FE Meme
Round-Earthers: Brazil to South Africa Route
#243: Round-Earthers treat a curved southern-ocean flight path as the "fastest route" from Brazil to South Africa, but the meme implies that arc is absurd on a flat map.
The Meme
Flight-route graphic with macro caption "Round-earthers be like: This is the fastest route from Brazil to South Africa" over a curved great-circle style path.
Why It Spreads
A single curved southern-ocean path from Brazil to South Africa looks like a ridiculous detour when imagined on a flat sheet. Captioning it as what round-earthers accept turns a familiar airline route into a one-glance punchline about map distortion without mentioning great circles.
What It Gets Wrong
The flight-route graphic captioned "Round-earthers be like: This is the fastest route from Brazil to South Africa" shows a curved southern-ocean arc that looks absurd on a flat map but is the shorter great circle on a sphere. São Paulo to Johannesburg is roughly 7400 km; the geodesic bows south over the South Atlantic because that path minimizes distance on an ellipsoid, not because pilots prefer scenic curves. Published schedules and independent ADS-B tracks follow exterior geodesics while flat-map straight-line chords mis-predict southern block times. TestTheGlobe's Flights Only Make Sense On A Flat Map and TestTheGlobe's Flight Path Comparison walk through the observations and predictions this image skips.
The Debunk
The flight-route graphic captioned "Round-earthers be like: This is the fastest route from Brazil to South Africa" shows a curved southern-ocean arc that looks absurd on a flat map but is the shorter great circle on a sphere. São Paulo to Johannesburg is roughly 7400 km; the geodesic bows south over the South Atlantic because that path minimizes distance on an ellipsoid, not because pilots prefer scenic curves.
- Great-circle distance on a sphere is shorter than a straight chord on a flat projection; TestTheGlobe's Flight Path Comparison plots Brazil to South Africa on the ellipsoid versus flat-map chords.
- Southern routes operate on published schedules with measured block times; TestTheGlobe's Southern Hemisphere Flights Are Impossible addresses the claim that such flights cannot exist.
- Mercator stretching turns minimal geodesics into dramatic arcs on paper; TestTheGlobe's Map Distortion Does Not Matter shows why wall-map curves mislead about shortest paths.
- ADS-B tracks follow the same geometry the meme screenshot treats as ridiculous; TestTheGlobe's Flights Only Make Sense On A Flat Map explains projection versus navigation.