In a forgotten remote spot stationed "Point Nemo", in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is the greatest body of water on the planet, and it is referred to as the farthest point from human civilizations on Earth. The place really is where you will not find anyone.
The closest land to this point is 1,600 km away, which is equivalent to a journey of 8 and a half days by sailing ship. This would make every side surrounding this spot look like a horizon extending to infinity, straight and uninterrupted by anybody or terrain.
This delicate, dramatic uprightness leaves no opportunity to doubt that this earth is flat, and those who are suspicious must reconsider over and over again.
But there is something really suspicious here. If we watch a ship moving away from us little by little in a straight line, we will notice its gradual disappearance, until the last thing we can see, the ship's mast, disappears before it disappears below the horizon. This destroys the first conclusion that the Earth is flat and gives us another opportunity to think.
The disappearance of the ship below the line of sight is nothing but a strong indication that there is a continuous and connected curvature of the earth, and only the spherical or oval shape can satisfy this condition without any defect, and any other interpretation of the shape of the earth is nothing but a fantasy. And based on the obviousness of this conclusion, the battle to prove the surface of the Earth has just returned, after it had disappeared for many centuries, to show a new generation adopting this view of the blue planet.
Flattening the Earth.. the axioms of ancient religions and civilizations
Since ancient times, the shape of the Earth has occupied a significant part of human thinking, just as he was preoccupied with observing the stars and tracking the movement of the planets, the Earth also has its share of contemplation and contemplation, despite the difficulty of determining the geometric shape of the Earth, because man is sitting on its huge surface.
And as it appeared in ancient civilizations such as the pharaohs and the civilization of Mesopotamia, the flat-earth model formed the cornerstone in formulating the features of the universe, perhaps because of what the earth looks like in the eye of the beholder of its undoubted surface and extension, due to its hugeness concerning our tiny bodies.
It appears in the text of Al-Ahram(Pyramid Texts), which dates back to the era of the ancient Egyptian state, and is also the oldest known religious text in the world; The goddess "Nu", represented by water, surrounded the dry land like a circular disk.
There is a great similarity in this belief between ancient civilizations and ancient myths, and the Israelites describe the universe as three layers, as the earth is a disk floating on an extended water surface, surrounded by a concave celestial water dome inside which celestial bodies swim regularly, and holes in the dome allow With rain falling on the ground from time to time.
The same applies to the Greek philosophers in the pre-Socratic era, such as the philosopher Thales and Leucippus, as well as Democritus, who set the first nucleus of the atom theory. The surface of the earth seemed to be one of the axioms for the ancient man.
The sphericity of the Earth... Greek mathematics and the experiences of the Abbasids
The first abnormal opinion on the issue of the surface of the earth appeared at the hands of the Pythagorean school attributed to the mathematician "Pythagoras", the author of the most famous mathematical theorem in Euclidean geometry. They were the first to invent the sphericity of the Earth based on mathematical arguments.
Then they were followed in the same approach by the giants of the Greek philosophers such as “Plato” and “Aristotle”, who deduced two observations: that the southern stars rise above the horizon line as we head towards the south, and also the shape of the circular Earth’s shadow that appears on the surface of the moon during the eclipse phenomenon.
Since the Greeks excelled in mathematics, it was self-evident to try to calculate the diameter of the Earth if their conception of the planet was true, and there were several attempts until the emergence of the mathematician “Eratosthenes.” - the curator of the Library of Alexandria - in the third century BC, he made his famous experiment to measure the circumference of the globe. He had heard that people in the city of Aswan (which is located very close to the Tropic of Cancer) on the summer solstice (22 June) see a picture The sun is in the well-meaning that the sun is perpendicular to it - at the time when the sun casts a shadow on things in the city of Alexandria.
According to a simple mathematical calculation, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth and found it (252000) Greek stadium, which some researchers estimated at (24,450) miles or (39348 km), which is a result very close to the real number (40,000 km), and it is an impressive result. Too much due to the limited tools and techniques that were present.
The Muslims and Arabs had their share in correcting the knowledge path and contributing to the enrichment of science. The Abbasid Caliph Al-Mamun commissioned the brothers, the sons of Musa bin Shaker, to measure the diameter and circumference of the Earth with an accuracy that no one had preceded them in on a scientific mission that was the first of its kind in the Sinjar desert in northern Iraq, and they obtained a close result. What did the ancients say?.
“Will you lie to your eyes?” .. The return of flatness in the conspiracy mentality
The scientific method in the natural sciences always tends to revise ideas, so it refutes the wrong theses and verifies the correctness of the rest. Of course, when a theory or a scientific thesis falls before conclusive proofs, it disappears forever, and it is mentioned only on occasions related to the history of the emergence and development of science in the era Human, a good example of this is the geocentric model or the Ptolemaic system, which has been standing for centuries before it was replaced by the current model, which is the heliocentric system in the solar system.
But the situation is different here with the flat Earth model, which has been hidden for many years before it appears again in public, not only that but formations founded in the twentieth century called themselves “modern flat-earth societies.” espousing the return of the old model of the Earth's shape.
It was conducted by the newspaper "Scientific American" An interview with one of those interested and involved in discussing flat-Earth theorists, “Michael Marshall” project manager for the “The Good Thinking Society” which is based in Britain. Marshall says: The motivation behind The return of the Flat Earth theory to life is to be drawn to conspiracy theorists, regardless of who is behind the conspiracies, be they governments, corporations, or secret societies.
Perhaps the most prominent accused of involvement in these conspiracies is the government of the United States of America by passing its agendas through the American space agency NASA, and the Masonic Society also joins the list of accused, citing the affiliation of some scientists to it, such as the English scientist "Isaac Newton", the author of the famous law on the force of gravity.
Also, the believers in this model depend directly on sensory experiences instead of mathematical conclusions that may require effort and double imagination, and this would strengthen their argument to convince many others who lack some real scientific proof.
It is simple for them, they have become very experienced in persuasion and martyrdom, and if they do not convince the listener, they will leave him in the circle of doubt with their simple question: Will your eyes lie and believe the dictates of false science that you could not verify yourself?
Flatness model... Dialectics of the map and gravity outside logic
Flat Earth did not settle on a single model in the eyes of its proponents. What they agreed on was the position of the North Pole in the middle of the map. In addition to that, the forms and boundaries of the model varied. Some of them said that the Earth is surrounded by a massive ice wall that prevents the ocean water from leaking out, and some suggested The other is that the flat Earth and the atmosphere are contained within a snow globe Huge that prevents anything from falling from its limbs. Some said that the ends of the earth extend to infinity so that no sun rises on those lands and no light reaches them.
The majority of them agree on the circular motion of the sun and the moon, and they move between orbits according to an ambiguous mechanism throughout the year, so it seems consistent with the spherical Earth model when the sun’s rays focus on the orbits of Capricorn and Cancer in the summer season. Many also believe that the real distance that separates us from the sun and the moon is not great at all, but rather that they are 5,500 kilometers away, and that they are, of course, celestial bodies much smaller than what astronomers agree on.
Gravity is the first enemy of the Flat Earth model because flat objects fail to formulate or explain the meaning of the occurrence of gravity. The direction of the gravitational force in the spherical Earth model is always towards the center, but in a Flat Earth, there is no physical explanation or meaning for the direction of gravity.
So, to avoid such a dilemma, many believe that the force of gravity is nothing but a lie and that it has no meaning or significance, and to explain the fall of bodies to the bottom, they claim that the Earth is the one who ascends to the top with an acceleration of 9.8 kilometers per second, without explaining the movement of the Earth in this way.
Skeptical astronomy.. Proof of extroversion on the Bedford River
In 1838, a British inventor named "Samuel Robotham" conducted an experiment on the Old Bedford River, which is 9.7 kilometers long, to verify the curvature of the Earth. He used a telescope at a height of 20 cm from the water level and then began to observe a sailing boat going straight up the river. The result was that the boat did not disappear from its sight throughout the experiment, while if the numbers that talk about the curvature of the Earth were correct, the highest peak of the boat is supposed to be about 11 meters below the horizon line, and this did not happen.
This prompted "Robotham" to publish to the world the reality of the shape of the Earth in his book "Skeptical Astronomy". To extinguish the fire of his enthusiasm, he repeated the experiment again and again, and each time he obtained the same result, which is that the earth is undoubtedly flat as it was prepared for him.
And after many years, the prominent naturalist "Alfred Wallace" appeared in 1870 to repeat the experiment, but with caution from the mistakes made by "Robotham". Wallace's knowledge of the properties of light was not insignificant, and it gave him an advantage in getting the Bedford River experiment done right.
Wallace knew that light is refracted by the action of atoms and that the atmosphere is at its highest density at the surface of the earth, to find that all light rays that travel horizontally bend downward at a level close to the surface, even if the measurement of the experiment is from a height close to the surface of the earth, we will find that the light rays are bent downwards by an amount equal to the curvature of the earth.
This led him to conclude that conducting his experiment at a sufficient height to prevent the phenomenon of refraction of light, to find that the sailing boat had completely disappeared at the end of the river..
This scientific experiment is the most prominent of the experiments conducted in favor of the flat-Earth model in the beginning, before the secret of its mystery was revealed once the properties of light were known.
The poison of the dark ages... the spread of flatness in the countries of the world
There is no doubt that the motives of supporters of the flat Earth model differ from one country to another.
History refers to the marathon debates that Europe witnessed in the Middle Ages, in an attempt to assimilate the flat earth model because of what was prepared for the clergy from the appearance of religious texts that the earth is flat, although Europe had accepted the sphericality of the earth many years before then, based on conclusions Greek empirical and analytical mathematicians.
The same thing is happening today in the Arab countries, as the absence of a sound scientific basis leaves a vacuum for the infiltration of suspicions that may create for its owner that it is based on a correct scientific basis. And the BBC News Network points out that YouTube is the main barracks and a starting point for promoters of conspiracy theories, and there is no way to stop fake news in light of the spread of Internet users and surfers around the world in countless numbers.
Other recent surveys indicate that 7% of the Brazilian population believes in the flat Earth model, equivalent to 11 million people. The matter developed further when a student in geology submitted a proposal for her doctoral thesis to defend the flat Earth model at a university in Tunisia.
The donut is the closest logical theory to flattening
Scholars believe that the real problem in structuring the flat Earth model is that the final result is complete for believers in it, and on it, there is an attempt to build the causes and causes, regardless of how realistic they are. The occurrence of solar and lunar eclipses, the autumnal equinox, the absence of the North Star below the horizon in the south, and the presence of gravity are all arguments that support the spherical model definitively, unlike the flat model, which collapses completely and is unable to give solid and sane explanations, so we find any explanation, no matter how poor, to be convincing Because faith in the result helps them to do so.
Interestingly, the planet Earth may accommodate several physical forms, apart from being flat, because it violates all the physical laws on which the universe is based. Technically and theoretically, our planet could be in the form of a donut, or as athletes like to call it the Toroid.
This can happen if we consider that the planet Earth - like all planets - is spherical due to the force of gravity that pushes all sides to the center. (Centrifugal Force) on the planet not collapse in on itself due to the void in the middle, and then we will get a planet like a "donut", and it will be more satisfying than the flat Earth model in terms of physics at worst.