This is what life would be like if the world was actually flat

The notion that the earth is flat is one of the most easily disproved and farcical theories to keep kicking about.

Professor Brian Cox recently attempted to educate the public in a Facebook Q&A session:

There is absolutely no basis at all for thinking the world is flat.

Nobody in human history, as far as I know, has thought the world was flat.

The Greeks measured the radius of the Earth. I cannot conceive of a reason why anybody would think the world is flat.

There are interesting bits of physics that tell you you live on a spinning planet and one of them is called the Coriolis force, which is the force that's responsible for causing storm systems to rotate on the planet.

So when you see those beautiful pictures of storms spinning around and rotating, the reason for that is that we live on a spinning planet.

It's probably the most nonsensical suggestion that a thinking human being could possibly make. It is drivel.

Yet still, there are people out there who believe.

Worryingly, their numbers are, growing:

There are a few problems with this theory.

First off, compasses wouldn't work properly without the mantle and core of the planet, as Dr Tobias Dürig, a volcanologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Otago, told IFL Science:

[It] would also be bad news for any organism, since the geomagnetic field basically works as a starship deflector shield against solar radiation.

Living on flat Earth’s surface would be as pleasant and healthy as sitting inside a 24/7 microwave oven! Solariums would have a hard time – however, the market of sun creams and tinfoil hats would boom.

In addition, say goodbye to wines:

Agriculture would miss the fertile volcanic soils rich of nitrogen and phosphorus – soils which bear some of the best red wines on our planet.

There would also be no tectonic plate movements, and our gravitational field would all but disappear, due to the lack of an earth's core. We'd jump and float off into space - which would also happen to our atmosphere. There's basically little chance the planet would hold its shape.

But don't just take it from us and the good Dr Dürig, take it from Neil deGrasse Tyson as well:

HT IFL Science

More: Professor Brian Cox had the perfect response to Flat Earthers