# The Earth is flat

**Verdict: Contradicted.** Every independent line of evidence (ancient, modern and amateur) points to a globe.

Category: Science, Space & Technology · Era: Victorian to viral · First circulated: 1838 · Believed by: ~2% (US)
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/flat-earth

## Summary
The claim that the Earth is a flat, stationary plane and that space agencies conspire to hide it: set against evidence anyone can gather for themselves, and the far more interesting question of why the belief persists.

## The claim
That the Earth is a flat, stationary plane (usually pictured as a disc centred on the North Pole and ringed by an ice wall), and that NASA, governments and scientists conspire to hide its true shape.

## Origin and timeline
- 1838: Samuel Rowbotham runs his Bedford Level experiment on an English canal and claims it proves the water is flat.
- 1865: Rowbotham publishes Zetetic Astronomy, founding the modern flat-Earth tradition.
- 1956: Samuel Shenton founds the International Flat Earth Society, which stays a small mail-order affair for decades.
- 2015: Flat-Earth videos explode on YouTube; Mark Sargent's Flat Earth Clues series helps ignite a global online revival.
- 2018: Netflix's Behind the Curve documents the movement, and films believers accidentally disproving themselves.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: The horizon looks flat, and water always finds its level.
  Evidence: Ships and city skylines vanish from the bottom up as they cross the horizon, reappearing top-first through a telescope: exactly what a curved surface hiding their lower half would do.
- Claim: No one has ever really measured the Earth's curve.
  Evidence: Eratosthenes measured it around 240 BC using nothing but shadows in two Egyptian cities, and got the circumference right to within roughly 10%: no rockets required.
- Claim: The Moon and stars are consistent with a flat plane.
  Evidence: During every lunar eclipse the Earth casts a round shadow on the Moon, and travellers heading south see entirely different constellations rise: both impossible on a flat disc, as Aristotle noted 2,300 years ago.
- Claim: You can't trust NASA's photos.
  Evidence: You don't have to. Amateur high-altitude balloons, airline routes across the southern hemisphere, and the space programmes of rival nations all independently show a sphere.

## Why people believe it
- Flat Earth is the keystone of total distrust: if 'they' lied about the shape of the ground, nothing any authority says can be trusted.
- It flatters the senses (the Earth looks flat) and rewards 'doing your own research' with a sense of being awake.
- The movement offers community and identity; for many, leaving would mean losing friends, not losing an argument.

## Sources
- Behind the Curve (documentary), Daniel J. Clark / Delta-v Productions, Netflix (2018)
- Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe, Samuel Birley Rowbotham ('Parallax'), the founding text of the flat-Earth movement, included here as the origin of the claim, not as evidence for it (1865): https://archive.org/details/zeteticastronom00rowbgoog
- 200 Proofs Earth Is Not a Spinning Ball, Eric Dubay, the movement's most widely circulated modern claim compendium, included here as a primary artifact, not as evidence for it (2015): https://archive.org/details/200-proofs-the-earth-is-not-a-spinning-ball
- On the Heavens, Book II (Earth's round eclipse shadow and shifting stars), Aristotle, c. 350 BC: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/heavens.2.ii.html
- Cleomedes' Lectures on Astronomy: A Translation of The Heavens (earliest surviving account of Eratosthenes' measurement), Cleomedes, trans. Alan C. Bowen & Robert B. Todd (University of California Press) (2004)
- Differential Susceptibility to Misleading Flat Earth Arguments on YouTube, Landrum, Olshansky & Richards, Media Psychology 24:1 (2021): https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2019.1669461
- Most Flat Earthers Consider Themselves Very Religious (2018 Omnibus poll), YouGov (2018): https://today.yougov.com/society/articles/20510-most-flat-earthers-consider-themselves-religious

Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/flat-earth