Simple Proof of the Globe: Distances Between 4 Cities

As discussed previously in Flat Earth Challenges, checking distance and area measurements is a fairly simple way to show it is impossible to map our Earth to a flat plane.

Just pick 4 cities that are all fairly distant from one another (8000 km or more is perfect).  The distances don't even have to be all that accurate, as we will show in our example.  If you pick 4 cities that are closer to each other then you need more accurate distances.  I don't want to have to care that much about having super accurate distances, I want something that is glaringly obvious.

For my example I've used Sydney, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, and London -- which I've also used before to show how utterly ridiculous the Gleason map is...

But that's just one Flat Earth map.  Let's destroy all Flat maps in one go...

The Method

What I did is pick the cities with the three longest routes and placed those first three cities that distance apart on a flat plane (Sydney, London, Buenos Aires) using a scale of 10 km to 1 pixel.

Then you draw an arc from each of those cities with a radius equal to their distance to the fourth city (Johannesburg in this case).  If the Earth is flat, then the distances from Sydney, Buenos Aires, & London to Johannesburg will all cross at just one point.  This is simple plane geometry.

But as you can see below, the triangulation doesn't even come close to fitting on a flat plane.  They are many thousands of kilometers off - ridiculously far off.  This isn't because we don't know the distances, these distances only fit on a Globe.

And this doesn't use any particular map or rely on compass directions, angle measurements, or anything else.  Just the distances.

The Usual Suspects

The excuse that we don't really know the distances is just absurd and comes from Flat Earther cognitive dissonance only.  Any sailor can tell you that 1° of latitude is always about 111km -- it doesn't change as you go North and it doesn't change even in the Southern Hemisphere.  You can drive it -- don't trust your GPS -- get a theodolite and measure the angular change in Polaris yourself.  These pathetic appeals to "whaaaaaa, everyone is lying to us" is just utter nonsense -- there is no excuse for such profound ignorance when you can pretty easily verify this for yourself.

See another version using Cities in the US:

So help me reading this picture. I'm trying to fit Chicago at the intersection of the black, red and green lines but apparently I'm really off. pic.twitter.com/zMsDlQOhqd

— Il Lupo Perde Il Pelo Ma Non Il Vizio (@iloveberlu) December 18, 2017