Andrei Mihai Read online

  Of course, planets aren’t perfect spheres -- they have features like

  mountains or valleys, and tend to form bulges around their equator --

  but they’re definitely, without a doubt, not flat.

  Why aren’t planets flat?

  Let’s assume for a second that you could make a flat Earth. We’ll still

  need a hypothetical, dense ‘core’ which would also be flat, or slab-like.

  This model is already unstable. Gravity as a force acts between the

  center of mass of two or more objects -- and by mathematical definition,

  centers of mass are points [11], not volumes or lines. Under the sway of gravity, particles will try to move as close as they possibly can to that

  center of mass. A slab or a disk simply has too many particles too far

  away from the center to be stable.

  Even if such a slab formed , it would later col apse into a sphere-like

  object.

  14

  Flat Earth

  For debate’s sake, let’s consider the slab to be indestructible. Even

  so, any new material drawn by the slab’s gravitational pull will tend to

  gather as close to the center of gravity as possible, and in time, will also

  end up forming a sphere.

  If that doesn’t convince you (because, let’s face it, it’s a bit too abstract), here’s more tangible evidence against Flat Earth:

  It’s a common misconception

  2,000

  that the Earth was only recently

  year-old shown to be round.

  proof

  The ancient Greeks already

  suspected that the Earth was

  spherical.

  The idea popped up in the 5th century BC, in the works of Herodotus

  and later Pythagoras[12], to whom the spherical model is widely attributed.

  Before 200 BC, the Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes used

  shadows to not only show that the Earth is round, but to calculate its

  circumference as well [13] -- and he was able to do this without leaving Egypt, where he was living. He did it by noting the angles of shadows

  in two cities on the Summer Solstice, when the Sun reaches its highest

  position in the sky (there are two solstices every year, one for each

  hemisphere). By knowing the distance between the two cities and the

  shade angle, you can calculate the size of the Earth’s sphere.

  His result was a mere 66

  km off (0.16%) from the

  currently accepted polar

  circumference of the Earth.

  15

  Flat Earth

  We don’t know if Eratosthenes was the first to devise this, but his

  experiment remained in history.

  The idea was replicated several times, and can be still tested today --

  all you need is a friend from a nearby city, a protractor, and two sticks.

  Magellan

  His is perhaps the most

  famous example.

  Loaded with money

  from the Spanish Crown,

  renowned explorer

  Ferdinand Magellan

  embarked on August

  10, 1519, from Seville

  (Spain), leading five

  ships.

  Magel an sailed across the Atlantic, passed what would be known

  as the Strait of Magel an, final y taking a little break in the province of

  Cebu in the Philippines -- where a bunch of natives killed him in battle.

  Realizing that things were very problematic, second-in-command

  Juan Sebastián Elcano took charge and led the expedition back home

  -- to the other side of the planet. They arrived back in Seville on

  September 6, 1522, after ful y circumnavigating the globe. Charles I

  of Spain rewarded Elcano with a coat of arms and the motto ‘Primus

  circumdedisti me’ (“You went around me first”).

  More recently, the Transglobe Expedition (1979–1982) was the

  first expedition to make a circumpolar circumnavigation, traversing

  both poles of rotation (north and south) using only surface transport.

  Together with Magel an’s east-west circumnavigation, this clearly proves

  that the Earth is a sphere.

  16

  Flat Earth

  Another simple experiment, particularly popular with kids, is the

  “ships on the horizon” example: if you’re next to a port or a large body

  of water, you might see that approaching ships seem to emerge from the

  horizon. They don’t move up and down; it happens because the Earth is

  round. Think of an ant walking around on an orange -- that’s the type

  of effect you see with the ships, even though the scales are much larger.

  Something else you can try to do by yourself is keeping an eye on the

  sky. For thousands of years, people have noted that constel ations shift

  depending on your position on the planet. This can only be realistical y

  explained if the Earth is round. You can try this yourself, whenever you

  have a long-distance trip coming up.

  If you look at the sky, you might also see that the Moon and other

  planets are round -- although interestingly, the Flat Earth Society

  tweeted that “Unlike the Earth, Mars has been observed to be round.”

  Lastly, in the past decades, people have done something pretty neat:

  they’ve gone to space and taken photos of the Earth.

  Lo and behold, it’s pretty round.

  . . .

  We sometimes ridicule people for buying into these

  fairy tales -- which isn't particularly nice of us.

  For many people who give in to pseudoscience,

  these ideas offer an escape from a world that's

  often cruel, unfair, or just doesn't make sense. But

  these ideas end up further robbing them of agency

  and feelings of control over their life.

  That's what makes this whole affair tragic.

  . . .

  17

  Flat Earth

  References (Flat Earth)

  10. Las Cumbres Observatory, “Planets and How They Formed”.

  11. Khan Academy, “What is center of mass?” .

  12. Melissa Hogenboom, “We have known that the Earth is round for over

  2000 years” , BBC.

  13. Julian Rubin, “Eratosthenes The Measurement of the Earth’s

  Circumference. Hands On Activity: Repeat Eratosthenes’ Experiment” , juliantrubin.com

  18

  Astrology

  The Stars

  Don’t

  care

  About you.

  19

  Astrology

  Astrology

  To most people, the idea of a flat Earth seems absolutely ridiculous.

  So let’s continue with something just as ridiculous: a 2,000-year-

  old divination practice which claims that the life and personality of

  some primates is defined by the movement of the moon, planets,

  and a few randomly defined constellations.

  Or, as most people call it, astrology.

  Astrology is the belief that the alignment of stars and planets affects

  every individual’s mood, personality, and environment -- it all depends

  on when the individual was born.

  Except it doesn’t. There is no mechanism to justify this, no force

  that can back it up, and no rational reason to split up the entire

  human population into 12 groups represented by randomly assigned

  constel ations. It’s been thoroughly disproven as a pseudoscience.

  Renowned astrologer Elizabeth Teissier famously tried to explainr />
  astrology by saying that “the sun ends up in the same place in the sky on

  the same date each year,” but that couldn’t be further from the truth-- on

  any specific date, there’s a difference in Earth’s location of about twenty-

  two thousand miles between two successive years.

  The constel ations used in the western zodiac were first described

  in Babylon, some 3,000 years ago. They hardly even look like what

  they’re supposed to represent, and there’s no reason to assign 1/12th

  of the world’s population to one constel ation. Does my life depend on

  Babylonian pattern-matching and ancient magic?

  Certainly not.

  20

  Astrology

  Testing

  It’s not easy to test astrology because

  astrology

  astrologers themselves can’t agree

  on what it’s supposed to do.

  Throughout its history, astrology has been regarded as a science, an

  art, and a form of divination magic. Some claim that astrology is a real

  branch of science, and that there is a verifiable mechanism behind it

  which underpins its workings -- but we just haven’t found it yet.

  Despite several trials and experiments, astrology has never demonstrated

  its effectiveness scientifical y and was refuted through various methods

  (more on that a bit later).

  Others astrologers propose conventional causal agents such

  as electromagnetism and gravity. But the gravitational effect of

  constel ations is completely negligible compared to even that of the

  moon, let alone the Earth -- and the perceived magnetic field of other

  planets and constel ations is far weaker than even those produced by

  modern household appliances.

  Final y, some practitioners don’t try to explain a causal agent, simply

  saying that the field cannot be researched -- essential y, classifying

  astrology as a form of divination, a supernatural force at work. Wel ,

  there’s not much we can do to disprove magic.

  Or can we?

  (of course we can)

  21

  Astrology

  It’s not easy to find new studies about

  astrology. It’s been disproven through

  Astrology

  and through, and there’s very little

  studies

  incentive to carry out additional studies.

  But the few existing ones are quite

  convincing.

  The Carlson study

  In 1985, a young physicist called Shawn Carlson carried out[14] what is widely regarded to be the most comprehensive test of astrologers’

  abilities. He involved renowned astrologers from Europe and the US,

  and designed the study to meet both scientific rigor and astrology

  demands. During the study, neither the participants nor the researchers

  knew which participants belonged to which group, thus eliminating

  bias from all sides -- a double-blind trial. The results were clear: the

  astrologers’ guesses were no better than chance -- and even when the

  astrologers were very confident that they had made a match correctly,

  results were still no better than chance. Or, as Carson himself put it,

  astrologers “are wrong.”

  Not all studies are made equal. Look

  Astrology Works, hard enough through the literature,

  but only in rigged you’ll come across studies that seem to

  studies

  suggest astrology might work.

  In 1979[15], Ivan Kel yfrom the University of Saskatchewan showed that the vast majority of studies conducted do not confirm astrological

  claims and the few studies that do need additional clarification.

  Kel y also carried out a separate study[16] over several decades, where he tracked more than 2,000 people under the same zodiac sign -- most

  of them born within minutes of each other. According to astrology,

  the subject should have had very similar traits, but this was not the

  case.

  22

  Astrology

  The study participants had no notable similarities, outside what

  you’d expect from a random distribution. Peter Hartman from the

  University of Aarhus designed a similar study with an even larger

  sample size which produced similar results.

  No matter how you look at it, astrology simply doesn’t work. But

  sometimes, it seems like it does.

  Our brains are hardwired to look for patterns[17].

  Sometimes, when two unrelated or random events happen,

  our mind tries to see a connection -- even when there's

  no connection to be seen. In the case of astrology, a very

  similar effect pops up.

  This effect is called "subjective validation" and it occurs

  when two unrelated or random events are perceived to be

  related because of a previous belief or expectancy, which

  'demands' a relationship.

  You read a horoscope, it says that something will happen to

  you, and whenever something somewhat relevant happens,

  you attribute it to the horoscope you read previously.

  The Forer experiment

  Forer gave a “unique” personality analysis to his students and asked

  them to rate how well it suits them, on a scale from 0 to 5[18].

  By now, you’ve probably guessed what happened -- all the students

  received the same personality analysis, and all of them thought it suited

  them. Even better, Forer created the personality analysis from various

  horoscopes.

  23

  Astrology

  Here’s what such a horoscope sounded like:

  • “You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.”

  • “You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.”

  • “You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not

  turned to your advantage.”

  • “While you have some personality weaknesses, you are general y

  able to compensate for them.”

  • “Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome

  and insecure inside.”

  • “At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made

  the right decision or done the right thing.”

  • “You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become

  dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.”

  • “You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept

  others’ statements without satisfactory proof.’

  • “You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to

  others.”

  • “At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other

  times you are introverted, wary, reserved.”

  • “Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.”

  Does this sound like you? Well, the average rating that

  students gave this assessment was 4.26/5 -- in other words,

  they found the assessment to be 85% accurate, even though

  they were all blanket statements.

  These type of blanket statements became known as Barnum

  statements[19]-- after P.T. Barnum, who used them in his

  performances, allegedly stating:

  “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

  24

  Astrology

  More evidence

  of

  Paranormal Inactivity

  A similar experiment was carried out, ironic
al y, by astrologer

  Michael Gauquelin. Gauquelin offered free horoscopes to any reader

  of a Parisian newspaper, provided that they would give feedback on

  the accuracy of his supposedly “individual” analysis. As with Forer’s

  experiment, he sent out thousands of copies of the same horoscope

  to people of all astrological signs -- 94% of readers replied that the

  reading was accurate and insightful. To top it off, the horoscope

  he gave out was that of a local mass murderer, Dr. Petiot, who had

  admitted during his trial that he had killed 63 people.

  Gauquelin set out to scientifical y analyze astrology, and his results

  came out strongly against his profession.

  In a sense, astrology is a benign pseudoscience -- it doesn’t real y

  do anything bad directly. It’s glorifying, gives a sense of communion

  with the cosmos, and it promises to bring a bit of magic into your

  day-to-day life.

  But, at the end of the day, it’s just not real. There’s a sucker born

  every minute -- and most of them are looking for magic.

  25

  Astrology

  References (astrology)

  14. Shawn Carlson, (1985), “A double-blind test of astrology“, Nature.

  15. Ivan Kel y, (1979), “Astrology And Science: A Critical Examination“,

  Psychological Reports.

  16. Robert Matthews, “Astrologers fail to predict proof they are wrong“, The Telegraph.

  17. Paul Thagard, (1978), “Why Astrology Is A Pseudoscience“, PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association.

  18. Bertram Forer, (1949), “The fal acy of personal validation: a classroom

  demonstration of gullibility“, The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.

  19. “Barnum Effect | psychology“, Encyclopedia Britannica.

  26

  Homeopathy

  Homeopathy

  is still bs.

  27

  Homeopathy

  Ho

  me While astrology may be largely benign, here’s a

  pseudoscience that isn’t: homeopathy.

  o

  Despite a mountain of science disproving

  homeopathy, many people are using it as a

  treatment -- sometimes, at the expense of getting

  pa proper medical treatment.

  Let’s have a look at it.