Flat-Earth · Source catalogue

The founding text of the modern flat-earth ('Zetetic') movement. Rowbotham argues from experiment-by-eye that water is level and the earth a plane with the north pole at the centre, the sun a small body about 32 miles across and some 3,000 miles up circling over the plane, and the stars and moon likewise near. The deep-read section sets out sea-perspective observations: the Nab light-ship hull seen from 2 ft 8 in above the water at about 8 miles (Portsmouth, May 1864); a steamer funnel watched from Southsea pier toward Ryde; the Plymouth committee's Eddystone observations (October 1864, Western Daily Mercury, 25 Oct 1864); and a table of lighthouses seen beyond their 'curvature' range. The deep reader found that Rowbotham's geometry (8 inches x miles squared, after subtracting the observer's own horizon distance) is the standard no-refraction construction and his arithmetic mostly right, with slips (Whitby 102 for 112 ft; Lower Farn 67 for 21.7; Hekkengen 380 for about 32 ft; Grimsby refraction step). He leaves out refraction (a coefficient k of about 0.13 would remove 25-70 percent of the hidden height in these cases) and applies a refraction correction to the wrong quantity; he treats computed ranges and journalists' phrases as observations and reads ambiguous 'miles' as nautical when that helps. The Nab hull sighting would need k of about 0.46 on a globe (possible in calm-water ducting); the Ryde funnel test is a real discriminating design (predicted 35-40 in bulge) but only one sentence of outcome is recorded; the Eddystone 'entirely out of sight' report discriminates neither way. Witnesses in the 1864 tests are mostly unnamed except the Plymouth committee. QE deep read (PDF pp.68-80, 103-107): (a) the vertical air-gun test (printed pp.67-69): an air-gun fixed vertical on a post, ball 'invariably (during several trials) descended within a few inches of the gun', twice onto the muzzle, average flight 16 s; Rowbotham predicts 5,600 ft westward from a surface speed of 'more than 700 feet per second' (the figure at 51 N is about 957 ft/s). No date, place, witness, gun or ball data are given. A rotating earth gives the ball the ground's eastward speed, as he himself grants for a dropped ball (Figure 22); the Coriolis prediction for a drag-free 16 s flight is about 0.31 m (a foot) west, below the scatter such a test would show, so the test cannot discriminate. (b) The two-tube star test of orbital motion (printed pp.69-71) is written as a proposed experiment in the future tense; two parallel tubes give a time lag only through misalignment (15 arcsec of sky per second of time), and even on his own 6,000-mile stars the yard baseline gives 0.02 arcsec. (c) Sun distance (printed pp.72-74): Ordnance Survey officers' noon altitudes 55 deg 18' (London) and 53 deg 2' (Ackworth, 151 mi) give a plane height of about 2,508 mi, and an unnamed Royal Engineers officer's 45 deg and 38 deg over 800 mi give about 2,858 mi (both 'under 4,000 miles'). The first pair matches a globe (2.27 deg against 2.19 deg expected from 151 mi); the second does not (a globe expects 11.6 deg for 800 mi); the two plane heights differ by 14 percent and neither is dated or documented. (d) Moonlight (printed pp.98-102): the Moon is called self-luminous because concentrated moonlight does not blacken silver chloride or warm a thermometer (Lardner, a Dickens periodical, De La Hire, Forbes), with one contrary Lancet item of 14 March 1856 (cooling of more than 8 degrees). The deep reader notes full-Moon light is about 5e5 times fainter than sunlight, so a 300 to 6,000-fold concentration is 0.06 to 1.2 percent of sunlight and the null results are what reflected sunlight predicts; the Lancet report was not located.

Key claims

• Water at rest is level over any distance, so the earth has no curvature of 8 inches per mile squared.
• A ship's hull seen through a telescope from 2 ft 8 in above calm water at about 8 miles (the Nab light-ship, May 1864) should be hidden by curvature but was visible.
• Lighthouses are seen at distances where a globe of 25,000 miles circumference would hide several hundred feet of them (table of lights, PDF pp.174-179).
• Sunrise and sunset, and the apparent sinking of receding objects, are effects of perspective on a plane rather than of a curved surface.
• A ball fired vertically from a plumbed air-gun falls back within inches of the gun after a 16 s flight, which Rowbotham says shows the earth does not rotate (he predicts a 5,600 ft lag).
• Two parallel tubes aimed at a star show no change after six months, which Rowbotham says shows the earth has no orbital motion (proposed experiment, no data).
• Noon sun altitudes from Ordnance Survey and Royal Engineers officers (London 55 deg 18', Ackworth 53 deg 2', 151 mi; 45 deg and 38 deg over 800 mi) give a sun under 4,000 miles above a plane.
• Concentrated moonlight produces no heat and no chemical effect, so the Moon is self-luminous rather than a reflector.

Relevance: Primary source for the whole project: the original statement of the flat-earth case (Bedford Level, sea perspective, lights, a small near sun) from which Hampden, Carpenter, Blount and the modern TFES wiki and Dubay lists draw.

Mainstream conflict: Contradicts the spherical earth (R about 3,959 mi) and the standard treatment of refraction, which the deep read finds he omits; the Nab sighting is explainable on a globe only with strong superior refraction (k about 0.46).

A 19-page religious and polemical pamphlet signed 'John Hampden, Swindon, Wilts, December 1869', collated and abridged (with permission) from Section 14 of Rowbotham's Zetetic Astronomy. The title page OCR reads 1809; it is 1869. The argument is chiefly scriptural: 'world' appears over 200 times in the Bible and 'round' never; the Flood history would be 'untrue' on a globe. Observational content is second hand and unquantified: the sea looks level left and right and convex ahead, surveyors work to a horizontal datum (an 1860s House of Commons standing order is quoted), a line of gas lamps shrinking in the distance is called an optical delusion, luminaries are said to be within a few thousand miles by plane triangulation. Internal inconsistency noted by the deep reader: earth's rotation speed given as 1,100 mph (p.6) and elsewhere as 700 miles per second. The pamphlet contains NO wager, no stake, no Bedford Level, no mention of Wallace; the 1870 wager is outside this document. It does say 'scores and hundreds' of learned people privately admit the arguments are unanswerable (Hampden's own characterization, uncorroborated in the pamphlet) and that he has been 'taunted'.

Key claims

• The Bible describes the earth as a stationary plane, so a globe is incompatible with Scripture.
• Surveyors and engineers work from a horizontal datum because the supposed convexity of the earth is of no practical use.
• All the luminaries are within a few thousand miles, as plane triangulation shows.
• Many learned men privately concede the arguments but will not say so publicly (Hampden's assertion; no names given).

Relevance: Shows the promoter's position before the 1870 wager: relied on Rowbotham, argued from Scripture, and already framed science as unwilling to admit the truth.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with the globe and heliocentric astronomy; scriptural reading is a theology claim, not testable physics.

Third edition, with the second-edition preface of 24 Sept 1872 admitting that critics 'pointed out several matters which, on proper examination, were not, as evidence, entirely satisfactory', which were omitted (it does not list them). Chapter II holds 15 numbered experiments: (1) the 1838 Old Bedford canal flag-boat, observer in the water with the telescope 8 in above the surface, a 5 ft flag seen to six miles where a globe predicts 11 ft 8 in of drop; (2) six flags a mile apart and a disappearing barge; (3) a levelled theodolite midway; (4) forward levelling; (5) a turf-boat telescope trip of 5 April 1870; (6) Brighton to Worthing; (7) a levelled board along the horizon; (8) Isle of Wight, Isle of Man, North Wales; (9) Holyhead-Kingstown lights; (10) horizon rising to eye level in balloon accounts (Wise, Coxwell and Glaisher quotations); (11) Brighton quadrant and lensless tube; (12) Mersey steamer seen from Waterloo; (13) railway, Mont Frejus tunnel, Suez Canal, Atlantic cable; (14) Shooter's Hill/St Paul's/Hampstead; (15) clinometer at Brighton. A refraction section argues refraction cannot explain the results because the 'same medium' was crossed. Differences from 1865: the Bedford flag boat changes (3 ft flag, opposite direction, observer 'seated in the water' in 1865; 5 ft flag, 11 ft 8 in prediction, 'down to the water's edge' in 1881); the Douglas-to-Great Orme (60 mi) and Brighton race-course items are dropped; the Spithead/Ryde and Cowes items and several lighthouse entries (including the Hekkengen figure carrying a 380 ft error) are absent. No Chapter II experiment names an independent witness; the only named outsiders at a Bedford test are the 1870 wager party, who reported the opposite result (the middle disc seen higher: 'three of the gentlemen' concluded convexity), which Rowbotham, not present by his account, attributes to lens 'divergence' and height offsets. Exp. 11 admits that surveyors' levelled-theodolite results went against him. QE deep read of Chapters III-V (book pp.62-104): (a) the vertical powder cannon (pp.62-68) replaces the 1865 air-gun: ball fell back 8 inches from the gun after 30 s, 'greatest deviation less than 2 feet', average 28 s; prediction 8,400 ft westward. The deep reader finds 8,400 ft equals 600 feet per second times 14 s, not his stated 600 miles per hour (which would give 24,640 ft over 28 s), and that the Coriolis prediction for a 28 s flight at 52 N is about 1.6 m (1.2 m with drag), which the reported scatter neither confirms nor excludes. No gun, place, date, wind or witness is given. (b) Experiment 3 (not the Chapter II numbering) is a spring-gun fired forward and backward in a train, reported as certain with no data, and the Palmerston to Panmure letter of 20 December 1857 on a proposed firing trial; the letter itself notes that the ball keeps the earth's eastward motion so deviations 'may in practice turn out to be very small', contrary to Rowbotham's reading. (c) Experiment 4: a grindstone and the atmosphere; Rowbotham concludes that if the earth turns its atmosphere turns with it, and cites clouds in opposite directions. (d) The two star tubes (pp.79-87) are written as reported results with no star, date, clock or numbers; the parallax history he quotes (Henderson, Bessel, Herschel) is itself a record of measured parallaxes of 0.3 to 1 arcsec. (e) Chapter IV circumference arguments: the Atlantic cable and longitude-time method give 16,262 mi at about 50 N (the globe gives 16,006); the southern circle of 23,400 mi rests on one almanack distance (Auckland-Sydney 1,315 nautical miles against about 1,165 great-circle) and a transposed longitude difference (Adelaide-Sydney is about 12.6 deg, not 23 deg); 'circumference 52,800' should read 32,800 from his own diameter; the northern and southern radial scales are inconsistent (67 against 30 miles per degree). (f) Chapter V sun distance (pp.99-104): a triangle method demonstrated on Nelson's Monument, Great Yarmouth (1856), then London Bridge (noon altitude 61 deg) and Brighton (64 deg), 50 mi apart, 13 July 1870, giving a sun 700 miles up and all luminaries within 1,000 miles. The globe puts the noon altitudes of the two places only 0.69 deg apart (about 60.4 and 61.1 deg), so Brighton's 64 deg is about 3 deg too high; with consistent inputs the same flat model gives about 3,600 mi. The 1865 edition's results (under 4,000 mi, 6,000 mi limit) were lowered to 700 and 1,000 mi in 1881 without comment.

Key claims

• The surface of standing water is a horizontal plane: a flag at 5 ft stays visible to the water's edge over six miles of the Old Bedford canal where a globe predicts 11 ft 8 in of hiding (Exp. 1).
• Over water, lighthouses and coastlines are visible at ranges that the 8 in x miles-squared curvature rule would hide (Exps 8-9).
• Refraction cannot account for the results because observer and object are in the same medium.
• Railway, canal and tunnel engineers worked to level datums without allowing for curvature (Exp. 13).
• A ball fired from a vertical cannon falls back within 8 inches to 2 feet of the gun after 28-30 s, where a rotating earth would, he says, carry the gun 8,400 ft away (Chapter III).
• Two tubes set one yard apart on a block show that the earth has not moved a yard in an orbit in six months (Chapter III; no data given).
• The sun is about 700 miles up, from noon altitudes of 61 deg at London Bridge and 64 deg at Brighton on 13 July 1870 (Chapter V).
• The earth is a plane whose southern circle at Cape Town is 23,400 miles round, from Auckland-Sydney sailing distances (Chapter IV).

Relevance: Mature statement of the Zetetic experimental case, with the preface admission that earlier evidence was pruned; the Chapter II experiments are the claims later restated by Carpenter, Blount and Dubay.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with curvature of the earth and with the standard refraction coefficient; the 1870 wager result in the same book (pp.268-273) is the opposite of the claim in Exp. 1.

A pamphlet of 100 numbered 'proofs', printed by the author in Baltimore (dedicated to R. A. Proctor), organised as an attack on Proctor's Lessons in Elementary Astronomy. Carpenter calls himself Hampden's referee in the 1870 wager and states Rowbotham died 23 Dec 1884. The measurable core is small (proofs 4, 5, 16, 25-26, 36, 40, 67, 71, 78 and the 'no allowance' claims 3 and 51): proof 36 uses the standard 8 in x miles-squared rule; proofs 25-26 cite survey documents; the Chesapeake/Sharpe's Island light (13 miles, 112 ft 8 in expected, 'not a difference of 100 hair's breadths' seen) is his own cited observation; most others use the astronomers' own figures as reductio (19 miles/s orbital speed). His account of the Bedford wager is partisan: he says Wallace 'wrongfully claimed' the £500 and that Proctor's three-boat diagram cannot give the stated result. He wrote to Smithsonian secretary Baird, Proctor (reply 12 Dec 1885 calling it 'one hundred difficulties for young students'), mathematician Frank Strong and Johns Hopkins president Gilman (five letters Aug-Oct 1886); no reply from Gilman is printed. Baird's reply (6 Jan 1886) said the proofs 'have doubtless been thoroughly investigated by the inquisitive astronomers and geodesists of the last four centuries'. About 25 press notices are quoted; 5,000 copies stated in circulation by Oct 1886.

Key claims

• The earth is a stationary extended plane with the North Star overhead, not a globe.
• Over standing water, a distant light at 13 miles on Chesapeake Bay showed no difference in height where a globe requires 112 ft 8 in.
• The astronomers' own figures (orbital speed 19 miles/s, rotation 1,000 mph) are absurd and so refute the motion of the earth.
• The 1870 Bedford test was in truth in Hampden's favour and Wallace claimed the stake wrongly (Carpenter's partisan account).

Relevance: A second-generation Zetetic summary showing how the movement spread to the USA and how scientists and institutions were challenged; carries the only referee's-side account of the wager in the folder.

Mainstream conflict: Contradicts the globe and the standard orbital speeds; the quantitative proofs use mainstream formulas but omit observer height and refraction.

A society journal of the Universal Zetetic Society, an advocacy publication that prints letters it favours with editorial comment. Deep-read items: (1) New Zealand letters of 1893 from George Revell (Tuakau, Waikato) reporting that the sun rises ENE and sets WNW in the southern winter, the Southern Cross never sets and stars circle a southern point, with a question why 15 degrees of longitude are '45 miles' north of E and '60 miles' south of E; the editor answers that 'the light of the sun travels faster in some places than the sun itself'. (2) Editorial dismissal of Foucault's pendulum (53) and a reproduced lecture 'Our Earth Motionless' by Dr. Schoepfer (via Scientific American, 1878) claiming heavier pendulum balls deviate more, with a table of 20,000 vibrations versus ball mass and the Richer clock (Cayenne, losing 2.5 min a day). (3) 'G.M.'s test': at the equinox noon, altitudes of 90, 60, 45, 30, 0 degrees at latitudes 0, 30, 45, 60, 90 - the deep reader's calculation shows that using the Review's own 69-mile degrees the implied sun height differs by station (3,585, 3,105, 2,390 miles), i.e. the lines do not meet at one point. (4) Pendulum variability articles and a Lieut. Middleton letter on the surface of water. Bruce/Donald Antarctic temperatures are quoted. The Review is the source of the editorial position that the sun's light 'travels in curves' and that southern degrees are longer. QE deep read (Bedford-related items): (1) James Naylor, 'The Old Bedford Canal and some things that can be SEEN there' (PDF pp.216-217; printed probably late 1896 about experiments of August 1894 by an unnamed party with a surveyor's theodolite, Dumpy level and telescopes, four days of unsettled weather): heights given are Old Bedford Bridge 17 ft, Welney Bridge 13 ft at 6 mi, the Great Eastern Railway bridge 19 ft to the girder top and 15 ft to the underside about 12 mi away (from a company letter of 31 August 1894), and a boat 2 ft 6 in above the water. All readings are qualitative: Welney Bridge 'in or near the centre of the field' of a levelled telescope; with the theodolite levelled both ways it appeared 'a little below the cross hair'; the railway girder was seen as a dark band over Welney Bridge and, from the boat, under its arch. His globe figure of 21 ft above the girder omits the 17 ft eye height; the deep reader recomputes 38 ft at k = 0 (32 ft at k = 0.13), and finds the sight is possible on a globe only for k of about 0.8 to 0.9 (looming). Distances, straightness, datum and weather are undocumented, and the folder has no second account. His claim that the cross-hair deflects rays is not standard optics. (2) PDF p.265 reprints the 5 March 1870 telescope views of Carpenter and the referee Coulcher (countersigned 'This is correct' in The Field) and a second pair the Review calls 'utterly false'; the upper pair shows the three marks equally spaced from both ends, which the deep reader says is what a sphere predicts, not a straight line. (3) 'Parallax Triumphant' (p.34) quotes General Roy's thirty pickets 100 ft apart: heads in a line in the afternoon, concave upward in the morning (Trig. Survey vol. 1 p.175, second-hand), a report of refraction varying through the day; its attribution of a '20 feet' depression to Coulcher is not found in the held Field text, the nearest figure being Wallace's '22 ft in all' (Field, 2 April 1870), and the supposed contradiction with '5 feet' confuses the mid-point rise (6.0 ft) with the drop of the far signal (24 ft). (4) Carpenter's 1894 account of the wager (pp.87-88, Baltimore, 26 March 1894): the stake of 500 pounds handed to Wallace on 1 April 1870, the referee meeting ended by a policeman, and the optician Solomons' assistant, written 24 years later by Hampden's own referee. (5) The 1894 Signal Corps heliograph (pp.218-219, from Harper's Weekly 20 October 1894, via The Herald of Glad Tidings): Mt Uncompahgre (14,418 ft) to Mt Ellen (11,410 ft), 183 mi; the Review says curvature would hide the station by 'nearly 6 miles'; the tangent drop at 183 mi is 4.23 mi, the two horizon distances sum to 278 mi, so the stations are mutually visible on a globe. (6) Naylor, 'Zetetic Refraction No. III' (p.175): he concedes that sun angles on one meridian 'far more nearly correspond with the common theory than with Zeteticism', then dismisses the difficulty by 'Zetetic refraction'. (7) Lieut. Middleton's 1871 plumb-line proposal for testing a six-mile canal (pp.234-235) is only a proposal and, as described, follows the level surface and cannot tell a globe from a plane. (8) p.204 reprints Proctor's concession that a sight close to the canal surface would be decisive, and Rowbotham's turf-boat account of April 1873.

Key claims

• In the southern hemisphere the sun rises and sets north of the east-west line and the Southern Cross never sets (Revell, New Zealand, 1893), as the plane model requires.
• Foucault pendulums behave inconsistently and prove nothing; heavier balls deviate more (Schoepfer table, reproduced).
• Sun altitudes at different latitudes at the equinox cannot be reconciled by a flat-earth triangle with a sun at finite height (G.M.'s test, argued by the editors to refute the globe's parallel rays).
• Experiments have shown the earth has none of the motions attributed to it (editorial, citing Parallax).
• In August 1894 a zetetic party with a theodolite and Dumpy level found the Old Bedford canal horizontal; Naylor says a railway girder 12 miles away was seen over Welney Bridge, where a globe would hide it (no instrument readings given).
• A US Signal Corps heliograph linked Mt Uncompahgre and Mt Ellen over 183 miles in 1894, where the Review says curvature should hide the stations by nearly six miles.
• The movement's own writer Naylor concedes that sun angles on one meridian correspond far more nearly to the common theory than to Zeteticism, and invokes 'Zetetic refraction' to dismiss it.

Relevance: Documents the organised Zetetic Society of the 1890s and its extra-European observations (the first flat-earth attempt to deal with the southern sky); precursor of Blount/Smith's 1904 southern model.

Mainstream conflict: Southern-hemisphere sun and star paths are exactly what a globe predicts (the deep reader notes Revell's data are 'consistent with ordinary southern-hemisphere geometry'); Foucault precession with latitude is standard mechanics.

A 1-shilling pamphlet (Kingston Hill, Surrey) by the President of the Universal Zetetic Society that extends Rowbotham's single-centre model to explain the southern sky. The earth is a motionless plane; the sun, moon and planets are small, low lights (sun and moon about 30 miles across, the highest 'not more than some six or seven thousand miles high') carried by two ether vortices (north and south centres meeting at an 'equator' belt like cog-wheels), the sun following a figure-8 path; light travels in curves so the observed direction of sunrise is a 'focussed image'. Gravitation is rejected; electricity, magnetism and ether currents replace it. The authors now accept the southern midnight sun (Discovery expedition) and converging southern meridians - changes from Rowbotham flagged by the deep reader. Numbers: 25,000-mile circumference, 69.5 mi per degree at the equator, sun speed about 1,040 mph. The Preface cites Bedford Canal photographs ('Dallmeyer lens', 'expert photographer') as printed proof of level water; no date, canal length, camera height or photographer is given. No sun-altitude table or triangulation is provided.

Key claims

• The sun, moon and planets are small bodies tens of miles across, within a few thousand miles of the plane earth.
• Two ethereal vortices (north and south) move the sun in a figure-8 path, accounting for the southern sun and stars.
• Light travels along curves, so sunrise direction is an image rather than the sun's true position.
• Photographs on the Bedford Canal printed the proof that water is level (asserted; no data).

Relevance: The most developed turn-of-the-century Zetetic cosmology; the southern-sky accommodation shows the model changing under pressure from observation.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with parallax distances to the sun and moon, gravitation, the conservation of angular momentum in planetary motion and southern-hemisphere day-length data.

A single saved blog post (3 Aug 2015) listing 200 numbered one-paragraph proofs, reproducing a 35-page ebook (photographs and diagrams not in the text). The deep read classifies them: 68 quantitative, 24 appearance/perspective, 18 claimed experiments, 22 about institutions or space agencies, 68 other (argument, scripture, history, flight routes). Many duplicate Rowbotham, Carpenter and Blount (curvature of 8 in x miles squared, Bedford, Eddystone, Brighton, Waterloo, Chesapeake). The deep reader's arithmetic checks: items 6, 10-11, 14, 15, 60, 63-65 reproduce the 8 in x n^2 rule; item 9 uses the full-distance drop (600 ft at 30 mi) while 10-11 use mid-chord sag, mixing geometries; item 67 gives 1,944 ft for 60 miles where the rule gives 2,400 ft; item 49 gives 0.00004 percent where 0.0043 is meant; item 39 gives 25,182 where its figures give about 25,321 miles; items 23, 157-158 vs 25-26 and 179-184 treat the atmosphere inconsistently. Experiments named: Michelson-Morley and Sagnac described as nulls (the deep reader notes Sagnac's 1913 interferometer is standardly reported as a positive fringe shift), Airy, Foucault ('sometimes clockwise, sometimes counter'), Coriolis in sinks, a Michelson-Gale-Pearson reference absent. New relative to the older books: NASA and space-agency fakery (Apollo, ISS), flight-route and timetable arguments, a Freemason/Protocols conspiracy narrative. Single-source or unnamed-source items (cannonball tests, Chambers' Journal 1895 Aden witness, Times 1854, Captain Gibson 1872) are listed rather than dismissed.

Key claims

• The curvature of a 25,000-mile globe (8 inches times miles squared) is not observed: lights, mountains and coasts are visible beyond the calculated hiding distance (items 67-93, Biot/Arago 100 miles, Portlock 108 miles).
• Michelson-Morley, Sagnac and Airy's water-filled telescope show no motion of the earth through space (item 18, 16).
• Foucault pendulums and the Coriolis effect do not behave as a rotating earth requires (items 140, 141).
• Flight times, southern routes and Antarctic travel are inconsistent with a globe (items 36-48, 179-184).
• NASA and 'space agencies' fake images, and a Masonic conspiracy motive explains the heliocentric model (items 1, 57, 162-178, 197-198).

Relevance: The compendium that popularised the modern movement; useful because it restates every older claim in one place with its numbers, so reviewers can test each in one pass.

Mainstream conflict: Contradicts GPS, satellite geodesy, ring-laser and Sagnac results, the Coriolis effect in artillery and meteorology and the standard account of refraction; several figures are internally inconsistent.

An archived Reddit post (13 Oct 2018, 25 comments) listing 32 'government documents' that use the words 'flat earth' or 'flat, nonrotating earth': CIA reading-room items (a 1948 Russian item and a 'Russian light study'), a NOAA geoid page, Army Research Laboratory reports (ARL-TR-2352, -4998, -5118, -5810, -2683, -1812 and others), the 2007 PTTI time-transfer paper, IRIG 106-17, a NAVAIR document, and about 17 NASA reports. For NASA reports the quoted phrases are present in the project's copies (RP-1207, TP-2835, CR-3073, CR-186019, TM-X-2514, CH-53, SR-71, CR-62898, etc.). The comments are mostly rebuttals: the phrase is a calculation simplification valid at local scale; one commenter notes the first cited paper actually treats the earth as an ellipsoid. Item 19 (CR-4568) is summarised in the post as if it supported a flat earth; the deep read shows its abstract and main model are spherical, with the flat-earth only as the zeroth-order sub-problem.

Key claims

• Government and NASA documents state that the Earth is flat and non-rotating, so the agencies know the true shape.
• NASA CR-4568 'mentions a spherical rotating earth' but its schemes are 'difficult to prove' and not for real-time use, while the working equations are flat-earth (post's reading of items 19).

Relevance: Entry point of the 'NASA admits flat earth' argument that the project's NASA-Reports folder tests.

Mainstream conflict: Reading conflicts with the documents' own scope statements (short-range, short-duration simplification); see the deep reads of TM X-2514, RP-1207, CR-4568 and the Lead Stories and AAP fact-checks.

A Steemit post leading with NASA RP-1207 (1988, 'Derivation and Definition of a Linear Aircraft Model'), quoting 'a flat, nonrotating Earth' from its Summary, Introduction, Concluding Remarks and report documentation page, then listing 14 more: SR-71 TP-2002-210718, VSTOL TM-100996, the 2006 'Time to Climb' paper and others, each with page and quoted phrase. Closing lines promote a blog and the tags #galileo #nasa #lies. The cited reports are linked, not included.

Key claims

• NASA research papers (RP-1207 and 14 others) assume and therefore admit a flat, nonrotating earth.

Relevance: Second source (with the Reddit thread) for the 'NASA admits flat earth' claim; promoter's compilation, an interested party's characterization.

Mainstream conflict: The phrase appears in the reports as a stated modelling assumption; the reports themselves limit it (e.g. 'short-range, short-duration flights').

Page asserts that aircraft instruments are built on, and pilots taught to fly over, a flat, non-rotating earth, while saying it is 'not specifically a disproof' of the round earth. Section 'Royal Air Force College' reproduces a New Scientist letter of 16 Aug 1979 (p.543) by Darcy Reddyhoff of the RAF College saying navigators are taught the stars are fixed to a celestial sphere centred on a fixed earth. This is the page where the folder README says the wiki states the NASA-report claim.

Key claims

• Aviation instruments and training assume a flat, non-rotating earth.
• Navigation is taught on a fixed earth with the stars on a celestial sphere.

Relevance: The wiki's statement of the 'aviation uses flat earth' claim.

Mainstream conflict: Treating a modelling choice (and the celestial-sphere teaching device) as a belief about the planet; see the NASA fact-checks.

Describes Rowbotham's 1838 wade-in observation (telescope 8 in above the water, 5 ft flag still visible) and six-flag repeats, says most results 'have served to prove Flat Earth Theory' and any contrary result was 'soundly disproved by Flat Earthers'. Claims Wallace won the 1870 wager but was found by the courts to have 'cheated' (the deep reader flags this for checking against the primary record), and that Lady Blount's 1904 photograph (Clifton) has 'not been explained' apart from 'hypothesising concerning refraction'. Oldham is not mentioned; refraction gets one passing comment.

Key claims

• The Bedford Level experiment, repeatedly performed, proves a flat earth.
• Wallace's 1870 win was obtained by cheating and the courts found against him.

Relevance: Modern advocate's summary of the central Bedford Level evidence; compare with Wallace (1905), Oldham (1901) and Wikipedia.

Mainstream conflict: Contradicted by Wallace's account (he won the umpire's decision, repaid the stake after Hampden v. Walsh because of the stakeholder rule) and Oldham's 1900-01 repeat (middle mark about 6 ft high).

Argues Eratosthenes measured the diameter of the flat earth rather than the circumference of a globe: with the sun overhead at Syene and 7 degrees 12 minutes south of zenith at Alexandria, 500 miles apart, the angle is '1/25th' of the sweep from 90N to 90S, so 500 mi x 25 gives a flat-earth radius the page states as 'about 12,250 miles' (500 x 25 is 12,500; the page then doubles to 25,000 miles for the diameter) and says this 'represents the area of land which the light of the sun affects', not the whole earth.

Key claims

• The Eratosthenes shadow experiment measures the diameter of a flat earth, about 25,000 miles (the page's figure).

Relevance: Shows how flat-earth writers reinterpret ancient geodesy; a calculation the reader can check.

Mainstream conflict: Treats a single data pair as determining a plane geometry without a sun height; the same angles also fit a distant sun on a sphere (Skiba himself concedes it is consistent with a local sun).

FAQ to newcomers with contents General Information, Geography and Related Phenomena, Physics and Cosmology. Describes the Society as descending from Samuel Shenton's International Flat Earth Research Society and the Universal Zetetic Society; notes the UN emblem resembles the flat-earth map; says answers differ because members hold differing views.

Key claims

• The 'mainstream flat earth model' is a disc map with a central north pole, an ice wall, a small near sun and moon and universal acceleration.

Relevance: Defines the current mainstream model of the movement the project is reviewing.

Mainstream conflict: Same as the model pages (see Sun, Moon, Universal Acceleration).

Intro to the maps proposed over the history of the theory. States three positions on Antarctica: the Ice Wall encountered by Ross, a rim continent surrounding the known earth, or an isolated continent distinct from the ice wall.

Key claims

• The continents are laid out on a disc map with Antarctica as an encircling ice wall (three variant positions).

Relevance: Records disagreement within the movement on the geography.

Mainstream conflict: Disagrees with globe-based distances in the southern hemisphere (long-flight times and routes).

The page claims the experiment gave an ambiguous, inconsistent result and therefore no valid evidence of rotation. It rests on one quotation from Dr. Paulo N. Correa ('269 separate tests ... from -0.04 to +0.55 of a fringe, and a mean at +0.26 fringes ... borderline significance'). The deep reader finds the paper's own final figure is 0.230 +/- 0.005 fringe observed versus 0.236 +/- 0.002 calculated (about 3 percent agreement, difference about 1.1 combined uncertainties), the wiki's mean (+0.26) differs from the paper's (0.230) and Table I has a 263 vs 269 mismatch caused by an OCR '2O' (set 6 is 26 observations). The wiki does not claim a stationary earth or aether.

Key claims

• The Michelson-Gale-Pearson results are inconsistent and borderline, so they do not demonstrate earth's rotation.

Relevance: A load-bearing modern flat-earth claim about rotation, testable directly against the 1925 paper in the folder.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with the paper's own 0.230 vs 0.236 fringe agreement and with ring-laser results; the wiki quotes the mean as +0.26.

Opens 'The Moon is a revolving sphere. It has a diameter of 32 miles and is several thousand miles above the surface of the earth.' Topics: tides, solar and lunar eclipse, nearside always seen, phases, moon tilt illusion, lunar lander, 'Moon Spherical' (libration shows more than 50 percent of the surface). Includes a Rowbotham block quotation on the moon's appearance.

Key claims

• The Moon is a sphere 32 miles across, some thousands of miles up, self-luminous per Rowbotham's text.

Relevance: Gives the current model's sun/moon sizes, identical to Rowbotham's.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with measured lunar parallax (about 384,000 km) and apparent size.

A hub page, not the evidence: no photographs, camera heights, zoom data or refraction calculations are on it. It lists three causes - ocean swells, limits of optical resolution (reversed by zoom), refraction (inferior mirage) - and links sub-pages not in the folder. It argues the effect is 'inconsistent', quoting Proctor via Schadewald's The Plane Truth on Rowbotham's Eddystone report (an opponent's account reproduced by the wiki) and Rowbotham pp.217 and 223, and mentions time-lapse photography.

Key claims

• Hulls that sink below the horizon are restored by zoom or by lifting mirage, so curvature does not cause the sinking ship effect.
• The sinking ship effect is inconsistent, occurring sometimes and not others.

Relevance: Core hull-down observation of the movement; the page defers evidence to sub-pages not in the folder.

Mainstream conflict: Contradicts curvature as the primary explanation of hull-down; Hirt et al. (2010) measure large variable refraction but not over water.

States 'The Sun is a revolving sphere. It has a diameter of 32 miles and is located several thousand miles above the surface of the Earth.' Topics list links to Sunrise and Sunset, Electromagnetic Acceleration, The Setting of the Sun as a Perspective Effect, Magnification of the Sun at Sunset, Equinox; a spotlight-effect section and 'Sun Spherical'.

Key claims

• The Sun is 32 miles across and several thousand miles above the plane earth.

Relevance: Current model's sun, same size as Rowbotham's.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with solar parallax (about 1 AU) and angular size.

States that the earth and the observable universe accelerate 'upward' at a constant 9.8 m/s^2, producing the effect called gravity, and that 'all sufficiently massive celestial bodies' accelerate at 1 g relative to a local observer. Rejects Newtonian and general-relativistic gravity as 'incompatible' with a flat earth. Discusses the equivalence principle, speeds approaching light (Lorentz-factor argument, formulas are images), dark energy, and Cavendish, tides, Eotvos and gravity variations. Sources and the Davis-plane demonstration are not readable in the saved file.

Key claims

• Gravity is replaced by a constant upward acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2 of the earth and universe.
• The earth's velocity never reaches the speed of light because of relativistic effects at constant proper acceleration.

Relevance: The movement's replacement for gravity; a testable-by-calculation claim (speed after a year at 1 g exceeds c in Newtonian terms).

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with Newtonian gravity, Cavendish measurements, tides, variation of g with latitude and altitude.

Biography stub: Voliva (1870-1942) took over Zion, Illinois after Dowie, taught flat-earth doctrine through the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church and broadcast on a 100,000-watt radio station. Reports a 1932 interview by Irving Wallace in which Voliva said the Bible was his entire scientific library, called astronomers 'ignorant fools', and gave the sun as 3,000 miles away and 32 miles in diameter.

Key claims

• Voliva taught a flat earth with a 32-mile sun at 3,000 miles, based on Scripture.

Relevance: Links Rowbotham's figures to the 20th-century organised movement.

Mainstream conflict: As for the sun/moon pages.

Claims that in 1871 Astronomer Royal G. B. Airy filled a telescope with water and found no need to change its tilt for stellar aberration, which 'demonstrated that the earth was fixed' and 'the stars move relative to a fixed Earth'. Quotes a Malcolm Bowden video description, Neville Jones on aether drag and Arago 1810. No dimensions, water index, angles or results are given; the reference is Proc. Roy. Soc. 20, 35.

Key claims

• Airy's water-filled telescope shows stellar aberration is unaffected by the telescope's motion, so the earth does not move.

Relevance: A named experiment central to the movement's argument against orbital motion.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with the standard account that aberration depends on relative velocity, not the medium in the tube (explained by relativity).

Thesis: the Coriolis effect 'appears to be a fictitious effect that is not, and has never been, properly demonstrated with experimental evidence'. A collage of quotations from artillery manuals, long-range shooting sources, Hadley/Eotvos reports and Philip Ball and MIT articles, with no measurement of its own and no alternative mechanism for cyclone rotation (deferred to another page). The deep reader notes the page's opening wording (deflection 'Eastwards or Westwards') is not the textbook statement (rightward in the north, leftward in the south, plus eastward deflection of falling bodies) and records tensions inside the page's own sources.

Key claims

• The Coriolis effect has never been experimentally demonstrated and is unnecessary in artillery and sniping.

Relevance: One of the movement's main rotation arguments.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with artillery and naval gunnery practice, Foucault pendulum and weather systems.

Defines the model in which 'light curves upwards over very long distances', adopted 'as a modern alternative to the perspective theory proposed in Earth Not a Globe' to explain sunrise and sunset. No mechanism is established; the approximation section names a 'Dark Energy potential' and a 'Bishop constant'. Argues the burden of proof: 'no evidence that light is curving is ... an admission that there is not sufficient evidence that light is straight'. Cites experiments and papers that the deep reader lists.

Key claims

• Light rays bend upward over long distances (EA), replacing perspective as the explanation for sunsets.

Relevance: The movement's current attempt at a quantitative mechanism for sunset on a plane.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with measured straight-line propagation, laser ranging and astronomical observations; no testable formula given beyond the image.

Claims pendulum behaviour 'has more to do with the initial conditions ... than the supposed rotation of the earth' and museum pendulums are motor-driven. The page has no rate analysis (no sin(latitude) or degrees-per-hour). Cites Conlin on Airy privately calling the pendulum a 'fraud' and a 'mathematical curiosity', Longden's wire-twist effect, a South Pole mount and Rowbotham's ball-and-socket remark; Mach's principle is offered as an alternative.

Key claims

• Foucault pendulums are inconsistent and driven by initial conditions or machinery, so they do not demonstrate diurnal rotation.

Relevance: Main pendulum argument in the movement.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with Foucault's 1851 account and the sin(latitude) precession rate observed worldwide.

Frames the RLG as a consumer version of Michelson-Gale-Pearson based on the Sagnac effect and argues the Earth-rate signal is 'pulled out of noise' by statistics so another diurnal cause could produce it. Cites Canterbury's 'A Study of Ring Laser Gyroscopes', Correa, the Wettzell large ring laser G, an arXiv G-ring paper, MEMS and Brillouin laser gyroscopes. The deep reader found no mention of Knodel and no '15 degrees per hour' claim beyond a '2x15 deg/h' caption; it does not claim a null for the RLG and gives no mechanism of its own for the Sagnac shift.

Key claims

• Ring laser gyroscopes do not give decisive evidence of earth's rotation; the signal comes from noise statistics or another diurnal mechanism.

Relevance: The movement's reply to ring-laser evidence.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with direct measurements of Earth rotation by large ring lasers and with navigation-grade RLGs.

Restates Rowbotham's perspective law: a flock of birds receding over flat country appears to descend toward the horizon, a plane at constant altitude appears to approach it, a long row of objects converges; so the sun, a small body at finite height, could 'disappear' at the horizon by perspective.

Key claims

• Sunsets can be explained by the law of perspective acting on a small, near sun.

Relevance: Rowbotham's sunset explanation, predecessor of the Electromagnetic Acceleration proposal.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with the sun's constant angular size and the observed change of sun elevation with latitude.

Defines 'The Conspiracy' as the blanket term for the active faking of space travel by NASA and other agencies, saying there is no 'Flat Earth Conspiracy' (the shape is not being hidden) but a 'Space Travel Conspiracy'. Contents: motive; evidence (Apollo, Mars missions, Cassini, ISS, a Chinese space hoax). Earliest references attributed to the Flat Earth Society under Samuel Shenton.

Key claims

• NASA and other agencies fake space travel; the motive is to promote the concept of space.

Relevance: States the conspiracy element of the movement from its own side.

Mainstream conflict: Contradicts independent tracking of spacecraft by many countries and amateurs.

Claims WGS84 is 'a complex system which pulls information from a large collection of smaller flat maps', that coordinates are reprojected onto planar maps, and that spherical latitude and longitude are unreliable for distance and area; hence WGS84 is a 'flat earth map management system'. The deep reader finds the page quotes no passage of WGS84 or IS-GPS-200 and does not address ellipsoid-vs-geoid, ECEF or the rotation-rate parameter.

Key claims

• WGS84, the basis of GPS, relies on flat map projections and so is evidence for a flat earth.

Relevance: Tests the claim against the project's NGA and IS-GPS-200 documents.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with the NGA standard, which defines an ellipsoid and a rotation rate 7.292115e-5 rad/s as defining parameters.

Langley TN on a three-dimensional trajectory simulation to compute wind compensation for unguided rockets, demonstrated on the Shotput vehicle with postflight simulations of four missiles using measured winds. The simulation is stated as programmed with respect to a flat, nonrotating earth; one of the four documents in the AAP fact-check (it is the 1961 wind-compensation study).

Key claims

• A rocket launch trajectory simulation with measured winds is accurate with a flat, nonrotating earth model (short-range, unguided rockets).

Relevance: Cited by the 'NASA admits flat earth' lists; shows the phrase in a short-range launch context.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Literature survey of internal gravity and acoustic waves in the atmosphere. On PDF p.13: 'A model frequently used is that of a flat, nonrotating earth ... Gravity is usually considered to be constant', describing what other theorists do; the next paragraph says the simplest case (isothermal atmosphere, plane level surfaces, nonrotating earth, handled by Eckart, Lamb and Hines) is 'not valid for small effects' but describes large effects. Context pages move on to spherical-earth models and forcing.

Key claims

• Wave theories of the atmosphere commonly use a flat, nonrotating earth with constant gravity as a simplification, valid for 'general, large effects' only.

Relevance: Gives an explicit statement of the limitation, unlike the lists that quote the phrase alone.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Optimal-control method that adds a sensitivity measure to the performance index, demonstrated on a nonlinear rocket-trajectory problem solved by steepest descent. The example's assumptions include a flat, nonrotating earth.

Key claims

• An optimal rocket-trajectory example is posed on a flat, nonrotating earth to keep the control problem tractable.

Relevance: Another instance on the lists; the phrase is an assumption of a worked example.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Langley memorandum deriving angle of attack and sideslip of a rocket/parachute test vehicle from radar and a two-gyro platform. The abstract, summary, introduction and concluding remarks all say 'The method is limited, however, to application where a flat, nonrotating earth may be assumed', and PDF p.7 adds: 'It is assumed herein that the earth is represented as a flat, nonrotating reference frame. (This assumption limits the analysis to short-range, short-duration flights.)'. It is a coordinate-transformation exercise, not a statement about earth's shape.

Key claims

• The method is limited to applications where a flat, nonrotating earth may be assumed, i.e. short-range, short-duration flights.

Relevance: The clearest case in the folder of a NASA document itself stating the limit of the assumption.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Contractor report for Marshall Space Flight Center modelling an aircraft landing through wind shear. Chapter II lists the assumptions of the aircraft landing model, including that 'the earth is flat and non-rotating'. One of the four documents in the AAP and Lead Stories fact-checks.

Key claims

• The aircraft landing model assumes a flat, non-rotating earth (stated as assumption a).

Relevance: Cited in the fact-checks as a 1978 landing study using the phrase.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Ames helicopter simulation model: coordinate systems, fuselage aerodynamics, rotor, engine and governor, control system, equations of motion, validated against time histories with pilot comments. The text states the model uses a flat, nonrotating Earth with the helicopter treated as a rigid body.

Key claims

• The helicopter model uses a flat, nonrotating earth as its reference frame (confirmed in the extracted text, letter-spaced OCR).

Relevance: One of the four documents in the AAP fact-check.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Dryden manual for the LINEAR program that derives linear aircraft models from nonlinear six-degree-of-freedom equations; sections on equations of motion, observation equations, analysis points (trim, pushover-pullup, level turn) and stability derivatives. Companion to RP-1207; the text search found no flat-earth phrase in the extracted text.

Relevance: Background for RP-1207, the report most often cited in the lists.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

The report named first on the Steemit list and by Lead Stories. 'Flat, nonrotating earth' occurs in the Summary and Introduction (PDF p.7), Concluding Remarks (p.36) and the report documentation abstract (p.108): a linear model for 'a rigid aircraft of constant mass flying over a flat, nonrotating earth' (p.36 adds a stationary atmosphere). Other stated assumptions: constant mass, constant inertia tensor, atmosphere properties functions of altitude alone. The deep reader found no statement in the report calling it an approximation or limiting it to short flights, and no earth-rotation, curvature or Coriolis terms.

Key claims

• The linear aircraft model is derived for a rigid aircraft of constant mass over a flat, nonrotating earth in a stationary atmosphere.

Relevance: The 'headline' NASA document for the claim; the deep read records exactly what it does and does not say.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

AIAA flight-test-conference paper on YAV-8B Harrier flight tests: 3-5 minute maneuvers under radar tracking with a laser tracker near the ground; tracking data feed state estimation. The kinematic model describes motion over a flat, nonrotating earth.

Key claims

• Short-duration Harrier maneuver kinematics are modelled over a flat, nonrotating earth.

Relevance: On the lists (item 31 in Reddit); another short-duration case.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Interactive version of the LINEAR program; the equations of motion used are stated as six-degree-of-freedom equations with a stationary atmosphere and flat, nonrotating earth (p.126 per the Reddit list).

Key claims

• The nonlinear equations of motion used by LINEAR assume a stationary atmosphere and flat, nonrotating earth.

Relevance: Cited as items 24-25 in the Reddit list.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Generic high-performance aircraft model with full-envelope nonlinear aerodynamics, thrust and first-order engine response, with a FORTRAN implementation, intended as a common focus for control theory.

Key claims

• The six-degree-of-freedom model flies over a flat, nonrotating earth (as quoted by the Reddit list; not confirmed by text search).

Relevance: Cited as item 26 in the Reddit list.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

The abstract says a guidance scheme for 'a rocket over a spherical, nonrotating Earth' (p.3), Chapter 3 says 'a nonrotating, spherical Earth' (p.32), with inverse-square gravity and (r_e+h) terms (Eq. 3.1-3.7, p.34; p.40). The 'flat Earth, vacuum' wording on pp.32 and 43 describes only the epsilon = 0 zeroth-order sub-problem solved in closed form; the sphere returns in the first-order perturbation terms, and the Earth's radius r_e is still present even in the flat equations (Eq. 3.27). Nothing in the report says the Earth is flat.

Key claims

• A launch-guidance problem is solved in two models: the full spherical, nonrotating earth and, as a perturbation expansion's zeroth-order term, a uniform-gravity 'flat' local-horizon model.

Relevance: Corrects the Reddit post's reading (item 19) that this report supports a flat earth.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Preliminary performance analysis of the SR-71 as a launch platform with external payloads, J58 thrust enhancement (nitrous oxide injection, higher temperature) and a climb-dive technique; the analysis assumes a nonrotating earth.

Relevance: Cited among the 'nonrotating earth' hits (Reddit item 20).

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Army report defining the Dynamic Atmospheric Environments category of the Army Modeling and Simulation Office: requirements, objectives, roadmap. A propagation model is said to work well over a flat earth (Reddit item 15).

Key claims

• An acoustic/EO propagation model 'works well over a flat-earth'.

Relevance: Another Reddit-list item; a propagation modelling convenience.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Army target-detection algorithm for a robotic vehicle (feature detection, PCA/MLP clutter rejection, recognition). A flat-earth approximation is used to estimate target range from image geometry.

Key claims

• Target range can be estimated by a flat-earth approximation from the camera's field of view and depression angle.

Relevance: Reddit items 11 and 13.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Dryden flight-test report estimating stability and control derivatives of the SR-71 carrying LASRE experiments; the equations of motion assume a rigid vehicle and a flat, nonrotating earth.

Key claims

• SR-71 stability-derivative estimation uses equations of motion for a rigid vehicle over a flat, nonrotating earth.

Relevance: On both the Reddit and Steemit lists.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Minimum-time-to-climb analysis in a two-dimensional altitude-dependent wind field using singular perturbation and a shooting method; the point-mass aircraft is confined to a vertical plane on a non-rotating, flat earth.

Key claims

• Minimum-time climb is analysed for a point mass over a non-rotating, flat earth.

Relevance: Reddit item 32 and Steemit list.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Derives rigid-body equations of motion not referenced to the centre of mass, for aircraft that lose mass through damage; compares with standard simulation for a generic transport with wing damage. The text says: 'the rigid body equations of motion over a flat non-rotating earth are developed'; one of the four documents in the AAP fact-check ('flight capabilities after aircraft damage').

Key claims

• Equations of motion for a damaged aircraft are developed over a flat, non-rotating earth.

Relevance: On the lists as a modern (2007) example.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

39th PTTI meeting paper. 'We tried three different mapping functions. Two are rough approaches, namely a simple plane troposphere (assuming a flat Earth) and the straight line of sight through the spherical troposphere shell. While these two functions result in too large or too small values, respectively, we use ... Niell's.' The plane (flat-earth) slab is 'too large'; the spherical line-of-sight 'too small'; at low elevations (8.4, 9.6, 19.0 degrees on this link) the path can be ten times the zenith path. The flat-earth plane is thus a rejected comparison, not the method used; no percentage error is given for it.

Key claims

• A flat-earth plane troposphere gives too large a path length at low elevation; the paper adopts Niell's spherical mapping function.

Relevance: Reddit item 8; the deep read shows the paper rejects the flat model for long-baseline links.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Adds liquid-payload moments (low-viscosity liquid, linear theory at high spin) to six-degree-of-freedom projectile trajectory calculations; the equations of motion assume a flat earth (Reddit item 6, p.1).

Key claims

• Six-degree-of-freedom projectile equations assume a flat earth.

Relevance: Reddit item 6.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

A student course summary stored in the NASA-Reports folder. Section 1.1.2 lists simplifying assumptions: flat earth (curvature zero), non-rotating earth (no Coriolis accelerations), constant mass, rigid symmetric aircraft, no gyroscopic effects, constant wind. It is a textbook-style statement that the flat, non-rotating earth is a simplification and says what it neglects.

Key claims

• Flight-dynamics courses assume a flat, non-rotating earth as a simplification, neglecting curvature and Coriolis accelerations.

Relevance: Shows the assumption stated openly as a simplification in teaching material; secondary source, not a NASA document.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Extends the liquid-payload work by solving the linearized Navier-Stokes equations for a projectile in coning motion; one example is stable in most cases and catastrophically unstable in one. The six-degree-of-freedom equations assume a flat earth.

Key claims

• Projectile equations of motion assume a flat earth.

Relevance: Reddit item 7.

Mainstream conflict: none: the 'flat, nonrotating earth' wording is a stated modelling assumption, not a claim about the planet's shape

Foucault's 1851 note to the Academie (commissioners Arago, Pouillet, Binet). Ideal case at the pole: a spherical mass on a flexible thread from a fixed point on the axis, released 'without communicating any lateral impulse', keeps its plane of oscillation while the earth turns beneath it, so the plane appears to shift from east to west. He reports experiments confirming a round, homogeneous thread can be twisted without affecting the plane, a lathe-arbour vibrating-rod demonstration (footnote p.16), a first cellar pendulum and a larger repetition at the Observatoire, and links the result to Poisson. The rest of the PDF (pp.1-14, 18-28) is unrelated Academie business.

Key claims

• The plane of oscillation of a freely swinging pendulum is fixed in space; its apparent turning relative to the ground gives a visible sign of the earth's rotation.

Relevance: The primary source for the pendulum that the Zetetic literature disputes.

Mainstream conflict: none (this is the mainstream account); the Zetetic and TFES pages argue against its interpretation.

Philosophical Transactions paper (read Jan 1856) describing Airy's 1826-1854 plan and the 1854 Harton Colliery experiment: two pendulums timed at the top and bottom of a deep mine to compare gravity at the two heights and so derive the earth's mean density, treating the earth as a sphere of radius R and density D with a shell of thickness c and density d. Sections describe the method of observation and reduction (arc, temperature, barometer, density-of-air corrections) and tables of swings. Airy concluded the error in density would be a small fraction of the whole (the digest records a garbled '1/16th'). Presumably relevant to the project as the same Airy whose water-telescope experiment TFES cites; not itself about the earth's shape. RESULT (deep read): over a vertical separation of 1256 ft 1 in (shaft 1263 ft 6 in) the ratio of gravity below to above was measured as 1.00005185 +/- 0.00000019 (probable error; Airy says it 'may be doubled' but not trebled): 'Gravity below is greater than Gravity above by 1/19286 part', a seconds' pendulum gaining 2.24 s per day below [read: p.35, p.37]. With rock density 2.50 Airy reduces this to a mean density of the earth of 6.566 +/- 0.0182 (6.565 after Stokes's addendum on rotation and ellipticity). The deep reader notes the modern 5.51 would predict a gradient about 34 percent smaller, so Harton overshoots for reasons not given in the pages read, and that the ratio is a net effect of height and the rock slab, not the free-air gradient alone. The deep reader's comparison (calculated, not Airy's): a uniformly accelerating floor with no mass (gradient g squared over c squared) predicts 4.2e-14 for this depth, about 1.2e9 times smaller than measured; Newtonian free-air plus slab terms reproduce sign and size.

Key claims

• Gravity at the bottom of Harton Colliery (1256 ft down) exceeds gravity at the top by 1 part in 19,286 (ratio 1.00005185 +/- 0.00000019), a seconds' pendulum gaining 2.24 s per day.
• From that ratio and a rock density of 2.50, the mean density of the earth is 6.566 times water (Airy's reduction).

Relevance: The only measured gravity-with-depth result in the folder; replaces a recalled gravity gradient in the review of the claim that gravity is not a pull from the earth's mass.

Mainstream conflict: none

The Koreshan Unity's 'Cellular Cosmogony' holds that we live on the inner surface of a hollow sphere about 8,000 miles across. In Part II (the survey chapters) Morrow's Rectilineator, a straight-edge device stepping a line of sight by right angles from a datum 128 inches above mean tide, was set up at Naples, Florida (26 deg 4' 30'' N) on 17 March 1897 and run southward 4 1/8 miles to the water. Result as reported: the air line fell towards the water 8 in at 1 mile, 'about 2 ft 8 in' at 2, 6 ft at 3 and met the water at 4 1/8 mi, interpreted as a concave rise of 'about 8 inches to the mile' squared (the same 8 in x n^2 number a convex earth would show, with opposite sign). The tabulated measurements are 8.02 in (1 mi, staff 9), 30.62 in (2 mi, 17), 54 in (2.5 mi, 21), 75 in (3 mi, 24), 128 in (4 1/8 mi, 25) against calculated 8, 32, 50, 72, 136.1; the prose figures equal the calculated, not measured, values. The authors compare a 22-foot difference between a convex and concave earth. Return-line checks: a 228 ft test closing to .0001 in, and a return over 0.375-0.75 mile (given variously as 1/2, 3/4 and 0.375 mi) agreeing to about 0.25 in. Witnesses are mostly members or visitors of the Koreshan colony; no independent surveyor's report is included; refraction is treated as negligible; the water surface is assumed to follow the earth's contour (hydrostatics). QE deep read of the optical tests (PDF pp.83-106), all by the Koreshan Unity's own staff, mostly unnamed, with the narrator 'the writer': Summit, Illinois, Old Illinois and Michigan canal, 25 July 1896: paper targets 7 in above the water (a 22-in disc to 29 in at the first target), seen from 5 'measured' miles with the telescope 12 in and then 6 in above the water, 'plainly visible', with reflections on the water beneath; the naked eye lost the targets when lowered to 15 in; the authors say a globe would put the target tops 9 ft 7 in to 9 ft 10 in below the line of sight. Lake Michigan (World's Fair grounds, 16 August 1896) and Roby, Indiana (23 August 1896): yachts and steamers at estimated 12 to 15 miles, hulls hidden to the naked eye and shown by a telescope. Naples beach, Sanibel Light (stated 34 mi) and Cape Romano sightings, January 1895 to February 1897, with some local witnesses outside the Unity. Gordon's Pass to Doctor's Pass, Gulf of Mexico, 2-3 March 1897: a 3.5-ft-square target (top 5 ft above low tide) at 6.5 mi seen with the telescope down to 12 in above the water. Naples Bay, 5 March 1897: a 20 x 30 in white cloth target, top 2 ft above high tide, at 4.5 miles, seen with a telescope 2 in above the water; a 2-ft stake with a cross-bar at the mid-point 'in line with the top of the target' when the telescope was 2 in above the water. The deep reader's refraction check: a globe needs a refraction coefficient k of about 0.5 to 1.0 for these sightings (0.69 to 0.87 for the Summit 6-in telescope at 5 mi, 0.92 for Naples Bay at 2 in), against a usual 0.13 to 0.17, and the Naples Bay stake test taken at face value needs k above 1; the book records no air or water temperature, time of day (Summit, Naples Bay) or tide state, and contains small arithmetic slips that do not change the size of the disagreement. The same book's own model (8 in per mile squared concave) would put the cross-bar about 30 in below the line to the target, not on it. Distances from today's coordinates may be shorter than the book's (Sanibel about 25.6 mi, not 34; the passes about 5.0 mi, not 6.5; memory, medium, unchecked).

Key claims

• The surface of the earth is concave: a rectilinear line through a 4 1/8 mile survey approaches the water by 8 inches times miles squared, ending at 128 inches in 4 miles.
• The earth is the inner surface of a cell about 8,000 miles in diameter (stated as the conclusion).
• Over the Old Illinois canal at Summit on 25 July 1896 targets 7 to 29 in above the water were seen from 5 miles with a telescope 6 to 12 in above the water, where a convex earth should hide about 10 to 11 ft (Koreshan Unity staff, unnamed).
• At Naples Bay on 5 March 1897 a 2-ft mid-point cross-bar was seen in line with the top of a 2-ft target 4.5 miles away from a telescope 2 in above the water, which the authors read as water that is concave, not convex.

Relevance: The only systematic geodetic survey made by a proponent of an alternative figure of the earth; shows how the same 8 in x n^2 figure supports opposite shapes depending on how the line and datum are defined.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with the globe and with astronomy (sun about 100 miles across and 1,000 miles away in the Koreshan cosmology); the method's reliance on a stepped line over a tidal water datum is the point reviewers must test.

A 23-line abstract read to British Association Section E (Geography), Glasgow, 17 September 1901. Oldham repeated Wallace's Bedford experiment in the summers of 1900 and 1901 'with the special object of obtaining photographic records'. On the six-mile straight reach of the Old Bedford River between Welney and Denver bridges, marks were set at the Welney parapet, on Denver bridge and on a pole midway at equal heights above the water; a telescope from Welney to the Denver mark showed 'the middle mark ... about six feet above the line of sight', 'agreeing with the effect calculated'. Missing from the abstract: bridge heights, mark sizes, telescope power, any photograph, witnesses and any refraction treatment. For a 6-mile line the deep reader's geometry gives about 6 ft (3 mi squared x 8 in = 6 ft) before refraction.

Key claims

• Over six miles of still water the midpoint of a level sight line stands about six feet above the sight line, as curvature predicts.

Relevance: Independent (non-Zetetic) repeat of Wallace's test; also the origin of the photographs Lady Blount later disputed.

Mainstream conflict: none (consistent with a sphere); the abstract is brief and omits refraction.

Wallace's account, written 35 years later as the winning party (he calls it 'the most regrettable incident in my life'), of the 1870 wager. Hampden in Scientific Opinion of 12 Jan 1870 staked £500 to prove 'convexity' of any water; Wallace asked Lyell, accepted, and Hampden chose the six-mile Old Bedford reach. Referees: William Carpenter (for Hampden, 'a journeyman printer'), Mr. Coulcher of Downham Market (for Wallace, a surgeon and amateur astronomer), umpire John Henry Walsh, editor of The Field. Set-up: Welney bridge parapet 13 ft 3 in above the water with a 6-inch telescope; a calico sheet with a black band on the higher Old Bedford bridge at the same height; a pole with two red discs (upper at telescope height, lower 4 ft down) midway. Prediction agreed beforehand: flat water, upper disc on the band; convex, upper disc about 5 ft 8 in (reduced by refraction to perhaps 5 ft) above it. Seen: the pole discs stood well above the band; sketches by Coulcher were 'signed by Mr. Carpenter'; a Troughton level at the same height gave a similar result (Hampden declined to look). Walsh decided for Wallace and published in The Field (18 and 26 March 1870). Hampden demanded the money back; litigation and libel: Walsh prosecuted Hampden 1871; Wallace won £600 damages by default (uncollectable), Hampden was jailed for libel in 1873-75; in January 1876 Hampden sued Walsh for his deposit and won under the stakeholder rule, so Wallace repaid £500 plus about £200 of costs, then settled for £277 with £410 still nominally owed; Hampden resumed libels in 1878, a tract in 1885 offered £100 for any curvature within 100 miles of London. Wallace says the whole affair cost 'fifteen years of continued worry, litigation, and persecution'. Wallace gives no magnification, disc offset in feet or weather: the record is signed sketches, not numerical measurements. Hampden's and Carpenter's accounts are not in this chapter.

Key claims

• On 1870 Bedford canal, the midpoint pole showed above the line between the end marks, as a convex surface predicts (Wallace's account, with sketches signed by Hampden's referee).
• The umpire decided for Wallace; Hampden recovered the stake from the stakeholder in 1876 under the wager-law rule, and Wallace repaid it.
• Hampden pursued years of libel against Wallace and the umpire.

Relevance: The best-documented adjudicated test of the central flat-earth experiment; the account is by an interested party (the winner).

Mainstream conflict: none (a sphere); Wallace's account is a winning party's retrospective.

Two pages of Heath's history (Oxford, 1913): Eratosthenes, born about 276 BC, famous for an earth measurement on scientific principles; Aristarchus would presumably have accepted Dicaearchus's 300,000 stades for the circumference, as Archimedes did. The digest records Eratosthenes' method as summarised (shadow angle at Syene and Alexandria) but the numbers are in garbled symbols not read here.

Key claims

• Eratosthenes derived the earth's circumference from the sun's angle at two places 5,000 stades apart.

Relevance: Mainstream historical background to the TFES 'Eratosthenes on Diameter' page.

Mainstream conflict: none

A magazine-section feature on Zion, Illinois, Dowie's successor Wilbur Glenn Voliva and the town's bans. The flat-earth material sits only in a caption under a drawing ('The universe as authorized by the Rev. Wilbur Glenn Voliva'): Voliva 'brushed aside all the findings of science with regard to the formation of the earth'. The article body never mentions a flat earth; the reporter's stance is in the caption's closing sentence. Neutral independent press record of the movement's 20th-century leader.

Key claims

• Voliva teaches a flat-earth universe and rejects the findings of science (as a newspaper caption reports it).

Relevance: Independent contemporary press record of Voliva.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with science; the claim reported is Voliva's.

Theory part of the Michelson-Gale experiment: derives the expected fringe shift for a light path round a rectangle at the earth's rotation rate on the hypothesis of a fixed ether (first given in Phil. Mag. 1904; a footnote corrects a factor-of-two error in 1904). Records the 1923 Mount Wilson open-air attempt, the need for an exhausted pipe and funding of the Clearing, Illinois experiment. The deep reader reconstructs the omitted steps and a dimensional and numerical check for Clearing.

Key claims

• The rotation of the earth should shift fringes by a computable amount proportional to the enclosed area times the rotation rate times sin(latitude) over the wavelength and c.

Relevance: Primary source for the prediction tested in Part II.

Mainstream conflict: none (the experiment measures rotation relative to inertial space)

Report of the Clearing, Illinois experiment: a 2010 ft x 1113 ft (about 0.208 km^2) rectangle of 12-inch pipe evacuated to 0.5-1 inch of mercury, a 20 A arc source, effective wavelength 5700 +/- 50 Angstrom, latitude 41 deg 46', a small reference loop for the fiducial zero. 269 readings in 13 sets (11 x 20, 26, 23). Result: 'The final displacement, expressed as a fraction of a fringe, is 0.230 +/- .005 obs. 0.236 +/- .002 calc.'; the beam travelling counter-clockwise was retarded. The authors conclude observed and calculated agree within error and draw no conclusion distinguishing a stationary ether from relativity; both give the same value. The difference is about 1.1 combined uncertainties.

Key claims

• The Michelson-Gale experiment measured a fringe shift of 0.230 +/- 0.005 against a computed 0.236 +/- 0.002 for the earth's rotation (agreement within about 3 percent).

Relevance: Primary source for the experiment the TFES wiki and Dubay-type lists characterise as ambiguous or absent.

Mainstream conflict: none

Lay introduction to geodesy by a US agency (an interested institution in mapping): Greek views from flat disc to Pythagoras's sphere, Plato's 40,000-mile and Archimedes's 30,000-mile guesses, Eratosthenes, the 17th-century arc measurements and Cassini vs Newton, the figure of the earth (topographic surface, sphere, ellipsoid, geoid), measuring techniques and, from outside the assigned range, satellite confirmation. The satellite and WGS chapters were not in the assigned pages.

Key claims

• Arc measurements, gravity and satellite orbits show the earth is an oblate ellipsoid with a geoid undulation, not a plane.

Relevance: Mainstream baseline on geodesy for reviewers.

Mainstream conflict: none (mainstream view; source is an interested agency)

Summary of Russell's book Inventing the Flat Earth for the American Scientific Affiliation (4 Aug 1997, Westmont College): history is precarious; the claim that medieval Christians believed in a flat earth is a widespread error (the Historical Society of Britain listed it first among ten common historical illusions) and is attributed partly to 19th-century secular attacks on Christianity. Relevant because the movement's own history claims (that globe was a late imposition) and the mainstream's claim (that the flat earth was a myth) both have to be weighed.

Key claims

• Educated medieval opinion held a spherical earth; the idea that Christians believed in a flat earth is a later invention.

Relevance: Historical counter-narrative on the origin of the flat-earth idea.

Mainstream conflict: Conflicts with the movement's historical self-account; neutral on the physics.

Geodesy experiment (ETH Zurich) measuring the refraction coefficient k about 1.8 m over grass on an 800 m line with two instrument systems. 'Our results show that the frequently used Gaussian refraction coefficient of +0.13 is not suited for describing refraction effects in the lower atmosphere': k ranged from -4 to +16 on sunny summer days (mostly -1 to -3 by day, +12 to +16 around sunset, i.e. temperature gradients of -0.5 to -0.1 K/m by day and 1-2 K/m after sunset) and -2 to +5 on cloudy days, with 10-30 minute fluctuations of 1-1.5. A sign-convention inconsistency in the paper's Fig. 1 caption is noted. The paper is about levelling error, gives no data over water or long lines and does not test earth's shape; the deep reader's worked example shows that k = 1 would cancel the curvature drop entirely. It supplies the range of refraction a hull-down or looming claim must appeal to near the ground.

Key claims

• Near-ground refraction coefficients vary from -4 to +16 within a day, far outside the textbook +0.13.

Relevance: Mainstream measurement relevant to long-sight claims (Skiba's Lake Michigan sighting; Bedford) because it bounds what refraction can do, but over grass at 1.8 m only.

Mainstream conflict: none

The WGS 84 definition: defining parameters a = 6,378,137.0 m, 1/f = 298.257223563, GM = 3.986004418e14 m^3/s^2 and nominal earth angular velocity omega = 7.292115e-5 rad/s. Four parameters suffice because the surface is an equipotential surface of the normal gravity field. Also: GPS variants of GM and omega, frame realisation, accuracy and temporal effects, Earth Orientation Parameters (measured rotation), geoid and EGM2008. A possible typo ('9.8 magnitude' for the 2011 Japan earthquake) is noted. The source is a government agency that operates the system.

Key claims

• The earth is modelled as a rotating oblate ellipsoid with flattening 1/298.257 and angular velocity 7.292115e-5 rad/s, the basis of GPS.

Relevance: Tests the TFES 'WGS84 is a flat-map system' claim.

Mainstream conflict: none (mainstream definition); agency is an interested party

News article of 18 April 2019 about the documentary Behind the Curve (director Daniel J. Clark). Describes Mark Sargent, Patricia Steere, Nathan Thompson and former NASA artist Matt Boylan, and the experiment by 'citizen scientists' Jeran Campanella and Bob Knodel using a $20,000 laser gyroscope: Knodel is quoted that on turning it on they 'were picking up a drift ... A 15 degree per hour drift' that matched a rotating globe, and they 'started looking for ways to disprove it'. Gives RLG history (laser 1960; Macek and Davis 1963). Reference list includes Schreiber et al., Beverini et al. and the Canterbury study. The article also describes Jeran Campanella's own test, separate from Knodel's gyroscope: after a first laser attempt failed because the beam was not focused enough, 'two styrofoam sheets have been placed at either end across a four-mile distance, with holes cut out at the same height'; a light shone through one sheet was not visible to Campanella, 'thereby confirming the Earth's curvature'. A flat-side, near equal-height test; the sagitta over 4 mi is about 2.67 ft at k = 0 (QE calculation).

Key claims

• A flat-earth team's own laser gyroscope registered a drift of 15 degrees per hour, as a rotating earth predicts (Knodel, as quoted).
• A four-mile light-through-holes test run by flat-earth proponent Jeran Campanella, with holes at equal height at both ends, did not show the light, which the article reports as confirming curvature (press report, not the experimenters' data).

Relevance: Secondary press source for the Knodel gyroscope result discussed in Kottke and the TFES RLG page.

Mainstream conflict: Counters the TFES RLG page's reading; a press report, not the experimenters' data.

Blog post on Behind the Curve (2018): at the end Jeran Campanella devises a simple experiment (this post does not say what it is; the Earth.com article in the folder describes a four-mile light test through aligned holes in two sheets) that he claims will prove flatness but that 'quickly shows the opposite' (his reaction: 'Interesting. Interesting. That's interesting.'). The post also describes the Knodel laser-gyroscope result (15 degrees per hour drift) and says the Globebusters channel's later videos tried to debunk the 15-degree claim.

Key claims

• Two experiments devised by flat-earthers in Behind the Curve (Campanella's simple experiment, described in the Earth.com article in the folder as a four-mile light-through-holes test, and Knodel's laser gyroscope) ended up consistent with a rotating spheroid, per the post.

Relevance: Press report of a movement-run test that did not support flatness; the later Globebusters rebuttal is also reported.

Mainstream conflict: Reports conflict with the claim of the movement's own experimenters.

A site that opposes the flat-earth movement explains the RLG and the Sagnac effect (credited to Georges Sagnac, 1913): two beams counter-propagate round a loop and arrive at different times if the loop rotates; RLGs in aircraft and ships detect earth's rotation. It states that flat-earthers claim no instrument can measure earth's rotation. An advocacy source on the globe side.

Key claims

• RLGs installed in aircraft and ships easily detect and measure earth's rotation.

Relevance: Counterpart to the TFES RLG page.

Mainstream conflict: Opposite of the TFES RLG page; both sides are advocacy sites.

The interface specification that tells GPS receivers how to turn broadcast ephemeris into positions. Table 20-IV uses WGS 84 constants: mu = 3.986005e14 m^3/s^2, earth rotation rate 7.2921151467e-5 rad/s, equatorial radius 6,378,137.0 m and J2 = 0.0010826262; the ECI conversion is a rotation by angle (earth rotation rate x (t - t0)); position error is highly sensitive to the angular ephemeris parameters. Revision history runs from initial release 25 Jan 1983. The source is the agency that operates GPS. Deep read: satellite clock rates are offset 'to compensate for relativistic effects' by delta f / f = -4.4647E-10 (10.2299999954326 MHz from 10.23 MHz) [read: p.33]; users compute the relativistic term delta t_r = F e sqrt(A) sin E with F = -2 sqrt(mu)/c^2 = -4.442807633E-10 s/sqrt(m), equivalently -2 R.V / c^2 [read: p.117-118]; the reference semi-major axis is A_REF = 26,559,710 m (CNAV section); Table 20-IV gives the WGS 84 rotation rate and mu, and the Earth-fixed user equations subtract the rotation rate and include Coriolis and centrifugal terms (pp.126-129). The word 'Sagnac' and the word 'flat' do not occur in the 248 pages; an Earth-rotation correction is present in substance (rotation by rotation rate times (t - t0), and the transit-time correction). The deep reader reproduces the -4.4647E-10 offset from the potential and velocity terms (+5.30E-10 and -0.83E-10) using a geoid potential and orbit radius recalled from memory, and the 11.97 h GPS orbital period from A near 26,561,750 m. QE check (separate calculation): Kepler's third law with A_REF gives 11.966 h; mass gravity gives 4.457E-10 against the printed 4.4647E-10 (0.2 percent), while a constant surface g up to orbit would give about 2.20E-9. The source is the agency that operates GPS (an interested party); the clock offset is the operator's engineering choice and the document does not say how it was verified in orbit.

Key claims

• GPS position computation uses an oblate earth with a rotation rate of 7.2921151467e-5 rad/s and J2 gravity.
• GPS satellite clocks are deliberately offset by -4.4647E-10 for relativistic effects, a figure that follows from a central inverse-square gravitational potential and the orbital speed, not from a constant surface g (agency specification; interested party).
• The GPS user equations take the earth's rotation rate (7.2921151467E-5 rad/s) as a fixed input and work in an Earth-fixed frame with Coriolis and centrifugal terms.

Relevance: Primary document for the GPS-as-evidence argument and for the TFES WGS84 page.

Mainstream conflict: none (mainstream)

Fact-check dated 7 Feb 2023 of an Instagram post (6 Feb 2023, 'NASA DOCUMENTS SAY FLAT NONROTATING EARTH'). The article names a 1988 NASA reference publication 'Derivation and Definition of a Linear Aircraft Model' (pp.35 and 108; the designation RP-1207 is not in the article) as one of many using the phrase. NASA public affairs officer Rob Margetta is quoted: the phrase reflects an assumption to simplify calculations, the curvature 'did not affect the calculations in any meaningful way', and 'This by no means implies that NASA believes the Earth to be flat and stationary'; no airplane flies fast enough for curvature to matter in a trajectory analysis, only near orbital speed. NASA is an interested party. Adds references to UNLV and NASA pages on earth's shape and the 24,901-mile circumference.

Key claims

• The phrase 'flat, nonrotating earth' in NASA reports is a simplifying assumption; curvature matters only near orbital speeds.

Relevance: Mainstream fact-check of the NASA claim; its central evidence is a statement by NASA itself.

Mainstream conflict: none (opposes the claim)

Fact-check of 22 July 2025 verdict 'False' on a Facebook post (13,000 likes) citing four NASA documents (a 1978 variable-wind landing study, a damaged-aircraft flight-capability study, a 1961 rocket wind-compensation study and a CH-53 helicopter study). A NASA spokesperson is quoted that researchers assume a flat, non-rotating earth to simplify calculations and that curvature 'did not affect the calculations in any meaningful way'; airplanes can be treated as over a flat domain; Hank Pernicka (Missouri S&T) likens it to throwing a paper plane without accounting for the sphere. The four documents are in the project's NASA folder (CR-3073, Bacon-Gregory 2007, TN D-645, TM-81238).

Key claims

• NASA documents that say 'flat, nonrotating earth' do so as a calculation simplification.

Relevance: Second mainstream fact-check; names the four documents so they can be matched.

Mainstream conflict: none (opposes the claim)

Encyclopedia summary: Rowbotham's 1838 observations on the six-mile reach north-east of Welney (telescope 8 in above the water, 3 ft flag, still in view at six miles where a sphere predicts about 11 ft hiding), published under 'Parallax' (1849), Hampden's wager, Wallace's 13 ft sight line and mid pole, referee Walsh awarding the bet to Wallace, Hampden's allegations and Court cases (it says Hampden was imprisoned for threats to kill and libel and the court voided the wager and required the money back), and Oldham's 1901 repeat (middle pole about 6 ft higher); the experiment is said to remain in a 2023 Indian ICSE syllabus. It also reports two 1904-1905 tests printed in the English Mechanic that 'showed the opposite results': Clement Stretton's on the Ashby Canal, where a theodolite aligned with a boat's cabin roof showed a dip of about eight inches at one mile (tangent drop 8.0 in), and the 1896 Summit, Illinois canal test by Ulysses Grant Morrow of the Koreshan Unity, who found the target visible at 5 miles and concluded the surface was concave; critics attributed it to refraction. These are secondary reports; the English Mechanic issues of January 1905 are the record to obtain.

Key claims

• Wallace, allowing for refraction, found curvature consistent with a sphere; Rowbotham's earlier reading rested on refraction effects.
• A 1905 test on the Ashby Canal (Stretton, English Mechanic) showed a dip of about eight inches at one mile (secondary report, Wikipedia).

Relevance: Mainstream encyclopedia comparison for the Bedford Level.

Mainstream conflict: none (summary of mainstream history)

A 2-minute caption transcript: Skiba, using a $30 telescope of about 100-150x at a reservoir near his house, reports seeing a far shoreline he 'theoretically should not see'; the camera could not be attached because of shake. He calls it 'NOT conclusive'.

Key claims

• A far shoreline was visible at a reservoir that curvature arithmetic says should be hidden (unmeasured, no distance or heights given).

Relevance: One of his first informal tests; shows the low evidential standard he himself flags as inconclusive.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Autobiographical interview segment (status as of 23 Sept 2015). Skiba, born 1969, says Springfield (Massachusetts) planetarium staff refused to point their telescope at the Moon landing sites, which he gives as the origin of his suspicion of the space programme; describes his film and missionary work and his move toward flat-earth belief.

Relevance: Gives Skiba's motive and background (a source of interest, not evidence about the claims).

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Landing page with the site's menu (Opening Statements, Easy Globalist Arguments to Refute, The Quest For Truth Begins, The Bible and the Still Flat Earth, Angels and Stars, Enoch, Conclusions, Gearing Up for Apollo, Video Resources) and a note that the page is under construction. No arguments.

Relevance: Index to the site that holds the series.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Opening statements: Skiba says he first set out to mock the idea, was challenged to prove it false, and found it was not easy; he uses a 'flip the board' method (arguing the contrary on his Facebook page), reports hostility from his own side and earlier labelling as a 'cult-leading heretic'.

Key claims

• Skiba, a biblical-literalist writer, came to doubt the globe after trying to argue the opposite.

Relevance: Motive and method statement for the series.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Skiba answers common globe arguments he calls 'not that impressive': other bodies are spheres so the earth must be (answered by analogy: an Asian raised only among Asians would not conclude all humans look Asian); ships and 'falling off the edge' (he says flat earthers do not hold the picture-style flat earth); and others.

Key claims

• Common arguments for the globe (planets are spheres; ship-and-horizon) are weak and easily refuted.

Relevance: Shows his rhetorical handling of the standard arguments; no data.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

States he is on a quest for truth regardless of credibility; quotes Webster's definitions of truth and credibility and concludes credibility concerns belief while he cares about truth; says he will not rely on 'deceiving institutions'.

Relevance: Statement of stance.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Verses grouped by topic (KJV unless noted), 'Allowing the Bible to Speak for Itself', starting with Job: heavens above (Job 9:6-8; Job 22:14 'circuit' - Hebrew 'chug' - of heaven), foundations, pillars and similar passages, presented without commentary as showing a flat, enclosed, stationary earth.

Key claims

• The Bible describes a flat, stationary earth under a dome (verse compilation).

Relevance: His biblical case, the foundation of his turn to a 'Zetetic Biblical Earther'.

Mainstream conflict: Theological reading; not a physics claim. Conflicts with the globe model if read literally.

Asks 'what if the stars really are intelligent beings?', citing Bible passages that treat stars as living entities.

Relevance: A theological aside; relevant to his cosmology of the heavens.

Mainstream conflict: Theological speculation; no physical claim to test.

Argues that Job 26:7 ('hangeth the earth upon nothing') does not support a floating globe: the Hebrew word belimah occurs once, and by analogy with 'in want for nothing' he reads 'the earth is not hung on anything'; cites Job 26:11 and 9:6 for 'pillars'.

Key claims

• Scripture describes the earth set on pillars, not hung in space.

Relevance: Part of the biblical case.

Mainstream conflict: Theological reading; not a physics claim.

Treats the Book of Enoch as valuable though not Scripture because Scripture quotes it; cites Robert Schadewald's article that 1 Enoch is the most important ancient document describing Hebrew cosmology (found in Ethiopic copies by James Bruce in 1773; Charles (1913) dating parts before the Maccabees, and fragments at Qumran), then describes the Enochian flat, domed cosmos.

Key claims

• Ancient Hebrew cosmology (1 Enoch) describes a flat, domed earth.

Relevance: Historical-textual support in his biblical case.

Mainstream conflict: A claim about ancient texts; the physical claim conflicts with the globe.

Facebook notes including 'Throwing Rocks in Glass Houses' (15 June 2015): says hostility comes mostly from globe believers, compares the reaction to calling Easter and Christmas pagan, answers critics who ask why he discusses the flat earth rather than the Gospel, and collects testimonies from others.

Relevance: Documents the social side of his conversion and the reaction he met.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Live-audience debate: 10-minute opening blocks and 20 minutes of open debate, moderated by a referee and timekeeper. The first speaker says he is 'not a flat-earther' and 'not convinced that it's flat'; the digest records the format and positions, with the substance not fully read.

Key claims

• (Not extracted in detail.)

Relevance: A debate, so each side's best arguments appear; only the structure is digested here.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Skiba, Rick Hummer (drone pilot) and Captain Tony of Salmon Hunter Fishing Charters sail west from (probably) New Buffalo, Michigan on 24 June 2016 at 280 degrees toward Chicago's Willis Tower, to test whether a news-reported 'superior mirage' (photo by Joshua Nowicki, weatherman's explanation of cold air above cold water bending the skyline back) would make the city vanish as they approached. Distances as called out: 37 nmi by the chartplotter (about 42.6 statute miles; Skiba's Google Earth check 46 statute miles), turned back about 8 nmi from the coast; 'I saw Chicago for 40 miles' and 'the whole time for nearly 46 miles'. Cameras left on the city for the return leg; drone footage was lost. He attributes the missing lower parts of buildings to 'the haze'. No camera height, tower height visible, fraction of skyline hidden or air/water temperatures are reported; the 46 miles is the starting distance, not the last distance at which Chicago was seen. All numbers are caption transcriptions and no independent log, GPS track or unedited footage is in the file.

Key claims

• The Chicago skyline remained visible for about 40-46 miles across Lake Michigan, which the curvature rule says should hide most of it.
• A mirage would make the city vanish or 'roll up over the ball'; instead it stayed visible, so this is not a mirage.

Relevance: Skiba's flagship observation; the fuller 2017 video revises its interpretation (atmosphere as a magnifying lens).

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

States hull-hiding figures (about 10 ft at 4 miles, 17 ft at 5, 24 ft at 6 and almost 33 ft at 7 miles) and plays a clip from a video by 'Jiren' (Jeranism) of footage by 'Lorie Fry'/'Lori Ferrari' off Florida (about 25 minutes). The narrator says the water looks as if it disappears when zoomed out and reappears when zoomed in, a 'mirage zone' or 'mirage band' with the boat looking 'as if it floats on air', and argues it is not curvature.

Key claims

• Receding ships are lost in a 'mirage band' of the water, not over a curve; zoom restores the hull.

Relevance: Related to the TFES sinking-ship page.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Having reckoned with Scripture in Parts 4-7, he asserts the Bible is a 'Flat Earth Book' ('Ball means ball and circle means circle'), asks why anyone would deceive people about the earth's shape, and says the Bible shows a flat-ish, enclosed, stationary earth under a dome, linking the heliocentric model to the Anthropic Principle.

Key claims

• The Bible shows a flat, enclosed, stationary earth with the luminaries under a dome.
• The globe model is promoted to remove humanity's special place.

Relevance: States his motive argument.

Mainstream conflict: Theological and motive claims; conflicts with the globe model.

Skiba's conclusion (7 July 2016): after a year of research the earth's 'nature and place in the cosmos is not what we have been told ... by modern science, or indeed by the Church either', adding he has 'far more questions than I do answers'. He moves from 'Zetetic Agnostic' to 'Zetetic Biblical Earther', resting on Scripture and faith; the page does not mention a dome or firmament in detail and does not argue the case for an enclosed earth. He had promised himself six months of research (15 April to 15 Oct 2015) and made nearly 100 videos and a website.

Key claims

• A year of research convinced him that the earth is not as modern science or the Church says; he aligns with a literal biblical reading.

Relevance: The primary statement of Skiba's own position and of the limits he places on his evidence.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Short version of the Chicago argument: 'experts in optics and weather' concluded 'the atmosphere really does act like a lens' (a convex magnifying lens), and he asks whether the hidden lower parts of ships and buildings are due to this or to curvature. Discusses the Chicago photos of Joshua Nowicki ('looming' versus mirage, 13 April) and agrees weather causes distortion but argues visibility should be the default.

Key claims

• The atmosphere can act as a convex lens, magnifying distant cities and hiding their bases, without curvature.

Relevance: Short form of the 2017 expanded video.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Skiba reconstructs his Chicago analysis: ABC57 meteorologist Tom Coomes and Notre Dame's Dr. Mark Rennie called the effect a superior mirage/looming; Skiba says 'my primary objective was only to show that it's not a mirage' and that he had hoped for other flat-earth evidence. He now proposes 'the atmosphere is acting like a lens which magnifies the city' and 'we start to lose a little bit of the bottom of the buildings', supported by bench demonstrations with glass lenses and a 2x lens (reported qualitatively, no distances or measured hidden fractions). He concedes the camera lens contributes ('I'll give you that') and that the lower parts were not visible. The deep reader finds an arithmetic slip (2,400 ft is the drop at 60 miles below the tangent plane, not the hidden height for an observer above the water; 60 mi is neither photo's distance, Nowicki about 53 mi, Skiba 46 mi) and that in the ABC57 clip the lens reveals the lower buildings (image displacement) while his demonstrations hide them. He answers 'cherry-picking' with a skunkbayweather.com time-lapse of 7 Sept 2012 (9:43 a.m., 59.5 F visible; 5:44 p.m., 63.5 F not).

Key claims

• The lost bases of Chicago's skyscrapers at 46-53 miles are due to atmospheric magnification, refraction or perspective, 'with no need of curvature whatsoever'.

Relevance: His most developed observational argument, and an unusual case where a proponent accepts that the lower buildings were hidden and offers a refraction-type explanation.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Two flight tests. (a) Max Igan's reported compass observation on Santiago-to-Sydney (direction stated inconsistently): a compass in his lap read west-southwest/southwest for the whole awake period while the seat-back display showed northwest, which the hosts say a globe great-circle (south-southwest, west, then northwest) should show but a flat Gleason azimuthal map path (west-southwest) would not; Igan himself says 'I didn't prove anything'. (b) Skiba's own Minneapolis-to-Amsterdam level and altitude records on his phone (and his wife's) showed 'no change whatsoever' of nose-down or climb behaviour, which he takes as inconsistent with flight over a ball; he gives no value for one hour (1.26 miles in 12 minutes at 500 mph, about 6,653 ft). Caveats stated: the Gleason map is not exact, Jeranism assumes a direct flight, southern flights are hard to track. The deep reader notes the compass claim rests on filmed footage with no instrument log or declination correction, and that cabin level tests measure the local apparent vertical, which the video does not distinguish from true level.

Key claims

• A compass on a southern-hemisphere long-haul flight pointed west-southwest while the seat display said northwest, an anomaly on a globe.
• A level on a transatlantic flight showed no change in attitude as a 500 mph aircraft would need on a curved earth.

Relevance: Illustrates two commonly cited 'aviation' tests and the lack of instrumentation controls.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Part two of the 'testingtheglobe.com' series with Victor Brewer (Explosive Truth channel). Stated goals: a weather balloon with a non-fish-eye lens and a gimbal, three cameras (two on the horizon, one up to see whether the blue turns black and stars appear); exceed MythBusters' 70,000 ft and reach at least 115,000 ft 'with a non-fisheye lens'. Preliminary test: the gimbal functioned to about 80-90,000 ft before failing (estimate, no log). Weak points he acknowledges: 'I don't feel like the balloon launch in general is like a conclusive experiment' and 'it has to be a compendium of evidence'. Notes that Eratosthenes's shadow result is also consistent with a local moving sun over a flat earth.

Key claims

• A high-altitude balloon with a non-fish-eye lens would show no curvature, unlike fish-eye footage.

Relevance: Pre-registration of the balloon test, including his own stated limits and prediction about stars.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Aftermath of the 12 June 2017 Ohio launch (about 118,000 ft stated as maximum; live video feed to about 91,000 ft; top GoPro 3 froze at about 45,000 ft; the camera gimbal with the 7.2 mm lens was lost). No horizon-curvature result is reported: the speakers discuss lens distortion in other people's drone footage, gimbal roll (about 1.8 degrees, 0.8-2.8) and lessons for the next launch. Positions: Brewer 'lean[s] more personally towards a stationary Globe' but says he would be delighted to show a flat earth; Skiba 'quite biased on the flat side', '80% there'; Hummer's conclusions are not stated.

Key claims

• No curvature result is reported from the 2017 balloon launch because the main camera was lost.

Relevance: Records the failed first balloon test and its participants' stated biases.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Skiba replies to a YouTuber (Sly Sparkane) who said his own balloon footage proved curvature. He concedes curvature is visible near the top of the flight and treats it as lens-induced barrel distortion, citing the same curve seen at under 1,000 ft; calls the result 'inconclusive' and says both sides 'are going to find evidence to support their claim'. Says the balloon reached '200,000 feet' (conflicts with his 99,806 ft last ping and the 115,000 ft goal: likely a mishearing). His stated goals were to debunk MythBusters' 70,000-ft claim and to show the difference between fish-eye and human-eye lenses; he says both were achieved.

Key claims

• Curvature visible in balloon footage is lens distortion, not the earth; the test is inconclusive.

Relevance: Closest the project comes to Skiba's own reading of his balloon data.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Biography page: award-winning documentary filmmaker and author of Babylon Rising: And The First Shall Be Last and Archon Invasion: The Rise, Fall and Return of the Nephilim; 'ancient Nephilim theorist'; actor since 1986; Hollywood Film Institute graduate; working on a project called SEED; lists his websites.

Relevance: Identity and background of the author.

Mainstream conflict: none

Full debate of Rob Skiba against Dr. Robert Sungenis at the Flat Earth International Conference, Denver, 15 November 2018: topic what Scripture says about the earth and its place in the cosmos; format 30-minute openings, 15-minute rebuttals and closings. Skiba argues a flat earth; Sungenis is, from [memory, medium], a Catholic geocentrist, so the debate is between two biblical cosmologies (the digest names the topic and format only). Only the structure was digested here.

Key claims

• (Not extracted in detail.)

Relevance: A debate between two biblical-cosmology positions (flat vs geocentric globe).

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Responds to a 2015 video of ten reasons for a round earth: says billiard balls and light bulbs do not prove a spherical table or room; time zones (item 9) are answered by heliocentrism 'squish[ing] the earth'; 'round' does not only mean a globe; the claim that other planets and stars are round is 'an interesting assumption but not a proof'. Condensed from a series of more than six hours.

Key claims

• The ten usual reasons for a globe do not prove it.

Relevance: His systematic reply to the mainstream list.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

First of two talks at the 2019 Flat Earth International Conference: frames the 'four big questions' (who am I, why am I here, where am I, how did I get here), introduces himself (filmmaker, Baptist minister's son, Christian since age 7, 'astronaut by 30' as a child) and argues the philosophical case that globe belief rests on trust in authorities.

Relevance: Philosophical half of his two-part presentation.

Mainstream conflict: Philosophical argument; no data.

A list of ten-odd evidence items tagged by the deep reader: NASA imagery as art or faked, Gemini 4 spacewalk vs ISS footage (he concedes the 'head-turning' point has been debunked but questions the helmet seal), ISS cupola footage ('somebody's lying'), the Chicago skyline boat trip (46 mi; his own 'inconclusive'), atmosphere as a magnifying lens (his own, weak as to lens vs magnification), a second-hand arch-visibility account (about 40 ft arch at 20 miles from a writer friend who is a former lifeguard) and claims that 'smartest guys' are '96% stupid' (presumably dark matter/energy, a [memory, medium] reading) and 'off by 10 to the 120th'. He urges 'don't believe me ... go out and start searching for yourself'.

Key claims

• There is a 'preponderance of evidence' for a flat earth of which his own tests are 'inconclusive' and others' claims are second hand.

Relevance: Shows how the proponent himself ranks his own evidence.

Mainstream conflict: Advocacy by a flat-earth proponent (interested party); contradicts the globe model; observations are his own account.

Site menu and footer for testingtheglobe.com: sections including Opening Statements, the Bible and the Still Flat Earth, Enoch, Conclusions, 'Gearing Up for Apollo' (Architects of a Spherical World?, Examining an Ancient Motive, Following the Beast South), Video Resources and books. Navigation only.

Relevance: Index of the series.

Mainstream conflict: none

Faulkner (Dr. Danny R. Faulkner, writing on the Answers in Genesis site) replies to Skiba's characterisation of his earlier AiG article 'Is the Earth Flat?' ('No. The earth is not flat and the Bible never said it was!'). Lists four reasons he gave for a spherical earth: the earth's round shadow in lunar eclipses, stars visible change with latitude, lunar eclipses at different local times by longitude, distant objects over water are visible with elevation; then discusses star trails. The author writes for Answers in Genesis, a Christian apologetics ministry (a stake in the biblical argument; [memory, medium] a young-earth creationist organisation).

Key claims

• Star trails and other observations are consistent with a spherical earth (Faulkner's reply).

Relevance: A co-religionist's rebuttal of Skiba's biblical flat-earth argument.

Mainstream conflict: Opposes the flat-earth claim; author is an interested party (Answers in Genesis).

A site opposed to flat-earth claims lists experiments by flat-earthers that it says confirm a sphere, asserting confirmation bias. Includes a section 'Rob Skiba's High-Altitude Balloons': he launched balloons with a customised GoPro to remove barrel distortion; the page says the curvature remained. The author is an advocate on the globe side.

Key claims

• Flat-earthers' own balloon and other experiments confirmed a sphere.

Relevance: A globe-side advocate's summary of Skiba's balloon results.

Mainstream conflict: Opposes Skiba's reading; advocacy source.

News report of 14 Oct 2021: Rob Skiba, 'one of the country's most prominent advocates of Flat Earth Theory', died of COVID-19 after falling ill following 'Take On The World', a biblical flat earth conference; he had been hospitalised for low oxygen and was sceptical of COVID-19 vaccines. Records the end of the record of Skiba's work; the record of his claims stops in 2019-2020.

Relevance: Establishes when the source record ends (death in October 2021).

Mainstream conflict: none

Obituary by Faulkner: he met Skiba at the first Flat Earth International Convention in 2017, they disagreed on many issues but Skiba always treated him kindly; he criticises rude comments after the death and cites Proverbs 24:17 and Job 31:28-30. Gives Skiba's dates as 26 May 1969 to 13 October 2021.

Relevance: Dates of the author and a respectful opposing view.

Mainstream conflict: none