As we mention in a previous article, The Flat Earth Resurgence, there has been a recent explosion of people who actually believe the earth is flat. Therefore, I've created this project to focus on providing science-based reasoning to bring some sanity into the discussion for anyone looking into this argument.
Image credit: mine
As I mentioned in the article, Yes, Flat Earthers, There Really is 24 Hour Sunlight In Antarctica, flat earthers actually deny this easily provable and observable phenomenon that has been proven and documented by science, individuals, and even filmmakers on thousands of occasions. Why would they deny something that has so much science behind it and for which they could actually just go observe themselves if they wished?
They deny it because it's IMPERATIVE for their belief system that 24 hour sunlight in Antarctica not exist! This is because, as I will show, it's simply impossible for this phenomenon to occur on a flat earth.
Why 24 Hour Antarctic Days are Impossible on Flat Earth
In Yes, Flat Earthers, There Really Is 24 Hour Sunlight in Antarctica, I mention the impossibility of 24 hour sunlight in Antarctica on their model, and I'll go into this more here. In their 'model', that is not really a model of flat earth at all because the Flat Earth Map is a Globe Projection Map, with the sun rotating on it, looks something like the image below:
As you can see, the sun only touches the outer edge of the 'ice wall', which is what they call Antarctica, just a tiny bit. If you move the sun more towards the ice wall, on a longer circle around the planet, you don't get much more sunlight in Antarctica, perhaps 4-6 hours a day.
In the 'yin-yang' visualization below, the sun's rays form a strange teardrop pattern with a tail (many flat earthers believe the yin-yang is a 'hidden in plain site' visualization of sunlight and moonlight on the globe) that do not seem to be reproduced by any light source I've ever seen, you can still only achieve perhaps 12 hours of sunlight on any one spot on the 'ice rim' in December, and simply doesn't explain how the sun would change to produce very short days of sunlight in the far southern hemisphere cities. You can enlarge the spot of sunlight, put it at an angle, make it smaller, make the sun move faster or slower, and you'll still not create 24 hour sunlight in Antarctica without creating 24 hour sunlight for the rest of the world at the same time.
While I go over the fact that there actually is 24 hour sunlight in Antarctica, making flat earthers concede that point is not even necessary. We know that southern hemisphere cities, such as Cristchurch, New Zealand and Ushuaia, Argentina get up to 17 hours of sunlight per day in December. This is not even a point of debate for the flat earth community, so far as I know, and this is still impossible on that model. The only way to have 24 hour sunlight in Antarctica, or even 16 hours of sunlight in Ushuaia, is to have the ENTIRE globe lit up for 16-24 hours a day in December, and that is just not what we see in reality.
The Gleason Map Shows It Could be Possible
There is another map, called the Gleason Map that was created in 1892 as another type of globe projection map that makes extremely good time calculations of daylight and distances. Gleason was reportedly a flat earther, so flat earthers believe his map is a 'flat earth map'. However, it's clearly distorted in the southern hemisphere, it's patent says it's a "...first class geographical globe maps or charts of the world", and right on the map itself, it says, "On the Projection of Modern College".
Image credit: Digital Commonwealth
There are a lot of problems with the Gleason Map that I will address in another article, however, it's problems are simply the same problems that all other globe projections have: distortion. Mapping a flat earth to a 2d map simply would not incur distortion, particularly distortion in the specific pattern of an azimuthal equidistant map where there is more distortion the further you get away from the central point.
But further proof this map is not a 'flat earth map' is that in order for the correct daylight times to occur, as per the Gleason map calculator in the bottom corners (see enlargement below), the sun would have to shine in a pattern with an oblong shaped hole in the middle. Even flat earthers don't argue that the world sees a sun with an oblong hole in the middle.
Image credit: Digital Commonwealth
Many lamps even have light bulbs with a circular pattern, and the light bulb doesn't shine a circular pattern on the floor below or around it because lights give off a cone-shaped pattern, and projections from all the sides of the lamp overlap in the middle to create a solid pattern on the objects below. The YouTube video below shows the light pattern a circular lightbulb creates; and it's not a circle of light.
The Gleason map is a globe projection map with some interesting and clever ways to visualize particular events we see on earth. However, it's impossible to make a 3d model of the earth with a sun over it that replicates the Gleason map patterns necessary to achieve the solar patterns we see in reality. This representation below shows what would have to occur throughout the year for the light on earth to occur on a flat earth as we see it in reality, and it represents the Gleason Map patterns.
Image Credit: Flat Earth Society Subreddit
Gleason also left close to 250 pages of explanations and math to go with his map. If Gleason's map were truly the only flat earth map to have ever been produced so far in history, you'd think that in the 120 years since Gleason produced it, with the advent of supercompers and modeling software, that someone would have been able to create a 3d model from it that replicates the solar patterns we see here on earth, but no one has.
Is There Another Flat Earth Model that Can Accomplish This Feat?
It has been proposed to me by another Steemit use commenting on one of my posts, that I am simply proving that the MAINSTREAM flat earth model is impossible, but that OTHER models are the real deal! However, when pressed to show me the flat earth model that did accurately account for 24 hour sunlight in Antarctica, he could not do so.
The Enigmatic Square and Rectangular Earth Models?
There is another model that actually can account for 24 hour sunlight in both poles. The square earth model. There is an excellent video by a flat square earther showing how this phenomenon occurs.
However, the model is just a common educational tool used in classrooms to illustrate how the sunlight works on a globe and not a model showing the realities of a flat square earth. The video is also lacking in the details of showing exactly how a sun over the top would have a 'tail' like the yin-yang model, or how the sun would transport itself back to the other side of the earth once it reached the far edge. Teleportation, perhaps? It's a bit unclear how the magic occurs that would accomplish this feat.
A Cylindrical Earth, Maybe?
A cylindrical earth would overcome the teleportation issue, and even account for curvature and allow for 24 hour daylight in the poles. However, what happens when people go to the south and north poles? Would they drop off the top and bottom into the hollow interior? There actually are cylindrical projection maps, like the one shown below.
Image credit: emaze.com
Unfortunately, in reality, planes can and do fly OVER the north and south poles without reporting a giant hollow space before encountering land again. So, known reality also seems to get in the way of such a hypothesis.
Any Other Flat Earth Model That Could do This?
Perhaps a hollow earth? There is a group saying that the earth is hollow, but I'm a bit unclear whether they believe we are living INSIDE or outside of the earth. Either way, it would seem that we'd be back to spherical, and not flat, for such a model.
While science never can completely exclude some other possibility that we simply can't imagine as yet for a natural phenomenon we see every day, it seems that no model ever proposed by flat earthers could actually work to produce this provable and observable phenomenon, so instead of being scientific and rejecting this ridiculous hypothsis that has proven to be a failure time and time again, and instead continuing to ask questions about the true shape of the earth, they conveniently deny 24 hour sun in Antarctica actually exists and concoct a fantasy as elaborate as any Sci Fi comic book.
Image credit and video: Kurdistan Planitarium
Meanwhile, as in the image above, sphere earthers have a perfectly good model that gives an accurate and reasonable explanation for this phenomenon so simple that 4th graders consistently reproduce it in science fair projects around the world. The same model also explains thousands upon thousands of other phenomenon we observe every day in real life.
No need for worldwide conspiracy theories and denying observable reality to explain the globe earth model. For 24 hour sunlight in Antarctica, Occam's Razor and observable reality are heavily in favor of the spherical, heliocentric model. Sorry flat earthers, but 24 hour sunlight in Antarctica on your model is simply impossible.
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