Neil deGrasse Tyson has never been a man to mince his words. He's one of the smartest guys in the United States, an astrophysicist and not someone to be taken on lightly in a battle of wits.
There are one group of people, lurking in the corners of the internet, who are always up for the argument, however: Flat-Earthers.
The growing group of common sense deniers that populate online forums promulgating the idea that the world is a huge disc are the bane of proper scientists, and Neil deGrasse Tyson has taken it upon himself to slap them down in hilarious style.
Speaking on StarTalk, a podcast hosted by comedian and space enthusiast Chuck Nice's YouTube channel, deGrasse Tyson said: "For me, the fact that there's a rise of Flat-Earthers is evidence of two things. One, we live in a country that protects free speech. And, two, we live in a country with a failed educational system."
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"Our system needs to train you not only what to know but how to think about information and knowledge and evidence. If we don't have that kind of training, you'd run around believing anything.
"It wasn't until Francis Bacon, Galileo, and the 1600s that if you're going to say something, and what you think you are saying is true, no matter how obvious you think it is, then you need to test it. There could be something fooling you in one way or another."
It isn't the first time that the doyen of American astrophysicists has waded into this debate.
A few years ago, he took to Twitter to slap down noted Flat-Earther and rapper B.o.B.
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B.o.B. had been known to tweet regularly about how the world was flat.
"No matter how high in elevation you are... the horizon is always eye level, sorry cadets, I didn't wanna believe it either," the rapper once posted, followed by: "Don't believe what I say, research what I say. I'm going up against the greatest liars in history... you've been tremendously deceived."
He later cast aspersions on the curvature of the Earth by claiming that he could see Manhattan skyscrapers from 60 miles away, clearly proving that the Earth wasn't round.
Cue deGrasse, who answered him with a tweet reading "Earth's curve indeed blocks 150 (not 170) ft of Manhattan. But most buildings in midtown are waaay taller than that."
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End result: B.o.B. is a bit thick, Neil deGrasse Tyson is really, really smart. But we kinda knew that already.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: Science, News, Flat-earth, Interesting