Who said earth is round

This is because the Earth is round, and not flat:. Eratosthenes BCE used this principle to calculate the circumference of the Earth quite accurately. To see this demonstrated, refer to my experiment video about Eratosthenes and the circumference of the Earth. Standing on a flat plateau, you look ahead toward the horizon.

You strain your eyes, then take out your favorite binoculars and stare through them, as far as your eyes with the help of the binocular lenses can see. Next, climb up the closest tree—the higher the better, just be careful not to drop those binoculars and break their lenses. Then look again, strain your eyes, and stare through the binoculars out to the horizon.

The higher up you climb, the farther you will see. Even if you stood on a completely clear plateau with no obstacles between you and the horizon, you would see much farther from the greater height than you would on the ground. This phenomenon is caused by the curvature of the Earth as well, and would not happen if the Earth was flat:.

The Earth is different from other planets, that much is true. However, there are certain characteristics all planets have, and it will be quite logical to assume that if all planets behave a certain way, or show certain characteristics—specifically if those planets are in different places or were created under different circumstances—our planet is the same.

In , Galileo Galilei observed the moons of Jupiter rotating around it. He described them as small planets orbiting a larger planet—a description and observation that was very difficult for the church to accept, as it challenged a geocentric model where everything was supposed to revolve around the Earth. This observation also showed that the planets Jupiter, Neptune, and later Venus was observed too are all spherical, and all orbit the sun.

A flat planet ours or any other planet would be such an incredible observation that it would pretty much go against everything we know about how planets form and behave. We know it. The time in New York, at the moment these words are written, is pm. In Adelaide, Australia, it is am. More than 13 hours ahead. Wrong: Despite a persistent legend, neither Columbus nor his Spanish patrons thought Earth was a finite plane instead of a round planet.

Legend has it that he defied Spanish officials to do so, sailing west instead of East because he was certain the world was round.

Detail of Portrait of Christopher Columbus. That was thanks to scientists, philosophers and mathematicians who, as early as around B. However, Columbus ran into resistance when he tried to get funding for his landmark journey for a different reason. After years of negotiation and argument over the actual length of the proposed journey, he finally convinced Ferdinand II of Spain and his wife Isabella to finance the expedition.

Sea level itself is even irregularly shaped. Additionally, the shape of the Earth is always changing. Sometimes this change is periodic, as is the case with daily tides that affect both the ocean and the crust; sometimes the change is slow and steady, as with the drift of tectonic plates or the rebound of the crust after a heavy sheet of ice has melted ; and sometimes the shape of the planet changes in violent, episodic ways during events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or meteor strikes.

The National Geodetic Survey measures and monitors our ever-changing planet.