It’s the age-old question – well, more of just an old question, because anyone with a basic belief in science and/or has been on a plane knows otherwise, but – ‘Is the Earth flat?’ still buzzes on in the minds of sceptics across the (FLAT!) world.
One man who disagrees is our very own Brian Cox. The professor of particle physics was recently asked for his opinion of flat-earthers in an interview with Greg James and he didn’t disappoint.
Greg James asked the scientist what he thought of rapper and zero-hours conspiracist B.o.B in a segment called ‘Shouldn’t Be News’.
Cox told BBC Radio One:
A ‘flat-earther’ is a person who thinks the Earth is flat, and that is not right. It’s a sphere.
To his credit – again, I’m not going to defend what he thinks. It’s totally wrong – but that’s the heart of science.
If you want to prove something to yourself and you should do, that’s a good instinct, then that’s what you do. You get your money, build a rocket, go up into space and then you will find it is spherical. He has wasted all his money but he will have learned something.
So, please carry on, I’d like him to do that and publish his pictures. I’ll send him a tenner.
It comes as a bit of a slap in the face to ardent flat-earther Connor Murphy who recently disclosed why we don’t fall off the edge of the planet.
Connor, son of famous flat-earther Dave Murphy, spoke exclusively to UNILAD about NASA, the Sun, Photoshop and pretty much everything you’ve ever wanted to ask someone who thinks the reason you see the curvature of Earth from a plane is because the windows are round.
Watch the documentary here:
Speaking about why NASA and the government would lie about space travel, he said:
There are two good reasons in my opinion. One obvious reason would be money. The money raised by NASA alone since their inception is something like fifteen trillion dollars, and with that money they’ve really shown little for their work.
They’re releasing composite images and articles and telling you this is what’s happening, this is what we’re doing, and we spent seven hundred million dollars to get this photo of Pluto that we had to put together in Photoshop.
A second thing is to make people feel insignificant. It makes you feel like you’re an insignificant speck of dust and therefore you’re easy to control. Basically if you can imagine the globe squashed down with Antarctica instead of being its own continent, being the perimeter around the side. So a lot of people say that’s an ice wall. It’s more like a shelf or cliff.
And as for why we don’t fall of the edge of the world, he added:
Fall off into what, do you know what I’m saying? The way we see it is it’s an enclosed system.
There’s water above, there’s the firmament – or the dome – and there’s water above it and water below it and there’s no leaving it, there’s no finding other Suns and stuff. You can’t fall off the edge, essentially.
What about the curve of the Earth you can see when you fly? Conor said:
You cannot see curvature from a plane. The reason why it may seem is because of the way planes have to be designed. Every single window on a plane has to be round and curved because the cabin itself is curved.
You can’t have straight panes or they would explode and everyone with the plane would be done. Next time you’re on a plane, look out the window and at the wing, because the wing will seem to curve as well.
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Connor believes the only reason a lot of people find Flat Earth conspiracies a complete joke is because we’re taught to do so from a very early age.
He didn’t personally always believe the Earth was flat, but as he got older and delved into it he found there to be too many ‘inconsistencies with the model you’re taught at school’, he couldn’t ignore them anymore.
‘At one point,’ he finishes, ‘you have to make a decision on where you lie on it and I had to pick the Flat Earth.’
Astounding.
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