49
  the same mistakes.
• 11:51
  A Flat Earth shown a photograph will say
• 11:54
  something like, look, no curve.
• 11:57
  A critic answers: refraction.
• 12:00
  And both sides think that the discussion is
• 12:02
  over.
• 12:03
  But that's not science.
• 12:05
  If refraction is the explanation, we should also
• 12:08
  be able to measure it.
• 12:10
  And if Flat Earth is the explanations, the
• 12:12
  model should also make predictions.
• 12:17
  This is where we need to ask the
• 12:18
  harder questions.
• 12:19
  Not, can Flat Earth explain the one photograph?
• 12:23
  But can one Flat Earth model explain all
• 12:26
  the observations at the same time?
• 12:29
  That is a much harder test.
• 12:34
  Imagine a ship sailing away from you.
• 12:37
  It gets smaller.
• 12:38
  Eventually, it disappears.
• 12:40
  The Flat Earth explanation is often perspective.
• 12:44
  Everything becomes smaller with distance.
• 12:46
  And of course, that is true.
• 12:48
  But on a globe, something more specific should
• 12:51
  happen.
• 12:52
  The bottom of the ship should disappear first,
• 12:55
  then the rest.
• 12:56
  And that is normally what we observe.
• 12:59
  Then comes the counter-argument.
• 13:01
  Use a camera with a powerful zoom.
• 13:03
  And the ship becomes back.
• 13:07
  Sometimes it does.
• 13:08
  If the ship had simply become too small
• 13:12
  for the camera to see clearly.
• 13:14
  But not always.
• 13:15
  When a ship is physical behind a geometric
• 13:19
  horizon, zoom can either make the visible part
• 13:23
  larger.
• 13:24
  But zoom cannot bring back the part of
• 13:27
  the ship that is hidden.
• 13:29
  We can test this.
• 13:30
  And even better, we can change the height
• 13:33
  of the observer.
• 13:34
  Move higher and the horizons move farther away.
• 13:40
  Part of a distant object may become visible
• 13:43
  again.
• 13:43
  And that is exactly what geometry of a
• 13:46
  globe predicts.
• 13:48
  On an endless flat surface, we need another
• 13:51
  explanation.
• 13:52
  But let's give Flat Earth the best possible
• 13:55
  chance.
• 13:56
  Maybe perspective is stranger than we think.
• 13:59
  So let's look up.
• 14:05
  The best known Flat Earth model, the North
• 14:07
  Pole, is at the center.
• 14:10
  The continents are spread around it.
• 14:13
  Antarctica is not a continent at the bottom
• 14:16
  of the globe.
• 14:17
  Instead, it's a huge ring of ice around
• 14:19
  the entire world.
• 14:21
  The Sun and the Moon are relatively close
• 14:24
  to the Earth's surface.
• 14:27
  The Sun moves around the Flat Earth like
• 14:31
  a lamp.
• 14:32
  Day and night happens because the Sun only
• 14:35
  lights part of the disk at this time.
• 14:38
  At first that sounds like a model.
• 14:41
  And a model that can be tested.
• 14:42
  So let's test the Sunset.
• 14:45
  On a Flat Earth, the Sun should move
• 14:49
  farther and farther away from the observer.
• 14:52
  So it should also appear smaller.
• 14:58
  Eventually, it should disappear into the distance.
• 15:02
  But this is not what a normal sunset
• 15:04
  looks like.
• 15:06
  The Sun stays almost at the same appearance
• 15:09
  size through the day.
• 15:11
  And in the evening, it moves down behind
• 15:14
  the horizon.
• 15:15
  The bottom disappears first and then the rest.
• 15:19
  You can measure this with the right camera
• 15:21
  equipment and filters.
• 15:23
  And after the Sun has set, sometimes you
• 15:25
  can go higher location and you can see
• 15:28
  it again.
• 15:29
  That is difficult to explain with a local
• 15:32
  sun moving about a flat disk.
• 15:38
  But it is completely natural on a curved
• 15:41
  surface.
• 15:42
  And now we have an even bigger problem.
• 15:45
  Time zones.
• 15:47
  When it's noon in Europe, it can be
• 15:49
  nighttime somewhere else.
• 15:51
  So the Flat Earth model has to explain
• 15:54
  exactly how sunlight is limited to one part
• 15:57
  of the world.
• 15:58
  A normal lamp sends lights in all directions.
• 16:02
  So why doesn't a local sun light up
• 16:06
  the entire disk?
• 16:07
  The answer is often some kind of a
• 16:10
  spotlight effect.
• 16:11
  Perspective, the atmosphere, or special properties of the
• 16:16
  light.
• 16:17
  Once again, we have to ask, can we
• 16:19
  measure it?
• 16:20
  Can the model predict exactly where the line
• 16:24
  between day and night will be on a
• 16:26
  certain date?
• 16:27
  Because on the global model, we can't do
• 16:30
  that.
• 16:32
  And there's a difference between an explanation and
• 16:35
  a prediction.
• 16:41
  Now we reach into one of the biggest
• 16:43
  problems for the Flat Earth model, the midnight
• 16:45
  sun.
• 16:47
  North of the Arctic Circle, the Sun can
• 16:50
  stay about the horizon for 24 hours during
• 16:54
  summer.
• 16:55
  That actually fits very well in the cladding.
• 17:01
  I'll try again.
• 17:02
  Sorry.
• 17:04
  That actually fits fairly easily into the classic
• 17:07
  Flat Earth model.
• 17:09
  The Sun circles around the North Pole.
• 17:11
  Fine.
• 17:13
  The problem is in the South.
• 17:15
  Because on a globe, the same thing happens
• 17:18
  in Antarctica during the southern summer.
• 17:22
  The Sun can stay about the horizon all
• 17:25
  day and all night.
• 17:27
  And the classic Flat Earth map, this becomes
• 17:30
  extremely difficult.
• 17:31
  Because Antarctica is shown as a giant ring
• 17:35
  around an entire outside edge of the world.
• 17:38
  A local sun moving in circle further inside
• 17:41
  the disk should not be visible moving all
• 17:46
  the way around an observer near the outer
• 17:49
  edge in the way that we actually see.
• 17:53
  And that is why Antarctica matters a lot.
• 17:58
  It is also why Antarctica plays a huge
• 18:01
  role in the Flat Earth story.
• 18:09
  And this is where the story becomes really
• 18:11
  good.
• 18:11
  Because if the Flat Earth is a flat
• 18:14
  disk, where's the edge?
• 18:17
  Rowbotham's model Antarctica was the outer boundary.
• 18:21
  A huge wall of ice.
• 18:23
  Not necessarily an edge where you can fall
• 18:26
  into space, but a wall of ice surrounding
• 18:29
  the known world.
• 18:30
  And immediately another question appears.
• 18:34
  Why hasn't anyone simply investigated it?
• 18:39
  The Flat Earth explanation often points to the
• 18:42
  Antarctic Treaty.
• 18:44
  The treaty was signed in 1959.
• 18:48
  And the story goes quickly into dramatic.
• 18:51
  During the Cold War, countries that strongly disagreed
• 18:54
  with each other were still able to cooperate
• 18:57
  in Antarctica.
• 18:58
  Why?
• 19:01
  The Flat Earth story has an answer.
• 19:03
  Because they all knew, because they all know
• 19:07
  the secret.
• 19:08
  The Antarctic Treaty supposedly prevents ordinary people from
• 19:12
  freely exploring the area.
• 19:14
  The military guard the ice.
• 19:17
  Nobody is allowed to cross it.
• 19:19
  And behind the ice, this is where the
• 19:21
  theories split apart.
• 19:23
  Some believe there's more land, other worlds, hidden
• 19:27
  continents, resources, maybe even civilizations.
• 19:32
  And some maps shared online shows enormous unknown
• 19:35
  lands behind Antarctica.
• 19:38
  It is a fantastic material for conspiracy theory,
• 19:41
  but there is a problem.
• 19:44
  You can actually travel to Antarctica.
• 19:46
  Tourists can do that every year.
• 19:49
  Expeditions go there, private citizens go there, scientists
• 19:52
  from many countries go there.
• 19:54
  There are rules.
• 19:56
  You need permits.
• 19:57
  Environmental restrictions and a huge area are extremely
• 20:01
  dangerous and difficult to reach.
• 20:04
  But the Antarctic Treaty does not say nobody
• 20:07
  is allowed to see the ice wall.
• 20:10
  It regulates peaceful activities, scientific work, and environmental
• 20:15
  protections, among other things.
• 20:17
  So the idea that the treaty simply prevent
• 20:20
  ordinary people from discovering the edge of the
• 20:22
  Earth does not hold up.
• 20:24
  But a Flat Earth supporter can still ask
• 20:27
  a good question.
• 20:29
  Why not simply cross Antarctica and settle
• 20:31
  the issue?
• 20:33
  People have crossed the continent.
• 20:36
  And modern navigation gives us the distances that
• 20:39
  fits Antarctica as a continent, not as a
• 20:42
  ring around the entire world, which brings us
• 20:45
  to perhaps the most, should I say, the
• 20:48
  biggest problem for the Flat Earth, the map.
• 20:55
  If the Earth is flat, one thing should
• 20:57
  be fairly easy.
• 20:59
  Draw a map, not a decorative logo, a
• 21:01
  real map with a scale, a map where
• 21:04
  the distances between cities are correct, where the
• 21:08
  flight roads work, where ship roads work, where
• 21:13
  the position of the Sun works, where the
• 21:15
  stars work, where the latitude and longitude works.
• 21:20
  The most popular Flat Earth map looks like
• 21:23
  an azimuthal map with the North Pole at
• 21:25
  the center.
• 21:27
  It looks convincing.
• 21:28
  North America here, Europe there, Asia, Africa, Australia,
• 21:33
  Antarctica as a ring around everything.
• 21:38
  The problem appears when we measure distances in
• 21:41
  the southern atmosphere.
• 21:43
  Australia becomes enormous.
• 21:45
  Distances between South America, Africa, and Australia becomes
• 21:50
  badly distorted, but people travel those routes, pilots,
• 21:55
  passengers, cargo, aircraft, ships.
• 21:59
  We don't need to trust NASA.
• 22:01
  We can buy a ticket.
• 22:03
  If the Flat Earth map were correct, certain
• 22:05
  flights should take much longer than they actually
• 22:09
  do, but they don't.
• 22:12
  Then we hear another answer.
• 22:14
  The flight routes are fake.
• 22:18
  GPS is manipulated.
• 22:20
  The speed between on the airplane's screens are
• 22:24
  wrong.
• 22:25
  Maybe the pilots don't even know.
• 22:28
  And something important happens here.
• 22:30
  We started with a physical model, but for
• 22:32
  every observation that does not fit, we now
• 22:35
  have to add another hidden mechanism.
• 22:38
  The maps are fake.
• 22:39
  GPS is fake.
• 22:41
  The flight routes are fake.
• 22:42
  Astronomy is fake.
• 22:44
  Satellites are fake.
• 22:45
  The pictures are fake.
• 22:48
  And the more extra explanations we add, the
• 22:55
  harder the theory becomes to test, because if
• 22:59
  every piece of evidence against the theory can
• 23:02
  be explained as a part of a conspiracy,
• 23:05
  what could ever prove that the theory is
• 23:08
  wrong?
• 23:09
  We will come back to that question, but
• 23:11
  first we need to look at the sky,
• 23:13
  because the sky is brutal.
• 23:20
  Go outside on a clear night on the
• 23:22
  northern hemisphere, like in Denmark, and find the
• 23:26
  North Star, Polaris.
• 23:28
  Then we photograph the sky over a long
• 23:31
  period of time.
• 23:32
  The stars appears to move in circles around
• 23:34
  a point close to Polaris.
• 23:37
  That works fine with a rotating Earth, but
• 23:40
  first, it could also work with a flat
• 23:45
  Earth, where the sky rotates about us.
• 23:49
  So that proves nothing, at least not yet.
• 23:53
  And now let's travel south.
• 23:55
  The farther south we go, the lower the
• 23:58
  Polaris appears in the sky.
• 24:01
  At the equator, it's close to the horizon.
• 24:03
  If you go further south, it disappears, and
• 24:06
  that is exactly what we expect on a
• 24:08
  globe.
• 24:10
  But the really interesting thing happens in the
• 24:15
  southern sky, in Australia, in South Africa, in
• 24:18
  South America.
• 24:19
  Here the stars appears to rotate around a
• 24:22
  different point in the sky, and they rotate
• 24:25
  in the opposite direction of what we see
• 24:29
  around in the northern sky.
• 24:31
  Now imagine the Flat Earth map.
• 24:34
  Australia is on one side, South America is
• 24:38
  somewhere else, and South Africa is another direction.
• 24:41
  If observers of all three places look towards
• 24:44
  the southern celestial pole, they are looking into
• 24:49
  very different directions on a Flat Earth map,
• 24:52
  and yet they see the same southern sky.
• 24:55
  That creates a serious geometric problem.
• 24:58
  On a globe, it's simple.
• 25:00
  The observers are standing on different parts of
• 25:02
  the same planet and looking outwards relative to
• 25:05
  the same axis of rotation.
• 25:08
  On a flat disk, we need a much
• 25:11
  more complicated optical model.
• 25:14
  Again, it's not impossible to make a claim,
• 25:20
  but the model has to be shown, it
• 25:22
  has to be calculated, it has to predict
• 25:24
  what we observe.
• 25:31
  Now we need to travel more than 2000
• 25:33
  years into the past.
• 25:35
  No satellites, no NASA, no computers, just a
• 25:38
  man, the Sun, and a stick.
• 25:41
  The man's name is Eratosthenes.
• 25:47
  He lived in the third century before Christ
• 25:50
  and worked in Alexandria.
• 25:52
  He knew about an interesting observation further south
• 25:56
  at Syene, near modern-day Aswan.
• 26:01
  Around the summer solstice, the Sun was extremely
• 26:05
  high in the sky there.
• 26:06
  At the same time, a vertical object in
• 26:09
  Alexandria created a measurable shadow.
• 26:13
  Erastorhenes compared the angle about 7.2 degrees,
• 26:18
  roughly 1 15th of a complete circle.
• 26:23
  If the Sun's rays reach earth almost parallel
• 26:28
  to each other and the Earth's surface is
• 26:31
  curved, then the distance between those two places
• 26:35
  represents about 1 15th of the entire earth
• 26:41
  circumference.
• 26:42
  Multiply that distance by 50 and you get
• 26:45
  the circumference of the Earth.
• 26:50
  His results came surprisingly close to the value
• 26:53
  that we use today.
• 26:54
  No satellites, no computers, no graphics, shadows, distance,
• 26:59
  geometry.
• 27:00
  But we need to be fair because flat
• 27:02
  earth has an answer.
• 27:04
  If the Sun is small and close to
• 27:06
  earth, its ray would not be parallel.
• 27:10
  Then the two sticks on a Flat Earth
• 27:12
  could also create a different shadow.
• 27:15
  And that is correct.
• 27:16
  Two shadows alone does not prove a globe.
• 27:19
  That is important.
• 27:20
  But now we can expand the experiment.
• 27:24
  We can use three cities, 10, 100.
• 27:29
  Measure at the same time.
• 27:31
  Now the height and the position of the
• 27:33
  local sun has to match every measurement.
• 27:37
  And when we compare, and when we combine
• 27:40
  many observations, the geometry fits a curved earth
• 27:43
  and a very distant sun.
• 27:46
  This is how scientific models become strong.
• 27:50
  Not because one experiments is sacred, but because
• 27:53
  many independent observations begin to point in the
• 27:57
  same direction.
• 28:04
  Aristotle wrote about the shape of the Earth
• 28:07
  more than 2000 years before NASA existed.
• 28:11
  One of his arguments involved lunar eclipses.
• 28:14
  During a lunar eclipse, the Moon moves through
• 28:17
  the Earth's shadow.
• 28:19
  And the edge of that shadow is curved.
• 28:22
  The interesting part is not only that it's
• 28:25
  curved, it remained curved no matter how the
• 28:29
  eclipse was oriented.
• 28:31
  A flat disc can create a round shadow
• 28:34
  if you hold a plate directly towards the
• 28:38
  light.
• 28:39
  But turn the plate and the shadow becomes
• 28:42
  oval.
• 28:43
  Turn it further and it becomes almost a
• 28:46
  line.
• 28:47
  A sphere with another on the other hand
• 28:52
  creates a circular shadow from every direction.
• 28:55
  That is a strong argument long before modern
• 28:58
  space travel.
• 29:00
  So Flat Earth models need another explanation for
• 29:03
  the lunar eclipses.
• 29:05
  Some suggest an invisible object, a so-called
• 29:08
  shadow object.
• 29:10
  Others suggested an electromagnetic or an optical effect.
• 29:16
  But we face the same problem again.
• 29:18
  Where is the object?
• 29:20
  How does it move?
• 29:22
  Why can't we see it?
• 29:24
  And can the model predict the next eclipse?
• 29:27
  The standard astronomical model can.
• 29:31
  Years into the future, with very accurate timing.
• 29:37
  That is an important difference.
• 29:40
  Good theory does not only explain what's already
• 29:44
  happened, it tells you when it happens next.
• 29:55
  Now we come to a word that creates
• 29:56
  problems in Flat Earth debates.
• 30:00
  Gravity.
• 30:01
  Many Flat Earth models reject gravity as the
• 30:05
  explanation.
• 30:06
  Instead they suggest density or buoyancy.
• 30:12
  Heavy things fall, light things rise.
• 30:17
  But something is missing.
• 30:19
  Direction.
• 30:20
  Density can help explain why a stone sinks
• 30:24
  in water while a root floats.
• 30:29
  But only if there is already a force
• 30:33
  creating up and down.
• 30:37
  Buoyancy works because of pressure differences in a gravitational
• 30:42
  fields.
• 30:43
  Without downward acceleration, density alone does not tell
• 30:48
  the stone which directions to move.
• 30:51
  Another Flat Earth model therefore suggests that the
• 30:54
  entire Flat Earth is accelerating upward at about
• 30:59
  9.8 meters per second.
• 31:06
  That would make us feel if we are
• 31:09
  being pushed against the ground.
• 31:12
  But then we run into another problem of
• 31:16
  reality.
• 31:17
  Long before the disk would appear to the
• 31:21
  speed of light, you can try to solve
• 31:23
  that using reality.
• 31:26
  But by that point the model has become
• 31:29
  much more complicated than the gravity that it
• 31:33
  was supposed to replace.
• 31:34
  And more importantly, gravity can be measured locally.
• 31:38
  Small changes in gravitational fields can be measured.
• 31:43
  They are used in geology, navigation, surveying, and
• 31:46
  once again you do not need a picture
• 31:49
  from space.
• 31:54
  A classic Flat Earth argument is this water
• 31:57
  finds its level.
• 31:59
  And that is true.
• 32:00
  Pour water into a glass, the surface looks
• 32:02
  flat.
• 32:04
  Fill a bathtub flat.
• 32:07
  A lake, it looks flat.
• 32:09
  And the ocean, it also looks flat too.
• 32:13
  So how can the oceans curve around a
• 32:16
  globe?
• 32:17
  The problem is the word level.
• 32:21
  Level does not mean endless geometric plane.
• 32:24
  On earth the ocean surface follows gravity.
• 32:28
  Locally it looks flat.
• 32:30
  Globally it follows the shape of the Earth.
• 32:34
  Think about the enormous size of the planet.
• 32:38
  Across a few feet the curve is so
• 32:40
  small that you can't see it.
• 32:43
  A spirit level works locally.
• 32:46
  And sometimes interesting happens when we are using
• 32:50
  extremely precise surveying across long distances.
• 32:56
  We have to account for the curvature of
• 32:59
  the of the Earth.
• 33:03
  Surveys were doing that long before the space
• 33:06
  age.
• 33:07
  Railroads, canals, bridges, tunnels, large engineering projects requires
• 33:12
  geodesy.
• 33:15
  If the Earth has a completely different geometry,
• 33:17
  the problem would not exist only at NASA.
• 33:21
  It would appear in thousands of ordinary engineering
• 33:24
  projects.
• 33:30
  But we also have to talk about NASA
• 33:32
  because you don't get very far into a
• 33:36
  Flat Earth rabbit hole before those four letters
• 33:40
  appear.
• 33:40
  NASA.
• 33:42
  The picture are CGI.
• 33:45
  Astronauts are hanging from wires.
• 33:49
  A space station is filmed in a studio.
• 33:52
  Bubbles in space prove that the footage is
• 33:55
  recorded underwater.
• 33:56
  Green screens, fake satellites, fake rockets, fake moon
• 34:01
  landings.
• 34:01
  And this is where the Flat Earth connects
• 34:04
  into another conspiracy theories.
• 34:06
  Because if the Moon landings were fake, what
• 34:09
  else is fake?
• 34:11
  If one image has been manipulated, why can
• 34:16
  we trust the others?
• 34:18
  If one image is manipulated, why can we
• 34:23
  trust the others?
• 34:25
  And space agencies really do things that can
• 34:29
  make communication difficult.
• 34:33
  Some images are composites.
• 34:36
  Colors can be adjusted.
• 34:38
  Satellite data may be combined.
• 34:40
  An image of the whole earth can be
• 34:43
  created from several sets of data.
• 34:47
  But the words composite and fake do not
• 34:50
  mean that the same thing.
• 34:52
  A panorama on your phone can be made
• 34:56
  from several pictures.
• 34:58
  That does not mean that your kitchen does
• 35:01
  not exist.
• 35:02
  Still, the Flat Earth criticism touches a real
• 35:05
  human problem.
• 35:07
  If an institution says, trust us, some people
• 35:11
  will automatically ask, why?
• 35:14
  And if I actually think, and I actually
• 35:19
  think that is healthy, the problem begins when
• 35:22
  skepticism only looks from one direction.
• 35:25
  If NASA has to prove everything, while a
• 35:29
  random internet video can prove nothing, skepticism has
• 35:34
  to work both ways.
• 35:36
  Otherwise, it's not really skepticism.
• 35:38
  It's just choosing a new authority.
• 35:46
  Let's assume that the Earth is flat and
• 35:49
  that the globe is a lie.
• 35:52
  How big would the conspiracy have to be?
• 35:55
  NASA, obviously.
• 35:57
  But NASA is American.
• 35:59
  What about Russia?
• 36:00
  Russia has its own space program.
• 36:02
  China, India, Japan, Europe, private companies, astronomers, surveys,
• 36:10
  pilots, sailors, meteorologists, engineers, scientists in Antarctica, amateur
• 36:18
  radio operators who track satellites, people who receive
• 36:23
  weather satellite signals using them for their own
• 36:26
  university, universities, military forces, and countries that are
• 36:32
  not exactly famous for trusting each other.
• 36:39
  They would not all have to know the
• 36:42
  whole secret.
• 36:43
  That is an important objection.
• 36:45
  A large conspiracy can be organized so only
• 36:49
  a few people understand the full picture.
• 36:51
  But the more independent systems that have to
• 36:56
  produce exactly the same false results, the bigger
• 36:59
  the problem becomes.
• 37:01
  China has to fake a globe in the
• 37:04
  same way as the United States.
• 37:07
  Russia has to do the same.
• 37:09
  India, Europe.
• 37:11
  And they have to continue doing that through
• 37:13
  us.
• 37:14
  Changes in government, espionage, defectors, economic conflicts for
• 37:20
  decades.
• 37:22
  That is not a logical problem.
• 37:24
  It is logically impossible.
• 37:26
  But the explanations become very expensive.
• 37:30
  And then we reach the perhaps most important
• 37:32
  questions.
• 37:33
  Why?
• 37:36
  Why hide it?
• 37:38
  There are many answers.
• 37:40
  Power, control, money, religion.
• 37:44
  If people discover that the Earth is flat,
• 37:46
  perhaps they would realize that the universe was
• 37:49
  created, that humans have a special place, that
• 37:54
  we are not just a random piece of
• 37:56
  dust in a huge universe.
• 37:59
  Some Flat Earth ideas are therefore deeply religious.
• 38:03
  The firmament, the dome, the waters above, earth
• 38:08
  at the center.
• 38:10
  Other Flat Earth supporters are not religious at
• 38:13
  all.
• 38:14
  For them it is about control.
• 38:16
  If people in power can lie about that
• 38:20
  in the very world that we are living
• 38:23
  in, they can lie about anything else.
• 38:26
  And there I think we are getting closer
• 38:28
  to the real attractions of the Flat Earth.
• 38:32
  Because maybe Flat Earth is not mainly about
• 38:34
  the shape of the planet.
• 38:36
  Maybe it's about trust.
• 38:38
  Or, should I say, the lack of it.
• 38:46
  The modern Flat Earth movement did not explode
• 38:49
  because someone suddenly discovered a new geographic evidence.
• 38:54
  It grew together with social media, especially video.
• 38:58
  People often describe almost the same journey.
• 39:02
  They started as skeptics.
• 39:04
  They watch one video as a joke, then
• 39:07
  another, then five, then 50.
• 39:10
  And at some point something happened.
• 39:13
  They started thinking, wait a minute, I can't
• 39:17
  explain that.
• 39:18
  Why does the horizon look like that?
• 39:22
  Why can't I feel the rotation?
• 39:25
  Why does NASA use composite image?
• 39:28
  Why does some astronaut videos look strange?
• 39:33
  And the algorithm has an answer.
• 39:36
  Here's another video, and another, and another.
• 39:39
  And after a few weeks, someone that may
• 39:42
  have watched hundreds of arguments against the globe,
• 39:45
  but almost no serious explanations of those arguments.
• 39:50
  That creates an imbalance.
• 39:54
  And once distrust is established, the questions change.
• 39:58
  It is no longer, is the Earth flat?
• 40:01
  It becomes, why are they lying to me?
• 40:05
  That is a much more powerful question emotionally.
• 40:09
  Because now it is about you, your freedom,
• 40:12
  your intelligence, your ability to see through the
• 40:16
  deceptions.
• 40:17
  You are no longer simply a person investigating
• 40:20
  a geographic model.
• 40:22
  You are someone that is woken up, and
• 40:26
  everyone else is still asleep.
• 40:32
  It's easy to make fun of the Earth,
• 40:34
  much too easy.
• 40:36
  But that tells us something, almost nothing.
• 40:41
  People rarely join a worldview because of diagrams
• 40:47
  alone.
• 40:49
  It's also about community.
• 40:52
  Imagine the feeling you have discovered something enormous,
• 40:57
  something most people cannot see.
• 41:00
  You meet other peoples that who understand, they
• 41:03
  listen to you.
• 41:04
  That takes your question seriously.
• 41:07
  You developed a shared language.
• 41:09
  Globeheads, SHIELD, NASA, the Furnament, Statistic Research, you
• 41:15
  become part of a group.
• 41:17
  And when the outside world laughs at the
• 41:20
  group, it can actually make the community stronger.
• 41:23
  Because the laughter becomes evidence that the outside
• 41:27
  world refuses to listen.
• 41:29
  We see this in many strong beliefs communities.
• 41:34
  Not only conspiracy theories, and politics, and religions,
• 41:38
  and subcultures, and ordinary social groups.
• 41:43
  We humans want to belong.
• 41:45
  Flat Earth does not only offer a model
• 41:48
  of the planet, it offers a story about
• 41:51
  who you are.
• 41:52
  You are one of the people who is
• 41:54
  asking questions.
• 42:00
  And now we come to one of my
• 42:01
  favorite stories in the entire Flat Earth world.
• 42:04
  It became famous through the documentary called Behind
• 42:09
  the Curve.
• 42:10
  A group of Flat Earth researchers wanted to
• 42:13
  measure the Earth's rotation.
• 42:16
  They got an access to a precise laser
• 42:18
  gyroscope, an expensive instrument.
• 42:21
  If the Earth rotates once every 24 hours,
• 42:27
  the instrument should detect about 15 degrees of
• 42:31
  rotation per hour.
• 42:33
  360 degrees divided by 24 hours, that's 15.
• 42:39
  They turned on the instrument and what did
• 42:42
  they measure?
• 42:44
  About 15 degrees per hour.
• 42:47
  That was a problem, because the experiment was
• 42:50
  designed to test whenever the Earth was really
• 42:53
  rotating.
• 42:54
  And the instrument detected the expected rotation.
• 42:57
  But instead of the immediately saying, okay the
• 43:00
  result is that the Earth is rotating, they
• 43:03
  became looking for another explanation.
• 43:05
  Maybe the instrument was detecting the movements of
• 43:08
  the sky.
• 43:10
  Maybe cosmic radiation was affecting it.
• 43:13
  Maybe they could isolate the gyroscope.
• 43:16
  It is a fascinating moment.
• 43:18
  Not because these people are stupid, they aren't.
• 43:22
  It shows something that we all do.
• 43:24
  When a result threatens something we strongly believe,
• 43:28
  our standard evidence suddenly becomes much higher.
• 43:35
  If the experiment has shown no degrees per
• 43:37
  hour, I imagine that the result would have
• 43:40
  been quickly presented as strong evidence for a
• 43:43
  Flat Earth.
• 43:44
  But 15 degrees, then the instrument has to
• 43:46
  be investigated.
• 43:48
  This is confirmation bias.
• 43:51
  And none of us are immune.
• 43:53
  No scientists, no skeptics, not me.
• 43:59
  The same documentary included another experiment.
• 44:02
  This time the light was supposed to travel
• 44:04
  across long distance.
• 44:06
  The idea was simple.
• 44:08
  If Earth is flat, a light placed on
• 44:11
  a certain height would be visible through the
• 44:13
  opening placed at the same height farther away.
• 44:17
  If the Earth curves, the geometry should be
• 44:21
  different.
• 44:23
  They performed the experiments.
• 44:25
  The light did not appear where the flat
• 44:27
  Earth model expected it.
• 44:29
  When the light source was raised higher, it
• 44:33
  became visible again.
• 44:35
  The result was consistency with curvature.
• 44:39
  And this is where I think that flat
• 44:40
  Earths become more interesting.
• 44:42
  Because the movement itself says, test it yourself.
• 44:47
  Don't trust authorities.
• 44:49
  Observe, experiment, follow the result.
• 44:52
  These are the exact principles.
• 44:55
  But those principles come with a price.
• 44:58
  You also have to accept the results when
• 45:01
  the experiment gives you an answer you did
• 45:04
  not want.
• 45:05
  Otherwise it's no longer a test.
• 45:08
  It becomes a search for confirmation.
• 45:15
  So let's return to the question from the
• 45:17
  beginning.
• 45:17
  Can you investigate the shape of the Earth
• 45:19
  yourself?
• 45:20
  Yes.
• 45:21
  You don't have to go into space.
• 45:23
  You don't have to trust NASA.
• 45:25
  You can measure shadows with different latitudes.
• 45:29
  You can observe the light of the stars
• 45:31
  about the horizon.
• 45:33
  You can photograph star tails north and south
• 45:36
  of a crater.
• 45:37
  You can observe a lunar eclipse.
• 45:40
  You can watch ships move beyond the horizon
• 45:43
  from different heights.
• 45:45
  You can measure sunshine.
• 45:47
  You can compare flight times and distances.
• 45:50
  You can build a Foucault pendulum if you
• 45:54
  have enough space and patience.
• 45:56
  You can track satellites in the sky.
• 45:58
  Amateur radio operators can receive satellite signals directly.
• 46:03
  And the beautiful part is none of these
• 46:05
  observations has to stand alone.
• 46:09
  The size of Earth is calculated from the
• 46:12
  shadows match the distance to the horizon.
• 46:16
  It matches latitude.
• 46:20
  Latitude matches the positions of the stars.
• 46:23
  The stars match the Earth's axis of rotation.
• 46:27
  The rotations can be measured with pendulums and
• 46:29
  gyroscopes.
• 46:31
  The geometry matches flight distances.
• 46:33
  It matches navigations.
• 46:35
  It matches eclipses.
• 46:37
  This is not one photograph.
• 46:40
  It's a network of observations.
• 46:43
  And that is where the global model becomes
• 46:46
  incredibly strong.
• 46:58
  I know that some people are thinking, Ghani,
• 47:01
  I still can't see a curve.
• 47:03
  No.
• 47:05
  And from a normal height, you should not
• 47:07
  necessarily expect to see one clearly with your
• 47:09
  eyes.
• 47:11
  It may be one of the strangest things
• 47:12
  about the entire debate.
• 47:14
  Flat Earth often use our intuition as a
• 47:17
  measuring instrument.
• 47:18
  It looks flat, therefore it is flat.
• 47:21
  But our intuition developed for a world at
• 47:25
  human scale.
• 47:27
  Feet, miles, not planets.
• 47:31
  When you stand on a beach, the ocean
• 47:33
  looks enormous.
• 47:34
  But compared with the Earth, you're only seeing
• 47:37
  a tiny part of the surface.
• 47:41
  It is a little like standing on a
• 47:46
  parking lot and trying to understand the geography
• 47:49
  of the entire country from the asphalt under
• 47:52
  the shoes.
• 47:53
  Locally flat and globally curved are not opposites.
• 47:57
  Both can be true at the same time.
• 48:03
  And here we should correct another common misunderstanding.
• 48:07
  The Earth is not a perfect sphere.
• 48:09
  It is slightly wider around the equator than
• 48:13
  from its pole to pole.
• 48:15
  Rotation helps create that shape.
• 48:19
  And even that is a simplification.
• 48:22
  Mountains, ocean, trenches, differences in mass, gravitational field.
• 48:28
  All of this makes the real shape of
• 48:30
  the Earth more complicated.
• 48:32
  Scientists who measure the Earth, therefore, has to
• 48:35
  use things like epipsoids and GEOID.
• 48:44
  And if the word GEOID is not exactly
• 48:47
  rolled out of my Scandinavian tongue, don't worry.
• 48:51
  I don't have to say it anymore.
• 48:54
  The point is simple.
• 48:55
  The scientific model is not.
• 48:57
  The Earth is a perfect ball.
• 49:00
  The real model is much more precise.
• 49:05
  And that position can be measured.
• 49:12
  But let's try something.
• 49:14
  If I had to build the strongest possible
• 49:16
  case for Flat Earth, I would not begin
• 49:18
  with strange NASA videos.
• 49:20
  I would begin with a much deeper question.
• 49:25
  How do you know what you know?
• 49:28
  How much of your worldview have you personally
• 49:31
  tested?
• 49:33
  Very little.
• 49:34
  The same is true for me.
• 49:36
  I do not personally measure the change of
• 49:38
  an electron.
• 49:40
  I do not have to talk through the
• 49:42
  Earth's crust.
• 49:43
  I have not visited the Moon.
• 49:45
  And I believe the engineers, when I enter
• 49:48
  an airplane, I do not need to understand
• 49:52
  all the physics and so on when I
• 49:55
  travel on vacation in an airplane and things
• 49:58
  like that.
• 49:59
  I accept a lot of knowledge because independent
• 50:03
  people can test it and because it produces
• 50:08
  results of tests for that work.
• 50:11
  That is an important difference.
• 50:13
  Science does not require us to blindly trust
• 50:17
  one intuition or one institution.
• 50:21
  In principle, results should be open to testing.
• 50:24
  And Flat Earth asks a healthy question.
• 50:27
  What if the institutions are wrong?
• 50:30
  The problem is not the question.
• 50:32
  The problem begins when the answer has already
• 50:34
  been decided.
• 50:36
  They are lying.
• 50:39
  Because then we no longer are skeptical.
• 50:43
  We only have to simply replace one certainty
• 50:46
  with another.
• 50:54
  I also do not want to say a
• 50:56
  huge conspiracy is impossible.
• 50:59
  History has shown that government lies, companies lie,
• 51:03
  intelligence agents hide programs, scientific institutions can be
• 51:08
  wrong, authorities can protect their own interests.
• 51:11
  We know this.
• 51:13
  So the argument a conspiracy could never happen
• 51:17
  is a bad argument.
• 51:19
  And of course it could.
• 51:22
  The real question is, what evidence does this
• 51:25
  particular conspiracy require?
• 51:28
  And how many independent observations has to be
• 51:32
  explained away?
• 51:33
  Flat Earth do not only require NASA to
• 51:37
  lie.
• 51:38
  It needs some alternative explanations for astronomy, navigations,
• 51:42
  geodesy, physics, flight times, eclipses, star trails, the
• 51:49
  movements of the Sun, gravity, Antarctica, gyroscopes, pendulums,
• 51:53
  and much more.
• 51:55
  It is not the idea of a conspiracy
• 51:58
  that breaks the model.
• 52:00
  It is the number of physical observations that
• 52:03
  the model has to replace.
• 52:11
  And this is where we find the real
• 52:12
  rabbit hole.
• 52:13
  On the surface, Flat Earth seems to be
• 52:15
  about geography.
• 52:17
  But the deeper we go, the less it
• 52:19
  becomes about the shape of the Earth.
• 52:22
  It becomes about questions like, who decides what
• 52:27
  is true?
• 52:28
  When should we trust experts?
• 52:32
  When should we trust our own eyes?
• 52:34
  Can images be manipulated?
• 52:36
  Can institutions lie?
• 52:38
  Can the majority be wrong?
• 52:41
  And what happens to a person when the
• 52:44
  entire worldview changes?
• 52:46
  Those are much more interesting questions.
• 52:49
  And here Flat Earth may actually have something
• 52:52
  important to teach us.
• 52:54
  Not that the Earth is flat.
• 52:57
  But the sentence, everybody knows that, should never
• 53:02
  be the end of an investigation.
• 53:11
  Let's imagine two people.
• 53:12
  One believes in a globe, the other believes
• 53:15
  on a Flat Earth.
• 53:16
  I give them both the same experiments.
• 53:18
  The results fit the globe.
• 53:20
  The first person says, see, I was right.
• 53:24
  The second person says, there must be some
• 53:27
  unknown effect.
• 53:30
  Who is being scientific?
• 53:34
  At first, it's just the first person.
• 53:35
  But wait, now I give them another experiment.
• 53:39
  This time the result seems to disagree with
• 53:41
  the globe model.
• 53:42
  The first person says, the instruments must be
• 53:45
  wrong.
• 53:47
  The second says, see, I was right.
• 53:50
  Now they are doing exactly the same thing.
• 53:53
  So the most important question is not how
• 53:55
  you believe before the experiments.
• 53:58
  The most important question is, what result would
• 54:02
  make you change your mind?
• 54:04
  If the answer is nothing, then we have
• 54:07
  left science behind.
• 54:12
  That applies to Flat Earth, but it also
• 54:14
  applies to the rest of us.
• 54:20
  So what would it take to convince me
• 54:22
  that the Earth is flat?
• 54:24
  A repeatable experiment would be a good start.
• 54:27
  A Flat Earth model that can predict the
• 54:29
  exact position of the Sun, the position of
• 54:32
  the Moon, eclipses, the movement of the stars,
• 54:36
  distances between continents, flight times, the geometry of
• 54:40
  the horizon, gravity.
• 54:42
  All of those in one model.
• 54:47
  And ideally, that the model should work at
• 54:50
  least as well as the current one.
• 54:52
  This is not unreasonable, because that is exactly
• 54:57
  what the globe model already does.
• 55:00
  So this is something that often disappears in
• 55:03
  the debate.
• 55:04
  A scientific theory does not win because it
• 55:08
  sounds better.
• 55:09
  It wins because it can explain and predict
• 55:12
  observations.
• 55:13
  Flat Earth can be good at questioning individual
• 55:16
  observations, but it has a very hard time
• 55:20
  putting them all together in one mathematical problem,
• 55:24
  or model, should I say.
• 55:25
  And that is the greatest weakness.
• 55:27
  Not NASA, not Photograph, the model itself.
• 55:36
  If the evidence for a globe is so
• 55:38
  strong, why doesn't Flat Earth disappear?
• 55:42
  Because humans, beings, are not calculators.
• 55:46
  I don't choose our worldview simply by placing
• 55:49
  evidence on a scale.
• 55:51
  Identity matters.
• 55:53
  Trust matters.
• 55:54
  Community matters.
• 55:55
  Feelings matters.
• 55:57
  And perhaps most important, stories matter.
• 56:00
  The scientific story says you live on a
• 56:02
  small planet orbiting an ordinary star among billions
• 56:05
  of other stars.
• 56:07
  The Flat Earth story can say you live
• 56:10
  in the center of something that is created
• 56:12
  especially for you.
• 56:15
  The sky is closer.
• 56:16
  The universe is not endless.
• 56:18
  You matter.
• 56:20
  And someone is trying to hide the truth
• 56:22
  from you.
• 56:23
  That is a fantastic story, almost perfect.
• 56:27
  There's a mystery, an enemy, a secret, a
• 56:30
  group of people who has discovered the truth,
• 56:33
  a world that is much stranger than we
• 56:36
  were told, and a podcast host that I
• 56:40
  can say I would be jealous.
• 56:43
  That is hard to complete with.
• 56:50
  But let's give the theory one final moment.
• 56:53
  Imagine that we are wrong.
• 56:55
  Imagine that the Earth is really flat, that
• 57:00
  there is a giant ring of ice around
• 57:02
  the world, that the Sun and the Moon
• 57:04
  move above us, and the stars are not
• 57:08
  distant suns but something completely different.
• 57:12
  That space, as we understand it, does not
• 57:15
  exist.
• 57:17
  That all of our models of the universe
• 57:20
  are wrong, it would be the greatest discovery
• 57:23
  of human history, bigger than the discovery of
• 57:26
  an America, bigger than reality, bigger than evolution.
• 57:31
  Everything would have to be rewritten.
• 57:33
  Physics, astronomy, history, religion, navigation, geography, and the
• 57:40
  persons who could demonstrate that in one repeatable
• 57:44
  experiment would not need a YouTube video with
• 57:48
  dramatic music.
• 57:49
  The result would be repeated everywhere.
• 57:52
  That is the beautiful thing about reality.
• 57:57
  If something physical is true, the truth does
• 58:01
  not need protection from the measurement.
• 58:09
  So is the Earth flat?
• 58:12
  After following the arguments all the way down
• 58:15
  the rabbit hole, is my answer no?
• 58:17
  Not because NASA says no, not because I
• 58:21
  have seen a beautiful picture from space, not
• 58:24
  because the idea sounds ridiculous, but because the
• 58:28
  Flat Earth model breaks down when it has
• 58:31
  to explain many different observations at the same
• 58:33
  time.
• 58:34
  The movement of the Sun, the southern sky,
• 58:38
  eclipses, navigation, distances, gyroscopes, pendulums, shadows, the horizon,
• 58:44
  Antarctica.
• 58:45
  No single observation has to be perfect, it
• 58:48
  is the combination that matters.
• 58:51
  The globes explain them in one consistent geometry.
• 58:57
  Flat Earth needs additional explanations for different problems.
• 59:03
  Perspective here, refraction there, electromagnetism somewhere else, an
• 59:09
  unknown shadow object, a hidden mechanism, manipulated maps,
• 59:14
  fake satellites, and finally a global conspiracy.
• 59:18
  That does not mean that every person who
• 59:21
  believes that the Flat Earths are stupid, far
• 59:24
  from it.
• 59:25
  Some have spent thousands of hours in studying
• 59:28
  the subject, some know the argument far better
• 59:33
  than their critics do, but intelligence does not
• 59:40
  protect us from being wrong.
• 59:42
  Sometimes intelligence simply makes us better at defending
• 59:47
  what we already believe, and that is applied
• 59:50
  to us all.
• 59:58
  I began this episode with a question, how
• 1:00:00
  do you know that the Earth is round?
• 1:00:02
  If the only answer is before the episode
• 1:00:06
  was because someone told me, then I hope
• 1:00:09
  your answer is a little bit different now,
• 1:00:12
  because now you can investigate it, you can
• 1:00:14
  measure it, observe the question and doubt.
• 1:00:17
  That is the part of the Flat Earth
• 1:00:19
  movement I think is worth keeping.
• 1:00:24
  Do not blindly trust authorities, fine, but let's
• 1:00:29
  add some more sentences.
• 1:00:30
  Do not blindly trust the people who tell
• 1:00:33
  you that the authorities are lying either.
• 1:00:36
  Question them both, because the biggest trap inside
• 1:00:41
  the rabbit hole is not necessarily the lie,
• 1:00:43
  it's the feeling that you have finally found
• 1:00:46
  the truth, and therefore you no longer need
• 1:00:48
  to keep looking.
• 1:00:50
  Maybe that is where the Flat Earths become
• 1:00:53
  relevant to us all, not as geography, but
• 1:00:56
  as a warning about how easily the question
• 1:01:01
  can be, how do I know, can become,
• 1:01:04
  I know they are lying.
• 1:01:07
  Those two sentences may sound almost the same,
• 1:01:11
  but they lead to two different, very different
• 1:01:14
  places.
• 1:01:14
  The first opens the door, the second closes
• 1:01:17
  it.
• 1:01:18
  So the next time you stand by the
• 1:01:20
  ocean, look towards the horizon, you will probably
• 1:01:24
  look at a complete flat, and maybe that's
• 1:01:29
  okay, our eyes do not need to see
• 1:01:31
  the entire planet at once.
• 1:01:34
  What is interesting is about what we can
• 1:01:36
  still discover is its shape, with shadows, with
• 1:01:41
  stars, with pendulum, with light, with geometry, and
• 1:01:45
  when something that Flat Earthers and their critics
• 1:01:49
  should both be able to agree on, curiosity.
• 1:01:54
  Ask the question, not do the experiment, and
• 1:01:58
  be willing to accept the answer, even if
• 1:02:02
  it's not the answer you hoped for.
• 1:02:05
  Thank you for listening, and if you are
• 1:02:07
  still there, please consider like and subscribe.