Monday 12 June 2017

Flat Earth Debunked: Sunset

I can’t believe I have to make this post, but apparently I do.

No one has yet commented on my previous Sun And Moon post to rebut my small point about how the sun cant set on a flat earth, but after seeing hundreds of YouTube comments recently from poorly educated fuckwits saying that the sun can set on a flat earth due to “perspective”, I guess I should talk about it here and now.


First of all, flat earthers are correct in arguing that the further away things are, the more they will converge into a single point, like this:


However, flat earthers seem to believe that as something gets further away from you, it will start to eventually look like it’s setting below a flat surface. This is flat wrong.

Now hang on tight, because this is gonna get pretty mathematical. (And by mathematical I do of course mean simple maths that teenagers learn in high school which shows how fucking stupid flat earthers are but… ah what the hell I’m getting ahead of myself.)

If we want to find out the absolute minimum altitude angle the sun can be above the flat earth, we need to look at the flat earth model itself and then we’ll get to the maths.

Most flat earthers seem to agree that the sun goes in circles about 4,800 kilometers above the equator during the equinox on their azimuthal equidistant projection map, like this: (ignore the moon, that’s irrelevant for today’s post).


Now, let’s imagine an observer somewhere on the equator during one of the equinoxes. Where he is on the equator is irrelevant, just imagine he’s somewhere on that longitude.

Now imagine it’s midnight for him, which means that the sun is on the opposite side of the flat earth, about 20,000 kilometers away from his position.

If we want to figure out how high above the horizon the sun would appear for him, we have to use the tangent formula, which is:

a = Tan-1(4800/20000)

When we crunch the numbers out, we find that at its furthest position away from our observer, the sun would still be 13.5 degrees above the horizon for our equator fellow.

Also, here’s a diagram for proof:


Now, I recently had a talk with a flat earther who said the sun was even closer. He said it was about 1,000 miles, or 1,600 kilometers above the flat earth.

Well, let’s do the formula again, shall we?

a = Tan-1(1600/20000)

Huh. So even if the sun is closer, the sun would STILL be about 4.6 degrees above the horizon at midnight for our observer… And yet we can still see it set every evening, going WAY below 4.6 degrees HOURS before midnight.


So in conclusion, sunset on a flat earth would NEVER HAPPEN if the sun was always above the flat earth itself.

It’s over, flat earthers. It was a nice run, but I’m sorry… You’ve been completely and utterly DEBUNKED.

Of course, I’m not finished with the flat earth just yet. There’s a lot more to go through, so stay tuned!

(Also, check out MetaBunks EXCELLENT page on this exact topic here)

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