Why do people laugh at FLAT EARTHERS! (Part 2) (Patreon)

I never had high hopes for the scientific literacy of Flat Earthers….. but I didn’t expect them to be this bad!

The reason planets have atmosphere is simple. The gas molecules do not have escape velocity and so cannot leave. It can be a little more complicated than this with solar wind, and magnetic fields, but the main reason we have not yet lost our atmosphere is gravity!

Enter stage left our Flat Earther who insist that the above argument is wrong because…..’gases are not made up of solid bouncy balls’. In reality however, that’s ALMOST EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE!!!! The kinetic theory of gases was one of the earliest things to be hammered out in the infancy of the scientific endeavor, and it was done by some of the great names in scientific history, like Maxwell and Boltzman!  Well over 100 years later the kinetic theory of gases is a robust pillar in our scientific understanding of the universe.