r/BeAmazed • u/Awkward_Click3061 • Nov 11 '23

Science Look at that

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u/2called_chaos Nov 11 '23

So was it established fact at that point how far the sun is away or at least that the rays are, for all intents and purposes, actually parallel?

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u/Cualkiera67 Nov 11 '23

That was an assumption necessary for the experiment. It wasn't proved by it.

If the sun was small and super close to the earth, then the shadows difference wouldn't necessarily mean the earth was curved.

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u/Naimadean Nov 11 '23

Ironically, it's this idea that a lot of flat earthers use to justify their beliefs. Fortunately, there is other supportive evidence that we can use to conclude the earth is round.

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u/gil_bz Nov 11 '23

There is a post somewhere on /r/AskHistorians about if they knew how far the sun is. They did some calculations, those were wrong actually. But they did understand that the sun was very very far away from the earth, astronomically far. I think they got the moon wrong as well.