Gonzaga Debate Institute 2011 Mercury Conspiracy Theory
AT: But we know it is Round
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- Round Earth Proofs – Multiple Reasons
AT: But we know it is RoundThe only reason we believe the Earth is round is because it’s deeply ingrained in our culture. The claim is actually dishonest and unscientific. Shenton, 2009 (Daniel, “In Defense of the Earth” Earth Not a Globe 1 Exhibit, http://www.earthnotaglobe.com/library/daniel_shenton_flat_earth_essay.pdf, SL) The Earth is flat. This is a belief I hold as the beginning of an ongoing search for truth and certainty. It is a starting point - an intellectual foundation on which I feel further knowledge can soundly be built. Much as Descartes did in his Meditations on First Philosophy, I wish to start from a place of certainty and build upon it. The Flat Earth is an obvious truth to me now. My senses show me and my reason confirms it. However, my belief that the Earth is flat is not a popular one and it is not a belief I have always held. Like most people, I was taught from an early age that the Earth is a rotating sphere which, along with a collection of other spherical bodies, revolves in an elliptical orbit around our Sun. To most of you, this will seem like an obvious and unarguable fact. It is something you have been told by teachers. Told by parents. Told by textbooks. It is something you are utterly sure of. And, more than likely, it is something you have never truly investigated. It isn't surprising, then, that people believe so strongly that the Earth is a sphere. We are bombarded every day of our lives with information. Television, radio, books and the Internet all compete to tell us things. Society agrees that some ideas are worth debating and that others are not. The idea of a spherical Earth falls into that second category. At some point, our society decided with great certainty that the Earth is a sphere and, consequently, that further consideration is unnecessary and anyone holding an opposing viewpoint is unworthy of debate. That the Earth is spherical is a 'fact' and we are, from an early age, told to accept it without question and in the face of our own first-hand experience. But as 16th Century mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace stated, "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness." The Spherical Earth model is truly extraordinary and runs contrary to all of our senses. Consequently, the burden of proof is extraordinary - and this burden has never been met. But, because the idea is so firmly ingrained in our culture, few of us bother to hold the Spherical Earth model to account. This tendency to firmly maintain beliefs while intentionally disregarding opposing evidence - particularly evidence in the form of first-hand experience -is intellectually dishonest and unscientific. Man's quest for truth is furthered only through experience and reason. During the 19,h Century, Samuel Birley Rowbotham pioneered an approach to astronomy called Zetetic Astronomy. Zeteticism stresses the importance of reason and experience over the trusting acceptance of dogma. This emphasis on experience as the only source of true knowledge dates back to ancient Greek empiricists such as Aristotle and was also prominent in the more recent British empiricism espoused by [ohn Locke. In his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke states, "No man's knowledge can go beyond his experience." The earth is flat based on the translation of the Bible Hare, founder and architect of the Sacred Text Archive, 2005 (John Bruno, Preface to “The Earth is not a Globe” Ebook, http://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/za/, SL) Rowbotham believed that the earth is flat. The contients float on an infinite ocean which somehow has a layer of fire underneath it. The lands we know are surrounded by an infinite wilderness of ice and snow, beyond the Antarctic ocean, bordered by an immense circular ice-cliff. What we call the North Pole is in the center of the earth. The polar projection of the flat earth creates obvious discrepancies with known geography, particularly the farther south you go. Figure 54 inadvertantly illustrates this problem. The Zetetic map has a severly squashed South America and Africa, and Australia and New Zealand in the middle of the Pacific. I think that by the 19th century people would have noticed if Australia and Africa were thousands of miles further apart than expected, let alone if Africa was wider than it was long! The Zetetic Sun, moon, planets and stars are all only a few hundred miles above the surface of the earth. The sun orbits the north pole once a day at a constant altitude. The moon is both self-illuminated and semi-transparent. Eclipses can be explained by some unknown object occulting the sun or moon. Zetetic cosmology is 'faith-based', based, that is, on a literal interpretation of selected Biblical quotes. Hell is exactly as advertised, directly below us. Heaven is not a state of mind, it is a real place, somewhere above us. He uses Ussherian Biblical chronology to mock the concept that stars could be millions of light years away. He attacks the concept of a plurality of worlds because no other world than this one is mentioned in the Bible. Round Earth Proofs – Multiple ReasonsThe Earth is round due to the gravitational force pulling it into a sphere Cain, Masters in Computer Science and Engineering, 2009 (Fraser, “Why is the Earth Round” The Universe Today, http://www.universetoday.com/26782/why-is-the-earth-round/, SL) Don’t listen to the Flat Earth Society, they’re wrong; the Earth is round. But did you ever wonder why the Earth is round? It all comes down to gravity. One of the effects of mass is that it attracts other mass. For small objects, like your computer, your car, and even a building, the force of gravity is tiny. But when you have millions, and even trillions of tonnes of mass, the effect of the gravity really builds up. All of the mass pulls on all the other mass, and it tries to create the most efficient shape… a sphere. You can also check out these books about the planet Earth from Amazon.com for more information. For smaller objects, like asteroids, the force of gravity trying to pull the object into a sphere isn’t enough to overcome the strength of the rock keeping it in shape. But once you get above a certain mass and size, the strength of the object can’t stop the force of gravity from pulling it into a sphere. Objects larger than about 1,000 km in size are able to pull themselves into a sphere. In fact, the International Astronomical Union decided in 2006 that this ability was one of the requirements for an object to be considered a planet. They must orbit the Sun, they need to have cleared out all the smaller objects in their orbit, and they need to have enough gravity to pull themselves into a sphere. When an object has the gravity to pull itself into a sphere, astronomers say that it’s in hydrostatic equilibrium. And that’s why the Earth is round. Of course, the Earth isn’t perfectly round. Because it’s turning on its axis approximately once every 24 hours, the Earth’s equator bulges outwards. And there are mountains and valleys that make the Earth’s surface rough. Pictures prove - The earth is smoother than a billiard ball Cain, Masters in Computer Science and Engineering, 2009 (Fraser, “Why is the Earth Round” The Universe Today, http://www.universetoday.com/26782/why-is-the-earth-round/, SL) The Earth isn’t flat, that’s for sure. And if you look at a photograph, the Earth really looks round. But how round is it? The actual shape of the Earth is actually an oblate spheroid – a sphere with a bulge around the equator. The Earth is bulged at its equator because it’s rapidly rotating on its axis. The centripetal force of the rotation causes the regions at the equator to bulge outward. And it actually makes a pretty big difference. The diameter of the Earth, measured across the equator is 43 km more than when you measure the diameter of the Earth from pole to pole. This bulge has some interesting implications. For example, it means that the point on Earth furthest from the center isn’t actually Mount Everest, but Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador. Only because Chimborazo is closer to the Earth’s equator. So how smooth is the Earth. When billiard balls are manufactured, they aim for a tolerance of 0.22%. The Earth has a tolerance of 0.17%, so it’s actually smoother than a billiard ball. If you could hold the Earth in your hands, it would feel smoother than a billiard ball. But the Earth definitely isn’t flat. Lunar eclipses confirm the earth is round Schottlender, PhysicsQuest Intern at American Physical Society, 2008 (Muriel, “Top Ten Ways to Know the Earth Isn’t Flat,” August 19, 2008, http://www.smarterthanthat.com/astronomy/top-10-ways-to-know-the-earth-is-not-flat/, SL) Now that humanity knows quite positively that the Moon is not a piece of cheese or a playful god, the phenomena that accompany it (from its monthly cycles to lunar eclipses) are well-explained. It was quite a mystery to the ancient Greeks, though, and in their quest for knowledge, they came up with a few insightful observations that helped humanity figure out the shape of our planet. Aristotle (who made quite a lot of observations about the spherical nature of the Earth) noticed that during lunar eclipses (when the Earth’s orbit places it directly between the Sun and the Moon, creating a shadow in the process), the shadow on the Moon’s surface is round. This shadow is the Earth’s, and it’s a great clue on the spherical shape of the Earth. Since the earth is rotating (see the “Foucault Pendulum” experiment for a definite proof, if you are doubtful), the consistent oval-shadow it produces in each and every lunar eclipse proves that the earth is not only round but spherical – absolutely, utterly, beyond a shadow of a doubt not flat. 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