The earth is not a ball, that has been proven.
How do you know, and how has it been proven? All "proofs" I have seen thus far rely on poor initial presumptions about both models and misapplication of mathematics. It seems to me people are often mistakenly confident in alleged disproof just as they are in flawed proofs.
An argument can be challenged based on its form (formal fallacy) its relevance to its propositions (informal fallacy) or the facts supporting its propositions. Sure, the Earth looks flat. The horizon appears to be a horizontal line. But why does that really disprove the idea of the horizon as a very small circle of a sphere on a very large spheroid?
I'm not an astrophysicist, but I can draw a diagram to illustrate a concept. Polaris should be visible south of the "equator" by any flat earth model with a celestial dome, and we should be able to calculate that dome height with basic geometry, unless my model and math are fundamentally flawed.
Saying that people in power lie does not mean the inverse of their statements are true. The best lies are not complete falsehoods, but divergence from truth with enough tendrils of apparent support to get people to buy into the false aspects.
It wouldn't surprise me if we live on the inside of a ball, four time the size they say the globe is.
But, i just do not know.
How would we model it and test it? That is how we could know, or at least have data to support or dispute a given model.
I should also state some really weird things.
You cannot sail using the flat earth map. You still need to calculate grand arcs. Or you won't get where you are going.
You ALSO cannot sail using a globe.
Best example is, you are going round the horn of Africa.
You go down, go over so far, go up and smash into the coast of Africa. (if you are taking your distances off of a globe)
Because a globe is a terrible scale for navigation purposes? Navigational charts are drawn many orders of magnitude larger.
I don't follow. Do you mean the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Agualhas at the southern tip? I suppose we could check with some South African HIVE users for direct information in the latter case.
Because the globe model is not accurate at all, south of the equator.
To illustrate this easiest, there was a group that was going to sail around Antarctica.
So, on a globe, you should easily make that journey in a month.
After a year, they gave up and turned north.
Every time they took a reading, they found that they weren't as far along as they thought.
So, if you try to sail around South Africa by going so many nautical miles, and then turning north you find that you haven't actually gone far enough, and you turn north and smack into land.
(it is not a "little" pear shaped.)
I have never been south of the equator. I can neither confirm nor disprove your claims from personal observation and experience.
Who was this group of antarctic circumnavigators? Where can their records be found?
Africa is a lot less pointy than South America on every map or globe I have seen. Are you sure the flaw is not in your conceptual model?
And this is where i fail bigly. I do not remember names, so i cannot provide search terms for these events.
It is that, when you take the globe model, and you are at a certain latitude, then the distance between longitudes should be X, but, south of the equator this doesn't hold true.
When you measure distance across land from one degree of longitude to another
When you try to sail around Antarcitica
When you try to sail around a known land mass (the bottom of Africa)
You find that it is not X distance, it is 2X or as you go further south it is 12X
How do you know this, though? I do sympathize with not having sources at your fingertips. I read a lot, online and off, so having info rattling around between my ears with no easy hyperlink for a source does happen. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Sure, in the end, we're both working from hearsay when it comes to distances and travel, but the preponderance of evidence I have seen which people support with data (whether dubious or not) does not match your unsubstantiated claims.
The best proof of 'not a ball of the stated size' are visual. (or light doesn't travel in straight lines)
So, you take the govern-cement's website data on how far away certain light houses can be seen. Do the math, and find that they should be well over the horizon.
And, on a clear, still night, you can see these light houses from further.
Then their are the photographs you see, taken on a rare chance of clear, still days. Of cities that are so far, they should be over the horizon.
Today, there are many people taking such photos with IR cameras on the regular.
Other things, that are harder to prove, but are way more relevant is that there is too much land area below the equator. You measure points across the land mass... and they are longer than they should be measured on a globe.
One popular scientist who was confronted with this fact said "The earth is pear shaped"
It can be bent.
When I have seen people "show their math," they use the wrong formulae, usually a parabolic formula to disprove a spheroid. It doesn't add up because it literally can't.
Was it a mirage? These occasions are notable for their rarity and the wavering vertical distortion they exhibit based on what I have seen when such evidence is presented. Sometimes objects may even seems to float or look upside-down, because mirages are weird and atmospheric refraction is a thing.
[citation needed]
Slightly pear-shaped. Very slightly. A minutely lopsided oblate spheroid. Not a literal pear. I'm no fan of NdGT, but quoting him out of context is dishonest.
I have been to the Pacific Ocean, Lake Superior, and the large lakes in North Idaho. My own admittedly limited observations reflect the predictions of the sphere model. One of my vague plans involves visiting the northeast shore of Lake Pend Oreille near Owens Bay and looking SSW from the shore. What would you predict I should see?
In case you're curious about where some of these claims originally came from, it will interest you that Giovanni Cassini thought that the Earth was egg-shaped; he came into conflict with Isaac Newton, who maintained that the Earth bulged out slightly at the equator because of angular inertia. Because Cassini was a cartographer, his claim still holds some sway even now, despite observations overwhelmingly confirming Newton's hypothesis.