It’s been around 500 years since Nicolaus Copernicus published his famed heliocentric theory, and now, in the twenty first century, where plans are underway for a human settlement on the Red Planet, Man has once again been forced to rethink the very unquestionable, divine foundation of his knowledge of the Earth, the knowledge whose discovery split civilization itself into the medieval and modern ages, the knowledge that the Earth was flat.
Individuals from the Flat Earth Society claim to believe the Earth is level. Strolling around on the planet’s surface, it ‘looks’ and ‘feels’ level, so they deem all evidence to the contrary, for example, satellite images of Earth as a sphere, to be creations of a “round Earth conspiracy” orchestrated by NASA and other government agencies.
The question most of us long to ask them is: “Well, are they being serious?”
On that account, yes, they are. But surely, you must be wondering, what proof do they have? How can they possibly defy this scientific fact that every second grader of today knows?
Flat Earthers base their claims on a series of experiments conducted on different water bodies by their pioneer, Sameul Rowbotham. As a result of his work, he deduced that the surface of a mass of water could never curve- it must always be flat, no matter how much volume it occupied. This led him to believe that the idea of a spherical earth was inconceivable, as that inevitably meant that the ‘surface’ of the oceans would have to be curved.
Other reasons frequently cited by the Flat-Earthers in support of their claims are religious references to the Gospel, and also that it is not possible for billions of tons of salt-water on the Earth’s surface to not ‘fall’ into space.
Now, this does seem quite ludicrous a claim, since the force that keeps us all on land, and prevents us from floating around in space, gravity, is no uncommon phenomenon.
But here comes the intriguing part- they believe that gravity is but an illusion: in other words, that there exists no such thing as gravity.
But then how do they explain the clearly visible effects of gravity? Their explanation is one ridden with controversy- they claim that instead of us being pulled towards the Earth’s core, our planet accelerates upwards at a constant rate of 9.8m/s2, equal to that of gravity. The force that powers this motion of the Earth, according to them, is called dark energy. But wait, if the earth is consistently exhibiting upward motion, wouldn’t that mean that the Sun, Moon and the solar system would eventually be left far, far below?
Now here comes the interesting part: they believe that the ‘whole’ Earth is the entire universe, that there are no independently-existing stars or galaxies or clusters, but that all of these are found in a gigantic hemisphere above the flat disc of the Earth. Another outcome of this theory is that the Sun and the Moon are both thought to be of roughly the same size, and at the same height (about 3000 miles) above the Earth’s surface.
Such claims have obviously been firmly rebutted by many scientists and physicists all over the world. They argue that curved forms of water do exist as raindrops, and as the Earth is such a gigantic sphere, at any one place its surface looks and feels flat-which is why the water in seas and oceans does not appear to ‘curve’.
There are many everyday examples of a round or curved Earth, they argue, such as a limit to the distance on the horizon that can be seen by the naked eye, due to the curvature, as well as the hull of a distant ship disappearing first as it ‘moves’ down the slope.
Perhaps the strongest arguments, however, are the ingenious experiments which were conducted by scientists such as Pythagoras and Aristotle, and in recent times, by their modern counterparts.
Furthermore, in the proposed model of the Flat Earth, as all stars are found in the enclosed hemisphere, it follows that all of them would be visible all over the world at night, as well as in all different seasons. This however, is not true-constellations seen at the North Pole are different from those in the South. For Example the Southern Cross (The Crux) can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere, while the Big Dipper stars the skies in the North. This thereby suggests that these are different stars- a fact that can only be explained in the ’round’ Earth model.
For the common man, however, the greatest proof that the Earth is round are the photographs of our planet captured by multiple satellites launched into space; however, Flat Earthers claim that these are a clever forgery on NASA’s part.
In light of all this, it seems difficult that the Flat Earthers will accept our planet’s spherical shape anytime soon, though it is undoubtedly the truth.
The writer is an A-Level student at Aitchison College. He is an avid reader and an eloquent public-speaker