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My brother-in-law hit me with a flat earth take at a BBQ and I can't stop thinking about it
We were at a family thing in Austin last weekend, grilling burgers, and out of nowhere he goes, 'You ever think about how they never show you the curve from a commercial plane window?' He wasn't even being a troll, he was dead serious. He started talking about the Antarctic treaty and how no one can just go explore it freely. I laughed it off at first, but the way he laid it out, piece by piece with this calm certainty, got under my skin. It wasn't the usual YouTube rant stuff. He's a smart guy, an electrician, and he was using basic logic to poke holes in what we're told. It made me realize I've never actually checked any of this for myself, I just accepted it. Now I'm down a rabbit hole trying to find simple, solid proof the earth is round that isn't from NASA. Has anyone else had a normal conversation with someone that completely flipped a 'settled' topic for them?
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josephadams7mo ago
Look at the stars from different places on earth... you see totally different sets of them. That only makes sense if we're on a ball. Sailors have used that for navigation forever, long before NASA. The horizon thing is solid too, you can watch a boat go over it with your own eyes. His points sound logical until you check them yourself, which is what he says to do. The curve from a plane window is subtle, but there are videos from high-altitude balloons that show it clearly. It's easy to get stuck on the questions if you don't look at all the answers that are out there.
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patricia_perez747mo ago
The star navigation point is interesting. How did ancient cultures like the Polynesians use different star maps to sail across the Pacific if the sky was the same everywhere? That seems like a real world test.
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jamie9405mo ago
Right? The ship hull thing is wild, you can actually see it from any beach if you bother to look.
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wren6387mo ago
That "calm certainty" is what gets me too. I read about ship hulls disappearing bottom-first over the horizon, something anyone with binoculars at a coast can see for themselves. It's a simple observation that doesn't need any agency to explain.
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