{"id":13258,"date":"2025-03-11T12:05:42","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T16:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zobi.alcowep.com\/bourtagshdrevxnls658739\/how-do-we-know-the-earth-isnt-flat-we-asked-a-nasa-expert-episode-53\/"},"modified":"2025-03-11T12:05:42","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T16:05:42","slug":"how-do-we-know-the-earth-isnt-flat-we-asked-a-nasa-expert-episode-53","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zobi.alcowep.com\/bourtagshdrevxnls658739\/how-do-we-know-the-earth-isnt-flat-we-asked-a-nasa-expert-episode-53\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do We Know the Earth Isn\u2019t Flat? We Asked a NASA Expert: Episode 53"},"content":{"rendered":"
How Do We Know the Earth Isn\u2019t Flat? We Asked a NASA Expert: Episode 53<\/h2>\n
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2 min read<\/p>\n
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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This was a magical revelation for the Greeks and the Egyptians, who were able to see from the motions of the stars and the way the Sun moved. They saw the way the Sun\u2019s shadow worked in different places. And they figured, well, that\u2019s only possible if the Earth is round. And they took that information and it extended into the time of the great mariners that explored our Earth by ships.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
They made the first orbit of Earth by sea, and they knew the Earth was round, allowing them to go across one ocean and come back home the other way. If the Earth were flat, they would have sailed off the end. And so we knew that.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
But then, at the dawn of the space age, in the late 50s and 60s, we were able to see for ourselves that our beautiful home is a gorgeous round object known as a sphere. And that was really special. It put ourselves into context of our solar system and our universe.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
We have a big round Sun and a beautiful round Earth and a round Mars.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
And today we use the roundness of Earth, the spherical Earth, to use methods in space geodesy to figure out where we are, where we\u2019re going. I haven\u2019t been lost in years. That\u2019s pretty good.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
What\u2019s happening to the Earth, what\u2019s happening to our oceans as we take the pulse of our planet and consider other worlds beyond as we explore those.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
So as we get ready to go back to the Moon with women and men and explore other worlds, the roundness of our solar system and our universe is a special thing. And we should embrace that as we understand why our planet isn\u2019t flat.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n