Friday, September 2, 2016

Flat Earth & Hollow Earth

I've posted previously on the group still convinced the Sun revolves around the Earth, and as I prepared to write up a bit on those who still think the Earth is Hollow, I found I never actually posted about the next interesting topic in this category, people who believe the Earth is Flat.

Yep, you read that right, it's 2016 and there are people that still believe the Earth is Flat, people that still believe it's Hollow, and people still convinced the Universe revolves around the Earth. And I'm sure there's a lot more fringe groups with similar beliefs, but we can worry about those later.

(Trekky0623's depiction of Flat Earth, 2008.)

You can visit the Flat Earth Society’s website for yourself: http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/home/index.php

And if you're into physics, go to their FAQs and scroll down to the bit about gravity, because it's hilarious and totally inconsistent with their answers to other questions:
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/home/index.php/faq

That probably sounds disrespectful. I suppose it is, but they believe in something and they're sticking to their guns, trying to prove it. If nothing else that shows loyalty and conviction. So, that deserves some respect.

And they do have a point on the Moon landing conspiracy. If a flat Earth were possible with the currently understood laws of gravity, then a spaceship would be unable to orbit the earth because there is no curvature, thus falling back and crashing, so we likely would not be able to reach the Moon. But since Flat Earth doesn't make sense with our current laws of gravity, that doesn't seem likely, it seems more likely that if things 'just fall' the Moon would fall into the Earth. But I'm sure one of them has worked out why that doesn’t happen.

(Map of interior world of a Hollow Earth, from "The Goddess of Atvatabar" by William Bradshaw, 1892)

The Hollow Earth camp seems to be less organized, but they also have websites:

http://ourhollowearth.com/
- This is more of a book advertisement then a Society or Network to be fair.

http://www.hollowearthnetwork.com/
- And wow, I can't even. Just take a look at all that, skim some of it maybe. . . and you'll know what I mean. I wasn't sure if the authors of The Rough Guild to Unexplained Phenomenon were serious about Hollow Earth or not when I was reading their chapter on it, but the sheer amount of content on this site and the fact that it's still being updated suggests the site's authors are serious. And it appears that the Hollow Earth crowd are generally more likely to be religious fanatics then the Flat Earth groupies. Mind blowing.

I think I'm going to need to see if I can set-up some interviews, because honestly the whole thing is fascinating, even if it is hard to swallow.
_

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