地平论正确吗？

地平说是一种古老的世界观，地平说与地圆说相对，认为地表是平面，而不是一个巨大的球面。这种观点是绝大多数民族古代长期持有的观点，包括古希腊前的希腊文明，希腊化时代前的近东，笈多王朝前的古印度和17世纪前的中国。

不过，这理论是错误的。

地平论协会曾在脸书上发过这么一则帖子，这帖子是针对生活科学（LiveScience）的假设而写的。

The Flat Earth Society

24 July

It’s not everyday you see such a cobbled together mess of strawmen. To address a few:

1) The flat earth is infinite or a closed flat non-euclidean space. There is no center of gravity.

2) Again, gravity exists and is finite in spite of the earth being an infinite plane. See Gauss’ Law.

3) See 1

4) It has been shown by our society that GPS would not cease to function accurately given a closed flat non-euclidean earth.

Similarly the rest also completely ignore our actual views and instead attack nonsense points. Shame on you Live Science. 

https://www.livescience.com/flat-earth-weird-effects.html

中文翻译：

解决生活科学的假设中的几个问题：

1) 平坦的地球是无限的或封闭的平坦非欧空间。没有重心。

2）尽管地球是一个无限的平面，但重力仍然存在并且是有限的。参见高斯定律。

3) 见 1

4) 我们的社会已经表明，在一个封闭平坦的非欧几里得地球上，GPS 不会停止准确运行。

同样的，其余的假设也可以上面的证明证明。别无视我们的实际观点，而嘲笑无稽之谈。为生活科学感到羞耻。

然而生活科学的文章则是这样的：

8 ways life would get weird on a flat Earth

Just how strange would the world be if it were flat?

Earth — the blue marble — is our spherical home. But what if Earth were flat? After all, some people, called flat-earthers, truly believe in this retrograde idea. How would everyday life function? Would it function at all? We explore how much of an oddball, or “oddslice” Earth would be if it were flat and whether there are any advantages to living on a strange disk with the sun and moon rotating overhead like a cosmic carousel.  

 1. Say goodbye to gravity (at least as we know it) 

On spherical Earth, gravity tugs equally on objects no matter where in the world they are. For Earth to take the shape of a flat disk in the first place, gravity — as we know it — must be having no effect. If it did, it would soon pull the planet back into a spheroid. 

Maybe a flat-Earth would have no gravity at all, as a solid disk-like Earth would not be possible under actual gravity conditions, according to calculations in the 1850s by mathematician and physicist James Clerk Maxwell. 

Or perhaps on a flat-Earth, gravity would pull everything to the center of the disk — the North Pole. In that scenario, the farther away you are from the North Pole the more horizontal the gravitational tug toward the central point of the disk, according to James Davis, a geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. This would wreak havoc worldwide, but at least the world long jump record would be easily beaten (as long as you orientated yourself northward before taking off that is).  

 2. It would certainly clear the atmosphere 

View of Earth’s atmosphere from the International Space Station

With no gravity, flat-Earth would no longer be able to hold onto the layer of gases called the atmosphere. The force of gravity is what holds this veil around our planet. And without this protective blanket, Earth’s skies would turn black because light emitted from the sun would no longer scatter as it enters Earth’s atmosphere and paint the skies the familiar blue we see today. The loss of atmospheric pressure would expose plants and animals to the vacuum of space, leading to asphyxiation in seconds, Luis Villazon, a zoologist and educator, wrote in BBC Science Focus.

Without an atmosphere surrounding the planet, water would initially boil away in the vacuum of space. That’s because water boils when its vapor pressure equals that of the atmosphere, so lower atmospheric pressure means lower boiling point. Without an atmosphere to help warm the planet, the surface temperature would also plummet causing any remaining water to quickly freeze. But it isn’t all bad news, as deep-ocean organisms such as chemosynthetic bacteria that don’t require oxygen might just survive. After all, such bacteria have endured long trips to space and lived to tell the tale. 

3. Cloudy with a chance of sideways rain  

If flat-Earth gravity pulls water towards the North Pole, bulging oceans would collect at the center of the planet.

If gravity pulled toward the center of the planetary disk, which in this case is the North Pole, precipitation would also gravitate toward that spot. This is because precipitation falls to Earth due to gravity and will therefore fall toward the point of strongest gravitational pull. 

Only at the center of the disk would weather behave as we know it on Earth — falling straight down. The farther out you travel, the more horizontal the precipitation would be. Water in rivers and seas would also flow toward the North Pole, meaning vast bulging oceans would collect at the center of the planet, leaving practically no water at the edges, according to Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. 

4. We would all get lost

It’s hard to imagine a world without GPS, suffice to say we’d be lost!

It is likely that satellites would not exist if the Earth were flat, as they would have trouble orbiting a flat plane. “There are a number of satellite missions that society depends on that just wouldn’t work,” James Davis, a geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in a statement “I cannot think of how GPS would work on a flat Earth,” said Davis. 

We depend on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) for anything from the GPS services on your phone, to travel information and supermarket just-in-time stock management to make sure produce arrives as fresh and as quickly as possible. And critically, emergency services use GPS to locate callers from their phone signal, the satellite communications could possibly save your life. 

It’s hard to imagine a world without GPS, suffice to say we’d be lost. On the upside, at least on flat-Earth humans would have the horizontal rain to point us in the right — well, north — direction. 

5.  Some journeys would take forever  

Longer travel times can be expected, not just due to no-GPS navigation issues, but also because of the distances we would need to travel. According to flat-Earth belief, the Arctic lies in the center of the planet and Antarctica forms a giant ice wall around the edge; this wall conveniently stops people from literally falling off the face of Earth. But if you are unable to fly around the globe and instead are forced to fly across it, then travel times would increase significantly. For example, to fly from Australia (which is one side of the flat-Earth map) to a McMurdo station in Antarctica (on the other side of the flat-Earth map), you would need to fly across the entire Arctic, as well as North and South America. You can also forget about trips across Antarctica (though this has been achieved many times on a spherical Earth), as that pesky ice wall would prevent such travel. 

6.  No more auroras and we’d all be roasted  

Aurora photographed by NASA astronaut Jack Fischer aboard the International Space Station.

On spherical Earth, the swirling molten metal surrounding our iron core generates electric currents that in turn create our protective magnetic field which curves around the planet from one pole to the other, according to NASA. But on a flat Earth, without a solid core generating a magnetic field that protective layer — the magnetosphere — would cease to exist. And so would auroras. Also called the Northern Lights, these sky shows form when charged particles from the sun bump into oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the magnetosphere, where they release energy in the form of incredible aurora light shows. 

Even so, the absence of auroras would be the least of our worries, as Earth would no longer be protected from solar winds. Earth and everything on its surface would be bombarded with harmful solar radiation, leaving a barren world akin to our neighbor Mars, according to NASA. 

 7. We’d all have to share the same night sky 

On flat-Earth we would all have the same view of the night sky.

A flat-Earth would not be split into hemispheres like it is on our current orb: So night and day wouldn’t be flip-flopped depending on whether you’re in the Northern or Southern hemisphere. Also, the night sky no matter where you stood on the planetary disk. It sure would make stargazing easier, as you wouldn’t have to travel to a different hemisphere to tick off all the targets on your astronomy bucket list. But isn’t that part of the fun? 

If we all shared one view of just one portion of the night sky, we’d miss out on the many ground-based discoveries that have been made due to our access to a 360-degree view of the observable universe from Earth. We’d have to solely rely on space-based telescopes to widen our view of the cosmos. 

8.  Hurricanes would be a thing of the past 

Every year, hurricanes (also called typhoons and cyclones depending on the location where they form) cause unprecedented damage. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey alone caused $125 billion (£90 billion) worth of damage to the U.S., according to NOAA. 

The devastating rotating nature of these tropical storms stems from Earth’s coriolis effect, which causes storms in the Northern Hemisphere to rotate counterclockwise and those in the Southern Hemisphere to rotate clockwise. However, on stationary, flat-Earth, no coriolis effect would be generated. No coriolis means no hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones. This is also why we don’t see these types of storms between five degrees north and south of the equator, as the magnitude of the coriolis effect is zero at the equator, according to NASA.  

中文翻译：

在平坦的地球上生命会变得奇怪的 8 种方式

如果世界是平的，世界会有多奇怪？

地球——蓝色大理石——是我们的球形家园。但是如果地球是平的呢？毕竟，有些人，称为平地者，真正相信这种逆行的想法。日常生活将如何运作？它会起作用吗？我们探索了如果地球是平的，地球会有多大的奇怪或“奇数”，以及生活在一个奇怪的圆盘上是否有任何好处，太阳和月亮像宇宙旋转木马一样在头顶旋转。  

 1. 告别重力（至少我们知道） 

向地性是引导植物根部向下生长而枝条向上生长的重力过程。 如果重力被改变为朝向北极，我们可以看到植物的行为很奇怪。

在球形地球上，无论物体位于世界何处，重力对它们的牵引力都是一样的。为了让地球首先呈现出一个扁平圆盘的形状，重力——正如我们所知——必须没有任何影响。如果确实如此，它很快就会将地球拉回一个球体。 

根据 1850 年代数学家和物理学家詹姆斯·克拉克·麦克斯韦 (James Clerk Maxwell) 的计算，也许平坦的地球根本没有重力，因为在实际重力条件下，不可能出现像固体盘状的地球。 

或者也许在一个平坦的地球上，重力会将所有东西都拉到圆盘的中心——北极。根据哥伦比亚大学拉蒙特-多尔蒂地球观测站的地球物理学家詹姆斯戴维斯的说法，在这种情况下，你离北极越远，朝向圆盘中心点的引力牵引就越水平。这将在世界范围内造成严重破坏，但至少世界跳远记录将被轻松打破（只要你在起飞前向北定位）。  

 2.肯定会净化气氛 

从国际空间站看到的地球大气层

没有重力，平坦的地球将不再能够保持称为大气层的气体层。重力是在我们的星球上保持这面纱的原因。如果没有这种保护毯，地球的天空就会变黑，因为太阳发出的光在进入地球大气层时不再散射，并将天空涂成我们今天看到的熟悉的蓝色。动物学家和教育家路易斯·维拉松在 BBC 科学聚焦中写道，大气压力的丧失会使植物和动物暴露在真空中，几秒钟内就会导致窒息。

如果地球周围没有大气层，水最初会在太空真空中蒸发。那是因为水在其蒸气压等于大气压力时会沸腾，因此较低的大气压力意味着较低的沸点。如果没有大气层来帮助地球变暖，地表温度也会骤降，导致任何剩余的水迅速冻结。但这也不全是坏消息，因为不需要氧气的化学合成细菌等深海生物可能会存活下来。毕竟，这些细菌经历了长途太空旅行，并活着讲述了这个故事。 

3. 多云，有可能下雨  

如果扁平地球引力将水拉向北极，那么膨胀的海洋就会聚集在地球的中心。

如果重力拉向行星盘的中心，在这种情况下是北极，降水也会被吸引到那个地方。这是因为降水由于重力而落到地球上，因此会朝着最强的引力点下降。 

只有在圆盘的中心，天气才会像我们在地球上所知道的那样——直线下降。你走得越远，降水就会越水平。根据哥伦比亚大学的拉蒙特-多尔蒂地球观测站的数据，河流和海洋中的水也会流向北极，这意味着巨大的膨胀海洋将聚集在地球的中心，而在边缘几乎没有水。 

4. 我们都会迷路

很难想象一个没有 GPS 的世界，足以说我们会迷路！

如果地球是平的，卫星很可能就不存在了，因为它们很难绕平面运行。哥伦比亚大学拉蒙特-多尔蒂地球天文台的地球物理学家詹姆斯戴维斯在一份声明中说：“社会所依赖的许多卫星任务是行不通的，我无法想象GPS在平面上如何工作。地球，”戴维斯说。 

我们依靠全球导航卫星系统 (GNSS) 提供从手机 GPS 服务到旅行信息和超市及时库存管理的任何服务，以确保农产品尽可能新鲜、尽快送达。至关重要的是，紧急服务使用 GPS 通过电话信号定位呼叫者，卫星通信可能会挽救您的生命。 

很难想象一个没有 GPS的世界，足以说我们会迷路。从好的方面来说，至少在平坦的地球上，人类会有水平降雨将我们指向正确的方向——好吧，北——方向。 

5. 有些旅程需要永远  

平坦的地球与浮雕的视图。

预计旅行时间会更长，这不仅是因为没有 GPS 导航问题，还因为我们需要行驶的距离。根据地平说，北极位于地球的中心，南极在边缘形成巨大的冰墙；这堵墙可以方便地阻止人们从地球表面掉下来。但是，如果您无法环游世界而被迫飞越地球，那么旅行时间将显着增加。例如，要从澳大利亚（地球平面图的一侧）飞往南极洲的麦克默多站（地球平面图的另一侧），您还需要飞越整个北极作为北美和南美。你也可以忘记穿越南极洲的旅行（虽然这已经实现了 在球形地球上多次），因为讨厌的冰墙会阻止这种旅行。 

6. 没有极光，我们都会被烤焦  

美国宇航局宇航员杰克费舍尔在国际空间站上拍摄的极光。

根据美国宇航局的说法，在球形地球上，围绕我们铁核的旋转熔融金属会产生电流，进而产生我们的保护磁场，该磁场围绕地球从一极弯曲到另一极。但是在平坦的地球上，如果没有产生磁场的实心核心，保护层——磁层——将不复存在。极光也是如此。也称为北极光，当来自太阳的带电粒子撞击磁层中的氧和氮分子时，就会形成这些天空表演，在那里它们以令人难以置信的极光表演的形式释放能量。 

即便如此，极光的消失将是我们最不担心的，因为地球将不再受到太阳风的保护。据美国宇航局称，地球及其表面的一切都将受到有害的太阳辐射的轰击，留下一个类似于我们的邻居火星的贫瘠世界。 

 7. 我们必须共享同一个夜空 

在平坦的地球上，我们都会看到相同的夜空。

在平坦的地球上，我们都会看到相同的夜空。 （图片来源：Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images）

一个平坦的地球不会像我们目前的球体那样分裂成半球：所以白天和黑夜不会根据你是在北半球还是南半球而翻转。此外，无论您站在行星盘上的哪个位置，夜空都是如此。这肯定会让观星变得更容易，因为您不必前往不同的半球来勾选天文遗愿清单上的所有目标。但这不是乐趣的一部分吗？ 

如果我们都只看到夜空的一部分，我们就会错过许多基于地面的发现，因为我们可以从地球上获得可观测宇宙的 360 度视图。我们必须完全依靠天基望远镜来拓宽我们对宇宙的看法。 

8. 飓风将成为过去 

从国际空间站拍摄的飓风佛罗伦萨。

从国际空间站拍摄的飓风佛罗伦萨。 （图片来源：美国宇航局）

每年，飓风（也称为台风和气旋，取决于它们形成的位置）造成前所未有的破坏。根据美国国家海洋和大气管理局的数据，2017 年，仅飓风哈维就对美国造成了价值 1250 亿美元（900 亿英镑）的损失。 

这些热带风暴的毁灭性旋转性质源于地球的科里奥利效应，导致北半球的风暴逆时针旋转，南半球的风暴顺时针旋转。然而，在静止的平坦地球上，不会产生科里奥利效应。没有科里奥利意味着没有飓风、台风和旋风。据美国宇航局称，这也是为什么我们在赤道以北和以南 5 度之间看不到此类风暴的原因，因为科里奥利效应在赤道的强度为零。  

（实在抱歉，我用了机器翻译，很可能出现错误）

不过，除此之外，还有更多假设能推翻地平论。

1. 月全食

如果地球是平的，那月全食就不会发生了。

2. 地球中心不会被太阳照到（中午的太阳不再会在你的头顶上！）

地平论的太阳与月球是这样运转的。

所以地球中心的地方，中午的太阳不在你的头顶上。

3. 山顶上根本就看不见地球的圆周。

都说地球是平的，那地球怎会有圆周？

4. 地球不会有赤道。

那怎么接近赤道的国家又那么热？而且根据地平论，太阳运转的轨道是照着地球边缘运转的，那么赤道应该不会被照到。

5. 南极会比北极热

如果地球是平的，而太阳运转的轨道又是这样的，那么南极是最热的，而北极却是最冷的！

6. 你可以直接地看到海上行驶的船只

你不再会看到远航的船只先露出桅杆顶，慢慢露出船身，最后才看得到整艘船。反之，你能够直接看到整艘船。

7. 月食的时候，投到月球上的地球影子不再是圆形

8. 当你越往北走，北极星越高；越往南走，北极星越低，且可以看到一些在北方看不到的新的星星。这也推翻了地平论。

9. 当飞机向东（举例而言）飞行，到达地球边缘时，无法飞到南边。

不过地平论者内比斯特解释了这一问题：

吃豆人效应

在内比斯特的理论中，当飞机向东（举例而言）飞行，到达地球边缘时，它就会逐渐消失，然后在西边的相应坐标处重新出现——就像吃豆人游戏里出现的画面一样。至于原因，内比斯特表示，这是因为“时空在四周的折叠”。

不过这也是错误的，如果是这样，那么我们应该会经过地球边缘（南极）才会到那国家，可是，我们没有。

完

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