The ancient claim that the Earth is flat has made a stunning comeback in the age of social media. NASA images are faked, Antarctica is an ice wall — inside the largest anti-science movement of the modern era.
In the third century BC, the ancient Greek scholar Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth with remarkable accuracy. Fast forward 2,300 years. Humanity has photographed our planet from space and broadcasts live footage from the International Space Station every single day.
And yet, a growing number of people insist the Earth is flat.
The Flat Earth movement, which exploded across YouTube and social media around 2015, is far more than a quirky belief. It is a mirror reflecting the fractures in modern society: distrust of science, skepticism of institutions, and the collapse of shared epistemological frameworks.
The most popular Flat Earth model envisions a disc-shaped plane with the North Pole at its center. The outer edge is ringed by a massive wall of ice, which we call Antarctica. The sun and moon are small objects circling roughly 5,000 kilometers above the surface.
What about NASA's photographs of the globe? The answer is straightforward, they say: every image is fabricated. The International Space Station footage is filmed in a Hollywood studio. Every astronaut who ever lived is lying.
Note: The Flat Earth hypothesis is thoroughly debunked by modern science. The following discusses it as a social phenomenon, not a legitimate scientific position.
The movement's explosive growth was not accidental. YouTube's recommendation algorithm played a documented role. Watch one conspiracy video, and the algorithm would serve a cascade of related content. This "rabbit hole effect" gradually drew millions of viewers deeper into the ecosystem.
Psychologists point to what they call "epistemic distrust" as the underlying driver. For people whose faith in governments, media, and scientific institutions has eroded completely, the stance "I only believe what I can verify with my own eyes" feels not irrational but empowering.
The evidence for a spherical Earth is overwhelming and comes from multiple independent sources. Ships disappearing hull-first over the horizon. The changing positions of stars at different latitudes. The circular shadow Earth casts during lunar eclipses. Satellite imagery. GPS navigation. The flight paths of international airlines. Every single observation aligns with a spherical model and contradicts a flat one.
In 2018, a prominent Flat Earther purchased a $15,000 laser gyroscope to disprove the Earth's rotation for a Netflix documentary. The result was devastatingly ironic: the device detected precisely 15 degrees of rotation per hour, confirming the very phenomenon he sought to debunk.
The Flat Earth movement is easy to mock. But researchers treat it as a serious social phenomenon. The decline of scientific literacy, the filter bubbles created by social media algorithms, and the erosion of trust in authority are problems that extend far beyond Flat Earthers. These same forces fuel climate change denial, vaccine hesitancy, and a host of other anti-science movements.
The question Eratosthenes answered 2,300 years ago is being debated again in the 21st century. The answer to why lies not in astronomy, but in sociology.
