Read This: What would happen if the world actually became flat?
Because “I Want to Believe” posters have apparently given us a reason to ignore scientific fact, our modern world is rife with batshit conspiracy theories. One of the more amusing ones—in that, unlike the shit peddled by people like Alex Jones and Mike Cernovich, it’s not ruining anyone’s life—is the theory that, actually, the Earth is flat.
If your interest is piqued, there’s a litany of flat-Earth Instagram accounts to sift through, but you could also just take it from the likes of believers like Tila Tequila, B.o.B., and half the NBA (not Shaq, though, he was just kidding). What, exactly, would it look like? Gizmodo rounded up a panel of “weather and climate researchers, seismologists, astronomers and physicists” to theorize on the phenomenon.
Susan Hough, a seismologist at the United States Geological Survey, says “all sorts of hell would break loose,” though it would “depend on how flat is flat.” Basically, she says there’d be no gravity, which is the same conclusion reached by Marek Kukula of the Royal Observatory in London, who says a flat Earth’s atmosphere would “float away into space, rapidly followed by anything else not physically attached to the surface,” which actually sounds really cool.