The use of the word usurpers is an interesting turn of phrase, as it suggests that those pesky round earthers have essentially robbed them of the mantle of truth. A previous version of this story included an incorrect planetary reference.“The soldiers of truth and reason of the Flat Earth Society have drawn the sword, and ere another generation has been educated and grown to maturity, will have forced the usurpers to abdicate,” it notes. 16, 2022: The Earth is a sphere that is 93 million miles away from the sun. A previous version of this story cited an incorrect amount of time.Ĭlarification, Sept. 15, 2022: It would take the sun eight minutes to reach Earth traveling at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. We rate claims that the sun isn’t that far away, and rather under a dome, Pants on Fire!Ĭorrection Sept. The average distance is about 93 million miles. At their farthest, they’re 94.5 million miles away from each other. At their closest, Earth and the sun are 91.4 million miles apart, according to the California Institute of Technology. Scientists then use what they know about interplanetary distances to scale the distance between the Earth and the sun.īecause Earth doesn’t orbit the sun in a perfect circle, its distance from the sun changes during the year. To measure how far we are from the sun, it’s necessary to first find the relative distances between Earth and other planets, Pandian wrote.

Humans have been able to use radar to measure interplanetary distances since 1961, transmitting a radar signal at a planet, or the moon, and measuring how long it takes for that radar echo to return.

In 2016, astronomer Jagadheep Pandian broke down how we know the distance between the sun and Earth for Cornell University.

Nasa is earth round or flat