Is the Earth flat, with Mount Meru at its center? And is there a black, motionless sun below the surface instead of Earth's inner core? No, that's not true: Pseudoscientific claims that our planet is flat and hollow as well as conspiracy theories claiming the existence of a mountain at the center of the Earth or of a sun under its surface contradict scientifically proven facts. Science explains natural phenomena that "flat Earth believers" are unable to justify through their model.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) published by @ploskatazemq on July 20, 2023.
A Bulgarian text overlay, translated into English by Lead Stories staff, reads:
The Еarth has no core but a black, motionless sun centered under the Earth, which gives electromagnetism to Mount 'Maru' at the center of our flat world.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jul 25 10:35:51 2023 UTC)
One of many indisputable pieces of evidence that the Earth is round - which the flat Earth model cannot explain - is the difference in the night sky between the northern and southern hemispheres, where different constellations and stars can be seen. Another such evidence is the phenomenon of lunar eclipses, which occur when the Earth passes between the moon and the sun casting a shadow over the moon. This shadow is always round regardless of the position of the Earth. This would not happen if the Earth were flat.
Netflix documentary "Behind the Curve" describes an expensive experiment, costing roughly $20,000, in which a conspiracy theorist and YouTuber, Bob Knodel, attempted to prove that the Earth is flat, ironically ending up with a result that concluded otherwise.
The center of the Earth is not hollow: The existence of Earth's inner core can hardly be denied. Thanks to one of the most reliable methods for studying the Earth's core - measuring seismic waves - recent scientific data have proved the existence of an additional layer of the core. An article dated March 16, 2023, describes a research method that relies on data from earthquakes greater than magnitude six, to collect information from seismic waves and from their reflection from the Earth's core.
The claims in the TikTok video are a collection of conspiracy theories: In addition to the flat Earth theory and the hollow Earth theory, the black sun theory and Mount Meru as the Earth's center are also mentioned. The last one is an ancient Buddhist belief carried over into the present as part of the flat Earth theory. The current Dalai Lama denied these beliefs by stating that ancient views related to the supposed flat shape of the Earth are wrong.
The idea of a black sun below the planet's surface comes from a novella written in 1991 which talks about Nazi occultism and connects a symbol used in Nazi Germany and the black sun.
More evidence proving the actual round shape of planet Earth can be found here.
