Ever since the ancient Greeks first made observations of the circular Moon and the skies, scientists have known that the Earth is a sphere. We've all seen beautiful images of the Earth from space, some photographed by astronauts and others collected remotely by orbiting satellites. So why doesn't our planet look round when we're standing in a park or looking out a window?

The answer is all about perspective. Humans are pretty tiny creatures living on a really large sphere.

An average adult is between 5 feet and 6 feet 6 inches tall (1.5 to 2 meters), and kids are smaller. Imagine you're a circus acrobat standing on a ball that's about 3 feet (1 meter) wide. From on top of the ball, you would see it curving away from your feet in all directions.

Now picture a tiny fly on that circus ball. Its viewpoint would probably be a millimeter or less above the surface. Since the fly is much smaller than the ball, and its view is close to the surface, it can't see the whole ball.

The Earth is about 42 million feet (12.8 million meters) wide, and even a tall adult's viewpoint is just 6 feet (about 2 meters) above its surface. There is no way our eyes can take in the size of the spherical Earth when we are standing on it. You couldn't tell the Earth was a sphere even if you hiked to the top of Mount Everest, which is 29,035 feet (8,850 meters) above sea level.

Related: Flat Earth 'theory': Why do some people think the Earth is flat?

The only way to see the curve of the Earth is to fly more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) above its surface. This is because the length of the horizon that we see depends on how high we are above Earth's surface.

Standing on the ground with nothing blocking our vision, our eyes can see about 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) of the horizon. That's not enough of the planet's circumference to see the horizon line begin to show off its curve. Like a fly on a circus ball, we just can't see enough of the edge where the Earth meets the sky.

To see the whole spherical planet, you would need to hitch a ride with an astronaut or on a satellite. This would give you a full view of Earth from a much greater distance.

Big commercial airliners also can fly high enough to give glimpses of Earth's curvature, although pilots have a much better view from the front of the plane than passengers get from side windows.

Not quite a sphere

Even from space, you wouldn't detect something important about Earth's shape: It's not perfectly round. It's actually a slightly oblate spheroid, or an ellipsoid. This means it is a little bit wider around the equator than it is tall, like a sphere that someone sat on and squashed a little bit.

This is caused by Earth's rotation, which creates centrifugal force — the same force that would cause you to fly off a spinning merry-go-round if you didn't hold on. This force produces a slight bulge at the planet's waistline.

Topographic features on Earth's surface, such as mountains and deep-sea trenches, also distort its shape slightly. They cause small variations in the strength of Earth's gravitational field — the force that pulls all objects on Earth downward, toward the planet's center.

Earth science, the field that I study, has a branch called geodesy that's devoted to studying Earth's shape and how it's positioned in space. Geodesy informs everything from building sewers and making accurate maps of sea level rise to launching and tracking spacecraft. It's an important area of current scientific research and a reminder that we are still learning about this amazing planet we call home.

This question was submitted by Zayden, age 11, from Corona, California as part of The Conversation's Curious Kids series.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Of all the conspiracy theories that litter the Internet, the flat Earth conspiracy is quite possibly the most curious. After all, the ancient Greeks figured out the planet's shape (and even its circumference) in the third century B.C. 

But a fringe society founded in the 1950s, dedicated to insisting that the Earth is flat, has given rise to a modern ground of flat Earth adherents. These believers claim that the Earth is a flat disc, and that evidence that it is round — say, pictures taken from space — are an elaborate hoax involving multiple governments. Opinions differ on exactly how the flat Earth works, with believers concocting elaborate versions of physics and creative interpretations of the solar system to make their theories work. 

No one knows how many flat Earth believers are out there. According to Smithsonian Magazine, membership in the Flat Earth Society, founded in 1956, once reached 3,500 people. Today, the society claims more than 500 members on its roster. But some believers want nothing to do with the Flat Earth Society, according to a 2019 CNN article, with some attendees of the Flat Earth International Conference in Dallas that year telling the news agency that the organization is a government-sponsored front designed to make Flat Earthers look bad. (The Flat Earth Society responded to this by telling CNN, "We are not a government-controlled body. We're an organization of Flat Earth theorists that long predates most of the FEIC newcomers to the scene.")

Who are flat-earthers?

As the Flat Earth Society/Flat Earth International Conference schism reveals, flat-earthers are not a monolithic group. The current president of the Flat Earth Society, Daniel Shenton, is a Londoner who now lives in Hong Kong. Robbie Davidson, who organizes the annual Flat Earth International Conferences, is a Canadian who espouses Biblical literalism and opposes what he calls "scientism."

A 2017 national poll by Public Policy Polling found that only 1% of Americans believed the Earth was flat, with an additional 6% saying they weren't sure. There was very little evidence of differences in this belief by political affiliation, with any differences between Trump voters, Clinton voters and third-party voters falling within the poll's margin of error of 3.2%.

A 2018 article in the Colorado Sun on a flat Earth convention in Denver found that many attendees believed a whole suite of conspiracy theories, such as that all politicians are actors and that powerful shadowy forces control the world. 

Flat-earthers occasionally get a boost from celebrity believers. For instance, on Jan. 25, 2016, rapper-singer Bobby Ray Simmons Jr. (known as B.o.B) released a track called "Flatline" in which he disses astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, after the two had a Twitter battle over the spherical-ness of the planet. B.o.B is convinced Earth is flat. A day earlier, the rapper tweeted: "No matter how high in elevation you are... the horizon is always eye level ... sorry cadets... I didn't wanna believe it either." In 2018, NBA player Kyrie Irving had to apologize after causing a media controversy by speculating that the Earth was flat on a 2017 podcast. 

Flat Earth map

The leading flat-earther theory holds that Earth is a disc with the Arctic Circle in the center and Antarctica, a 150-foot-tall (45 meters) wall of ice, around the rim. NASA employees, they say, guard this ice wall to prevent people from climbing over and falling off the disc. (In keeping with their skepticism of NASA, known flat-earther conspiracy theorist Nathan Thompson approached a man he said was a NASA employee in a Starbucks in mid-May 2017. In a YouTube video of the exchange, Thompson, founder of the Official Flat Earth and Globe Discussion page, shouted that he had proof the Earth is flat — apparently saying an astronaut drowning was that proof — and that NASA is "lying.")

Furthermore, Earth's gravity is an illusion, they say. 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. 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. (Einstein's laws apparently still hold in this alternate version of reality.)

As for what lies underneath the disc of Earth, this is unknown, but most flat-earthers believe it is composed of "rocks."

It's worth noting that all of the above is completely contentious even within the flat Earth community. "None of us believe that we're a flying pancake in space," Davidson told CNN in the 2019 article. At the Flat Earth International Conferences, it's more common to believe that space simply does not exist at all and the disc of the Earth sits still, he said. One speaker at the 2018 FEIC even argued that Earth is neither a sphere nor a disc, but instead is shaped like a diamond, according to The Guardian.

Do flat-earthers think the moon is flat?

Flat Earth opinions about the moon vary. Some think that while Earth is flat, the moon and sun are spheres, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported. In this vision of the solar system, 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. (Stars, they say, move in a plane 3,100 miles up.) Like spotlights, these celestial spheres illuminate different portions of the planet over a 24-hour cycle. Flat-earthers believe there must also be an invisible "antimoon" that obscures the moon during lunar eclipses.

On YouTube, there are videos pointing to shadows in pictures of the moon and arguing that the moon is transparent, and thus just a light. One speaker at the 2018 conference attended by a Guardian reporter made a case for the moon as a projection.

What is the Zetetic Method?

If flat-earthers seem hard to dissuade based on standard scientific evidence, there's a reason for that: flat Earth theorizing follows from a mode of thought called the "Zetetic Method." The Zetetic Method is an alternative to the scientific method, developed by a 19th-century flat-earther, in which sensory observations reign supreme. 

"Broadly, the method places a lot of emphasis on reconciling empiricism and rationalism, and making logical deductions based on empirical data," Flat Earth Society vice president Michael Wilmore, an Irishman, told Live Science in 2017. 

In Zetetic astronomy, the perception that Earth is flat leads to the deduction that it must actually be flat; the antimoon, NASA conspiracy and all the rest are just rationalizations for how that might work in practice.

Those details make the flat-earthers' theory so elaborately absurd it sounds like a joke, but many of its supporters genuinely consider it a more plausible model of astronomy than the one found in textbooks. In short, they aren't kidding. 

"The question of belief and sincerity is one that comes up a lot," Wilmore said. "If I had to guess, I would probably say that at least some of our members see the Flat Earth Society and Flat Earth Theory as a kind of epistemological exercise, whether as a critique of the scientific method or as a kind of 'solipsism for beginners.' There are also probably some who thought the certificate would be kind of funny to have on their wall. That being said, I know many members personally, and I am fully convinced of their belief."

Wilmore counts himself among the true believers. "My own convictions are a result of philosophical introspection and a considerable body of data that I have personally observed, and which I am still compiling," he said.

Wilmore and the society's president Shenton both think the evidence for global warming is strong, despite much of this evidence coming from satellite data gathered by NASA, the kingpin of the "round Earth conspiracy." They also accept evolution and most other mainstream tenets of science. This is in contrast to Davidson, who disputes other scientific theories and findings, such as evolution, that contradict a strict interpretation of the Bible. 

How we know the Earth is NOT flat?

Despite the claims from flat-earthers, there are plenty of ways to know that the world is round. One quick option is to check out NASA's image library, which is chock-full of nice, curvy pictures of the globe taken from the International Space Station. If NASA is hoaxing everyone, they're committed to the bit. 

Don't trust NASA? The Russians also snap pictures of the round Earth, Space.com reported. So does Japan's space agency. And China's.

For the flat-earther convinced that all these countries put aside their political tensions in order to maintain the fiction that Earth is spherical, there are also ways to check on the planet's shape with one's own eyes. One of the simplest is to go to a harbor and watch the ships depart. As a ship disappears over the horizon, the bottom of the ship will go first, followed gradually by the mast. 

Related: 8 ways life would get weird on a flat Earth

You can also take a page out of the ancient Greeks' book. Ancient Hellenistic philosophers figured out that the world had to be a globe based on a few observations. One was that the stars aren't the same in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres: From opposite halves of the Earth, you're clearly looking out at different quadrants of space. Another was that Earth's shadow on the moon's surface during lunar eclipses is curved. 

The Greeks even figured out how to calculate an approximate circumference of the Earth with no fancier tools than a stick and the light of the sun. By measuring the angle of a shadow cast by the sun at the same time and day in two cities a known distance apart, the philosopher Eratosthenes was able to calculate that the planet's circumference was between 24,000 and about 29,000 miles (38,600 and 46,670 kilometers). (It's actually 24,900 miles.) The very fact that the angle of the sun differs on different parts of the planet indicates that we're all sitting on a globe. 

Conspiracy theory psychology

As inconceivable as their belief system seems, it doesn't really surprise experts. Karen Douglas, a psychologist at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom who studies the psychology of conspiracy theories, says flat-earthers' beliefs cohere with those of other conspiracy theorists she has studied.

"It seems to me that these people do generally believe that the Earth is flat. I'm not seeing anything that sounds as if they're just putting that idea out there for any other reason," Douglas told Live Science.

She said all conspiracy theories share a basic thrust: They present an alternative theory about an important issue or event, and construct an (often) vague explanation for why someone is covering up that "true" version of events. "One of the major points of appeal is that they explain a big event but often without going into details," she said. "A lot of the power lies in the fact that they are vague."

The self-assured way in which conspiracy theorists stick to their story imbues that story with special appeal. After all, flat-earthers are more adamant that the Earth is flat than most people are that the Earth is round (probably because the rest of us feel we have nothing to prove). "If you're faced with a minority viewpoint that is put forth in an intelligent, seemingly well-informed way, and when the proponents don't deviate from these strong opinions they have, they can be very influential. We call that minority influence," Douglas said.

In a study published online March 5, 2014, in the American Journal of Political Science, Eric Oliver and Tom Wood, political scientists at the University of Chicago, found that about half of Americans endorse at least one conspiracy theory, from the notion that 9/11 was an inside job to the JFK conspiracy. "Many people are willing to believe many ideas that are directly in contradiction to a dominant cultural narrative," Oliver told Live Science. He says conspiratorial belief stems from a human tendency to perceive unseen forces at work, known as magical thinking. 

However, flat-earthers don't fit entirely snugly in this general picture. Most conspiracy theorists adopt many fringe theories, even ones that contradict each other. Meanwhile, flat-earthers' only hang-up is the shape of the Earth. "If they were like other conspiracy theorists, they should be exhibiting a tendency toward a lot of magical thinking, such as believing in UFOs, ESP, ghosts the Devil, or other unseen, intentional forces," Oliver wrote in an email. "It doesn't sound like they do, which makes them very anomalous relative to most Americans who believe in conspiracy theories."

Editor's Note: This article was first published on Oct. 26, 2012, and updated by Stephanie Pappas on Dec. 16, 2021 and Oct. 17, 2022.

Conspiracy theories lurk all over the internet and cover a dizzying range of topics — from the idea that the moon landings were faked to the belief that Earth is flat. Often, believers will readily dismiss any and all evidence that contradicts such claims, and suggest that witnesses or experts who dispute the ideas are simply part of the conspiracy.

As a general rule, people don't like being unable to make sense of things; we are curious, and we want to understand the world around us. In the past, science couldn't explain many of the phenomena humans encountered, and so the easiest and most efficient response to an unanswerable question was to credit an omnipotent, omniscient higher power. Science is now able to answer many of the questions that once stumped us, and while we don't always have the answers, now, more than at any point in our history, we have the capacity to accurately explain and understand all manner of phenomena.

With that in mind, why do people believe in conspiracy theories, even when there is a mountain of evidence to show that they are incorrect? Why are conspiracy theories so prevalent today — and what exactly is a conspiracy theory?

Related: 20 of the best conspiracy theories

"A conspiracy theory is a belief that two or more actors have coordinated in secret to achieve an outcome, and that [exposing] this conspiracy is of public interest," Karen Douglas, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent in the U.K., told Live Science in an email.

This interpretation is supported by Hugo Drochon, a professor of political theory at the University of Nottingham in the U.K..

"At its core, a conspiracy theory is a belief that there is a small group of shadowy people who control everything in the world. This is why we get conspiracy theories about climate change being a 'hoax': it's because [conspiracy theorists believe] this nefarious group wants to control us," Drochon told Live Science.

So, how do such theories grow and prosper? What makes someone — or a group of people — adamant that they are being lied to, and that they are being deliberately misled by a cabal of concealed truth-twisters? 

Conspiracy theories "begin with us trying to understand complex events," Daniel Jolley, a University of Nottingham professor of social psychology, told Live Science in an email. "Conspiracy theories arguably offer simple solutions to complex problems."

Douglas suggested that such notions often flourish when people need answers in times of stress.

"Conspiracy theories tend to emerge when important things happen that people want to make sense of," she said. "In particular, they tend to emerge in times of crisis when people feel worried and threatened. They grow and thrive under conditions of uncertainty." 

Douglas added that "it is difficult to argue all conspiracy theories are malicious," and said that more often than not conspiracy theories stem from people wanting to try to make sense of difficult situations. 

"Unique ingredients" make conspiracy theories spread

In terms of what makes a particular theory spread, Jolley explained that a number of elements need to be in place.

"To achieve popularity and longevity, a conspiracy theory requires some unique ingredients coming together. The event or overarching issue needs to be significant, the conspirators need to be realistic (i.e., a tightly formed group), and the ground needs to be fertile."

Simply put: a conspiracy theory needs to appeal directly to people who will be willing to believe it, exactly at a time when they're most likely to believe it, and there needs to be a group or organization to blame.

"Take COVID-19 as an example," Jolley continued. "It is a significant event that people are trying to understand. The ground was fertile because COVID bred feelings of uncertainty and anxiety. These aspects meant conspiracy theories grew and thrived."

Jolley noted that conspiracy theories about 5G's purportedly detrimental impact on human health have existed for a while, but in 2020, the theory went from "a fringe to a mainstream belief when the narrative was applied to COVID-19." According to Jolley, this is a perfect example of a conspiracy theory existing for some time, but only being able to flourish when people are feeling vulnerable and are open to believing something they might otherwise dismiss.

In April 2020, an article in The New York Times reported that "baseless" theories about 5G and COVID resulted in "more than 100 incidents" in a month in the U.K. alone, which included a wireless tower in Birmingham being set ablaze.

Of course, nobody can be expected to take everything they read or hear at face value, so what distinguishes a conspiracy theorist from someone who is merely skeptical?

"We can all be a bit paranoid at times, especially if we're down or feeling a bit vulnerable. It's part of human nature," Drochon said. "But the difference for conspiracy theorists is that no amount of new information will challenge the core belief. Have you ever tried convincing a conspiracy theorist that 9/11 was not an inside job?"

Confirmation bias and echo chambers

But why do people fall for — and ultimately cling to — certain conspiracy theories? What is the allure of believing in something that is outlandish or implausible, even in the face of contradictory evidence?

"We desire to feel in control, feel certain, and feel close to those similar to us, and a conspiracy theory can enable this," Jolley said.

Research suggests that a majority of people (65%) regard themselves as having "above average" intelligence, something researchers attribute to people's "tendency to overrate one's cognitive abilities." This lack of self-awareness, as well as confirmation bias and exposure to echo chambers, could also play a role, Jolley suggested.

"Once a belief forms, people are keen to defend it," Jolley said. "They are likely to digest content that supports that belief and seek to discredit information that is not supportive. Coupled with a worldview centered on distrust towards others, you can see how someone can find themselves down the rabbit hole."

Are there certain groups of people who are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories? Or are we all at risk of becoming staunch supporters of outrageous hypotheses? 

"You'll find conspiracy theorists across all walks of life, but there are some who are more susceptible," Drochon said. "It's about exclusion, or a feeling of exclusion; maybe not having a job or being single, for example," he added.

"Sometimes we say religious people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories because they adopt a Manichean view of the world — good versus evil — but it's more complicated than that," Drochon said. "It's often about being in a minority position, so if you are highly religious in a secularized world you're more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, but if you're highly atheist in a religious world, you will also be susceptible." 

According to Douglas, we all have the potential to fall foul of conspiracy theories if the conditions are right.

"Research suggests people are attracted to conspiracy theories when one or more psychological needs are frustrated," Douglas said. "The first of these needs are epistemic — related to the need to know the truth and have clarity and certainty. The other needs are existential, which are related to the need to feel safe and to have some control over things that are happening, and social, related to the need to maintain our self-esteem and feel positive about the groups that we belong to." 

Because of this, no one is entirely immune from the lure of a conspiracy theory, Douglas said.

"Anyone can fall prey to conspiracy theories if they have psychological needs that are not being met at any particular time." 

Originally published on Live Science.

Bill Nye has had it with flat-earthers and other science deniers. 

While humanity is landing robots on Mars and breaking open the mysteries of the universe, there continues a social trend of "science denialism." From opposition to handwashing in the 1800s to modern climate deniers, anti-maskers and "flat-Earthers," or people who believe that planet Earth is actually flat ( it is not), "anti-science" movements aren't new, but they are a problem facing us all today, according to Nye..

"The flat-Earthers, the anti-vaxxers, the anti-maskers are not on board with the progress of science. And the thing is, it affects all of us," Nye told Space.com. "When you deny the body of knowledge that's been discovered through the process of science, you're holding all of us back, and this is why it's such an important time."

He added to this reporter: "Chelsea, are you gonna vote? Please vote. My goodness." (Reader — and Bill Nye —  fear not, I am voting.)

Related: Bill Nye Tackles Time Travel (and Pot) in 2nd Netflix Season

"There are people running around in the United States, or in the world, on the electric internet, thinking out loud ... that the Earth might be flat," Nye told Space.com. "What?! It's the 21st century … just that anybody would even joke about it is weird. And so this anti-science movement that we have in the United States, well, in the Western world right now, is bad for everybody."

"That's why I did, or we did, the show the Science Guy show years ago was out of concern for the future of the United States especially," Nye said. 

Nye referenced the importance of a number of science advances including relativity. "Your mobile phone depends on Einstein's theories of both special and general relativity to get the right answer, to get it to work. And so we take all that for granted," he said.

He added that we all also depend on the science behind genetically modified food, which stems back thousands of years and is as advanced as ever today. "I just like to remind everybody ... farming is not natural. If you stop farming, it goes back, the land goes back to something else … so this is all science."

Nye added that "it's the exploration of space that led to these profound, profound improvements for quality of life for so many of us."

"I'm excited about the future. I mean, when the young people are running the show ... things are gonna improve or change for the better very rapidly," Nye added. "But it's, you know, as we always say, it's going to be a close call ... if we go get the climate so far out of control." 

You can see Bill Nye discuss science and more online at tin a replay of this year's virtual New York Comic-Con. Nye talked about his book "Bill Nye's Great Big World of Science," with coauthor and science journalist Gregory Mone.

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

In this episode of Life's Little Mysteries, we'll explore an idea that originated thousands of years ago, and despite plenty of scientific evidence to the contrary, it mysteriously persists today — the notion that the world is flat.

What proof do we have that tells us the Earth is round? How do flat-earthers explain lunar eclipses and equinoxes, and why we don't fall off the planet? What would happen if the Earth really was flat? Listen to Life's Little Mysteries 9: Mysterious Flat-Earthers, to find out! 

We'll also hear about the late "Mad" Mike Hughes and his attempts to self-launch a rocket to see Earth's curve, and a psychology professor explains the factors that shape persistent belief in a flat Earth (and in other conspiracy theories).

Co-hosts: Jeanna Bryner and Mindy Weisberger

Guests: Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Associate Professor in Social and Organizational Psychology at Vrije University, Amsterdam; Brandon Specktor, senior writer at Live Science

Listen to Life's Little Mysteries 9: Mysterious Flat-Earthers below, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, so you don’t miss out on new episodes.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for even more Life's Little Mysteries, and catch up on the latest Life's Little Mysteries articles. You can also join the conversation in our forums, where you can pose Life's Little Mysteries questions of your own, or even suggest topics for upcoming podcast episodes. 

Originally published on Live Science.

Following the tragic death of 'Mad' Mike Hughes, we revisit the real reasons why he launched himself into the air aboard his homemade steam rocket, knowing how risky the stunt was. 

This past weekend (Feb. 22), Hughes, 64, a daredevil and amateur rocketeer, tragically died during the launch while filming for the Science Channel's show "Homemade Astronauts."

Hughes was attempting to launch to 5,000 feet (1.5 kilometers) into the air on private property near Barstow, California. He built the rocket himself with the help of his partner Waldo Stakes as part of the show (the Science Channel has yet to comment on whether or not production will continue) that set out to highlight amateur teams working to reach incredible altitudes.

Related: 'Mad' Mike's steam rocket grounded by Craigslist water heater 

According to witnesses at the scene of the launch, Hughes lifted off in his rocket, but soon after, the rocket crashed into the ground. According to Stakes, who was on-site for the launch, Hughes was killed in the event. Hughes crashed at about 1:52 p.m. EST (1752 GMT), according to the Daily Press of Victorville.

Justin Chapman, a freelance journalist, witnessed the crash along with his wife, he told the AP. According to Chapman, the rocket "appeared to rub against the launch apparatus, which might have torn the parachutes attached to it," AP reported. 

The risks that come with launching

In 2018, Hughes successfully launched to 1,875 feet (0.57 kilometers) in an earlier version of the homemade rocket. But, while that launch was a success, he told Space.com in a 2019 interview that he landed pretty hard in the Mojave desert, and this hard landing even caused him to get a compressed vertebra. 

Especially with a difficult, painful landing under his belt, Hughes was aware of how risky the daredevil feat was. "It's a dangerous thing to do," he told Space.com. "Anything [going wrong] could be catastrophic."

"This is a 50-50 deal," Stakes added in a 2019 interview with Space.com. "When you climb inside the rocket there's a 50% chance you're not gonna climb back out of it." But, Stakes added at the time, "Mike is a daredevil and he's willing to take the risk." 

Stakes and Hughes meant for this launch to be a steppingstone to the creation of what they called their "rockoon," a combination of a rocket and balloon. The "rockoon" would work by means of a balloon taking a rocket up fairly high into the air (about 22 to 25 miles), where it would disconnect from the rocket, which would soar to the Kármán line, or the line signifying the beginning of space, Stakes told Space.com. The passenger, who was to be Hughes, would then return to Earth via the help of a parachute. 

Debunking conspiracy coverage

So, if Hughes knew how dangerous it would be to launch himself in this rocket and had already suffered from a difficult landing previously, why did he choose to launch?

Following this tragic accident, a common notion has reemerged in the media. People are saying that Hughes was launching to "prove" the Earth is flat, as Hughes is openly a believer in a number of conspiracy theories, including the flat Earth theory. But, according to Hughes, there was no tie between these conspiracies and his love for launching rockets.

In a 2017 documentary about the daredevil entitled "Rocketman: Mad Mike's Mission to Prove the Flat Earth," Hughes stated, "I'm not going to take anyone else's word for it, or NASA, or especially Elon Musk with SpaceX," he said. "I'm going to build my own rocket right here and I'm going to see it with my own eyes what shape this world we live on."

However, in the interview with Space.com, Hughes clarified, "although I do believe in the flat Earth, this was never an attempt to prove that." 

"This flat Earth has nothing to do with the steam rocket launches, it never did, it never will. I'm a daredevil!" he added. He additionally shared that he wanted to launch "to inspire people."

• Flat-earther to launch himself in homemade steam rocket Saturday
• Flat-earther blasts himself into the sky on homemade rocket
• 'Mad' flat-earther to launch himself 5,000 feet up

Follow Chelsea Gohd on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Mike Huges, the self-taught rocket scientist and self-avowed  flat-Earth conspiracy theorist, died Saturday morning (Feb. 22) during an attempt to launch a homemade rocket outside Barstow in San Bernardino County, California, according to news reports.

"Mad Mike," as he called himself, was attempting to reach an altitude of 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) Saturday. He rode his rocket into the sky, but something went wrong and as he rocketed into the air on top of a column of steam, a green parachute seemed to rip off from the rocket, as seen in a video posted to Twitter by freelance journalist Justin Chapman; Hughes then fell to his death, said Darren Shuster, his public relations representative, as reported by the LA Times.

This wasn’t Hughes’ first rodeo, as the self-taught engineer had made two other attempts, the latest of which was supposed to launch in August 2019. That attempt was grounded by bad weather. Before that, the rocketeer had a successful (albeit bumpy) launch in March 2018, when his homemade rocket reached 1,875 feet (572 m) in altitude over Amboy, California. During that launch, Hughes had to deploy two parachutes to save himself from smashing into the desert. Even so he plummeted back to Earth at 350 mph (563 km/h). He got out of that one with just a sore back, he said at the time. 

Would flat-Earth-believer Hughes have been able to see our planet's sphere at 5,000 feet (1,524 m)? Nope. And he knew that, saying he would need to soar past the so-called Kármán line — where the sky ends and space begins, or roughly 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth — to see the curvature with his own eyes.

To do that, Hughes  told the Associated Press in 2018 that he wanted to build a "Rockoon," or rocket/gas-balloon-hybrid. That, he said, would let him float high into the atmosphere before lighting the rocket's fuse to boost him even farther into the air. 

The current attempt, which Hughes had partnered up with Waldo Stakes to carry out, was being documented in a Science Channel series called "Homemade Astronauts." 

"Michael 'Mad Mike' Hughes tragically passed away today during an attempt to launch his homemade rocket. Our thoughts & prayers go out to his family & friends during this difficult time. It was always his dream to do this launch & Science Channel was there to chronicle his journey," the Science Channel tweeted.

• 7 Ways to Prove Earth Is Round (Without Going to Space)
• 101 Images of a Round Earth Taken from Space
• 8 Times Flat-Earthers Tried to Challenge Science (And Failed)

Originally published on Live Science.  

The Earth is a sphere. This is a simple fact that humans have known for thousands of years; it was incontrovertibly confirmed as soon as the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957 and it went … you know ... around the globe. 

Nevertheless, a small but vocal group of people who insist that the world is flat — so-called flat-earthers — have emerged online in recent years, and they seem to be sowing doubt about this most basic aspect of reality. Many flat-earthers put a great deal of effort into concocting alternative explanations for why the world behaves as if it's round when it's actually flat — even though a spherical Earth clearly fits the observations humans have made about the planet over the last few millennia.  

However, if Earth, somehow, were truly flat, it would not behave much like the planet we know today. In fact, humanity (and everything else) would be very, very dead. 

Related: Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?

To shape a cosmic body into a disk (rather than a sphere), you've got to spin it very fast, says David Stevenson, a planetary scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. This would, unfortunately, destroy the planet by tearing it into tiny particles. In the 1850s, astronomer James Clerk Maxwell showed mathematically that a solid, disk-like shape isn't a stable configuration in the cosmos, in work he conducted regarding Saturn's rings. Maxwell's research predicted that Saturn's rings would be made of lots of small, unconnected particles; he turned out to be right. His math also explains why there are no planet-size disks floating around the galaxy.

To flatten Earth without spinning it very rapidly, you'd need magic, or perhaps a galactic panini press. At any rate, a stamped-flat Earth wouldn't last for long. Within a few hours, the force of gravity would press the planet back into a spheroid. Gravity pulls equally from all sides, which explains why planets are spheres (or nearly so – depending on the speed of a planet's rotation, those forces may work against gravity to create a bit of a bulge at the equator). A stable, solid disk-like Earth just isn’t possible under the actual conditions of gravity, as Maxwell’s math showed. 

And once you get rid of gravity, everything about our planet rapidly stops making sense. 

The atmosphere? Gone, because it's held to the planet by gravity. Tides? Gone. They're caused by the gravitational pull of the moon, which tugs on the oceans and causes them to subtly bulge out as it swings by. 

The moon itself? Also gone, since every explanation of the moon's existence involves gravity. In the most widely accepted scenario, the moon was created when a giant, planet-size body crashed into the early Earth; debris from the crash was captured by Earth's gravity. Another scenario suggests that the moon formed at the same time as Earth did (again, thanks to gravity). Or, Earth's formidable gravity attracted and snagged the traveling hunk of space rock as it went hurtling by. 

Simple calculations

Gravity is also responsible for Earth's layered structure, with the densest materials sinking to the core, lighter materials making up the mantle and the lightest materials forming the crust. Without this layered structure, the planet would behave a lot differently. Earth's liquid outer core, for example, acts as a giant, dynamic magnet, which creates the planet's magnetic field. The magnetic field helps protect the planet's atmosphere from the stripping effect of the solar wind, which scraped away Mars' atmosphere after that planet's magnetic field faltered 4 billion years ago. 

If the Earth were flat, plate tectonics — the movement of rigid plates that make up the planet's crust — wouldn't work either, says James Davis, a geophysicist at the Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York City. 

"When you do the calculations, just simple calculations like, 'If this plate is moving this much and that plate is moving that much,' you have to do it on a sphere," he told Live Science. "You don't get the right answer [the answer that matches real-world observations] if you assume it's a plane." 

Related: 8 Times Flat-Earthers Tried to Challenge Science (and Failed)

Flat-earthers spin different explanations for how all these observations could be possible on a flat planet. The problem, Davis says, is that these explanations don't have any basis in mathematics or physical reality. When Maxwell predicted in the 1850s that Saturn's rings were made of lots of small particles, he did so by applying general knowledge of how gravity and rotational forces work. His essay on the subject, in fact, was mostly mathematical equations. Flat-Earth theories don't work that way, Davis says. 

The flat-Earth worldview also involves cherry-picking different explanations for different phenomena. In real life, the Earth and the Moon are both round for the same quantifiable reason — gravity. Flat Earth believers have to invent independent explanations for both, and these independent explanations often contradict one another. This isn’t how scientific theory works, Davis says. 

"If we can explain a thousand observations with one theory, a simple theory, that's better than explaining a thousand observations with a thousand theories," he said. 

But setting all that aside, if the Earth were truly flat, it would mean that the millions of scientists who deny its flatness — and who have done so throughout history — are united in a vast conspiracy for reasons that are flat-out unfathomable. It almost makes the prospect of a galactic panini press look realistic. 

Almost.

• How Do Flat-Earthers Explain the Equinox? We Investigated.
• How Flat-Earthers Explain Total Lunar Eclipses
• Flat-Earthers Explain Why We Don't Fall Off the Edge of Our Planet, and It Involves Pac-Man

Originally published on Live Science.

"Mad" Mike Hughes, a self-taught rocketeer and flat-Earth conspiracy theorist, will once again attempt to launch himself into the sky over the Mojave Desert on a steam-powered rocket this Sunday (Aug. 11), hopefully reaching heights of 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) before parachuting safely back to the round, welcoming Earth. (What are you doing this weekend?)

The stunt, which is being sponsored by a "commitment-free dating app" and filmed as part of an upcoming Discovery Channel series featuring Hughes, gives the 63-year-old rocketeer a chance to outdo himself following a successful-yet-bumpy DIY launch he completed in March 2018. 

Despite multiple setbacks and dust-ups with the Bureau of Land Management, Hughes rode his homemade rocket some 1,875 feet (572 m) into the air over Amboy, California, on March 24, 2018, before plummeting back to Earth at 350 mph (563 km/h). Hughes had to deploy two parachutes to save himself from smashing into the desert nose-first, finally walking away with just a sore back.

This Sunday's launch looks to be a bit riskier, with Hughes aiming to blast himself more than twice as high into the sky before dropping back to Earth at around 400 mph (643 km/h), according to a news release for the event. As with last year's launch, Hughes reportedly made his new steam-powered rocket at home in his garage — however, he will get some help this time in the form of a portable launchpad, instead of having to jury-rig a mobile home into a ramp (as he did last year).

Will Hughes be able to see the curvature of the Earth from his mile-high vantage point, thus crushing his stated belief that our planet is "shaped like a Frisbee?" Not unless his steam-powered contraption exceeds its reach by about seven-fold, carrying him 35,000 feet (10,700 m) up instead.

But proving or disproving the Earth's 100% verifiable roundness is not the goal of this stunt, anyway. As Hughes has said before, he will need to soar past the Kármán line — that contested boundary where the sky ends and space begins, roughly 62 miles (100 kilometers) over Earth — to personally see our apparently latke-shaped planet from space with his own eyes. To do that, Hughes told the Associated Press last year, he wants to build a "Rockoon," or rocket/gas-balloon-hybrid, which he can use to float high into the atmosphere before lighting the rocket's fuse and blasting up even farther. This Sunday's event puts him one small step closer to that ambition.

Truly, 2019 is an exciting time to love rocket science while believing that everything NASA says is a lie.

• 7 Ways to Prove Earth Is Round (Without Going to Space)
• 101 Images of a Round Earth Taken from Space
• 8 Times Flat-Earthers Tried to Challenge Science (And Failed)

Originally published on Live Science.

Organizers of an annual conference that brings together people who believe that the Earth is flat are planning a cruise to the purported edge of the planet. They're looking for the ice wall that holds back the oceans.

The journey will take place in 2020, the Flat Earth International Conference (FEIC) recently announced on its website. The goal? To test so-called flat-Earthers' assertion that Earth is a flattened disk surrounded at its edge by a towering wall of ice.

Details about the event, including the dates, are forthcoming, according to the FEIC, which calls the cruise "the biggest, boldest adventure yet." However, it's worth noting that nautical maps and navigation technologies such as global positioning systems (GPS) work as they do because the Earth is … a globe. [7 Ways to Prove the Earth Is Round]

Believers in a flat Earth argue that images showing a curved horizon are fake and that photos of a round Earth from space are part of a vast conspiracy perpetrated by NASA and other space agencies to hide Earth's flatness. These and other flat-Earth assertions appear on the website of the Flat Earth Society (FES), allegedly the world's oldest official flat Earth organization, dating to the early 1800s.

However, the ancient Greeks demonstrated that Earth was a sphere more than 2,000 years ago, and the gravity that keeps everything on the planet from flying off into space could exist only on a spherical world.

But in diagrams shared on the FES website, the planet appears as a pancake-like disk with the North Pole smack in the center and an edge "surrounded on all sides by an ice wall that holds the oceans back." This ice wall — thought by some flat-Earthers to be Antarctica — is the destination of the promised FEIC cruise.

There's just one catch: Navigational charts and systems that guide cruise ships and other vessels around Earth's oceans are all based on the principle of a round Earth, Henk Keijer, a former cruise ship captain with 23 years of experience, told The Guardian.

GPS relies on a network of dozens of satellites orbiting thousands of miles above Earth; signals from the satellites beam down to the receiver inside of a GPS device, and at least three satellites are required to pinpoint a precise position because of Earth's curvature, Keijer explained.

"Had the Earth been flat, a total of three satellites would have been enough to provide this information to everyone on Earth," Keijer said. "But it is not enough, because the Earth is round."

Whether or not the FEIC cruise will rely on GPS or deploy an entirely new flat-Earth-based navigation system for finding the end of the world, remains to be seen.

• Religion and Science: 6 Visions of Earth's Core
• 101 Images of a Round Earth Taken from Space
• 8 Times Flat-Earthers Tried to Challenge Science (and Failed) in 2017

Originally published on Live Science.

During the Super Blood Wolf Moon this weekend (Jan. 20-21), skywatchers in much of the Western Hemisphere saw the moon pass directly through Earth's shadow. Our natural satellite appears red during lunar eclipses for the same reason that sunrises and sunsets appear that shade here on Earth: because sunlight is scattered as it passes through the atmosphere.

According to flat-Earth conspiracy theorists, this astronomical phenomenon — known as a total lunar eclipse — was actually a rare opportunity to catch a glimpse of a mysterious "shadow object" that orbits the sun and occasionally passes in front of the moon from our point of view here, on an allegedly pizza-shaped Earth. [Amazing Photos of the Super Blood Wolf Moon of 2019!] 

Although flat-Earthers believe our planet is flat as a pancake, they surprisingly seem to have come to the consensus that the sun and moon are spherical objects. However, these theorists posit that both the sun and the moon orbit Earth's north pole, hovering directly above the pancake and never passing around to the other side. If that were true, however, lunar eclipses as we know them could not happen, because the moon must be on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun for such an event to happen. So, flat-Earthers fabricated a new explanation for the shadow seen on the moon during an eclipse.

In a post on The Flat Earth Wiki, a website run by The Flat Earth Society, the conspiracy theorists offer no description of the so-called "shadow object" — no details about its size, shape, composition or origin. But the writers claim that this mysterious, shadowy figure causes all lunar eclipses. Oh, and it's totally invisible when it's not in front of the moon.

"The shadow object is never seen in the sky, because it orbits close to the sun," says The Flat Earth Wiki. Even though the tiny, innermost planet Mercury can be seen close to (and occasionally in front of) the sun, The Flat Earth Wiki falsely asserts that "we are never given a glimpse of the celestial bodies which appear near the sun during the day." 

If nothing else, The Flat Earth Wiki does give a description of the mysterious proposed object's orbit, stating that it's tilted about 5.15 degrees to the sun's orbital plane. Coincidentally, in reality, this is the angle at which the moon's orbit is tilted with respect to Earth's orbit. The Flat Earth Society did not provide the mathematical calculations by which it arrived at this number, which seems more likely to have been "borrowed" from real astronomers' calculations than to have been derived from scratch.

The wiki additionally states that "there is also a possibility that the Shadow Object is a known celestial body which orbits the sun; but more study would be needed to track the positions of Mercury, Venus and the sun's asteroid satellites and correlate them with the equations for the lunar eclipse before any conclusion could be drawn."

Astronomers have already charted the orbits of all the planets for the foreseeable future, and none of them will come in between Earth and the moon anytime soon (or ever).

Clearly The Flat Earth Society's explanation of the lunar eclipse is flat-out wrong. You can read more about the amazing math and physics of lunar and solar eclipses here. And don't worry if you missed the Super Blood Wolf Moon; here's when the next eclipses will occur.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Original article on Space.com.

The spring equinox is upon us. On Monday (March 20), the sun will shine directly on the Earth's equator, spring will officially begin in the northern hemisphere, and the length of day and night will be nearly equal across the globe ... or, "across the disk," if you're a flat-Earther.

For flat-earthers — the vocal online community of folks who believe the world is actually flat and science is a conspiracy — the equinox can be tricky to explain. Without axial tilt, the phenomenon in which the rotating, spherical Earth angles its poles toward or away from the sun, how can the changing seasons be reliably explained? How can sunrises and sunsets occur if the sun is constantly shining on the entire, flat surface of the planet? If the North Pole sits at the exact center of the world, can compass directions even exist? 

Related: 7 ways to prove the Earth is round

Flat-Earth thinkers have come up with many answers to these niggling questions over the last century or so, and we've scoured the literature to share the explanations with you. Be warned: Understanding them requires discarding a few thousand years of what you might consider accepted scientific knowledge. For starters, forget the heliocentric model of the solar system. You won't need it here.

The sun is really, really small

In the most popular flat-Earth maps, the North Pole sits roughly at the center of the planetary disc, while Antarctica forms a giant ice wall along the planet's circumference. The equator forms a ring hallway between the two.

Many flat-Earthers agree that the sun perfectly circles the ring of the equator on the equinox; however, to account for the equal hours of daytime and nighttime, the models make a few tweaks to how the sun itself looks and behaves.

While you might envision the sun as an enormous ball of exploding gas located 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away, a flat-Earther would see it as a teeny, tiny spotlight hovering just over the Earth. How teeny and how close is it? According to the early flat-Earth thinker Samuel Birley Rowbotham, who published the influential treatise "Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe" in 1881, the sun is only about 32 miles (52 km) in diameter and hovers anywhere from 400 to 700 miles (640 to 1,130 km) above the Earth, depending on the month.

Many modern flat-Earthers now believe that the sun sits about 3,000 miles (5,000 km) over the Earth, but Rowbotham's general idea remains popular in the community. Here's how members of the Flat Earth Society (one of the foremost flat-Earth activist groups in the world) describe the idea on their official wiki page:

"The sun moves in circles around the North Pole. When it is over your head, it's day. When it's not, it's night. The light of the sun is confinedto a limited area, and its light acts like a spotlight upon the Earth."

The diameter of these sun-circles governs the seasons. According to one popular theory, the sun circles closest to the North Pole in June, then spends the next six months spiraling slowly outward toward the ice wall at the edge of the world. In December, the sun reverses course and spirals back inward again.During the spring and autumn equinoxes, the sun circles in a perfect loop around the equator, casting light on half of the disc world at any given time. Voila: seasons!

Is that … possible?

This explanation has its problems. For starters, a sun circling 3,000 miles (5,000 km) above a flat Earth would never actually "set," even at the most southern latitudes. YouTube user Wolfie6020, a globe-Earth proponent, demonstrated this by building a scale model of the flat-Earth-style sun as it would be seen from Sydney on a vernal equinox. As shown in his video, the sun (actually a drone carrying a ping-pong ball) never dips below the horizon, even at its farthest point from the observer.

Moreover, during an equinox, the sun appears to rise due east and set due west everywhere on Earth except at the poles. For this to hold true on a flat Earth, where some cities are physically many times farther away from the sun than others, the sunlight would have to bend at hundreds of different angles simultaneously. That's the only way it could appear as if it was always coming from the east. YouTube user Flat Out, another prolific globe-Earth proponent, demonstrated the impossibility of this explanation using simple computer simulations in 2017.

So far, no flat-Earth model has been able to resolve these problems. But that doesn't stop the community from trying — or, in some cases, not trying. Like many conspiracy theories, it's the uncertainty that makes flat-Earth theory a mystery worth obsessing over for its proponents. So, whatever you believe, we hope this year's equinox restores your wonder in the globe/disk we call home.

Editor's note: This article, originally published in 2018, was updated on March 20, 2023.

Once a belief takes hold, it can be hard to make it budge, even with reams of data and evidence. Now, a new study hints at one reason why: When a person gets just a few jolts of positive feedback for their belief, they feel very certain they're right.

This certainty persists even if the overall body of evidence suggests the person is wrong, researchers reported Aug. 16 in the open-access journal Open Mind. This certainty can be a curiosity killer, said study co-author Louis Marti, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley.  

"If the answers you have happen to be wrong, but you have a very high certainty that you're correct, you're probably not going to go out and seek out other information," Marti told Live Science.

False beliefs

Marti and his colleagues were interested in how misinformation takes hold, a hot topic in an era when false information spreads rapidly online. In the face of firm evidence, people hang onto false beliefs like that the Earth is flat or that climate change is a hoax, with obvious implications for politics and policy. [7 Ways to Prove the Earth Is Round (Without Launching a Satellite)]

The researchers knew from previous studies that curiosity drives the search for new information. The question, then, was this: What keeps people from becoming curious? How do they become so certain that they already know it all?

To find out, the team ran three experiments using online participants recruited from Amazon's pay-by-the-gig website, Mechanical Turk. In three separate experiments with more than 500 different participants in each, the researchers presented a variety of colorful shapes on a computer screen and asked whether each was a "daxxy." A "daxxy" was defined as a structure with a particular color, shape and size, but the participants had no idea which color, shape and size were right. They had to guess and then use the feedback on whether they were right to reason their way to the correct definition of "daxxy."

The advantage of this method, said study co-author Celeste Kidd, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, is that the researchers could statistically determine how certain any given participant should be about the definition of "daxxy" at any given point, based on how much information had been presented. They could then ask the participants how certain they felt and compare the two answers.

Certainty uncertainty

People are pretty good at using feedback to figure out what "daxxy" means, Marti said. But it turns out, they're not so good at knowing when they've got the answer right. [Top 10 Conspiracy Theories]

The main factor determining how certain someone was in their definition, Marti said, was how well they'd done in their most recent answers — no matter how abysmally they'd performed otherwise.

"You might get the first 19 trials wrong but get the last five trials right," Marti said, "And if that happens to you, you're probably going to say you're certain, even though you got 19 wrong."

Something like climate change denial or belief in a flat Earth is likely more complicated than a simple learning task like the daxxy experiment, Marti said. But this confusion over certainty might still matter in those cases, because it could keep people from seeking out new information that might upset their preconceived notions.

Take a flat-Earth believer, Kidd said. Their belief can explain why the horizon looks flat from most vantage points and why it doesn't feel like you're spinning through space. That positive feedback might be enough to keep someone from searching for the real explanations (the immensity of the Earth's curvature and the constant nature of its rotation, respectively).

The findings pertain to more than just fringe conspiracy theorists, though. Everyone holds false beliefs of one kind or another, Marti said. He added that he now hopes to study whether there is any way to "snap people out of" their misconceptions about certainty.

"If we can get people to realize there is a gap in their information, our theory would predict that would then raise their curiosity, which would then make them more likely to research things themselves," he said.

Original article on Live Science.

One conspiracy theory at a time, folks: Flat-Earthers aren't on board with climate change denial.

A screenshot that appeared on the subreddit r/facepalm on Tuesday (Aug. 28) received more than 39,000 upvotes. In it, someone tweets at the Flat Earth Society's official Twitter handle, "OK. Real Question. But do you guys believe in climate change?"

The Flat Earth Society's account replies, "Certainly. It would be nothing short of irresponsible to question something with so much overwhelming evidence behind it and something that threatens us so directly as a species." [8 Times Flat-Earthers Tried to Challenge Science (and Failed)]

"OK, cool," responded the original tweeter.

The screenshot is real, dating back to a July 25 exchange.

As The Conversation noted in May, Flat Earth Society President Daniel Shenton has said in the past that he accepts the science of human-caused climate change. This makes him a sort of mirror image of certain powerful policy figures in the U.S., The Conversation added, like former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who accepts that the Earth is round but rejects the science demonstrating that humans are responsible for climate change.

One conspiracy theory at a time.

Originally published on Live Science.

Speakers recently flew in from around (or perhaps, across?) the earth for a three-day event held in Birmingham: the UK's first ever public Flat Earth Convention. It was well attended, and wasn't just three days of speeches and YouTube clips (though, granted, there was a lot of this). There was also a lot of team-building, networking, debating, workshops – and scientific experiments.

Yes, flat earthers do seem to place a lot of emphasis and priority on scientific methods and, in particular, on observable facts. The weekend in no small part revolved around discussing and debating science, with lots of time spent running, planning, and reporting on the latest set of flat earth experiments and models. Indeed, as one presenter noted early on, flat earthers try to "look for multiple, verifiable evidence" and advised attendees to "always do your own research and accept you might be wrong".

While flat earthers seem to trust and support scientific methods, what they don't trust is scientists, and the established relationships between "power" and "knowledge". This relationship between power and knowledge has long been theorised by sociologists. By exploring this relationship, we can begin to understand why there is a swelling resurgence of flat earthers.

Read more: How to reason with flat earthers (it may not help though)

Power and knowledge

Let me begin by stating quickly that I'm not really interested in discussing if the earth if flat or not (for the record, I'm happily a "globe earther") – and I'm not seeking to mock or denigrate this community. What's important here is not necessarily whether they believe the earth is flat or not, but instead what their resurgence and public conventions tell us about science and knowledge in the 21st century.

Multiple competing models were suggested throughout the weekend, including "classic" flat earth, domes, ice walls, diamonds, puddles with multiple worlds inside, and even the earth as the inside of a giant cosmic egg. The level of discussion however often did not revolve around the models on offer, but on broader issues of attitudes towards existing structures of knowledge, and the institutions that supported and presented these models.

Flat earthers are not the first group to be skeptical of existing power structures and their tight grasps on knowledge. This viewpoint is somewhat typified by the work of Michel Foucault, a famous and heavily influential 20th century philosopher who made a career of studying those on the fringes of society to understand what they could tell us about everyday life.

He is well known, amongst many other things, for looking at the close relationship between power and knowledge. He suggested that knowledge is created and used in a way that reinforces the claims to legitimacy of those in power. At the same time, those in power control what is considered to be correct and incorrect knowledge. According to Foucault, there is therefore an intimate and interlinked relationship between power and knowledge.

At the time Foucault was writing on the topic, the control of power and knowledge had moved away from religious institutions, who previously held a very singular hold over knowledge and morality, and was instead beginning to move towards a network of scientific institutions, media monopolies, legal courts, and bureaucratized governments. Foucault argued that these institutions work to maintain their claims to legitimacy by controlling knowledge.

Ahead of the curve?

In the 21st century, we are witnessing another important shift in both power and knowledge due to factors that include the increased public platforms afforded by social media. Knowledge is no longer centrally controlled and – as has been pointed out in the wake of Brexit – the age of the expert may be passing. Now, everybody has the power to create and share content. When Michael Gove, a leading proponent of Brexit, proclaimed: "I think the people of this country have had enough of experts," it would seem that he, in many ways, meant it.

It is also clear that we're seeing increased polarization in society, as we continue to drift away from agreed singular narratives and move into camps around shared interests. Recent PEW research suggests, for example, that 80% of voters who backed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election – and 81percent of Trump voters – believe the two sides are unable to agree on basic facts.

Despite early claims, from as far back as HG Wells' "world brain" essays in 1936, that a worldwide shared resource of knowledge such as the internet would create peace, harmony and a common interpretation of reality, it appears that quite the opposite has happened. With the increased voice afforded by social media, knowledge has been increasingly decentralized, and competing narratives have emerged.

This was something of a reoccurring theme throughout the weekend, and was especially apparent when four flat earthers debated three physics PhD students. A particular point of contention occurred when one of the physicists pleaded with the audience to avoid trusting YouTube and bloggers. The audience and the panel of flat earthers took exception to this, noting that "now we've got the internet and mass communication … we're not reliant on what the mainstream are telling us in newspapers, we can decide for ourselves". It was readily apparent that the flat earthers were keen to separate knowledge from scientific institutions.

Flat earthers and populism

At the same time as scientific claims to knowledge and power are being undermined, some power structures are decoupling themselves from scientific knowledge, moving towards a kind of populist politics that are increasingly skeptical of knowledge. This has, in recent years, manifested itself in extreme ways – through such things as public politicians showing support for Pizzagate or Trump's suggestions that Ted Cruz's father shot JFK.

But this can also be seen in more subtle and insidious form in the way in which Brexit, for example, was campaigned for in terms of gut feelings and emotions rather than expert statistics and predictions. Science is increasingly facing problems with its ability to communicate ideas publicly, a problem that politicians, and flat earthers, are able to circumvent with moves towards populism.

Again, this theme occurred throughout the weekend. Flat earthers were encouraged to trust "poetry, freedom, passion, vividness, creativity, and yearning" over the more clinical regurgitation of established theories and facts. Attendees were told that "hope changes everything", and warned against blindly trusting what they were told. This is a narrative echoed by some of the celebrities who have used their power to back flat earth beliefs, such as the musician B.O.B, who tweeted: "Don't believe what I say, research what I say."

In many ways, a public meeting of flat earthers is a product and sign of our time; a reflection of our increasing distrust in scientific institutions, and the moves by power-holding institutions towards populism and emotions. In much the same way that Foucault reflected on what social outcasts could reveal about our social systems, there is a lot flat earthers can reveal to us about the current changing relationship between power and knowledge. And judging by the success of this UK event – and the large conventions planned in Canada and America this year – it seems the flat earth is going to be around for a while yet.

Harry T Dyer, Lecturer in Education, University of East Anglia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

More than 200 flat-earthers descended on West Midlands, England, this past weekend to "engage freely in deep and meaningful discussions," according to the Flat Earth Convention UK.

The Earth's glorious globular-ness was proved more than 2,000 years ago by the ancient Greeks, but there's a small subset of people who think the planet is a disk despite enjoying the downward pull of gravity that could only result from living on a sphere. 

At this conference, they were presenting their scientific evidence for such a disk. One of the more interesting pieces of evidence came from speaker Darren Nesbit, who referred to the "Pac-Man effect" as the reason why planes don't fall off the edge of a flat Earth, according to the science news website Physics-Astronomy.org. When a plane or other object reaches the edge of the horizon, such as when Pac-Man reaches the end of the screen, that object will teleport from one side of the planet to the other, a la Pac-Man entering from the other side of the screen. [7 Ways to Prove the Earth Is Round]

According to the group that put on the convention, the gathering also included some "alternative viewpoints." (You think?)

"In conjunction with a select number of well-known flat-earth speakers, we have also provided some alternative viewpoints. We truly hope that new friendships are forged, ideas and experiments are brain stormed and future actions are set in motion," they state on their website.

Related: How do flat-Earthers explain the equinox? We investigated.

Among the nine speakers were Nesbit, a musician who became interested in flat-Earth beliefs in 2014; Dave Marsh, a manager with England's National Health Service; and Gary John, an independent flat-Earther who put on the convention.

Marsh was one of four speakers who are associated with the flat-Earth research group called FEcore. His research focuses on the moon, "as he believes it is the key to unlocking the globe earth deception," according to the convention website.

He studies the speed of the moon across the night sky. (Flat-Earthers believe the moon and sun orbit around Earth's North Pole.) "My research destroys big bang cosmology," he said, according to Physics-Astronomy.org. "It supports the idea that gravity doesn't exist and the only true force in nature is electromagnetism."

Another speaker, Martin Kenny, purports to have broader views of a flat Earth than other believers. "It is my innerstanding that there are other lands, dimensions and civilizations yet to be discovered across and within the plane of our Earth. The whole earth consists of 4 concentric rings of land, each ring having its own sun and moon, which would be our wandering stars," he says on the convention website.

Flat-Earthers like Kenny agree that the planet is a flat plane, though they have varied ideas for the disk's particular layout. Many seem to think the Earth is a disk surrounded by an ice wall and that those who show evidence to the contrary — including NASA, with its many satellite pics beamed down of our blue marble — are fakes. These conspiracy theorists believe NASA and others are trying to keep this secret from the public. [101 Images of a Round Earth Taken from Space]

As for how many people buy into this clearly mistaken belief, that is unknown. However, the oldest flat-Earth organization, the Flat Earth Society, claims to have 555 registered members as of August 2016. According to the society's website, the group was founded by an English inventor named Samuel Birley Rowbotham in the 1800s.

In addition to the Q&A's with the nine speakers at the three-day convention, there was apparently a talk entitled "Heliocentric v Geocentric experts Debate." The convention's site doesn't indicate who was debating these two views, one proved ages ago, and the other suggesting Earth is fixed in space with the universe revolving around it.

This isn't the first flat-Earth convening. In November 2017, the Flat Earth International Conference was held in Raleigh, North Carolina. That convention hosted some big-name (in flat-Earth circles, at least) speakers, such as founder of the Flat Earth Clues series on YouTube, Mark Sargent, who thinks we are all locked inside a "Truman Show"-like dome structure. The next FEIC is scheduled for Nov. 15 -16 in Denver.

We hope you don't fall off the planet before then.

Original article on Live Science.

The findings don't necessarily indicate an epidemic of flat-Earthism, as only 4 percent of the 18- to 24-year-old age group said they actually believe the world is flat. Rather, there seem to be a relatively large number in this age group who are willing to entertain doubts: 9 percent said they had always believed the world was round but were recently having doubts, 5 percent said they had always believed the world was flat but were becoming skeptical of that conclusion and 16 percent just weren't sure.

Flat-Earth philosophy has been around since the 19th century, but it has recently blown up online, particularly on YouTube and Twitter. Believers post videos and memes arguing their case for a flat Earth and positing conspiracy theories to explain away everything that makes it clear that the planet is, in fact, a globe.

Flat-Earth believers

It's hard to pin down precisely how many flat-Earthers there are. The first flat-Earth conference in the United States, held last year, drew a crowd of 500, according to its organizers. The new survey, conducted by YouGov, drew respondents from its online panel of 1.8 million residents of the United States. The survey questioned 8,215 adults, and the results were then weighted to represent the demographic makeup of the U.S. population. [7 Ways to Prove the Earth Is Round (Without Launching a Satellite)]

Overall, the results suggest that 84 percent of Americans believe the world is round. Five percent said they always believed the world to be round but have recently become skeptical. Two percent said the world is flat. Another 2 percent said they always thought the world was flat but have recently become skeptical. And 7 percent just weren't sure.

"Young millennials," or those ages 18 to 24, were the most likely to exhibit round-Earth skepticism, with only 66 percent firm in their belief in a spherical world. For comparison, 94 percent of those 55 and older think the world is round, as do 85 percent of 45- to 54-year-olds, 82 percent of 35- to 44-year-olds and 76 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds.

There weren't many differences in flat-Earth beliefs across regions of the country or between genders or people of different political persuasions. People who reported incomes of less than $40,000 a year were slightly less likely to say the world was round than people who made higher incomes (79 percent versus 87 percent in the $40,000 to $80,000 income bracket, and 92 percent in the $80,000 and up income bracket). 

The geography of religion

The most predictive demographic factor that explains flat-Earth belief appears to be religion, the YouGov survey suggested. According to the results, 52 percent of those who said the world was flat also called themselves "very religious," a descriptor that only 20 percent of Americans as a whole use for themselves. Another 23 percent of flat-Earth believers called themselves "somewhat religious," while 25 percent said they were either not very religious or not religious at all.

While few polls have focused specifically on flat-Earth beliefs, other national polls have suggested that Americans are shaky on facts generally taught by the time they reach fourth grade. A 1999 Gallup poll found that 18 percent of Americans mistakenly thought the sun revolves around the Earth, rather than the other way around. (Germans and Britons were similarly heliocentrically confused in surveys taken around the same time, according to Gallup.)

Google Trends suggests that interest in the concept of "flat Earth," if not necessarily belief, has been on the rise over the past few years. The search trend for the term in the United States crept upward over 2016 and 2017, with spikes coinciding with particular events. For example, searches for "flat Earth" rose around the time of the August 2017 solar eclipse, which spurred much sparring between flat-Earthers and mainstreamers online.

Original article on Live Science. 

A flat-Earth conspiracy theorist named Mike Hughes finally lifted off our spherical planet's surface into the skies aboard a self-made, steam-powered rocket Saturday (March 24).

"Mad" Mike believes, of course mistakenly, that the Earth is flat, and his plan since November 2017 has been to launch himself upwards of 1,800 feet, with the goal of making it high enough to prove the planet's flatness, though that's down the line, he has said.

In a video by Noize TV (which contains explicit language) yesterday, Hughes is seen stepping into the top cone of the rocket, with his helmet-covered head facing the heavens, the desert mountains in the background. The rocket was nestled into scaffolding attached to Hughes' "Flat Earth" plastered truck.  

The launch comes after two failed attempts — one was canceled after the Bureau of Land Management caught wind of his plans to shoot the rocket from public lands and promptly shut him down; and in another attempt on Feb. 3, the flat-Earther's rocket never left the pad (on private land). (Noise TV livestreamed the painful-to-watch 11-minute event.)

This time, Hughes, a 61-year-old limo driver, crafted a ramp from a mobile home so that he could launch from a vertical angle that would allow him to return to Earth on private land owned by Albert Okura. In Saturday's success, the rocket took off straight into the air, reaching 1,875 feet (572 meters) above the Mojave Desert near Amboy, California, before making a "hard landing which sheared off the nose cone," he posted on his Facebook page.

The cone, with Hughes inside, fell back to Earth attached to a parachute. He was dropping at 350 mph (560 km/h) before pulling his parachute; that wasn't enough to slow him to a reasonable speed, and so Hughes had to pull a second parachute before crashing into the desert, as seen in the Noize TV livestream.

Upon landing, he told the Associated Press that aside from an aching back, he was fine, and "relieved," adding "I'm tired of people saying I chickened out and didn't build a rocket. I'm tired of that stuff. I manned up and did it."

The mission looked like it was going to be aborted, due to the high winds and the fact that his rocket was losing steam. As reported by the AP, for maximum thrust, the steam pressure should reach 350 psi and before the launch, it was dropping to 340 psi.

"I told Mike we could try to keep charging it up and get it hotter," said Waldo Stakes, who was helping Hughes with the mission. "He said, 'No,'" the AP reported.

His ultimate goal? Hughes reportedly wants to build what he's calling a Rockoon, or a rocket that hitches a ride into the air aboard a gas-filled balloon. The rocket would then separate and take Hughes to an altitude of 68 miles (110 kilometers), where he could then take pictures to prove the flatness of the Earth, according to the AP. One can see Earth's curvature starting at an altitude of about 6.6 miles, or 35,000 feet (10,700 m).

"Do I believe the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee? I believe it is," he said in an earlier video posted to his Facebook page. "Do I know for sure? No. That's why I want to go up in space."

Of course, there are plenty of ways to prove the Earth is a sphere without launching oneself into space, as Live Science has laid out previously.

Originally published on Live Science.

"Cosmos" host and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson recently shot down the ideas of anyone who still thinks the Earth is flat. In a new YouTube video on the scientist's StarTalk channel, he used examples ranging from space observations to ancient Greek experiments in a conversation with stand-up comedian Chuck Nice.

"So, tell me, Neil, is the Earth flat?" Nice said to open the conversation.

"We have video from space of the rotating, spherical Earth. The Earth is round," was Tyson's laconic response. [Even a Kid Can Prove the Earth Is Round: Here's How]

Satisfied, Nice joked, "Thank you for joining us on this episode," and pretended to wrap things up. But the co-hosts continued their conversation in a 9-minute video that is based on a chapter in Tyson's new book, "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry" (W.W. Norton, 2017).

The science argument

"What's odd," Tyson continued, "is there are people who think that Earth is flat but recognize that the moon is round. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and the sun are all spheres. But Earth is flat ... something doesn't square here."

Tyson explained that because of the laws of physics and the way energy works, the universe "favors the sphere" when forming planets and other bodies. Sometimes, a sphere might be distorted because it's rotating very fast. But almost everything in the universe, he added, is spherical or almost spherical.

Tyson did not address asteroids, which are small bodies of ice and rock and are irregularly shaped. It is widely recognized, however, that these asteroids have a gravity too low to pull their mass into a sphere. Worlds orbiting the sun that do have spherical bodies are sometimes called planets, but only if they meet certain criteria set by the International Astronomical Union.

In the example of Pluto — once considered a planet — the IAU ruled in 2006 that the body is not big enough to clear debris from its path and therefore should be reclassified as a dwarf planet. That's a controversial definition, one that Pluto's New Horizons spacecraft team does not agree with. But for his part, Tyson (as shown in many other sources, such as this 2017 clip from "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert ") really, really doesn't believe Pluto fits the definition of planethood.

Tyson was similarly outspoken in the new StarTalk video. He said there are people in the U.S. who believe in a flat Earth for two reasons: the country protects free speech, and its educational system doesn't teach students to think critically about the evidence.

The geometry argument

There's even more evidence that the Earth is round, Tyson said. During lunar eclipses, the moon passes into the Earth's shadow and lies directly opposite to the sun. The shape of the Earth's shadow is always round in these eclipses. If Earth were a flat planet, at times, you would see a flat shadow on the moon. But that's never happened, Tyson added. The Earth must be a sphere, because that's the only thing that casts a perfect circle every time.

Or think about a ship sailing toward the horizon, Tyson said — it gradually disappears, because the Earth is curved. Or, he said, if he were to send co-host Nice on a journey around the Earth, Tyson could turn his chair 180 degrees and eventually see Nice arriving back where the comedian had started. (Nice quipped that would take him 150 years to accomplish the trip, because "I'm no Forrest Gump. It would take me that long to run the Earth.")

Tyson further described an ancient experiment by the Greek Eratosthenes, who lived in Alexandria around 250 B.C. Eratosthenes noted that in an Egyptian city called Syene (near modern-day Aswan), you could see right to the bottom of a well at noon during the summer solstice. On the same day, you couldn't see to the bottom of a well in Alexandria.

There are two possible explanations for that observation, Tyson added. The first is that the Earth is flat and has a small sun, close to the planet. The second is that the Earth is curved, with a sun further from the planet. But if you were to extend the argument to three wells, there's no way a flat Earth's geometry would fit the experiment's results, he added.

So, what if people still believe the Earth is flat?

"That's OK," Tyson quipped, "as long as you don't run NASA."

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Yesterday's successful launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket also sent an unusual payload into space: a cherry-red Tesla Roadster "manned" by a dummy named Starman and equipped with cameras that provided gorgeous views of Earth against the backdrop of space.

But flat-Earthers aren't buying it.

"People who believe that the Earth is a globe because 'they saw a car in space on the Internet' must be the new incarnation of 'It's true, I saw it on TV!' It's a poor argument," tweeted The Flat Earth Society, an organization dedicated to spreading the (incorrect) notion that the Earth is not round. "Why would we believe any privately held company to report the truth?" the organization added.

Trust no one

Flat-Earth conspiracy theorists have a long history of mistrusting the government when it comes to space. On forums devoted to the belief that the Earth is a flat disk, "NASA" often gets mocked as standing for "Never A Straight Answer," and astronauts' attempts to answer the common flat-Earth call of "show me the curve" are regularly dismissed as hoaxes and lies.

Now, Elon Musk's private spaceflight company has apparently joined the ranks of the hoaxers and liars, the flat-Earthers say. On Twitter, flat-Earth accounts posted about "FakeX" and insisted that photos of Starman against a round Earth were Photoshopped. On Starman's live YouTube feed, chatters trolled one another with taunts about how the video proved flat-Earthers wrong, or was part of a vast conspiracy, depending on who was doing the trolling — flat-Earth opponents or believers.     

In the thread following The Flat Earth Society's tweet, the person in charge of the feed referred most challengers to the organization's Wiki page, where members posit that the planet is a flat disk with the North Pole at the center and an ice wall (what most people know as Antarctica) skirting the edge.

Believe your eyes

It's impossible to say how many people actually believe that the Earth is flat — especially online, where trolls and true believers are difficult to distinguish. The Flat Earth Society lists 555 members, and the organizer of a flat-Earth conference that took place in November 2017 in North Carolina told Live Science that about 500 people attended.

Experts in conspiracy belief say that, despite their strange insistence on ignoring more than 2,000 years of scientific observation, flat-Earth theorists may be fairly similar to believers in other conspiracies: They tend to be drawn to these beliefs out of the sense of control and special knowledge they confer, and the believers tend to like black-and-white versions of the world in which clear "bad guys" try to pull the wool over the eyes of the "good guys."

Some flat-Earth believers are motivated by their interpretations of the Bible as saying the Earth is flat. (The organizer of November's flat-Earth conference is a Christian creationist.) Others simply don't trust anything they can't see with their own eyes. There's a name for this, the Zetetic method,which holds personal sensory experiences above all other forms of information gathering. Starting from this mindset, nothing NASA or Musk releases can be considered trustworthy; only going into space to find the curve with one's own eyes counts.

Unfortunately, that's not so easy to pull off.

Original article on Live Science.

A believer in flat-Earth conspiracies took another shot at shooting himself toward the stratosphere in a homemade rocket. Once again, it fell flat.

"Mad Mike" Hughes, a self-proclaimed daredevil who rejects the fact that the Earth is round, posted a video on his Facebook page about two weeks ago saying that he planned to launch himself from private property to an altitude of 1,800 feet (550 meters) on Saturday, Feb. 3. Hughes had canceled and delayed launches before, so it wasn't really clear whether Saturday's event would happen. His homemade rocket sat on the "launchpad" in Amboy, California, for about 11 minutes before it … didn't go anywhere, as shown on a live video of the event.

Nevertheless, it spotlights a subculture that is increasingly gaining notoriety online.

That subculture is flat-earthers, people who argue that centuries of observations that the Earth is round (including astronaut photographs from space and the fact that round-the-world travel itineraries work) are either mistaken or part of a vast cover-up. Instead, flat-earthers argue, the planet is a disk. Exactly what this looks like varies by who is theorizing, but many flat-Earth believers say that walls of ice surround the edge of the disk, and that the planets, moons and stars hover in a sort of dome-shaped firmament above Earth, much closer to Earth than they really are. [8 Times Flat-Earthers Tried to Challenge Science in 2017)

As conspiracy theories go, it's a pretty all-encompassing one. So what is the appeal? For many believers, it's a matter of distrust of the scientific elite and the desire to see the evidence with their own eyes. And, psychologists say, flat-Earth conspiracy theorists may be chasing many of the same needs as believers in other conspiracies: social belonging, the need for meaning and control, and feelings of safety in an uncertain world.

The draw of conspiracy

Flat-Earth theories aren't new; in the modern era, they date back to an English writer named Samuel Rowbotham, who came up with a variety of creative interpretations of cosmology in the mid-1800s. There was a smattering of interest in the 1950s with the creation of the International Flat Earth Society, but today's resurgence of the theory seems to derive from social media, said Viren Swami, a social psychologist at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England. Minor celebrities, such as rapper B.o.B and TV personality Tila Tequila, have boosted the conspiracy's profile by tweeting about their skepticism that the Earth is round. [7 (Easy) Ways to Prove the Earth Is Round]

The internet-era flat-Earth movement is new enough that no one has done any psychological research on it, Swami said, though one of his students is working on a project on the phenomenon now.

Still, psychologists have studied why conspiracy theories are appealing, in general. The reasons fall into three main categories, said Karen Douglas, a social psychologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.

The first reason has to do with the search for knowledge and certainty. People who feel uncertain tend to be drawn to conspiracies, Douglas told Live Science. This happens on both small and large scales: When people are induced to feel out of control in a psychology study, they become more open to conspiracy belief, 2015 research found. There is also evidence that conspiracy beliefs spike during times of societal crisis, such as after the 9/11 attacks, according to a paper published last year in the journal Memory Studies.

Though imagining shadowy cabals behind every corner might seem scary, conspiracy theories also seem to offer believers the promise of control in the form of knowledge and insight that others lack, Douglas said.

"You have a need for security and control, and you don't have it," she said, "so you try to compensate for it."

Finally, conspiracy theories can give believers a self-esteem boost and allow them to feel good about the groups they belong to. Some studies suggest narcissism and conspiracy belief are linked, Douglas said, and many conspiracies divide the world into "good guys" (e.g., the moral YouTube star setting out to find the truth) and "bad guys" (e.g., the government, or a given ethnic group).

Rejecting the basics

People are often fairly self-aware about the underlying reasons they believe in conspiracies, said Michael Wood, a lecturer in psychology at the University in Winchester in England.

"One thing I've found interesting in my own adventures on the flat-Earth side of YouTube is, people are often pretty upfront about their motives," Wood said. They'll say that they find it more appalling to believe in the universe as a huge, uncaring place, and that it seems more reasonable to imagine Earth was made for humans like a perfect snow globe. [10 Times Earth Revealed Its Weirdness]

Some flat-Earth believers are motivated by religion, Wood noted; some harken back to biblical passages mentioning "the firmament" of the heavens. For others, the flat-Earth belief seems to grow out of other, space-related conspiracy beliefs, such as the belief that the moon landings were faked, Wood told Live Science.

"If you read flat-Earth discussion groups, people talk about NASA, and they really hate NASA," he said.

Part of the problem, Swami said, is that understanding the physics of the universe is very difficult, and flat-Earthers are, to some extent, right that science is elitist: It takes money, knowledge and time in higher education to be in a position to launch a satellite into space or understand the math that shows why the planet is round. (However, you can fairly easily prove it is round with home-based methods.) Flat-Earth theories simplify all the complexities and don't require believers to put any faith in science or scientists, Swami said.   

Interestingly, studies involving children suggest that although humanity has known that the planet is round since the time of the ancient Greeks, it's not an intuitive belief. Elementary-school students will say that the world is round when asked, according to studies dating back to the 1970s and 1980s, but further questioning often reveals that their mental image of the round Earth is quite confused. They might believe, for example, that the Earth up in space is round, but obviously the one we walk around on is flat. Or they might say the Earth is round, but also that it's possible to fall off the edge. These contradictory beliefs were common in kids up to age 10 or so, according to a 1985 study. By 13, most kids had grasped the concept of a spherical Earth, the study found, though some were still a little flummoxed by how gravity worked.

Unfortunately, once a conspiracy belief is established, it's hard to change, said Swami; people tend to hold on to their beliefs. Arguments and discussions only tend to entrench those beliefs, as people tend to engage in what's called "psychological reactance," Swami said, spending time honing their own arguments and convincing themselves even further of their own rightness.

Prevention, instead, seems to be key, Swami said. Analytical and critical thinkers have been shown to be less susceptible to conspiracy beliefs, he said.

"It's really, really key that we teach properly critical-thinking skills and analytic skills," he said.

Original article on Live Science. 

The flat-Earth rocketeer remains planet-bound.

"Mad" Mike Hughes, a flat-Earth conspiracy theorist who has managed to get significant attention for his now-repeated failed rocket launches, strapped himself into his second homemade rocket Saturday (Feb. 3). But, as Noize TV documented in an excruciating 11-minute livestream of the event, Hughes' rocket never left its pad.

His stated plan, as Live Science previously reported, is to launch himself 1,800 feet (550 meters) above the desert in California and take photos before bailing out in a parachute. These photos, shot from a height anyone can reach by climbing a very tall building or even a small mountain, will, Hughes claims, show that the Earth is flat.

In fact, it's pretty easy for anyone to show that the Earth is round with a simple experiment — though the planet's curvature doesn't become visible to the naked eye until a height of about 35,000 feet (10,700 m).

Hughes canceled his previous launch after the Bureau of Land Management caught wind that he planned to crash his rocket into public land. In a video posted to YouTube, Hughes claimed that Saturday's failure resulted from a faulty plunger or a blown o-ring. However, he added that the details will remain unclear until the rocket cools down and he opens it up to examine it in detail.

Hughes went on to say that the launch could still happen this week — though he does have to be in court Tuesday because he's suing a range of California officials, from Gov. Jerry Brown to U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.

"It's just aggravating," he told a small crowd of reporters. "I mean, what do you do?"

Originally published on Live Science.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #333333; -webkit-text-stroke: #333333; background-color: #ffffff} span.s1 {font-kerning: none}

"Mad" Mike Hughes, a flat-Earth conspiracy theorist, appears to have a new rocket and a new launch date for his mission to prove our oblate spheroid world is actually a disc. (It isn't, and you can prove it yourself.)

Back in November 2017, Hughes announced plans to launch himself 1,800 feet (550 meters) above California's Mojave Desert in a homemade steam rocket. From that height, he said then, he would take photos that would prove the flatness of planet Earth.

However, 61-year-old Hughes' initial launch plans — to fire himself skyward from a launch ramp in the ghost town of Amboy, accelerate to a speed of 500 mph (800 km/h) and parachute back to the ground as the rocket crash-landed 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away — would have involved his $20,000 contraption smashing into Bureau of Land Management (BLM)-owned property. After the Associated Press first reported Hughes' plans to a wide audience, the BLM shut them down.

Now, according to several posts on his Facebook page (some of them buried in comments on other posts), Hughes has built a new rocket that he plans to launch from private land in Amboy on Feb. 3. This rocket, it seems, will launch vertically so that it doesn't cross into BLM property.

In order to get high enough in the air to photograph the curvature of the Earth, Hughes would have to reach about 35,000 feet (10,700 m) on a clear day — far higher than he has said he will rise in a homemade rocket.

Original article on Live Science.

In the stew of false information and conspiracy theories that swirls online, perhaps no idea is as flummoxing as the belief in a flat Earth. Flat-earthers believe that the Earth is a flat disc ringed by an ice wall. All those elegant models of a round Earth that perfectly explain seasons, eclipses, sunrises and sunsets? Lies and cover-ups, they say. Pictures of the round Earth from space? Government conspiracies. The fact that you can see ships disappearing hull-first over the curve of the horizon with your own eyes? Well, flat-earthers claim to see something different.

It's been a big publicity year for flat-Earthers, who have gained celebrity backers, promised death-defying stunts in the name of their theory and held their first conference. Here are eight times the conspiracy theorists have gotten their names out there in 2017.

1. Shaq attacks Earth's roundness

Basketball player Shaquille O'Neal was roundly mocked online when he announced on his podcast in March that Earth is "flat to me." He went on: "I do not go up and down at a 360-degree angle, and all that stuff about gravity. Have you looked outside Atlanta lately and seen all these buildings? You mean to tell me that China is under us? China is under us? It's not. The world is flat."

A few days later, though, Shaq announced that he was just messing with everyone: "I'm joking, you idiots," he clarified. [5 Scientific Rebuttals of Shaq's Flat-Earth Claims]

But people who think the world is flat aren't necessarily primed to believe their ears when they hear a beloved celebrity saying he was just making a joke of their theories. A quick stroll through the Flat Earth Society forums suggests that some true believers now think Shaq was simply pressured into retracting his statements and that he's on their side.

2. Rapper B.o.B crowdfunds a satellite

The rapper B.o.B, also known as Bobby Ray Simmons Jr., is famous for having gotten into a Twitter fight with physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson over whether the Earth is round. B.o.B raised his profile further this year with an attempt to crowdfund his own rocket launch to carry a camera into space to look for the curvature of the Earth. Flat-Earthers, of course, don't believe in the Earth's curvature (which, for the record, becomes visible to the human eye at about 35,000 feet (11,000 meters) elevation, but only given at least a 60-degree field of view, according to a 2008 paper, making it hard to detect from a typical passenger airliner window). Two months after the fundraiser was posted, B.o.B had reached $6,883 of his $1 million goal, the first thousand of which he donated himself, according to his GoFundMe page.

3. Kyrie Irving gets on board

What is it with NBA players? Kyrie Irving of the Celtics has had a complex relationship with the flat Earth in 2017. As SB Nation breaks it down, the point guard declared the Earth flat on a podcast in February, and then returned to the same podcast in March to say he was just trying to start a conversation. In September, he was asked by CBS Boston what he really believed and said his original statements were just an "exploration tactic" and that people should do their own research. In October, he again floated the notion that the question of whether Earth is round is up for debate, saying he didn't know whether pictures of Earth from space were real.

4. Solar eclipse fuels conspiracy theories

Eclipses are moments when it becomes really possible to look up and remember that you live on a spinning ball. Well, unless you're a flat-Earther. Then, they're proof, duh, that the Earth is flat.

Flat-Earthers used the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse that crossed the contiguous United States as "evidence" of their beliefs. According to Forbes, they argued that the west-to-east eclipse path was evidence of something fishy, because the sun moves across the sky from east to west, right? (Actually, the moon orbits Earth from west to east, so the moon's shadow follows the path of the moon.) Flat-Earthers also argued, using flashlights and coins, that the moon's shadow should have been bigger than the moon itself. The problem with this argument is that the sun is an extremely distant, diffuse source of light, not a nearby point source, so the flashlight analogy doesn't fit. Instead, the moon is like a tiny speck against the backdrop of the sun's massive light.

5. Homemade rocket launch fizzles

In November, flat-Earther "Mad" Mike Hughes announced plans to launch himself 1,800 feet (550 m) above the Mojave Desert in a steam-powered rocket he made out of salvaged parts. His plan was to attempt to photograph the lack of curvature of the horizon to "prove" the Earth's flatness. The curvature of the horizon is subtle enough as to not be visible until at least 35,000 feet, so it's unclear exactly what Hughes hoped to prove. Nevertheless, his homemade rocket cost a reported $20,000, making it quite a deal compared with B.o.B's estimated $1 million rocket-launch scheme.

Unfortunately for Hughes, his launch was to take place on public land, and the Bureau of Land Management shut him down at the last minute.

6. Flat-Earthers hold a conference

The internet has undoubtedly expanded flat-Earth believers' reach. The Economist recently reported that, based on Google Trends data, interest in "flat earth" as a search term has risen significantly over the past two years. Flat-Earthers are now meeting in person, too. The first-ever Flat Earth International Conference was held this year in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was hosted by Kryptoz media and the Creation Cosmology Institute, both of which use religious overtones in their flat-Earth philosophizing. The organizer of the conference told Live Science that about 500 people attended.

7. Earth is flat; Mars is round

As founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk knows a little something about the challenges of launching rockets off an obloid sphere into space. So when he tweeted in November, "Why is there no Flat Mars Society?!" he probably didn't expect an actual answer. 

Well, he didn't really get one, either. But he did get a response, straight from the Flat Earth Society itself (@FlatEarthOrg): "Hi Elon, thanks for the question. Unlike the Earth, Mars has been observed to be round. We hope you have a fantastic day!"

Why does the Flat Earth Society believe in direct observations of Mars' roundness but not Earth's? Who knows. But flat-Earthers tend to have complicated, often contradictory, explanations of how astronomy works in the absence of a round Earth. The Flat Earth Society pushes a view in which the sun rotates over the top of the disk of the Earth like a baby's mobile at a much closer distance than the 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away that it actually is. The other planets — which, in this theory, are also much smaller and closer than they are in reality — orbit the sun, the Flat Earth Society believes.  

8. Another athlete asks questions

Whatever is in the water at the NBA is apparently affecting the cricket world, too. Former English cricketer Freddie Flintoff recently hit the tabloid circuit with his opinion that the Earth is flat, or possibly turnip-shaped (OK, sure). Flintoff discussed his belief on his BBC Radio 5 podcast in November, asking why the water in the ocean doesn't wobble if Earth is hurtling through space. (It's because Earth's rotational speed is basically constant, forgiving an imperceptible slowdown of about 2 milliseconds per century. The oceans move with this constant spin just as a passenger in a car traveling down the highway moves at the same speed as the car. Rotation does cause Earth to bulge at the equator, though, which is why the planet is an obloid shape rather than a perfect sphere.) Flintoff said he got his ideas from listening to a flat-Earth podcast.

Original article on Live Science. 

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Could 2,000 years of belief be wrong? Are we in fact living on a disc rather than a globe? One believer from the Flat Earth Society is determined to find out. "Mad" Mike Hughes is all set to build his own rocket to see for himself that the Earth is flat.

For the last 50 years, we've been able to view pictures of the Earth from space, which might seem like all the proof you need to see that our planet is in fact round. But the awareness of how easily images can be doctored and the growth of internet conspiracy theories appears to have fueled a resurgence of belief in a flat Earth.

At the same time, there's a lack of understanding of the science that has long been used to demonstrate that we live on a globe, without the need to leave it. I wish Hughes well with his endeavor, as he has at least been willing to try and prove his theory. Perhaps if more people really could see for themselves the evidence, we might be able to reverse this worrying trend. A good place to start would be by making sure children have the chance to try out simple experiments in school.

One of the best documented methods for determining the Earth's roundness was first performed (to our knowledge) by the ancient Greeks. This was achieved by comparing the shadows of sticks in different locations. When the sun was directly overhead in one place, the stick there cast no shadow. At the same time in a city around 500 miles north, the stick there did cast a shadow.

If the Earth were flat then both sticks should show the same shadow (or lack of) because they would be positioned at the same angle towards the sun. The ancient Greeks found the shadows were different because the Earth was curved and so the sticks were at different angles. They then used the difference in these angles to calculate the circumference of the Earth. They managed to get it to within 10% of the true value – not bad for around 250 B.C.

Another piece of evidence for a globe is the difference between the night skies in the northern and southern hemispheres. The view is completely different because the Earth beneath you is pointing in a different direction. If the Earth were flat, the view should be the same. This can be made even easier by simply comparing when it is night and day in each country.

You can observe the planets as well. They all rotate, and watching over the course of a few days gives a clear picture they are spherical rather than flat. The chance that most of the planets are spherical but the Earth is flat seems very unlikely.

Fake science

But when science experiments are performed incorrectly they can appear to give the opposite result. If they are shared through social media, these false ideas can be spread quickly with no one to point out their flaws. One common example is the Bedford Level experiment, a form of which was first carried out in 1838 and used to "prove" the Earth was flat for over 30 years before an explanation was found.

This experiment involved placing a marker at a set height at either end of a canal about six miles long. If the Earth is round, then one marker should appear lower than the other when viewed at the same time through a telescope because the furthest marker would have fallen away with the curvature of the Earth. But it was reported that the markers are the same height, suggesting the Earth is actually flat. Modern day Flat Earth theorists still quote this experiment.

The problem is this doesn't take into account the optical effect of the air over the intervening water, which bends or "refracts" the light as it travels from the marker to the telescope and makes it look like they are the same height. The solution is to use multiple markers along the length of the canal which, when observed, all appear to be at different heights.

Perhaps the most impressive experiment that even schools can do today is to send a camera up in a high-altitude balloon. The footage will show that from a high-enough vantage point you can see the curvature of the Earth. This is what Mike Hughes will find if he ever makes his rocket work.

Ultimately, arguing on the internet is not the best way forward for any scientific endeavour. We need to provide the means for people to test these theories themselves and to understand the results they get.

Ian Whittaker, Lecturer, Nottingham Trent University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

"Mad" Mike Hughes, a flat-Earth conspiracy theorist, will have to wait a little longer to test his science-busting rocket.

Hughes had previously announced plans to launch himself in a homemade rocket to a height of 1,800 feet (550 meters) above California's Mojave Desert. But the launch, which Hughes had said would take place Nov. 25, did not happen. NPR reports that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) "got wind" of the plan after the Associated Press reported Hughes' announcement. The agency shut down Hughes' launch, which would have taken place on public land.

The AP's original report stated that Hughes had built his steam-powered rocket out of salvaged parts in his garage, for a total personal cost of $20,000. Hughes also bought a motor home and converted it into a ramp. Once the rocket was aloft, Hughes planned to ditch it and parachute back to Earth.

The 61-year-old had ridden a homemade rocket once before, on a quarter-mile flight across the Arizona desert. [Wishful Thinking: 6 'Magic Bullet' Cures That Don't Exist]

This launch was supposed to be the first stage in a long-term effort to fly high enough to photograph the "disc Earth" and disprove that Earth is a sphere — a scientific reality that's been established for about 2,500 years and that anyone can prove for themselves. The curvature is subtly visible at about 35,000 feet (10,700 m) altitude if you have at least a 60-degree field of view.

Hughes claimed on YouTube that he had previously received tacit approval for the project from the BLM and the Federal Aviation Administration, and that the agencies reneged on their approval after news reports emerged.

He also said that his mobile launcher broke down in his driveway but that he had repaired it.

 Original article on Live Science.

Well, this should liven up everyone's Thanksgiving weekend.

A flat-Earth enthusiast who claims not to believe in science plans to launch himself 1,800 feet (550 meters) above California's Mojave Desert in a homemade steam rocket on Saturday (Nov. 25), the Associated Press reported.

The daredevil, 61-year-old limo driver "Mad" Mike Hughes, built the rocket and its launch ramp himself for about $20,000, according to the AP. If all goes according to plan, the contraption will accelerate to a top speed of 500 mph (800 km/h) and travel about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away from the launch site, a ghost town called Amboy. (Hughes will make a parachute-aided touchdown.)

Hughes buys into the flat-Earth conspiracy theory, according to the AP; indeed, the rocket's chief sponsor is a group called Research Flat Earth. Saturday's liftoff won't get Hughes nearly high enough to gather any photographic evidence about our planet's shape — which is an oblate spheroid, by the way — but such a mission may be in Mad Mike's future.

He and a collaborator have discussed building a "rockoon" — a rocket that launches after being carried aloft by a balloon — that could get up to an altitude of 68 miles (109 km), the AP reported.

Hughes' refusal to accept the truth about Earth's shape might make you skeptical about Saturday's launch, and about the future rockoon project. If so, his own words probably won't do much to bring you around.

"I don’t believe in science," Hughes said, according to the AP. "I know about aerodynamics and fluid dynamics and how things move through the air, about the certain size of rocket nozzles, and thrust. But that’s not science, that’s just a formula. There’s no difference between science and science fiction."

The entire story is definitely worth your time. You can read it here.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

A conference aimed at disputing the idea that the world is round just wrapped up in North Carolina.

The first-ever 2017 Flat Earth International Conference (FEIC) was held in Raleigh on Nov. 9 and 10, featuring some of the big names in round-Earth denial. Among the speakers were Darryle Marble, who once took a level on a plane to "prove" the Earth doesn't curve; Mark Sargent, the creator of the Flat Earth Clues YouTube Series, who believes all life is enclosed in a "Truman Show"-like dome structure; and Jeran Campanella, a YouTube and online radio personality, who makes flat-Earth, 9/11 Truther and other conspiracy theory videos. [7 Ways to Prove the Earth Is Round]

The conference was hosted by Kryptoz Media, which produces DVDs and other media arguing that "scientism" is an agenda designed to keep people from God, and the Creation Cosmology Institute, an organization with little online footprint except a now-deleted YouTube channel.    

The conference featured talks such as "NASA and Other Space Lies," "Flat Earth with the Scientific Method," "Waking Up to Mainstream Science Lies" and "Testing the Globe." The conference organizer, Kryptoz Media's Robbie Davidson, is a Christian creationist, and that philosophy emerged in sessions such as "Flat Earth & The Bible" and "Exposing Scientism," the latter of which decried evolution and the Big Bang theory of the universe's origin.

Flat-Earthers believe that Earth is not a globe, but a flat plane. Beliefs on how the "true" globe is laid out vary, but many YouTube personalities who push the conspiracy theory say that the planet is a disc surrounded by an ice wall. Flat-Earthers argue that NASA and other scientific agencies digitally fake pictures of the globe from space and that there is a vast conspiracy to keep the truth of the flat Earth from the public.

Recently, flat-Earth believer and rapper B.o.B. tried to crowdfund $1 million via GoFundMe to launch a satellite to see if he could detect for himself the curvature of the Earth. GoFundMe temporarily froze the donation account, but it is now back online, having raised $6,842 from 224 people.

No one knows how many people really subscribe to flat-Earth beliefs. The Flat Earth Society, the oldest organization devoted to the belief, claims 555 members. Marble boasts 22,954 subscribers to his YouTube channel. About 500 people attended the conference in Raleigh, Davidson told Live Science via email.

The next annual Flat Earth International Conference will be held in Denver, from Nov. 15 -16, in 2018. Davidson said he expects up to 1,500 attendees.

Original article on Live Science.  

Some former NASA astronauts have a message for flat-Earther B.o.B: The curve is real, and we've seen it.

Last week, the Atlanta-based rapper kicked off a crowdfunding campaign to raise $1 million, ostensibly so he can build and launch one or more satellites to settle the "question" of Earth's shape once and for all.

B.o.B doubts that Earth is round because the horizon looks pretty flat in photos taken from the planet's surface. That's a simple consequence of Earth's large size, of course, but B.o.B doesn't see it that way. "Help B.o.B find the curve!" the crowdfunding project's description reads, in part. [7 Ways to Prove the Earth Is Round Without Satellites]

This plea elicited a response from former NASA astronaut Terry Virts.

"I can save BoB a lot of money — the Earth is round. I flew around it," Virts tweeted Wednesday (Sept. 27) via his @AstroTerry account.

Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin (@TheRealBuzz) responded to Virts Wednesday, tweeting, "I did too. It's called an orbit: the curved path of a celestial object around a star, planet, or moon."

Retired astronaut Scott Kelly also chimed in Wednesday, posting a time-lapse video of our planet as seen from the International Space Station.

"Show you the curve? Here you go @bobatl! One full orbit around Earth. Maybe donate funds raised to #PuertoRicoRelief," Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) tweeted.

B.o.B hasn't been swayed by thousands of satellite photos, the circumnavigation of the globe, common sense or any of the other evidence showing beyond a shadow of a doubt that Earth is round, so Virts, Aldrin and Kelly are probably just shouting into the wind. But hey, it's worth a shot.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Proving Earth is round

Rapper B.o.B wants to crowdfund his own satellite and launch it into space to find out, once and for all, whether the Earth is flat or round. As a flat-Earth conspiracy theorist, the Georgia-based musician is betting on flat, but his $1 million call for cash on GoFundMe has raised only about $2,000 in its first five days, the first $1,000 pledged by B.o.B himself.

Fortunately, there are plenty of cheaper ways than a satellite launch to show that the Earth is round. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, here are seven.

Go to the harbor

When a ship sails off toward the horizon, it doesn't just get smaller and smaller until it's not visible anymore. Instead, the hull seems to sink below the horizon first, then the mast. When ships return from sea, the sequence is reversed: First the mast, then the hull, seem to rise over the horizon.

The ship-and-horizon observation is so self-evident that 1881's "Zetetic Astronomy," the first modern flat-Earth text, devotes a chapter to "debunking" it. The explanation relies on assuming that the sequential disappearance is simply an illusion brought on by perspective. This debunking does not make much sense, however, as there's nothing about perspective (which just says that things are smaller over longer distances) that should make the bottom of an object disappear before the top. If you'd like to prove to yourself that perspective isn't the reason for boats disappearing hull-first and returning mast-first, bring a telescope or binoculars on your trip to the harbor. Even with vision enhancement, the ship will still dip below the curve of the Earth.

Look at the stars

Greek philosopher Aristotle figured out this one in 350 B.C., and nothing's changed. Different constellations are visible from different latitudes. Probably the two most striking examples are the Big Dipper and the Southern Cross. The Big Dipper, a set of seven stars that looks like a ladle, is always visible at latitudes of 41 degrees North or higher. Below 25 degrees South, you can't see it at all. And in northern Australia, just north of that latitude, the Big Dipper just barely squeaks above the horizon.

Meanwhile, in the Southern Hemisphere, there's the Southern Cross, a bright four-star arrangement. That constellation isn't visible until you travel as far south as the Florida Keys in the Northern Hemisphere.

These different stellar views make sense if you imagine the Earth as a globe, so that looking "up" really means looking toward a different sliver of space from the Southern or Northern hemisphere.

Watch an eclipse

Aristotle also bolstered his belief in a round Earth with the observation that during lunar eclipses, the Earth's shadow on the face of the sun is curved. Since this curved shape exists during all lunar eclipses, despite the fact that Earth is rotating, Aristotle correctly intuited from this curved shadow that the Earth is curvy all around — in other words, a sphere.

For that matter, solar eclipses also tend to bolster the idea that the planets, moons and stars are a bunch of roundish objects orbiting each other. If the Earth is a disk and the stars and planets a bunch of small, nearby objects hovering in a dome above the surface, as many flat-Earthers believe, the total solar eclipse that crossed North America in August 2017 becomes very difficult to explain.

Go climb a tree

This is another one of those self-evident things: You can see farther if you go higher. If the Earth was flat, you'd be able to see the same distance no matter your elevation. Think about it: Your eye can detect a bright object, like the Andromeda galaxy, from 2.6 million light-years away. Seeing the lights of, say, Miami from New York City (a distance of a mere 1,094 miles or 1,760 kilometers) on a clear evening should be child's play.

But it's not. That's because the curvature of the Earth limits our sight to about 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) … unless you climb up a tall tree, building or mountain and get yourself a perspective from higher up.

Take a round-the-world flight

This one should cost you considerably less than $1 million, though you will have to drop a few thousand dollars. Anyone can circumnavigate the globe nowadays; there are even travel firms, like AirTreks, that specialize in multi-stop, round-the-world routes. You won't have to retrace your steps to land where you started.

If you get lucky enough to get an unobscured view of the horizon and a high enough commercial flight, you might even be able to make out the curvature of the Earth with the naked eye. According to a 2008 paper in the journal Applied Optics, the Earth's curve becomes subtly visible at an altitude of around 35,000 feet, as long as the observer has at least a 60 degree field of view (which may be difficult from a passenger plane window). The curvature becomes more readily apparent above 50,000 feet; passengers on the now-grounded supersonic Concorde jet were often treated to a view of the curved horizon while flying at 60,000 feet.

Get a weather balloon

In January 2017, University of Leicester students strapped some cameras to a weather balloon and sent it skyward. The balloon rose 77,429 feet (23.6 kilometers) above the surface, well above the level needed to view the planet's curves. The instrument aboard the balloon sent back stunning footage that shows the curve of the horizon.

As long as your balloon has a payload of less than four pounds, there are hardly any restrictions on launching it. Just call the Federal Aviation Administration ahead of time to make sure you're not headed into restricted airspace.

Compare shadows

The first person to estimate the circumference of the Earth was a Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes, who was born in 276 B.C. He did so by comparing shadows case on the day of the summer solstice in what is today Aswan, Egypt, with the more northerly city of Alexandria. At noon, when the sun was directly overhead in Aswan, there were no shadows. In Alexandria, a stick set in the ground cast a shadow. Eratosthenes realized that if he knew the angle of the shadow and the distance between the cities, he could calculate the circumference of the globe.

On a flat Earth, there wouldn't have been any difference between the length of the shadows at all. The sun's position would be the same, relative to the ground. Only a globe-shaped planet explains why the sun's position should be different in two cities a few hundred miles apart.

A rapper-turned-flat-Earther is attempting to prove that the world is not round by crowdfunding his own satellite launch.

B.o.B, born Bobby Ray Simmons Jr., is a rapper from Georgia who once recorded a diss track about physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, after the two got into a Twitter fight in 2016 about whether the Earth is round. The rapper is a member of the Flat Earth Society, a group of people who are convinced that the planet is flat, not round. A scroll through B.o.B's Twitter feed also reveals a number of other conspiracy beliefs: He is an anti-vaxxer, a 9/11 truther and also, for some reason, believes that oil does not form from the remains of organic material buried under pressure.

B.o.B's new GoFundMe has a $1 million goal and has raised $2,701 from 98 people in the five days since he put up the request. (He pledged the first $1,000 himself.) The goal, according to the rapper, is to launch a satellite as far into space as necessary to "find the curve" of Earth. [7 Ways to Prove the Earth Is Round (Without Launching a Satellite)] 

How we know the Earth is round

Despite myths about Christopher Columbus believing he might sail off the edge of the Earth, humans have known that the world is round for a very, very long time. The Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras left the first written arguments for a round Earth in 500 B.C. Ancient Greeks thought the sphere was the perfect shape, so it stood to reason, Pythagoras figured, that the Earth was spherical. A few hundred years later, according to the American Physical Society (APS), Aristotle dropped some scientific evidence into the debate. He pointed out that during lunar eclipses, Earth's shadow on the moon is curved; ships going over the horizon seem to drop down, hull-first, rather than becoming tinier and tinier until they disappear; and different stars are visible from different vantage points on Earth, which wouldn't make much sense if the planet were flat.

The Greek mathematician Eratosthenes, born in 276 B.C., even managed to determine the circumference of the Earth. He did this, according to the APS, by measuring the angle of the shadow of a stick stuck in the ground on the summer solstice in Alexandria, on what is today the Egyptian coast. He knew that in Aswan, Egypt (then known as Syene), the sun cast no shadows on the day of the solstice — it was directly overhead. The difference in the sun's angle between Syene and Alexandria corresponded to one-fiftieth of a complete circle, so Eratosthenes realized that if he knew the exact distance between the two cities, he'd just need to multiply to determine the full circumference of the Earth.

The mathematician had to hire surveyors to walk the distance with precisely measured steps, but he eventually landed on a total circumference for the planet of between 24,000 and 29,000 miles (39,000 to 47,000 kilometers). He turned out to be remarkably accurate: Around the equator, the planet's circumference is 24,900 miles (40,072 km).

Resurgence of flat-Earthers

So if the ancient Greeks had it figured out, how can anyone still believe in a flat Earth in the age of satellites and rocket launches? [Top 10 Conspiracy Theories]

The resurgence of flat-Earth beliefs started in the early 1800s with a writer named Samuel Rowbotham, who developed an entire alternative cosmology around the idea that the Earth is a flat plane enclosed by a dome of space, surrounded by a perimeter of ice walls. Rowbotham's philosophy was that the Earth looks flat, from a human's point of view walking on the surface, so everyone who said they could show otherwise must be lying. The International Flat Earth Society, formed in 1956, draws from Rowbotham's views. In the mid-1990s, the president of the group claimed to have 3,500 paying members, according to his New York Times obituary. Today, the Flat Earth Society website claims to have 555 members, the most recent being B.o.B.

Flat-Earthers don't trust NASA or any other space agency. According to the Flat Earth Society's FAQs, astronauts are being bribed or coerced into lying; airplane windows distort views to make it look like the horizon curves; and the International Space Station is a hoax. Also, gravity isn't real.

An independent satellite launch may or may not convince B.o.B that the Earth really does curve, but he may find the process a bit difficult if he doesn't accept that the planet is round. To launch a satellite (or any other object) into space, you have to take into account the Earth's radius. In the formula for the speed needed to achieve orbit, V = sqrt (g0*Re^2/(Re + h)), "Re" is the mean planetary radius. Astronomer Johannes Kepler sorted this out in the 1600s, according to NASA.

It remains to be seen whether B.o.B will ever get a chance to launch a satellite, anyway. According to The Verge, GoFundMe has frozen the rapper's donation account, meaning he won't be able to access the funds unless he can provide more information that the money will not be mismanaged.

Original article on Live Science.  

Former NBA player Shaquille O'Neal can likely see that a basketball is round, but the newly proclaimed "flat-Earther" can’t seem to say the same for the planet.

In a podcast that aired Feb. 27, the basketball legend announced that the Earth is flat, saying that when he drives from Florida to California, "it's flat to me."

But there are countless ways that show the Earth isn't flat, but round. (To be specific, it's an "irregularly shaped ellipsoid," according to the National Ocean Service.) [Earth from Above: 101 Stunning Images from Orbit]

Before we dive into the science, here is what O'Neal said, as sports reporter Ben Rohrbach first reported.

"It’s true. The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. Yes, it is. Listen, there are three ways to manipulate the mind — what you read, what you see and what you hear. In school, first thing they teach us is, 'Oh, Columbus discovered America,' but when he got there, there were some fair-skinned people with the long hair smoking on the peace pipes. So, what does that tell you? Columbus didn’t discover America. So, listen, I drive from coast to coast, and this s*** is flat to me. I’m just saying. I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it's flat to me. I do not go up and down at a 360-degree angle, and all that stuff about gravity, have you looked outside Atlanta lately and seen all these buildings? You mean to tell me that China is under us? China is under us? It’s not. The world is flat."

Here are five scientific rebuttals to O'Neal's statement.

1. It's true that Christopher Columbus didn't discover America; on his first voyage in 1492, he came across several islands in the Caribbean, including San Salvador, Cuba and Hispaniola (the current-day Haiti and Dominican Republic). However, native people already lived on these islands, so it's hard to say that Columbus discovered them.

Moreover, the Vikings landed in what is now Newfoundland, Canada, in about A.D. 1000, so Columbus wasn't even the first European to reach the New World.

But, the Earth's roundness is not dependent on how transparent elementary schools are about Columbus' journey. Sorry, Shaq, just because A is false, that doesn't mean B is too.

2. O'Neal mentions that the world looks flat to him during coast-to-coast drives. That's because the curvature of the Earth, which is just a few feet per mile, is hard to see from the ground, even when you're 7 feet 1 inches tall (215.9 centimeters).

3. Even the ancient Greeks realized that the Earth is round. Eratosthenes, a Greek mathematician, noted that a well had no shadow when the sun was directly overhead on the summer solstice. He determined that if the Earth is a sphere, he could calculate the planet's size by looking at the angle of the sun at another location, so long as the sun's rays were parallel. [Earth's 8 Biggest Mysteries]

In 240 B.C., Eratosthenes measured the distance between two Egyptian cities and calculated the angle of the sun at both locations. There was a slight difference between the angles, Eratosthenes found. He used the data to calculate the Earth's circumference to between about 25,000 miles and nearly 29,000 miles (40,000 to 46,600 kilometers), Live Science previously reported. 

Eratosthenes wasn't far off: Earth's circumference is 24,873 miles (40,030 km).

3. Ferdinand Magellan helped prove Earth's roundness when his fleet circumnavigated the world from 1519 to 1522. Unfortunately, Magellan was killed in the Philippines in 1521 when he was trying to convert the people there to Christianity.

4. O'Neal asserts that he did not "go up and down at a 360-degree angle" during his road trip. But a 360-degree angle is a full circle, so we're not quite clear what he means here. Traveling Earth's entire circumference would be a long road trip, but O'Neal would go in a full 360-degree loop were he to make it.

5. Technically, China is not "under" the United States — the Indian Ocean is, according to Mental Floss. You can see Earth's roundness in the famous "Blue Marble" portrait, courtesy of NASA.

In addition, gravity explains why Earth and the other planets are round. Mass attracts other mass, and the more matter a forming planet attracts, the stronger its gravitational pull toward the center becomes, Live Science reported. A sphere is the natural outcome of these forces.

On a side note, if you fell through the Earth it would take 48 minutes and 12 seconds to reach the other end, Live Science previously reported.

Original article on Live Science.

A throwdown between a rapper and an astrophysicist centers on whether the Earth is a sphere, a scientific question that was supposedly settled in the third century B.C.

Rapper-singer Bobby Ray Simmons Jr. (known as B.o.B) released a track called "Flatline" on Monday (Jan. 25), dissing noted astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson after the two had engaged in a Twitter argument over Earth's shape, which B.o.B purports to be flat. In the track, B.o.B hollers, "Aye, Neil Tyson need to loosen up his vest / They'll probably write that man one hell of a check," and even embeds part of a talk by Tyson in which he says, "So it's not actually a sphere, it's an ... it's oblate, it's officially an oblate spheroid."

Earth's oblate spherical-ness was determined long ago. While the ancient Greeks were among the first to discern that the Earth is a sphere, there were still people who didn't think it could be true, because, well, look around. The ground is flat and plainly so all the way to the horizon. [Religion and Science: 6 Visions of Earth's Core]

This common-sense reasoning is, in part, what drives more modern flat-Earth beliefs. In the last century a whole society — the Flat Earth Society — has grown up around it. The 19th-century version was called the Zetetic Society, which eventually disbanded.

So what do flat-Earthers really believe? A look at the Flat Earth Society website gives some answers here. Their model of the Earth looks something like the logo of the United Nations, with the North Pole at the center. The Earth is a round disc, surrounded by an ice wall (Antarctica, which the U.N. logo doesn't show). The sun and moon are each about 32 miles across, and hang about 3,000 miles above the surface of the Earth.

Gravity doesn't enter into their argument, because flat-Earth cosmology says the whole disc is accelerating at exactly 32 feet per second in the "up" direction.

Earth's seeming flatness

There are several lines of evidence, though, that the Earth is round. But first, we can look at why it appears flat, and why that misled people for so long. [Earth from Above: 101 Stunning Images from Orbit]

The Earth is a sphere about 24,000 miles (38,624 kilometers) around at the equator — a pretty big number relative to a person's visual abilities. To calculate the distance one could expect to see, multiply the diameter of the Earth (about 7,917 miles, or 12,742 km) by the height of the person (or building, or mountain one is standing on) and take the square root. For a 6-foot-tall person standing on a beach, that works out to about 3 miles. (A more rough-and-ready version of this says the horizon in miles will be 1.22 times the square root of the height in feet.) This is also why the distance one can see gets larger the higher up you go.

This assumes a perfectly spherical Earth (it isn't) and no refraction of light from the atmosphere (there is some). But as a general estimate this works pretty well, and explains why the Earth looks flat: The "drop" on the horizon due to the planet's curvature is only a few feet per mile.

There are other lines of evidence, and that gets us to the ancient Greeks. Specifically, a man named Eratosthenes, who lived in Syene, Egypt. On the summer solstice, Eratosthenes had seen that a well had no shadows: the sun was at its zenith. He deduced that if the Earth were spherical, he could figure out the planet's size by checking the angle of the sun at some other location, assuming the sun was so far away that its rays were essentially parallel. So, in about 240 B.C., he had someone measure the distance between Syene (modern-day Aswan) and Alexandria, and checked the angle of the sun at both locations. He found a small, measurable difference in the angle, and calculated that the Earth was 24,662 to 28,968 miles in circumference, according to scientists today. He was wrong, but not by much.

By about A.D. 1, the idea of a spherical Earth was taken as a matter of course almost everywhere; Indian astronomers were convinced, and Islamic scholars used the concept to calculate the direction and distance to Mecca, according to the work of David A. King, a former professor of the history of science at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Berlin.

Even Christopher Columbus knew the Earth was round — the old story of him having to convince anyone otherwise is a myth (popularized by Washington Irving in a biography of Columbus). The real problem was that his estimates of the distance to China were too low. Contemporaries thought his mission was suicidal, because the crews would die of thirst absent stumbling on a hitherto unknown source of fresh water (as noted by Samuel Elliot Morrison, who wrote a Pulitzer-Prize winning biography of Columbus in 1942). Ferdinand Magellan, of course, killed the flat-Earth idea once and for all by sailing all the way around the world.

Flat-Earthers

The modern flat-Earthers can trace their intellectual lineage to a man named Samuel Rowbotham (1816–1884). He published a book on the flatness of the Earth called "Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe." When he died those ideas lived on, as a woman named Lady Elizabeth Blount founded the Universal Zetetic Society. The society petered out after World War I. The current Flat Earth Society is headed by a man named Daniel Shenton, and has a website outlining experiments that purportedly show the Earth is flat.

One such experiment involves using a 6-mile length of canal to show that the Earth is not, in fact, round, disputing the old saw that ships' hulls disappear below the horizon and would not if the Earth were not curved. It's called the Bedford Level Experiment. A supporter of Rowbotham's used a telescope to observe a boat rowing away; since the hull of the boat remained visible even though it was 6 miles distant, it was initially taken to prove that the observation of ships' hulls was wrong, and a trick of perspective. The naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace repeated the experiment, and took into account the refraction of the atmosphere, by setting his sight line higher. He showed that, yes, in fact, the Earth is a sphere, as published in Nature in April 1870.

One other way to prove that there's a horizon is, in fact, with a good telescope. If the Earth were flat, then even if perspective made it hard to resolve objects near the horizon (it does), then with a decent telescope one should be able to see, for example, the Welsh coast from Boston. But you can't; no matter how good the telescope is, Europe never comes into view.

That aside, flat-Earthers have come up with some other — rather ingenious — "proofs" that the Earth is flat. One is the distances around the Southern Ocean. The flat-Earth model says that the distance between, say, Melbourne, Australia, and Santiago, Chile, should be greater than the distance between New York and Beijing. Melbourne is 7,002 miles (11,268 km) from Santiago, while New York is 6, 824 miles (10,982 km) from Beijing. Rowbotham gives some distance estimates in his book; the problem is they are just wrong: "From near Cape Horn, Chile to Port Philip in Melbourne, Australia the distance is 9,000 miles," Rowbotham writes. It's actually 5,681 miles. Rowbotham's figure would apply to a flat Earth, but he assumes that at the outset. Leaving the distance estimate aside, he assumes the longitudes are separated by 143 degrees; the actual figure is about 149 degrees.  

If the travel distance doesn't give Earth's curvature away, eclipses surely would: An interesting artifact of Eratosthenes' calculation is that if you assume the Earth is flat the figure for how high the sun would be matches the radius of the Earth — in this case, you assume that the sun's rays are not parallel (as Eratosthenes did) but are emanating from a spherical sun a short distance away. But the fact that eclipses happen gives the game away; if the planet were flat there would be nothing to cast a shadow, say, across the sun or moon. The Flat Earth Wiki says it's a "shadow object" and posits that the reason nobody has ever seen this behemoth object on Earth is that the sun's glare blots out everything else in the sky during the day. Plenty of people have observed Venus, for example, during the day (it's hard, but it can be done). If there were some shadow object big enough — remember flat-Earthers think the moon is some 32 miles across — it has to find a way to be invisible during both day and night. [See Photos: 'Lost' Astronomy Plates Show Historic Eclipse and More]

That links to another issue: The Pole Star gets lower in the sky as one travels south, and eventually dips below the horizon. If the Earth were flat no matter how far you went, Polaris would never get below the horizon at all, nor would new stars become visible as you traveled south – they certainly would not rise above the horizon at a constant rate of 1 degree for every degree of latitude traveled south, because of the geometry of a flat Earth, and flat sky.

Flat-Earthers assert precisely that, though: The stars are actually only 3,100 miles above us, and seeing Polaris approach the horizon is a trick of perspective. So as you travel south, more come into view. But were that the case, you would not see stars coming over a horizon; the southern stars would look bunched together in a kind of bright band that covered the southern sky — precisely because of perspective. (This assumes a flat sky as opposed to a dome shape, which is the only way the argument can work.)

According to flat-Earth cosmology, Antarctica is actually an ice wall that keeps the water in the oceans in place, and that NASA employees (among other government conspirators) are guarding the place to keep people out. Explorer Roald Amundsen was faking it (or badly mistaken), and clearly the dozens of expeditions to the region were all in on the conspiracy to hide the edges of the Earth, according to flat-Earth beliefs. The moon missions, by the way, are a hoax, and GPS satellites are rigged somehow to show the Earth is round, though it's unclear how they could stop anyone from flying or sailing in directions that would disprove that.

In addition, if the Earth were accelerating enough to produce the illusion of gravity, then eventually it would approach (but not quite reach) the speed of light, according to the theory of relativity. More interesting, the mass would continually increase (relative to the rest of the universe). But flat-Earth cosmology doesn't seem to include gravity, so it's also not clear whether they buy relativity at all. 

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

In 1893, Orlando Ferguson, a real estate developer based in South Dakota, drew a map of the Earth that combined biblical and scientific knowledge in a unique way. The map accompanied a 92-page lecture that Ferguson — referring to himself as a "professor" — delivered in town after town, traveling far and wide to share his theory of geography, highlighted by his belief that the Earth was flat.

Ferguson's map represents the Earth as a giant, rectangular slab with a dimpled upper surface. Don Homuth of Salem, Ore., just donated one of two intact copies of the map to the Library of Congress. [See the map]

"It's very fragile. It's printed on tissue paper and hand-colored with watercolors," Homuth said. He got the map from his eighth grade history teacher in Fargo, N.D., who got it from his grandfather, who lived in Hot Springs, S.D. — Ferguson's hometown.

"Now, I'm 67. I don't want it to fall into the hands of relatives, for God's sake! And I don't particularly want to sell it. So we thought we'd send it to the Library of Congress," Homuth told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

The only other copy is housed in the Pioneer Historical Museum in Hot Springs. James Bingham, chairman of the museum's board of directors, told us what he knows about it.

"Ferguson was trying to make an updated version of the flat Earth theory to fit the biblical description of the Earth with known facts," Bingham said. Typical of flat Earths, Ferguson's Earth is a rectangular slab, the four corners of which are each guarded by an angel. "What makes his flat Earth different from other theories is his theory holds that the Earth is imprinted with an 'inverse toroid.'" If you were to take a donut and press it into wet cement and then remove the donut, Bingham explained, the rounded impression it left in the cement would be what is known in mathematics as an inverse toroid.

"It's pretty clever because it explains the Columbus phenomenon, where you see ships coming in over the horizon and gradually the mast gets taller and taller until you can see the ship," Bingham said. "By 1893, most people knew about horizons so he had to come up with some way to explain that."

The map also has a picture of a man holding onto the Earth for dear life, with an inscription that reads: "These men are flying on the globe at a rate of 65,000 miles per hour around the sun, and 1,042 miles per hour around the center of the earth (in their minds). Think of the speed!" Yeah right, Ferguson seems to have been implying. [Read: What's at the Center of the Milky Way?]

"These people truly believed that the Earth is not a globe!" Homuth said. "A lot of stuff like this got ignored and swept into history's wastebasket. But at the time people actually believed this stuff!"

Incredibly, some people still do. The Flat Earth Society is an active organization currently led by a Virginian man named Daniel Shenton. Though Shenton believes in evolution and global warming, he and his hundreds, if not thousands, of followers worldwide also believe that the Earth is a disc that you can fall off of.

"I haven't taken this position just to be difficult," Shenton told The Guardian last year. "To look around, the world does appear to be flat, so I think it is incumbent on others to prove decisively that it isn't. And I don't think that burden of proof has been met yet."

To Mr. Shenton, we offer this NASA/NOAA GOES-13 satellite image of our planet as it looked on March 2, 2010.

This article was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover.