Monday, March 18, 2019

Their Thoughts Are Flat

We, the inhabitants of this earth, usually attempt to improve our knowledge and understanding of the world around us. We do this through research and experimentation, using the scientific method that most of us learned about in Junior High School. Throughout history, there has always been a group of people that have attempted to preserve the status quo - either out of conservative religious or close-minded stubborn reasons. But what we're seeing today are a new breed of people who are attempting to reverse centuries of scientific progress by demanding that their opinions be respected as facts.

I call this group of people the Flat Thinkers, as they tend to dismiss science and tend to view their opinion above all. Let's take the Flat Earth theory for example. Flat Earthers believe that the world is flat, despite centuries of evidence to suggest otherwise. It is amazing to me that in this day and age, when we have had manned space missions since 1961 that provide photographic evidence that the Earth is round, some people still choose to dismiss facts for their opinions.

In fact we can go all the way back to Ancient Greece around 2200 years ago when a mathematician, Eratosthenes from Alexandria, proved that the earth is round with nothing but a stick and sunlight. He had observed that in the city of Syene a stick planted in the ground at 90 degrees at noon casts no shadow. He attempted the same experiment in Alexandria, planting a stick in the ground at 90 degrees and at noon, he observed a shadow at 7 degrees variation. That meant that the curvature of the earth was causing the variance. Using this information and the distance between the two cities, he went on to calculate the first even known circumference of the earth.   

Fast forward to today, and the Flat Earther group known as Globebusters were so convinced in their belief that the Earth is flat, that they decided to prove it once and for all with an experiment. They set up two identical boards with equidistantly placed holes in each, placing them some distance apart, with a camera at one board's end, and a light farther away from the other board's end. If the earth were flat, compensating for sea level, the light emitted at one end using the same height as the camera would be clearly seen through both boards and directly observed by the camera. This did not happen, until the person holding the light elevated it enough to compensate for the curvature of the earth.

So, just like Eratosthenes' experiment, the Globebusters proved yet again that the earth is round. And in the process, they disproved their own group's beliefs. Let's stop treating erroneous beliefs with white gloves. Let's stop considering opinions as facts without a shred of proof. And let's stop the regression of centuries of scientific progress on the whim of the uneducated and the fearful.

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