“Flat Earth supporters” also appeared in Lithuania: they used the country’s landscape to “prove” their truth

One of the most popular conspiracy theories in the world claims that the Earth is flat, not round.

Proponents of this line of thinking believe that NASA and governments of all countries have colluded against humans by hiding other continents beyond Antarctica.

A profitable association

“Flat Earth Community” (eng. „Flat earth Society“) existed since 1956. until 2001 and at the peak it reached 3.5 thousand. members.

Group members created and actively sent out newsletters. Their theory was based on some statements of the Bible – these people understood all the words written in the Bible directly.

in 2009 this movement was renewed and gained new momentum. It is still expanding rapidly and attracting new members.

Their main goal is to refute all available evidence for the round shape of the Earth.

According to them, the Earth is disc-shaped, with the Arctic Circle in the middle, and the giant Antarctic ice wall connecting the edges.

In such a world, the Sun and Moon are 51 km spheres moving in circles above the Earth.

According to them, the stars also move in a similar way – like big swinging searchlights above our heads.

The number of believers is increasing

in 2017 US rapper BoB (real name Bobby Ray Simmons Jr.) launched a crowdfunding campaign (English crowdfunding) to launch the satellite.

The artist, a famous supporter of the “flat Earth” theory, wanted to look for evidence that our planet is a disk and not a globe.

His goal was to collect 200 thousand. US dollars (about 183 thousand euros), and later this number increased to 1 million. US dollars (about 919 thousand euros).

On the popular GoFundMe site, the rapper raised funds to send one or more devices into space to help him “find the curve,” which is how flat-Earth believers describe the edge of the supposed disc-shaped planet.

Some proponents of this theory claim that NASA workers are protecting the edge of the world so people don’t fall off it.

There are also those who believe that it is impossible to fall off the edge of the Earth, because they say that Antarctica is its wall that keeps the oceans from spilling out.

Two months after the fundraiser started, BoB raised 6,883 US dollars (about 6,325 euros) and, falling short of the goal, donated the money to himself.

Nevertheless, in the last few years there has been a huge increase in the number of people who, like BoB, believe in flat earth theories.

The influential publication The Economist fixed Google searches for evidence of this conspiracy theory peaked back in 2017.

It is now held annually in the US flat earth conferenceand YouTube is full of videos purporting to prove that the Earth is flat.

Among them appeared Lithuanian channelwhich distributes this type of information, also shares other conspiracy theories, posts defaming the government, and various pseudo-scientific films in Russian.

He accidentally proved that the earth is round

Perhaps the biggest blow came from enthusiasts trying to prove the “flat Earth” theory, who were caught on Netflix in 2018. dokumentiniame filme „Behind the curve“.

In the video, the man suggested conducting an experiment that was supposed to prove beyond doubt that the Earth is flat.

The course of the experiment was as follows: he placed the camera on one side of the board wall, in which a hole had been cut.

Then he asked the helper to hold the light device emitting a straight laser beam at a good distance from the tied wall.

The laser beam had to pass through a hole in another board wall built about 15 meters away from the original wall.

“If you can see through this hole, through the other hole, and see a light at the end, 5 meters above the water level, it means that the Earth is flat,” claimed the inventor of the experiment.

But the experiment took an unexpected turn. According to its organizer, if the laser beam was visible only when its source was raised to a height of 7 meters, it means that the earth is round.

That’s exactly what happened.

Why can’t the Earth be flat?

According to scientists, the earth could not be flat for several reasons.

First of all, the theories of “flat earthers” are ground into dust by gravity.

It is likely that if the Earth were flat, it would not have any gravity at all because, according to of mathematician and physicist James Clerk Maxwell According to calculations made in the 1850s, a hard disk-shaped planet would be impossible under true gravity.

A more likely assumption is that on a flat Earth, gravity would pull everything to the center of the disk, the North Pole.

If the Sun and Moon simply revolved around one side of the flat Earth, this would likely explain the transition from day to night. However, this would not explain the seasons, eclipses and many other phenomena.

The Sun would also have to be smaller than the Earth to prevent it from burning up and hitting our planet or the Moon. But we know that the Sun is more than 100 times larger.

The publication was prepared in 15 minutes in partnership with Metawhich aims to stop the spread of misleading news on the social network. More about the program and its rules – here.