THE EARTH IS FLAT

You make some interesting points. I will address your points before I make my own. < > Wrong, as the Earth has an atmosphere and its own field of gravity drawing everything towards it, and the car does not. << Loose objects would fly off of the earth just as loose objects in the car would fly around inside it.>> However nothing has ever gone flying off into space from Earth without the greatest efforts by humankind. < > Gravity and atmosphere blow your theory apart. < > Nonsense. < > No, you're making the mistake of associating north and south with up and down, respectively. North and South have no bearing on the constant pull of gravity. < So any moving object that would travel to the opposite pole would be repelled off into space under conventional thinking.>> Untrue, because if I were to go south of the equator, the Earth would not repel me into space. I know because I've been south of the equator many times and I was born and raised north of the equator. < > The Earth is round for the following reasons: Three arguments come to mind. All of these date back to Greek times or earlier. 1. During lunar eclipses, the projected shadow of the earth on the moon is always round. If the earth were flat, then this projection will not always be circular (it could degenerate to a line), but this is never observed, regardless of the time of the lunar eclipse. Aristotle (384-322 BCE) wrote about this. The third point, below, is also credited to Aristotle. 2. Eratosthanes (276-195 BCE) did a famous experiment on measuring the angle of the sun at noon in Alexandria, Egypt, and in Syrene. Finding the difference in the angles and knowing the distance between the two points, the circumference can be calculated. 3. If you travel north or south a signigicant distance, you will see a different set of stars at night. This will not happen on a flat surface. 4. When ships sail out to sea, they sink below the horizon gradually. First the hull goes down, then the masts. This suggests that the Earth's surface curves away and downward from wherever you stand. It's hard to observe this effect on land, because mountains and trees and so forth get in the way when something moves away from you before it dips below the horizon. 5. If you climb higher, you can see further. On top of a mountain or lighthouse, or in an airplane, you can see things that are invisible -- below the horizon -- when you are on the ground. For example, if you watch the Sun set, and at the very moment when the Sun is just below the horizon you climb quickly up a hundred feet, you will see the Sun again. It is hard to explain why you can see further when you climb higher unless the Earth's surface curves downward away from you wherever you stand. 6. When the Sun is directly overhead in any place, it is NOT directly overhead at the same time in any place a few hundred miles away: If you were to put a stick in the ground sticking straight up at noon in New York City, then telephone a friend in Chicago to ask him to also put a stick in the ground sticking straight up, he would see a shadow, and you would not. This is hard to explain unless ``straight up' (away from the Earth's surface) points in different directions when you are at different places on the Earth's surface. That is, the Earth is not flat, but round. 7. If you travel North, you can see stars at night which you never saw before. Since there are so many stars, you only need to travel a hundred miles or so. The new stars are stars that were hidden below the horizon before you walked North. How could this be true if the Earth were flat? 8. There are tides in the oceans, which you can see at the shore, that repeat every 24 hours or so. If the Earth were flat, then there would be no tides, because the tides depend on their being a substantial distance between the near and far sides of the Earth, from the point of view of the Moon. The Earth is not flat. The Earth is round. Thank you.