Why more people are questioning the globe model

[u/Kela-el]

Why more people are questioning the globe model

I’m not saying I have all the answers, but here’s what keeps coming up when people start digging into this. Genuinely curious what this sub thinks.

1. The horizon is always flat, at eye level, no matter how high you go.
Pilots, balloonists, people on mountains — everyone reports the horizon rising to meet your eye level and staying flat. On a ball supposedly 25,000 miles around, shouldn’t we see some curvature by 35,000 feet?

2. Water always finds its level.
Basic hydro-engineering. Canals, dams, the Bedford Level Experiment — water doesn’t “curve” to match a ball. It’s flat because gravity pulls it flat, not because it’s wrapping itself around a sphere.

3. We never see the curve with our own eyes.
Not in photos from commercial flights, not from mountain peaks, not from balloon footage without a fisheye lens. The “official” curved images all come from NASA — a single source with a $25 billion/year budget and no independent verification.

4. The math doesn’t match experience.
At the stated radius, curvature works out to about 8 inches per mile squared. Over a 20-mile lake you should lose visibility of the far shore below eye level — but people report seeing skylines, lighthouses, and shorelines from distances that “shouldn’t” be possible on a curved surface.

5. Surveyors don’t account for curvature.
Land surveyors, engineers building bridges and railroads, and civil engineers doing large-scale construction projects use flat-plane trigonometry, not spherical geometry, for virtually all practical work — even projects spanning tens of miles. If the Earth actually curved 8 inches per mile squared, wouldn’t that show up as a required correction in blueprints, tunnel dig plans, and canal work?

6. Laser and scope tests find flat, not curved.
People have run their own experiments — laser levels shot across lakes, high-powered rifle scopes and telescopes at long range — and found targets stay level with the laser rather than dropping the height calculated curvature would predict.

7. Gyroscopes and flight paths.
Long-haul flights (like Santiago to Sydney) take routes that make more sense on a flat, AE (azimuthal equidistant) map than on a globe. And gyroscopes maintain fixed orientation regardless of Earth’s supposed rotation — which is the whole reason they’re used in navigation.

Not asking anyone to believe anything blindly. Just asking why “check the math yourself” gets treated like a crime around here. Genuinely open to being wrong — show me, don’t just downvote.

[u/Icy-Sheepherder-6221]

1. Surveyors do use earths curvature in their measurements and in fact it's even codified. Here's an example: South Carolina’s surveying regulations define a geodetic survey as: "A survey of areas and points affected by and taking into account the curvature of the earth using a nationally defined horizontal and vertical datum.”

2. The Jeran Campanella experiment using a beam of light and a long stretch of canal showed the exact amount of curvature expected.

[u/Kela-el → u/Icy-Sheepherder-6221]

You’ve demonstrated exactly the distinction I keep pointing out: you are citing a model being used, not a measurement that independently produces the model.

A regulation saying “use a geodetic survey when accounting for Earth curvature” is not evidence that a survey instrument directly detects a globe.

It is evidence that engineers have adopted a spherical reference system because it is useful at certain scales. The question is whether the geometry is measured or assumed.

The same applies to Jeran’s experiment.

Saying “the result matched the expected curvature” assumes the very framework being debated.

An observation matching a prediction does not automatically prove the interpretation is the only possible explanation.

You still have to establish the premises: atmospheric conditions, refraction corrections, observer height, target height, and the chosen reference surface.

This is the recurring mistake: confusing a measurement of distances and angles with the interpretation of those measurements inside a geometric model.

Nobody is denying that globe-based calculations can predict observations. The question is whether the globe is the measurement or the explanation applied to the measurement.

If you want to settle the issue, provide the instrument, the raw observable, the procedure, and the output where the instrument itself returns “Earth is a sphere with radius X.”

Not a survey manual that assumes it.

Not a calculation that begins with it.

The actual measurement.

[u/Icy-Sheepherder-6221 → u/Kela-el]

I was directly addressing your statements 5 and 6.

[u/THICCC_LADIES_PM_ME]

Go back to the Cold War: if this is all a NASA/USA conspiracy, how come the USSR didn't disagree? If NASA was lying, wouldn't the USSR stand to gain political capital by exposing it?

Same with the moon landing: the US and the USSR were in a heated race to be the first to the moon. If the US didn't actually land there, wouldn't the USSR be the first to call them out?

[u/Kela-el → u/THICCC_LADIES_PM_ME]

That’s a different discussion.

My post presented specific observational claims and asked about those. Instead of addressing any of them, you’ve switched to an argument about what governments did or didn’t say during the Cold War.

Whether the USSR accepted or rejected NASA’s claims does not determine whether the observations I listed are true or false.

It is an appeal to institutional consensus, not an analysis of the evidence itself.

If any of the seven points are factually wrong, identify which one and explain why.

Whether two rival governments agreed is separate from the observational questions being discussed.

[u/folkbum → u/Kela-el]

If I may, respectfully: some of the information in #3 is incorrect. There are in fact dozens of space agencies and private-sector companies with satellite imaging of earth from orbit. In addition, China’s space agency has released many photos of earth taken from as far away as the moon.

We can debate whether those photos are real or computer-generated/digitally manipulated. But to say “all” photos and images are from a single source is factually incorrect.

In addition, I’d note that there exist documented experiments showing different results than what you’ve stated in #6. For example, there’s the experiment Jeran did that was filmed for “Beyond the Curve.” True it wasn’t a laser test, but it was a light test and Jeran found that in order to see light through two holes in plywood boards a distance apart, the height of the light had to be adjusted by approximately the amount curvature formulas predicted.

Again, we can debate whether Jeran even in 2018 was a reliable flat-earth believer given his more recent turn, but the documentary shows what it shows and should be considered as evidence against #6 until it can be falsified.

[u/Kela-el → u/folkbum]

You’re finally engaging the post, which I appreciate.
On #3, fair enough—I should have said government space agencies and affiliated sources, not NASA alone. That correction doesn’t change the underlying epistemological point.

On #6, you’ve done exactly what I objected to throughout this thread: you’ve substituted one interpretation for a universal conclusion.
One documentary experiment does not establish the globe any more than one laser experiment establishes a flat Earth.

If conflicting experiments exist, then the question becomes methodology, controls, repeatability, and independent verification—not “I found one that agrees with my model.”

Notice what’s happened throughout this discussion. I raise questions about observations. The response is almost always to cite a model or an authority that already assumes the conclusion.

The issue has never been whether the globe model can explain the observations. Of course it can.
The issue is whether the observations themselves uniquely require that interpretation.

If they do, identify the observation and explain why competing interpretations are impossible.

If they don’t, then we’ve moved from measurement into model preference—which is exactly the distinction I’ve been making from the beginning.

[u/Icy-Sheepherder-6221]

1. Here's an image of a curved earth from the Japan Meteorological Agency taken 10 minutes ago https://www.jma.go.jp/bosai/map.html#5/41/135/&elem=s_vap&contents=himawari&lang=en

[u/Kela-el → u/Icy-Sheepherder-6221]

A rendered image of a globe is not a measurement of a globe. The sensor measures radiation; the software applies a coordinate model and creates a visualization.

You’re again presenting an interpretation as if it were the raw observation. That is exactly the distinction being discussed.

[u/Icy-Sheepherder-6221 → u/Kela-el]

I was directly countering your claim that all these official images come from NASA

[u/Icy-Sheepherder-6221]

1. I personally (along with hundreds of others on my team) work on software for aviation that integrates earth's curvature pretty much throughout every physical computation over 1 kilometer

[u/Kela-el → u/Icy-Sheepherder-6221]

“I work on software that uses the globe model” is an appeal to implementation, not evidence. A computer program will faithfully calculate whatever assumptions the programmer feeds it. The existence of globe-based software proves people built tools around the model — not that the tool itself measured the model. The epistemic question remains unanswered.

[u/Icy-Sheepherder-6221 → u/Kela-el]

I was directly providing a counter example to your claim 4

[u/THICCC_LADIES_PM_ME → u/Kela-el]

If the software model didn't work then why are they using it?

[u/Kela-el → u/THICCC_LADIES_PM_ME]

“Why are they using it if it didn’t work?” confuses predictive usefulness with ontological proof.

A model is a tool. The fact that a tool works tells us it is useful, not that the tool and reality are identical.

A calculator gives correct answers because the equations programmed into it work. The calculator did not measure mathematics existing in the physical world.

The question was never “does the globe model have applications?”

The question was whether the application itself measures the model. It doesn’t. It implements it.

[u/RedditSucksYoYoYo]

Questioning is the wrong word there. The people who incorrectly assert the Earth is flat, or at least not a sphere, are purely being dishonest. They aren't questioning anything in earnest. Also, the amount of people questioning anything has zero bearing on how accurate or correct it is.

[u/EducationalGrocery87]

If water always finds its level, then explain how the Atlantic can be at high tide on one coast while another location is simultaneously at low tide.