Who said world not flat

Images from space were final proof, if any were needed. The notion of a flat Earth initially resurfaced in the s as a backlash to scientific progress, especially among those who wished to return to biblical literalism. Perhaps the most famous proponent was the British writer Samuel Rowbotham — The International Flat Earth Research Society, which was set up in by Samuel Shenton, a signwriter living in Dover, UK, was regarded by many people as merely a symbol of British eccentricity — amusing and of little consequence.

But in the early s, with the Internet now a well-established vehicle for off-beat views, the idea began to bubble up again, mostly in the US. Discussions sprouted in online forums, the Flat Earth Society was relaunched in October and the annual flat-Earth conference began in earnest.

As with any fringe movement there are disagreements and several different flat-Earth models exist to choose from. Others suggest our flat planet and its atmosphere are encased in a huge, hemispherical snow globe from which nothing can fall off the edges.

To account for night and day, most flat-Earthers think the Sun moves in circles around the North Pole, with its light acting like a spotlight. Physicists will scoff at these ideas, but the worrying thing is that they are spreading rapidly and gaining proponents outside America too.

Such efforts are important. This shocking number has been attributed to a resurgent evangelical Christian church, but there are also signs that religious fundamentalism is spreading these ideas in Islamic countries too. In the website Jeune-Afrique reported that a geology student in Tunisia was intending to submit a PhD defending her work on a flat-Earth model. It would be easy to dismiss flat-Earthers as simply being misguided due to a lack of education.

Landrum thinks this conspiracy mentality is linked to science denial and a susceptibility to believing deceptive claims on social media Politics and the Life Sciences 38 Their lack of trust in authority includes not just scientists but scientific bodies such as NASA, all of whom they think are part of a massive conspiracy to prevent the flat-Earth truth being revealed. McIntyre adds that the flat-Earthers he interacted with each believed a selection of conspiracy theories, including that governments control the weather and that chem-trails from aeroplanes consist of chemical or biological agents.

But the fact remains that the videos are still on its platform. After all, their ideas are all generally based on fallacies and misunderstanding of science. But even without the visual confirmation of pictures taken from space, many of the arguments used by flat-Earth proponents can be easily dismissed with trigonometry or basic physical laws. Another phenomenon that proves the Earth is a spinning globe is the Coriolis force, which acts perpendicular to the direction of motion of a spinning mass.

This force leads to cylones swirling clockwise in the southern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere; through the direction of winds, it also impacts ocean currents. Long-range military snipers even have to make allowance for deflections caused by the Coriolis effect. Indeed, as Slegr points out, getting physics students to explain the evidence for a spherical spinning Earth is a great critical-thinking exercise.

This inverse temperature gradient means that light rays refract toward the colder, denser air, allowing an image of the reflected skyline, formed on the water below the horizon, to appear almost hovering above the horizon figure 1.

The fact that the buildings are visible is in fact simply a mirage. Light bends down towards the denser air, but because our eyes assume the light has travelled in a straight line, the object appears higher than it is. The effect also explains why a far-off ship can be seen even though it might have dipped below the horizon. Since then numerous other studies have not only established the spherical nature of our planet but also conducted extensive research to figure out various other characteristics and phenomenons which further points towards Earth's sphericity.

Barring one group. The flat-earthers. This group, like Plato, have a firm conviction that our planet Earth is a flat surface. Why flat-earthers believe the Earth to be flat? Walking over the surface of Earth feels like you are walking on a flat surface and hence, Earth is flat and not spherical, they argue. They allege that the spherical Earth theory is a "global" conspiracy planted and promoted by Nasa and various other governmental organisations.

According to flat-earthers, Earth is a disc with the Arctic Circle in the centre and Antarctica, a foot-tall wall of ice, around the rim. This wall is 24X7 guarded by Nasa employees to prevent people from climbing it.

According to Flat Earth Society, no one has been very far past the ice wall and returned to tell of their journey. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland.