Why is it so hard for certain people to accept the fact that the Earth, our grand home planet, is round?
Look, we are fully well aware that it is not a perfect sphere, but regardless, when looking at a globe, you are looking at a relatively accurate representation of its shape. There are several testimonies from astrophysicists and astronauts (who have actually seen said planet from space) to support this fact (emphasis on fact). However, not even those experts can convince people from believing that it looks more like a pancake.
Admittedly, though, we may be more inclined to even consider that theory before taking an earnest look at a more recent Earth-shape conspiracy theory to surface.
What sounds like a concept of a Saturday Night Live send-up of absurd conspiracy theories is actually a legitimate discussion happening online: a new theory has dawned suggesting that the Earth is “torus-shaped,” a description that resembles that of a donut. Yeah, like one of these:
Indeed, this idea actually did begin as a conspiracy parody in 2008 when someone known as Dr. Rosenpenis started a thread on FlatEarthSociety.org suggesting the donut shape theory as a joke. But not everyone was in on the joke, including commenter Varaug, who took the theory and ran with it until a fully realized “postulation” had developed by 2012. Varaug’s analysis states that Earth does not appear torus-shaped to us Earthlings because “light bends and follows the curvature of the torus, making the hole ‘unseeable.'”
Perhaps that explanation for this, supposed, unseen hole is intriguing. But astronomer and astrophysicist Dr. Tabetha Boyajian has another explanation which we were able to guess on our own: anyone located within the Earth’s hypothetical “ring” would be able to look up and see the other side, she tells Vice, adding that “we usually only see light bend in the way Varaug is describing next to the largest bodies in the universe, like supermassive black holes.”
Donut Earth theory “doesn’t start off with a question that we need to answer… It starts off as, ‘Hey, how about this?’ And then they try and explain things,” Dr. Boyajian says. “Any of those claims is just saying, ‘You know what, I’m going to just come up with a new idea with no motivation for it. Just eight things that can possibly be consistent with it. And that’s not how we develop theories.”
Dr. Boyajian goes on to prove the Donut Earth theory contradicts known facts, such as the shape of the Earth’s shadow during an eclipse or how a torus-shaped planet would experience double seasons for those closer to the inner ring, while, in reality, the entire surface experiences only one at a time per year.
For us, all the proof we need is right here:
What do you think? Do you see this theory as a sign that humanity’s dwindling intelligence has gone too far off the deep end or are you preparing for a Donut-Earther uprising? Let us know in the comments below!