Flat Earth: ( Why Does Other People Believe It? )

Hello fellow Steemians. I'm here again Rigel. Let's discuss about flat earth. I saw it in the #bitcointalk so it caught my attention and have some research about it and I want to share this to you that why some people thinks and believe that the earth is flat?. First let's know what flat earth is.

Modern flat Earth societies consist of individuals who promote the idea that the Earth is flat rather than a sphere. Such groups date from the middle of the 20th century; some adherents are serious and some are not. Those who are serious are often motivated by pseudoscience or religious literalism.

Through the use of social media, flat Earth theories have been increasingly espoused by individuals unaffiliated with larger groups, many of which have members around the world.

Modern flat Earth hypotheses originated with the English writer Samuel Rowbotham (1816–1884). Based on conclusions derived from the Bedford Level experiment, Rowbotham published a pamphlet Zetetic Astronomy. He later expanded into a book Earth Not a Globe, proposing the Earth is a flat disc centred at the North Pole and bounded along its southern edge by a wall of ice, Antarctica. Rowbotham further held that the Sun and Moon were 3,000 miles (4,800 km) above Earth and that the "cosmos" was 3,100 miles (5,000 km) above the Earth. He also published a leaflet titled The inconsistency of Modern Astronomy and its Opposition to the Scriptures, which argued that the "Bible, alongside our senses, supported the idea that the earth was flat and immovable and this essential truth should not be set aside for a system based solely on human conjecture".

Rowbotham and followers like William Carpenter gained attention by successful use of pseudoscience in public debates with leading scientists such as Alfred Russel Wallace. Rowbotham created a Zetetic Society in England and New York, shipping over a thousand copies of Zetetic Astronomy.

After Rowbotham's death, Lady Elizabeth Blount established a Universal Zetetic Society, whose objective was "the propagation of knowledge related to Natural Cosmogony in confirmation of the Holy Scriptures, based on practical scientific investigation". The society published a magazine, The Earth Not a Globe Review, and remained active well into the early 20th century. A flat Earth journal, Earth: a Monthly Magazine of Sense and Science, was published between 1901–1904, edited by Lady Blount.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_societies

Why Does other People Believe it?

First, a brief tour of the worldview of a flat-earther: While writing off buckets of concrete evidence that Earth is spherical, they readily accept a laundry list of propositions that some would call ludicrous. The leading flat-earther theory holds that Earth is a disc with the Arctic Circle in the center and Antarctica, a 150-foot-tall wall of ice, around the rim. NASA employees, they say, guard this ice wall to prevent people from climbing over and falling off the disc. (In keeping with their skepticism of NASA, known flat-earther conspiracy theorist Nathan Thompson recently approached a man he said was a NASA employee in a Starbucks in mid-May 2017. In a YouTube video of the exchange, Thompson, founder of the Official Flat Earth and Globe Discussion page, shouted that he had proof the Earth is flat — apparently saying an astronaut drowning was that proof — and that NASA is "lying.")

Earth's day and night cycle is explained by positing that the sun and moon are spheres measuring 32 miles (51 kilometers) that move in circles 3,000 miles (4,828 km) above the plane of the Earth. (Stars, they say, move in a plane 3,100 miles up.) Like spotlights, these celestial spheres illuminate different portions of the planet in a 24-hour cycle. Flat-earthers believe there must also be an invisible "antimoon" that obscures the moon during lunar eclipses.

Furthermore, Earth's gravity is an illusion, they say. Objects do not accelerate downward; instead, the disc of Earth accelerates upward at 32 feet per second squared (9.8 meters per second squared), driven up by a mysterious force called dark energy. Currently, there is disagreement among flat-earthers about whether or not Einstein's theory of relativity permits Earth to accelerate upward indefinitely without the planet eventually surpassing the speed of light. (Einstein's laws apparently still hold in this alternate version of reality.)

As for what lies underneath the disc of Earth, this is unknown, but most flat-earthers believe it is composed of "rocks." [Religion and Science: 6 Visions of Earth's Core]

Then, there's the conspiracy theory: Flat-earthers believe photos of the globe are photoshopped; GPS devices are rigged to make airplane pilots think they are flying in straight lines around a sphere when they are actually flying in circles above a disc. The motive for world governments' concealment of the true shape of the Earth has not been ascertained, but flat-earthers believe it is probably financial. "In a nutshell, it would logically cost much less to fake a space program than to actually have one, so those in on the Conspiracy profit from the funding NASA and other space agencies receive from the government," the flat-earther website's FAQ page explains.

Who believes the Earth is flat?
Flat-earth believers are not relegated to the hidden corners of the universe: Plenty of celebs have been quite vocal with their beliefs. For instance, on Jan. 25, 2016, rapper-singer Bobby Ray Simmons Jr. (known as B.o.B) released a track called "Flatline" in which he disses astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, after the two had a Twitter battle over the spherical-ness of the planet. B.o.B is convinced Earth is flat. A day earlier, the rapper tweeted: "No matter how high in elevation you are... the horizon is always eye level ... sorry cadets... I didn't wanna believe it either."

And then there's Shaq. In a podcast that aired on Feb. 27, 2017, former NBA player Shaquille O'Neal proclaimed our home planet is flat, saying that when he drives from Florida to California "it's flat to me." Shaq later said he was just kidding. [5 Scientific Rebuttals of Shaq's Flat-Earth Claims]

Some believers have gotten creative in their quest to prove a flat planet: Conspiracy theorist D. Marble posted on YouTube on May 1, 2017, that he brought a spirit level aboard a flight from Charlotte, North Carolina to Seattle, Washington, to see whether the plane's nose would dip to "compensate for curvature" of the Earth, he said. On the video, he said: "I recorded a 23 minute and 45 second time-lapse, which by those measurements means the plane travelled a little over 203 miles. According to Spherical Trigonometry given to explain the Heliocentric model, this should have resulted in the compensation of 5 miles of curvature. As you'll see there was no measurable compensation for curvature." (The air bubble in his level remained centered, which he said proves the Earth is flat.)

Source: https://www.livescience.com/24310-flat-earth-belief.html

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