[Music] we'll start with some basic questions the sky is in a world where it feels like nothing is as it seems blue it's blue of course oh this guy's blue skies blue one plus one is two two - hmm there's at least one truth we thought was indisputable and the earth is what flood the earth is flat my reality of my senses tell me that the earth is flat and stationary or so I thought but for the people attending the first Flat Earth international conference here in Cary North Carolina their earth is indisputably not round
everybody here can agree on absolutely one thing which is it is not a globe for centuries a flat earth was accepted as certainty until science and sailboats said otherwise but in 2015 this guy mark Sargent hosted his Flat Earth Clues part of a series of clues that can help you get your head around both the design of the Flat Earth system we live in you're kind of the like father of this did not invent Flat Earth all I did was walk up to a door point at it say you know what I think there's some
really interesting things on the other side of this and check it out for yourself if Flat Earth is a university you know FAA then I would be the freshman recruited people have traveled from around actually mark would say across the flat world to attend the first world flat Club is you don't talk about flat Club until now you know I have a poem about that it's right here Amy Nicholson wrote a book of poetry about her flat earth journey a few months flat and seven months to rally Kimberly came to the conference from Houston I
haven't really come out all the way I'm still a little in the closet laney in ivali came from even farther I mixed with quite a lot of flavor tha's anise in New Zealand you know flatters I guarantee it but you don't know who they are because they're afraid of talking about it like many modern movement this one has grown in large part out of the internet with rappers like odd TV evangelizing to hundreds of thousands of subscribers and YouTube channels like blow Buster's encouraging skepticism about what you've been taught for the serious students here at
the conference it all comes down to proof when it comes to science there's things you can test right now right fire burns waters wet drop something Falls the ground that appears to be gravity those are things you can test right but the curving horizon the sloping sea level the spin of the earth unless you can see these phenomena with your own eyes they may not be true this is crazy right but think about this for the last 2025 generations this is what we've told people I like what we've been told in school some flat earthers
imagine the earth looks like a snow globe round but not sphere the North Pole is at the center of most Flat Earth maps with the ice of Antarctica holding everything in so are you certain this is pretty sure almost I mean there are some details to be worked out sure but the basic concept is sound absolutely sound and one thing again we absolutely know for a fact this ain't it so those iconic Blue Marble images seen from space flat earthers denounced them as fakes you start seeing words like composite or animation or you know something
that tells you this is not an actual photograph of the earth so if you think you have questions feel free to line up a statement the flat earthers have men many more this is what returns stores which is why I thought someone who's actually seen the Earth from space might have some answers one plus one is two what color is the sky and the earth is round professor Mike Massimino spent more than twenty days in space and worked on the Hubble telescope so when you looked at the planet what did it look like looks round
yes it is round like my eye witness account and I looked at it as much as I could it is round okay we're in the final countdown are you doing over there he's played himself on the Big Bang Theory but some flat earthers actually believe astronauts are just actors part of a huge conspiracy going back to those very first steps on the moon you don't believe in going to space knew no no at all the Rockets go up sure there's nobody in them Rob Skiba is another one of the celebrity contrarians in the Flat Earth
movement his popular YouTube videos and podcasts take clues from the Bible's Book of Genesis there's no way you can get a spinning heliocentric globe out of anything in the Bible are you just skeptical with everything I have become skeptical at everything and I think rightfully so pretty much everyone here those kind of a conspiracy theorists say that's a common trait but I think there's a little bit of conspiracy theorists in all of us I really do this it's why many of them do their own experiments Darryl marble packed a level on a flight to test
if the plane was flying parallel to a flat earth so there's gonna be some sciency people who say that is a real bug low experience that's a little basic I know it's so simple it'll go right over your head the Creed over many of these believers check it out for yourself go out and test you just want them to ask the questions why do you believe what you believe and let you go from there because I can tell you something that then you just look at me and say I'm crazy a lot of people watching
this will go me like that man is crazy they probably do and and I would say well they're crazy for not testing what they think they believe but in a world of disagreements large and small for something as clear as this horizon the interpretation could be infinite for Nightline I mean a pilgrim in Cary North Carolina hi everyone George Stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the ABC News youtube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our Channel and don't
forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching