The fault in our stars

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Epicyclists

ZetaTalk Galileo Was Wrong, The Church Was Right Flat Earth Society (website) David Talbott Ted Holden Robert W. Felix v -t -e

“”Tila Tequila also believes that the planet is flat and one rule of life is to believe the exact opposite of what Tila Tequila believes...I know thatNeil deGrasse Tyson tweeted a lot of fancy science shit, but it's the"Duude" that got me. That's straight guy talk for"Bitch, I can't!"

—Michael K.[1]

Flat Earth (also known as theFlat Earth myth, theFlat Earth theory,Globe Skepticism,Globe Denial,flat-Earthism,Earth shape theory, less commonlyplatygeism, andintelligent geography for parodists ofintelligent design) refers to thepseudoscientific belief that theEarth — which the vast, vast majority of the population imagine in their heads as this bigspherical thing (oroblate spheroidal thing, pedants) — is actually ageocentric flat disk.Yes, people actuallydo believe this, although this belief usually involves some form of religiousfundamentalism. Modern flat earthism revolves around a quasi-religious, cult-like system ofgurus collaboratively grifting their marks.^[2]

Flatlining brain activity[edit]

The characteristics of flat-earthism[edit]

The flat Earthconspiracy cult/grift, and interaction with its proponents can be described with following concepts:

Fractal wrongness[edit]

If the flat-Earth model were correct, we would need to throw the majority, if not all, of our current knowledge ofscience clean out the window, especiallyphysics,geology, and all ofastronomy. While some fields such asmedicine might not be inherently incompatible with the shape of Earth, fractally wrong flerfs^{[note 1]} also tend to oppose things likevaccines,COVID masks,gender studies, etc.

Ad hoc reasoning[edit]

When confronted, they typically have their own explanations for their views. The "evidence" they provide is ad hoc and generallypulled out of their asses. Thepiecemeal rebuttals do not actually work together to form any model, and theyadmit it.

The only aim of the rebuttals is to shift theburden of proof. The lack of model that explains the phenomena of the physical world (celestial objects, seasons, day/night cycle etc), forces everyone in the cult to memorize statements and to fake understanding. This explains why most flat-earthers have a tendency to talk very similarly to each other, and often cite the same sources and arguments and repeat the same—

Thought-terminating clichés[edit]

Endlessly repeated statements and tautologies like "Water can't stick to a ball", "Gravity is just a theory", or "Pressurized gas needs a container" serve two meanings: The cult leaders use these as recruitment propaganda, and cult members usually scream them as a response to the cognitive dissonance they feel when challenged.

Gish gallop[edit]

Those the cult looks up to (the gurus running the grift) are in charge of defending the community. These gurus are faced with the impossible challenge of beating reality, and its nasty bias that favors logic, college-level math, and peer-reviewed, sound science, so the gurus resort in rhetorical tactics, especially Gish gallop. For an example seethis debate between Dave Farina and Flat Earth Dave. The tactic is also imitated by the cult members fighting off theircognitive dissonance.

Unified conspiracy theory[edit]

If the flat Earth was true, hiding it would require the most elaborate conspiracy in the entire world.

The conspiracy would employ tens of millions of people. It's obvious that we would need the involvement of every major government entity - especially (though by no means limited to) their militaries and almost 200^[3] space agencies. Essentially, every professional and amateur astronomer, physicist, geologist, meteorologist, rocket scientist and engineer, architect, pilot and politician in the pastfive hundred years would have to be in on it. All work they put out, every course, lecture, seminar, and talk, every paper and book, every project, every video, would be built on a lie. It would also mean theMoon landings never happened. Who else would have to be involved? All shipping companies, all airline companies, any transnational company that moves their goods around the world, odometer manufacturers (who would beVERY DEEPLY involved), satellite TV providers. Oh, and let's not forget about cartographers. Furthermore, all of these people need staff, tools, facilities, entire supply chain systems, and they'd be producing meaningless junk, decade after decade.

This conspiracy would also be completely pointless. Life for the vast majority of the human population would not be changed in any way if the Earth were revealed tomorrow to be a giant hockey puck instead ofa sphere an oblate spheroid. What would be the point of spending all of this time, effort and money into making people think that the shape of the Earth is different? If you ask a flat-earther about this you won't get much of a response. Some might claim that it is "to hide God", which is stupid: there are much simpler ways of accomplishing that, like simply suppressing religion.

Revealed flat Earth would not change the local politics, at all. We have unused resources sitting around us, right now, in much less adversarial conditions than the supposed Ice Wall (Antarctica on flerf model). On the other hand, would the the Ice Wall hide behind itself a fully automated luxury communism, there would be no need to oppress this world. If the resources were truly limitless, why not bring everyone there? If on the other hand the point is to maximize global wealth disparity, why aren't people being shipped from the Ice Wall paradise to our world? In either case, millions of people would uphold this conspiracy without reaping any of its benefits, and not one of them is complaining about it. There areno flat Earth whistleblowers. No one concerned with the well-being of 3.5 billion poor people missing out on the resources. Not a single student is puzzled by and calling out the supposed indoctrination, or making noise whenthey finally drop the bomb: "We've been lying to you abouteverything your whole life." Nobody has fought the power. That is, until now.

The supposed, hundreds of years old, perfect plot, is now being exposed by a few high-school drop-outs making YouTube content. And for some reason, the co-conspiring governments don't want to deploy their literal assassination squads, like the ones in RussianAlpha group, andGRU Unit 29155, Mossad'sKidon, CIA'sSAC, or North Korea'sReconnaissance General Bureau. Russia has murdered hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in a pointless war over resources, but disappearing the tally count of about 200,000 flerfs (or just their cult leaders) is too big of a hassle. Finding all targets at the same time wouldn't even be too hard, given that Flat Earth Dave's apptracks and leaks the precise geolocation ofevery flat-earther using the app, whether they've opted in to its friend-finder feature or not.

Considering all this, it really goes to show how big of atinfoil hat you'd have to be wearing in order to block outthat much of reality.^[4] Even fuckingAlex Jonesthinks flat-earthers are ridiculous.

Projection[edit]

Last but not least, flat-earthers have an extreme tendency to hypocritically project everything wrong with their cult, and life, to their surroundings:

• Religion: They are not the ones relying on blind faith, it's the science that's a religion, and that's trying to hide… …God.

• Oppression: They are not the sheep being exploited by their cult leaders, we are.

• Individuality: They claim fierce independence, yet they parrot their leaders' thought terminating clichés.

• Orthodoxy: They're not pushing an agenda, they're just asking hard questions. Also, anyone questioning their world-view, (even gurus capable of integrity and introspection like Jeranism), is immediatelybranded a government shill.

• Source criticism: They're not the ones taking anything at face value, but TruthSeeker42069 knows what's up.

• Knowledge: In fact, all of science is wrong — except the part they managed to gain an intuitive grasp over during primary school. They're not too dumb to get the rest of it, "it's just where the lies begin".

• Reasoning: They don’t need to be told what’s true, they’ve got ‘common sense’, which is absolutely different from when the scientific community uses their head when building the body of knowledge.

• Testimony: They claim science is all about blindly trusting what others have written about, but the 1600 year old Bible and the cult's own lore from the 19th century are 100% reliable sources.

• Progress: Mainstream physics is a hoax — except when it's busysputtering atoms ontosilicon wafers to build processors that render the very videos questioning its validity.

What the Flat Earth movement is really about[edit]

While debunking flerfs' lies hits all the right spots of fun and not too easy, all of it fails to address the nature of the Flat Earth movement. Dan Olson's video essayIn Search of a Flat Earth discusses among other things the nature of Flat Earth, and it may very well be the greatest analysis of the cult out there. You should watch it at least until Part 2.^{[note 2]}

Further analysis

Like Olson points out, flat-earthers' aim is to simplify the world, the complexity of which has exploded. This is reflected in what Thomas Winship, who wrote Zetetic Cosmogony (a corner-stone of flerf crankery), said: "Modern astronomical teachings affirms [—] that the stars and are worlds and suns, some of them equal in importance to our own Sun himself, and others vastly his superior; that these worlds, inhabited by sentient beings, are without number and occupy space boundless in extent and illimitable in duration"

In other words, science threatens flerfs' narcissistic worldview of being the God's chosen being, and thus, the center of the world. Their concern is, that if the world is bigger than mankind can ever explore, then we are not the point. Ergo, the Bible is not true, and there is no God, which in turn means death will be the permanent end of the individual's experience, and that thought isscary.^{[note 3]}

Flat Earth is a cult, and with that comes cults' power dynamics. The cult provides a simple system, where the truth is what the flat-earthers make it out to be. The cult leaders state^[6] that one must "empty their cup to be able to refill it", which signifies how fundamentally incompatible the belief system is, and how the cult expects complete rewriting of the individual's worldview. In the cult environment, the societal chaos is replaced by orthodoxy towards the central doctrine. As long as the doctrine is not challenged, it allows very lively discussion and brain-storming to fill the gaps, to explain why the cult's central thesis is true: simple "proofs" of why the Earth is flat, who are "they", and how and why are "they" hiding the true shape of our world.^{[note 4]}

Thus, flat Earth provides a liberation from the school-years era of "oppression", where wrong (or just dumb) ideas, or wrong connections between ideas, were called out. This creates a breeding-ground for crankery, and repels any, and all logical people. The echo chamber that forms, functions as a walled garden for narcissistic grifters, who are naturally gravitating towards the group to leech off money and admiration from uneducated, gullible, and often desperate people. The cult's ultimate currency is not progress from logical inference, but loyalty, and in exchange for that, the marks (slang term for suckers) get to experience belonging, community, meaning, and (at long last,) a sense of superiority. The extreme anti-establishment nature of the cult rejects contradictory evidence and those stating it, which shields the central narrative. As Olson said, fact checking serves as a filter to keep counteracting forces out. This gives the grifters a carte blanche, and removes ridicule the marks' quixotic struggle would face.

The inconsistent and contradictory ideas do not matter to flerfs. The goal is not to establish the objective truth. Like QAnon, flat Earth treats facts (and lies) as game pieces to attain the real goal. As Olson points out, "flat-earthers' goal is to un-explain the world, as real explanations impede with their politics". As Olson said about QAnon, "the goal is to find filler to justify support for authoritarian policies directed at people they already don't like", with the aim of making systemic issues go away by silencing those pointing them out.

As the true believer flerfs' goal is to "red pill everyone" to give them "personal sovereignty and newfound belief in God",^[7] recruitment while maintaining group cohesion becomes the top priority inside the group. Internally, group dynamics of shunning the non-believer is usually enough, but recruitment of new members requires explanations. The set of explanations does not seek to pass Occam's razor, but energy minimum of explanations and thought terminating clichés that maximizes recruitment with minimal work. This materializes as propaganda that snow-balls from fallacious nuggets into eight-hour long compilations.^[8] Re-use of content in new videos minimizes work and the repetition serves both asrehearsal and as the "repeat a lie long enough, and it becomes the truth" propaganda 101 tactic. The cult leaders instruct the members how to do low-effort recruitment: passively expose them to the material, and instead of engaging with their questions, steer them to the cult's lore.^[9]

As on organizational level modern flat Earth was never much more than an instance of the online grift, "redpilling everyone" mainly served to maximize the number of marks, and lack of action frustrated flerfs. Because of this, flat Earth mainly served a function in the radicalization pipeline: It was the last stepping stone of losing trust in society and its institutions. The next stone would be taking political action.

The QAnon conspiracy promised "The Storm" and "The Great Awakening", basically a fascist new world order. As fascism is more or less just "society as a cult", many flerfs believe they can thrive in it with the one resource they have an endless supply of: loyalty. After QAnon nabbed most of the flerfs, the flat Earth movement has been a shadow of its former self, consisting mostly of active members' circle-jerk webinars and conventions, and the grifters operating on whoever chose to remain in the cult, or whoever happens to stop by on their way through the radicalization pipeline.

Relativity of wrong[edit]

Isaac Asimov used the idea of a flat Earth in his essayThe Relativity of Wrong to make a point about the progress of scientific knowledge.^[10] He pointed out that the notion of a flat Earth is wrong, but the idea of aspherical Earth is also wrong, as the shape of the Earth is better described as an oblate spheroid (because the Earth is wider than it is tall, flattening out at the poles while bulging around the Equator). Asimov went on to say how these theories aren't equally wrong (and believing such a thing as a flat Earth is "wronger than wrong") but that they do have use.

An architect working on a small building site would have no use for "Spherical Earth Theory" and would assume the ground is flat, but another designing a bridge, would. A designer of novelty globes wouldn't need to compensate for the oblateness of the earth, but those sending satellites into orbit do (in fact the distortion has quite a dramatic effect on inclined orbits).

Modern flat-earthery tends to benot even wrong, however.

Preface to debunking[edit]

First things first. The Earth can not be both flat and a sphere at the same time. This isn't afalse dilemma — the twomutually exclude one another. Either the Earth is flat, andall ofestablished science is completely wrong, or the flat Earth is completely wrong, and the people spreading it are cultists and/or scammers.

Natural sciences are not soft sciences like sociology or political science, where there are different frameworks that explain the topic, with none objectively more valid than the other. Natural science deals with, and explains objective reality, and thus, it has no room for second best theory.

"But theories are just theories!"

Our everyday "I have this theory that when one is tired, their nose bleeds more often" is what science calls aconjecture. A conjecture is just an idea. A conjecture that can be tested is called ahypothesis. The testing is done using thescientific method, with ascientific experiment, that must be able to disprove the hypothesis. If it doesn't disprove it, then the experiment supports the hypothesis. If there are competing explanations, over time new experiments rule them out. Once there's sufficient evidence no other explanation is better, we start calling that explanation ascientific theory.

The theories are rarely perfect, but the process ensures they only improve over time. E.g., the model of atoms in the atomic theory has evolved fromJohn Dalton's 1803 idea of atoms being tiny particles, to J. J. Thompson's 1904plum pudding model, toRutherford-Bohr model by Niels Bohr and Ernest Rutherford in the 1910s, followed by our modernquantum mechanical model. Even the scientific method hasevolved and improved over the centuries. This pursuit of knowledge in a way that's capable of introspection is not a problem, neither is any imperfect intermediate step towards the right direction:All models are wrong, but some are useful.^{[note 5]} The real problem is those who claim to have all the answers, and those who ask society to take steps back just because it suits their politics.

In the 19th century, scientists really thought the Earth was stationary. At some point scientists like Viviani ran into precession of pendulums, that they could not explain with their current model. This created the need for a better model, and with theFoucault's pendulum rotating Earth eventually won.

For the globe model to remain the prevailingfigure of the Earth theory, it must explain as many things as flat Earth for it to be even considered, and more to be accepted. Which it does. Thus, there's nothingsuspicious orstrangely convenient about the globe model being able to trivially debunk everything flat Earth proponents — both old and new — say.

Despite this, flat-earthers still continue to misrepresent and distort the truth, using lies — either direct or by omission — and every rhetorical trick in the book, to make it seem flat Earth explains more phenomena. Time to torch their bullshit.

Flat Earth debunks[edit]

The Earth[edit]

• The Curve

Debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding the curvature of Earth:

• "But roads are flat!"
• "But water is always level!"
• "But Kansas is flatter than a pancake!"
• "But "table experiments" prove it just looks like there's curvature!"
• "But football fields prove it just looks like there's curvature!"
• "But the horizon is always at eye level!"
• "But objects go under the horizon due to perspective!"

• "But you can zoom back the boats in view!"

• "But the distance of the horizon is determined on clear weather by the power of our vision!"

• "But sunsets are caused by perspective!"

• The sunset can be re-experienced by gaining altitude

• "But you can zoom the set Sun back into view!"

• "So where's the curve?"
• "But fish eye lenses curve the horizon!"
• "So why is distant object X visible when it shouldn't be?"
• "So why isn't distant object X leaning away from us?"
• "So why did Neil deGrasse Tyson say "stuff is flat" regarding Red Bull Stratos?"
• "But globers claim you both can and can't see the curvature!"
• "But the radio waves can travel too far!"
• Mountains cast shadows to clouds only on a globe

• Shape

Debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding the shape of Earth:

• "So why did Neil deGrasse Tyson say the Earth was pear shaped?"

• Gravity

Debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding gravity:

• "Gravity does not exist!"

• Density and buoyancy
• Everything accelerates "up"
• Electromagnetism

• "So why don't people on the Southern Hemisphere fall off?"
• "So why don't rivers flow uphill?"
• "How can Earth pull such massive oceans?"
• "How can Moon override Earth's gravity and create tides?"
• "So why do lakes not have tides?"
• "But tides are caused by the gentle and gradual rise and fall of the Earth from the bosom of the mighty deep!"
• "How can Earth drag the atmosphere along but birds and bugs can fly? Why can humans jump despite air pressure?"
• "But how can long jump be longer than the height to which I can jump?"
• "But how can a pressurized atmosphere exist next to a vacuum?"
• "But there are no experiments showing pressure gradients can be created"
• "But they fake the ISS footage with Zero-G planes!"
• The long ISS shots used wire harnesses and green screens!
• "How is it that gravity can cause planets to revolve elliptical orbits around a single center of attraction?"
• "But if someone digs through the Earth, they will come out the other side with their feet up!"

• Magnetism

The debunked claim by flat-earthers regarding magnetism:

• If the Earth was flat, compasses in Antarctica would have their needlepoint North, through the Earth.

• Rotation

Debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding Earth's rotation:

• "So how can water stick to a spinning ball?"
• "Why do cannon balls fired East not have more range, and those fired West, less range?"
• "Why do cannonballs shot towards the zenith fall to the same place and not Westwards?"
• "But the Coriolis effect is fake!"

• "But gyroscopes do not show 15° per hour drift!"

• "But with 24 hours per Earth's rotation, it would be daylight during night hours six months from now!"

• Climate

Debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding climate:

• "So why does a negligible increase in distance towards the Sun cause such temperature difference at the poles?"
• "So why isn't the climate, flora and fauna on the North Pole and Iceland similar to Antarctica?"
• "So why is there a "dome" in Antarctica?"

• Navigation

Debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding navigation:

• "But pilots use flat Earth maps for navigation!"
• "But all maps of the world are flat!"
• "But there is no North-South direction circumnavigation!"
• "But planes never fly through Antarctica even though it's a shorter route!"
• There are direct flights between Australia and Southern America

The Moon[edit]

Debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding the Moon:

• The Moon only works on a globe

• Three-dimensional Moon hovering above Earth would reveal its backside
• Vertical pizza-Moon would be flat from its side
• The Moon's orientation is upside down in southern hemisphere
• A two-dimensional Moon in the firmament would appear elliptic when viewed from an angle
• The Moon's orientation depends on its latitude

• "The Moon's face spins as it revolves above Earth!"

• Miscellaneous arguments

• "But the Moon's face should show a little bit of parallax when viewed from different sides of the globe!"
• "So why is the Moon the same apparent size as the Sun?"
• "But there are eclipses where both the Moon and the Sun are visible so it can't be Earth's shadow that eclipses the Moon!"
• "Oh! The spherical Moon is tidally locked? How convenient!"
• "But a reflective Moon would show a shiny point reflection!"
• "But the Moon is made of plasma!"
• "But the Moon is self-luminescent!"
• "But if a rock can't reflect light nor can't the Moon!"
• "But the Moon is transparent!"
• "But the moonlight is cold!"

The Sun[edit]

Debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding the Sun:

• The Sun's apparent size stays almost constant year-round in analemmas
• "But Scientists have changed their answer about the distance to the Sun!"
• "But the Sun is inside the clouds!"
• "But there's no 24-hour Sun in Antarctica!"

Stars[edit]

Debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding the stars:

• "But star trail photography proves that the Earth doesn't move!"
• "But Polaris can be seen from the Tropic of Capricorn!"
• "But all stars gradually decline when moving away from the North pole!"
• "But Sigma Octantis can not be seen with publicly available telescopes!"

Celestial mechanics[edit]

Debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding celestial mechanics:

• "So why can't we feel Earth's rotation affecting us?"
• "So why can't we feel the cornering forces as we turn around the Sun?"
• So why can't we feel the cornering forces as we turn around the galaxy's center?
• "But those values add up! We're spinning like crazy!"
• "But Sundials wouldn't remain accurate due to all the movement!"
• "But in absolute terms, we are going really fast, why can't we feel it?"
• "How can Polaris maintain its alignment straight above the North Pole?"
• "Why isn't there a 12-hour night and day everywhere?"

Celestial objects[edit]

The debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding asteroids:

• "But the asteroids are fake!"

Astronautics[edit]

Debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding astronautics:

• "But rockets do not have anything to push against in space!"
• "But the ISS should be melting in 2000°C thermosphere!"

Astrophotography[edit]

Debunked claims by flat-earthers regarding the Astrophotography:

• "So why are there no REAL photos of the Earth?"
• "So why are there no photos of Earth with the stars visible?"
• "So why do continents cover different areas in photos of the globe?"
• "So why do the Earth and Moon appear different sizes in many photos?"
• "But NASA's photos of planets are fake CGI!"
• "So why is there no ISS footage of satellites or space debris?"

The conspiracy[edit]

Debunked conspiracy theories made by flat-earthers:

• "But NASA means "deceive" in Hebrew"

• "But NASA's secret documents admit the Earth is flat and non-rotating!"
• "But there are whistleblowers!"
• "So why can't we travel to Antarctica to see the 24h Sun ourselves?"

Experiments[edit]

Over the centuries, experiments have been performed to determine the shape of the Earth.

The Glober Experiments[edit]

Aristotle's observations of Earth being spherical (350 BCE)[edit]

Aristotle'sOn the Heavens (orig. De Caelo) book, written in 350 BCE, provides the first evidence about the shape of the Earth being a sphere.The book II, Ch. 14 gives as proof

Hipparchus' observation of the precession of the equinoxes (127 BCE)[edit]

Theprecession of the equinoxes discovered by Hipparchus in 127 BC, proved that the Earth's axiswobbles over time, completing one circle once every 26,000 years.

James Bradley's discovery of stellar aberration (1725)[edit]

James Bradley's discovery ofstellar aberration proved that the Earth moved through space.

The Cavendish Experiment (1797)[edit]

The Cavendish experiment demonstrated gravity between two objects.

See the main article on this topic:The Cavendish experiment

The discovery of Stellar parallax (1832-1838)[edit]

The discovery ofstellar parallax by Thomas Henderson, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, and Friedrich Bessel in the 1830s, proved that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

Foucault's Pendulum (1851)[edit]

Foucault's pendulum proved the Earth was rotating around its axis.

See the main article on this topic:Foucault's pendulum

Alfred Russel Wallace's Reproduction of the Bedford Level Experiment (1870)[edit]

Wallace's experiment proved curvature of the Earth, by controlling for atmospheric refraction.

See main article for this topic:Alfred Russel Wallace's Reproduction (1870)

Aether drift experiments[edit]

Luminiferous Aether was a hypothetical medium thought to be responsible of carrying electromagnetic radiation (visible light, X-rays, etc), similar to how air carries sound waves. Theaether drag hypothesis proposed that aether was dragged along by moving matter, such as Earth. If this was the case, then either aether moved with the Earth, and there was no relative movement, or, there was relative movement calledaether wind, and it would be detectable with instruments at rest on Earth's surface.

The aether drift experiments have never been used to prove Earth's shape (this has been known since antiquity), or movement through space (which has been known sinceJames Bradley's 1725 discovery of stellar aberration). This hasn't stopped flat-earthers from lying blatantly about both applicability, and the result supporting their crankery.

Airy's aether drag test (AKA Airy's Failure) (1871)[edit]

Airy aether drag test showed that either aether moves with the Earth, or that it doesn't exist.

See the main article on this topic:Airy's failure

Michelson-Morley experiment (1887)[edit]

The Michelson-Morley experiment proved that aether did not exist.

See the main article on this topic:Michelson-Morley experiment

Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment (1925)[edit]

The Michelson-Gale-Person experiment further refuted existence of aether, and supported Earth's rotation andspecial relativity.

See the main article on this topic:Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment

Jesse Kozlowski's Cooper River Lake Curve Experiment (2016)[edit]

Jesse Kozlowski is a surveyor who has been debunking flat-earthers by basically doing his job. Kozlowski uses "reciprocal vertical/zenith angles" to prove the curvature of the Earth. In this case, by measuring with a theodolite the reciprocal angles of two different targets at 7,311 feet from each other in the Cooper River Lake with the same elevation, using the water as the level reference. On a flat Earth, the sum-up angle for these two targets would sum up not more than 180º, and thus there would be no reciprocal vertical/zenith angles. However, Kozlowski measured that the angles of each target were higher than 90°, with a sum-up zenith angle higher than 180º, thus proving the Earth a globe.^[11]

These reciprocal zenith angles experiments (shared byMcToon) have also been replicated byWalter Bislin andThe Maine Surveyor (see below), confirming again the curvature of Earth:

Dan Olson's Lake Minnewanka Curve Experiment (2020)[edit]

Dan Olson's Lake Minnewanka curve experiment is the first, properly documented, real-time video recording of the curvature of Earth hiding objects behind itself.

See main article for this topic:Lake Minnewanka curve experiment.

The Flerf Experiments[edit]

Every once in a while, flat-earthers do try to actually walk the talk, and perform experiments themselves to disprove globe and confirm their pizza land.

Samuel Rowbotham's Bedford Level Experiment (1838)[edit]

See the main article on this topic:Samuel Rowbotham's Experiment (1838)

Darryle Marble's spirit level experiment (2017)[edit]

In 2017, Darryle Marble tried to prove the Earth flat by taking a spirit level to a plane.

At the cruising speed of 450 knots, the plane has to adjust its pitch by one degree every 8 minutes. Human pilots make less than half-a-degree corrections every few minutes. Modern autopilots make 0.1 degree corrections at the rate of roughly 10-20 adjustments per minute. These adjustments are imperceptible to human senses.^[12] In Marble's video, the spirit level's bubble absolutely does not stay still. The pitch compensation for the Earth's curvature is drowned in other disturbances from turbulence etc.

Marble also seemed to assume the change in pitch would remain constant, because he expected to see the bubble constantly move towards the other end of the spirit level. This completely fails to understand that in the globe model, gravity is always towards the ground, i.e. the geocenter of the Earth, and thus, the spirit level, when propped to the angle that's perpendicular to the zenith, will not detect the curvature. This is because the gravity well that affects the spirit level changes constantly as the plane travels along the curvature.

So because the spirit level can not detect plane's orientation in the inertial frame of reference, and because the documented bubble movement in the video easily explains 0.1 degree autopilot corrections to pitch, this experiment fails to disprove globe.

Jeran Campanella's flashlight experiment (2018)[edit]

During the filming of the 2018 Netflix documentaryBehind The Curve, Jeran Campanella, yes, the same Jeranism who later went to Antarctica with The Final Experiment group, recreated the Bedford Level Experiment with a flashlight, and he managed to prove the Earth, a globe.

Bob Knodel's RLG experiment (2018)[edit]

During the filming of the same documentary, another flat-earther, Bob Knodel, bought a 20,000 USDring laser gyroscope (RLG) to measure the drift caused by the Earth's rotation360° / 24h = 15° / h. Knodel proved Earth to be, a globe.

Mike Hughes' rocket experiment (2018)[edit]

In 2018, "Mad Mike" Hughes launched himself to the sky on a home-made rocket, in the hope of documenting the non-existence of the curve.

Hughes reached the height of 1,875 feet which just under 5% of commercial airliners' cruising altitude (38,000ft). Needless to say, the altitude was not enough to show the curve. Still, the experiment proved beyond any doubt Hughes had the largest balls in the entire flatsphere.

Hughes died in a subsequent attempt in February 2020.^[13]

Joint Experiments[edit]

The Final Experiment (2024)[edit]

See main article for this topic:The Final Experiment.

David Weiss' peer-reviewed experiment (TBD)[edit]

In February 2025, Flat Earth Daveagreed to design and take part in a rigorous, bipartisan, scientific experiment, with Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, with the goal of getting it published in a peer-reviewed, accredited journal. The preliminary idea was to measure the curve with a straight flying plane's altitude, as a function of flying distance. Weiss did his best to weasel his way out of this one, but in the end, couldn't find an excuse. The experiment design meeting will take place in June and August, 2025.

Meanwhile, Michael Toon, who hosted the episode above, is reportedly searching for an extra-long measuring tape to size up Weiss' long face.

The scoreboard[edit]

Adding to the experiments by flerfs

• the two experiments done at TFE (24 hour Sun recording, and the scale measurement), and
• the Bedford Level Experiment replication by Dan Olson,

we get to the scoreboard.

Firmament fleers[edit]

Over time, some flat earthers have made it out of the cult. Here we celebrate them for getting their lives back.

Congratulations everyone!

History[edit]

Online resurgence[edit]

Sadly, the flat Earth model is gaining popularity — or at least more vocal proponents — via the Internet, especially on various nutcase-enabling platforms likeYouTube.^[17] The starting point for the resurgence can be considered to be flat-earther Mark Sargent's first YouTube video he uploaded in February 2015.^[18] The central arguments of the video are about:

1. There exists no 360 degree camera footage from outside the ISS^[19] (there now is^[20]),
2. There are no non-composite images of Earth^[21] (there is a whole album^[22], and another^[23]), and
3. There are no straight flights from South America to Australia^[24] (there is).

Hilariously enough, the video also confirms the existence of pressure gradient^[25] which proves gravity exists, and which disproves the firmament, as pressurized containers have equal pressure regardless of altitude.

Flat Earth seems to be rooted in complete and active suspicion of all authority and an assumption thatMainstream Science™ is just one big, faceless monolith — spreading lies to keep the public in the dark about, er...Some nefarious end! NASA, being part of theIlluminati according to the flat-earthers, is possessed of infinite money and controlwhile at the same time being so incompetent they leave easily-spotted mistakes in their propaganda that expose the whole thing. Flat-earthers like Jeranism^[26] make videos filled with a mix ofGish Gallop and creative misunderstanding,willful ignorance, and flat (hah!) denial of facts and evidence to the contrary.^[27]

The flat Earth movement shares many of the same beliefs and goals as theAlt-right, and have even adopted Alt-right memes into their online presence. They created a variant ofPepe the Frog called "Fepe," or "Flat Earth Pepe."^[28]

Fundamentalist endorsements[edit]

Motives for advocating a flat over a round Earth despite evidence to the contrary vary. Manyyoung-earth creationists who think it's 6,000 years old don't go so far as to say that it's not round.^[29] However, there are some particularly nutty evangelical flat-earthers.^[30]

Modern geocentrists make a point of distancing themselves from the flat-Earth belief. Charles K. Johnson based his flat-Earth belief on a hyper-literal interpretation of theBible (asserting thatJesus' ascent "up" intoHeaven is proof of a flat Earth, since a round Earth would have no "up" or "down").^[31]

A flat-Earth movement also exists within fundamentalistIslam, based on a literal interpretation of several Qur'anic verses (see the "Religious views" section below).

While we're on the subject, a common claim by people who arrive at flatheaddery from the Religious Fundamentalism direction is that the globe is a lie propagated by the Satan-controlled media in an attempt to draw people away from the Bible. Although one would think that if Satan had that kind of power, then they'd simply ban Bibles outright.

To demonstrate the error in thinking of these people (who have apparently never heard of metaphors or hyperbole), let's look at a passage likely very near and dear to their hearts: God setting his bow in the sky after Noah's flood to celebrate his promise never to do that again. According to Hyperliteralist logic, this means that every rainbow ever (even ones produced from garden hoses) is actually all the same specific object, an actual warbow that might potentially be seized by human hands and used to fire arrows one day.

Celebrity endorsements[edit]

The rapperB.o.B., who has had several hits including "Nothin' on You" and "Airplanes", outed himself as a flat-earther in 2016 and released a diss track called "Flatline" aimed at astronomerNeil deGrasse Tyson. Tyson's nephew, who is also a rapper, released a counter-diss track in response.^[32] AstrophysicistLawrence Krauss wrote inSlate such views can be useful — even if grotesque — when they can be used to check our assumptions. He proposes three clear reasons why the Earth is round: the time zones, the seasons, and the Global Positioning System.^[33]

Confusing their ball game proficiency withan understanding of spheres in general, four NBA players also come out as flat-earthers, includingShaquille O'Neal.^[34] (He was joking.)

Tila Tequila has also endorsed flat-earthery^[35] — which seems contradictory, considering she's also endorsedHitler,^[36] whomwe don't think was a flat-earther.

In November 2024, another rapper, Lorenzo Dechalus (prof.Lord Jamar), expressed his flat Earth crankery on Godfrey's podcast and offered to debate Neil deGrasse Tyson.^[37] The heavyweight champion of astrophysics was unavailable, but, on January 15, 2025, during a 20 minute "debate" with Professor Dave, Dechalus got his ass handed back to him.^[38]

Christian flat Earth apologetics[edit]

The universe according to the Old Testament.

World picture fromChristian Topography (c. 6th-century).

ManyBiblical literalists claim the Bible disprovesevolution and other scientific theoriesprima facie. Since there is no real debate about the shape of the Earth, these passages call Biblical literalism into question. The irony of flat-earthers encouraging people tostop blindly accepting what they've been taught and do their own research has not gone unnoticed, considering that the primarily cited origin of flat Earth ideas is indeed the Bible.

In numerous passages, the Bible claims that the Earth is a flat disk and/or rectangular, usually implicitly. Whether or not the Bible "really" says this is often debated — but if the Bible was written by people who lived in societies who were unaware that the Earth is a more or less spherical object which orbits the Sun, then we would expect this view to be reflected in their writings. Presumably, God's concern would be the salvation of their souls, so it's difficult to see why clearing up the true shape of the Earth would be important for that endeavor.

Biblical flat-Earthism is very rarely accepted. Wilbur Glenn Voliva even offered $5000 as a prize for anyone who can prove that Earth is not flat. Of course, his predictions about Earth ending in 1923, 1927, 1930, and 1935 also failed.^[41] Teaching about spherical Earth was banned in the schools of Zion,Illinois, at that time.

Former President of theUnited StatesJimmy Carter mentioned flat-earthers in passing (though he was actually speaking against mandatory teaching ofcreation science):^[42]

Appeals to the Bible[edit]

What the Bible actually says about a flat Earth is clearly a matter for debate amongst Christians. But it is certainly both instructive and amusing to read how some Christians clearly see a flat Earth while other Christians attempt to dismiss their claims as poetry, dreams or something which is "obviously" not to be taken literally.

The king seeing all the earth[edit]

• "Daniel 4:10-11. In Daniel, the king “saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth… reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth's farthest bounds.” Only with a flat Earth could a tall tree be visible from "the earth's farthest bounds" — this is impossible on a spherical Earth, or is the tree a rocket?

Theological rebuttal: The strength of Daniel 4:10-11 as an argument for a flat Earth is considerably reduced by the fact that this part of the Book of Daniel recounts a dream experienced by the Assyrian king of Babylon. Thus, it does not necessarily refer to an actually existing tree or make any statements about real cosmology. This interpretation would seem to indicate that biblical literalists do not even know how to read the Bible properly. This is alsoquote mining.

Jesus seeing all the kingdoms[edit]

Shows why you couldn't see all the kingdoms. To be fair, you cansuggest that those outside of lines of sight are not kingdoms.

• Matthew 4:8: "Again, thedevil taketh him up into anexceeding high mountain [spaceship?], and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world"
• Luke 4:5: "And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time."

Theological rebuttal again: The strength of usingMatthew andLuke as flat Earth claims is reduced by the fact that "kingdom" is a human construct. If you classify all the places on Earth that you can't see from that particular location as "not kingdoms", such as barbaric tribes and non-monarchies, it can be fitted within that description. However, how the devil knows that those places are not ruled by kings (again, the concept of "king" is also a human concept) is not exactly clear.

You could also go with the idea that Satan simply showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the worldover the course of a trip around the equator or in sequence, because the text does not imply that they were showntogether.

Yet another possible interpretation is that only kingdoms in thethen known world (southern Europe, northern Africa and western Asia) are meant, which could be seen from a point in space not far above the surface of the Earth. Take your pick, flatheads.

The Earth is a circle[edit]

• Isaiah 40:22: "He sits enthroned above thecircle of the earth (Earth’s orbit?), and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like acanopy (map), and spreads them out like a tent to live in."

Jews and Christians use this quote to "prove" that the Bible implies that the Earth is spherical, although the word is "circular", and may refer to the perception of a 360 degree panoramic view. Some scholars point out thatIsaiah never uses the ModernHebrew word for sphereKadur, anywhere.^[43] It is not clear to Theists whether this is relevant, because the interpretation of the wordKadur in the Bible is disputed by Theists. This line probablydoes refer to a flat model of the earth, since an alternative translation is "He sits enthroned above thevault of the earth," a reference to thefirmament.

The passage describes theHeavens as like a canopy, not the Earth. This interpretation would seem to indicate that Biblical literalists do not even know how to readsentences properly.

Some non-flat-earth Christians maintain that this entire text is intended to be poetic in nature, as it talks about God holding the dust of the Earth in a basket. Either this, along with everything else, is meant to be a metaphorical description, or God has areally big basket.

"Four Corners"[edit]

• Isaiah 11:12 "And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts ofIsrael, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from thefour corners [north, south, east and west] of the earth."
• Revelation 7:1 "And after these things I saw fourangels standing onfour corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree."

As with the Daniel quote, modern Jews and Christians, who have been educated by Science, don't take this literally; to them the events described inRevelation are a series of visions, rather than an accurate description of the world (which would indicate that you shouldn't take the Holy Bible literally). Another interpretation of this verse is that four corners of the Earth don't refer to literal four corners but to cardinal directions, which is further supported by the description of the four winds which are commonly referenced by their cardinal direction. An additional consideration is thatLeviticus 19:27 refers to the "corners of the head"; this means that either A)the authors of the Bible had no problem with using the word "corners" non-literally while discussing round things (which would give the absurd implication that they used idioms and figurative speech just like everyone else ever), or B) The Ancient Israelites had heads like Minecraft Characters (in spite of all fossil evidence to the cont-- Oh wait...). Take for example themodern idiom "The Ends of the Earth." If Isaiah or Revelation had been written today, then this would be the phrase used, and then thousands of years later fundies would take this as proof that the Earth is shaped like a string or rope.

Even ignoring all the above rebuttals and debate amongst Christians about what the Bible "really" says, there's still the issue that if we are indeed meant to read the Bible this hyper-literally, then that would imply that when Jesus said we were to be "like doves," that he meant we were to grow feathers, eat mostly seed and fruit, regurgitate crop milk, and make mostly cooing noises.

The problem, of course, is that the very people who insist the Earth is flat because of (their) literal interpretation of the Bible, when pressed on the above points, retreat to a non-literal interpretation of those points, thereby undermining their whole argument that the Earth is flat because the Bible literally says it is. Essentially, they canpick and choose what parts of the Bible are hyper literal or not.

Islamic flat Earth apologetics[edit]

Muslims pray facing theKaaba inMecca. In the "flat-Earth map" theQibla will not consistently point to the Kaaba.^[44]

SomeIslamic fundamentalists possibly believe the Earth is flat, using a literal interpretation of severalQur'an verses. In fact,medieval Muslim scholars, like Christians of the same era, readily accepted Greco-Roman astronomy and used a Ptolemaicgeocentric model of the universe with a spherical Earth.^[45][46] This would make modern Islamic flat Earth apologetics astep backwards. In 1966 the supreme religious authority ofSaudi Arabia, SheikAbd al-Aziz Bin Baz, is rumored to have declared "The Earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is anatheist deserving of punishment." However historians such as Robert Lacey believe that this quote was misinterpreted (and that Ibn Baaz was actually asserting that theEarth doesn't orbit around the Sun — but not that the Earth was flat).

Mohammed Yusuf, founder of terrorist groupBoko Haram, stated that theTheory of Evolution as well as spherical Earth teachings should be rejected because they are againstIslam.^[47] In a 2007 TV debate, anIraqi Astronomer, Fadil Al-Sa'd, tried hard to push the ideas that the Earth is flat andQur'anic verses also support that the Sun (also flat) is much smaller than Earth andrevolves around it.^[48]

As inall cases of proof-via-scripture, it's just a question ofmaking flat-earthery fit bycherry picking your preferred translation so it fits your pre-existing beliefs.

Appeals to the Qur'an[edit]

Islamic cosmology byZekeriya Kazvinî. The cosmic bull bears (Kujata) the earth-disk (rimmed byMount Qaf) and stands on the fish (Bahamut).

Qur'an 18:47

And (remember) the Day We shall cause the mountains to pass away (like clouds of dust), and you will see the Earth as alevelled plain, and we shall gather them all together so as to leave not one of them behind.

The Muhsin Khan and Shakir translation seem to use "levelled plain"; other translations, apart from Yusuf Ali, which says "level stretch" rather than "levelled plain", which clearly suggests thatGod is f@#king punching mountains flat like the badass he is the Earth is a disc.

Qur'an 20:53

Who has made earth for youlike a bed (spread out); and has opened roads (ways and paths etc.) for you therein; and has sent down water (rain) from the sky. And We have brought forth with it various kinds of vegetation.

Translations again disagree on this. Like a "carpet" and like a "cradle" are also popular.

Qur'an 43:10

Who has made for you the earthlike a bed, and has made for you roads therein, in order that you may find your way.

Other translations of this "like a bed" indicate that it's metaphorical, with "resting place" being the most popular use. The Dr. Ghali translation still uses "cradle" in place of bed.

Qur'an 43:38

Till, when (such a one) comes to Us, he says [to his Qarîn (Satan / devil companion)] "Would that between me and you were the distance of the two easts (or theeast and west)" a worst (type of) companion (indeed)!

One presumes that this is a tacit admission that there is an absolute point marked "east" and a point marked "west" which isn't possible on a globe because it wraps around. It's not entirely possible on a flat Earth, either as there is no fixed reference. InTerry Pratchett'sDiscworld, set on a flat disc, they use radial co-ordinates of "hubward" (meaning toward the centre) "rimward" (towards the outside) and "turnwise" and "widdershins" for clockwise and counterclockwise respectively. Analogous with east and west on a globe, there are no fixed points on this reference frame.

Qur'an 78:6

Have We not made the earth as abed,

Only Muhsin Khan says "bed". The rest are "expanse" or variations of it. Dr Ghali continues with "cradle". One has to ask, if someone walked up to you and said that the Earth is like a bed, wouldn't one usually think they meant it was a small, warm, and comfortable thing you sleep in and which a parent lovingly prepares for their child? "Flat" is usually quite far down the list of words associated with beds, and indeed if one wanted to describe something as flat, they usually pick something much closer to two-dimensional, such as parchment.

Qur'an 79:30

And after that Hespread the earth;

Ironically, the flat-earthers would have been better off with Dr Ghali here, as he is less ambiguous about it: "And the earth, after that Heflattened it (for life)."

The irony strikes back[edit]

Faking photos[edit]

And the original Mars photo can be found where?

Some flat-earthers, who dismiss all photographs of space as fake ― without giving any criteria for what would constitute a genuine one, other thanincredulity ― have been known to use deceptive means for making their case. Essentially, they have done the very same thing that they accuse others of doing. The image at the right is among the first that one finds upon searching for “flat Earth” in Google Images.

Convincing, right? Not so fast. The alleged photo cannot be found in theNASA archives, because it was done byYouTube user Danny Wilten. It just showed how theMartian landscapes captured by spatial probescould be photoshopped from one taken inIreland, not that such a thing actuallyhad taken place.^[49] To date, no photo ofMars has been shown to correspond to one taken onEarth,^[50] which would be the relevant proof. But it also raises the question, what exactly do these space deniers expect to see on other worlds? Do they expect other rocky planets to be radically different from barren places on Earth? But more importantly, if these photos are so evidently fake, why bother lying? And even if they are fake, it doesn't necessarily mean that the Earth is flat. Absence of evidence doesn't mean evidence of absence.

Faking quotes[edit]

Since there is nobody in the actual scientific community supporting a flat Earth there is a need for the flat Earth community tocherry-pick quote anybody important for anargument from authority. And who no other thanNikola Tesla! The most cited scientist by/forcranks! In 2016, flat-earthers started to share this "quote" from Tesla:

While the last sentencesin italics are from Tesla, the rest of the quote is actually from some random Facebook guy called ‘Darrell Fox’. However, this hasn't stopped flatties from believing and sharing this false quote. Also, needless to say really but, Tesla was not a flathead.^[51]

Using spherical Earth mathematics[edit]

Screenshot of the source code in Flat Earth Dave's app reveals the code uses the Earth obliquity (axial tilt) in it's code.

In his video "Flat Earth Dave's App Massive Security Breach" Michael Toon revealed he had been sent adecompiled version of Flat Earth Dave's appFlat Earth Sun & Moon Clock. The app's friend finder feature was found to determine the distance of friends by using theHaversine formula, which "determines the great-circle distance between two points on asphere given their longitudes and latitudes." This proves Flat Earth Dave is fully aware of the Earth being a globe. The decompiled source code also revealed a plethora of security issues that affected all of its 203,793 users.^[52] These issues were also analyzed by Dave McKeegan two weeks later.^[53] McKeegan showed source code from the app that uses the constantOBLIQUITY = 0.40927971 whichis the Earth'sobliquity (axial tilt) in radians.

Another example of flatties using spherical Earth mathematics is the flat-eartherShane St Pierre's model, which is basically an outrightplagiarized copy-paste ofWalter Bislins' Flat Earth Dome Model, both code and text. Flat Earth debunker JB Aerospace has not only shown in Shane's plagiarized code uses heliocentric parameters such asRadiusEarth: 6371.0, // km andDistSun: 149600000.0, // km but JPL ephemerides, which are NASA's calculations of the orbits of celestial objects based on observations that flat-earthers reject (such us spacecraft observations), and physical models which flat-earthers also reject (like Newtonian physics).^[54][55] Walter not only noticed and called out Shane for doing a "flat EarthJames Somerton" but he updated his simulator by adding those previous heliocentric parameters as variables, which if it were changed then "the App fails and makes wrong predictions", like with the Final Experiment for example. (See:Flat Earth Dome Model only works Based on the Heliocentric Model).

Insecurity for you, insecurity for me[edit]

In his Feb. 7, 2025 follow-up video^[56] Michael Toon revealed a security researcher had tried to report the app's vulnerabilities to Weiss, but the support email Weiss had given Google did not exist. Toon also showed the app claims to collect no data at all, but it clearly did collect PII. It thus violates both Google's ToS, and GDPR, especially as the server is hosted in Finland. Weiss misrepresented the publicly accessible data as "hacker who had gotten into the API, and he claimed all leaked data was publicly shared with other users" except the password. Weiss claimed they had changed everyone's passwords and notified users about the issue. Weiss called the whole thing a "nothing burger by anti-flat Earth trolls". Instead of looking into mirror about his failure to deployany, let alonemodern password hashing practices, Weiss blamed users, who might have re-used the password in other services.

Next, Toon showed the application included the user's location inside every uploaded packet, even if the user did not opt-in to the app's friend finder feature, and that this information is tied to the user's name and email without their consent. He showed an e-mail by Weiss where he blamed globe Earth proponent "trolls" for the data breach. Weiss claimed to have "enlisted an A-Team that had fixed the security problems, and prevented the use of the service's API. When Toon invited Weiss to join a live stream event to defend his app, Weiss responded with a cease and desist notice which basically threatened Toon with a SLAPP lawsuit. The demands were to "Cease and desist from making or promoting false statements regarding the breach", and "retract any prior statements that falsely suggest more than 100 users were compromised."

According to Toon, the following day (on Oct. 17, 2024) Weiss received complaint on X from user who had received same reset password over email. This is wrong on so many levels. The user is never supposed to receive a password over email. They should be sent a link with a rapidly expiring token that allows changing the password. As Toon commented to the user, it was only possible if the server still stored the passwords in plaintext, i.e. without any protection. Weiss later sent a new message to his users telling them their passwords were changed, but they could continue the current app session without logging back in with the new password. Toon then revealed the reason the app could do that, was the app doesn't perform password verification even upon new connections that lacks the session token. Instead, merely spoofing theuser_id or thedevice_id of a user, was enough to login to someone else's account, read their messages, or impersonate them in the conversations. Furthermore, both theuser_id and thedevice_id were available via the public API meaning what the server accepted as a password, was available on the server even if passwords were hashed. Another massive issue Toon highlighted, was the app's location accuracy was so high it allowed determining many users' home addresses. Weiss' "mitigation" strategy to these issues was obfuscation: he only changed the API domain name. He also put the service behind Cloudflare, which only protects from DoS attacks — a non-issue.

Finally, to highlight the absolutely batshit crazy level of lack of security,Weiss' included his personal $DOME shit-coin PRIVATE KEY in the source code of the application, that he shipped to his 200,000+ users.

On Feb. 6, 2025, after the industry-standard 90 day notice period, Toon and his team of security professionalspublished their findings on GitHub.

For now,all the vulnerabilities remained unfixed.

Antisemitism[edit]

Flat-earthers have often complained thatNASA had ex-Nazi collaborators working for them, such asWernher von Braun. This was indeed true (seeOperation Paperclip)^[57] but ultimately this is a poorreductio ad Hitlerum argument in the end: "Why should I trust a space agency on its topics of expertise, if it also hasantisemites in it?"^{[note 6]} Fortunately, almost all those scientists are dead (or retired), so that worry is unsubstantiated. However, the irony is that, bizarrely, many popular flat-earthers have spread some kind of antisemitic conspiracies themselves.^[58] So much so thatAnswers in Genesis (in an astoundingstopped clock moment) noticed this too.^[59] And even to the point offaking pictures ofHitler being a flat-earther! No kidding:

Here are some examples:

• Edward Hendrie, who in his bookThe Greatest Lie on Earth: Proof That Our World Is Not a Moving Globe constantly blames Jews, "communists" and "Zionists" for everything, who "control the mass media, which they use to propagandize the people into pushing the politicians into doing their bidding against God and his anointed"^[59] (he may as well have titled his bookMein Kampf 2.0). Hendrie has also written two entire books accusing jews of replacing "God's commands with Satan's Babylonian dogma" by founding communists and rising Hitler into power (we kid you not)^[60] and ordering9/11...^[61] He is anantivaxxer too.^[62]

Antisemitic poster used in Eric Dubay's YouTube video200 Proofs Earth Is Not a Spinning Ball.

• Yoga instructorEric Dubay's infamous YouTube video200 Proofs Earth Is Not a Spinning Ball mentionsThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his 198^th "proof",^[63] features literal "Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition" propaganda posters and mentions the antisemitic book "Freemasonery and Judaism" ofLéon de Poncins.^[64] He is also aHolocaust denier^[65] who claims "Jewish-controlled mainstream media" has "painted an evil picture of Hitler"^[66] and wrote a rap about it:

Twice! (which it isn't a lot but it's weird he did it twice, right?)

• InJoe Rogan's podcast, the flat-earther Eddie Bravo hints that there's a worldwide Jewish "globalist" conspiracy.^[67]
• TV personality and social media influencerTila Tequila expressed her belief in flat Earth^[68] and antisemitism many,^[69] many,^[70] MANY,^[71] times.
• The ArgentinianNew World Order,9/11 truther, flat-earther conspiracy theorist Iru Landucci cited the (well-known antisemitic hoax) book "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in one of his conferences.^[72]
• ^[73] Flat Earth internet influencer "Kaleb.fe"^[74] has been called out in TikTok for sharing antisemitic content.^{[75][76][77][78]} During the 2023Israel–Hamas war Kaleb doubled down on the nowantisemitic-friendly social media, owned by anti-flat Earth butantisemitic sympathizerElon Musk, formerly known asTwitter. He stated to "wake up my fellow brothers and sisters to flat Earth, after I will wake them up to the evil that is Jewry"^[79][80] by quoting Hitler and sharingBitChute'sneonazigreat replacement shitty documentaryEuropa: The Last Battle.^[81][82]
• JustOwen Benjamin. No comments.
• Whoeverthis guy is.

In some way, this is unsurprising too, since a flat Earth would require some kind ofNew World Order conspiracy theory. They often land not far away from the oldest grand conspiracy in the book: theInternational Jewish /Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory.^[83] After all, if a spherical Earth is fake, what else is fake?Maybe the Holocaust? Am I rightB.o.B.?^[84]

“”Do your research onDavid Irving Stalin was way worse thanHitler That’s why thePOTUS gotta wear a kippah

—B.o.B -Flatline[85]

So if they were really worried aboutNazism, they could excise the ones in theircult community.^{[note 7]}

Common counterarguments that donot refute flat-earther claims[edit]

Just because the thing you're trying to prove happens to be correct doesn't necessarily mean that the "proof" you're trying to use is valid. As such, some of the arguments people use against flatheads have almost as little thought put into them as the ones the flatheads themselves use. Stay away from these arguments.Inverse stopped clocks will be handed out at the ticket booth.

The shadow the Earth casts on the Moon is round![edit]

This one is more nuanced than it first appears, prohibitively so. Ordinary moon phases are caused by the Sun shining directly upon the lunar sphere from various angles: we see its horizon swivel around. Aristotle observed that duringeclipses a bit of Earth gets in the way and casts a shadow on the moon that isalways curved to some extent, from our perspective on Earth.

On the other hand, for a coin held in front of a flashlight (flat Earth with Sun below, moon above): oblique lighting squashesthat shadow more severely before warping further onto the same spherical moon.

Contrasting eccentricities to characterize fractions of Earth's silhouette isn't worth it.^[87] Much less entertaining the flat model where an always-above Sun emitsupwardly-curved light across the sky at the moon.

Eratosthenes' shadows proved a round Earth![edit]

Eratosthenes' experiment assumed a Sun sufficiently large and distant that its rays are near-parallel when they reach earth. Guess what happens when you swap that for a small and near sun?

The experiment wasnot about theshape of the Earth. Earth was suspected to be spherical because of Earth's circular shadow on the Moon, and because ships were observed disappearing hull first. The experiment was about measuring theradius of the Earth assuming it was spherical. Eratosthenes calculated the Earth's circumference to be 250,000 stadia, or, 40,000 km, which is extremely close to the modern value of 40,070km. From that, he calculated the radius to be 6366 km, when the modern value is 6378km.^[88]

But the moon landing![edit]

*cough*

Gravity would pull a disk that big into a spherical shape![edit]

If someone is dumb enough to deny a fact as basic and demonstrable as the shape of the Earth, then do you really think they're going to accept a concept as advanced as an intangible cosmic force that evenscientists don't fully understand yet? People knew that things fell long before Newton, and those who thought to ask why came up with their own explanations. As it is, the most popular flathead explanation (that actually makes sense anyway) for spilled milk not hovering midair is that the Earth is constantly accelerating upward at 9.8m/s^2.

Proof by humor[edit]

Reverse Flat Earth conspiracy theory[edit]

Another crank belief that is gaining just as much, if not more, momentum in the tubes as the flat Earth itself is its mirror image conspiracy: the Reverse Flat Earth Conspiracy Theory (lame title, but we'll think of something else later). As you may have guessed, the idea here is that the flat Earth theory isn't merely false, it's actually a fake conspiracy that was made up by the powers that be to make "genuine" truth seekers look bad.^[90] Unsurprisingly, however, said clowns who make this unfounded claim often believe in other sorts of crankery that are almost as moronic as the flat Earth itself. Actually, if you haven't guessed, this is the wholepoint. The point is toknock down the flat Earth as "obviously" wrong to give their own form of crankery credibility. At least one conspiracy loon who rejects the flat Earth even saysspace itself is a hoax!^[91]

In short: no, you donot get any bonus points for rejecting the flat Earth if you regurgitate other sorts of crankery and conspiracy bullshit. Looking cute like the kitten near the dinner table doesn't cut it, so don't try it.

Helping Flerfs[edit]

As with all grifts with a cult-like structure, there are two parties. Those making the T-shirts, and those buying them. The grifters selling the T-shirts can not be convinced to stop. Like Upton Sinclair said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." The grifters lack the skill set, job experience, and connections to maintain their current lavish lifestyle in honest jobs. They would also be giving up theirnarcissistic supply. They've already lost the only thing they stood to lose: their reputation. Thus, they have zero incentive to look for something better out there.

Similarly, the marks, almost never wish to learn the truth. What is actually happening is something comparable tospiritual bypass, where the flerf is actively avoiding their mental health issues, difficult life situation, or dissatisfaction in life, by escaping into a fantasy world where they arethe protagonist fighting "the real powers that be". In this case,according to flerfs, the ones that have hiddenfree energythe Christian God,spirituality,scientific knowledge, andeasyaccess tohidden natural resources that any average Joe canjust pick like dandelions. Ornot.^{[note 8]}

The cult group has usually long since replaced any real friends and family, and led to loss of job and the place in the normal society. With nothing to go back to, majority of the flerfs would rather die, than accept their entire identity is based on a lie, and return to their void of objective reality. Thus, the marks are almost never available to be convinced. Especially via internet feuds. This is evident from when flerfs are asked "What would convince you that you're wrong?", their most common answer is "Nothing". This shows their belief is unfalsifiable both from the viewpoint of arguments (impossible requests and endless goal post shifting), and from the viewpoint of faith ("Flat Earth is Gods truth, and I choose to believe, and refuse the overwhelming counter-evidence"). Scammers have known since the late 19th century, that once the mark sees the scam as something that's going to make them better off, they can not be convinced byknockers (=debunkers). They refer to this state of mind the mark has, asthe fever.^[93]

As the flat-earther Mark Sargent said, "flat Earth is the last conspiracy people will believe". This has some truth to it, in that were it true, everyone would have to be in on it against the flat-earthers. Flat Earth is also the boundary between "harmless" crankery, and political radicalization: For many, the next step wasQAnon.^[5] There areno woke flat-earthers, and dedicating resources to help flerfs sends an awful message to every not-awful person that could use the help.

Flerf marks are the symptom of a failed education, social work, and mental healthcare systems, and thus at the root, the only solution starts with corrective public spending policy.

See also[edit]

Further reading[edit]

Rebuttals of flat Earth conspiracies[edit]

• The Globe: How the Earth Became Round, James Hannam (Reaktion books, 2023)ISBN 9781789147582
• Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything, Kelly Weill (2022, Algonquin Books)ISBN 9781643752198
• How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason, Lee McIntyre (2022, MIT Press)ISBN 9780262545051
• Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas about Our Planet, Donald R. Prothero andMichael Shermer (2020, Red Lightning)ISBN 978-1684350612
• When the Earth Was Flat. Studies in Ancient Greek and Chinese Cosmology, Dirk L. Couprie (Springer, 2018)ISBN 978-3-319-97052-3
• The Earth Is Not Flat, Gordon S. Brooks (2016, Createspace) ‎ISBN 978-1530207923
• Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, Christine Garwood (2008, Thomas Dunne books) ‎ISBN 978-0312382087
• Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians, Jeffrey Burton Russell (1997)ISBN 978-0-275-95904-3

Scientific papers against a flat Earth[edit]

Yes. They do exist... Real scientist did in their free time what flat-earthers should have done in the first place: making predictions with their models. (Spoilers: they all fail).

• Boyd, John P. (2020-03-27)."Meteorology and Oceanography on a Flat Earth"(PDF).arXiv:2003.08541 [physics].
• Boyd, John P. (2022-05-20)."Polaris: The Mathematics of Navigation and the Shape of the Earth"(PDF).arXiv:2206.07491 [physics].
• de Marez, Charly; Corre, Mathieu Le (2020-01-06)."Can the Earth be flat ? A physical oceanographer's perspective".arXiv:2001.01521 [physics].
• Tort, A. C. (2014)."An exercise on Gauss' law for gravitation: The Flat Earth model".Physics Education.49 (6):629–631.doi:10.1088/0031-9120/49/6/629.ISSN 0031-9120.
• Kuzii, Olena; Rovenchak, Andrij (2019-05-01)."What the gravitation of a flat Earth would look like and why thus the Earth is not actually flat".European Journal of Physics.40 (3): 035008.doi:10.1088/1361-6404/ab0bba.ISSN 0143-0807.

External links[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

• Cover story articles
• Pseudoastronomy
• Anti-intellectualism
• Antisemitism
• Conspiracy theories
• Denialism
• Silly "Earth" theories
• Flat Earth
• Fundamentalism
• Pseudoscience
• Pseudohistory
• QAnon
• Unified conspiracy theory
• Creationism

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