Since the time of Ancient Egypt, people have believed that the Earth is a flat disk that floats on the ocean. However, this was before modern science, NASA, the space race, and pictures from outer-space that depict a clearly spherical earth. In 1956, the Flat Earth Society was formed as a place for free thinkers and intellectuals to come together to exchange ideas, as the website explains. The society fights against what the rest of the world simply accepts to be true. What would happen if we challenge the common knowledge that the Earth is round? What might we find out?

  Have you ever seen the curvature of the Earth for yourself? When you walk on the ground, it feels flat, not curved. This is what the Flat Earth Society determines to be the best way to prove that the world is flat; using your own senses while skeptically viewing the world around you. The book, Earth Not a Globe, was originally published in 1881, and remains a staple text in the Flat Earth community. In this book, the author, Samuel Rowbotham, describes various experiments that he conducted, such as the water convexity experiment, which proves that the Earth is flat. This experiment involves a series of uniform flags each placed a mile apart from the next in a canal. When a man looks down the line of flags with a telescope, he could clearly see the tops of all of the flags. By properties of right angles, this meant that the top of the water was also completely horizontal. If the Earth were round, then the tops of the last flags would not be visible because they would slant off into the distance.  

   In addition, the new documentary on Netflix called Beyond the Curve, the creators explain another claim to the Flat Earth conspiracy: the government wants to keep us ignorant about the true shape of the Earth in order to keep us oppressed and docile. This goes along with the claim that NASA is a government ruse, that men have never been to the moon, and that the Earth is simply a flat disk rushing up into nothingness, denying that gravity even exists.

  But the reality is that only relying on our senses and refusing to believe science is what is holding Flat Earthers back from the real truth – that the Earth is round. The experiment performed in Earth Not a Globe was not a sufficient distance to be able to see the curvature of the Earth, and therefore does not mean that the Earth is flat. Junior Nikolas Jauch agreed, “[The Flat Earth Theory] is not really based on science, and all modern technology today is based on Earth being a sphere. For example, GPS uses satellites that orbit the Earth to triangulate your position.” Additionally, the book was published in the late nineteenth century, before modern science and space travel. Whether or not you believe that humans have been to the moon, there definitely have been spacecrafts launched that provided pictures of Earth from space, depicting the spherical nature of our planet and the surrounding ones. Also, gravity is a substantiated scientific theory, and is what keeps us on the ground. Furthermore, the governments of our world would gain nothing by telling everyone that the Earth is round and collaborating to edit pictures of the Earth from space. The idea is that it would keep the citizens of the world docile, but there is still violence, uprisings, protests, and wars throughout the Earth. In conclusion, the Earth is round. That is The Real Deal.