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Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson Destroy B.o.B’s Flat Earth Theory With The Most Epic Mic Drop

By Lawrence Arboleda
Published on: 18:31 PST, Jan 28, 2016

Beloved astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson just literally dropped the mic on rapper B.o.B Wednesday night following the latter’s insistence at convincing the entire world via Twitter that the Earth is flat, the Huffington Post reported.

The war of words between Tyson and B.o.B started Monday, when the rapper took to Twitter to show his hatred for science, most particularly NASA, telling everybody that the entirety of humanity had been fooled into thinking that the Earth is shaped like an oblate spheroid. Neil, however, corrected him on Twitter with some fast facts.

One of B.o.B’s tweets pointed out that one shouldn’t be able to see the North Star from the Southern hemisphere. Neil explained that the North Star is gone from view once you go further South of the equator.

The 27-year-old rapper released “Flatline,” a three-minute track that tries to prove that the world is a flat surface, to get back at Tyson. Neil responded to B.o.B with his own diss track, “Flat to Fact.”

Neil, however, was having none of it. On Wednesday’s episode of The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, he answered Larry’s call for help (via the “Science panic button”) by entering the scene while eating a sandwich. After handing the sandwich to Larry (much to the audience’s delight), Neil decimated B.o.B with scientific explanations that prove without a shadow of a doubt that the Earth is not flat.

“Listen B.o.B, once and for all. The Earth looks flat because, one, you’re not far enough away, at your size,” Tyson said. “Two, your size isn’t large enough relative to Earth to notice any curvature at all. It’s a fundamental fact of calculus and non-Euclidean geometry — small sections of large curved surfaces will always look flat to little creatures that crawl upon it.”

While Neil deGrasse Tyson conceded that the Aeroplanes rapper has the inalienable right to his opinions and the freedom to express them, he explained how his influence in the media can cause harm to the society at large.

“There’s a growing anti-intellectual strain in this country, and it may be the beginning of the end of our informed democracy.

“Of course, in a free society, you can and should think whatever you want. If you want to think the world is flat, go right ahead. But if you think the world is flat, and you have influence over others – as would successful rappers or even presidential candidates – then being wrong becomes being harmful to the health, the wealth and the security of our citizenry.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson also explained how humanity has benefited from science since the Stone Age, even quoting Isaac Newton’s in the process to prove his point.

“Discovery and exploration got us out of the caves, and each generation benefits from what previous generations have learned. Isaac Newton, my man, said, ‘If I have seen farther than others, it’s by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ So that’s right B.o.B., when you stand on the shoulders of those who came before, you might just see far enough to realize the Earth isn’t f—–g flat.””

The coup de grace in Tyson’s short but powerful lecture couldn’t be more poignant, as he literally dropped the mic to the floor to make his case.

“And by the way, this is called gravity,” Tyson said, before dropping the mic on the floor and making his exit.

Meanwhile, B.O.B hasn’t responded yet to Tyson’s latest rebuttal. As of this writing, his latest tweet shows a photo of himself smiling to the camera while raising a glass. He captioned the photo, “just took my meds.”

[Photo by Comedy Central/YouTube]

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