Movements of plates on one side of the Earth effect movements on the other. Tectonic plate movement and seismicity depend on a round Earth, because only on a sphere do all the plates fit together in a sensible way, Davis says. They could strip away the atmosphere, as they did after Mars lost its magnetic field, and the air and oceans would escape into space. Without a magnetic field, charged particles from the sun would fry the planet. That, however, wouldn’t rotate in a way that creates a magnetic field. But in a flat planet, that would have to be replaced by something else. Removing Heaven and Earthĭeep below ground, the solid core of the Earth generates the planet’s magnetic field. However, we know the sun to be more than 100 times the diameter of the Earth. The sun would also presumably have to be smaller than Earth so as to not burn up or bump into our planet or the moon. But it wouldn’t explain seasons, eclipses and many other phenomena. If the sun and moon just loop around one side of a flat Earth, there could presumably be a procession of days and nights. For this reason, he says, “I cannot think of how GPS would work on a flat Earth.” How would they orbit a plane? “There are a number of satellite missions that society depends on that just wouldn’t work,” Davis says. Likewise, in a flat world, satellites likely wouldn’t be possible. Without the linear, perpendicular momentum that helps generate an orbit, it’s unclear what force would keep the sun and moon hovering above the Earth, Davis says, instead of crashing into it. Rather, the sun circles over the top side of the world like a carousel, broadcasting light and warmth downward like a desk lamp. The flat Earth model places our planet at the center of the universe, but doesn’t suggest that the sun orbits the Earth. Instead, the linear momentum and the sun’s gravity combine, resulting in a circular orbit around the sun. The planet is also traveling in a direction perpendicular to the star’s gravitational tug if it were possible to switch off that gravity, the Earth would shoot away in a straight line and hightail it out of the solar system. In other words, the sun’s gravity isn’t acting alone. However, the Earth doesn’t fall into the sun because it is traveling in an orbit. In the scientifically supported model of the solar system, the Earth revolves around the sun because the latter is much more massive and has more gravity. This would have some strange impacts, like sucking all the water toward the center of the world, and making trees and plants grow diagonally, since they develop in the opposite direction of gravity’s pull. As you got increasingly far from the center, gravity would tug more and more horizontally. That means it would only pull straight down at one point on the center of the disk. What we know about gravity suggests it would pull toward the center of the disk. People who believe in a flat Earth assume that gravity would pull straight down, but there’s no evidence to suggest it would work that way. The same measurable force that causes an apple to fall from a tree also causes the moon to orbit the Earth and all the planets to orbit the sun. That’s a pretty big deal, since gravity explains a wide range of Earthly and cosmic observations. It’s unclear how gravity would work, or be created, in such a world, says James Davis, a geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Gravity Failsįirst of all, a pancaked planet might not have any gravity. Let’s examine, then, how the well-known principles of physics and science would work (or not) on a flat Earth. Members of the Flat Earth Society and several celebrities, including Atlanta rapper B.o.B and NBA player Kyrie Irving, claim to hold such beliefs. Humans have known for thousands of years that the planet is round, yet the belief in a flat Earth refuses to die. If you subscribe to the idea of a flat Earth, then you’d believe that no such thing happened, because the sun rotates in a circle around the sky. The Earth has yet again made a revolution about the sun. If Earth were flat, you’d know it, because a lot of things would work differently.
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