Terrapacists: where science does not reach

We were at the conference of the Italian Terraplatters in Milan: a festival of crackpot ideas, from aeroplanes that run on compressed air to Lucifer and all the way to the Sun, which would be 5,000 km away.

Flat Earth: while the last day of Focus Live at the Museum of Science and Technology in Milan is consumed in great festivity, a 'secret agent' from Focus crashes the conference of Italian terraplatters (and is soon discovered). | AMANDA CARDEN / SHUTTERSTOCK

On 24 November, while the last day of Focus Live was taking place at the Museum of Science and Technology in Milan, a conference of the terraplatters Italians. An opportunity to see live these characters who reject in toto what comes from mainstream science, from institutions, from researchers. Who deny not only the shape of our planet, but space missions, the evolution of species, gravity, the movements of the Earth and even History as it is written in books. And who instead claim that astronauts are actors, that a race of giants lived on our planet, that there is a conspiracy of 'strong powers' to hide from people not only how flat the Earth is, but also to produce manipulated information about everything.Flat Earth: Agostino Favari, one of the leaders of the Italian terraplanters. | FOCUS

BEWARE OF ASSUMPTIONS! After paying the €25 registration fee (as opposed to €10 for Focus Live, which includes the entire museum), we enter the convention hall: I don't know if the Terrapianists have noticed, but the hall is named after 'JFK', the man who made the moon landing possible. If I were them, I couldn't help but notice that it's probably no accident, in fact: maybe even a conspiracy.

The protagonists of the day are the usual names of Italian terrapianism, in particular Agostino Favari, Albino Galuppini and Calogero Greco. The former, an engineer, represents 'scientific' terrapiatialism: he shows the audience two slides that are pictures of haphazardly handwritten sheets of paper, like a class assignment by an average student, in which there are drawings of triangles and trigonometry formulae. The purpose is to show that the Sun is about 5,000 km from the Earth, instead of 150 million km, as it is in reality. Favari's formulas, which are within the reach of a fourth-year student but incomprehensible to a large part of the public, are also correctly carried out. The problem (but only for the terratondists) is that they only work if the starting hypothesis is that the Earth is, indeed, flat.

WORSHIPPERS OF LUCIFER. Galuppini, a graduate in natural sciences, is instead the dreamy terrapianist, for whom the conspiracy to conceal the truth is hatched by scientists, bankers, politicians and so on, all worshippers of Lucifer. Because 'by denying the Bible and everything else they lead people to the abyss', to Lucifer, he emphasises. In his speech, he quickly reviews many of the proofs that are the workhorses of the Terrapianists: GPS doesn't work with satellites but thanks to antennas hidden in skyscrapers, distant objects such as some islands in the sea can be seen even though they should be hidden by the Earth's curvature, from aeroplanes you can't see the curvature of the Earth, where the curvature can be seen is because the lens used deforms the image... To the attempted reply of a spectator who points out that on action cams the lens doesn't create curvature if it frames at a great distance, the reply is: 'That's his opinion. Let's move on'. The poor guy tries to explain that it's not an opinion, it's how the lens works, but is silenced.

COMPRESSED-AIR AIRCRAFT. Calogero Greco, on the other hand, is the prototype of the terraplatter who hears no reason. In his introduction, without any particular thread, he expounds on the chicken-egg orbit that the Sun would travel over the flat Earth (without falling on its head, even though it does not orbit around anything) but also on the fact that modern aeroplanes do not use fuel but run on compressed air... That would be an epoch-making discovery! Couldn't we apply it to other means of transport as well?

One of the pearls of Greco's lucubrations concerns the direction of Mecca: 'When Muslims turn their prayers towards Mecca, if they are in the west they should look east, right? But we have information, I know them too, they live in Chicago... when they pray they look north, which is impossible on a ball Earth. Because they have their compasses calibrated to always look at Mecca. How do you explain that?" We don't explain it. On the other hand, Greco approached me in a pause with a stern air: "You are a troll, a paid provocateur. I recognise them at once!".

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE...? The conference was attended by 40-50 people: taking out speakers, journalists and onlookers, there were perhaps 20 or so convinced Terrapianists in the audience. Not many, considering that we are in a big city. In general, the impression we got was one of an embarrassing lack of preparation in any field: on the other hand, how could it not be so, since the terrapianists reject any confrontation and scientific investigation, because everything is a conspiracy against them and against the whole of humanity.

All the technical questions posed by the speakers have a simple answer that can be found on the Net. One example among many: "How is it possible to receive information from the Voyager probes, which would be billions of kilometres away? What kind of generator would they have to have on board to transmit from so far away?". Needless to explain, in this case it is not the transmission power that one has to look at, but the communication reception system, which uses the largest and most sophisticated antennas existing on Earth, those of the Deep Space Networkto succeed in the undoubtedly difficult task of communicating with the probes. But common sense is not at home here; the terrapaths seem to live in a world of their own, impervious to anything from the outside.

SOCIAL PHENOMENA. One could even smile about the shape of the Earth, even if at some junctures the atmosphere at the meeting became tense: after all, everyone is free to believe what they want (we feel like saying, albeit with difficulty). The problem is that this is only one of the more surreal aspects of the false science that finds fertile ground on the web and social networks, and which also denies much more serious topics, such as the usefulness of vaccines or global warming. A vast phenomenon, which perhaps also has at its root a generalised distrust of official and established institutions, scientific and political, and of everything that comes from them.

We should ask questions then, but not about the shape of the Earth. As Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the New York Planetarium, said, referring to the United States: 'In my opinion, the fact that terrapaths are on the rise is a sign of two things. The first is that we live in a country that protects free speech. But the second is that we live in a country with an ineffective education system'.