*I am a glacial geologist who specializes in reconstruction of past glacial processes. I will not claim to be an expert in geologic knowledge beyond that. Looking to better understand the principles of FE theory as part of ongoing scientific questioning. I have many questions about FE, but many are partially addressed in the FAQ and or the wiki, so I want to address some of the shortcomings of FET, namely its avoidance of explanations of geologic phenomena. Thanks in advance for any clarifications you can provide on any of the queries below. I appreciate it!
1. Is there an estimate of the age of the earth in flat earth hypotheses? I have not seen any. This is more a point of curiosity for me, but it would hold implications for evaluating other aspects of the theory against potential bodies empirical evidence.
2. How are earthquakes and volcanoes explained within a flat earth paradigm? Again, more curiosity than anything, but these are major phenomena that require explanation in any worldview.
3. Though I am admittedly skeptical of the FE model’s ability to account for changes in day/night and seasons, larger scale climate variations are not discussed within a FE framework. A very basic but fundamental question to ask would be what is the cause(s) of past ice ages and interglacials in the recent geologic past (either the last interglacial to glacial maximum from 115 000 – 25 000 years ago, or the last deglaciation from 20 000 – 12 000 years ago, or even the Medieval Warm Period and/or Little Ice Age conditions that exhibited major climate changes over large parts of the earth?
4. Antarctica. (this will be a longer one, fair warning.) Glaciers and ice sheets are intensely complicated features, but they can be effectively simplified as large masses of frozen water that move/flow due to the influence of gravity. I will grant that they could move under the influence of any force that exhibits a downward acceleration of 9.8 m/s2 (i.e. UA explanation offered in the FE wiki), given our inability to differentiate those two possibilities within a closed reference frame. The problem lies in glacier mechanics and mass balance, but we don’t need to go into detail; simply put, glaciers flow ‘downhill’ melting or calving into the sea at their downstream end. For a glacier/ice sheet to survive over millennia, mass must be added in the upflow regions in the form of precipitation.
a. If Antarctica is just a wall of ice (and mountains?) that rims the earth, as depicted in the more common FE maps and theories, where are they flowing from? That is, where is ice being added to the wall of ice to counteract the melting and calving observed along the margins of Antarctica?
b. If mass is being added upflow, that would mean it is being added closer to the edge of the disk. The downward acceleration that drives glacier motion (either gravity or UA, as discussed above), would also cause the ice sheet to flow not only towards the inner part of the disk, where it meets the oceans, but also towards to outer parts of the disk (the mechanism here is the same for all large ice sheets and ice caps, Greenland ice sheet would be the best analogue). If this is true, then ice would eventually flow either off the edge of the earth (which is likely no happening, because this would cause rapid acceleration of the ice flow velocity, initiating broad ice streams that would effectively ‘steal’ ice from the catchment areas flowing towards the oceans within the disk (google ice stream piracy, or check out a paper by Matthew Bennett, 2003: ice streams as the arteries of an ice sheet).
c. Many people have been to Antarctica, including several personal friends of mine (these are limited to cruises and research missions that visited the margins of the continent). I have seen videos and hundreds of photos of the different stages of the trip. I have personally been offered a position to visit the continent as part of a graduate field course, but I was unable to make it work because of financial and time constraints. Many other people have flown to (and in some cases, skied to) the south pole. There is a permanent research station at the south pole, and many past travelers have documents their experience in detail. There is a 24-hour live stream offered by the US Antarctic program
https://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/spwebcam.cfm – you can check sunrise and set times and compare them to predictions made by round earth (though, technically, there’s just 6 months of daylight followed by 6 months of darkness, but the angle of the sun in the sky/glow beneath the spring and fall will be informative in developing/evaluating theories). You can even apply to be a volunteer and work on different research bases in Antarctica! 😊
d. How do the transantarctic Mountains and the nearly 100 documented volcanoes fit within the icewall paradigm of flat earth (this assumes the monopole version that appears to be more commonly promoted as opposed to the dipole version which was advocated following increased Antarctic exploration in the early 1900’s, according to the FE wiki). In the round earth paradigm, these mountains form a significant topographic divide which helps promote the divergence of flow at the interior of the ice sheet outward in both directions to the east Antarctic and west Antarctic ice sheets.
e. How does liquid water get to the base of the Antarctic ice sheet? And why does it flow towards the oceans? If the ice was simply a wall that holds the oceans in place, as promoted by FE, any documented water should be flowing from the oceans, beneath the ice, towards the interior of the ice sheet/outwards towards the edge of the disk, however far that may be. This flow should be controlled by differences in hydraulic head (think pressure) from sea level to the base of the Antarctic ice sheet, which is in many areas 800 - 1500 m below sea level, even along its margins. If the ice was holding the oceans on the surface of the disk, there would be a head differential promoting water flow outward toward the disk margins, rather than from the ice into the oceans.