By now you should be well on your way to proving why the sun appears to 'set' when it actually doesn't, you have rewritten the laws of physics to accommodate your new theory of gravity, and you've proven that a solar eclipse is anything other than the moon passing in between the earth and the sun.
However that was all child's play compared to our next little flat-earth problem, and that is something called the subsolar point.
You see back in the day (276-194 BC), the original NASA shill, deciding to shill for them roughly 2000 years before their existence. A man called Eratosthenes, used his observation of a particular subsolar point in Egypt, to begin his workings out on what the circumference of the earth is.
It is this very subolar point that as a flat earther trying to win a Nobel Prize, you simply have to address, as it is a nasty little hole in the theory, and threatens to cast a dark shadow over the light of the flat earth hypothesis.
Consistently Spot On
Quite simply put, the subsolar point on earth, is the point at which the sun is directly overhead causing shadows to disappear.
Photographs taken of outdoor objects at the subolar point of the day, look very strange and hyper-real because of the lack of shadow. As I mentioned above Eratosthenes realised that the fact two nearby towns did not have a subsolar point at the same time, the earth must be curved.
So why does the subsolar point cause the flat earth hypothesis such problems?
Well as you know, in the flat earth model, we have already had to change the earth from orbiting around the sun to the sun circumnavigating perfectly above the earth.
But the problem with that, is the subsolar point on earth would always be in the same place regardless of seasons. Because at the moment, the subsolar points on earth are different depending which season you are in.
This is because as the earth rotates, it also wobbles giving us different seasons around the world. Whereas in the flat earth model, the sun is always covering exactly the same ground, meaning the subsolar points would remain the same all year round; which they don't.
Seasoning An Idea
Which brings us neatly to the second part of this problem, and that is the seasons. The reason we have summer in July in the Northern hemisphere, and a nice hot Christmas day in Australia, is because of the seasonal wobble as the earth rotates and orbits the sun.
As you'd imagine, the pathetic glober theory says that when the earth is tilting towards the sun we have summer, and away from we have winter, this is felt most extremely at the poles.
This is the reason why in places like Sweden, Finland, and Greenland, they have months of darkness in the winter, whereby the sun never rises, and months of light in the summer, whereby the sun never sets.
However in a flat earth model there is no explanation; at least not at the moment, as to why the subsolar point shifts, and why we have seasons.
It is not as simple as just tilting the disc, because of cause that would mean that the sun (being only 32,000 miles away in the flat earth model), would be noticeably closer to the earth at certain times of year, and would appear much bigger in the summer months than the winter ones.
Also because all the countries are on one facing side, you would have to fit in exactly how the sun manages to take 24 hours to get around the globe, because the minute you start tilting the disc in this way, day and night times would be dramatically different across the earth.
One thing we can all agree on, that a day is 12 hours long, and the night is also 12 hours long, therefore if you can explain how the subsolar point exists, and how we can have different seasons whilst the sun is circling so closely above us, and yet still appears the same size regardless of the time of year, you sir (madam), will be well on your way to winning a Nobel Prize.
As Charlie Sheen once said:
WINNING!
Further reading:
Sun Path Diagrams For Summer & Winter Equinoxes - Arizona State University
General Astronomy Yearly Motions: - Wikibooks
Sun Angle, Duration, And Insolation: pdf
Five Impossible Facts That Would Have To Be True If The Earth Were Flat
Image citation:
Related musings:
A Flat Earther's Rough Guide To Winning A Nobel Prize - Tackling The Sun Problem
A Flat Earther's Rough Guide To Winning A Nobel Prize - Much Ado About Gravity
A Flat Earther's Rough Guide To Winning A Nobel Prize - Eclipsing Logic
Cryptogee Musings Contents Pages:
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