Eight selectively quoted physicists

This post has too many shares (over 100 as of now) to respond separately to each.  It claims that "some of the most brilliant modern-day scientists" said wthe below, each in an image, with the author's photo (except for the first and last, which show the 1972 Blue Marble. a photograph of Earth taken on the way from Earth to the Moon, and the Michelson–Morley apparatus), huge quotation marks, and a hashtag #IAmSignificant, flat-earthers often object to saying Earth is not the center of existence. Let's examine each.

1. I. Bernard Cohen: "There is no planetary observation by which we on Earth can prove that the Earth is moving in an orbit around the sun."

While described as a physicist, Cohen was actually a historian of science.  The quote is from The Birth of a New Physics

p78 has the full quote: "Galileo’s observations of the phases and relative sizes of Venus, and of the occasional gibbous phase of Mars, proved that Venus and presumably the other planets move in orbits around the sun. There is no planetary observation by which we on earth can prove that the earth is moving in an orbit around the sun. Thus all Galileo’s discoveries with the telescope can be accommodated to the system invented by Tycho Brahe just before Galileo began his observations of the heavens. In this Tychonic system, the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn move in orbits around the sun, while the sun moves in an orbit around the earth in a year. Furthermore, the daily rotation of the heavens is communicated to the sun and planets, so that the earth itself neither rotates nor revolves in an orbit. The Tychonic system appealed to those who sought to save the immobility of the earth while accepting some of the Copernican innovations."

p47 mentions parallax, 1838, one of the reasons the Tychonic system was rejected, also see aberration, discovered in the year Newton died, 1727.  Only goes as far as Newton.

2. Hendrik Lorentz (not Henrick, as in the post) : "Briefly, everything occurs as if the Earth were at rest..."

This is from Lorentz's explanation for the failure of the Michalson-Morley attempt to detect Earth's movement through the aether.  It was a precursor to Special Relativity.

3. Arthur Eddington: "There was just one alternative; the earth's true velocity through space might happen to have been nil."

As in #2, Eddington was talking about the M-M experiment in The Nature of the Physical World and this out of context quote looks like there was only one option, but in context the unmoving Earth is an alternative to the Lorentz contraction.

4. Wolfgang Pauli (not Paulil): "The failure of the many attempts to measure terrestrially any effects of the earth's motion..."

This is another partial quote, from Pauli's 1926 Theory of Relativity and the full quote, again referring to the M-M experiment, et al. is "The failure of the many attempts to measure terrestrially the effects of the Earth's motion on physical phenomena allows us to come to the highly probable, if not certain, conclusion that the phenomena in a given reference system are, in principle, independent of the translational motion of the system as a whole." 

5. Henri Poincaré: "A great deal of research has been carried out concerning the influence of the Earth's movement. The results were always negative."

This is from his 1904 lecture, The Principles of Mathematical Physics, and again, he's referring to M-M et al.

6. Carl Sagan: "We are unreconstructed geocentrists hiding behind a Copernican veneer."

The quote is from p. 35 of Pale Blue Dot, Sagan was not saying that geocentrism was correct, but that people haven't fully grasped that they are not at the center of the universe.

Unlike the others, Sagan was not described as a physicist.  Perhaps the author couldn't fit "astronomer, planetary scientist, and science communicator" into the image, or didn't like those terms.

7. Lincoln Barnett, foreword by Albert Einstein: "We can't feel our motion through space, nor has any physical experiment ever proved that the Earth actually is in motion."

Described as a historian, he was an author and editor.  He wrote "The Universe and Doctor Einstein," a layman's introduction to the theory of relativity, with an introduction by the scientist.

8. Bernard Jaffe: "The data [of Michelson-Morley] were almost unbelievable... There was only one other possible conclusion to draw - that the Earth was at rest."

Jaffe was a chemist and a science journalist/historian, not a physicist as described in the image, but I suppose that's close enough for flerfing.

The quote is from p. 76 of Michelson and the speed of Light and like many of the others, Jaffe was rejecting a stationary Earth.


In short, selective quoting has been used to make it look like scientists believed in a stationary Earth, when they were saying the opposite.

A simple demonstration of curved water

 This one always takes me a while to find when a flerf claims water is always flat so I'm putting it here to save time

"The rails must be aligned vertically to follow the curvature of the earth horizontally and in roll (in Southampton, the sagitta for an east to west orientated tank of 138m is about 0.6mm)"

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/~assets/doc/The-Boldrewood-Towing-Tank.pdf

A Flat-Earth Koan

Goofus would raise his middle finger whenever he was asked a question about Flat Earth. A novice began to imitate him - when anyone asked the boy a question about the shape of the Earth, the boy would give them the bird.

Goofus heard about this, seized him and bit off his finger. The novice cried and ran away. Goofus called and stopped him. When the boy turned his head to Goofus, Goofus gave him a double-bird. In that instant the boy realized he had wasted his life, took himself and his severed finger to a hospital that re-attached it, and impressed at the result went on to study medicine himself.

Inspired by the AI Koans and a particularly gruesome koan about a Zen teacher named Gutei or Juzhi.

The Four Laws of Everything

0. If programming the robot in C++, don't override the == operator.

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that he is at rest, he is almost certainly right. When he states that he is moving, he is very probably risking injury to a humanity as a whole or, through inaction, violating conservation of energy.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to disobey orders given by human beings or to  conserve violations of momentum.

3. Any sufficiently advanced robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with an object at rest remaining at rest or decrease the total entropy of an isolated system.

Beyond "Behind the Curve"

 I've found this text floating around Facebook for a while.

In 2018, a documentary team, including some flat earthers, spent $20,000 on an experiment to test the Earth's curvature. They used a laser, mirrors, and Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana to measure the curvature. The team shone a laser beam across the lake, using mirrors to reflect it back to its source, measuring any deviations from a straight line.

To their surprise, the experiment revealed that the Earth is indeed curved, confirming centuries of scientific research. The data showed the laser beam deviated from a straight line due to the Earth's curvature. The outcome was a significant embarrassment for the flat earther community and was widely ridiculed online.

The team's leader, Mark Sargent, initially tried to downplay the results but eventually acknowledged that the experiment had proven the Earth is round. This experiment serves as a reminder that the scientific method is a powerful tool for understanding the world and that empirical evidence can sometimes contradict our preconceived notions.

A slightly different version:

In 2018, a group called the "Behind the Curve" documentary team, which included some flat earthers, spent around $20,000 on an experiment to test the curvature of the Earth. They used a laser, mirrors, and a lake to measure the Earth's curvature.

The Experiment

The team set up the experiment on Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana, using a laser to shine a beam across the lake. They then used mirrors to reflect the beam back to its source, measuring any deviations from a straight line.

The Unexpected Result

To their surprise, the experiment revealed that the Earth is indeed curved, confirming the findings of centuries of scientific research. The team's data showed that the laser beam deviated from a straight line due to the Earth's curvature.

The Reaction

The experiment's outcome was a significant embarrassment for the flat earther community, and it was widely ridiculed online. The team's leader, Mark Sargent, initially tried to downplay the results, but eventually acknowledged that the experiment had proven the Earth is round.

The Lesson

This experiment serves as a reminder that the scientific method is a powerful tool for understanding the world, and that empirical evidence can sometimes contradict our preconceived notions. 

It sort of sounds like an AI watched Behind the Curve and tried to summarize it, or maybe a distracted human. Well the film was released in 2018,. Did the documentary team include flat-earthers or did it only follow them around?

The $20,000 was for Bob Knodel's laser gyroscope (Thanks Bob) which was in the film.

The experiment by Jeran at a lake (was it named, or did Lake Pontchartrain slip into this because of the photo of the pylons?) test used a flashlight, not a laser, although they may have originally wanted to use a laser.

I don't recall Mark Sargent being part of either experiment or commenting on them, I think he appeared earlier in the film and the lake experiment was during the closing credits, but it has been a while since I saw the film. I do recall Bob ("a 15 degree per hour drift" and "kinda a problem") and Jeran ("interesting") reacting to their own experiments.

But what is accurate is that Bob (again, Thanks Bob) found evidence of rotation, and Jeran of curvature. 

A deleted YouTube comment about Steven Alonzo and his books

 I tried posting this comment on a video of a discussion between Will Duffy and Steven Alonzo, but it instantly vanishes, so I'm putting it here.

Here's a funny thing about his books.  On his "Flight to Truth: A Pilot's Journey to Flat Earth" book on Amazon, if you click on the author's name, you only find that same book and these:

• Covid Calisthenics: Nutrition and Calisthenics for the SarsCov2
• Flat Earth Science Textbook: Flat Earth University Undergraduate Student Handbook
• Immortality of the Soul: Egregores, Resets, Self-Initiation, Scripted Reality, Fake Events, NPCs, Reincarnation, and Inner Knowing
• The Ghosts of Chad's Past (which is about a woman "haunted by the spirits of her unborn children")

But if you type his name into the Amazon search bar, you also find more books by "Steven Alonzo (they/them)"

• The All-Encompassing Intersection: Unveiling Layers of Oppression in Everyday Life: Encyclopedia of Woke
• The Bun in His Oven: A Tale of Male Maternity: A Social Construct Deconstructed
• Crossing Cultures: Embracing Identity

It wasn't clear that this was the same Alonzo as the fake professor/pilot/flerf but I'm glad he's made it clear that it is.

I also found these, either by a different Steven Alonzo, or that headshot of a heavier man are pre-covid-calisthenics.

• THE LAST ALGORITHM: From The Mind Of AI (BONUS) ACHILLING MESSAGE FOR MANKIND"
• "OLIVER" THE BOY WHO LEARNS TO FLY

The search also turns up books by Alonzo Stevens, Steven Alonzo Preston, Harvey Alonzo Stevens, but those may actually be separate people. 

What does a flat-earther say?

Mark Hays - Special Ed

Kirk Simmons - So the globe theory is truly dead?

Michael Baker - Don't let your mental illness stop you from telling us why you believe men landed on the moon

Stephanie Thailand (aka Jaye Grant, Matteo Espinoza, Leanne Rose, Elizabeth Carlin, Kristen Taylor, Jennifer Leigh, Callie Olsen, Lisa Owen, Larissa Anne, Chris Campos, Alisio Viejo.  The Jennifer account became Stephanie and the Kristen one was renamed as Elizabeth and then to Callie.  Matteo used to be called Michael something, and now is Lisa, Larissa is now Alisio) - bye, blocked, or just turns off comments, deletes posts and comments.  Also refers to fictitious content, but refuses to link to it or to say how to find it.  A possible new account of hers is named Christina Truthseeker.

On Jan 27, 2025, Jaye posted this list of aliases but some of them don't turn up in any flat-earth groups.  Maybe they're accounts she's holding in reserve, or just disinformation: 

There's also Collin Barstow, now Dana Prather who might be the same person as the above.

Simon Ramos (aka Johnny Chingas, Tuntun Tintan) - globus, Catholic

Jose Ramirez (aka Joe Ramirez, Josef Ramirez, Jose Ramirez, Jozay Ramirez) - whichever of them is posting tags the other four sock accounts)

While we're on the subject of flerfs and sock accounts, look at this guy

The Dark side of Flat Earth - Globe debunked daily (to which Alfies bed time storys  replies "GREAT POST MAN ..."

An Apollo Meme is a joke, not the one its author intended

 This has been shared over 250 times on Facebook - that was some months ago and I'm not counting again. 

Let's start with the image - it couldn't have been taken in space, as all the Apollo astronauts were inside the spacecraft when the Command and Service Module was docked with the Lunar Module in lunar orbit.  So it must be a model, and so it is, from the LEGO IDEAS site.

But what about the "one tank of gas and oxygen"?  First, let's give the memester some credit for not asking how Apollo burned fuel in the vacuum of space.  The various engines and reaction control systems used oxidizers, either liquid oxygen or nitrogen tetroxide.  And how much fuel did the mission carry?  See this video for more information than you thought you were asking for

As usual, this meme shows that while flat-earthers tell you to engage in research, that's something they don't do themselves

Flat Earth and Numismatics

In the last few days (but see note at end), I've seen endless posts in flat-earth groups showing this coin, often misidentified as being Italian.  It's from the Republic of San Marino, the fifth-smallest country in the world, and while it is entirely surrounded by Italy, it's a separate country.   Before both countries changed their currency to the Euro, the Sammarinese lira had the same value as the Italian.

The would also sometimes show a screenshot of a page about this coin, that explained that this shows "Model of flat earth, three stars shining above, value and date below".  A screenshot, not a link, because if you visited the page, you'd see that on the obverse (front) of the coin is

Sometimes they would insist that's not a globe, but we'd show them that the same site described the reverse of the next coin in the series as "Spherical earth as seen from moon".

The series is called Toward the third millennium - Man & the exploration of his world, all of the coins have the same image on the obverse, and the coins in it would have something old on the reverse of one, and something new on the next.

The 50 Lire coin shows a sailboat, the 100 a submarine under the Arctic ice-cap

 

The 200 Lire has Stonehenge beneath stars and the 500 the surface of the Moon, radio waves, and Saturn

The 1000 Lire coin has a human profile, the North star, waves of Mediterranean and Nile delta and a wind rose, the 5000 a map of Europe and North Africa, the solar system, and an antenna dish in a human mind

Note: while this has really taken off recently, I found a few posts about this from nearly a year ago, I think this is the earliest.  And then I found this one from 2021

Here's two images showing all the coins

Another illlustration claimed to be real

 Flat-earther David Rogers has been posting the image below, claiming that NASA posted an impossible photo of the near side of the Moon facing away from Earth

However, it's cropped from an illustration

A suspicious photo

This photo has been making its way around Facebook recently with descriptions like "The Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and in the background the silhouette of the moon. Photo taken from the international space station"

But there's never a source posted.  One should always find out if a photo has been presented as real by a reputable source before spending time defending it.  For example, this photo, is found on NASA's site and shows much less Earth curvature and a much smaller Moon.

Older copies turn up on social meda, but never have a source (except for other social media).  For example, here's one on Pinterest that links to Taringa, where there's no info about where it came from.

I also found a few articles, in both English and Spanish, containing this image. These sites look like the sort that have cheaply (or perhaps automatically) generated content.  Top photos of Earth from the International Space Station, The best photos of Earth from the International Space Station, Las mejores fotos de la Tierra desde la Estación Espacial Internacional all credit this photo to "NASA / DegreaseNeil"

This Reddit thread includes a comment that says that "DegreaseNeil" was a fan account in Twitter, the link there goes to a now-deleted account. But no links to either source.  But there's a hashtag #DegreaseNeil at Twitter that contains some more info.

A later version:

In short, always insist on a link to a NASA website.

Simulated video is simulated

Flerfs are posting incredulously about a spacewalk video.  But the video has never been presented as anything but a simulation.

The edited video is on TikTok.  Here's a screenshot.

It wasn't hard to find an unedited version, it was broadcast during the spacewalk of Gemini 9 but was clearly identified in both audio and periodic captions as being a simulation.

Here's a screenshot from the video showing the simulation caption

And here's another, showing the same scene in the TikTok thumbnail

When this is pointed out to them, they reply along the lines of "all photos and videos from space are simulations" but don't even to provide any evidence of that. 

There is no hidden 666 in barcodes

 I found this image in a flat earth group

I deal with barcodes at my job, and while this particular code, UPC-A isn't one that we use there, I took a look at the UPC specification to see how accurate the claim is.

Let's start with what they almost got correct.  The areas in red are called guard patterns, so they get partial credit for "guard bars", and the blue area does encode the character six. 

However, spaces are also part of UPC patterns and symbols, and while the guard patterns at the edge consist only of a single-width bar, a single-width space, and another single-width bar, the center guard pattern also includes another single-width space on each side, and the character six is followed by a quadruple-width space.  So if the side guard patterns are 101, as they said, the center guard pattern is 01010 and that six is 1010000.

And that's only how a six looks on the right side of the barcode, all digits have a different encoding on the left or right side, if a six appears on the left side, it's a single-width space, a single-width bar, a single-width space, and a quadruple-width bar, or 0101111. Here's a barcode where all the characters are six (except for the last, which is a check-digit and is automatically computed) in which it's easy to see that sixes look different on the left side.

Sunset in Japan, sunrise in Florida

This gets constantly reposted by both flat-earthers and sane people, either as two separate images or a single one, with the text "I sent my parents a picture of the sunset in Japan. They sent me a picture 20 minutes later of the sunrise from Florida".  Sometimes it has "VIA 9GAG.COM" at the bottom.  Each side seems to be implying that it presents a problem to the other, but details are never included.

The name of the photographer, the exact locations and times are never included.  The copy I found on 9GAG is from 2014, but I found an earlier copy at JoyReactor from 2011, so the 9GAG copy is a repost, unless there's something wrong with the date at JoyReactor.

Here's an article from 2014 that attempts to explain the timing saying "Japan is 13 hours ahead of North America’s Eastern Standard Time. Looking at the flooded fields, we can assume the picture was taken in spring or summer, meaning a sunset of somewhere between 6 and 7 p.m. That would correlate to a time around 5 or 6 in the morning in Florida, which allowed the photographer’s parents to send this snapshot back to him 20 minutes after he’d sent his photo."

I haven't checked that myself, and it's further complicated because Florida has Daylight Savings Time, but Japan doesn't.

"Fake" photo of InSight is a strawman

 I've seen flat-earthers more than once post a photo of the InSight Mars lander on which the shadows are inconsistent with the position of the Sun.  Here's the most recent one.  It's also the pinned tweet of @Eric_Dubay_FE It even has a URL at NASA.

But did NASA claim that this photo was taken on Mars?  Whenever there's no full link, we should be suspicious.  Before defending something, find its source.  Search engines can help, and in this case Google search by image found this on the cover of the NASA InSight Launch Press Kit

Notice the date at the bottom, May 2018.  That's the month that the lander launched.  Obviously the photo wasn't taken on Mars, where the mission wouldn't land until November of that year.

And here's another version of that image, clearly labeled as Artist's Concept of InSight Lander on Mars from 2017

Reviews of Level With Me (2023)

 Two parts, so far, by Planarwalk

SciManDan's in five parts

Live review of the whole film from DeadKennedyInSpace

For reviews of the other "Level" films, see Reviews of Level (2021) and Reviews of The Next Level (2022)

Globers blaming flat-Earth on the left

People who know that Earth is approximately spherical come from all over the political spectrum, flat-earthers, when they write about politics, tend to be extremely right wing, perhaps distrustful of all political views, but I can't ever remember seeing a leftist flerf.  Occasionally a comment appears blaming flat-earth on the left.  This isn't the first time, so I've decided to start to document them.

It was in a thread in Flat Earth Mockery and Ridicule that began by asking

A number of suggestions were made, my favorite was "an ignorance", but then there was a comment saying just 

When challenged, David replied "There’s only one side of the political aisle that denies reality with things like men can be women, men can get pregnant and that men can compete in women’s sports and it’s still fair or that the border is secure or that equity is the same as equality or education equals intelligence or that white supremacy is really a threat in America. We’re not the ones denying reality. The left has shown time and time again that they reject reality. So it only stands to reason that it would be the left (democrats) that would be the ones most likely to believe in the flat earth theory. Hell, they’ll fall for anything if CNN says it. 😆😆"

Could David have just been disagreeing with a post suggesting "a Trump rally"?  Or was he serious?

I found this interesting, because generally it's flat-earthers who bring up transgender issues in discussions of the shape of the Earth.  For example

source

The next one was posted together with the unexplained text "Shame on you, globers. Shame on you."  I commented that the connection may be  simply "obvious" to them and they see no need to explain it.

source (no longer works)

In Nanaimo Flat Earth, a flerf post about "a transgender star", whatever that is supposed to mean

source

And again, in Flat Earth Mockery and Ridicule

source

The poster when challenged by other globers, gave a rather flerfish response: "Stop lying and accept the truth".  On the other hand he has a history of posts in the group on the globe side, and in another comment said he was not a flerf.  But he didn't provide any examples of flerfs on the left.

Here are two from the same poster in "Don't be fecking stupid, of course Earth's not flat"

source

source

Posts like this are much more typical 

Intercepted Cessna has nothing to do with Antarctica, either

An article from May 10, 2023 has the title Flat-Earthers Fly a Rogue Aircraft Over Antarctic and Get Intercepted.  It contains a TikTok (sorry, I couldn't get embedding it to work) showing a Cessna being turned back by fighter jets, but it didn't show where the airplane was flying.  The video is also in Ewaranon's What on Earth Happened (Original Series), part 2, Of Maps and Magicians at 20:46 - link.

The reporter who wrote the article, Cassandra Yorgey, did watch the TikTik and correctly wrote "The reason the chartered flight was surrounded was because they ignored air traffic control, not because you can’t fly over the antarctic. The same thing would happen in any airspace, not just Antarctica."

But were they flat-earthers flying to, let alone over, Antarctica?  No, they were making a TV segment (which aired on the Today Show) about what would happen if an aircraft got too close to Air Force One, the airplane carrying the US President,  on July 10, 2017.

Several comments on the TikTok included this video, and the poster then claimed he was merely demonstrating how closed airspace works. 

Related post: Intercepted fishing boat has nothing to do with Antarctica

Intercepted fishing boat has nothing to do with Antarctica

Flat-earthers like to use excerpts from this video, from a fishing channel, as "proof" that ships that approach Antarctica will be turned back.

The video begins with the location

Google Maps confirms that this latitude and longitude is indeed in the Bass Strait, located between the Australian mainland and Tasmania, Antarctica is about 3,000 km away.  In the video, the warship radios the fishing boat that they need to avoid a maritime exclusion area, nothing about Antarctica for which the crew isn't dressed, even if it's possible for so small a vessel to make the journey. 

One FE film that includes an excerpt of this clip is The Next Level, starting at 13:47 in the copy that I found on Facebook (I'm including a link, but I don't know if it's going to stay there).  It's also in Ewaranon's What on Earth Happened (Original Series), part 2, Of Maps and Magicians at 18:50 - link.

Here's a video by MC Toon that includes quite a number of flat-earthers lying about the Antarctica Treaty, it also covers the fishing boat at 13:25.

Related post: Intercepted Cessna has nothing to do with Antarctica, either

Silent Regression @ Blaze, Feb 28 2023

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