what to the planets look like in a flat earth world
Are flat-earthers being serious?
Of all the conspiracy theories that litter the Cyberspace, the apartment Earth conspiracy is quite possibly the most curious. After all, the ancient Greeks figured out the planet's shape (and even its circumference) in the tertiary century B.C.
But a fringe society founded in the 1950s, dedicated to insisting that the Earth is apartment, has given rise to a mod ground of apartment Earth adherents. These believers claim that the Earth is a apartment disc, and that evidence that it is round — say, pictures taken from space — are an elaborate hoax involving multiple governments. Opinions differ on exactly how the flat Earth works, with believers concocting elaborate versions of physics and creative interpretations of the solar system to make their theories piece of work.
No one knows how many flat Earth believers are out there. Co-ordinate to Smithsonian Magazine (opens in new tab), membership in the Apartment Earth Society, founded in 1956, in one case reached three,500 people. Today, the lodge claims more than than 500 members (opens in new tab) on its roster. But some believers want nothing to exercise with the Flat Earth Society, according to a 2019 CNN article (opens in new tab), with some attendees of the Flat Globe International Briefing in Dallas that year telling the news agency that the organization is a government-sponsored front designed to make Flat Earthers look bad. (The Flat Globe Society responded to this past telling CNN, "We are not a government-controlled torso. We're an organisation of Flat Earth theorists that long predates most of the FEIC newcomers to the scene.")
Who are apartment-earthers?
As the Flat World Guild/Flat World International Conference schism reveals, flat-earthers are not a monolithic group. The current president of the Apartment World Society, Daniel Shenton, is a Londoner who at present lives in Hong Kong. Robbie Davidson, who organizes the annual Flat Earth International Conferences, is a Canadian who espouses a Biblical worldview and opposes what he calls "scientism."
A 2017 national poll past Public Policy Polling (opens in new tab) found that simply 1% of Americans believed the Earth was flat, with an additional 6% proverb they weren't sure. There was very little evidence of differences in this belief by political amalgamation, with whatsoever differences between Trump voters, Clinton voters and third-political party voters falling within the poll'southward margin of mistake of three.2%.
A 2018 article in the Colorado Sun (opens in new tab) on a apartment Globe convention in Denver found that many attendees believed a whole suite of conspiracy theories, such equally that all politicians are actors and that powerful shadowy forces control the world.
Apartment-earthers occasionally become a boost from celebrity believers. For instance, on Jan. 25, 2016, rapper-singer Bobby Ray Simmons Jr. (known every bit B.o.B) released a track called "Flatline" in which he disses astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, later the two had a Twitter battle over the spherical-ness of the planet. B.o.B is convinced Earth is flat. A mean solar day earlier, the rapper tweeted: "No matter how high in elevation you lot are... the horizon is ever eye level ... distressing cadets... I didn't wanna believe it either." In 2018, NBA player Kyrie Irving had to apologize subsequently causing a media controversy by speculating that the Earth was flat on a 2017 podcast.
Apartment Earth map
The leading flat-earther theory holds that Earth is a disc with the Arctic Circle in the center and Antarctica, a 150-human foot-tall (45 meters) wall of ice, effectually the rim. NASA employees, they say, guard this ice wall to prevent people from climbing over and falling off the disc. (In keeping with their skepticism of NASA, known flat-earther conspiracy theorist Nathan Thompson approached a human he said was a NASA employee in a Starbucks in mid-May 2017. In a YouTube video of the exchange, Thompson, founder of the Official Flat Earth and World Word page, shouted that he had proof the Earth is flat — apparently saying an astronaut drowning was that proof — and that NASA is "lying.")
Furthermore, Earth'due south gravity is an illusion, they say. Objects practise non accelerate downwardly; instead, the disc of Earth accelerates upward at 32 anxiety per second squared (nine.eight meters per 2nd squared), driven upward by a mysterious forcefulness chosen dark energy. Currently, there is disagreement amid flat-earthers about whether or non Einstein'south theory of relativity permits Globe to accelerate upwardly indefinitely without the planet eventually surpassing the speed of light. (Einstein'south laws evidently still concord in this alternating version of reality.)
As for what lies underneath the disc of Globe, this is unknown, but most flat-earthers believe information technology is composed of "rocks."
It's worth noting that all of the above is completely contentious fifty-fifty inside the flat Earth community. "None of us believe that we're a flying pancake in space," Davidson told CNN in the 2019 commodity. At the Flat Earth International Conferences, it's more than common to believe that space just does not be at all and the disc of the World sits still, he said. One speaker at the 2018 FEIC even argued that Globe is neither a sphere nor a disc, merely instead is shaped like a diamond, according to The Guardian.
Exercise flat-earthers think the moon is apartment?
Flat Earth opinions near the moon vary. Some retrieve that while Earth is apartment, the moon and sunday are spheres, Alive Science's sister site Space.com reported (opens in new tab). In this vision of the solar organisation, Earth'southward solar day and nighttime bicycle is explained by positing that the sun and moon are spheres measuring 32 miles (51 kilometers) that move in circles 3,000 miles (4,828 km) above the airplane of the Earth. (Stars, they say, move in a airplane 3,100 miles upward.) Similar spotlights, these celestial spheres illuminate different portions of the planet over a 24-60 minutes bicycle. Flat-earthers believe in that location must also be an invisible "antimoon" that obscures the moon during lunar eclipses.
On YouTube, there are videos pointing to shadows in pictures of the moon and arguing that the moon is transparent, and thus simply a low-cal. One speaker at the 2018 conference attended past a Guardian reporter made a case for the moon every bit a projection.
What is the Zetetic Method?
If apartment-earthers seem hard to dissuade based on standard scientific show, there's a reason for that: flat Globe theorizing follows from a mode of thought chosen the "Zetetic Method." The Zetetic Method is an culling to the scientific method, adult by a 19th-century flat-earther, in which sensory observations reign supreme.
"Broadly, the method places a lot of emphasis on reconciling empiricism and rationalism, 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 perception that Earth is apartment leads to the deduction that it must actually be apartment; the antimoon, NASA conspiracy and all the rest are just rationalizations for how that might work in practice.
Those details brand the apartment-earthers' theory so elaborately cool it sounds like a joke, merely many of its supporters genuinely consider it a more plausible model of astronomy than the ane found in textbooks. In brusque, they aren't kidding.
"The question of belief and sincerity is ane that comes up a lot," Wilmore said. "If I had to judge, I would probably say that at least some of our members meet the Apartment Earth Social club and Flat Globe Theory as a kind of epistemological exercise, whether as a critique of the scientific method or as a kind of 'solipsism for beginners.' At that place are also probably some who idea the certificate would be kind of funny to take on their wall. That existence said, I know many members personally, and I am fully convinced of their conventionalities."
Wilmore counts himself among the true believers. "My own convictions are a consequence of philosophical introspection and a considerable body of data that I have personally observed, and which I am still compiling," he said.
Wilmore and the lodge'due south president Shenton both recollect the evidence for global warming is strong, despite much of this evidence coming from satellite data gathered by NASA, the kingpin of the "round Earth conspiracy." They also accept evolution and most other mainstream tenets of scientific discipline. This is in contrast to Davidson, who disputes other scientific theories and findings, such every bit evolution, that contradict a strict estimation of the Bible.
How we know the Earth is Not flat?
Despite the claims from flat-earthers, at that place are plenty of means to know that the world is round. One quick option is to check out NASA's image library (opens in new tab), which is chock-full of squeamish, curvy pictures of the world taken from the International Space Station. If NASA is hoaxing everyone, they're committed to the bit.
Don't trust NASA? The Russians also snap pictures of the round Earth, Space.com reported (opens in new tab). And so does Japan's space agency (opens in new tab). And China's (opens in new tab).
For the flat-earther convinced that all these countries put bated their political tensions in guild to maintain the fiction of a spherical Earth, there are also ways to bank check on the planet's shape with i's own eyes. 1 of the simplest is to go to a harbor and sentry the ships depart. As a transport disappears over the horizon, the bottom of the transport will go first, followed gradually by the mast.
Related: 8 ways life would get weird on a flat Earth
Yous can also take a page out of the ancient Greeks' book. Ancient Hellenistic philosophers figured out that the world had to exist a globe based on a few observations. I was that the stars aren't the aforementioned in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres: From opposite halves of the Earth, you're clearly looking out at unlike quadrants of space. Another was that Earth's shadow on the moon's surface during lunar eclipses is curved.
The Greeks even figured out how to calculate an estimate circumference of the Earth with no fancier tools than a stick and the light of the sun. By measuring the angle of a shadow cast by the sun at the same time and mean solar day in two cities a known altitude apart, the philosopher Eratosthenes was able to calculate that the planet's circumference was between 24,000 and about 29,000 miles (38,600 and 46,670 kilometers). (Information technology'southward actually 24,900 miles.) The very fact that the angle of the sunday differs on unlike parts of the planet indicates that nosotros're all sitting on a globe.
Conspiracy theory psychology
As inconceivable as their belief system seems, information technology doesn't really surprise experts. Karen Douglas, a psychologist at the University of Kent in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland who studies the psychology of conspiracy theories, says flat-earthers' beliefs cohere with those of other conspiracy theorists she has studied.
"It seems to me that these people practise generally believe that the Globe is flat. I'm not seeing anything that sounds every bit if they're just putting that idea out there for any other reason," Douglas told Alive Science.
She said all conspiracy theories share a bones thrust: They present an alternative theory about an important issue or result, and construct an (often) vague explanation for why someone is covering up that "true" version of events. "I of the major points of appeal is that they explain a big event but often without going into details," she said. "A lot of the ability lies in the fact that they are vague."
The self-assured way in which conspiracy theorists stick to their story imbues that story with special appeal. After all, apartment-earthers are more adamant that the Globe is apartment than most people are that the World is round (probably because the rest of the states feel we accept nothing to testify). "If you're faced with a minority viewpoint that is put along in an intelligent, seemingly well-informed style, and when the proponents don't deviate from these strong opinions they take, they tin exist very influential. We call that minority influence," Douglas said.
In a study published online March v, 2014, in the American Journal of Political Science, Eric Oliver and Tom Wood, political scientists at the University of Chicago, found that virtually half of Americans endorse at least one conspiracy theory, from the notion that 9/11 was an inside chore to the JFK conspiracy. "Many people are willing to believe many ideas that are directly in contradiction to a dominant cultural narrative," Oliver told Live Scientific discipline. He says conspiratorial belief stems from a human tendency to perceive unseen forces at work, known as magical thinking.
However, flat-earthers don't fit entirely snugly in this full general flick. Most conspiracy theorists adopt many fringe theories, even ones that contradict each other. Meanwhile, flat-earthers' only hang-upwardly is the shape of the Globe. "If they were like other conspiracy theorists, they should be exhibiting a tendency toward a lot of magical thinking, such as believing in UFOs, ESP, ghosts the Devil, or other unseen, intentional forces," Oliver wrote in an email. "It doesn't audio similar they do, which makes them very anomalous relative to most Americans who believe in conspiracy theories."
Editor's Note: This article was first published on Oct. 26, 2012, and updated by Stephanie Pappas on Dec. 16, 2021.
Originally published on Live Science.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/24310-flat-earth-belief.html
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