Water is wet and the earth is round – which is sad news for conspiracy theorist Bob Knodel. Knodel is a proud Flat-Earther who was so confident in the theory that he spent a whopping $20,000 on an experiment that ironically concluded that the Earth is round.
The conspiracy theorist has a YouTube channel that is dedicated to proving that the Earth is flat and the channel has developed a community.
Knodel wanted to prove naysayers wrong, so he spent $20,000 on a laser gyroscope that he was sure would highlight that the planet does not rotate. The experiment took place in the Netflix documentary Behind the Curve where it was revealed that the Earth is actually round (shock horror).
However, using a gyroscope he discovered that there was a “drift” that was collected each hour.
“What we found is, when we turned on that gyroscope, we found that we were picking up a drift. A 15-degree per hour drift,” he says.
Knodel realised that this fact is what would be expected from a rotating globe but it’s not what he wanted to find out.
“Now, obviously we were taken aback by that, wow, that’s kind of a problem,” he shares. “We obviously were not willing to accept that, and so we started looking for ways to disprove it was actually registering the motion of the Earth.”
But, he started speaking to another Flat-Earther at a Denver meeting where he shared that they had to continuously try to prove their argument and emphasised the amount of money he spent on the gyroscope experiment.
“We don’t want to blow this, you know? When you’ve got $20,000 in this freaking gyro,” he said. “If we dumped what we found right now, it would be bad? It would be bad. What I just told you was confidential.”
Accept the truth, the Earth is round.