7.1. Evidence of the Earth’s Sphericity

There are many ways to prove that earth is spherical. The following are some of them.

1. The Sun and the other planets in the Solar System are all spherical in shape.

2. If the Earth was flat, then all the places on the Earth would have had sunrise and sunset exactly at the same time.

3. If we watch a ship approaching the land, first we see the smoke of the ship (as the entire ship lies below the line of sight) and gradually the entire ship, as it comes up over the horizon. If the Earth was flat, we would have been able to see the whole ship at a time.

4. A circular shadow observed during the lunar eclipse can only be cast by a spherical body.

5. If you look around from any place, whether a mountain, a level plain, or top of a very tall building, the horizon will always appear circular. This is possible only in case of a spherical body.

6. Magellan’s circumnavigation in 1520 proved that the Earth is spherical in shape.

7. Engineers when driving poles of equal length at regular intervals on the ground have found that they do not give a perfect horizontal level. The centre pole normally projects slightly above the poles at either end because of the curvature of the earth.

8. Nowadays, when you can see the Earth in its true perspective from the outer space, the fact that the shape of the Earth is spherical needs no further proof.