Let's Diskuss
R
Ruchika Dutta· 7 years ago
Exploring innovations, digital trends, and scientific discoveries through reliable, practical, and easy-to-understand content.

What would have happened had Earth been flat?

0
845

Join this conversation

Sort By

If Earth were flat instead of spherical, life and physics would behave very differently. Gravity would not pull evenly toward the center like it does now. People near the edges might experience strange gravitational effects, and oceans could behave unpredictably instead of forming stable global sea levels.

Day and night cycles, seasons, and sunsets would also look very different. A flat Earth would struggle to explain why different parts of the world experience different time zones and why stars change depending on location. Satellite orbits, global navigation systems, and modern space exploration would likely not work the way they currently do.

Scientists know Earth is roughly spherical because of observations from space, gravity, astronomy, navigation, and centuries of scientific measurements and experiments.

Must Read: Where did the Earth’s water come from?

Answered by
P
Priya AgrawalRandom Facts Enthusiast
View Profile
Updated on06/05/26
0
As opposed to prevalent thinking, it's a confusion that numerous social orders of genuine, instructed individuals at any point really put stock in the level Earth hypothesis. "With remarkable couple of exemptions, no informed individual in the historical backdrop of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. ahead trusted that the Earth was level," student of history Jeffrey Burton Russell noted in 1997. "A round Earth shows up at any rate as ahead of schedule as the 6th century B.C. with Pythagoras, who was trailed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others in seeing that the earth was a circle."

As the researcher and author Stephen Jay Gould once composed, the possibility that numerous individuals—including the Spaniards and Christopher Columbus—trusted the Earth to be level was to a great extent created by nineteenth century journalists, for example, Washington Irving, Jean Letronne and others. Letronne was "a scholastic of solid enemy of religious biases… who keenly attracted upon both to distort the congregation fathers and their medieval successors as trusting in a level earth," Russell noted.

Regardless, while it's enjoyable to envision counterfactual situations, science continues by concocting speculations to clarify perceptions. With regards to these hypotheses, the easier, the better, Davis says. The level Earth thought, in any case, unmistakably starts with the possibility that the planet is planar, and after that endeavors to turn different perceptions to its advantage. You can discover odd clarifications for individual wonders under this structure, says Davis, however "it goes to pieces before long."

Answered by
O
om kapurAuthor
View Profile
Answered on01/03/19
0

Although it’s a proven fact that Earth is spherical in shape, there are a lot of arguments which deny the theory of Earth being flat.

For example, how would have gravity worked? Would we still have had time zones and seasons? What about other conditions of life?
 
The answers are as interesting as they are worth pondering. Because according to the scientists, gravity would have not let you walk on the Earth, as it would pull you to the center. And had you tried walking away, it would have pulled your body backwards.
 
This pull of Earth’s center would have not only affected us, the human beings, but it would have become the reason of many unimaginable phenomena. The water would have ***** at the center of the Earth and the trees would have grown diagonally, in the opposite direction of the gravitational pull.
Another question that is worth pondering upon is if the Earth had still revolved around the Sun, or it would have been otherwise. According to the theories and hypothesis, had Earth been flat, it would be the one around which the Sun would have revolved, just like the moon. Again, this also would have led to many phenomena like there would have been no day and night, and no seasonal cycles. The Sun would have much smaller than the Earth, and that would have led to no Solar Eclipses.
 
Earth being flat would have also meant the lack of geomagnetic field which would have resulted in the malfunctioning of GPS, and would have led to unsynchronized time, making ATMs and credit cards non-existent.
 
Answered by
Ramesh Kumar
Ramesh KumarAuthor
View Profile
Updated on05/30/26
0