The Earth Is a Sphere!

Citizen scientists prove once again that we live on a globe

The participants in The Final Experiment flew to the Union Glacier camp in Antarctica on Saturday and have now confirmed through multiple measurements that we live on a globe, not a flat disk. The group included the expedition’s organizer and partial funder, Pastor Will Duffy, along with three representatives from the globe side, three from the flat side, a cameraman who also happens to be a flat-earther, and, for vague reasons, conservative pundit Candace Owens’ show producer.

For more background on this project and the significance of Antarctica in proving or disproving whether we live on a globe, see my previous posts:

Or you could read about a fictional trip to Antarctica in my satirical novel, Ship of Fools:

The Rubber Meets the Blue-Ice Runway

As predicted by the globe model (i.e., reality), all the participants experienced a 24-hour sun at roughly 80 degrees south latitude. This “midnight sun” is caused by axial tilt — in this phase of Earth’s orbit, the southern hemisphere tilts toward the sun so that the south polar region is in constant daylight.

Graphic from Wikipedia showing the effect of axial tilt on Earth’s seasons

This phenomenon would be impossible with the sun tracking above a flat disk, describing a circle following the Tropic of Capricorn (the Southern Tropic). Even the flat-earthers on the expedition agreed that the sun was not setting at midnight (or receding into the distance until it merged with the horizon, as they also describe sunsets on a flat Earth). They also used compasses on the flight south to ensure they were indeed traveling southward and not anywhere else. (Their usual critique of any trip to the South Pole is that the travelers are taken somewhere else, not anywhere close to 90 degrees south.)

Other measurements the expedition gathered included flight distances and times for the participants arriving in Punta Arenas, Chile, from various points around the globe (the distances agreed with the globe model but were far off for the flat-earth model); and the direction of sunrise and sunset from Punta Arenas (southeast and southwest, as predicted by the globe model).

Predictably, and unfortunately for Will Duffy’s hopes, this won’t be the last experiment because this evidence has failed to convince prominent members of the flat-earth community. Rebuttals from the flat side have included the charge that the whole thing is being filmed in a studio with a green screen*, that the participants are lying about what time it is when they’re claiming to see the sun at midnight, and more.

One of the two prominent flat-earthers traveling with the expedition now claims that seeing a 24-hour sun in Antarctica doesn’t disprove the flat-earth model, the exact opposite of what he claimed just a few short months ago. (Many prominent flat-earthers who refused to participate in the expedition flip-flopped in the same way.) The other prominent flat-earther on the trip claims not to know what any of it means.

You can catch up with The Final Experiment in the three videos linked below. The first was streamed at midnight local time just a few hours after they arrived and set up their cameras and other equipment. It features initial impressions from all the participants.

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The second video was streamed 24 hours later, after all the participants had experienced the sun staying above the horizon and never setting during that entire time. None of the flat-earthers appear in this video, so we don’t know what their thoughts are at this point. (I still refuse to go directly to their channels and put money in their pockets with a view.)

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And this final video is a time lapse of the 24-hour sun the participants experienced.

I’ll have another update once The Final Experiment and other accounts put together finished reports on the project, probably sometime in January.

UPDATE: Apparently there’s something in YouTube called a “chroma key” that has to do with using a green screen. Will Duffy, the creator of The Final Experiment, does use a green screen when shooting videos at home, so that the logo for The Final Experiment will appear behind him. In that first livestream linked above, he apparently forgot to turn off the chroma key. That meant that anything that was green in the shot was replaced with the TFE logo on a black background. That happened when trying to capture the screen of a weight scale inside the portable structure at their camp and also on a logo on one of the participants’ jackets toward the end of that livestream.

In the second livestream, Duffy refutes the charge that the entire thing was shot with a green screen in a studio, pointing to subsequent videos they shot with green items visible (you can see a green box in this same livestream). He never mentioned the technical reason for the glitch, but I found out about it via another video from Fight the Flat Earth.

And here’s a short livestream from Will Duffy debunking the green screen conspiracy theory in multiple ways, including flying a drone far into the distance.

The flat-earthers had a field day over this glitch on X, the preferred social media platform of conspiracy theorists. This kind of error is always a problem for anyone who tries to defend science, either from within the scientific community or from outside it, as these “citizen scientists” are doing. Because science claims to represent the truth, any error or glitch like this is seen as bringing the whole edifice down. It’s just too bad that this simple mistake has now undermined any chance TFE had for actually settling this debate (not that the chances were high to begin with). Much more footage is yet to come, and I’m sure it won’t have this problem. But it seems like the damage has been done, at least in the flat-earthers’ minds.

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Thanks so much for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll give it a like or a share, or even subscribe or buy me a coffee.

Celebrate the Solstice this weekend with a pair of chapters from Ship of Fools that just coincidentally coincide with this astronomical event.

On Friday, Liz, Sam, and the rest of their party approach Flatworld’s North Pole portal on the summer solstice.

Then on Sunday, Lonnie, Mike, and Slim fly to the South Pole during the Austral summer solstice (the winter solstice for us here in Northern latitudes), hoping to prevent the military from whisking Liz and her party to an undisclosed location. You’ll have to wait until the following weekend to learn how it all turns out.

If you haven’t been following along with the novel, you can start with the Prologue or check out this preview and table of contents.

Happy Holidays, of whatever flavor you celebrate!