Inside Flat Earth conference where conspiracy theorists try to build a rocket program to ‘expose government lies’
WE live on a disc in a giant snow globe – but the world’s top nations are hiding the proof so they can plunder secret outer lands in Antarctica.
Who says so? Followers of the Flat Earth movement, who attended a conference in Shropshire at the weekend to discuss their theory that the Earth is like a dinner plate.
And the odd idea is gaining momentum following hit Netflix documentary Behind The Curve.
A YouGov poll this year said three per cent of the UK’s adult population believed the Earth was flat — roughly 1.6million people.
Famous followers include former boxer Carl Froch and rapper B.o.B.. Even Top Gear presenter Freddie Flintoff has admitted he’s interested in the idea, recently saying “anything is possible”.
GRAVITY IS A MYTH
Blogger Mark Sargent, who has become a celebrity since starring in the Netflix show, was one of the speakers at the conference, where tickets cost £55 for one day and £700 for the full residential treatment.
Mark, 51, who has just finished a European tour taking in Stockholm, Dublin, Belfast and Cardiff, thinks we live on a flat disc covered by a dome — a bit like a snow globe.
But he admitted: “To prove that we would have to have our own rocket program.”
Others claim gravity is a myth, there is no such thing as space, the Sun isn’t 93million miles away and the edge of the planet is a huge wall of ice.
Tech worker Robin Campbell organised the weekend event, called Globe Lie UK Convention. The 52-year-old, from Bristol, delivered the opening lecture on Saturday in a darkened hall at a Christian centre in the village of Cleobury Mortimer.
It was a beginner’s guide, packed with slides and photos of supposedly devastating “evidence.”
The theory rests on the idea that Nasa — and all the other space agencies — have been faking images of Earth. The obvious question is: “Why would the world’s most powerful nations spend trillions on bogus space programs?”
According to Robin and Mark, they discovered secret lands “beyond the rim” of our pancake-shaped planet in 1952 during an expedition to Antarctica. At that point they realised Earth wasn’t a globe, but didn’t tell the rest of us because they wanted to keep the resources in these outer lands, including gold and oil, for themselves.
Among the believers is craftsman Ruben Dario Jaramillo, who was selling £15 models of flat earth.
The 35-year-old Londoner told me: “My wife Cynthia thought I was cheating on her because I was spending so much time researching flat earth theories.”
Cynthia is now a believer as well.
Instead of having to explain how a flat Earth could possibly work, the movement’s followers prefer to deny the spherical option.
Tony Riley, 39, from Liverpool, doesn’t classify himself as a “Flat Earther” and says he is searching for proof we live on a ball.
Clearly passionate about the subject, the businessman eloquently described some of the scientific experiments he has carried out as he questions long established theories.
Tony thinks gravity is a “pseudo-science”. He said he doesn’t “know where the Sun is”, and “maths doesn’t prove the real world”. Having said we should only believe what we can observe, he then dismissed the existence of the International Space Station which, with a decent telescope, can be seen orbiting the Earth.
Tony said: “It does look like a structure, but it looks holographic.”
Mother-of-two Roxanne Glen, from London, prefers to be called a “globe sceptic”. She said: “Natural observations have told me the Earth is flat.”
Rounding on the flat fans
HERE are some of the group’s claims – and what experts say . . .
CLAIM: Pilots would have to dip planes’ noses to account for the Earth’s curvature. But they don’t.
EXPERT: Autopilot varies the pitch to maintain altitude.
CLAIM: If Earth is round, why can you see objects beyond the horizon?
EXPERT: Many factors come into play, such as the elevation of the land you are on, the height of the object and refraction causing light to bend.
CLAIM: We’d feel it if Earth was rotating at 1,000mph while hurtling through space.
EXPERT: We can’t feel Earth move as we move with it at the same speed.
CLAIM: It’s been covered up that explorer Admiral Richard E Byrd found land as big as the US beyond the South Pole.
EXPERT: This isn’t a secret. On the official map, one half of Antarctica is the size of the US.
The 38-year-old building liaison worker believes schools are breaking the law by not teaching pupils that our planet could either be spherical or flat — or something else.
Roxanne has a YouTube channel and goes to Speakers Corner in London every month to persuade others of the “truth”.
Everyone at the event had the same message — seek out the facts.
That’s certainly good advice to anyone tempted to follow the globe deniers down their rabbit hole of misinformation and half truths.
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