100 Proofs that the Earth is a Globe

3. Meteor arrival rates

Meteors are small interplanetary objects that cause visible streaks of light in the sky when they collide with the Earth’s atmosphere. Before this visible collision, the object in space is called a meteoroid, and if any pieces of the object survive to land on the surface of Earth they are called meteorites. Meteoroids are considered to range from roughly the size of a peppercorn up to about a metre across. Larger objects are generally called asteroids, while smaller ones are micrometeoroids or space dust.

Most meteoroids are made of various types of rock, but a small percentage are mostly iron or iron-nickel alloy, and a few are icy. There are vast numbers of these objects in orbit around the sun, and many million enter the Earth’s atmosphere every day, although only a small fraction of those are large enough to produce a meteor trail visible to the human eye. Meteoroids originate from the asteroid belt, or as broken off parts of comets. These small objects are very easily perturbed by the gravity of large objects in the solar system, which effectively randomises their orbits. So in any region of the solar system, the positions and velocities of meteoroids is more or less random.

One of the Henbury Meteorites, cut to show iron composition.

From an observation point on Earth, we can watch for meteors. Better than counting by eye, we have built specialised radar systems that can detect meteors with greater sensitivity, including during daylight hours, and we can set them up counting meteors all day, every day. Every time the radar detects a meteor, it can record where in the sky it was, what direction it moved, and what time the event occurred. Thinking about the time in particular, we can count how many meteors arrive during any given hour, and average this over many days to produce an hourly rate of meteor events. Many experiments do just this.

Let’s consider what time of day meteors arrive, and if the hourly rate of meteors is the same at all times, or if it varies with time. If the Earth were flat, how might we expect the hourly rate of meteors to behave? Is there any reason to think that the hourly rate of meteors might be different at, say, 8pm, compared to 4am? Or midnight? If the Earth is flat, then… meteors should probably arrive at the same rate all the time. There’s no obvious reason to think it might vary at all.

What happens in reality?

There are several published studies showing measurements of the hourly arrival rate of meteors versus the time of day. Here are some graphs from one such paper (reference [1]):

Hourly meteor rate graph 1

Hourly meteor arrival rate at Esrange Space Centre, Sweden. Figure reproduced from [1].

These graphs show the average number of meteors observed arriving during each hour of the day as observed by a meteor-detecting radar station at the Esrange Space Centre near Kiruna in Sweden. The numbers on the vertical axis are normalised so that the 24 hourly bins add up to 1. As shown earlier in the paper, the total number of meteors observed per day is roughly 2000 to 5000, for an overall average of approximately 150 per hour. The times on the horizontal axis are in Universal Time, but Sweden’s time zone is UTC+1, so local midnight occurs at 23 on the graph. Notice that the number of meteors observed per hour is not constant throughout the day, but varies in a systematic pattern. Hmmm.

Here’s another set of data (reference [2]):

Hourly meteor rate graph 2

Hourly meteor arrival rate at stations in southern USA. Figure reproduced from [2].

This shows the hourly arrival rate of meteors for a single day as recorded by the American Meteor Society Radiometer Project stations in the southern USA. Again, the times shown are UTC, but the time zone is UTC-6, so local midnight occurs at 6 on the graph.

For good measure, here’s one more (reference [3]):

Hourly meteor rate graph 3

Hourly meteor arrival rate at three SKiYMET stations. Figures reproduced from [3].

These plots show the hourly arrival rate of meteors at three separate SKiYMET meteor observation sites, at latitudes 69°N, 22°S, and 35°S respectively. The times shown on the horizontal axis here are all local times.

Now, notice how in all of these graphs that the hourly arrival rate of meteors varies by time of day. In particular, in every case there is a maximum in the arrival rate at around 6am local time (to within 2 or 3 hours), and a minimum at around 6pm local time. This pattern, once you notice it, is striking. What could be the cause?

The Earth is moving in its orbit about the sun. In other words, it is sweeping through space, in an almost circular path around the sun. Now, remember that the distribution of meteoroid locations and velocities in space is essentially random. If the Earth is moving through this random scattering of meteoroids, it should sweep up more meteors on the side of the planet that is moving forwards, and fewer on the side that is trailing. And the Earth is also rotating about its axis, this rotation being what causes the daily variation of night and day – in other words the times of the day.

Earth orbit diagram

Diagram showing movement of Earth in its orbit and rotation. Earth image is public domain from NASA.

The side of the Earth that is moving forwards is the side where the rotation of the Earth is bringing the dark part of the Earth into the light of the sun, at the dawn of a new day. We call this the dawn terminator. In terms of the clock and time zones, this part of the Earth has a time around 6am. The trailing side of the Earth is the sunset terminator, with a time around 6pm. There will be some variation, up to a couple of hours or so at moderate latitudes, caused by the seasons (the effect of the tilt in the Earth’s rotation axis relative to its orbit).

In other words, if the Earth is a rotating sphere in space, orbiting around the sun, we should expect that the dawn part of the Earth, where the local time is around 6am, should sweep up more meteors than the sunset part of the Earth, where the local time is around 6pm. And if the Earth is a sphere, this variation should be sinusoidal – the distinctive smooth shape of a wave as traced out by points rotating around a circle.

And this is exactly what we see. The variation in the hourly arrival rate of meteors, as observed all across the Earth, matches the prediction you would make if the Earth was a globe. One consequence of the Earth being a globe is that if you want to see meteors – other than during one of the regular annual meteor showers – it’s much better to get up before dawn than to stay up late.

References:

[1] Younger, P. T.; Astin, I.; Sandford, D. J.; and Mitchell, N. J. “The sporadic radiant and distribution of meteors in the atmosphere as observed by VHF radar at Arctic, Antarctic and equatorial latitudes”, Annales Geophysicae, 27, p. 2831-2841, 2009. https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-27-2831-2009
[2] Meisel, D. D.; Richardson, J. E. “Statistical properties of meteors from a simple, passive forward scatter system”. Planetary and Space Science, 47, p. 107-124, 1999. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0032-0633(98)00096-8
[3] Singer, W; von Zahn, U; Batista, Paulo; Fuller, Brian; and Latteck, Ralph. “Diurnal and annual variations of meteor rates at latitudes between 69°N and 35°S”. In The 17th ESA Symposium on European Rocket and Balloon Programmes and Related Research, Sandefjord, Norway, 2005, ISBN 92-9092-901-4, p. 151-156. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252769360_Diurnal_and_annual_variations_of_meteor_rates_at_latitudes_between_69N_and_35S

2. Eratosthenes’ measurement

[audio version of this article]

Determining that the Earth is not flat is not a feat that requires space age technology to achieve. In fact, you can demonstrate it with not much more than a stick and some elementary geometry. And this was indeed done in antiquity.

Around the year 240 BC the Greek scholar Eratosthenes realised the significance of certain observations based on shadows cast by the sun. Not only did he show that the Earth is not flat, he did an experiment to measure the circumference of the spherical Earth.

Eratosthenes teaching in Alexandria. Painting by Bernardo Strozzi (1581-1644)

Eratosthenes was the head librarian at the great Library of Alexandria. He had heard that at noon on the day of the summer solstice, the sun shone directly down a vertical well in the Egyptian city of Syene, where the modern city of Aswan now stands. Equivalently, at noon on the solstice, a stick placed vertically in the ground would cast no shadow, because the sun was directly overhead. This property was well known amongst geographers as a curiosity, because it didn’t happen at any cities further north.

Eratosthenes took it a step further by thinking about why this was the case. He figured that the sun was a very long way away, at least much further away than, say, the distance between Syene and Alexandria on the northern coast of Egypt – measured by surveyors to be 5000 stadia. (According to the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea, Eratosthenes in fact calculated the distance from the Earth to the sun, possibly using a method developed by Aristarchus. Eusebius’s figures are ambiguous, but can be interpreted as giving a figure of 149 million km, almost exactly correct.) If the Earth were flat, the sun would be directly overhead everywhere at the same time. But this was not the case. At noon on the summer solstice, a vertical stick in Alexandria cast a definite shadow. He realised not only that the Earth’s surface must be curved, but that he could use the length of the shadow to calculate how big the Earth was.

By measuring the length of a vertical stick and its shadow in Alexandria at noon on the solstice, Eratosthenes calculated that the sun was at an elevation of 7°12′ to the vertical. The angle of 7°12′ is exactly one fiftieth of a circle. Eratosthenes also figured that Alexandria was pretty much due north of Syene. So this meant that the distance from Syene to Alexandria must be one fiftieth of the circumference of the Earth. So the circumference of the Earth, Eratosthenes concluded, must be 250,000 stadia.

Shadows in Syene and Alexandria

Shadows in Syene and Alexandria, if the Earth were flat, or spherical.

How long is a classical Greek/Egyptian stadion? There is some debate over this. Some scholars suggest that Egyptian surveyors used a stadion of 174.6 metres, giving a circumference of 43,650 km. Others think they used a stadion of 184.8 m, giving a result of 46,000 km. Modern measurements of the Earth’s circumference around the poles set the figure at 40,008 km. So depending which figure we use for the stadion, Eratosthenes got the answer right to within 9% or 15%, respectively. Not too bad for a measurement made with nothing but a stick!

The main mistake Eratosthenes made was assuming Alexandria was due north of Syene. The distance needs to be adjusted to remove the east-west offset, and if you do this you get an answer even closer to the modern measurement. The rest of the error is likely mostly due to imprecision in measuring distances and angles. We might even speculate that Eratosthenes did a bit of rounding to make his measured angle exactly one fiftieth of a circle.

Can we do better than Eratosthenes? With your help, I’d like to do an experiment and collect some data, and see how accurately we get to measuring the circumference of the Earth. Rather than use the northern summer solstice, we’re going to use the March equinox, which conveniently happens less than two weeks from when I post this entry: on 20 March (or 21 March in some time zones). On that date, I’d like you to help me by doing a simple measurement, wherever you happen to be. Full instructions follow:

Work out the date closest to the equinox where you are. For time zones of UTC+2 or less (including all of the Americas, Europe, and most of Africa) it’s on 20 March, 2019. For time zones UTC+3 or more (including Eastern Africa, Asia, Australia) it’s on 21 March. Actually if you’re in Europe or Africa, the equinox is close to midnight this year, so it probably doesn’t matter much if you do this on 20 or 21 March.
Work out what time is local solar noon where you are. (This is the time when the sun is directly over the meridian of longitude running through your location, and it’s usually not exactly at 12:00.) For this, use TimeandDate.com’s Sun Calculator. Enter your location in the search box. When the page brings up the data for your location, scroll down to the calendar table and find the entry for the date you have worked out at step 1. Look at the column marked “Solar noon” and read the time given there. You now have the date and the exact time when you need to make your measurement. Hopefully it will be sunny for you then!
Work out where you’ll be at that time on that date. Find a nice flat, level area there. Get a straight stick – the longer the more accurate. Measure the length of the stick.
On the equinox date, at the exact time of your local solar noon: If it’s sunny, place your stick vertically on your flat area. Do this as accurately as you can – use a spirit level or inclinometer if you can. If you don’t have one, let the stick dangle from the top, with the bottom just barely touching the ground. With the stick vertical, measure the length of its shadow cast by the sun, again as accurately as you can manage. Using a friend to help you will make things easier. If it’s not sunny at the right time, oh well, I appreciate your help anyway, but that’s how science works sometimes!
Once you have the shadow length, you’re ready to report your data! I need to know: (1) Where you were – city, state, country – enough that I don’t get it wrong. If you can tell me your exact latitude (using Google maps or a GPS), even better. (2) The length of your vertical stick. (3) The length of the shadow you measured. Send these three bits of data to me by email [dmm at dangermouse.net], by the end of March.

I’ll calculate the results, do some statistics, and come up with our very own measurement of the circumference of the Earth! I’ll post the results here in April.

1. The Blue Marble

[audio version of this article]

The most straightforward way to check the shape of the Earth is to look at it. There’s one small problem, though. To see the shape of the Earth as a whole, you need to be far enough away from it. For most of human history, this has not been possible. It was only with the advent of the space age that our technology has allowed us to send a human being, or a camera, more than a few kilometres from the surface.

The earliest photo of the whole Earth from space was taken by NASA’s ATS-3 weather and communications satellite in 1967. The photo was taken from geostationary orbit, some 34,000 kilometres above the surface of the Earth, and shows most of the western hemisphere, with South America most prominent. And you can see quite clearly that the Earth is round. It looks spherical, for the other landmasses that we know are there are hidden around the other side, and there is foreshortening of the features near the edges which matches our experience with spherical objects.

Photo of Earth taken by NASA’s ATS-3 satellite in 1967. (Public domain image by NASA.)

A more famous image of Earth taken from space is the Blue Marble image, captured by the Apollo 17 astronauts on their way to the Moon in 1972. This photo was taken from a distance of about 45,000 kilometres.

The Blue Marble photo of Earth taken by Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972. (Public domain image by NASA.)

This image is clearer and it’s arguably easier to see the spherical shape of the planet. Both these photos were taken with the full hemisphere lit by the sun.

The Apollo 13 astronauts, in their ill-fated flight, captured a different view, with part of the Earth in darkness because the sun was not behind them.

The Earth photographed by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970. (Public domain image by NASA.)

Here it is even easier to get a feeling for the round, spherical shape of Earth, because our experience with the way light falls on round objects helps our minds make sense of the curved shadow.

Well, that’s pretty definitive. But what else do we have?

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