NASA scientist gives brutal take down of flat earthers with one simple statement

A chief scientist at NASA has debunked the flat earth theory with a simple history lesson.

In a new video, Dr James Garvin, chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center was asked how we know the Earth isn’t flat.

He referred to great mariners such as England’s Sir Francis Drake and Portugal’s Ferdinand Magellan who explored the Earth by ships from the 16th Century and points out that they set off because they knew the Earth was round and would allow them to go across one ocean and come back home the other way.

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Dr Garvin, a planetary geosciences graduate from Brown University, said: “They made the first orbit of Earth by sea.

“If the Earth were flat, they would have sailed off the end.”

But knowledge of the Earth being round was discovered much earlier than that – more than 2,000 years ago in fact.

It was Greek philosopher Pythagoras who proposed the Earth was round about 500 BC but it wasn’t until 350 BC that Aristotle declared the planet was a sphere.

This was based on observations he had made about which constellation you could see in the sky as you travelled further and further away from the equator.

Dr Garvin said: “This was a magical revelation for the Greeks and the Egyptians, who were able to see from the motions of the stars and the way the sun moved.

“They took that information and it extended into the time of the great mariners that explored our Earth by ships.”

Since then advancements in technology have further confirmed the Earth’s shape and astronauts have been able to witness with their own eyes the curvature of the Earth.

Dr Garvin said: “At the dawn of the space age, in the late 50s and 60s, we were able to see for ourselves that our beautiful home is a gorgeous round object known as a sphere.

“And that was really special – it put ourselves into context of our solar system and our universe.”

There’s also no denying the fact that the sun sets at different times in different locations.

If the Earth were flat, then shadows would be the same length, regardless of location.

Recently, a famous Flat Earther YouTuber Jeran Campanella saw the sun doesn’t set in Antarctica’s summer – debunking the belief that Antarctica is an ice wall around the edge of a Flat Earth where the sun always dips in and out of view.

Finally, Dr Garvin also points to the other bodies in our solar system that are similarly spherical – moons, planets and even our sun.

He added: “We have a big round sun and a beautiful round Earth and a round Mars.

“The roundness of our solar system and our universe is a special thing and we should embrace that as we understand why our planet isn’t flat.”

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