Why Do People Believe The Earth Is Flat?
The insidious, anti-science undertones that are growing conspiracy theories across the globe
You’ll often hear it said that more people believe the Earth is flat today than did in the Middle Ages. In our age of the internet, antibiotics, germ theory and gene splicing, hundreds of thousands of people still believe that the Earth is flat. Why?
What leads people to turn away from scientific fact, into the arms of conspiracy theorists and fringe theories? Why, despite irrefutable evidence to contrary, do some people hold out against facts? Is it because they are the one true guardians of an earth-shattering truth, as they claim, or is there something far more unsettling beneath their beliefs.
A Globe in Space
We have known the Earth was round since at least 240BC. A Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes observed a well at local noon in Syene on the summer solstice, he looked down a well and saw that there was no shadow. In Alexandria, on the same day, the sun was also measured at local noon and found to be at a 7-degree angle. 7 degrees is about 1/50th of a circle…
