6 rules from Florian Aigner that are useful for distinguishing truth from nonsense.

This is not the first time that flat earth theory has found its way into Mimikama's content. But we would like to go into the conspiracy theory again, because Florian Aigner explained in a short guest article for Addendum why the earth is not a flat disk and how you can generally distinguish between conspiracy theories.

In the article “ How to Become Smarter ” on Addendum, Aigner makes the following points:

  1. Never believe something just because you want to believe it!
  2. Formulate theories so that they are falsifiable!
  3. Look for observations that contradict your theory!
  4. Ask about the sources!
  5. Does the thesis fit with what we already know?
  6. Accept that no theory can explain everything!

Of course we also have a few evergreens on this topic. It's just these little claims that ultimately aren't true:

Claim: People have always believed in a flat earth

A popular claim that conspiracy theorists like to use in the same breath as that all NASA images are fake. Maybe they should have paid attention in history class, because as early as 600 BC. In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras proposed that the Earth was a round planet that revolved around the central sun with the other planets, which is now known as the Copernicus model.

Screenshot Mimikama.at
Screenshot Mimikama.at

The fake images from space

In order to make the representation of the globe false, there is the claim that all images from space are fake. You can make it that easy. “There is no evidence that the earth is round!” is often emphasized and all images are fake. Nobody can say why such a gigantic fake should even exist. It's probably because you haven't yet had the experience of being able to see the curve of the earth from space.

Incidentally, the American Mike Hughes tried to compensate for this lack of self-experience with a self-made rocket and at the same time prove that the earth was flat. He actually managed to fly a good 500 m high with it. Of course, you can't really prove or refute anything, but the fact that he didn't kill himself is probably a miracle. However, the 61-year-old does not want to give up and try to prove the flat earth again.

Millions of images from the ISS, NASA, ESA, CNSA, Roscosmos and all other space agencies are still all fake. So the images from a Japanese satellite that takes a picture of the Earth every 10 minutes fake and computer-generated? That would also mean that since 1946, when the first photo of the Earth was taken from space , all space agencies would have been in cahoots just to tell humanity a gigantic lie?

But just take a look!

This is one of the biggest arguments for flat earth in the field of evidence warfare. You cannot see the curvature of the earth with the naked eye, which clearly shows that the earth is flat.

Image source: Blogrebels
Image source: Blogrebels

Very few people have the chance to see the curvature of the Earth “live”, as for example astronauts do. So many people only know satellite photos, and they could all be fake. Just recently, the singer Xavier Naidoo drew attention to himself by “proving” that the earth is flat: He held a ruler in front of his nose, as the blog rebels reported .

But this is lagging, because with our planet we are not dealing with a small ball that you can immediately tell is round. The earth is big. Very large by human standards. With an average radius of 6,371 kilometers on earth, we, as small people who are usually not quite 2 meters tall, cannot even notice the curve.

Let's put it into practice: If I were a small atom with consciousness and stood on a soccer ball, I could also use this ruler method to claim that the soccer ball is actually flat. So you have to be a certain distance from the ground in order to be able to see the curvature with the naked eye, but this can be calculated mathematically since you know the diameter of the earth.

Without going into a lot of mathematical formulas, you can, purely mathematically, determine the curvature of the earth at an altitude of around 10,600 meters, i.e. aircraft altitude. To do this, however, you would also need an absolutely cloud-free sky, no mountains in the field of vision and a viewing angle of 60 degrees, as well as a very sharp eye. You can see the curvature (and therefore the spherical shape) much more clearly the further away you are from the Earth. Millions of TV viewers were able to see this in 2012, for example, when Felix Baumgartner jumped out of a helium balloon from a height of 39 kilometers

No way... the sun and moon are much smaller and closer than you think!

And the sun wouldn't radiate heat either. Oh wonderful, there is a whole pool of claims about the sun and moon circling above us and being quite close to us. It all sounds a lot like the Trueman show, but such models really exist and there are explanations for them.

One explanation is the Flat Earth Society showing the phases of the sun. This states that the sun is actually only 4,800 kilometers away and only has a diameter of 51 kilometers. It moves in a circle over the flat earth and thus only illuminates a certain part, which would explain the day and night phases. In the middle you can see the Arctic again, outside the great Antarctic wall.

Screenshot Mimikama.at
Screenshot Mimikama.at

So. And if you don't think any further, it almost sounds logical. If there weren't some logic problems. Because even if the world looked like this, you would still have to be able to see the sun at night, even if it was so far away that it no longer sufficiently illuminates your own part of the earth. So you shouldn't see it sinking over the horizon, but you should see it getting further away.

Seasons can perhaps be explained by the fact that the sun is sometimes closer, sometimes further away from the earth's disk. OK. The midnight sun at the North Pole may also be explained by the fact that the sun is moving closer to the Arctic in the middle. Also okay. But what about the midnight sun in Antarctica? How does the sun manage to illuminate the entire ice wall day and night for months? Or is the midnight sun in Antarctica also part of the big conspiracy in which all Antarctic researchers and tourists are involved?

The problem with this theory is simply that it cannot fully clarify all questions and, if there are open questions, it even reveals itself to be nonsense.

Trolling

Of course, there is also trolling among the supposed evidence for a flat Earth. You have to look closely. In addition to the sometimes more finely worked out evidence, there are always clumsy fakes, some of which are also used to annoy supporters of the flat earth theory. Like the “evidence photo” with the large ice wall that protects us from “falling down” and is supposed to represent the end of the world:

There is a large wall of ice around the flat earth, Antarctica
Screenshot Mimikama.at
Screenshot Mimikama.at

The above photo from the Flat Earth Society forum is (hopefully) meant to be sarcastic, because series connoisseurs know that this is a scene from the series “Game of Thrones”. The theory goes that the Arctic lies in the middle of the flat Earth, while the inhospitable Antarctica is a large ice wall guarded by NASA employees so that no one tries to climb over the edge of the world.

Even if someone were to take this seriously, it would completely ignore the fact that there have already been numerous private expeditions to Antarctica and travel companies even holidays in Antarctica . But they probably all belong to the “big conspiracy”….


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )