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If you imagine Earth as a ball spinning in space, people who have recently gathered in a park in Arcadia, California, are eager to argue: you are wrong!
The Earth is actually "flatter than a pancake," said Nathan Thompson, part of a movement of people who say they are terrible.
They insist that the Earth is flat.
We live, say these people, on a disk floating in space, with a tiny sun hovering above us. But what about the curvature of the Earth? "I do not know, nobody has ever seen it," said a man.
"The perimeter of the flat Earth is a wall of ice," Thompson said.
"That's what holds in the ocean?" Asked his correspondent Brook Silva-Braga.
"It's all that contains," he said.
And what's under it? "Well, you know, we have not dug so deep," said Rene Flat, a stranger.
Netta Hagler, who organized the Flat Earthers meeting, questioned the fact that the Earth is turning in a vacuum at a speed of 1,000 miles at the hour. "But we can not feel it. I do not think I'm shooting right now. No, said Hagler.
Patricia Steere, who is part of what you might call the "stars" of the current Flat Earth movement (which mostly revolves around YouTube), told Silva-Braga: "Most people who have heard about it will laugh at idiots . But we are not idiots; we are intelligent people from all walks of life and all ages. "
Earth Earth raised levels on planes (to prove that they were flying level), they zoomed in on the moon and "found" clouds supposedly drifting behind it. "The moon is only a few miles high," said a flat Earth YouTuber. "We were lied to on such a scale!"
Steere has agreed to play "20 Questions: Cosmic Edition" with Silva-Braga.
Photos of the Earth from the space? "Completely and completely false," she says.
Is the sun 93 million kilometers? "No, the sun is not as far as we have been told, nor is the moon. They are probably about the same size. "
Images of astronauts floating on the space station? "Completely false. Harnesses, wires.
Have we really gone to the moon? "No. We did not go to the moon," said Steere, "and we do not have a rover on Mars, and we have not flown over Pluto, we have never been in space." . End of."
In short, Earth Earthers do not believe much in anything unless they see it for themselves. They think that NASA is only part of a larger plot.
According to Steere, "It's a giant chess game. We all in humanity, we are the pawns. Part of the problematic of the flat Earth is to keep us locked up, without knowing who we are, who we really are as people and what we are capable of. "
National security expert Tom Nichols, who teaches at Harvard Extension School, has a bleak view of the flat Earth. He told Silva-Braga that he thought something new was happening: "People are really obsessed with the idea that if it's not part of their direct experience, it can not be true.
"People have lost confidence in the experts. We have developed a kind of inverted snobbery that says that if you have a lot of education, if you are in a well known institution, you must by definition be a liar! "
Nichols put his expertise to the service of a book on "The Death of Expertise" (Oxford University Press).
He said, "Often young people say," The Internet is just a big library. "It's wrong; Internet is a big dumpster. There is no guarantee that everything you find on this one is true. "
"It's more democratic; Is not that so good? Silva-Braga asked.
"No. In terms of knowledge, more democratic is not good, absolutely not.We do not decide the speed at which things accelerate in the void by voting on it".
So, in this world where I am "show it to me", we went to the desert of Southern California to meet, by ourselves, the only man who boldly goes where no Flat Earther does. still went.
Meet Michael Hughes – "Mad Mike" to his fans. A limo driver, a self-proclaimed daredevil and, more recently, a self-built explorer, Flat Earth. "I am their best hope. I am the best hope to prove Flat Earth, "he said.
"The thing of the flat earth is like everything else for me. I just want people to question everything. Ask what your congressman, your municipal council, is doing. Question what really happened during the Civil War. What happened during September 11th?
And this rocket sitting in front of her house? Mad Mike has built it himself.
Silva-Braga asked, "How do you know how to build a rocket?"
"Trial and error," said Hughes. "It's a lot of things, you know?"
"There is not a lot of second chance, though, in the rocket sector."
"No, you do not do it! Especially at about 1800 feet. "
Last March, Mad Mike actually climbed into his rocket and went to see what he could see. And to everyone's surprise, Hughes fled and landed more or less intact.
Certainly 1,800 feet is not high enough to monitor the planet well. But Mad Mike now intends to climb up to 100 km to the edge of space, where he can see (or not see) the curve of the Earth.
A model hung in his house shows how he hopes to attach to a craft with balloons and rockets and fly away. "The first 20 miles will be with a ball," he said. "And after that, my rocket will fire, shoot me, then once the rocket stops shooting, I'll fly like Superman for about 30 seconds without energy, just in the atmosphere."
And if he succeeds in one way or another, Mad Mike says he will refute the centuries of science once and for all.
Or not.
"I'm waiting to see a flat disk up there," he said. "I do not have an agenda. If it's a round land or a ball, I'll go down and say, "Hey guys, I'm bad. It's a ball, ok?
And with that, we put the ball back in Professor Nichols's court.
"The world looks flat. I look out the window, I do not see a curve, "said Silva-Braga.
Nichols replied: "That's right, the world seems flat. And who are you to tell me that my perception is not better than that of others? And I think it's a very dangerous thing, because, you know, the Earth is round and you'll learn it the hard way if you try to fly a plane! "
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