this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

To play devil's advocate, wouldn't you get the same result on a flat earth, if the sun was closer enough for rays not to be parallel?

[–] magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I’m not completely sure, but I guess it’s difficult to fit a flat earth model if you have three or more measurements.

[–] bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Oh that's a good idea. In fact with more measurements, it would become harder and harder to ignore them corresponding to a spherical model.

Every degree of latitude would be a degree of shadow angle.

For flat earth, it would be on an inverse tangent curve. Even if it was argued that the air somehow bent the light to distort results, what are the odds that it would do so in a way that exactly matched a sphere?

Someone should set this up as a world-wide science project. It would be easy to coordinate measuring at the same time.