A man took a spirit level on a plane to prove the earth is flat

A flat-earth conspiracy theorist took a spirit level on a plane to “prove” the earth is flat. He also filmed it... Presumably in the name of science?

Back in 2017 YouTuber D Marble flew from North Carolina to Seattle to see if the pilot would dip the nose of the plane to “compensate for curvature”.

He says in the video: "I recorded a 23-minute and 45 seconds time-lapse, which by those measurements means the plane travelled a little over 203 miles.

Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter

"According to curvature math given to explain the globe model, this should have resulted in the compensation of 5 miles of curvature. As you'll see there was no measurable compensation for curvature."

He went on to add that gravity is just a "theory" and that there should be "no more defending what we know to be true! Now we take the fight to the enemy." He also uses the hashtag #FEOFFENSIVE on his podcast aka 'Flat Earth Offensive.'

D Marble has gone viral thanks to his experiment.

Here's the video:

In the five years since he shared the video, D Marble's clip has been viewed more than 1.6 million times.

In a comment that he added to the videos page three years ago he wrote: "If the earth is a globe at 24,901 miles in circumference, the equation for calculating curvature is 8 inches per mile squared. The plane travelled 203.85 miles. 203.85 × 203.85 = 41,554.82 41,554.82 × 8 = 332,438.56 Inches 332,438.56/12 = 27,703.21 Feet 27,703.21/5,280 = 5.24 miles There should have been well over 5 miles of downward tilt to make up for the earth's curvature over the course of 23 minutes and 45 seconds."

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.