Three flat Earthers and 12 who believe the Earth is a globe have gone to Antarctica to find out the truth for themselves.
The trip was organised under "The Final Experiment," a paid trip put on by U.S. Pastor Will Duffy. In an interview on the YouTube channel Answers in Genesis, he said it surprised him three years ago when a friend expressed online that the earth was flat.
Duffy said, "I decided to look into this more because it was so shocking to me that someone in the 21st Century could be a flat earther."
Looking deeper, Duffy concluded flat earth was primarily marketed to his kind of people, sometimes successfully.
"It seemed to me based on my interactions that a majority of flat earthers were Bible-believing Christians. And so I was like, 'Wow this is not the direction we need to be headed in the Body of Christ.' And so I had the idea of coming up with an experiment that would settle this debate once and for all so we could nip it in the bud."
The result was a trip to Antarctica close to the time of the summer solstice that is currently underway.
The flat earth conception places the North Pole in the middle of a flat sphere and and Antarctica on the perimeter like a container that holds in the ocean. The sun orbits the earth in a circle over top. Flat earthers have long alleged that the 24-hour sunlight that happens at the North Pole at the start of summer can't happen at the South Pole.
Past posted videos have already demonstrated a panoramic path for the Antarctic sun around December 21, but Duffy says flat earthers doubt the footage.
"They like to say that videos are doctored, altered, or CGI, so we are going to be using 360-degree cameras. That way, they can't say that, you know, we were filming the wrong part of the sky or or whatever. And then we're actually going to have another 360-degree camera filming the other one," Duffy explained.
Duffy said some flat earthers have pushed back and insisted his trip should not be called an "experiment" nor "final." However, he has not found any of them whose model would account for a perpetual Antarctic sun.
"The biggest flat earthers out there, for years, have said that this will settle the debate. They've said, if there's a 24-hour sun, we are wrong," Duffy explained.
"I do think there's some fear there that we are going to go down there and see a 24 hour sun. The flat earth community tried their hardest to convince the flat earthers that are going with us to not go. They pretty much begged them to not go," Duffy said, adding some participants were labelled "shills."
Regardless, three prominent flat earthers are ready to face the truth. Jeran Campanella, who has YouTube and Patreon channels named Jeranism; Austin Whitsitt who has "Witsit Gets It" channels on those platforms, and YouTuber Sean Griffin of Kingdom in Context are spending five days at an location about 80 degrees south latitude, the final being December 18.
Flat earth debunkers are also on the trip, including TikToker GlobeyMcGlobeFace, Craig of the FightTheFlatEarth Youtube channel, and Dave Farina. Farina's YouTube channel Professor Dave Explains has almost 3.5 million subscribers. Candace Owens is also sending her director Mark Herman along to film reactions.
Duffy said he expected the experiment would turn a few flat earthers from their belief. However, PhD astronomer and former University of South Carolina Professor Danny Faulkner was completely sceptical.
"I think they will double down. They will come up with all sorts of excuses of what might have happened--a fake sun that they put up. They might have drugged everybody and made them hallucinate while you were there. You weren't really in Antarctica, all those kind of things," Faulkner speculated.
The GPS location of participants is broadcast live at the-final-experiment.com.