The problem with this is that Astronomy and knowledge of a spherical earth existed a long long long time before NASA
To put it into perpective ...
I studied the History of Astronomy as part of my Undergraduate Science degree at University in the very early 1970's
Here's a brief summary ...
**Pythagoras first put forward his evidence for a spherical earth in 600 BC. There has never been a time since then that any scholar of any regard has refuted that we live on a spherical planet ?
I was simply trying to make the point that this "conspiracy" must have started back in the times of Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras and Erosthanes.
And back to the on-topic stuff, yes indeed it seems like the conspiracy had to be dating back to the time of Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras, Erosthanes and probably some others.
The orgins of globularism were in the beliefs of the Pythagorean number cult. Platonic schools grew from the same root. There was no conspiracy. It was simply a mistaken belief.
A proper conspiracy regarding the shape of the earth is comparatively modern.
Ski is pretty high in the other "The Flat Earth Society" (at
The Flat Earth Society). He just blames "globularism" on"simply a mistaken belief." Of course the "Platonic schools" did tend to
like spheres, because they were "cool".
**By 300BC it was common knowledge that the earth rotated to give day and night and the moon travelled around the earth once every 28 days, resulting in the phases of the moon.
At this time it was well known that 5 of the objects seen in the night sky were "planets" and not stars. Before this they were often called "wandering stars" because their path across the sky had been observed to have a retrograde motion.
**About 270BC Aristarchus calculated the distance to the moon and the size of the moon
**Aristarchus also believed that the sun was the centre of our solar system and even calculated the correct order of the visible planets. He also said that the stars were distant suns. This was not accepted at the time because religions and other Astronomers such as Ptolemy and Aristotle could not accept that anything other than the earth was the centre of the universe. (Man is such an egocentrical beast !!! lol)
**Eratosthenes worked out the circumference of the earth to within 10% about 250BC
Yes of course, they claim that Eratosthenes "assumed" that the earth was a Globe, and then claim that they can use Eratosthenes' figures to find the sun's height of the flat earth.
What the will not face, is Eratosthenes' figures (modernised to 7.2° and 800 km) outs the sun's height at 6,333 km, not 5,000 km as they claim.
The same method for 1° spacing puts the sun at 6,366 km (which happens to be the radius of the globe), and at 90° puts the sun on the ground.
The only consistent solution is a globe earth and a distant sun, but nobody will discuss it seriously.
I tried in
The Sun's height from the method and distances in "the Wiki". « on: April 15, 2016, 01:58:07 AM »**Around 150 BC Hipparchus discovered the precession of the equinoxes.
Yes, they seem to ignore the fact that the Globe was the accepted shape right through history, not only in the early Western Church (look up the "Venerable Bede's" writing on the shape of the earth. He left no doubt. Even the early Islamic community seems to have taken over the early western scientific theories, with some very advanced work done by Al-Biruni. Just do a search. There's lots of info from both Western and Islamic sources.
**In 1543 Copernicus published his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium which described a heliocentric solar system ie the sun at the centre and the earth and other planets travelling around the sun. This also perfectly explained the retrograde motion of the planets. He also had the visible planets in the correct order. The publication of this book was one of the most pivotal moments in Scientific History, as it set the scene for the establishment of The Scientific Method, and is now often referred to as "the Copernican Revolution"
Yes, Copernicus lead to a revolution, though his "model" didn't fit observations much better than Ptolemy's epi-cycles, etc because Copernicus, a bit like Plato,
liked perfect circles.
Then Tycho Brahe made his wonderfully accurate observations, especially as most used his unaided eye, but Brahe was still preferred a geocentric system and developed his Tycho nice System, with the sun orbiting the earth and the planets orbiting the sun.
**In 1608 Lippershey invented the telescope with a magnification of 3X
**In 1610 using a 20X refractor telescope Galileo discovered 4 of Jupiter's moons
I am continually amazed at the work of Galileo (and others). Just imagine the painstaking record keeping needed before the days of photography.
His records apparently show that he observed Neptune as a moving object in 1612! See in
New Theory: Galileo Discovered Neptune.So it wasn't till Kepler's elliptical orbits and Newton's Laws finally giving them a theoretical basis that we can say that the modern picture of the so;ar system came to fruition.
**In 1761 astronomers who travelled to various parts of the world, calculated the distance to the sun using the transit of Venus across the sun, using information left by Hubble who knew he would not live long enough to be able to do this himself.
1781 Uranus is discovered
1846 Neptune is disovered
1930 Pluto is discovered
1958 NASA founded.
We also knew about comets, most of the larger moons of the other planets, how and why solar and lunar eclipses occur, eliptical orbits of the planets, Newton's theory of gravity and Einstein's Laws of Relativity (In fact Einstein died in 1955)
WHAT conspiracy ??
Why do flat earthers deny this history???
I studied the History of Astronomy as part of my Science Degree in 1973 but my lecturer was in his 70's by then and had been teaching this stuff for about 40 years ... WAY before NASA was founded in 1958 !!!
You ask "WHAT conspiracy
??"
This I believe is what they base it on,
"The Flat Earth is an obvious truth",
"If personally unverifiable evidence contradicts 'The an obvious truth of a Flat Earth' then the evidence is fabricated".
"If there is large amounts of fabricated evidence then
there must be a conspiracy to fabricate it", etc, etc. QED.
It all boils to their claiming "The Flat Earth is an obvious truth", with I believe insufficient evidence.
I do hope the school teacher won't put too many red-marks through this!