The 93-Million-Mile Claim
The mainstream scientific claim is that the sun is 93 million miles from Earth (1 Astronomical Unit), has a diameter of approximately 864,938 miles, and is a main-sequence G-type star fusing hydrogen into helium. This figure was derived through triangulation methods using parallax — measuring the sun's apparent position shift across different points on Earth's surface — with the assumed globe geometry providing the baseline distance calculation. If the Earth is flat and not a globe, the triangulation baseline is different and every derived distance is wrong by the same factor as the geometry is wrong.
Flat earth researchers, working from the behaviour of the observable sun, propose a sun approximately 32 miles in diameter at an altitude of approximately 3,000 miles above the flat plane. These figures are derived from the angular size of the sun (approximately 0.5 degrees across, consistent whether observed from sea level or mountaintops — the slight variation is due to perspective, not 93 million miles of additional distance for a mountain observer) and the sun's observable light cone behaviour.
Light Cone Behaviour — The Local Sun's Proof
When clouds are observed at sunset and sunrise, the sun's rays often fan outward visibly from an apparent point source in the sky. These crepuscular rays appear to diverge from the sun's position outward. On a globe with a sun 93 million miles away, the sun's rays arrive effectively parallel — divergence would be invisible from any human scale. But the visible divergence of sun rays in photographs is consistent with a nearby point source where parallax is visible. The light cone of the sun lights a specific region of the flat plane and not others — a local spotlight, not a star flooding a hemisphere with parallel radiation.
Consistent Angular Size
The sun maintains approximately 0.53° of angular diameter throughout the day. On a globe, the sun at noon (directly above) should be slightly closer and therefore larger than the sun at the horizon — but no reliable measurement confirms this. The flat earth sun at constant altitude shows consistent angular size as expected.
Focused Heat
The sun's heat is most intense when the sun is directly overhead — noon. As it circles toward the horizon, warmth diminishes rapidly. This is consistent with a spotlight effect from a local source — not a sphere receiving parallel radiation from 93 million miles that should heat proportionally across a larger surface angle.
Clouds Illuminated from Below
At sunrise and sunset, clouds are illuminated from below — orange-lit on their undersides while their tops remain dark. On the globe model with a sun near the horizon, lighting from below is impossible. With a local sun at low angle traversing below the cloud base, bottom illumination is expected.
Constant Apparent Speed
The sun traverses the sky at an apparently constant speed. On a globe with the sun rising from below the horizon, its apparent speed should change dramatically as it approaches and recedes from the observer's line of sight. On a flat plane, the sun's circular circuit produces consistent apparent motion.
Sunrise & Sunset as Perspective — Not Curvature
The sun does not sink below a curved horizon. It recedes into the distance until it hits the optical vanishing point — the perspective limit of human or optical vision. This can be demonstrated by zooming in with a long-focal-length camera on a sun that has "set" below the visible horizon: it reappears. Several researchers have filmed this effect repeatedly on clear days over water, recovering the disc of the sun that perspective had compressed below the visible field. A sun truly below the horizon cannot be recovered by zooming — only a sun still above a flat plane at the limit of perspective can.
The Sun's Light — Not Electromagnetic Radiation
The flat earth model proposes that the sun's light is not electromagnetic radiation from a nuclear fusion reactor 93 million miles away — but a luminous discharge phenomenon of the local luminary itself. The sun is not a ball of gas. That it appears as a perfect circle, maintains its disc shape through atmospheric refraction, and produces specific light frequencies that interact with Earth's plants and DNA in precise ways points to a designed luminary rather than an accidental ball of burning gas 28 times the diameter of the Earth we stand on.