Sorry Flat Earthers! Statisticians say there is no doubt that our planet is ROUND

Members of the infamous Flat Earth Society are steadfast in their belief that our planet is a disk and that saying no astronauts have been ‘bribed’ or have been ‘mistaken’.

But a team of scientists from the University of Zurich invites them to disprove their latest statistical model, which shows (again!) that the Earth is indeed round.

The model predicts the time it takes to fly between two cities after entering the distance between them.

It shows that if you fly north from Perth, Australia for seven hours, you will land in Hong Kong, while a flight west of the same length will land you in Mauritius.

However, if the Earth were flat, that seven-hour westward flight would only get you halfway to Mauritius.

“It was important for us not to favor a model a priori, but to find a relatively simple method to prove whether the Earth is a disk or not,” said study co-author Dr Michael Wolf.

For the past 50 years, we’ve been able to view photos of Earth from space, which may seem like all the evidence you need to see that our planet is, in fact, round.

But the realization of how easily images can be tampered with and the growth of Internet conspiracy theories seem to have led to a resurgence of belief in a flat Earth.

Those who subscribe to the flat Earth model believe that the Earth is a disk, with the North Pole in the center and Antarctica along the edge.

Longitudes are shown as spokes extending outward from the center, and latitudes are concentric circles.

This differs from the spherical Earth model, where lines of longitude connect the north and south poles vertically, while lines of latitude run horizontally across the globe.

One of the best-documented methods of determining the roundness of the Earth is said to have been first performed by the ancient Greeks 2,000 years ago.

They stuck sticks in the ground at different locations, hundreds of miles apart, and compared the shadows they cast at the same time during the day.

They found that when the sun was directly overhead in one place, there was no shadow, but at exactly the same time there was shadow in another place.

If the Earth were flat, both sticks would have to show the same shadow, or lack thereof, because they would be at the same angle to the sun.

The ancient Greeks discovered that the shadows were different because the earth was curved, so the sticks were at different angles.

They then used the difference in these angles to calculate the circumference of the Earth, and managed to get it to within 10 percent of the value we know to be true today.

For the new study, published as a working paper by the Social Science Research Networkthe Swiss-based team wanted to find another way to verify that this was correct.

Dr. Wolf said, ‘Statistics are the ideal method for answering some controversial questions.

“It is a purely mathematical science and does not depend on basic physics assumptions or ideological paradigms.”

He adds that much of the evidence on which the spherical Earth model relies is inaccessible to the layman, so the emergence of conspiracy theories is not surprising.

The distances between two cities on a line of longitude — such as Perth, Australia, and Hong Kong, China — are the same whether you believe the Earth is a sphere or a disk.

In addition, the time it takes to fly between two cities is beyond dispute, regardless of beliefs.

So the team created a model that, when given the distance between two cities on a line of longitude, gives the correct flight time.

They then entered the distance between two cities along an east-west line, such as Perth and Port Louis, Mauritius.

Because of the way the Flat-Earth and Convex-Earth models interpret the shape of the planet, they both give different values ​​for the distance between these cities.

But the statistical model only gave the correct flight time between two cities on an east-west line when the distance from the spherical Earth was entered.

This serves as proof that the earth is indeed round.

The authors wrote: ‘If the Earth were flat, Perth-Mauritius would take twice as long as Perth-Hong Kong, which it doesn’t.

“The fundamental contradiction is that, under the flat-Earth model, flight duration observed on an east-west axis far away from the North Pole is incompatible with flight duration observed on a north-south axis.”

Dr Wolf added: ‘However, the really amazing thing about this method is that it can be used not only to prove that the Earth is not a disk (i.e. there is curvature), but also to prove the Earth’s value to decide. curvature.’

According to the Spherical Earth model – determined by physical measurements and unfeasibly complex calculations – the planet has a curvature of π/20,000 km.

The research team used the undeniable flight times between cities on an east-west line to get a value nearly identical to that of a model similar to their first.

Dr Wolf said: ‘It is the first time that the value of the Earth’s curvature can be determined using a method that takes up secondary school mathematics knowledge, classical statistical tools and publicly available data.’