Joseph Voelbel

Bill suspected the earth was round. He was fairly certain of it. Years of research had led him to this conclusion. Unfortunately for Bill, he was up against more than five centuries of well oiled industrial-scientific disinformation, which assured him the earth was not round, but was instead, flat like a pancake.

“Flat like a pancake?” Bill said, That’s crazy!”

But the scientists said that he was crazy because it was indeed flat like a pancake, perhaps flat like a blueberry pancake where the crests of the blueberries were the tips of the mountains, and the valley’s were places where, for metaphor’s sake, excited children had finger-picked some of the fruit out in advance to create divots before applying the syrup.

Bill wouldn’t have any of it, he knew they had private interests in their flat earth geocentric corruption, the kind bent on making a God game out of a known accident. Bill spoke out,

“We’re on a ball. You can tell it’s a ball because ships going out to sea disappear over the curve of the earth.”

“But Bill, the scientist’s said, those ships aren’t actually disappearing over the horizon they’re simply traveling beyond one’s visual line of sight. If you grab a pair of binoculars or a high-powered camera and rack focus on the place they disappeared from, those same ships pop right back into view. They’re not heading ‘over the horizon’, they’re just passing beyond the vanishing point of your perspective. Go see for yourself. Plus horizon comes from horizontal, meaning level.”

These scientists and their word games, he thought. Bill retorted with all his might.

“Actually, we’re on a ball tilted at 23.5 degrees that spins at 1,000 mph while traveling at a velocity of 67,000 mph around the sun and that sun — and all the planets along with it — rotates around the center of our Milky Way galaxy at 500,000 mph. Meanwhile, the milky way galaxy itself moves nearly three times faster than that, heading extragalactically at a speed of 1.3 million mph towards the constellation Lyra.”

The scientists laughed. They said, “Woah, woah, slow dow, Bill. That’s a lot of numbers! Let’s break them down one by one. For starters, does the earth feel titled? If so, why isn’t one our legs muscularly larger to compensate for all the extra-work?”

“Well that’s just absurd.”

“More absurd than there is a tilt with no indication of a tilt? Okay, if the earth is spinning at 1,000 mph and orbiting at 67,000 mph, and traveling at 500,000 mph then how come, on a windless day I can watch a leaf rock back and forth toward the ground, without the slightest indication of any counter forces being present, such as tilt, spin or orbital speed?

“Easy. We’re in our atmosphere, which moves along with it.”

“We’re in our atmosphere? Sounds like a Zoolander quote, ‘The files are inside the computer?’”

“We’re in it.”

“So if I jump up in the air, this atmosphere carries me at 1,000 mph?

“That’s right.”

“Impressive, must be sticky. And what happens to all the people on the bottom of your ball earth? Don’t they fall off?

“Nope, Gravity holds them in place.”

“It holds cities upside down? You’re telling me Buenos Aires is held upside down?

“Yep, and Sydney, and Johannesburg...”

“So let me get this right, if I jump, mm kay, and this sticky atmosphere catches me in the air and carries me at 1,000 mph while an invisible force called gravity holds me upside down all without my noticing it?”

“That’s right.”

“But what about the Coriolis effect? Are planes not subject to the same laws of physics as bullets? When you fly on a plane, why does the earth not spin beneath it?

“The atmosphere rotates with the earth, the proportionally faster the greater the height.”

“But if the earth and its atmosphere spins west-east at about 1,000 mph at the equator, and planes fly at 10,000 feet through this spinning atmosphere at, conservatively, say 500 mph, then flights flying east-west into the spin should arrive at their destinations three times faster and flights flying west east in the same direction as the spin would go backwards.”

“It does take about an hour longer to fly from NY to SF than SF to NY. It’s the jet stream.”

“If i’m flying to San Francisco around 500 mph, and the earth and the atmosphere is spinning towards me in the plane at over 1,000 mph, that means, San Francisco is approaching two times faster than the plane I’m in heading towards it. It’s like I’m moving 1,500 mph from NY to SF, but going the other way, at 500 mph, with the earth spinning beneath me at 1,000 mph, should mean the plane will be going 500 mph in reverse, and end up somewhere in the middle of the Pacific ocean!”

“It’s difficult to explain. The atmosphere moves along with the plane.”

“You’re a tough nut to crack Bill. Let us try a different line of questioning. If the sun is 90 million miles away, then how come it looks like it’s the exact same size as the moon, which we’re told is vastly closer?”

“That’s an optical effect. The moon is 400 times nearer to us than the sun. And the Sun is 400 times larger than the moon. They just appear the same size.”

“Woah, woah, woah, hold the ponies. An optical effect? You mean to tell us, Bill, and bear with us here because we’re the scientists who study all celestial phenomena with our big expensive telescopes, and don’t believe in coincidence, that you think the sun just happens to be exactly 400 times the size of the moon, and also the moon, just so happens to be exactly 400 times closer to the earth than the sun?

“That’s right.”

“Occam’s razor, Bill. What’s more likely? The sun and the moon are the same size, in actual celestial balance of day and night, just as they appear to be, or one just so happens to be 400 times farther from us while the other just happens to be 400 times smaller, creating a coincidental fraction of perceptual equivalence?”

“Perhaps Occam cut himself while shaving.”

“To what degree of improbability do you except us to stomach!? You’re always going on about coincidences. We’re scientists, and we find such a coincidence to be preposterously unlikely!

“It is an elusive matter of proportions.” “Elusive proportions, eh? Well, may we ask you this. If the earth travels 300 million miles between equinoxes from one spot on one side of the sun to the other, then why do all stars in the north remain in perfect orbit around Polaris? Wouldn’t that vast distance cause some parallax, that is, a displacement of those perfect concentric

rings around the north star? “Polaris is super far away.” “Ah right.. How far away is super far away?” “About 2,058,000,000 miles away.” “Okay one, we’re not even sure that’s a

number. Two, now you’re telling us what seems to not be moving, our earth, is in fact traveling at 70,000 mph rip-roaring through the galaxy, covering a tremendous distance of 300 million miles in a mere six months, but we can measure a shift in the stars of a single inch?”

Bill fidgeted in his chair, and stammered ever so faintly, at the onset of his next point,

“It’s all.. it’s all just too far away to tell. Polaris is over four quadrillion miles away, three hundred million miles doesn’t even register. Appearances can be deceiving. The sun. The moon. The stars. Just goes to show you can’t trust your senses’!”

“Interesting line of reason, Bill. We can’t trust our senses? The same senses that tell you to jump out of the way of an oncoming car? That enable a center fielder to predict the position of a baseball hit from 350 feet away while running at a full sprint solely from hearing the sound it made as it ricocheted off the bat? We’ve got news for you. Our senses are pretty gosh darn accurate.”

Bill still suspected the earth was a ball and wasn’t done in by such logical approaches; he didn’t care if any one else believed him.

“It’s a ball!” Bill said.

“Bill, sadly to say, if everybody thought the earth was a ball, and that we rotated around the sun, then we wouldn’t be the center of a mysterious creation in a unique realm. Instead, we’d be a spec of dust floating in a cosmic accident that blindly thrashed its way from fire to Mozart. Does that really sound like a world you want to live in?”

“My world is no less divine for believing we live on a ball.”

“Granted, and we hope you enjoy it! But pray it does not snatch your faith away from you. For that is a dangerously unscientific world where Tesla, Goethe, Tyco Brahe and Rudolf Steiner were all wrong.”

“It’s a ball.” Bill stated, and no amount of scientific evidence could persuade him otherwise.