Flat World: Difference between revisions

* As is the world on which the ''[[Golden Sun]]'' games take place, complete with the oceans constantly spilling an apparently infinite amount of water over the edges. Interestingly enough, the dangers inherent in such a system are actually brought to light in the second game. {{spoiler|Without the power of Alchemy, Gaia Falls will eventually erode all of Weyard to nothing. One assumes that Alchemy is capable of producing enough earth and water to combat the erosion.}}

** In ''[[Golden Sun: Dark Dawn]]'', which takes place 30 years after the end of the [[Game Boy Advance]] duology, the world's oceans and continents are now separated into layers, with the heroes' ship being unable to reach any continents other than their own due to the other continents being separated by waterfalls. Other than the addition of layers, the world is still a flat one but may revert back to its original shape in the years down the road since there's still natural activity happening in the world in the 30 year gap.

* Played straight in the Burning Crusade expansion of ''[[World of Warcraft]]''. The world of Outland is considered to be the largest fragment of a shattered world, and players in the game can fall off the edge and die (dying in such a way causes you to be resurrected at the nearest graveyard from the point you fell off)

* ''[[Minecraft]]'' has an option that lets you play a world that is literally flat, being made up of nothing but grass, two layers of dirt, and bedrock right below it. The main purpose of playing on a flat world is to assist in players that wish to build something without having to terraform the landscape.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* Pandora, from the ''[[Dominion and Duchy]]'' canon is a flat world that is somewhat unique in that it exists, possibly naturally, in a space opera setting.

* In part 4 of ''The Sick Kids'', the sequel to ''[[The Intercontinental Union of Disgusting Characters]]'', we learn that Central Earth is flat. ("What did you think it was anyway, round? Hah, we'd all fall off then!")

== [[Real Life]] ==

* The idea of everyone thinking the world was flat wasn't universal. Through history some people thought it was flat, some thought it may be round, but for the most part people probably didn't worry themselves about it much. While many people cite the idea that when a ship sailed to sea the mast was the last thing to disappear to the observer, the problem is that by the time a ship is that far out at sea (several miles for a 5.5-foot-tall person), the ship is so small to the unaided eye it's hard to make out the mast - and telescopes weren't developed until 1608 - a time when the fact that the Earth was round had been proven practically.

** The first person recorded to measure the circumference was Eratosthenes in 240 BC. Using the angles of shadows at noon he was within a 2%-20% margin - pretty good for what he had to work with.

** By the time of Columbus (1492) the earth was understood to be round by most educated people. There was less fear of Columbus sailing off the edge of the earth than the simple fact that it was ''uncharted waters'' he was sailing into, and no one knew when/if he would run into land. Also, Columbus had far underestimated the actual size of the Earth, and combined that with the largest estimation of how far Asia stretched eastward to conclude that the distance from Europe to Asia westward was only about 2,500 miles (in reality, it's closer to 15,000 miles). See analysis by Samuel Eliot Morison in ADMIRAL OF THE OCEAN SEA.

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:This Index Earth]]