A group of popular flat earth YouTubers have admitted defeat against the “globers” after taking a trip to Antarctica to witness the 24-hour sun.
Colorado pastor Will Duffy organized the highly anticipated December 14 trip, dubbed “The Final Experiment”, which brought together four “flat earthers” and four “globe earthers” in an attempt to settle the debate once and for all.
Flat earthers have long maintained that Antarctica holds the key to proving the earth is flat.
In summer, due to the tilt of the earth, the sun does not set over much of the continent. In the flat earth view of the world, Antarctica is actually an ice wall that encircles the other continents and holds in the oceans. If that view were correct, the sun must rise and set each day, even in Antarctica, and could never circle the sky all 24 hours.
“All right, guys, sometimes you are wrong in life,” Jeran Campanella from the YouTube channel Jeranism told viewers on the midnight livestream from Union Glacier Camp, four-and-a-half hours south from Punta Arenas, Chile.
“And I thought that there was no 24-hour sun, in fact I was pretty sure of it.”
Pastor Duffy noted Jeranism was “one of the most popular flat earth YouTube channels”, but Campanella quipped “not for long”.
“It’s a fact — the sun does circle you in the south,” he said.
“What does that mean? You guys are going to have to figure that out yourself. Don’t listen to my beliefs or my opinion, it shouldn’t matter to you. But at least you should be able to accept that the sun does exactly what these guys said as far as [it] circles the southern continent. I realize that I’ll be called a shill for just saying that, and you know what, if you’re a shill for being honest, so be it. I honestly believed there was no 24-hour sun, I honestly now believe there is.”
The trip had been in the works for three years, after Pastor Duffy first learned on Facebook that some people still believe the earth is flat.
No flat earthers had ever been to Antarctica — a popular conspiracy theory was that the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 prevented them from going, specifically in summer, lest they discover the truth.
In order to “end this debate, once and for all” so “no one has to waste any more time debating the shape of the earth”, Pastor Duffy arranged for the all-expenses paid $35,000-per-person trip with Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions.
Austin Whitsitt from Witsit Gets It conceded to viewers “we were wrong” about the 24-hour sun, but said he was still open to the earth being flat.
“I was one of the people that said I definitely didn’t think that there was a 24-hour sun,” he said.
“We obviously haven’t actually seen the sun for 24 hours, but it is doing what they said it would do, very clearly. It is still dancing around high in the sky. So obviously we’re documenting it. But I said what I feel about this the whole time, truth doesn’t fear investigation. I think we’re truly trying to figure out the truth. Obviously some people think that what we were told is the truth, I don’t think that but I do think that people need to be honest and humble and be like, whoa, you know, we were wrong when we claimed that there was no 24-hour sun.”
Whitsitt added that there may be a way to reconcile the 24-hour sun with the flat earth and he had “seen a physical demonstration that could show this working”.
“But I do think that some of the data we’re going to have from this trip may help to clarify if that is actually what’s happening,” he said.
“We obviously never claimed that people couldn’t go here, we just say you can’t freely and privately explore it. Obviously we did know you could go to approved places. The point of this trip is to see if there’s a 24-hour sun. There clearly is … I don’t think it falsifies plane earth, I don’t think it proves a globe, I think it’s a singular data point.”
Lisbeth Acosta from FlatEarth Gang said what mattered most was “putting our egos aside”.
“I’ve seen a lot of vitriol, a lot of crashing out on both sides and it’s just like, are we here for truth or are we here to hold onto a narrative and ego?” she said.
“That’s not saying a 24-hour sun proves a globe model, there’s still things that are definitely in question … but we’re here working together and I think the most important part is just this human experience.”
