Professor Brian Cox shut down the Flat Earth with a brutally simple response, putting a nail in the coffin of the theory.
Flat Earth believers continue to exist despite literal photos from space showing our planet as the beautiful blue globe it is.
Even genuine photos of Earth taken from space are ignored.
And while it’s easy to ignore anonymous keyboard warriors, some celebrities have helped keep the theory alive, including ex-boxing champ Carl Froch, per the Daily Mail.
“I believe the Earth is flat, 100 percent,” Froch once declared.
He dismissed space imagery showing the planet’s curvature as “like cartoons” and added that he’d only believe in a round Earth “when someone like Richard Branson goes up there and starts doing chartered flights.”
But Professor Cox wasn’t having it.
“There is absolutely no basis at all for thinking the world is flat,” Cox said during a public Q&A a few years back. “Nobody in human history, as far as I know, has thought the world was flat.”
He continued: “The Greeks measured the radius of the Earth. I cannot conceive of a reason why anybody would think the world is flat.”
While Cox is normally the affable science guy you’d happily have explain black holes over a pint, his tolerance for Flat Earth nonsense hits zero fast.
“The very simple fact we've taken pictures of it. I'm lost for words, it's probably the most nonsensical suggestion that a thinking human being could possibly make,” he said.
Then came the mic drop: “It is drivel.”
Despite the overwhelming evidence (and, you know, physics), Flat Earth theory still manages to attract a following. Some proponents have even coined a term for the rest of us grounded in reality: “globeheads.”
But not everyone stays on the conspiracy train. Some former Flat Earthers have said that being able to observe the Earth from certain altitudes - or simply engage with real science - snapped them out of it.
Still, if you’re hoping to sell Brian Cox on the idea of a giant, flat disk floating through space under a dome, you’d better bring more than memes and Carl Froch quotes.
Because if there’s one thing Cox makes clear, it’s this: “I'm lost for words… It is drivel.”