The mathematician and astronomer assigned these coordinates to more than 8000 places across the known world.Įven though many of the measurements weren’t accurate, Ptolemy’s concept of ‘global mapping co-ordinates’ – used to this day – was based on the theory that the earth was and is, indeed, round. In 150 AD, Ptolemy’s treatise Geographia laid out a revolutionary system of assigning co-ordinates, expressed in degrees of latitude and longitude, to locations around the world. “This gave him a figure that was very close to the actual circumference as we know it now.” “From this, he concluded that the circumference of the earth must be 50 times the distance between Syene and Alexandria,” Ms Jayasuriya adds. If the earth was actually flat, the angle would be identical in both places. He noted that on the 21st of June that year, in a town called Syene (near modern day Aswan), the reflection of the sun could be seen in a deep well, meaning that it was directly overhead.īut in Alexandria, around 800 kilometres away and almost directly north of Syene, at noon on the same day, the angle of the sun was about seven degrees – or one-50th of a circle. The first scientific estimates of the earth’s circumference were made by the Greek mathematician and geographer Eratosthenes in 240 BC. Greek philosophers established that the earth was round as far back as the third century BC, but it wasn’t until the 15th century that it became commonly accepted. “The further away from the village they travelled, the more hostile the environment became.” They lived in a village that was the centre of their existence,’’ she says. “Their view was egocentric and geocentric. And it has some high-profile supporters.įrom basketball players to musicians, rappers to TV hosts, a number of celebrities are jumping on the flat-earth bandwagon. Interest in most of these other far-fetched theories remains stable but the flat-earth movement is growing, particularly in America. In fact, a recent YouGov poll found that only around two-thirds of Americans aged between 18 and 24 believe that the earth is round.Īlthough the idea the earth is flat has been scientifically discredited, there seems to be a growing belief in the conspiracy theory.Īnd it’s getting more traction than some of the other conspiracies out there, like chemtrails (which proposes that a plane’s long-lasting condensation trail is actually made up of chemical or biological agent). ![]() ![]() If you type ‘flat earth’ into Google, you’d be joining a group of people that have helped to triple the search term over the last couple of years. Two University of Melbourne experts look at why. Although science says the earth is round, there are some people around who still think it’s flat.
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