Neil came prepared with the facts
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has destroyed flat earthers by giving a simple response to their claims.
Who would have thought, it’s 2024 and still we’re having to debate whether the world is flat or not, such is the stubbornness of humankind.
Despite the idea of a spherical Earth being easy enough to understand, sometimes it helps to get a more reputable expert to help explain and clarify things.
This is exactly what famous American space expert Neil deGrasse Tyson has done when he appeared on the StarTalk YouTube channel, laying down the facts in an effort to quash the continuing conspiracy theory.
The theory behind a flat earth basically states that our green and blue planet is actually a flat disk surrounded by ice, although there are many variation such as the idea that the ‘flat earth’ is covered by a clear dome.
The theory is a pseudoscience that is outdated and has been disproven.
However, fact and truth never stopped anyone and as we know the theory continues today, with a subscriber to this belief known as a ‘flat earther’ who make their judgements based on senses and observations rather than cold hard science.
The theory also normally comes with a good helping of scepticism towards the world’s leading scientific organisations, like NASA, as well as governments who are allegedly all in cahoots to brainwash people into believing the terrible truth that world is not actually a big old ball.
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Even Tyson is struggling to come to terms with the fact people still believe the theory in 2024.
He said: “What is odd, is there are people who think Earth is flat but recognise that the Moon is round, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and the sun are all spheres.
“But Earth is flat. Something doesn’t square.”
The astrophysicist said that the laws of physics and processes in space ‘favour the sphere and that most observable things in our universe are spheres, rarely appearing flattened.
He said: “And if something is not a sphere and is a little flattened, you can ask what flattened it, and you find out it’s rotating real fast.
“So then it gets a little flattened because of that. So almost everything in the universe is either a sphere or light distortion of a sphere, for some other things happening to it.
“We can just see how the universe favours spheres.”
Despite many of the positives, Tyson raised some of the issues that come with free speech as well as the lack of good education that had allowed this theory to continue.
He shut down the flat earthers with one simple response.
He said: “We have video from space of the rotating, spherical Earth. The Earth is round.”
Tyson highlighted the need for greater critical thinking to be taught in schools.
“Our system needs to train you not only what to know, but how to think about information and knowledge and evidence,” he explained.
“If you don’t have that kind of training you would run around and believe anything.”
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