Flat Earth Convention makes case for ‘Pac-Man Effect,’ astonishing Cosmic Egg theory

The wall of ice that holds in the oceans (AP)

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

That’s the first question and its answer on the Flat Earth Society’s FAQ page. Flat-earthers insist they are serious: they believe our planet is flat.

That Earth is in fact spherical was proven long ago, and yet belief in its flatness has held on among fringe thinkers — and, indeed, appears to be making a comeback, thanks to the internet.

And so Birmingham, England, just hosted a Flat Earth Convention that reportedly drew more than 200 people, many of whom spent $147 on a three-day ticket to attend lectures, collectively mock NASA and buy “Flat Power” merchandise.

What was the convention like? Various attendees, including a few reporters, have offered their impressions of the inventive theories offered at the event — and of whether the flat-earthers really are serious…

Theories

Flat-earthers do not have uniform opinions about the shape of the planet and how it operates in the cosmos. Theories advanced at the convention included:

— Earth is stationary. It quietly sits there in space, unmoving.

— There’s no such thing as gravity.

“My research destroys Big Bang cosmology,” said convention speaker David Marsh. “It supports the idea that gravity doesn’t exist and the only true force in nature is electromagnetism.”

— Earth is ringed by a giant ice wall.

The Flat Earth Society gets behind this notion. “Beyond the ice wall is a topic of great interest to the Flat Earth Society,” its website states. “To our knowledge, no one has been very far past the ice wall and returned to tell of their journey. What we do know is that it encircles the Earth and serves to hold in our oceans and helps protect us from whatever lies beyond.”

— Earth is shaped like a diamond.

— Earth is a series of interlinked rings.

Getting back to the ice wall. In this theory, the disc-like Earth has the Arctic circle in the center and Antarctica — the wall of ice — around the rim.

So there’s a reason to start worrying about a warming planet. If Antarctica melts, people and the oceans could fall off the side of the planet.

The Pac-Man Effect

“We know that continuous east-west travel is a reality,” convention speaker Darren Nesbit said. “No one has ever come to or crossed a physical boundary.”

Continue, please.

“One logical possibility for those who are truly free thinkers is that space-time wraps around and we get a Pac-Man effect,” Nesbit said.

In other words, The Sydney Morning Herald writes of the theory, “celestial bodies are able to teleport from one side of the planet to the other when they reach the horizon — just as the characters in the video game Pac-Man arrive on the right-hand side of the screen as they exit the left-hand side.”

The Cosmic Egg

There’s a dome above us. One possible believer in this wild theory — he calls himself Norbz — took to YouTube to map it out.

Norbz explained that God, or the Holy Trinity, created a “womb” to protect itself from itself, the Void. Then “the Trinity separated into three: positive, neutral and negative.”

A “cosmic vortex” was created, and inside was plopped Earth, a “three-level vortex on both sides.” This theory leans heavily on the power of toroidal fields in the vortex.

The upshot: we’re trapped like an embryonic chicken. But unlike a chick in an egg, we can never peck our way out — though we have convinced ourselves we can and have.

“When they say they’re going to outer space,” Norbz says in the video, “it doesn’t mean up, it doesn’t mean to land on stars. You can’t do that. It means to go outside the perimeter.”

What about the Moon landing?

Most convention-goers apparently agreed that NASA is a big con. To return to the Flat Earth Society FAQ page:

“Most Flat Earthers think Astronauts have been bribed or coerced into their testimonies. Some believe they have been fooled or are mistaken.”

Celebrity

Boston Celtics All-Star guard Kyrie Irving wasn’t in attendance, but he has become a hero of sorts to Flat Earth proponents.

Why? In a 2016 podcast, he said: “Is the earth flat or round? I think you need to do research on it. … It’s right in front of our faces. I’m telling you it’s right in front of our faces. They lie to us … For what I’ve known for as many years and what I’ve been taught is that the earth is round, but, I mean, if you really think about it from a landscape of the way we travel, the way we move … Can you really think of us rotating around the sun, and all planets align, rotating in specific dates, being perpendicular with what’s going on with these ‘planets’ and stuff like this?”

Irving, who’s certainly not the only celeb to entertain the notion that the Earth is flat, later added:

“For me, it’s not about whether the world is flat or whether the world is round. It’s really about everyone just believing what they want to believe and feeling comfortable with it. I’m not a scientist, I’m not here to tell everyone that this is it. For me, it’s just giving everyone a chance to do their own research and find their own knowledge rather than of having knowledge just shoved to you.”

Why flat-earthers believe Earth is flat

Because they believe in science — sort of. Limo driver and possible California gubernatorial candidate “Mad Mike” Hughes tried to prove Earth’s flatness earlier this year by blasting off in a homemade rocket.

“Do I believe the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee? I believe it is,” he told the Associated Press before his brief flight. “Do I know for sure? No. That’s why I want to go up in space.”

Flat-earthers’ belief in science is, however, conditional. Other factors usually take precedence.

“While flat-earthers seem to trust and support scientific methods, what they don’t trust is scientists, and the established relationships between ‘power’ and ‘knowledge,’ ” wrote Harry T. Dyer, a lecturer at the University of East Anglia who says he attended the Birmingham Flat Earth Convention.

He added that flat-Earth believers at the convention “were encouraged to trust ‘poetry, freedom, passion, vividness, creativity, and yearning’ over the more clinical regurgitation of established theories and facts. Attendees were told that “hope changes everything,’ and warned against blindly trusting what they were told.”

— Douglas Perry