Turtles all the way down

About half of all people in the US reject the theory of evolution. After all, who wants to be either a monkey’s uncle or a monkey’s nephew?

The percentage seem to bounce around depending on the poll/lunar cycle/how the question is asked, but roughly one-third of all Americans believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya. After all, he is half-black and has a really funny name.

A poll taken last summer showed that half of all Republicans believe that Trump won the popular vote. After all, you really do have to discount all those illegals bussed in from Puerto Rico to pull the D lever on their way to free pizza with pedophiles.

So it really should come as no surprise that there are still folks out there – perhaps even a subset of any and all of the above categories – who believe that the earth is flat.

The movement’s true scope remains something of a mystery — though some flat-earth-related videos have generated millions of online views — but the intent is clear: They are waging war on accepted science — on an understanding of the planet that dates back millennia.

If the Earth is round, they want to know, then why aren’t buildings tilted? Look at the oceans: How does water stick to a ball? And how, if the Earth is spinning at a rate of 1,000 miles an hour, are we even able to function?

To them, images of earth from space are just that — images. The video footage from the moon? Filmed on a movie set. And while they might disagree a bit on the details, they go by what they see. And what they see seems inarguably flat.

“What we observe and what we experience doesn’t seem to match up,” explained Josh Bolieiro of Nashua, during a recent meeting of Flat Earth New England at Revere Beach. (Source: Boston Globe)

I’m no STEM girl, but even I have some rudimentary understanding of why the water doesn’t fall off and why, given that 1,000 mph spin, we don’t all go whirling off into space. Ummmm, there’s gravity. And escape velocity. And, ummmm, wouldn’t you think that, if the earth were flat, someone would have found the edge by now and maybe even have made a leap into the void. Wouldn’t you think that The Edge might have become a tourist destination for those who had already checked off climbing Everest, peered into a volcano, and communed with penguins on the South Pole? Of course, if the earth were flat, there wouldn’t be a South Pole, would there now? But forget tourists. Surely, if the earth were flat, bungee jumping off the edge would be an Xtreme sport by now.

Despite the science on the side of the earth being round, people across the country are taking up the flat earth banner, and flat earth groups are sprouting up all over the place. Thus, Flat Earth New England.

Flat Earth New England…In the home of the august Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I’d say I’m shocked, but, these days, I’ve become pretty shock-proof.

Flat earthers, I’m guessing, are just into alternative facts. Which is pretty damned depressing. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Bill Nye, the mild-mannered TV scientist, has called the flat-earth movement “heartbreaking.” The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson went a step further, suggesting that flat-earthers should be rocketed into space and allowed to return to Earth only after admitting they’re wrong.

Gotta love that Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Researchers (you know, like science guys) have done studies on conspiracy theories – like the “theory’ that pictures taken from outer space that show our fair planet as round are photoshopped  – tend to crop up when it’s VUCA-time, and the world is just chocked to the gills with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. 

“What we found,” says Alin Coman, an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University, “is that it really goes to this notion of a search for meaning.”

Oh dear…

I’m all in favor of the search for meaning. I mean, if searching for meaning is your thing. (Me? I’m with folksinger Iris DeMent: Let the Mystery Be.) But I’m mostly in favor of taking a “just the facts, ma’am” approach to what’s going on in the observable (provable) world.

But I would like to know just what the flat earthers think is holding that Planet Pancake up. Turtles all the way down???