Recently, after taking pictures of Lake Michigan and noticing that the surface has no curve, someone did a little practical experiment to see if our planet earth was truly flat. It involved elaborate calculations and used other tools to find the correct answer, which we have all known for centuries now.
However, a 36-year-old software engineer called Jeff went for something much simpler. He used a basketball and a macro lens to simulate the curvature of the Earth and took photos to calculate the equivalent. Quite brilliant, isn’t it?
“Looking at my photos, it's easy to imagine being an incredibly small creature living on the surface of the basketball,” Jeff told Bored Panda. “From the perspective of that tiny creature, the "horizon" of the basketball would always look "flat". Using the appearance of the horizon as primary evidence, this creature would likely assume that they are living on a flat surface. I don't expect this to change the minds of any entrenched flat earth believers, but I hope that this interesting experiment could help someone that may be susceptible to persuasion by the flat earthers' arguments.”
“The few flat earth believers I have interacted with seem to rely heavily on memes as their preferred method of communication, so I wanted to be able to respond with a meme-like science experiment, using their own logic, that points out the absurdity of their logic.”
While people rejoiced that Jeff had found conclusive proof that planet Earth is indeed round, he had some reservations. “I would like to clarify, that my photo does not prove the Earth is round,” he told us. “It only proves in an easy-to-understand way that the surface of a sphere can appear flat. It proves that the basis of all flat-earthers’ beliefs (the horizon appears flat) is insufficient evidence to determine the shape of the earth.”
Cool science and logic always win in the end! Jeff makes quite an excellent point in the round vs. flat 'debate' that debunks one of the biggest arguments flat-Earthers have. So scroll down to read about the full experiment, as well as the specifics of what he used, and don’t forget to tell us what you think!
This person used a basketball to do a clever experiment
He later added this message to clarify the meaning of this experiment:
Here's how people reacted:
