The flat Earth conspiracy is the most curious of all the conspiracy theories on the internet. The ancient Greeks figured out the planet's shape in the third century B.C.
A fringe society founded in the 1950s that insisted that the Earth was flat has given way to a modern flat Earth movement. The believers claim that the Earth is a flat disc and that the evidence that it is round is a hoax. Beliefs in the solar system and elaborate versions of physics make their theories work, with differing opinions on how the flat Earth works.
No one knows how many believers are out there. Membership in the Flat Earth Society was once 3,500 people. More than 500 people are on the society's roster. Some people at the Flat Earth International Conference in Dallas told CNN that the organization was a government-sponsored front designed to make Flat Earthers look bad. The Flat Earth Society told CNN that they were not a government-controlled body. We're an organization of Flat Earth theorists that have been around for a long time.
Who are flat-earthers?
The Flat Earth Society/Flat Earth International Conference revealed that flat-earthers are not 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.
According to a national poll, only 1% of Americans think the Earth is flat, with an additional 6% saying they aren't sure. There was no evidence that there was a difference between the beliefs of Trump voters, Clinton voters and third-party voters.
The Colorado Sun found that many attendees at a flat Earth convention in Denver believed in a lot of conspiracy theories, such as that politicians are actors and that powerful shadowy forces control the world.
Flat-earthers get a boost from celebrity believers. Bobby Ray Simmons Jr., known as B.o.B, released a song called "Flatline" in which he criticized Neil deGrasse Tyson after the two had a battle on social media. B.o.B thinks Earth is not flat. The horizon is always eye level, no matter how high in elevation you are. I didn't think it was true. The NBA player had to apologize for suggesting that the Earth was flat on a show.
Flat Earth map.
The Bible Map of the World is a flat Earth map drawn in 1893. Credit: CalimaX
The leading flat-earther theory holds that the Earth is a disc with a wall of ice around the rim. People can fall off the ice wall if they climb over it. In keeping with their skepticism of NASA, Nathan Thompson approached a man he said was a NASA employee in a Starbucks. In a video posted on YouTube, Thompson, founder of the Official Flat Earth and Globe Discussion page, shouted that he had proof the Earth is flat and that NASA is lying.
They say that Earth's gravity is an illusion. 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 upward indefinitely without eventually reaching the speed of light. Einstein's laws are still in this alternate version of reality.
Most flat-earthers believe that the disc of Earth is composed of rocks.
It's worth noting that all of the above is very contentious within the flat Earth community. Davidson told CNN that they don't believe we're a flying pancake in space. At the Flat Earth International Conferences, it's more common to believe that the disc of the Earth is empty. The speaker at the FEIC argued that Earth is shaped like a diamond.
Do people think the moon is not flat?
The partial lunar eclipse of Nov. 19, 2021, can be seen through a telescope from Los Angeles, California. The image is from the Obsevatory.
Flat Earth has differing opinions about the moon. Live Science's sister site Space.com reported that some people think that the moon and sun are spheres. The sun and moon are spheres that move in circles 3,000 miles above the plane of the Earth, according to this vision of the solar system. They say that stars move in a plane that is 3,100 miles up. The spheres illuminate different parts of the planet over a 24 hour period. Flat-earthers think there must be an invisible moon that obscures the moon during lunar eclipses.
There are videos on the internet that argue that the moon is transparent and therefore just a light. A speaker at the conference made a case for the moon as a projection.
The Zetetic Method is what it is.
Flat Earthers seem to be hard to discourage based on standard scientific evidence. The scientific method, developed by a 19th-century flat-earther, uses sensory observations to make decisions.
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, and making logical deductions based on empirical data."
On a flat Earth, our world would get weird fast. GPS satellites wouldn't work on a flat Earth, so navigation could get more difficult. If gravity pulled toward the planet's center, you would have trees that were slanted and even rain. Earth would not be able to hold onto an atmosphere and skies would turn black if there was no gravity. How It Works is an image credit.
The idea that Earth is flat leads to a deduction that it must be flat, and 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 elaborately absurd that it sounds like a joke, but many of its supporters consider it a more plausible model of astronomy than the one found in textbooks. They are not kidding.
"The question of belief and sincerity is one that comes up a lot," Wilmore said. "If I had to guess, I would say that some of our members see the Flat Earth Society and Flat Earth Theory as a kind of critique of the scientific method or as a kind of'solipsism for beginners'." Some people thought the certificate would be funny to have on their wall. I know many of them personally and I'm completely convinced of their belief.
Wilmore is among the true believers. He said that his own convictions are a result of his personal observations and research.
The evidence for global warming is strong despite the fact that a lot of the evidence comes from NASA. Evolution and most other mainstream tenets of science are accepted by them. Davidson disagrees with other scientific theories and findings, such as evolution, that contradict a strict interpretation of the Bible.
How do we know the Earth is not flat?
The view of thousands of lights in North Africa was photographed by Tang Hongbo on July 30, 2021. Tang Hongbo is the China Manned Space Engineering Office.
There are many ways to know that the world is not flat. NASA's image library has a lot of nice pictures of the globe taken from the International Space Station. NASA is committed to the bit if they are hoaxing everyone.
Don't trust NASA? The Russians take pictures of the Earth. Japan's space agency also does. And China's.
There are ways to check on the planet's shape with one's own eyes if you're convinced 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 watch the ships leave. The bottom of the ship will go first, followed by the mast, as the ship disappears over the horizon.
Life would get weird on a flat Earth.
The ancient Greeks' book can be used to take a page. The world had to be based on a few observations. The stars are not the same in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and that is one of the reasons. There is a curved shadow on the moon's surface during lunar eclipses.
The Greeks figured out how to calculate an approximate circumference of the Earth using a stick and the light of the sun. The philosopher 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. It's actually 24,900 miles. The angle of the sun on different parts of the planet indicates that we're all sitting on a globe.
Conspiracy theory and psychology.
It doesn't surprise experts that their belief system is so unbelievable. Karen Douglas, a psychologist at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom who studies the psychology of conspiracy theories, says flat-earthers' beliefs are similar to those of other conspiracy theorists.
People generally believe that the Earth is flat. Douglas told Live Science that he wasn't seeing 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 construct an explanation for why someone is covering up that "true" version of events. She said that one of the major points of appeal is that they explain a big event but often without going into details. A lot of the power comes from the fact that they are vague.
The way in which conspiracy theorists stick to their story is what makes it special. Most people think the Earth is round, but flat-earthers think it's not so, because they think the Earth is flat. 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," Douglas said.
A study published online in the American Journal of Political Science found that about half of Americans endorse at least one conspiracy theory, from the idea that 9/11 was an inside job to the JFK conspiracy. Oliver told Live Science that many people are willing to believe ideas that are contrary to the cultural narrative. conspiratorial belief is caused by a human tendency to see unseen forces at work.
Flat-earthers don't fit in the picture. Conspiracy theorists often adopt fringe theories that conflict with each other. The shape of the Earth is the only hang-up for flat-earthers. Oliver wrote that if they were like other conspiracy theorists, they would have a tendency to believe in supernatural forces. It doesn't sound 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 updated in December of 2021.
Live Science published the original article.
