The flat Earth conspiracy is probably the most bizarre of all of the conspiracy theories spreading on the web. As a matter of fact, the early Greeks discovered the planet’s shape (and maybe even its circumference) in the 3rd century B.C.
A fringe society established in the 1950s, devoted to insisting the Earth is flat, has created a contemporary ground of flat Earth believers. These proponents state the Earth is a flat disc, and that proof that it’s round – say, photographs taken from space – are an elaborate hoax involving several governments. There’re divergent viewpoints as to the way the flat Earth functions, with believers producing complex variations of physics as well as creative interpretations of the solar system to make their theories work.
Nobody understands just how many believer in the flat Earth can be found. Based on the Smithsonian Magazine, membership in the Flat Earth Society, established in 1956, had gotten to 3,500 individuals. The organization nowadays has over 500 members on its roster. But a number of believers would like absolutely nothing to do with the Flat Earth Society, based on a 2019 CNN article(opens in new tab), with a few attendees of the Flat Earth International Conference in Dallas that year informing the news company that the organization is a government sponsored front created to make Flat Earthers seem to be bad. “We aren’t a government controlled organization,’ the Flat Earth Society stated in an interview with CNN. We’re a group of Flat Earth theorists that long predate nearly all of the FEIC newcomers to the scene. “
WHO ARE FLAT-EARTHERS?
As the Flat Earth Society/Flat Earth International Conference schism shows, flat earthers aren’t a monolithic group. Daniel Shenton, the present president of the Flat Earth Society, is a Londoner who resides in Hong Kong. Robbie Davidson, who runs the annual Flat Earth International Conferences, is a Canadian who embodies a Biblical worldview and opposes what he calls “scientism.”
A 2017 national survey by Public Policy Polling discovered that just 1% of Americans thought the Earth was flat, with an additional 6% stating they had been uncertain. There was hardly any evidence of variations in this opinion by political affiliation, with any differences between Trump voters, Third-Party voters and Clinton voters falling within the poll’s error margin of 3.2%.
A 2018 article in the Colorado Sun on a flat Earth meeting in Denver discovered that lots of attendees believed an entire collection of conspiracy theories, like that most politicians are actors and that powerful shadowy forces control the world.
Celebrities who favor flat earthers are at times given a boost. For example, on Jan. 25, 2016, rapper-singer Bobby Ray Simmons Jr. (known as B.o.B) released a song named “Flatline” where he disses astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, after the pair had a Twitter fight over the spherical-ness of the earth. The B.O.B. thinks the Earth is flat. Just a day earlier, the rapper posted a tweet: “No matter exactly how high you happen to be in elevation, the horizon is always at eye level, sorry cadets.” I didn’t wish to think it, either. In 2018, NBA player Kyrie Irving had to apologize after creating a media dispute by speculating the Earth was flat on a 2017 podcast.
FLAT EARTH MAP

The dominant theory of flat earthers is usually that the Earth is a disc, with the Arctic Circle in the middle as well as Antarctica, a 150-foot (45 meters) wall of ice around the rim. They point out NASA workers keep the ice wall secure so no one falls off of the disc. (In keeping with their skepticism about NASA, known flat Earther conspiracy theorist Nathan Thompson contacted a man he claimed was a NASA employee in a Starbucks in mid-May 2017. In a video posted on YouTube, Thompson, founder of the Official flat Earth and Globe Discussion page, claimed he had evidence the Earth was Flat (apparently stating that an astronaut drowning was that proof, and that NASA was slandering.)
Additionally, they claim the weight of the Earth is a misguided illusion. Objects don’t accelerate downward; Instead, the Earth’s disc speeds up at 32 feet per second squared (9.8 meters a second squared), driven by a mysterious force known as dark energy. There is disagreement among flat earthers as to whether Einstein’s theory of relativity enables the environment to accelerate forever without the earth eventually exceeding the speed of light. (in this alternative version of reality, Einstein’s laws appear to still apply.)
It is unknown what lies beneath the disc of the earth, but many flat earthers think it is composed of rocks.
Take note that even within the flat Earth community, most of the above is totally contentious. “None of us think we’re a flying pancake of space,” Davidson told CNN in the 2019 article. He added : “at the Flat Earth International Conferences, it is becoming more and more common to think that space simply doesn’t exist at all and that the disc of Earth remains still. As reported by one speaker at the FEIC in 2018, the Earth is neither a disc nor a ball, but instead is shaped like a gem.
DO FLAT-EARTHERS THINK THE MOON IS FLAT?
Flat earthers have different opinions about the moon on the flat Earth. Some believe that the moon as well as sun are spheres as the Earth is flat, based on Live Science’s sister site Space.com. In this view of the solar system, the day as well as night cycle of the Earth is discussed by presuming that the sun and moon are spheres measuring 32 miles (51 kilometers) that orbit above the Earth’s plane in circles measuring 3,000 miles (4,828 km). (Stars, they say, fly 3,100 miles up on a plane.) These celestial spheres, shaped as spotlights, illuminate various regions of the planet in a 24-hour cycle. Many flat earthers believe that there ought to also be an invisible “Antimoon” that obscures the moon during a lunar eclipse.
You will find videos on YouTube pointing to shadows in moon photographs and arguing the moon is transparent and therefore only a light. During the Guardian’s 2018 seminar, a single speaker made a case for the moon as a projection.
WHAT IS THE ZETETIC METHOD?
There’s a reason why flat earthers appear hard to convince based upon scientific evidence: Theorizing of the flat Earth originates out of a way of thought known as the “Zetetic method.” The Zetetic Method is a substitute for the logical technique, created by a 19th century flat-earther, by which sensory observations rule supreme.
“Broadly, the method assigns a lot of emphasis on reconciling rationalism and empiricism, and making logical deductions based on empirical data,” Flat Earth Society vice president Michael Wilmore, an Irishman, told Live Science in 2017.

In Zetetic astronomy, the opinion that the Earth is flat leads to the deducement that it have to be flat actually; the antimoon, NASA conspiracy and most of the rest are merely rationalizations for how that could work in practice.
These details make the Flat Earthers ‘theory sound like a farce, but a lot of its supporters consider it as a more plausible style of astronomy compared to the one you will find in books. In short, they aren’t kidding.
“The issue of belief and sincerity arises a lot,” Wilmore said. “I would probably say that more than a few of our members view the Flat Earth Society and Flat Earth Theory as a kind of epistemological exercise, whether to be a critique of the scientific method or as a sort of solipsism for beginners,’ he said. Also, there’re most likely a few who believed that putting the certification on their wall would be kind of amusing. But, I know many of the members individually and I’m totally convinced of their belief. “
Wilmore is among true believers. “My convictions are the outcome of philosophical introspection and a significant body of data which I’ve personally observed and which I am currently compiling,” he said.
Both Wilmore and Shenton think that the evidence for global warming is strong, despite most of the research coming from satellite data gathered by NASA, the kingpin of the “round – Earth conspiracy.” Additionally they accept evolution and many of the mainstream medical principles. This contrasts with Davidson who has challenged other scientific findings including evolution that contradict a strict interpretation of the Bible.
HOW WE KNOW THE EARTH IS NOT FLAT?

There’re lots of ways to know the Earth is round, in spite of the flat earthers ‘claims. One quick choice is checking out NASA’s image library, which is chock-full of excellent, curvy photographs of the globe taken from the International Space Station. If NASA is lying to everybody, they’re committed to the bit.
Do you not trust NASA? The Russians additionally snapped photos of the round Earth, reported Space.com (opens in new tab). Also does the Japanese space agency (opens in a new tab). And China ‘s(opens in new tab).
For that flat earther, certain that each one of these countries put aside their political tensions to maintain the fiction of a spherical Earth, there are in addition ways to observe the form of the planet with your own eyes. One of the easiest is to go to a port and watch the ships depart. When a ship vanishes over the horizon, gradually the mast will go down first, and then the bottom of the ship.
You are able to even borrow a page from the book of the ancient Greeks. The early Hellenistic philosophers discovered that based on a couple of observations the earth had to become a globe. One was the stars aren’t the same in the northern and Southern Hemispheres: Coming from different halves of the planet earth, you are clearly looking out at different quadrants of space. Yet another was the shadow of the Earth is curled on the surface area of the moon during lunar eclipses.
The Greeks actually managed to compute the rough circumference of the Earth using very little fancy tools, apart from the light and a stick of the sun. By determining the perspective of a shadow, cast by sunlight in two towns at the same day and time, a known distance apart, philosopher Eratosthenes managed to compute the circumference of the world was between 24,000 and about 29,000 miles (38,600 as well as 46,670 kilometers). (It is in fact 24,900 miles.) The simple fact various regions of the planet have various angles of the sunshine indicates that we’re all on a globe.
CONSPIRACY THEORY PSYCHOLOGY
As inconceivable as their belief system appears, it doesn’t actually shock professionals. Karen Douglas, a psychologist at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom who studies the psychology of conspiracy theories, says that dull Earthers ‘beliefs cohere with those of other conspiracy theorists.
“these folks usually think that the Earth is flat,” she said. “I do not see something that seems like they’re just putting that idea out there for some other reason,” Douglas said.
She pointed out all conspiracy theories share a basic thrust: They present an alternative theory about a crucial event or issue and develop an (often vague) explanation for why somebody is covering up that “true” version of events. “One of the primary points of interest is that they explain a huge event, but they do it without going into the details,” she said. “A great deal of their effectiveness lies in their vagueness,” she noted.
The self-assured way that conspiracy theorists keep to their story gives that story a special appeal. Flat earthers tend to be, after all, more convinced the Earth is round than many people that it is flat (probably because the remainder of us don’t have something to prove). “If you are confronted with a minority viewpoint put forth in an intelligent, seemingly well informed manner, when the proponents don’t deviate from these strong opinions they have, they are able to be very influential.” “We refer to it as minority influence,” Douglas explained.
In a study published online March 5, 2014, in the in the American Journal of Political Science, Eric Oliver and Tom Wood, political scientists at the University of Chicago, discovered that approximately half of Americans support more than one conspiracy theory, from the idea that 9/11 was an inside job to the JFK conspiracy. Lots of individuals are prepared to think a lot of concepts which are directly in opposition to a dominant cultural narrative, “Oliver told Live Science. He states the conspiratorial belief originates from a human inclination to see invisible forces at work, referred to as magical thinking.
Flat earthers , however, do not fit in this picture perfectly. Many conspiracy theorists support many fringe ideas, even contradictory ones. In the meantime, the flat earthers’only hang-up will be the shape of the earth. “If they had been like other conspiracy theorists, they should show a tendency toward a large amount of magical thinking, like believing in UFOs, ESP, ghosts the Devil, and other unseen, intentional forces,” Oliver wrote. “It does not sound like they actually do, which makes them extremely unusual relative to nearly all Americans who believe in conspiracy theories,” she said.
This article was originally published by Live Science.