ObscuripediaObscuripediaThe Free Obscure Encyclopedia

Category: Geometry & cosmography

21 pages

A top-level category of Obscuripedia. The list below is believed complete, though membership — like everything here — is subject to revision.

  • 180-degree planeClaim that the equator is a 90-radian circle forming one flat plane that contains all land.
  • Babylonian Map of the WorldThe oldest known map of the whole world — a clay disc ringed by a "Bitter River", and so also the oldest flat-earth map.
  • Celestial theodoliteA flat-Earth method that measures atmospheric refraction with great care and records it as the absence of curvature.
  • The Concordant OrreryThe Aetheric Concord's late mechanical model of the flat cosmos — built to need no globe mathematics, and set entirely from the globe's own almanac.
  • The doctrinal value of πThe belief that π ought to be a clean, rational number — most often 3.2 — once very nearly fixed by a vote of the Indiana legislature.
  • Egyptian cosmologyThe world of Geb and Nut: a flat earth and an arched sky, held apart by a god posted permanently between them.
  • Eight inches per mile, squaredThe flat-Earth drop rule — a correct approximation of the Earth's curvature, cited chiefly by people who then fail to find it.
  • The figure of the EarthThe measured shape of the planet, and the long labour of measuring it.
  • The Final ExperimentThe December 2024 expedition that took flat-earthers and their critics to Antarctica to watch the Sun decline to set.
  • FirmamentThe solid dome of the sky in ancient and biblical cosmology — figurative to most, load-bearing to the Aetheric Concord.
  • FlatOf no curvature anywhere — a plane. A stronger condition than 'level' or 'horizontal': a tilted floor is flat but not level, and still water is level but not flat.
  • Flat EarthThe cosmographies that decline the curvature of the Earth — the umbrella under which the encyclopedia's several flat doctrines are gathered.
  • Gai tianThe oldest Chinese cosmology: a round heaven canopy over a flat, square earth — and the gnomon that measured its height.
  • GeocentrismThe doctrines that decline the motion of the Earth, holding it fixed at the centre of things.
  • Hindu cosmologyThe Puranic world: a vast flat disc of ring-continents around Mount Meru, set in cycles of time a single day of which outlasts the Earth's age.
  • HorizontalThe plane perpendicular to the plumb line — flat, and tangent to the level surface, but true only where it is taken; two distant horizontals are not parallel.
  • LevelThe geodetic sense of the word: a surface everywhere perpendicular to gravity, and therefore — over any distance — curved. Still water is the demonstration.
  • Norse cosmologyThe walled middle-world of the Eddas: a flat Midgard ringed by the world-serpent and roofed with a giant's skull.
  • RadianThe standard SI unit of plane angle (≈ 57.2958°) — and the encyclopedia's most misread object.
  • Value of one radianThe doctrinal claim that one radian is 57.30 nautical miles, obtained from 360 ÷ 2π.
  • Whole-radian geometryDiscredited system in which a circle holds 360 radians, a radian is a distance, and a turn is 4π.

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