Youtube star brings flat-earth idea to kids

The theory that the Earth is flat reached a new audience recently, thanks to a viral video by controversial Youtube star Logan Paul.

Paul, who is popular with middle-school and high-school students, released a trailer for an upcoming documentary in which he attends a flatEarth convention and interviews participants. While his ultimate conclusion is not revealed in the trailer, he is shown telling a cheering audience, “My name is Logan Paul, and I think I’m coming out of the flat-earth closet.”

The video has more than 1.2 million views.

“A lot of kids look up to popular people like (Paul), so it could have an effect,” said Owen Cooney, 13, of Chicago.

The trailer, which is a little more than 2 minutes long, takes a light tone and highlights some quirky claims, with a young woman arguing, “People like to think that

(the Earth) is round, because the shape of your eyes is round.” Paul is seen arguing with a friend who dismisses flat-earth theory and staring into the camera saying: “I just don’t know what to believe anymore.”

There’s no support for flat Earth theory among mainstream scientists, according to Seth Jacobson, an assistant professor of earth and planetary science at Northwestern University.

“I know of no one (in science) who is a flatearther,” he said. “It’s not a thing.”

Jacobson said that there are many different ways to show the

Earth is round: You can get on a plane or ship and travel all the way around the globe. You can watch a ship sail out to the horizon and then dip below the horizon bit by bit; that wouldn’t happen if the earth was flat, Jacobson said. Or you can just look at photographs of the Earth as seen from space.

“That’s the ultimate piece of evidence, right?” said Jacobson.

Flat Earth Chicago Meetup organizer Steve Alicea countered that there aren’t plane flights that circle the earth completely in the north-south direction, flying over both the North Pole and the South Pole.

And Alicea expressed skepticism about NASA and questioned photographs of the Earth taken from space.

“It could be

legitimate imagery, but it could just as well be fake,” he said.

Paul, 23, has built a career on humor, high jinks and sunny good looks. The trailer for his flat-earth documentary, “The Flat Earth: To The Edge And Back,” scheduled to be released Wednesday, is getting skeptical and belittling online responses.

Cooney, the 13-yearold in Chicago, said that Logan Paul and his brother Jake were “super-famous” last year, but now kids at his school have moved on to “Fortnite” streamers. Cooney’s younger brother, Colin, 11, who likes science, said he found the Logan Paul video unconvincing.

“I’ll believe scientists, who are much, much smarter, over Logan Paul,” he said.