Seafaring peoples can hardly ignore the fact that the Earth is round, and roughly takes the shape of a sphere. Even in clear skies, the boats gradually disappear behind the horizon. This would not be explained if the Earth was flat.
"Platists" Do Not See Round Earth The Earth is flat, the "platists" are convinced of it and they have no shortage of arguments to demonstrate it.
On the other hand, if it is spherical, it is completely logical. Nowadays, we have an inescapable proof: the photographs taken from space. Nowadays, claim that the Earth is flat requires doubting that man has gone into space!
This was not the case before the second half of the 20th century. Thus, in the XIX ° century, an English and original engineer (it is not a pleonasm), Samuel Rowbotham (1816 – 1864) decided to carry out experiments to decide if the Earth was round or flat. The idea was to verify, using a telescope, whether a river, the Bedford in this case, curved or not. If the Earth is round, you cannot see a flat boat on a river more than five kilometers away … or Rowbotham manages to see one about ten kilometers away! Proof that the Earth is flat? No, no doubt since it is round but the experience is disturbing …
Question: how to explain Rowbotham's result?
In fact, it is explained by the refraction of the light, the phenomenon which makes us see as broken a stick yet straight in the water, and which explains the mirages in the desert. Even if our engineer was animated by a malicious spirit, his approach was without context of a scientific nature … and his experience only reinforces the theory according to which the Earth is round.
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Find out more about Hervé Lehning
A normalien and an aggregator of mathematics, Hervé Lehning has taught his discipline for some forty years. Crazy about cryptography, a member of the Association of Reservists of the cipher and information security, he in particular broke the secrets of the encryption box of Henri II.
- His blog MATH'MONDE on ABSMARTHEALTH
- The Hervé Lehning's latest book :
Also to discover: The universe of secret codes from Antiquity to the Internet published in 2012 by Ixelles.
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