h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is the world really flat?

No

Yes

its called mount everest, its is not flat

parts are.

Are you really a visitor to plantet earth?

Emmily

It's not really either... it's more of a squashed sphere with a rough and curved surface...

And being quite wobbly at the wet parts.

Holland is flat.

Bah, what about all those windmills stinking out of it?!!

Strangely both Denmark and Holland are very flat countries, and seem to be compensating for it by growing tall people.

As mentioned in another thread, there was a woman who did some experiments which seemed to show the Earth might be flat.

Actually its saucer shaped, so the water doesn't run over the edge.

One day it'll be cube-shaped. This transformation will happen overnight and be quite startling to the inhabitants when they awake in the morning, especially the ones who find themselves living on one of the corners, where gravity will alter by 0.5pi radians rather abruptly.

Earth's ablation (ablateness?) as with all planets, is a measure of the difference beween polar diameter and equatorial diameter, which in our case is something like 13,000km across against 12 and a half up. Or something. It's pretty easy maths, something like (e+p)/e but I can't remember.

I prefer the 'turtles all the way down' position

Well, the curvature is probably due to it being a turtle shell. And just like with gravity, there is a force that keeps you towards the center. So if you sail out into the ocean, you`ll be going around in a circle without noticing it, and that`s why it appears round.

Of course its flat, otherwise we'd all fall off or something.
Well, i mean, there are a few hills, obviously, but more or less flat disk/saucer shapped construction; I wonder how long it took for the engineers to build it?

I was taught at school that the earth is geomorphic. I gather that means earth-shaped. I don't think my geography teacher liked me much.

I travelled east until I came back to the place where I started, with some juking and zigging north and south along the way. And I didn't hit any corners, so it must be some sort of roundish shape.

I've played a video game where the world was supposedly round, but for the map to wrap the way it did the planet would need to be toroidal.