Neil deGrasse Tyson has set the record straight regarding his interaction with Terrance Howard, who claims the astrophysicist snubbed him years ago for proposing an alternate take on the established laws of science.
The Hustle & Flow star recently made an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, during which he recalled sending the 65-year-old an outline of his ideas and having them shut down in return.
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In a clip shared to his StarTalk channel on Thursday (June 13), the veteran scientist shared his side of the story while breaking down the actor and singer’s vision.
“Eight years ago, he sent me a 36-page treatise — so this is Terrance Howard attempting to reinvent mathematics and physics,” he said. “I actually spent time reading every line of all 36 pages […] I thought, out of respect for him, what I should do is give him my most informed critical analysis that I can. In my field, we call that a peer review.
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“What can happen is if you’re a fan of a subject, let’s say — a hobbyist, let’s call it — it’s possible to know enough about that subject to think you’re right, but not enough about that subject to know that you’re wrong, and so there’s this sort of valley of false confidence in there. This has been studied by others, and it’s called the Dunning–Krueger Effect. It’s the phenomenon where a little bit of knowledge [makes] you overassess how much of that subject you actually know.”
He went on to dissect said paper, which is titled “One Times One Equals Two.”
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“This is an ambitious work that is a clear indication of a restless, active mind,” the Cosmos presenter read aloud his feedback notes from years ago. “Within these pages, however, there are many assumptions and statements that are under-informed, misinformed or simply false, thereby compromising or nullifying many of the subsequent conclusions you have drawn.”
He then turned his attention to the following claim made by the Chicago native: “It can never occur, that the square root of a given number when added to itself is greater than the initial number squared? For that would expose a loose thread within a fabric of our Understanding.”
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After citing a number of examples to debunk the above statement, the Columbia University graduate added: “Science is about reproducibility. I can have the most brilliant, crazy, fun idea ever, and if I perform an experiment and no one else can duplicate that experiment, it belongs in the trash heap. It’s me in my own world.”
Check out the full video below:
Back in 2016, Tyson and B.o.B went back-and-forth after the latter tried making a case for the Earth being flat.
“This whole Flat Earth thing broke out and I just put out a few tweets to joust,” the scientist said during an interview on Sway In The Morning. “I made it clear that B.o.B could still be a great rapper — no one’s gonna take that away from him just because he was using four centuries old reasoning about the shape of the Earth.
“Then he did a diss track, and I said, ‘I don’t know if I know what a diss track is.’ So I call up my nephew and said, ‘What’s a diss track?’ I said, ‘Well, can you diss back? Is that allowed?’ Within four hours, my boy had a retaliation track. So I went back on Twitter and I said, ‘Although I’m an astrophysicist, I know some rappers, and one of them’s got my back.’ Then I posted it. Then I pulled out and I haven’t said anything to anybody until just now.”
He also gave a detailed explanation on why the Earth is in fact spherical, using the distance between the Marianas Trench and Mt. Everest as a metaphor.
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“[Earth] is a few miles wider at the equator than at the poles. If you shrunk Earth down to the size of a cue ball, it would be one of the smoothest, roundest cue balls ever made. That’s how round Earth is. The fact that I can tell you that it’s slightly wider at the equator is because we have very accurate tools to make that measurement. From the depths of the Marianas trench off of the coast of the Philippines, which is the deepest part of Earth’s crust, up to the top of Mt. Everest is like a dozen miles.
“You could drive that in 10 minutes basically doing the speed limit. The structure on Earth’s surface relative to the size of Earth’s surface is very mild. We think it’s large because we’re tiny compared to that. If you’re an ant, climbing up a stack of sheet of paper is a big effort for you. We’re ants on the surface of this terrain that we call Earth. But if you step back and look at the Earth, that sucker is as round as you’re gonna get.”
