Featured Image Credit: TikTok/@spacemanedu
Topics: Conspiracy Theories, Science, Space, TikTok, Reddit
Emily Brown
Topics: Conspiracy Theories, Science, Space, TikTok, Reddit
No matter how much evidence has been provided to the contrary, the idea that the Earth is flat is one that stubbornly persists among conspiracy theorists.
Chat rooms and Reddit threads thrive with claims and supposed evidence intended to prove that all the scientists and astronomers are wrong, with people pointing to daylight savings, the horizon and the view from plane windows to try and support their views.
Meanwhile, the truth about the shape of the Earth has been floating around for centuries, with Greek philosopher Pythagoras speculating that the Earth was actually spherical even before his death in 495 B.C.
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Still, the disagreement continues, so one astronaut decided to take matters into his own hands when he found himself with a rare perspective on the Earth.
The astronaut was up in space, hanging out among the stars as astronauts do, and filming himself while doing it.
Then, with one flip of his camera, he well and truly shut down the Flat Earth theory by revealing a view of our planet, shining bright and undeniably spherical in front of him.
The video was shared on the TikTok page @spacemanedu with the caption: "Someone Said Earth Was Flat…", after which it received more than six million likes.
There are multiple astronauts who have spoken out to refute the Flat Earth theory after seeing the shape of the globe with their own eyes, with many banding together in 2017 after Atlanta-based rapper B.o.B. raised questions about the planet and launched a fundraiser to build and launch a satellite so he could try and find out for himself.
NASA astronaut Terry Virts responded to B.o.B's doubt on Twitter, writing: "I can save BoB a lot of money — the Earth is round. I flew around it."
Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, followed up on Virts' post as he wrote: "I did too. It's called an orbit: the curved path of a celestial object around a star, planet, or moon."
Fellow astronaut Scott Kelly took things a step further as he shared a time-lapse video of the Earth, as seen from the International Space Station.
Alongside the video, he wrote: "Show you the curve? Here you go @bobatl! One full orbit around Earth. Maybe donate funds raised to #PuertoRicoRelief."
You can only hope that all of this evidence will be enough to convince all those who still have their doubts, but there's always someone determined not to give in!