Karen Douglas is professor of social psychology at the University of Kent in the U.K., specializing in the psychology of conspiracy theories. Karen’s research regularly features in the media, and she gives public talks. She is a founding member of an international network of conspiracy theory scholars. Don’t worry, these hallucinogenic compounds aren’t provided by evil “Big Pharma”; they’re actually secreted by the shape-shifting lizards that rule society. Why do you think lizards are in charge in the first place? They provide the secretions that keep the population in line, believing in things like the Earth is round and buildings exist. The few times people have actually tried to make a tall building like the World Trade Centre, it is destroyed by the government. 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.

Some refer to “ false flags” at times like this. In truth, all flags are false; they’re non-existent tall structures, so are just figments of our collective imagination.

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. And Earth's curvature is clearly apparent from high altitudes, as Capt. Albert Stevensof the U.S. Army Air Corps showed in the 1930s. In December 1930, for example, Stevens snapped a photo looking westward while flying at an altitude of 21,000 feet (6,400 meters) above Villa Mercedes, Argentina.

On July 30, 2021, Shenzhou 12 astronaut Tang Hongbo photographed the spectacular scenery of thousands of lights in North Africa, clearly showing the curvature of Earth. (Image credit: Tang Hongbo/China Manned Space Engineering Office) But in reality, humans have circumnavigated the planet in planes and ships, and no one has fallen into space. Rather, when ships traveling large distances on the ocean do appear and disappear on the horizon, they do so either mast or hull-first, respectively. If the Earth was flat, and you had the right optics, you could watch a ship sail from New York to Africa without losing sight of it. You can’t because the curve of the Earth makes the ship dip below the horizon. I don't think this discussion is really about the actual evidence or the scientific process, however. Well, the culprit was his outfit. During the first half of the Busan setlist, Suga wore a t-shirt that said, “The Earth is flat. Didn’t you know?” which prompted the funny-boned ARMYs to Tweet some hilarious takes, eventually landing in the phrase “Yoongi Flat Earther” on the trending list. | Weverse LiveFor instance, what’s the tallest supposed mountain on Earth? Everest. Except it isn’t. The name is a giveaway; it’s clearly a morphing of “never rest”, because if you wanted to go to the biggest mountain you’d literally never rest, because it isn’t actually there. What about all those people who have climbed it, you say? Well, consider all the people who have died supposedly doing so. How do you die climbing something that isn’t there? You can’t. They were obviously killed to protect the conspiracy, whereas those who “survived” were willing to play ball. The only way to always cast a circular shadow is if the thing casting the shadow — in this case, Earth — is a globe. It's a matter of geometry. And yet, the Earth isn't a perfect sphere; it bulges slightly at the equator. "Over a long time-scale, the Earth acts like a highly viscous fluid," says Surendra Adhikari, a geophysicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The Earth has been spinning since it was formed, and "if you have a spinning fluid, it will bulge out due to centrifugal forces." You can see evidence for this at the equator, where the Earth's diameter is 7926 miles—27 miles larger than at the poles (7899 miles). The difference is tiny—just one-third of 1 percent. THE SHADOW KNOWS

It didn't matter that astronauts like John Glenn and Neil Armstrong had been to space and verified that the Earth is round; Hughes didn't believe them. According to The Washington Post, Hughes thought they were "merely paid actors performing in front of a computer-generated image of a round globe." 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. Editor's note: This article was originally published on Sept. 8, 2020. An updated version was posted on Feb. 4, 2022. Dean Burnett covers the neurological mechanisms leading to conspiracy theories and more in his debut book The Idiot Brain,Eric Oliver is a professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on American politics, public opinion, political psychology, local politics, racial attitudes and self knowledge. He has published a number of books, the most recent of which was Enchanted America: How Intuition and Reason Divide Our Politics (The University of Chicago Press, 2018). He has also authored numerous articles in journals. 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 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." As objects recede from you, they begin to look smaller and slowly disappear in a very unique way: first their bottoms become hidden, and then their tops. If you've ever watched a ship on the horizon, you've seen this for yourself. Similarly, from a great distance, the tops of tall objects like mountains are visible well before their bases. The Andes Mountains, 287 miles [462 kilometers] away, and although taller than the plane's altitude, lay below the sensible horizon, marked by the white horizontal line in the photograph," NASA officials wrote in a description of the flight. "The Earth's curvature explains this phenomenon, as described in the diagram accompanying the photograph. The Earth's curvature is also visible laterally in the photograph, although the effect is subtle as the image encompasses only 1/360 of the Earth's circumference."

Many people don’t trust the society around them, most notably the representatives of that society. That trust often falls even further when it comes to elite representatives of that society, which include government officials, members of academia and scientists like me. By claiming that Earth is flat, people are really expressing a deep distrust of scientists and science itself.And that's not to mention the countless photos of Earth taken by orbiting satellites and eyewitness testimonies from astronauts hailing from dozens of different countries, space programs and private organizations. Engineers and architects also take the Earth's curvature into account when building large structures. A good example is the towers that support long suspension bridges such as the Verrazano Narrows bridge in New York City. Its towers are slightly out of parallel with each other, the tops being more than 1.5 inches further apart than their bases. If the Earth were flat, the bottom of the towers would be separated by the exact same distance as the top of the towers; the planet's curvature forces the tops of the towers apart. Today the Earth is mostly solid with a liquid outer core, but when the planet was forming, some 4.5 billion years ago, it was very hot and behaved like more like a fluid—and was subject to the squishing effects of gravity. You can learn more about the first photographs that clearly showed Earth's curvature in this NASA story. This explainer from Arizona State University lays out clearly and concisely the plentiful evidence for our planet's spherical shape. (Nearly spherical, rather: Earth's rotation causes it to be slightly squashed at the poles and swollen at the equator, a shape known as an oblate spheroid.) And this piece by fivethirtyeight.com explains why people believe in conspiracy theories such as the flat-Earth idea. Bibliography