Flat Earth Debunked: Sun And Moon

Flat earthers have a very odd way of explaining the day and night cycle.

They claim that spinning above their magical disc fantasy are the sun and the moon going in circles above the equator over and over again, like this:

(This gif only reflects the equinox, by the way.)

Of course, there’s a few problems with this utterly ludicrous model. (Is there ever NOT problems?)

Sun

It’s important to note that if the flat earth spotlight sun was always above the earth, regardless if it was day or night for any observer, the sun would NEVER be below the horizon and it would NEVER set. Period.

You can prove this yourself by putting your eyes down onto a flat floor and having a friend walk in large circles next to you. Does your friend ever disappear below the floor? No, that would be silly.

What’s that, flat earthers?

“BUH, BUH MUH PERSPECTIVE!!!!”

Ah, yes! Because there are DEFINITELY laws of perspective that allow an object to disappear below a horizon that shouldn’t even exist in the first place! I’m sorry, flat earthers! How silly of me!

Haha NO.

I don’t even need to draw it out for you geometrically illiterate cretins. The sun CANNOT be above a flat plane for an observer in one area but be below it for another observer elsewhere on the same flat plane! I’m sorry, but it’s geometrically impossible!

Even if sunsets still somehow magically worked on a flat earth without completely and utterly obliterating the laws of geometry, the apparent size of the sun would no doubt change over the day for observers watching the sun during the day. This is because as the sun goes through its daily cycle, it would come closer and closer and then drift further away for observers no matter where they were.

Unfortunately for flat earthers, the sun never changes it’s apparent size throughout the day despite their ridiculous claims that it apparently does.

Wolfie6020 illustrates this point fairly well here:

Now, if sunsets worked by the sun-spotlight moving away from observers, this poses a problem for flat earthers during the equinoxes; the 20th of March and the 23rd of September.

In reality, on a round earth, during these dates the sun rises due east and then due west for all observers on the planet.

However, if the sun sets at the same time its spotlight moves away, the sun would appear to set 45 degrees north off where it should be. Look for yourself:

This is a conundrum I have yet to hear flat earthers explain.

Now, it only gets worse from there.

The 6 month days and 6 month nights in the Arctic and Antarctica also pose problems for flatties… most deny that they happen, but anyone with a passport and some money to spend will confirm that as you go further north or further south, the days and nights will get longer depending on the season and which pole they’re heading to.

This means that on the flat earth, the sun-spotlight will have to do some pretty crazy shit in order for these very long days and nights to happen. Case in point, the solstices; the longest and shortest days of the year depending on your hemisphere, the 21st of June and December.

The sun is going to have to do something like this during the solstices on a flat earth:

Yeah. I don’t expect to see the sun ever having the ability to do this...

Original twitter post here

Now one more thing: if the sun was going in circles above the flat earth, then an observer on the equator during the equinox will see the sun go overhead at noon; so far so good.

But, when they look directly up at the sun, they would be able to see the sun's south pole. Yes, we do sometimes see the sun's south pole, but only a little bit of the pole NOT the entirety of it AND everyone on the planet sees it at the SAME TIME. Not only this, but the most we can ever see of the sun's south pole happens on only ONE day of the year: At the end of the first week of march, not every day for only people directly below the sun.

Moon

Let's take a look at the flat earth model again, shall we?

First off, how in the bleeding fuck does the moon reflect the suns light if it's not in the spotlight area of the sun?

Hm? What's that flat earthers?

"THE MOON MAKES IT'S OWN LIGHT!!!"

...sigh. I’m going to say this very clearly…

The moon, does NOT make it’s own light.

Even if it did, what would be causing the phases of the moon? Why would the moon go through a series of phases in a cycle?

Which brings me to my next point... the moon does not orbit the earth in a day. The moon orbits the earth in a month. Or 27 days to be more specific. It goes through it's phases every 27 days.

But then we strike PROBLEM GOLD in our digging. If this model was corrected to make the moon go around the earth in a month, then when we look up into the sky we should see the moon stay virtually still while the stars move past the moon while they do their daily cycle... unfortunately for the flatties, nobody sees this because the moon moves WITH the stars in sync with each other across the sky and then down under the horizon, because of the rotation of the Earth making them look like they're all moving together at the same time and at the same rate and speed in the sky. (You can confirm this with Stellarium.)

But if we make the moon go around the earth every day, we would just have the moon's phases cycle EVERY DAY.

No matter if you make the moon orbit in a day OR a month, you CANT make it match up with what we see in reality, unless the earth is ROTATING.

Also, this model seems to forget that there are times when you can see the moon in the daytime.

Yeah, we can never see the sun at night but we only sometimes see the moon in nighttime and only sometimes in daytime because during the other times the moon becomes a new moon or is below the horizon so it's not visible during the other times.

However, the moon still appears during the day VERY often. Here's an image of the moon I took from my cellphone during the day:

There are many other images of the moon during the day which I will leave for you to google yourself.

Now onto my final point about the moon... if the moon was only 3,000 miles up and orbiting above the equator, then at certain parts of the flat planet you would be able to see DIFFERENT SIDES of the moon at specific times, as illustrated in my little cartoon here:


What the Fuck?!

I often ask flat earthers: "What forces work to make the sun and the moon float and circle above the flat earth?"

Because seriously. When they call gravity magic and yet don't even THINK about the crazy hoop jumping required to believe in their clusterfuck model I have to ask myself: "Are they REALLY serious? Like, REALLY?!"

Luckily, I got an answer: They usually blame it on this substance called "Aether" which is supposed to be a highly strong, flexible material that has the magical ability of making celestial objects with HUGE amounts of mass move in circular orbits in convenient amounts of time.

However, no substance of this stuff has ever been found in human history, which makes the flat earthers themselves suffer from the burden of proof.