Science & Tech

Professor Brian Cox had the perfect response to Flat Earthers

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Picture:
Phil McIntyre Entertainment

Professor Brian Cox is one of the most popular scientists in the UK.

He does a terrific job of educating the public, either through his programmes or through his more argumentative tweets:

The physicist and TV personality has now tackled flat-earthers.

Not physically, but he's issued a stern rebuke to anyone believing the world is anything other than an oblate spheroid, via the Science Page on Facebook.

He said to the camera in is textbook gentle tones:

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.

He's wrong on the second point - people have thought the Earth is flat.

They're called the Flat Earth Society.

In the FAQ on their website, the first thing they have to clarify is that they're not joking.

In an attempt to reject the photographic evidence from Nasa's satellites and the International Space Station, they claim it's a global conspiracy faking space travel, with no evidence at all.

Elon Musk made headlines when he called the group out earlier this year, and they responded in kind.

More: Professor Brian Cox has a message for people who believe the moon landing was faked

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