The study is chilling. According to a survey conducted by Ifop for the Jean-Jaurès Foundation in 2019, 9% of French people believe “Possible that the Earth is flat”. In 2023, a new survey carried out by the same institute among 11-24 year olds showed that one in six young French people think that the Earth is flat (and one in four doubt the theory of evolution).
In the United States, the trend is even clearer: according to the 2021 POLES survey, 10% of Americans agree with this thesis. Called “flatists”, these people refute the spherical shape of our world, encouraged by numerous propagandist videos, based on experiments and flatist works from the 19th century and often associated with other conspiracy theories, we reported in July.
Memories of Antarctica: our photographer tells
Journey to the end of the ice
To combat this theory, a Colorado pastor, Will Duffy, created the project The Final Experiment. The adventure consists of going to Antarctica to “end the debate on the shape of the Earth”, summarizes Futurism. Why in Antarctica? To observe the midnight sun — a sun that shines 24 hours a day, a phenomenon that can only occur if the Earth is round.
Furthermore, flat scientists – or at least some of them – consider that Antarctica is an impassable wall of ice, which encircles all the other continents and holds back all the world's oceans. They say the 1959 Antarctic Treaty was put in place to specifically prevent people from visiting the icy continent during the summer – that is, right now in the Southern Hemisphere. So the Colorado pastor's idea was to get them to check it out for themselves.
In mid-December, four followers of the theory of “flat earth” (flat enthusiasts) and four people considering the Earth as a globe flew to Antarctica… for the tidy sum of $32,000.
YouTuber Jeran Campanella was on the expedition, reports Futura Science. “I thought there was no sun 24 hours a day in Antarctica. In fact, I was almost sure of that. I honestly believed that. But sometimes in life we are wrong”he declared during a live broadcast this Saturday, December 14 on his YouTube channel.
Will this be enough to disabuse the most convinced flat enthusiasts? Nothing is less certain. Some of them still consider that the midnight sun can occur with a flat Earth.
