Currently, there is disagreement among flat-earthers about whether or not Einstein's theory of relativity permits Earth to accelerate upward indefinitely without the planet eventually surpassing the speed of light. Objects do not accelerate downward instead, the disc of Earth accelerates upward at 32 feet per second squared (9.8 meters per second squared), driven up by a mysterious force called dark energy. Flat-earthers believe there must also be an invisible 'antimoon' that obscures the moon during lunar eclipses.įurthermore, Earth's gravity is an illusion, they say. (Stars, they say, move in a plane 3,100 miles up.) Like spotlights, these celestial spheres illuminate different portions of the planet in a 24-hour cycle. Earth's day and night cycle 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 plane of the Earth. NASA employees, they say, guard this ice wall to prevent people from climbing over and falling off the disc. The leading flat-earther theory holds that Earth is a disc with the Arctic Circle in the center and Antarctica, a 150-foot-tall wall of ice, around the rim. Judging by the exhaustive effort flat-earthers have invested in fleshing out the theory on their website, as well as the staunch defenses of their views they offer in media interviews and on Twitter, it would seem that these people genuinely believe the Earth is flat.īut in the 21st century, can they be serious? And if so, how is this psychologically possible?įirst, a brief tour of the worldview of a flat-earther: While writing off buckets of concrete evidence that Earth is spherical, they readily accept a laundry list of propositions that some would call ludicrous. According to the Flat Earth Society's leadership, its ranks have grown by 200 people (mostly Americans and Britons) per year since 2009. The belief that the Earth is flat has been described as the ultimate conspiracy theory. Walking around on the planet's surface, it looks and feels flat, so they deem all evidence to the contrary, such as satellite photos of Earth as a sphere, to be fabrications of a 'round Earth conspiracy' orchestrated by NASA and other government agencies. Members of the Flat Earth Society claim to believe the Earth is flat. A Flat Earth model depicting Antarctica as an ice wall surrounding a disc-shaped Earth.

What is flat earth theory