this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 minutes ago

This reminds me of MAGAts.

[–] TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

At the end of the documentary "beyond the curve" the flat earthers manage to get enough money together to buy a gyro laser to prove the earth isn't spinning. It costed the 20.000 dollars. The found out the earth was spinning constantly. They said needed time to come up with an explanation why this would be happening when the earth was flat, but in no way they thought "maybe we were wrong after all".

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It's bizarre they know enough science to be able to prove the Earth is round, but then ignore it anyway.

That doc showed the whole flat earth movement appeared to be one guy's attempts to get into a milfy redhead's pants. Poor guy was like a little lost puppy.

[–] TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Not strange if you grew up alone in your mom's basement and developed no social skills. Possibly home schooled and not blessed when it comes to intelligence. And the only thing that binds you to the other people is on the brink of falling apart, so they desperately try to hold on to it by refusing the obvious: a globe.

And what's even more sad, is that there are a lot of influences trying to argue with their community, making fun of them and trying to destroy their fantacy. All to hoard in views and followers to make money from ads. Pushing these people even further away from reality and society,. Alienating them.

[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 1 points 4 hours ago

How do they explain pendulums?

[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 19 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

I also like when they got a light to shine through 2 holes and the distance they were at required them to elevate the camera because of the curve of the earth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFqmDazwb6Y

[–] TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Haha yeah! Actually I doubt they believe the earth is flat, I got the feeling it's more an excuse for outcasts to unite and feel unity, the "us against the world" thing. Like: "If no one accepts me, I'll just go all the way into weirdness and find others who are also not accepted, so we won't have to be alone. Let our thing be so damn weird and stupid, no accepted person would dare to join us."

But that's just my hypothesis after watching this docu and some other stuff about and from them.

But there are some fanatics that actually believe it, but I think they need mental help because they strike as people having a constant psychosis. Even the general group finds them weird and extreme.

It's really sad.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

As an intellectual exercise, I rather enjoy flat-earth theories. "Knowing" that the earth is round, without having actually proven it for ourselves, is dogmatism, not science.

Constantly challenging even our most basic assumptions is how science advances.

[–] yesman@lemmy.world 58 points 22 hours ago (7 children)

Just some context: Ancient Aliens is racist. It's roots are literally Nazi.

You see, it's only achievements in brown countries that need alien help. The Greeks didn't need ET for the Colosseum, heavens no. We just scratch our head at Africans or Americans building pyramids and stuff.

In the 30s, Nazi "researchers" believed in something I'll call "Ancient Aryans" which is exactly the same as Ancient Aliens except it's pure Germans who are visiting these primitive cultures and raising architecture. What happened to the Germans? They were annihilated by in-breeding with locals of course.

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Aryan ≠ German. Aryan would be closer to modern day Afghan, Pakistani, or maybe Ukrainian? Aryans were from the grasslands east of the urals.

[–] BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago

The Greeks didn’t need ET for the Colosseum

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 20 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

The Greeks didn't need ET for the Colosseum

Just to be pedantic, the Romans built the Colosseum. While they did cosplay as Greeks, they weren't actually Greeks themzelves

[–] AFallingAnvil@lemmy.ca 0 points 5 hours ago

To be further pedantic, the Greeks started calling themselves the Romioi in late antiquity, so some Greeks were in fact Romans, but not all Romans were Greek.

[–] Leonixster@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (3 children)

I'll take this opportunity to shill for one of my favorite content creators, Miniminuteman, who just so happens to have a video debunking Ancient Aliens (two parter actually)

[–] bluesheep@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 hours ago

Googledebunkers unite!

[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 3 points 11 hours ago

There are dozens of us!

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 17 hours ago

And another pyramid video coming in a couple hours

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 15 points 20 hours ago

Yeah Ancient Aliens has always been real weird, and I'm gonna be honest I've never heard of the Ancient Aryans thing so... yeah the similarities are weird for sure. Few things to note.

The Parthenon is Greek, the Romans built the coliseum — also, the Native Americans didn't have a unified name for the Americas. If it makes you feel better you can say indigenous people of the American continents, or even Indigenous Americans, but calling them strictly American is genuinely awful.

My mom was born in Keams Canyon, and I've visited. If you went there calling the people there Americans they would not appreciate it. They're Hopi, or maybe Navajo.

[–] nednobbins@lemmy.zip 4 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Even if Nazis believed in Ancient Aliens as some sort of weird ubermensch theory, that doesn't make the idea itself racist at all.

People are fascinated by aliens. Before aliens people tended to attribute giant structures to gods and spirits when they lost the historical records. You don't need racism to believe in crazy fantasy ideas, you just need to be a bit too credulous.

[–] Akasazh@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

The Nazis doing something isn't the best argument of it not being racist

[–] Smeagol666@mander.xyz 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I hate "ubermensch" theory because it puts Nietzsche in a negative light when he wasn't an antisemite.

[–] Drewfro66@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 18 hours ago

This is a bit of a misconception.

Nietzche opposed a specific political group in Germany at the time called "The Anti-Semites". So he has a lot of quotes where he complains about The Anti-Semites, but he isn't really critiquing what we would consider antisemitism, but just this specific group and their ideology.

And this was probably not because he opposed them, but because they were problematic allies. His sister would marry an Anti-Semite, become one herself, and his books would be published by The Anti-Semites after his death.

I don't have any of them handy at the moment, but Nietzche had many things to say about the Jews that would get him branded an antisemite by modern standards.

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[–] trashboypro@lemmy.blahaj.zone 54 points 1 day ago (2 children)

When I realized that the whole Ancient Aliens bullshit was written by a butthurt Dane who has no real contribution to the civilization other than white supremacy as pseudoscience, that whole conspiracy theory became easier to debunk.

[–] vandsjov@feddit.dk 10 points 14 hours ago

When I tried to figure out who the “Dane” is, and so far it seems you mean Erich von Däniken, whom is not Danish but Swiss.

[–] Rothe@piefed.social 4 points 12 hours ago

Please leave us Danes out of this, we have nothing to do with this, you seem to be misunderstanding something.

[–] grozzle@lemmy.zip 107 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Paleontologist? probably was just there for his "dinosaurs built the pyramids" theory.

[–] human@slrpnk.net 82 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] rainwall@piefed.social 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not the mama!

Apparently the show was one of Jim hensen's ideas, and the concept was what he was working on when he passed away. Wikipedia says it was only greenlit because of the success of the Simpsons, which showed an oddball sitcom could work, which it did for 4 years.

[–] SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don’t remember it much other than enjoying watching it.

I also remember playing the theme song for it in my middle schools band.

[–] chaogomu@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The ending was pretty dark, and came a bit before the widespread acceptance of the Chicxulub impact.

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[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I never understood this. Any measurement you do with a wheel you could do with a line of length equal to the circumference. So whether they knew about pi or not is irrelevant?

[–] Juice@midwest.social 18 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

You're doing a measurement, and using a wheel to measure. There's a mark on the wheel, so that one turn = one unit of measure. So if all of your measurements are x turns of the wheel, then all of your measurements will be x/pi.

So mathematicians studying it will discover the measurements are all some multiple of pi. Journalists unlucky enough to have to write about this stuff know like 1 thing about archeology but like 2 things about math and 10000000 things about sensationalism, so they write articles about the one thing they know about archaology, the two things they know about math, and the 10000000 things they know about writing a sensationalist article, rinse repeat.

[–] bequirtle@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

mathematicians studying it will discover the measurements are all some multiple of pi.

Only if you measured it in wheel-lengths... In meters it would just be an arbitrary number

[–] erev@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

The ratios will still apply

[–] lastunusedusername2@sh.itjust.works -1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Yes but the ratio to the wheel radius. So unless you know that, the circumference is just an arbitrary length

[–] Juice@midwest.social 2 points 50 minutes ago* (last edited 49 minutes ago)

It isn't just a single linear measurement, it would be multiple measurements. Also they weren't using meter circumference wheels, the wheels would be, to us, some arbitrary standard that would be revealed when dividing the two lengths by pi.

I think the point of the post re: the tired paleontologist is that the pi-related ratio just isn't that interesting, Ancient Aliens uses math to mystify the subject, not make it simpler to understand. So I think the thing youre hung up on is the point of the post. It just isn't that interesting of an insight if you understand the math, but of you present it a certain way, youre like selling the idea that ancient civilization were capable of using abstractions (like pi) that maybe didn't "exist" for ancient civilizations. But when you think if it in terms of practical applications, you realize that the tools and the work that people were doing didn't require exactness to that degree.

Ancient Egyptians did have a concept of pi, but to them it was 22/7, which is more than close enough for any practical application. Pi is 3.1415.. and 22/7 is 3.142. They didn't need that exact of a figure to build a pyramid, their calculations were as good or better than our engineers use in practical application. Civilizations that are around for thousands of years end up figuring shit out when they try to do stuff. We use mathematics to plan, and so did they; but to build something you don't need someone who has memorized pi, you just need engineers with practical experience building things. Ancient civilizations had that, their tools contained their methods of abstraction, even in rare cases their books did not.

But Ancient Aliens never imagines real people with real experiences, it assumes stupidity and brutishness in its subject, when actually they are objectively stupid and brutal.

[–] bequirtle@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

I believe they are talking about how the base/height ratio of one of the pyramids is very close to pi

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 12 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (2 children)

Wheels are always a fraction of pi. Whether you like it or not. Lengths of string can be arbitrary, but a circle's dimensions are always tightly related to and proportional to pi in some way. I also recall that wheel measurements are more precise for large scale building because, unlike rope, leather and cloth, a wooden wheel doesnt stretch. Two wheels made similar will stay more between a much tighter error factor than two pieces of rope. The rope might start at the same length but will deform differently as they are used.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 hours ago

I don't know if I'd say wooden wheels "stretch" per se, but wood absolutely warps due to all sorts of factors

[–] Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I think they are saying that the circumference of a wheel can be any arbitrary measurement, you just change the size of the wheel. So how can that be notably different from having a straight ruler the same length as whatever that circumference is?

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

The spoke of the wheel is the same length used to measure the blocks. Other comments here have gone into detail. If the height of the blocks is the same as the diameter or radius of the wheel used to measure the base, then the relations will always be some function of pi. You don't have to know any definition of pi for this to always be geometrically true.

[–] DeadDigger@lemmy.zip 4 points 19 hours ago

Because this was how you did geometry and math in general in ancient times even till around year 500. The biggest problem was to easily construct exact angles. because it is rly hard to construct a triangle ruler with old materials. but a circle can be constructed with a pencil and a string and with 2 circles you can easily construct exact angles.

[–] SwifferWetjet@thelemmy.club 36 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Tiered looking. Dog was in full German chocolate cake mode. That's how he remembered the circles.

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