Hi everyone!
I've not been here in a long time, but I had a thought recently, and I'd never heard it discussed before, and a quick search didn't bring it up either. I wondered whether anybody here has anything to input.
I'll state up front that I believe the Earth to be a globe. But I'm here in good faith, in the spirit of robust discussion that lots of people here value.
So let's start with the premise that the Earth is flat. The sun, a few thousand miles above the surface, moves in good approximations of circles centred around the north pole. They aren't perfect circles but more like a spiral, with the sun moving closer to the north pole in summer and closer to the outer edge in winter (I live in the northern hemisphere so I when I say summer and winter I mean northern hemisphere summer and winter. I also don't know what other terminology to use than "hemisphere".)
Now, whether it's summer or winter, a full day and night cycle still lasts for 24 hours. But because the sun during winter travels over a much longer distance in the same period of time than it does during summer, it must be travelling much faster. But we don't see this happening, down here on the surface.
If, from a given northern latitude, you observe the sun move across the sky during northern solstice, and then observe it again from the equal southern latitude during southern solstice, the sun will appear to be moving across the sky at the same speed, though on a flat Earth we would expect it to be moving 1.7 times faster*, which would be quite noticeable with even casual observations.
So, what gives? Does anyone know of any FE models that can account for this? Has this topic been covered before? Apologies if so.
Thanks, all!
Best wishes
Don
*at least, given the measurements I got off Google Earth: 7400km straight down a meridian from the north pole to the Tropic of Cancer, giving a circumference for the Tropic of Cancer of 46,500km (all measurements rounded to the nearest hundred), then another 12,600km straight down a meridian from tropic to tropic, giving a circumference of 79,200 for the Tropic of Capricorn, roughly 1.7 times as long.