Look at other planets
Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2025 10:56 am
Airplane flight
If you've ever flown out of the country, especially as far away as possible, you must have noticed two interesting facts about airplanes and the Earth.
Airplanes can fly in a relatively straight line for a very long time without falling over the edge of the world. They can also fly around the Earth non-stop.
If you look out the window on a transatlantic flight, you will most likely see the curvature of the earth on the horizon. The best view of the curvature was on Concorde, but that plane is long gone. From the new Virgin Galactic plane, the horizon should be completely curved.
Earth is different from the others, that's for sure. After all, we turkey number data have life, and we haven't found any planets with life yet. But all planets have similar characteristics, and it would be logical to assume that if all planets behave in a certain way or exhibit certain properties—especially if the planets are separated by distance or formed under different circumstances—then our planet is similar.
In other words, if there are so many planets that formed in different places and under different conditions but have similar properties, our planet is likely to be one of them. Our observations have shown that planets are round (and since we know how they formed, we know why they are the way they are). There is no reason to think that our planet would not be the same.
In 1610, Galileo Galilei observed the rotation of Jupiter's moons. He described them as small planets orbiting a large planet—a description (and observation) that did not sit well with the church, as it challenged the geocentric model in which everything revolved around the Earth. This observation also showed that the planets (Jupiter, Neptune, and later Venus) were spherical and orbited the Sun.
A flat planet (ours or any other) would be so incredible to observe that it would upend virtually everything we know about planetary formation and behavior. It would not only change everything we know about planetary formation, but also about star formation (since our Sun would have to behave differently to accommodate the flat Earth theory), and about the speed and motion of celestial bodies. In short, we don’t just suspect that our Earth is round—we know it.
If you've ever flown out of the country, especially as far away as possible, you must have noticed two interesting facts about airplanes and the Earth.
Airplanes can fly in a relatively straight line for a very long time without falling over the edge of the world. They can also fly around the Earth non-stop.
If you look out the window on a transatlantic flight, you will most likely see the curvature of the earth on the horizon. The best view of the curvature was on Concorde, but that plane is long gone. From the new Virgin Galactic plane, the horizon should be completely curved.
Earth is different from the others, that's for sure. After all, we turkey number data have life, and we haven't found any planets with life yet. But all planets have similar characteristics, and it would be logical to assume that if all planets behave in a certain way or exhibit certain properties—especially if the planets are separated by distance or formed under different circumstances—then our planet is similar.
In other words, if there are so many planets that formed in different places and under different conditions but have similar properties, our planet is likely to be one of them. Our observations have shown that planets are round (and since we know how they formed, we know why they are the way they are). There is no reason to think that our planet would not be the same.
In 1610, Galileo Galilei observed the rotation of Jupiter's moons. He described them as small planets orbiting a large planet—a description (and observation) that did not sit well with the church, as it challenged the geocentric model in which everything revolved around the Earth. This observation also showed that the planets (Jupiter, Neptune, and later Venus) were spherical and orbited the Sun.
A flat planet (ours or any other) would be so incredible to observe that it would upend virtually everything we know about planetary formation and behavior. It would not only change everything we know about planetary formation, but also about star formation (since our Sun would have to behave differently to accommodate the flat Earth theory), and about the speed and motion of celestial bodies. In short, we don’t just suspect that our Earth is round—we know it.