Flat Earth - a conspiracy too far?
- Katharyn Daniels
- Feb 24, 2019
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 9, 2019
For as long as we have developed theories, there have been fringe groups that come up with a conspiracy theory to counteract it – not believing that what science or the government tells us is actually true. Conspiracies range from doubt around the Apollo Moon landings, to what actually happened during 9/11. One of the most persistent - and some would say the most ridiculous - is the belief in a flat Earth.
Scientists since Ancient Greek times have theorised that our Earth is spherical. Theories that have since been proven by voyages both around the world and into space.
However, there is a growing number of people believing in this conspiracy of late, partly due to social media.
Dr Lee, who runs the Twitter account @Theflateartherz, is one of these. He believes in flat Earth theory because of “observable reality.”
Dr Phil Sutton, astrophysics lecturer at the University of Lincoln disagrees.
“We’ve got the globe. It’s fairly obvious because you can see it. We could get flat Earthers, put them in a spacecraft and launch them into space so they could see it for themselves. They could actually go around it if they wanted to so I don’t think that’s in any question really."
This belief in a flat Earth is one issue, but flat Earthers such as Dr Lee also discredit other scientific findings such as gravity, space and even the Earth’s atmosphere.
Dr Lee claims that the atmosphere doesn’t exist. He says: “How can an atmosphere be right next to a vacuum” and also that the oceans prove Earth isn’t round because: “for the globe model to work these large oceans have to curve around a ball. No experiment has ever demonstrated large bodies of water curving or sticking to a spinning ball.”
When it's put to him that the atmosphere and the oceans work in a globe model because of gravity he states: “I have seen no evidence that gravity exists. It is only a theory, it has never been proven to exist.”
He believes that the forces at work are buoyancy and density. Dr Sutton countered this claim with a simple: “[that's] basically that’s gravity though isn’t it.
“It’s why a hot air balloon rises because you actually decrease the density in the hot air balloon so it's lighter and naturally wants to float, but that whole idea works on gravity because what is buoyancy otherwise.”
It has been proven by scientists on the International Space Station that water in a free form state does naturally form a sphere, as Dr Sutton argues.
Many flat Earthers think the North Pole is the centre of our Earth while Antarctica forms an ice ring around the Earth, which Dr Lee also buys into – even going as far as to say that recent explorations that led to two men crossing Antarctica were “nothing but propaganda.”
He believes that bedrock holds up this flat Earth which goes on “infinitely.”
These are all views that are held by the Flat Earth Society, who claim that people lie about the Earth being flat to “maintain legitimacy”, “hide the truth of the Bible”, and “gain power and money.”
Dr Sutton says: “Most objects around this sort of size become spherical. When you get a bit smaller they are a bit more uneven and potato shaped.
“They are governed by gravity basically so once they get to a certain size, gravity pulls them into this shape.”
He added: “We look at other planets and stars and they are round, we see them rotate. It only makes sense that the Earth would be the same. For it not to be raises even more questions.”
However, Dr Lee does not see this anomaly as a problem. Rather he does not believe that other planets and stars even exist “regardless of their shape or form.”
Instead he claims that stars are static electricity on the surface of an indestructible dome which surrounds Earth.
This raises more questions than it answers though. As Dr Sutton puts it: “Why would the dome have static in perfect spheres. If it is static noise it should be random, it shouldn’t be coherent to make structures like that.”
It seems that most of the issues Dr Lee raises can be explained by the existence of gravity and the forces that exert on the Earth.
The problem is, Dr Lee cannot see that this exists. For some, it seems, seeing is believing...
There are other issues raised with flat Earth theory: seasons, time zones, night and day. These processes are easily explained if you see the Earth as a globe due to the rotation and orbits of the Earth around the Sun.
Flat Earthers also try to explain this easily: “the light from the sun changes its shape slightly, this results in different time zones.”
One of the most common claims that the Earth is flat is that you cannot see a curve.
Dr Sutton says that this is because of scaling. “If you stood on a ball that’s the size of you, yeah you can see the curvature. You scale it up to a certain size where the horizon doesn’t start to curve then it seems fairly obvious that you’ll have to move further and further away.”
Despite this differing opinion, Dr Sutton says he thinks flat Earthers “have good intentions" but they aren't looking at the problem scientifically.
“With science you’re supposed to take observations and work out what is happening with them whereas with flat Earthers it’s almost as though they’ve come up with a theory before they’ve actually made the observations. It should actually be the other way around.”
Dr Lee added that his advice would be to "do your own research and always ask questions."
It's clear that there will never be an agreement between flat Earth theorists and scientists, however it does seem remarkably coincidental that scientists across all centuries since around 500 BC have come to the conclusion that the Earth is a globe.
After all, what have they got to gain from lying?
What are your thoughts on this topic? Get in touch with us on social media or send us an email at contact.us.taboo@gmail.com - we want to use some of your comments in our upcoming podcast.
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