This article originally appeared and was published on AOL.com‘
According to a recent report in the Economist, America’s interest in the flat-Earth movement seems to be growing.
Why?
Well, walking around on Earth’s surface feels and looks flat, so more Americans are starting to deem all evidence to the contrary as lies purported by NASA.
Just in September, Bobby Ray Simmons Jr, a rapper commonly known as B.o.B, started a GoFundMe campaign to find Earth’s curve and prove once and for all if our planet is actually round. And earlier this month, 500 “flat-Earthers” gathered in North Carolina told to hold the first annual Flat Earth International Conference.
However, the conspiracy theory claiming the Earth is just a flat disc hanging in space is nothing new. The Economist found that there has been a resurgence of the belief since 2013, as shown in the magazine’s graph below.
In the past two years, searches for “flat Earth” have more than tripled, according to data from Google Trends https://t.co/yFhFpOmDXF pic.twitter.com/Y1raqhHWcQ
— The Economist (@ECONdailycharts) November 28, 2017
According to the above data sourced from Google Trends, an unbiased sample of Google search data, searches for “flat earth” have more than tripled in the past few years.
The data indicated a spike in “flat earth” searches from roughly 30 to more than 80 in search interest when B.o.B tweeted about the conspiracy theory in January 2016
The cities in the background are approx. 16miles apart… where is the curve ? please explain this pic.twitter.com/YCJVBdOWX7
— B.o.B (@bobatl) January 25, 2016
The data began to dip a little shortly after but spiked again a year later when NBA player Kyrie Irving said the Earth was flat during a podcast with his teammates Channing Frye and Richard Jefferson.
“This is not even a conspiracy theory,” Irving said. “The Earth is flat.”
When pressed to explain himself, Irving started talking about “particular groups” and a mysterious “they” who wanted to convince the world that Earth is round.