According to a recent YouGov survey around a third of Americans aged 18-24 are not sure whether the Earth is round.
And there are flat Earth believers in the UK too, so many of them that in April 2018 there was a Flat Earth Convention in Birmingham. And this despite the fact that from primary school onwards children are taught about the proof provided by scientists, travellers and astronomers for the Earth being spherical.
In the 19th Century the geologist Alfred Wallace took on the flat Earther John Hampden, and won the argument once and for all, or so we thought.
But it turns out that flat Earth theory is trending online, fed by the growing number of videos published on YouTube – so much so that according to Mashable News, YouTube has now promised to stop recommending flat Earth ‘truther’ videos.
The company will alter its recommendations algorithm so that although these videos stay online, they will never be recommended to anyone. This is to try and discourage “content that could misinform users in harmful ways”.
I decided to ask students at the University of East London whether they thought the Earth was flat.
Deno said: “No I don’t think the Earth is flat because there are so many pictures from NASA that show the Earth is round. We would just fall off the edge, wouldn’t we?”
Karen joked: “There was a meme which said if the Earth was flat then all the cats would have thrown everything off the edge by now.”
So most people know the Earth isn’t flat. But why try to hide the existence of videos that say it is? Surely we can make our own minds.
