Unbelievably, in this day and age, there is a small pocket of people who still believe that the Earth is flat. When my son mentioned this to me on the way to school one day, I thought he was joking. Why would any reasonable, sane, person with a modicum of common sense seriously believe our fair planet is flat?

Out of curiosity, I looked it up online. I was disturbed to discover an entire system of theories based on a belief that no educated person has put stock in since the third century B.C. (Blakemore, 2017). Not since ancient times has a reasonably intelligent person found credence in the claim that the earth is flat. This must have been promoted as an elaborate attention-getting joke. What is the point? To prove you don’t have any common sense or power of observation?  Even more disturbing was to discover that many members of the “flat-earthers” sincerely believe that the Earth is indeed flat.

They claim that around 200 people a year join in their beliefs.  Well, 200 out of the almost 8 billion that exist on Earth isn’t really impressive. The fact is you are more likely to choke to death on an underripe grape than finding someone capitulating to the flat-earther philosophies. No matter the odds, these people are serious about what they believe and why. They have their own organization and website and aren’t afraid to make public their beliefs.

So what do they believe? Obviously, they believe the world is flat. But wait? What about gravity? They claim that we don’t really have gravity. You may wonder why we aren’t free-floating around. That is because the Earth (shaped like a disc) is being pushed up at the rate of what we round-earthers consider to be gravity.  What is pushing the Earth up? Something called “dark energy”. Even if I believed the dark energy hypothesis (notice I did not call it a theory), then how does that explain the other planets, stars, and moons in our solar system? Are those being pushed up as well? And how is it they can rotate around the Earth while being pushed up by such a force?

They also believe that gravity on a sphere is impossible. On their website, they explain it this way:

Using the “round Earth” theory, setting an object on the earth would be like setting grains of sand on a beach ball. Certainly, a few grains would stay – right around the top, the surface is nearly horizontal – but when you stray too far from the absolute top of the ball, the grains of sand start sliding off and falling onto the ground. The Earth, if round, should behave in exactly the same fashion. Because the top is a very localized region on a sphere, if the Earth were in fact round, there would be only a very small area of land that would be at all inhabitable. Stray to the outside fringes of the “safe zone”, and you start walking at a tilt. The further out you go, the more you slant until your very survival is determined by the tread on your boots. Reach a certain point, and you slide off the face of the planet entirely. Obviously, something is wrong.”

Something is wrong? You can say that again.

Gravity is created by mass. Gravity doesn’t merely pull “down”, but in the case of a round object, it pulls inward because of the shape. That, and the atmosphere, are reasons why the oceans don’t leak out into space. That inward pull is why all people, everywhere, can stand straight up and walk around without worrying about slipping off like sand on a beach ball.

And, as a life-long beach bum and mermaid in disguise, I have to ask: without gravity, how do they explain the tides? I didn’t find any reference to that. Admittedly, I didn’t wade too deeply into the website because I forgot to bring a shovel.

I have stood on the seashore many times and looked out at the horizon. It isn’t a straight line. There is a slight curvature. Also, if the Earth was flat, the beam from a lighthouse would be able to be seen from very far away. Instead, due to the slight curvature of the planet, the beam is cut off around 20 miles if the lighthouse is 130 above sea level.

I have watched the sun come up in the east and set in the west. I’ve watched the moon’s size change depending on whether it is close to the horizon or at its zenith. But don’t take my humble observations. How about the countless footage from space? But I guess they can’t admit to there actually being gravity on Earth because if you have a gravitational pull on a disc, sooner or later the disc will collapse into itself.

Oh, right. I forgot to mention the conspiracy theory. All those thousands of photos of the Earth in its spherical glory are photoshopped. All of them.

The GPS devices in airplanes? Rigged to make the flat disc of the Earth to appear spherical. The pilots only think they are flying in a straight line along the globe. They are actually flying in circles over a disc.

Why the conspiracy? According to their website, the flat-earthers believe the government is covering up the true shape of the Earth. They believe it is financially motivated. It is cheaper to pretend to have a space program than to actually have one.

But I have to ask: To what end? Why cover up the shape of the Earth? It makes no sense.

NASA does have a job in all of this, besides covering up the true shape of the Earth. Apparently, the model for flat-earthers is that our planet is a disc. The arctic is in the middle and the Antarctic is a tall wall of ice all around the rim of Earth. NASA’s job is to make sure no one climbs the ice and falls off the edge of the world.

I might actually believe they had an ounce of common sense if they weren’t so vague in their explanations. It is convenient to be vague because it cuts out the pesky details that can come back and bite them in the backside later.

They may call it the “round earth theory”, but it has been proven. Claiming that it is a huge coverup by the government flies in the face of the endless footage and observation by scientists. The idea that the Earth is flat went out of academic vogue over two thousand years ago thanks to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians.

We have proof. We have observation. We have repeatable conditions with which to test the theory. I’d say by now, after two millennia, we could say we have a scientific law. The Earth is round. Any other vague reasons or “evidences” to the contrary simply fall flat.