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Do they really think the earth is flat?
In the 21st Century, the term "flat-earther" is used to
describe someone who is spectacularly - and seemingly wilfully - ignorant.
But there is a group of people who claim they believe the planet really is
flat. Are they really out there or is it all an elaborate prank?
By Brendan O'Neill
BBC Online
4 August 2008
Nasa is celebrating its 50th birthday with much fanfare and pictures of past
glories. But in half a century of extraordinary images of space, one stands
out.
WORLD VIEW
330 BC Aristotle provides evidence of spherical earth
240 BC Eratosthenes of Cyrene accurately calculates circumference of globe
8th Century AD work by Bede shows acceptance of sphere idea
On 24 December 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 mission took a photo now known
as Earthrise. To many, this beautiful blue sphere viewed from the moon's
orbit is a perfect visual summary of why it is right to strive to go into
space.
Not to everybody though. There are people who say they think this image is
fake - part of a worldwide conspiracy by space agencies, governments and
scientists.
Welcome to the world of the flat-earther.
Our attitude towards those who once upon a time believed in the flatness of
the earth is apparent in a new Microsoft advert.
Depicting an olden-days ship sailing on rough seas, presumably heading
towards the "edge of the world", the advert is part of a $300m campaign
aimed at rescuing the reputation of Windows Vista by comparing its critics
to flat-earthers.
Satellite era
But are there any genuine flat-earthers left? Surely in our era of space
exploration - where satellites take photos of our blue and clearly globular
planet from space, and robots send back info about soil and water from Mars
- no one can seriously still believe that the Earth is flat?
Wrong.
Flat earth theory is still around. On the internet and in small meeting
rooms in Britain and the US, flat earth believers get together to challenge
the "conspiracy" that the Earth is round.
"People are definitely prejudiced against flat-earthers," says John Davis, a
flat earth theorist based in Tennessee, reacting to the new Microsoft
commercial.
"Many use the term 'flat-earther' as a term of abuse, and with connotations
that imply blind faith, ignorance or even anti-intellectualism."
Mr Davis, a 25-year-old computer scientist originally from Canada, first
became interested in flat earth theory after "coming across some literature
from the Flat Earth Society a few years ago".
"I came to realise how much we take at face value," he says. "We humans seem
to be pleased with just accepting what we are told, no matter how much it
goes against our senses."
Mr Davis now believes "the Earth is flat and horizontally infinite - it
stretches horizontally forever".
"And it is at least 9,000 kilometres deep", he adds.
James McIntyre, a British-based moderator of a Flat Earth Society discussion
website, has a slightly different take. "The Earth is, more or less, a
disc," he states. "Obviously it isn't perfectly flat thanks to geological
phenomena like hills and valleys. It is around 24,900 miles in diameter."
Mr McIntyre, who describes himself as having been "raised a globularist in
the British state school system", says the reactions of his friends and
family to his new beliefs vary from "sheer incredulity to the conviction
that it's all just an elaborate joke".
So how many flat-earthers are around today? Neither Mr Davis nor Mr McIntyre
can say.
Disappearing ships
Mr McIntyre estimates "there are thousands", but "without a platform for
communication, a head-count is almost impossible", he says. Mr Davis says he
is currently creating an "online information repository" to help to bring
together local Flat Earth communities into a "global community".
"If you will forgive my use of the term 'global'", he says.
And for the casual observer, it is hard to accept that all of this is not
some bizarre 21st Century jape. After all, most schoolchildren know that
ships can disappear over the horizon, that satellites orbit the earth and
that if you head along the equator you will eventually come back on
yourself.
What about all the photos from space that show, beyond a shadow of doubt,
that the Earth is round? "The space agencies of the world are involved in an
international conspiracy to dupe the public for vast profit," says Mr
McIntyre.
John Davis also says "these photos are fake".
And what about the fact that no one has ever fallen off the edge of our
supposedly disc-shaped world?
Mr McIntyre laughs. "This is perhaps one of the most commonly asked
questions," he says. "A cursory examination of a flat earth map fairly well
explains the reason - the North Pole is central, and Antarctica comprises
the entire circumference of the Earth. Circumnavigation is a case of
travelling in a very broad circle across the surface of the Earth."
Ultimate conspiracy
Mr Davis says that being a flat-earther doesn't have an impact on how one
lives every day. "As a rule of thumb, we don't have any fears of aircraft or
other modes of transportation," he says.
Christine Garwood, author of Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, is
not surprised that flat-earthers simply write off the evidence that our
planet is globular.
"Flat earth theory is one of the ultimate conspiracy theories," she says.
"Naturally, flat earth believers think that the moon landings were faked, as
were the photographs of earth from space."
Perhaps one of the most surprising things in Garwood's book is her
revelation that flat earth theory is a relatively modern phenomenon.
Ms Garwood says it is an "historic fallacy" that everyone from ancient times
to the Dark Ages believed the earth to be flat, and were only disabused of
this "mad idea" once Christopher Columbus successfully sailed to America
without "falling off the edge of the world".
In fact, people have known since at least the 4th century BC that the earth
is round, and the pseudo-scientific conviction that we actually live on a
disc didn't emerge until Victorian times.
Theories about the earth being flat really came to the fore in 19th Century
England. With the rise and rise of scientific rationalism, which seemed to
undermine Biblical authority, some Christian thinkers decided to launch an
attack on established science.
Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884) assumed the pseudonym of "Parallax" and
founded a new school of "Zetetic astronomy". He toured England arguing that
the Earth was a stationary disc and the Sun was only 400 miles away.
In the 1870s, Christian polemicist John Hampden wrote numerous works about
the Earth being flat, and described Isaac Newton as "in liquor or insane".
And the spirit of these attacks lives on to the present day. The flat-earth
myth remains the outlandish king in the realm of the conspiracy theorist.
And while we all respect a degree of scepticism towards the authorities,
says Ms Garwood, the flat-earthers show things can go too far.
"It is always good to question 'how we know what we know', but it is also
good to have the ability to accept compelling evidence - such as the
photographs of Earth from space."
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Thanks for your comments. A selection appears below.
The closest geometric shape to describe the earth has got to be an oblate
spheroid. Which roughly means a slightly flattened round thing. So the earth
is both flat and round.
Nick L, Cirencester, UK
It's interesting actually, this isn't the first time I've heard of a
conspiracy like this. It is of course scientifically impossible. How does a
flat object manage to be dark and light at the same time? Its impossible
surely. If you take a CD, try and make the same side both hot and cold, dark
and light and all points in between. It can't be done, try and do the same
to a ball and suddenly it is possible. Next they will be telling us that the
sun circles earth.
Mike Nash, Birmingham, England
How do "flat-earthers" explain lunar eclipses?
Erin Walsh, Newtownards, Northern Ireland
There are two points to be made here. First, the modern flat earth society
has not always insisted that the photographs from space were fakes. In the
1950s, after membership had dropped by two-thirds when the first pictures
from the satellites were published, the die-hards came back with a
hypothesis that the aerial view of the earth had been distorted by
'invisible and undetectable bodies' which refracted the light in such a way
that it appeared spherical. It was only with the moon landings that they
added the conspiracy theory that this had all taken place in the Nevada
desert.
The second and more important point is that this article misrepresents the
history of the theory, rejecting one extreme - the idea that everyone until
Columbus believed the earth to be flat, which is patent nonsense; to replace
it with an equally implausible extreme, the idea that virtually the whole of
western Christendom was perfectly well aware that the earth was a sphere,
with exceptions such as the atypical 'cranks' like Lactantius and Cosmas of
Alexandria. It simply is not true that there were no flat earth beliefs
among the educated classes, and certainly not true that it was all but dead
by the Middle Ages.
Mark Tebbit, Reading
If the earth was flat as suggested by these "theorists", a plane flying from
Santiago (Chile) to Sydney (Australia) would have to cross Mexico and
California before reaching its destination. Having spent many hours on that
route, I can assure the world that it doesn't. The world is not a flat disc.
Period.
Alex Williams, London
The flat-earth theory of the planet being a disc can be proven false quite
easily. Simply get a satellite photo of the South Pole showing Antarctica as
one landmass surrounded by water.
Oh wait, they don't trust satellite photos. But they do trust aircraft. The
reason planes fly routes in arcs is because this is the shortest and most
efficient route on a curved sphere. Simply show that the distance/fuel
consumption between two points in the Northern Hemisphere is roughly the
same as between two points in the Southern Hemisphere.
For example, the distance between Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town is 3775
miles, and the distance from New York to London is 3470 miles. If the disc
theory was correct, it would be something like 4x as far between the
Southern Hemisphere cities, since you'd have to traverse the two points
further from the center of the disc (ie the North Pole). Mr Davis can even
fly the plane if he wants!
But, I forgot, logic has already failed these people. Why should this be any
different?
Matt, NYC, US
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Who Loves Designer Vaginas?
Science and nature are mocking America's fickle God. Please,
no screaming.
Mark Morford
SF Gate Columnist
Wed June 20, 2007
What are you gonna do about it?
What are you gonna do about the fact that Mother Nature once again appears
to be thwarting and mocking and then grinning like a wicked divine trickster
at every cute rigid godly idea of how humans and animals are supposed to
move and hump and lick and behave, as loosely and, yes, rather bitterly
delineated in the Bible and by the Bush administration and Focus on the
Family and every other uptight sexually confounded person you have ever
known, et al. and ad nauseam?
What, furthermore, are you gonna do about human knowledge? About how science
insists on marching hell-bent forward with such astonishing speed and with
such incredible dexterity toward some glorious otherworldly nightmare
dreamscape of anima manipulation, a land where we can effortlessly
rescramble our genetic code and reconfigure this none-too-solid flesh as we
"play God" in so many bewildering ways the Christian right can't even figure
out where to aim its hollow, horrified indignation?
Here is the thing you must know: It is all changing with incredible,
butt-tingling speed. It is all fast becoming more than we ever imagined,
with ramifications we are only beginning to fully taste. There is no
stopping it. There is little that can slow it down. There is only the
single, looming question: How will you respond? Will you recoil and gag and
spit, or will you gurgle and swallow and smile?
Example: We are on the cusp of being able choose, should you so desire, the
exact size and length and speed and eye color and specific pleasing fur
markings of ... your dog. And your cat. And your baby (well, minus the fur).
And by the way, we have also invented new drugs to eliminate menstruation
and we can now grow designer vaginas in the lab and plastic surgery is more
common than bad sacrum tattoos and it's becoming increasingly obvious that
males of many species -- including our own -- are largely unnecessary for
procreation (but not, say, parallel parking, the lifting of heavy things or
buying you a nice postcoital breakfast).
Fascinating, that last thing. Have you heard? Scientists are discovering
more and more creatures, from sharks to bees to ants to turkeys to Komodo
dragons to turtles to sea bass, that can reproduce via parthenogenesis
(i.e., virgin birth; i.e., no father) either by actually switching sexes so
as to fertilize themselves, or via storing sperm for years for later use, or
because they're hermaphrodites, or by way of undertaking all manner of
clever unholy gender trickery so as to circumvent their own extinction and
confound creationists and ensure that all humans everywhere will continue to
look around and blink furiously and go, Wait wait wait, didn't we have some
of this figured out already? What the hell happened?
Wait, did I say designer vaginas? Indeed I did. Doctors can now grow new
vaginal tissue in a lab, from the original stem cells, for eventual
replanting (not to be confused with the hot trend in cosmetic vaginoplasty,
by the way, which is an entirely different fascination and has to do with
reshaping the labia for improved aesthetics and, you know, functionality.
God bless America).
Fabulous news for victims of birth defects and cancer and rare vaginal
disorders? You bet. Intriguing implications for all sorts of cosmetic
applications, not to mention what it might mean for transsexuals, not to
mention how close we are to doing the same thing with other organs -- and
even, eventually, entire limbs? One guess.
It is, we can all agree, a lot to take in. It is a great deal to attempt to
process in one tiny and oh-so-fleeting lifetime. The notion of human
eugenics alone is, for many, overwhelming enough, the idea that new parents
will soon have some sort of checklist at the gynecologist's office wherein,
when docs go in to tweak your fetus' DNA to eliminate diseases, you can also
easily choose not only its sex, but also the skin tone and hair color and
eye tint and muscle dexterity and 0-60 acceleration and number of cupholders
and overall genetic propensity toward an IQ that may or may not lead to
voting for aw-shucks warmongering neocon imbecile politicians. Neat! Or, you
know, not.
They are, quite obviously, the sort of advances that open so many cans of
ethical and spiritual worms it shakes us to the very core of what we
believe, of who we think we are and where we fit in and What It All Means.
You know, the good questions.
At the same time, it's really nothing new. It's little different than
previous periods of explosive growth in human knowledge that both titillated
and terrified the populace, such as, say, when Galileo pointed out (much to
the church's quivering rage) that not only is man's little spinning blue
spaceship not at the center of the universe, but we're actually so far out
on the fringes, so minute and insignificant in our Copernican swirlings that
we're really nothing more than a wisp of belly-button lint in the giant
laundry hamper of the gods. Talk about your existential angst.
Hence, religion. This (at least partially) explains why so many are so eager
to cling to religious dogma, to some sort of immovable, reliable framework
of understanding, something that can help make sense of it all, even if
making sense of it all involves shutting off your brain and killing your
divine intuition and soaking up giant gobs of blind faith so you don't have
to actually swim in those bloody murky confusing pools of ethics and meaning
and actually thinking for yourself. Mmm, numb groupthink. It's what's for
dinner.
There are only two real options. One is to hold tight to the leaky life raft
of inflexible ideology (hello, organized religion), to rules and laws and
codes of conduct written by the fearful, for the fearful, to live in
constant low-level dread of all the extraordinary changes and radical
rethinkings of what it means to be human or animal or male or female or
hetero or homo or any other swell little label you thought was solid and
trustworthy but which is increasingly proven to be blurry and unpredictable
and just a little dangerous.
There is another option. You can choose nimbleness, lightness, a sly and
knowing grin to go with your wine and your vibrator and your never-ending
thirst for more and deeper information. It's possible.
You can refuse to let your brain, your soul lock down into one way of
looking at the world as you see all the science and genetic manipulation and
designer vaginas, all the insane, incredible possibility as merely more
evidence that we are, in the end, just one big karmic science experiment.
Is this latter choice frustrating and brutally difficult and will it
challenge every notion of self you hold dear? Hell yes. Is it the only way
to enjoy this bizarre circus of a planet without grabbing a gun and cowering
in the corner with your homophobia and your flag and your Army of Christ
brochure, dead certain the terrorists and gays and hippies are coming to eat
your soul for breakfast? Well, probably.
Because, baby, the changes are coming, harder and faster than ever, with all
sorts of juicy, terrifying, delightful implications. Really now, what are
you gonna do about it?
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Two Self-fulfilling Prophecies Are
Stronger, and More Harmful, Than One
Time and again, research has demonstrated the power of an
individual's self-fulfilling prophecies - if you envision yourself tripping
as you walk across a stage, you will be more likely to stumble and fall. New
evidence suggests that previous studies have underestimated not only the
effect of our own negative prophecies, but also the power of others' false
beliefs in promoting negative outcomes.
By BJS
01/03/2005
Scienceblog.com
When two or more people have similar false beliefs about another person,
it's possible this could influence the person's behavior. Researchers
Stephanie Madon, Max Guyll, Richard Spoth, and Jennifer Willard, all at Iowa
State University, examined this phenomenon to see how much influence those
collective beliefs have in determining a positive or negative reality.
The researchers tested whether the false beliefs of mothers and fathers
could predict the amount of drinking done by their adolescent children over
the course of a year. Their study, "Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: The
Synergistic Accumulative Effect of Parents' Beliefs on Children's Drinking
Behavior," appeared in the December 2004 issue of Psychological Science, a
journal of the American Psychological Society.
The study involved 115 parents and their seventh grade children. Parents
filled out questionnaires that measured their beliefs about their children's
alcohol use and the children also filled out a questionnaires at the start
of the experiment, including items assessing their past alcohol use. Twelve
months later, the children answered a questionnaire that ascertained their
recent alcohol use. The results showed that parents' beliefs predicted their
children's alcohol use beyond the risk factors - the self-fulfilling
prophecy effect. This self-fulfilling effect was strongest when both parents
overestimated their child's alcohol use - the synergistic accumulative
effect.
However, when one or both parents underestimated their child's alcohol use,
their child's predicted increase in alcohol use was similar, showing there
was not a synergistic accumulation effect for positive beliefs. This pattern
of showing synergistic accumulation for negative beliefs but not positive
ones might reflect the manner in which people process negative and positive
information. For example, research shows that negative information is
more salient than positive information, perceived as more useful, and
influences evaluations more. In addition, people also weigh costs more than
rewards when making important decisions. Thus, the greater power of
unfavorable versus favorable beliefs may reside in how people process
negative versus positive information.
These results could be significant when applied to the context of
stereotyped groups that frequently bear the brunt of negative, false
beliefs. In their everyday lives, individuals from stereotyped groups more
often confront unfavorable than favorable beliefs from multiple perceivers
due to consensually held stereotypes. A favorable belief may not be able to
counteract the harmful effect of an unfavorable belief when there is a
preponderance of unfavorable beliefs competing with it. Over time, the
negative self-fulfilling prophecy effects could become more powerful as the
number of people with negative perceptions increases.
A full copy of the article is available at the APS Media Center at
www.psychologicalscience.org/media/
Psychological Science is ranked among the top 10 general psychology journals
for impact by the Institute for Scientific Information. The American
Psychological Society represents psychologists advocating science-based
research in the public's interest.
From American Psychological Society [1]
Links
[1]
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2005/pr050103.cfm
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| How to Prove 150 Years of
Scientific Tradition Wrong For 150 years
scientists believed that stable magnetic levitation was impossible. Then Roy
Harrigan came along.
Theodore Gray
February 2004
If you've ever tried to float one magnet over another (and who hasn't?),
you know that the stupid thing just keeps flipping over -- an irritation
formalized in 1842 when the Rev. Samuel Earnshaw published his famous
theorem establishing mathematically that such magnetic levitation just can't
be done. From that point on, any experimenter caught playing with magnets
courted the derision of his colleagues: "Ha, ha, look at Fred over there
trying to balance magnets! I guess he never heard of Earnshaw's
theorem!" Physicists can be so cruel on the playground.
Well, not so fast. It turns out that Earnshaw's theorem is absolutely
correct, but it has a couple of loopholes large enough to drive all sorts of
stable magnetic levitation devices through, including one you can now buy in
any novelty shop for about $30: the Levitron. (For more info go to
)
This spinning top, which hovers above a magnetic base, was patented in 1983
by a Vermonter named Roy Harrigan. Harrigan had one distinct advantage over
all those scientists who had tried and failed to levitate magnets before
him: complete ignorance of Earnshaw's theorem. Having no idea that it
couldn't be done, he stumbled upon the fact that it actually can. It turns
out that precession (the rotation of a spinning object's axis of spin)
creates an island of genuine stability in a way that does not violate
Earnshaw's theorem, but that went completely unpredicted by physicists for
more than a century. (Though after spending half an hour getting the
Levitron to work, I was willing to cut the blinkered physicists some slack.
I can only imagine how Harrigan must have felt the moment he finally got the
thing floating after years of effort.)
A second Earnshaw exception: diamagnetism. His theorem only applies to
ferromagnetism, the common north/south pole type of magnetism found in most
magnets. Diamagnetism is a purely repulsive magnetic force exhibited to
varying degrees by all materials in the presence of a magnetic field. Simply
drop a chip of graphite, for example, onto a block of magnets and it will
float in midair forever. I've had some chips hovering in my office for six
months. A superconducting ceramic disc is also a perfect diamagnetic
material, and floating a magnet over it is so easy and stable that you can
knock the magnet around with your fingers and it won't fall off. (Ten years
ago this was new and exotic, but today you can buy a kit for $40.)
Chips of graphite, by the way, aren't the only diamagnetic objects you can
levitate. Researchers in the Netherlands have successfully levitated water
droplets, hazelnuts, frogs and even a hamster named Tisha. In theory, it
should even be possible to levitate humans, although no one has actually
done so yet.
How could people possibly have missed these maglev possibilities for so
long? The power of negative thinking, simple as that. In my day job as a
creator of the scientific software Mathematica, I remember Earnshaw's
theorem whenever I'm told something can't be done. It's much better to
assume that it can be done, then get to work on the possibilities.
That's how breakthroughs are made.
Originally from:
www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,12543,577754,00.html#
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