Hey everyone, so with the first two videos in this miniseries, I demonstrated how anyone
can prove to themselves conclusively that the earth is a sphere by looking at objects
in the sky and thinking with their brains.
Those objects were the moon, and the stars.
So for this one, let’s get even simpler, and talk about manmade objects in the sky.
That’s right, airplanes.
Continuing with the theme of requiring precisely zero science to show that flat earth is the
dumbest hoax on the entire internet, one thing that anyone can do to prove the earth is a
sphere is to look at commercial airline flights.
Let’s revisit the flat earth map, or the thing they pretend isn’t their map, but
it totally is, because they can’t make a map, so they just use this.
Embarrassingly for them, this is actually an azimuthal equidistant projection of the globe.
That’s right, the flat earth map is a map of the globe, taken from the perspective of
looking down at the north pole, and flattening out its surface into a plane so that a three-dimensional
surface can be shown in two dimensions.
That’s why everything is distorted, with no consistent scale.
Secretly, flat earth priests know what this is, and they know it doesn’t work, but they’re
dumb and lazy and can’t come up with anything better, so they stick with this and simply
deflect anytime these facts are brought up.
Now, the further away from the center you go, the more significant the distortion, so
problems really arise in the southern hemisphere.
That’s where the flights come in.
Here’s South America.
Here’s Australia.
Pretty far away, huh?
If this map was taken to be precisely to scale, which it would be if the earth was actually
flat, then they’re as far away as two places can get.
Let’s say we wanted to fly between Santiago and Sydney.
If the earth was flat, which way would we go?
Well the straight line path would go up across all of South America, all of North America,
over Alaska, and then continuing all the way until we get to Sydney.
So do any airlines actually fly between these cities?
Yes, they do.
This airline flies between Santiago and Sydney four times a week.
But which way do they go?
Do they follow this straight line?
Nope.
They do the whole thing over the Pacific Ocean.
Here’s how that trip looks on a globe.
It takes 14 hours and 15 minutes going west, and 12 hours and 25 minutes going east.
On a flat earth, that route would look like this.
An absurdly long and totally unnecesary arc.
For comparison, how long does it take to fly between New York City and London?
It’s about 7 hours going east and about 8 hours going west.
Now, you tell me.
Does it make sense that a plane would travel this enormous arc in less than twice the time
that it would take to travel this teeny tiny one?
Not even a little bit.
First of all, the fact that these are arcs at all is totally nonsensical.
Planes don’t constantly turn slightly left or right.
They lock into a flight path and go straight.
Flat earthers like to whine about how planes don’t constantly dip down to match the curvature
of the earth, but that’s because they have no clue how planes work, since they maintain
constant altitude, and altitude conforms to the curvature of the earth.
So, how do flat earthers deal with this information?
Well, for the longest time, they simply denied that these southern hemisphere flights exist at all.
The flights are a nail in the coffin for flat earth, so they would just lie and say there
aren’t any.
But since anyone can find out that they definitely do exist in about ten seconds of googling,
some of them have had to start coughing up explanations.
The most popular of these is to pretend that the wind is responsible.
Again, this is because flat earthers are lazy.
Small differences in flight times going east vs. west occur because planes fly with or
against wind currents.
So they just take this concept and bring it to an absurd conclusion.
They will evoke currents of several hundred miles per hour, which would be a world record
hurricane, and pretend that the plane is somehow traveling twice as fast as usual without anyone noticing.
There are several problems here.
First of all, this boost from the imaginary wind still isn’t anywhere near enough.
This arc is stupid long.
The plane would have to be going several thousand miles per hour, and planes don’t do that.
Second, this flight goes both directions.
East and west.
How does the wind know which way the plane is going?
Most days there are planes going opposite directions simultaneously.
Does each of them have a little personal tornado, like in Wizard of Oz?
Flat earthers have suggested things as stupid as personal domes such that everyone gets
their own set of stars, so sadly, this wouldn’t even be the dumbest thing they’ve ever said.
But as you can see, there’s no way around this.
These flights exist.
They are not traveling this insane distance, because this is a projection of the globe
without a consistent scale.
The problem with the projection map they push as reality is that as we go towards the south
pole on a globe, the latitude lines are clearly getting shorter and shorter.
But on this flat representation, they are being represented as longer and longer, so
distances get more and more distorted the further outwards you go.
That’s why pretending this is a real map is stupid, and that’s why flat earth priests
pretend the southern hemisphere doesn’t exist.
It ruins everything for them.
As for their whining that flights don’t travel over Antarctica, well, there’s no
reason for them to do that.
The shortest path, which we call a great circle, for any common route doesn’t pass directly
over Antarctica.
Some get pretty close.
Like Johannesburg to Melbourne.
If it were to be flown, Johannesburg to Christchurch would nick the edge of Antarctica.
But this isn’t a regular flight.
Why?
Because the latter isn’t a major city, so not enough people would be interested in the
flight so as to make the route profitable for an airline.
In fact, there are very few large cities in the southern hemisphere in general.
Because of the way the continents are distributed around the earth, 90% of the human population
lives in the northern hemisphere.
But much to the dismay of flat earth priests, the southern hemisphere still exists, and
its existence is single-handedly enough to make them cry like toddlers that found out
the easter bunny isn’t real.
So that’s it.
Airplanes.
Ask any airline pilot what the shape of the earth is.
When they’re done laughing at you, they’ll tell you it’s a sphere.
And no, this moron doesn’t count.
He used to lie and say that he’s a commercial pilot, but then he got exposed by a real pilot.
Then he tried to hide the fact that he lied about it.
It was hilarious.
I’ll link to the video all about this incident below, in case watching him accidentally prove
the earth is a rotating sphere on a Netflix documentary wasn’t enough, and you want
to laugh some more at this stupid, hopeless moron.
To everyone else, I hope COVID ends real soon so that we can all visit our favorite places
around the globe once more.
I’ll see you next time.