Over the weekend, about 200 free-thinking individuals descended on a three-star hotel in Birmingham, England, to discuss a revolutionary theory: Contrary to 2,000-year-old science, common sense, and elementary school textbooks, they believe, the Earth is actually flat. It's an idea that's becoming disturbingly popular—and now that enough folks are buying into it, the conspiracies about what our planet might "actually" look like are only getting wilder.
No longer content with the idea that Earth is a flat disk with a giant wall of ice around it, the Flat Earthers at last weekend's convention presented all kinds of innovative ideas about what's really going on with our planet, the Telegraph reports. One of the most shocking insights came from self-proclaimed Flat expert Darren Nesbit, who hypothesized that the planet is standing on a set of pillars (supported by what, who knows), and that it's actually shaped like a diamond.
"I'm not saying this is definitely what is going on, but I think it is a plausible model," he said.
He also explained away a question that's stumped countless Flat Earthers—"How come no one's ever fallen off the edge?"—with something he called the "Pac-Man effect." The idea is that once you reach the end of the Earth, "space-time wraps around," and you're magically teleported from one edge of our planet to the other, or something like that.
Taking a less theoretical approach, speaker Dave Marsh explained how he spent a year in his backyard experimenting with a digital camera, an app on his phone, and the moon to prove that so-called "gravity" is a bunch of bullshit.
"My research destroys Big Bang cosmology," he said at the conference, according to the Telegraph. "It supports the idea that gravity doesn't exist and the only true force in nature is electromagnetism."
Sure, diamond-shaped planets, space pillars, and Pac-Man physics might sound batshit crazy, but the Flat Earther movement is only getting stronger by the day. A disturbingly high percentage of young people aren't sure the world is round anymore, and the conspiracy theory's fans are nabbing national headlines with wild-ass stunts they're pulling to prove themselves right.
With Flat Earther conventions in the US and Canada slated for later this year, we can only expect more incredible theories on the shape and video game-likeness our world truly holds.
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Related: Ten Questions You Always Wanted to Ask a Flat Earther
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