In what may be one of the most satisfying TV moments we can recall, a group of conspiracy theorists accidentally spent thousands of dollars to prove that, yes, the Earth is round.
The scene is from a new Netflix documentary called Behind the Curve, which follows a group of Flat Earthers, a “small but growing contingent of people who firmly believe in a conspiracy to suppress the truth that the Earth is flat.”
One of those Flat Earthers is Bob Knodel, who hosts a YouTube channel entirely dedicated to the theory and who is one of the team relying on a $20,000 laser gyroscope to prove the Earth doesn’t actually rotate.
Except… It does.
“What we found is, when we turned on that gyroscope, we found that we were picking up a drift,” Knodel explains. “A 15-degree per hour drift.
“Now, obviously we were taken aback by that – ‘Wow, that’s kind of a problem.’
“We obviously were not willing to accept that, and so we started looking for easy to disprove it was actually registering the motion of the Earth.”
You know what they say: If your experiment proves you wrong, just disregard the results!
“We don’t want to blow this, you know?” Knodel then says to another Flat Earther. “When you’ve got $20,000 in this freaking gyro.
“If we dumped what we found right now, it would be bad? It would be bad.
“What I just told you was confidential.”
If you’re keen to see this scene – and so much more – Behind the Curve is available on Netflix now.
READ MORE: Earth Is Spinning Faster Now Than It Was 50 Years Ago
Love it. I am working on an article about the awe people feel about the mystery of the universe’s origin. I quote scientists, but I am not one myself. Would you consider publishing it? If not, can you recommend a publisher that might?
“Accidentally” is the correctspelling.
Flat Earthers, when the dinosaurs became extinct via the collision, how did all the water manage to not gush over the edge after the huge tidal wave that ensued? I think the earth must be a deep dish rather than flat and it all just splashed back again. And the Bermuda triangle is actually like a plughole where stuff just gets sucked down. But just every so often not to let us guess what is happening. And all these airline pilots are lying, they just turn around at the edge and THEN head for the true destination. You are all correct of course, Doctor Strange pops out of the multiverse just to mess with us.
“What I just told you was confidential.”
Ehm, public knowledge is not “confidential”… Sorry Bob…