the flat earth society has members all around the globe

Schematic of refraction of light in the atmosphere.

This is the same effect which allows us to see the Sun even after it’s already below the horizon. Unfortunately, Rowbotham’s observation had a flaw – he didn’t take into account the effects of atmospheric refraction which, in measurements close enough to the surface, can cause light rays to bend downwards at a rate close to the curvature of the Earth. With a 20 cm (8 inch) telescope, he watched as a boat with a 91 cm (35 inch) mast drifted along the river, waiting to see the mast drop below the telescope’s view, which apparently didn’t happen.

The modern flat earth idea was born with the Bedford Level experiment, carried out in 1838 by Samuel Rowbotham, along a 10 km (6 miles) stretch of the Old Bedford River in the U.K. The curvature of the Earth is the reason you see a ship “disappear” into the ocean, and the reason why, from my home in Porto (Portugal), even if I use a telescope like the VLT, I can’t see Long Island, in the USA.īut, in this fake news, post-truth era, where something shared enough times is believed to be the truth, regardless of any evidence to the contrary, this belief seems to be gaining followers. This goes against every proof, including photos from space that shows the Earth as a sphere (the latest from a private Israeli company), rotating around itself once every 24 hours, and orbiting the Sun in 365 days (give or take a few hours). And all evidence to the contrary is falsified by the 'round Earth conspiracy', led by NASA.Ī model of a flat earth, with the Sun and the Moon rotating above it. Gravity doesn’t exist – the disk is simply in a constant “upwards” motion. These so called “flat earthers” believe the Earth is a disk, covered by a gigantic dome, with the Sun and the Moon rotating in circles above it, and with Antarctica being a gigantic ice wall (just like in Game of Thrones), going all around the edge of the disk. Two thousand years after Eratosthenes of Cyrene first calculated the circumference of the Earth, in a time where tourist space travel is almost a reality, there are still people who believe the Earth is flat. It’s meant as a joke, but unfortunately it’s not.

The flat earth society has members all around the globe