Members of the Flat Earth Society claim to believe the Earth is flat despite scientists explaining how we know the Earth is round since the third century B.C.
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00:00How do we know that the Earth is round?
00:05One of the most famous images of Earth is called the Blue Marble.
00:08It was snapped in 1972 from a distance of about 18,000 miles by the crew of the Apollo
00:1317 spacecraft, and it shows our planet as a water- and cloud-covered sphere against
00:18the black backdrop of space.
00:20However, there are people who claim that this image is part of a vast conspiracy to trick
00:25people into believing that Earth is round, when in reality, they say, it's as flat as
00:30a pancake.
00:31Members of a group known as the Flat Earth Society point to the visible horizon and say
00:35that since they can't see the curve of the globe, that the planet must be a flattened
00:39disk.
00:40How do we know that it's not?
00:43Well, no one has ever documented this so-called edge of the Earth, which flat earthers say
00:48is ringed with a giant wall of ice.
00:51And scientists have been explaining how we know the Earth is round since the 3rd century
00:55B.C.
00:56Earth is so big that from a person's vantage point on the ground, its curvature is simply
01:01impossible to see.
01:02But the ancient Greeks were able to see Earth's curve by looking at the sun's position and
01:07comparing shadows that it cast in different places at the same time of day.
01:11The laws of gravity also explain how a spherical planet would form, with its mass attracting
01:16matter in space and building a shape outward from a central core.
01:20And on a spherical planet, gravity's pull from the center is what keeps our feet on
01:24the ground.
01:25Not to mention that in the 16th century, Ferdinand Magellan sailed completely around the world,
01:31which would have been impossible on a flat Earth surrounded by an icy wall.
01:35Earth isn't a perfect sphere, more like an irregularly shaped ellipsoid, according to
01:40the National Ocean Service.
01:41But for those arguing that it's pancake-shaped, that idea falls a little flat.
01:47The shape of the Earth, just one of life's little mysteries.