In a project dubbed The Final Experiment, a group of Flat Earth proponents traveled to Antarctica at the height of summer in the southern hemisphere, expecting to witness the sun go down. It went almost exactly like you’d expect, with at least one person cautiously admitting a few pillars of his beliefs had been shaken. But others held fast to a concept that’s been negated in ways both theoretical and practical for two-and-a-half millennia.
Will Duffy, left, who is not a Flat Earther, thought his project would convince the Flat Earth community how wrong they are. Photo: Screenshot
Let’s pause here for a moment.
For any of this to make even a lick of sense, you are going to have to learn a little something about what the Flat Earth movement believes. Here it is in bullet points, so we don’t have to spend more time on it than absolutely necessary.
- Flat Earthers still exist, and they believe we live on a disc instead of a globe.
- They have all kinds of reasons for this, none of which are very good.
- One of their beliefs is that Antarctica is a narrow strip of land that circles the “disc,” with a gigantic sea in the middle. All the rest of the continents exist in the middle of this gigantic sea.
- Because of this, there is no such thing as 24-hour sunshine in Antarctica. It would have to get dark somewhere along that big ring island.
- A powerful group of [insert a variety of conspiracy theories here] have banded together to keep Flat Earthers from visiting Antarctica to prove this.
Here’s a helpful depressing visual aid.
Flat Earthers believe Antarctica is the white rim around the disc. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Hope is the thing with feathers (that shuts its eyes when it sees the curvature of the Earth)
Enter Will Duffy, the pastor of a small church outside of Boulder, Colorado. Duffy proposed The Final Experiment — a project that ultimately took Duffy, four Flat Earth influencers (yes, that’s a thing), and four round earthers (otherwise known as regular people) to Union Glacier, Antarctica, earlier this month. There, they observed the 24-hour sun firsthand. Then they recorded a 50-minute YouTube livestream.
“I created The Final Experiment to end this debate once and for all. After we go to Antarctica, no one has to waste any more time debating the shape of the Earth,” Duffy, in one of the most charmingly naive statements ever voiced in the internet age, said of the project.
But don’t get Duffy wrong. He’s no Flat Earther. His intention seems to have been the genuine offer of a directly observable piece of evidence — one that Flat Earthers couldn’t ignore or explain away via tangled conspiracy theory.
That’s commendable, but unfortunately for Duffy and humanity’s chances of ever making it into the United Federation of Planets, that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
“Sometimes you are wrong in life”
At least one Flat Earth influencer — Jeran Campanella, and no, I’m not going to link to his YouTube — was willing to make a small concession.
“Sometimes you are wrong in life,” Campanella said in the video. “I thought there was no 24-hour sun. In fact, I was pretty sure of it. I realize that I’ll be called a shill for just saying that, and you know what, if you’re a shill for being honest, so be it — I honestly believed there was no 24-hour sun. I honestly now believe there is.”
You have to give Campanella this; he knows his people. Shrieks of “shill” immediately echoed across the live stream chat window. Campanella then hedged, making it clear that the existence of a 24-hour sun does not negate his flat earth beliefs. It merely provides him and others with an unexplainable phenomenon.
Other Flat Earthers on the expedition had similar views. They couldn’t deny what they witnessed but expressed confidence that it would somehow fit into their existing worldview, given enough time and “research.” Even this slight nod to reality was a bridge too far for many viewers, who spent a good deal of time talking about green screens.
So it goes.
