- They could’ve just asked anybody living in Lapland or something.
Flat Earthers in their modern form have existed since the 19th century, and we doubt they’ll disappear any time soon. Some people are just that convinced that the Earth is a disc.
Even though, you know, we can fly up there and see that it’s a globe.
Over the years, flat Earthers have staged various experiments to prove that the Earth is, indeed, flat. In general, these experiments tend to show the exact opposite of what their organizers had hoped for.
That was the fate that also befell The Final Experiment (TFE). This was a grand expedition to Antarctica to demonstrate once and for all that the planet is not a globe.
The organizers — Colorado pastor Will Duffy foremost among them — were convinced that the legendary midnight sun of the Earth’s poles doesn’t exist. And, well, if the Earth was flat it wouldn’t, so they kind of have a point.
TFE flew 15 participants to Antarctica at a great cost to witness how the sun would set behind the horizon, unlike what science had told them. Except that it didn’t, and the midnight sun took place as it always does.
Money well spent.
The Sun that Never Sets
In case you slept through your elementary school science classes, you might wonder how a flat Earth would make the midnight sun not happen. For you sleepyheads, here’s a quick and dirty explanation.
The Earth isn’t floating through space with its axis perfectly aligned with the sun. Our planet is tilted at a roughly 23-degree angle, which during the solstices leaves one pole pointing away from the sun.
During the summer in the northern hemisphere, the North Pole is on the sunny side and experiences nonstop sunlight for a couple of months. Conversely, during the southern hemisphere’s summer, the South Pole gets the sun treatment.
Look at this handy graph from NASA to explain it:
However, if the Earth was flat, this phenomenon couldn’t happen. Although flat Earthers have no consensus on how their pancake cosmology works in practice, the most popular theories state the world’s continents are surrounded by a sheet of ice (that is, Antarctica) and the sun and moon rotate along the edges of the ice sheet.
If this were true, then the midnight sun would be impossible, as the sun would inevitably travel to the other side of the flat plane at night. Look at this handy graph by… Somebody to explain it:
An All-Expenses-Paid Experiment
This was the great argument of TFE. According to them, a flat Earth simply cannot accommodate the midnight sun.
“Both the flat earth side and the globe side agree that whether or not there is a 24-hour sun in Antarctica will confirm if we live on a flat plane or on a globe. A 24-hour sun cannot work on a flat plane in the south, and the sun cannot set on a globe during the southern summer,” TFE wrote on its website.
In the organizers’ view, of course, the midnight sun was impossible. So, they decided to fly a bunch of people to the Union Glacier Camp in Antarctica to see the great hoax.
TFE originally invited 48 people — 24 flat Earthers and 24 “globe Earthers,” as they call them — to participate in the project. In the end, however, only three flats and 15 globes came along.
That still cost a pretty penny. Those invited got an all-expenses-paid trip, but anyone else was also free to tag along if they could pay the $31,495 price tag.
The cost was probably inflated to make up for some of the money used to pay for the invitees’ trips. Still, this whole exercise couldn’t have been cheap.
‘Sometimes You Are Wrong in Life’
So, on December 14, the group arrived at the Union Glacier Camp. For the next few days, they stayed in Antarctica to see how the sun would set, undoing the myth of the midnight sun.
Except that’s not what happened.
Night after night, the sun stayed up. The midnight sun took place, just as it has for… Who knows how long.
Well, that’s a bit awkward.
“All right, guys, sometimes, you are wrong in life,” Jeran Campanella, a famous flat Earth theorist, admitted according to Science Alert.
“I thought that there was no 24-hour Sun, in fact, I was pretty sure of it,” he added.
Will this experience get the participating flat Earthers to change their tune, then? Of course not.
“I don’t think it falsifies plane Earth, I don’t think it proves a globe, I think it’s a singular data point,” said another flat Earth YouTuber Austin Whitsitt.
It’s just never enough for some people. Oh well, at least they got to enjoy a free (if mildly humiliating) once-in-a-lifetime trip to Antarctica.
TFE could’ve saved a whole lot of money by asking people living in Alaska or Norway if the midnight sun exists, though.