The flat Earth conspiracy is the most curious one on the internet. The Greeks figured out the shape of the planet in the third century B.C.
A society founded in the 1950s to insist that the Earth is flat has given way to a modern flat Earth movement. There are people who claim that the Earth is a flat disc and that there is an elaborate hoax involving multiple governments. There are differing opinions on how the flat Earth works, with believers creating elaborate interpretations of physics and the solar system to make their theories work.
It's not known how many flat Earth believers are out there. Membership in the Flat Earth Society used to reach 3,500 people. More than 500 people are on the society's roster today. Some attendees of the Flat Earth International Conference in Dallas told CNN that the organization is a government-sponsored effort to make Flat Earth. The Flat Earth Society told CNN that they are not controlled by the government. We are a group of Flat Earth theorists that have been around for a long time.
The Flat Earth Society/Flat Earth International Conference revealed that flat-earthers aren't a monolith. Daniel Shenton is a Londoner who lives in Hong Kong. A Canadian who organizes the annual Flat Earth International Conferences is a believer in the Bible.
Only 1% of Americans think the Earth is flat according to a survey by Public Policy Polling. There was no evidence of differences between Trump voters, Clinton voters or third-party voters in the poll.
According to an article in the Colorado Sun, attendees at a flat Earth convention in Denver believed in a number of conspiracy theories, including that politicians are actors and that powerful shadowy forces control the world.
Flat-earthers get a boost from celebrities. Bobby Ray Simmons Jr., also known as B.o.B, released a song called "Flatline" in which he took a jab at Neil deGrasse Tyson after the two had a debate on social media. B.o.B thinks Earth is flat. The horizon is always eye level regardless of elevation. I didn't think it was true. The NBA player had to apologize after he speculated that the Earth was flat on a show.
According to the leading flat-earther theory, Earth is a disc with a wall of ice surrounding it. People can fall off the ice wall if they climb over it. In keeping with their skepticism of NASA, known flat-earther conspiracy theorist Nathan Thompson approached a man in a Starbucks in May of last year. The founder of the Official Flat Earth and Globe Discussion page shouted that the Earth is flat and that NASA is lying in the video.
They say that Earth's gravity is a lie. The disc of Earth is driven up by dark energy at a rate of 32 feet per second squared. There is disagreement among flat-earthers about whether or not Einstein's theory of relativity allows the planet to accelerate indefinitely. In this alternate version of reality, Einstein's laws are still in place.
Most flat earthers believe that the disc of Earth is made of rocks.
Even within the flat Earth community, all of the above is very controversial. Davidson told CNN that they don't think we're a flying pancake in space. He said that it is more common at the Flat Earth International Conferences to believe that space does not exist. The speaker said that Earth is shaped like a diamond and is not a sphere.
Some people think the moon is a good thing. According to Live Science's sister site Space.com, some people think that the moon and sun are spheres. Earth's day and night cycle is explained by the idea that the sun and moon are spheres that travel in circles around the plane of the Earth. They say that the stars should move in a plane that's 3,100 miles up. The stars illuminate different parts of the planet over a 24 hour period. Flat-earthers think there must be an invisible moon that obscures the lunar eclipse.
There are videos on the internet that argue that the moon is a light and not a shadow. A speaker made a case for the moon at the conference.
Flat Earthers seem to be hard to discourage based on standard scientific evidence. The scientific method was developed by a 19th century flat-earther and uses sensory observations.
Michael Wilmore, vice president of the Flat Earth Society, told Live Science in 2017: "Broadly, the method places a lot of emphasis on reconciling empiricism and rationalism."
The perception that Earth is flat leads to the deduction that it must actually be flat; the anti moon, NASA conspiracy and all the rest are just examples of how that might work in practice.
The flat-earthers' theory is so absurd that it sounds like a joke, but many of its supporters think it's a better model of astronomy than the one found in textbooks. They are not joking.
There is a question of belief and sincerity that comes up a lot. Some of our members see the Flat Earth Society and Flat Earth Theory as a critique of the scientific method or as a kind of "solipsism for beginners." Some people think the certificate would be funny to have on their wall. I know a lot of members, and I am completely convinced of their belief.
Wilmore is a believer. He said that his own convictions are a result of a lot of data that he has personally observed.
Both Wilmore and Shenton think that the evidence for global warming is strong despite the fact that a lot of the evidence comes from NASA. Evolution and most of the other tenets of science are accepted by them. Davidson disagrees with other scientific theories and findings that conflict with a strict interpretation of the bible.
There are many ways to know that the world is not flat. NASA's image library contains a lot of nice pictures of the globe taken from the International Space Station. NASA is committed to the hoax.
Are you not sure about NASA? According to Space.com, the Russians take pictures of the Earth. Japan's space agency is also open in a new tab. There is a new tab for China.
One can check on the planet's shape with one's own eyes if one believes that all these countries put aside their political tensions in order to maintain the fiction of a spherical Earth. You can go to a harbor and see the ships leave. The bottom of the ship will go first as the ship disappears.
Life is weird on a flat Earth.
The ancient Greeks' book is a good place to start. The world was determined to be a globe by a few observations. The stars aren't the same in the northern and southern hemispheres, and that's one of the reasons. During a lunar eclipse, the Earth's shadow on the moon is curved.
The Greeks figured out how to use a stick and the light of the sun to calculate the Earth's diameter. Eratosthenes was able to calculate the planet's circumference by measuring the angle of a shadow cast by the sun at the same time and day in two different cities. The actual distance is 24,900 miles. The angle of the sun on different parts of the planet shows that we are all sitting on a globe.
Experts don't seem to be surprised by their belief system. Karen Douglas is a psychologist at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom who studies the psychology of conspiracy theories.
People tend to think that the Earth is flat. Douglas told Live Science that he didn't see anything that sounded like they were just putting that idea out there for any other reason.
She said that all conspiracy theories have the same basic thrust: They present an alternative theory about an important issue or event, and then explain why someone is covering up that version of events. She said that one of the major points of appeal was that they explained a big event but didn't go into details. A lot of the power is due to the fact that they are ambiguous.
The way in which conspiracy theorists stick to their stories makes them special. Most people think that the Earth is round, but flat-earthers think that it's not true. If you're faced with a minority viewpoint that is put forth in an intelligent, seemingly well-informed way, and the proponents don't deviate from their strong opinions, they can be very influential. We call it minority influence.
In a study published online in the American Journal of Political Science, Eric Oliver and Tom Wood, political scientists at the University of Chicago, found that about half of Americans endorse at least one conspiracy theory. Oliver said many people are willing to believe ideas that are not in line with the cultural narrative. A human tendency to see unseen forces at work is what leads to conspiratorial belief.
Flat-earthers don't fit completely in this picture. Conspiracy theorists often adopt fringe theories that don't agree with each other. The shape of the Earth is the only hang up for flat earthers. Oliver wrote in an email that if they were like other conspiracy theorists, they would have a tendency to believe in supernatural forces. It doesn't seem like they do, which makes them very odd compared to most Americans who believe in conspiracy theories.
The article was first published in October of 2012 and has been updated three times since.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
