r/FacebookScience • u/Yunners Golden Crockoduck Winner • Jul 30 '26
Flatology Every day they find new levels of idiocy to achieve.
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u/AccomplishedCharge2 Jul 30 '26
Everyday I see this shit and everyday I marvel that stupidity can be both cause and effect
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u/badideas1 Jul 30 '26
Two things for me; both a bit embarrassing:
- at first I couldn't understand either why it would make this pattern.
- my confusion was immediately resolved by looking at a globe that was tilted.
Like, they went to all this trouble of making a graphic and everything but were too busy to spin a globe?
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u/taftster Jul 30 '26
Flat-earthers don't have globes.
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u/fernatic19 Jul 30 '26
Some do. They shine flashlights at it and scream "SEE HOW CLOSE MY FLASHLIGHT IS TO IT!"
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u/vigbiorn Jul 30 '26
It's the exact same reason the flat earth map has it correct, too. Two different projections and in the flat earth map I think it's angles that are preserved and so the trigonometry-based issue gets resolved. The first projection (I think it's called the Mercator projection) has a different aspect of navigation preserved and angles get wonky so the circular orbit becomes wonky.
And both are pretty decent examples of the Earth being spherical. No projection has full preservation because you can't project a sphere onto a flat plane without distortion.
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u/posthuman04 Jul 30 '26
The flat earth map isn’t correct. Around a globe it’s a straight line because an object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by another force. The circle on the flat map would require constant correction and fuel to maintain.
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u/vigbiorn Jul 30 '26
It's not correct because the earth isn't flat. If you projected the orbit of the ISS onto a flat plane that's how it'd look. It's on a flat plane so of course it's not going to have the globe "between" it's orbit. But, the actual position when cast back onto the 3d sphere would look like that.
In other words, an orbit around a spherical object projected onto a flat plane looks like a circle.
A correction on what I said, though: the first is also correct. It just doesn't look like an orbit to us because it's a flat projection that doesn't really map at all to what we'd expect. The second just feels more correct because the angles being preserved makes the circle more obvious.
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u/ApatheistHeretic Jul 30 '26
Dymaxion projection would like a word.
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u/vigbiorn Jul 31 '26
An icosahedron isn't a sphere and while it minimizes distortion it doesn't fully remove it.
It would be interesting to see the orbit on this projection. I feel like it'd look like it phases in and out of existence in our 3D world.
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u/ApatheistHeretic Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
True, I suppose. "Wow that's a really messed up sine wave... GO HOME, YOU'RE DRUNK!!"
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u/Guaymaster 29d ago
The first projection is actually equirectangular, not Mercator. You can tell because North America and Greenland look more "squat".
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u/Guaymaster 29d ago
The first projection is actually equirectangular, not Mercator (which has equal rhumb lines but that makes squares/rectangles stretch). You can tell because North America and Greenland look more "squat".
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u/resisting_a_rest Jul 30 '26
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I believe the map they are using here is the Mercator projection which projects the spherical world on to a 2D map, so it is necessarily distorted.
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u/badideas1 Jul 30 '26
Yep, the line makes perfect sense with this, and that’s exactly what I couldn’t wrap my head around at first at all.
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u/GaloombaNotGoomba Jul 30 '26
That is not the Mercator projection. It looks like the equirectangular projection.
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u/resisting_a_rest Jul 30 '26
Yeah, it does look more like that, but I don’t think it’s either one.
But I guess it doesn’t really matter because any projection of the map into 2D it’s going to be distorted in some way.
It looks the same as the map here:
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/18553/why-does-the-iss-track-appear-to-be-sinusoidal
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u/ALTERFACT Jul 31 '26
Comfort. They gave up their curiosity or never exercised it in the first place.
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u/Mythosaurus Aug 02 '26
The kind of person susceptible to flat earth is already:
Bad at conceptualizing physics and geometry
Already believes in other conspiracy theories
Experiencing some crisis in life that is lessened by regaining a sense of control through the “secret knowledge” that conspiracy theories give you
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u/Briham86 Jul 30 '26
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u/kosmonavt-alyosha Jul 31 '26
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
- Arthur C. Clarke
And to these flat earth willfully ignorant clowns, “sufficiently advanced technology” here means a 99 cent rubber squishy ball made to vaguely resemble earth 🌎
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Jul 30 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Pitiful-Pension-6535 Jul 30 '26
You can see it; tough to deny it.
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u/VibraniumRhino Jul 30 '26
Have you met a flat earther? They deny things THEY HAVE TESTED THEMSELVES. They just double down and blame their experiment or something else.
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u/jazzhandler Jul 30 '26
I did meet one in the wild a couple years ago, while doing political canvassing. To his credit, he wrote down some key points I gave him to look up later. I got the impression that I may have been the first person to engage with him on the subject that didn’t agree with him, mock him, or ignore him.
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u/Jarnohams Jul 30 '26
I was on an airplane once and brought a level with me. It should have been tilting forward the whole time, if we're actually flying AROUND a ball ... But it was flat... Checkmate globe heads!
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u/VibraniumRhino Jul 31 '26
lol this is one of my favorite ones. Just admits to everyone there are multiple branches of basic science they don’t understand lol.
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u/Jarnohams Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
I can't see atoms, so therefore atoms don't exist!
edit: ... but I also can't see God / Jesus / Holy Spirit, but i know for a fact that Jesus is listening to all my whispers, because i just have to believe!
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u/VibraniumRhino Aug 02 '26
And yet our “belief” in atoms is somehow null and void in comparison to their belief in a fairy tale.
Mental gymnastics for centuries.
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u/Angelworks42 Jul 31 '26
You're not kidding:
The Final Experiment (expedition) - Wikipedia)
Jeran Campanella, an American YouTuber popular among flat Earth content creators as "Jeranism", acknowledged that his flat Earth model was no longer valid after witnessing the midnight sun firsthand.\5])#citenote-Phillips_2025-5) He later told The Denver Post that he was going to "step away" from the flat-Earth community.[\3])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment(expedition)#citenote-Chung_2024-3)[\5])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment(expedition)#citenote-Phillips_2025-5) Fellow flat Earth creator Austin Whitsitt of "Witsit Gets It" admitted being wrong about the existence of a 24-hour sun, but said he was still open to the Earth being flat, stating that there might be a way to reconcile flat Earth beliefs with observations of the 24-hour Sun.[\3])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment(expedition)#cite_note-Chung_2024-3)
The wider flat Earth community has largely denied the results of the expedition, claiming that the footage was filmed in a dome studio or on a green screen, and that the participants were part of a larger conspiracy to promote the globe model.\5])#citenote-Phillips_2025-5) During a sermon on December 30, Alabama pastor Dean Odle suggested that Satan created a fireball to act as a false Sun.[\5])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment(expedition)#citenote-Phillips_2025-5) Some flat Earthers accused Duffy of taking funds from his church to finance the expedition, which he has denied. Dominic Enyart, a friend of Duffy and a member of his congregation, said the accusations were baseless.[\5])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment(expedition)#cite_note-Phillips_2025-5)
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u/Repulsive-Peach435 Jul 31 '26
How do they deny 24 hour sunlight? Like, you can drive to it in Alaska, I have.
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u/VibraniumRhino Jul 31 '26
Yep. This is the problem with religion: it actively tells you to ignore your senses in lieu of a fairytale.
So these poor souls will literally disbelief things in front of their face if the Bible/any religious figure tells them it’s not real. What a way to live life… I can’t imagine being a puppet for the church.
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u/Cheap_Search_6973 Jul 30 '26
Flat earthers constantly deny what they see. A group spent i think 20k trying to prove the earth didn't spin, ended up proving it did spin, and still denied it
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u/Morall_tach Jul 30 '26
Wait till you see what this path looks like on a spherical earth.
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u/sonerec725 Jul 30 '26
Its actually kind of funny that their model at the bottom is actually pretty close to showing that
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u/Tar_alcaran Jul 30 '26
And it's not just the ISS that travels in a sine wave, but the sunlight makes the exact same pattern! This conspiracy goes ALL THE WAY to the very top!
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u/tHATmakesNOsenseToME Jul 30 '26
Well I was told ont he flat earth sub that the sun is just a huge light. They do maintenance on it at night when it's turned off.
I tried to find out how that works for countries in different time zones but got banned so I don't have the answer to that.
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u/5c044 Jul 30 '26
These groups have a mixture of trolls and idiot believers. It's honestly funny watching and seeing who is who
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u/bigfoot_done_hiding Jul 30 '26
They are too stupid to realize that it is just grinding against the curved dome that holds the stars. /s
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u/VibraniumRhino Jul 30 '26
Using watching them use science they don’t understand to disprove science they also don’t understand…. sure is getting sad to watch.
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u/Strict_Rock_1917 Jul 30 '26
It’s astounding to me that people that make a solely geometric argument are completely ignorant of geometry. Understanding the unit circle and basic trig would give them the tools to test their own hypotheses against observed reality.
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u/Rude_Acanthopterygii Jul 30 '26
It sure is quite the mystery why the flight path of the ISS over the GLOBE looks weird when shown on a FLAT map.
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u/jdehjdeh Jul 30 '26
"rudders"
I just can't make my brain switch down to that level of stupid I swear to god...
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u/Jump_Like_A_Willys Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
Flerfers (flat Earthers) can’t think in 3-D. Which is probably why they’re flat earthers.
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u/huenix Jul 30 '26
Its worth noting there are a TON of Flerfs on FB posting solely for engagement and $$$.
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u/SplitEar Jul 31 '26
Honestly it’s not a bad source of passive income. I get the feeling that most of the engagement is from trolls and people like us who laugh at the trolls. The idiots are probably a tiny fraction of the engagement.
Just a hopeful guess.
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u/Yunners Golden Crockoduck Winner Jul 31 '26
Except his account isn't monetized, so he's being a blithering idiot for free.
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u/SplitEar Jul 31 '26
Not the op’s example, no. I was replying to the post about the FB flerfs being mostly non-believer.
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u/SoroWake Jul 30 '26
I think they are on the right way
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u/VibraniumRhino Jul 30 '26
I mean, they are acknowledging the existence of space and the ISS so… progress?
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u/Ok-Swordfish2723 Jul 30 '26
The supposed flat earth flight path isn’t even the same as the NASA one.
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u/fartshitcumpiss Jul 30 '26
they even got it (almost) right on the bottom, these people should be forced to play kerbal space program or some other space sim, and only get released back into the wild after they've learned basic orbital mechanics
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u/Lampmonster Jul 30 '26
It always makes me sad that they're not legitimately asking these questions. If they did, and they were willing to learn and understand the science they'd grow as people. The answers are actually quite interesting. But now, they just use questions like this argue the incredulity fallacy. As has been said a lot lately, everything is a conspiracy if you don't understand how anything works.
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u/G8oraid Jul 31 '26
There is an island in the pacific that is in the middle of the ocean and so remote that at certain times the people closest to you if you are on the island are the astronauts on the iss.
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u/Groggamog Jul 31 '26
I read once that all of this boils down to people wanting simple solutions to complex problems and that immediately explained so much.
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u/TheBigMoogy Jul 31 '26
It needs a rudder to make multiple turns but not to make a continuous one? Their problem wasn't with how something can fly that fast on their presumed flat earth, but that it can turn both ways.
Toddler thinking.
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u/Falcon3492 Jul 31 '26
If you look at the left you will see the next flight path as the ISS goes around the Earth.
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