FE Meme
70% Uncarbonated Water: So Earth Is Flat?
#9: "The Earth is 70% water and uncarbonated, so it's technically flat."
The Meme
Four-panel Mummy movie stills: soda pun setup, "Ok?", arms-spread punchline, reaction shot.
Why It Spreads
The Mummy movie pun format is instantly recognizable: "uncarbonated" means flat soda, and slapping that wordplay onto "70% water" makes the punchline feel clever even when it says nothing about gravity or curvature. Dad-joke memes spread because the viewer gets the joke in one glance and feels smart for sharing it.
What It Gets Wrong
The four-panel Mummy movie stills pun on flat versus fizzy soda, but carbonation describes dissolved CO₂ in a drink, not planetary geometry. Oceans cover about 71% of Earth's surface and follow the curved geoid perpendicular to local gravity, where over 10 km h ≈ d²/(2R) with R ≈ 6371 km predicts on the order of 8 m of midpoint drop. Ships disappearing hull-first over water fits that curved equipotential and is inconsistent with wordplay that substitutes a movie gag for horizon dip or orbital mechanics. TestTheGlobe's Water Finds Level Means Flat and TestTheGlobe's Curvature Calculator walk through the observations and predictions this image skips.
The Debunk
The geoid model predicts level water that curves over long baselines; over kilometres h ≈ d²/(2R) with R ≈ 6371 km predicts measurable drop. A Mummy movie soda pun is inconsistent with any measurement of Earth's shape. Use TestTheGlobe's Curvature Calculator to compare the meme's claim with a measurable prediction.
- TestTheGlobe's Water Finds Level Means Flat: carbonation wordplay does not describe horizon dip; over 10 km, spherical geometry predicts on the order of 8 m of midpoint drop.
- TestTheGlobe's Curvature Calculator converts distance to expected drop, showing why a harbour looks flat while the Pacific still follows a curved geoid.
- The four-panel image is a Mummy movie gag about "flat" soda, not a geodetic measurement; ships hide bottom-first over water because the surface curves relative to gravity.
- TestTheGlobe's Rainy Lake Curvature documents repeatable long-water-baseline tests where surveyed heights match globe predictions, not pun logic.