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William of Ockham died in the middle of the 14th Century. A friar and theologian, he is credited with formulating “Occam’s Razor”, a principle roughly summarized as “when you have several possible explanations, pick the simplest”.\u00a0 (He never actually SAID that, but did write “Plurality must never be posited without necessity”. Hence endeth today’s philosophy lesson, stay tuned tomorrow for the lesson on the Holy Number of Three.)<\/p>\n
Despite this, there exists a group who believe the Earth is flat. Yep, actually several of them. But they all feel we exist on a roughly disc-shaped platform, the stars, Sun and Moon are arguable, and all the discoveries of modern science regarding astronomy, astrophysics, etc. are delusional or illusions foisted on us by who knows who.<\/p>\n
No one knows how many flat Earth believers are out there. According to Smithsonian Magazine<\/u><\/a>, membership in the Flat Earth Society, founded in 1956, once reached 3,500 people. Today, the society claims more than 500 members<\/u><\/a> on its roster. But some believers want nothing to do with the Flat Earth Society, according to a 2019 CNN article<\/u><\/a>, with some attendees of the Flat Earth International Conference in Dallas that year telling the news agency that the organization is a government-sponsored front designed to make Flat Earthers look bad.<\/p>\n
A 2017 national poll by Public Policy Polling<\/u><\/a> found that only 1% of Americans believed the Earth was flat, with an additional 6% saying they weren’t sure.<\/p>\n
The leading flat-earther theory holds that Earth is a disc with the Arctic Circle<\/u><\/a> in the center and Antarctica<\/u><\/a>, a 150-foot-tall (45 meters) wall of ice, around the rim. NASA employees, they say, guard this ice wall to prevent people from climbing over and falling off the disc.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, Earth’s gravity<\/u><\/a> is an illusion, they say. Objects do not accelerate downward; instead, the disc of Earth accelerates upward at 32 feet per second squared (9.8 meters per second squared), driven up by a mysterious force called dark energy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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