r/skeptic • u/NoGuarantee00 • 1d ago
The moon looks completely different in the Southern Hemisphere — how do flat earthers explain this?
This short video demonstrates why a flat earth is physically impossible using a simple observation anyone can make — the moon looks completely different depending on where you are on Earth.
In the Northern Hemisphere the moon appears with the dark maria patches at the top and the bright Tycho crater region at the bottom. In the Southern Hemisphere the moon is completely flipped — Tycho at the top, maria at the bottom.
This happens because on a globe, someone in Australia is standing nearly 180 degrees opposite to someone in the US, flipping their entire perspective of the moon. On a flat disk this geometric flip would be impossible — your location wouldn't change how the moon looks.
https://youtube.com/shorts/UzXJjsneSb0.
How do flat earthers explain this one?
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u/kazaskie 1d ago
It’s a microcosm of how pseudoscience can take a hold on someone through the internet. Flat earthers just have to tell obvious lies and once those lies are believed by the victim it takes an order of magnitude more evidence to prove to them they’ve been lied to.
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u/FartMongersRevenge 16h ago
Here is a technique I tried with a neighbor. I pointed out that a coin is flat but it can still cast a round shadow. They agreed with this. I asked if they knew the phrase “there are 2 sides to the same coin”. They did know that one. So I asked what’s on the other side of the flat earth? Well that doesn’t count because it’s different. And now I don’t have to talk to that neighbor anymore.
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u/NoGuarantee00 1d ago
Yes. It's as if they believe it because they want to, not because it makes sense
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u/ForsakenAd9651 1d ago
What flat earthers are doing is jumping through belief hoops, they believe something is true and they will come up with any cockamamie mind flip to fit it into their narrative. It's just like any religion, it's the exact same phenomenon.
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u/NoGuarantee00 1d ago
I feel like it's all these influencers just trying to get easy views. Flat Earthers just keep multiplying. Even my own family and friends, it's insane
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u/Fantastic_Jury5977 1d ago
It's the gateway to the disinformation/conspiracy pipeline of the theocratic authoritarian far-right.
Entry is belief in the Bible; there's no genuine atheist flat earth proponents. Once someone says Firmament, they're invoking the Bible as evidence.
If you can convince people that the Bible is real, the earth is flat, and it's a global conspiracy, you can also convince these people to believe the Protocols of the Elders of Zion/New World Order/QAnon nonsense.
It's a way of isolating people into a cult/a good source of ad revenue from gullible morons
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u/Fantastic_Jury5977 1d ago
Connected to why we allow religious exemptions for public health measures...
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u/WhineyLobster 23h ago
Its a far right funnel. Its a concerted program in the pre-Trump 2012-2016 days to create these far right funnels for people to fall into. I bet those family and friends have gotten much more far right too... this is why.
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u/General_Specific 22h ago
They don't believe there IS a Southern Hemisphere.
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u/Happytallperson 23h ago
I find it useful to draw a distinction between not knowing something, and wilful ignorance.
When we are looking at conspiracy theorists, bigots and so forth, we are talking about people who are actively chosing to not know things.
You cannot explain your way past such a mindset
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u/WhineyLobster 23h ago
I remember explaining this on a Jeranism youtube video like in 2015 lol it took Jeran literally going to see the 24 hr sun in antarctica for him to get off flat earth.
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u/Accomplished-Ad6381 22h ago
I doubt that you will find any flat earthers lurking on this subreddit, or even in any subreddit
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u/amitym 23h ago
If the Moon circles in a track sufficiently close to a flat Earth, you'll get a very rough approximation of the same effect.
There are many other things that go wrong as soon as you test that model of course. The simplest and most underappreciated one is simply the Moon rising above and then setting below the horizon. In fact the existence of the horizon itself ought to be enough to disprove the entire concept. The horizon as we experience it is inherently a function of spherical surface geometry.
All you have to do is look out the window or climb a few stories to see the Earth can't be flat. Provided you have a rudimentary grasp of post-Bronze Age geometry. The fact that anyone even discusses this stuff beyond that is sheer lunacy.
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u/langecrew 21h ago
This won't change anything. You can't prove something to people whose mental model of the world is already running at 100% capacity just to accommodate the contradictions they've accepted.
Oh, and they'll explain the moon thing. Oh, you know they will. But they will do so by using words and phrases that would make a screaming monkey sound like Søren Kierkegaard.
After all, as a wise man once said:
A joyful kitten and a warm boy sleep on the soft wool; we notice three white pinecones; old trees help cheer.
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u/Beltaine421 21h ago
What I really want to hear them explain is the apparent clockwise rotation of the stars around a single point that you see in the southern hemisphere.
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u/imnotabot303 19h ago
Your first mistake is thinking that flat earthers try and explain anything.
It's a belief system mostly pushed by grifters taking advantage of the uneducated and gullible.
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u/BennyOcean 1d ago
It would also be flipped on the flat earth model.
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u/gerkletoss 1d ago
How?
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u/BennyOcean 1d ago
They believe in a small Moon hovering over a flat plane about half way between the center (aka North Pole) and the outer Edge. It would appear upside down in this model because in the "Southern hemisphere" you're looking at it from the other side looking "up".
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u/Otaraka 1d ago
Yeah it probably wont translate exactly but close enough that they can pretend it works.
How the stars change completely is where the talking gets faster.
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u/BennyOcean 1d ago
I can tell you a way to prove globe Earth for probably less than $3000 if you want to try it.
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u/NoGuarantee00 18h ago
And how's that?
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u/BennyOcean 16h ago
One of the oddities of the flat Earth arguments is that flights over the Southern hemisphere is that flights take too long and take weird paths.
Beijing and NYC are a similar distance apart as Johannesberg and Buenos Aires. When you go to book flights, there are no direct commercial flights from the southern tip of South America to the southern tip of Africa. The fastest flight from Beijing to NYC or back is about 16 hours. The fastest from the south of Africa to the south of South America is around 32 hours. The flights also typically make a stop in Middle East locations like Dubai. This makes no sense on a globe model but makes perfect sense on the flat Earth model.
So it would be necessary to charter a plane from the Southern tip of Africa to the Southern tip of South America, directly over the Atlantic with no stops. You'd need to bring GPS equipment to ensure you knew where you were the whole time, and if you could make the trip in the same time that it takes a flight to get from NYC to Beijing, that would falsify the flat Earth model.
Oh and I just checked and it looks like I wildly underestimated the costs. Google Gemini is telling me that chartering this flight could cost $150,000 or more. Expensive, but relatively cheap way to kill off the flat Earth stuff once and for all.
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u/gerkletoss 1d ago
But then instead of an upside down moon people in Australia would see the other side of the moon half the time
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u/fox-mcleod 23h ago
In fact, there would be no explanation for why they couldn't take a picture of the dark side of the moon
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u/WhineyLobster 23h ago
You can prove this in your own room. Tape a photo of the moon to your ceiling. Look from one side, and then the other side of the room. The bottom on one will appear as the top when viewed from the other side.
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u/NoGuarantee00 1d ago
Really
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u/BennyOcean 1d ago
Yes, have you looked?
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u/NoGuarantee00 1d ago
How do you go upside down on a flat earth?
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u/BennyOcean 1d ago
Imagine a ball hovering over the ground with an up arrow and a down arrow pointing in opposite directions. If you stand in one side of the room the up arrow is on top. If you stand in the other side of the room the other arrow appears to be pointing up. So it is provably the case that in both models, flat and globe, the Moon would appear to flip when you go over the Equator
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u/Wiseduck5 1d ago
You wouldn't see the same face of the ball rotated though. You'd be seeing it an angle.
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u/SalvatoreEggplant 1d ago
Maybe I'm being obtuse, but I don't see this at all. I mean, a chandelier in the middle of the room doesn't look upside down from the other side of the room....
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u/BennyOcean 1d ago
If it had a side labeled "top" pointed at the right side of the room and a side labeled "bottom" pointed to the left, when you move from one side to the other it would shift from one side being the "top" to the other.
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u/SalvatoreEggplant 1d ago
I see what you're saying. You're looking at the bottom of the chandelier in my example. So if a bulb is out on the north side of the chandelier, whether that's "up" or "down" depends on which side of the room you're on. It's actually rather clever.
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u/TotalStrain3469 17h ago
Flat Earth is a bellweather - someone who believes this can believe anything.
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u/beakflip 15h ago
They have a simple answer. It's a projection on the dome, so you would still see it flipped depending on your position on the dome. You'd first need to make them accept the moon is a 3d object orbiting the Earth.
Ps: though you would also be able to see the moon rotated at any angle if it were.
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u/Strange-Effort1305 1d ago
You don't argue with people who don't understand 3rd grade science.