Editor’s Note: This story appeared as part of an April Fools issue.

The geographers and cartographers of UCSB Fiefdom recently printed evidence that the Worlde is flat. The paper has been expected for over a year now, but the cartographers explained that etching the printing plates took longer than expected. Cartographer Keith Clarke explained the research method.

“It’s quite simple, really,” he said. “It just looks that way.”

In a related discovery, the flat disc of the Earth appears to have an edge.

“We realised this early on,” geographer Dan diMontello said. “If the earth stretched out forever, the sun would bang into it in its revolution about the disc.”

To test this idea, graduate students watched the sun daily to determine if it rose and set.

“A few went blind,” Clarke said. “But in the end the results were worth it.”

As a final experiment, the cartographers kept a close watch on the horizon.

“The idea was that if the sun had collided with the earth, we would see an encroaching wall of flame,” diMontello said. “This has not yet happened. If it does, it will make an interesting paper in and of itself – assuming we are not all burned alive.”