Flat Earthers are among the most irritating of people and if your life is going well then you’re hopefully never going to encounter them in your day-to-day goings-on.
But every so often you’re going to be doing something like, say, buying a beer and wearing a shirt of the Cassini mission to Saturn like a big nerd, and some jerk will want to tell you that it’s all a hoax and the Earth is a flat disc and NASA is a hoax.
And look, you don’t want to spill your drink. So what’s a good quick response beyond “off you pop, weirdo?”
What’s with the different constellations?
You may not be an astronomer, but you’re most likely aware that you see different stars from different places.
For example, if you’re in Europe or the US and feeling homesick, looking up for the comfortingly patriotic sight of the Southern Cross will leave you confused and terrified since it’s not there.
A similar thing happened if you watched US kids science TV shows and ran out into your back yard in Adelaide to see the Big Dipper and felt like an idiot when you couldn’t find it. Sorry, little me.
It’s just not visible from there, because there’s a big round planet in the way. That, incidentally, is one of the reasons why NASA set up the Deep Space Communications Complex in Tidbinbilla, just outside of Canberra, because there’s a whole half a sky that can’t be seen from the US (which is why it was used to communication for the Moon Landing and stuff: it would have been a very unnecessary investment if the Moon was just floating overhead all the time).
But maybe you’re not super across the skies in other places. Fair enough. Here’s something you probably know pretty well:
The Moon’s a bit weird, huh?
Let’s assume that the Moon is just a lovely big grey ball pockmarked with asteroid impacts, floating serenely above the flat Earth. You look up, and so does someone in say, London. You both take photos of the full Moon.
How come theirs is upside down compared with yours?
Given how much media we consume from the northern hemisphere it can sometimes be a bit of a shock to see what movies would assure you is an upside-down Moon here in Australia.
And the global-conspiracy folks would say that it’s because you’re looking at the Moon from a different angle because you’re standing in the Southern Hemisphere of a globe, so you’re upside down relative to someone in the nothern hemisphere.
But for a flearther? That’s… that’s kind of tricky.
Ask To See A Map
Here’s a quick one: ask them to pull up a map of this flat Earth, and also a flight comparison site.
The first bit’s a bit mean because there is no agreed-upon Flat Earth Map, and part of the reason is because none come remotely close to accurately representing the flight times between countries.
For example, if you want to fly from Sydney to Santiago in Chile, then it’s either a pretty solid 13 hours flying over the ocean on a round Earth, or (using most of the maps that exist) flying over the North Pole and US on a flat earth.
Or maybe the plane takes a massive curve over the ocean to preserve the illusion of a round planet because airlines are prepared to waste fuel and money maintaining an inefficient conspiracy for… um, reasons?
In which case airlines are also hiding the fact that their fleets can travel at sci-fi supersonic speeds to cover those distances in that time.
Or you know, just buy another drink and ignore ’em. That’s probably easier.