Know your facts on the shape of our earth, just now you get roped in to this!

Okay, we have all heard of the famous flat earthers, or the flat earth society. The thought that the earth is anything but round makes the normal human cringe, or laugh. During my first year of studies, I learned that the earth is actually not round! Rather, the earth is an oblate ellipsoid, which means that the earth is flattened at the poles due to the spin of the earth around its axis. Also if you take all the water away from the earth, the earth is everything but round. The image below shows an impression, using geophysics, of what the earth might look like if the water had to magically disappear.

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I was intrigued by the idea that the earth is flat, and I wanted to try to figure out why people still believe this! So I did some research.

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The flat earth society is headed by the following people (directly from their website as outlined below):

"Our core team are from locations around the plane. Daniel Shenton, President, who founded the Society in London is now located in Hong Kong. Michael Wilmore, Vice-President, lives in Dublin Ireland. Our Secretary John Davis is currently in the United States but was born Canadian. In addition, our extended 'team' of members on our memberlist is equally varied - featuring believers from a number of countries."

Here is their official website.

• What do they actually believe?

Flat earthers state that when walking around on the planet's surface, it looks and feels flat, so therefore it must be flat! All concrete evidence about the earth being round is deemed conspiracy, and they deny that any of it holds validity. These include satellite photos of Earth as a sphere, GPS, flight paths of airplanes, etc.. The coin termed for what the normal human believes is the "round Earth conspiracy", which was orchestrated by NASA and other government agencies.

According to Livesciece amongst others, the belief that the Earth is flat has could be the ultimate conspiracy theory in modern day. According to the Flat Earth Society's leadership, the group has grown by 200 people per year since 2009, consisting mostly of Americans and Britons.

They believe that Earth is a disc with the Arctic Circle in the center. Antarctica is a 45.72 m wall of ice, around the rim. Apparently NASA guards this ice wall to prevent people from climbing over and falling off the disc. Apparently the
leader of the group, Nathan Thompson, recently approached a man who said that he was a NASA employee, this confrontation took place in a startbucks coffee shop in 2017. In a YouTube video of the meeting, Thompson shouted that he had proof the Earth is flat — apparently saying an astronaut drowning was that proof — and that NASA is "lying." Livesciece

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According to them, the sun and moon are spheres measuring 32 miles (51 kilometers) that move in circles 3000 miles (4,828 km) above the plane of the Earth, this is how they explain the earth's day and night cycles. Stars move in a plane 3100 miles above the surface of the earth. These spheres apparently illuminate different portions of the earth in a 24 hour cycle. Apparently there is also an invisible "antimoon" that moves in front of the moon during lunar eclipse.

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They also believe that the Earth's gravity is an illusion. Apparently objects do not accelerate towards the earth, but instead, the disc of Earth accelerates upward at 9.8 meters per second squared, driven up by a force called dark energy. There is also currently a disagreement within the society about whether or not Einstein's theory of relativity permits Earth to accelerate upward indefinitely without the planet eventually surpassing the speed of light (say what?).

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There is a lot more, but time has run out. It is quite interesting to read on their website, and I would encourage all to do their own research. It was quite an eye opening experience to know what people around us do believe. We should always still be nice and respectful, especially of religions. This, however, is not a religion, but a challenge to science, and believe me, scientists are very hard on these people.

Enjoy the weekend :)