‘It was like something out of Jaws’: Sir David Attenborough’s film crew are attacked by tiger sharks in terrifying ordeal while filming for Our Planet II, director reveals

• Sharks attack crew in seas around Laysan in Northwestern Hawaiian Islands
• Crew were in inflatable boats and had to make an emergency landing on sand

By Mark Duell

Published: 08:42 EDT, 15 June 2023 | Updated: 09:41 EDT, 15 June 2023

Life on Mars… but only for four years: Red Planet ‘too dangerous’ for humans to survive on for prolonged mission

• Scientists say if humans spend longer than 4 years the radiation becomes unsafe

By Milo Pope

Updated: 10:11 EDT, 3 June 2023

Members of the infamous Flat Earth Society are steadfast in their opinion that our planet is a disc, and that naysaying astronauts have been ‘bribed’ or are ‘mistaken’.

But a team of scientists from the University of Zurich is inviting them to disprove their latest statistical model, which shows (yet again!) that the Earth is indeed round.

The model predicts the time it takes to fly between two cities after inputting the distance between them.

It shows that if you fly north from Perth, Australia for seven hours, you’ll land in Hong Kong, while a westbound flight of the same length would see you land in Mauritius.

However, if the Earth were flat, that seven-hour westbound flight would only get you half the way to Mauritius.

‘It was important for us not to favor a model a priori, but to find a relatively simple method to prove whether the Earth is a disc or not,’ said study author Dr Michael Wolf.

For the last 50 years, we’ve been able to view pictures of the Earth from space, which might seem like all the proof you need to see that our planet is in fact round.

But the awareness of how easily images can be doctored and the growth of internet conspiracy theories appears to have fuelled a resurgence of belief in a flat Earth.

Those who subscribe to the flat Earth model believe that the Earth is a disc, with the North Pole at the centre and Antarctica stretching around along the edge.

Lines of longitudes are represented as spokes going outwards from the center, and lines of latitude are concentric circles.

This differs from the spherical Earth model, where lines of longitude connect the north and south poles vertically, while lines of latitude run horizontally around the globe.

One of the best documented methods for determining the Earth’s roundness is thought to have been first performed 2,000 years ago by the ancient Greeks.

They put sticks in the ground in different locations hundreds of miles apart, and compared the shadows they cast at the same time during the day.

They found that when the sun was directly overhead in one place there was no shadow, but at exactly the same time at the other location there was one.

If the Earth were flat then both sticks should show the same shadow, or lack of, because they would be positioned at the same angle towards the sun.

The ancient Greeks found the shadows were different because the Earth was curved and so the sticks were at different angles.

They then used the difference in these angles to calculate the circumference of the Earth, and managed to get it within 10 per cent of the value known to be true today.

For the new study, published as a working paper by the Social Science Research Network, the Switzerland-based team wanted to find another way to check if this was correct.

Dr Wolf said: ‘Statistics is the ideal method for answering a number of controversial questions. 

‘It is a purely mathematical science and does not depend on basic physical assumptions or ideological paradigms.’

He adds that many of the proofs relied upon by the Spherical Earth model are not accessible to the lay person, so the emergence of conspiracy theories is not surprising.

The distances between two cities on a line of longitude – like Perth, Australia and Hong Kong, China – are the same whether you believe the Earth is a globe or a disc.

Plus, the time it takes to fly between two cities is indisputable, regardless of beliefs.  

The team therefore created a model that, when given a distance between two cities on a line of longitude, gives the correct flight time.

Next, they inputted the distance between two cities along an east-west line, like Perth and Port Louis, Mauritius.

Due to how the Flat Earth and Spherical Earth models interpret the shape of the planet, they both give different values for the distance between these cities. 

But the statistical model only gave the correct flight time for between two cities on an east-west line when the Spherical Earth distance was inputted.

This therefore serves as a proof that the Earth is indeed round.

The authors wrote: ‘If the Earth was flat, Perth–Mauritius should take twice as long as Perth–Hong Kong, which it does not. 

‘The fundamental contradiction is that, under the flat-Earth model, flight durations observed on an East-West axis far away from the North Pole are incompatible with flight durations observed on a North-South axis.’

Dr Wolf added: ‘The really amazing thing about this method, however, is that it can be used not only to prove that the Earth isn’t a disc (i.e. that there is a curvature), but also to determine the value of the curvature.’ 

According to the Spherical Earth model – determined by physical measurements and unattainably complex calculations – the planet has a curvature of π/20,000 km.

The research team used the indisputable flight times between cities on an east-west line to get a value almost identical to this from a similar model to their first one. 

Dr Wolf said: ‘It is the first time that the value of the Earth’s curvature could be determined using a method that makes do with high school mathematics knowledge, classical statistical tools and publicly available data.’

Saturn has been confirmed to have more than 100 moons, meaning it may have the most of any planet in the solar system.

The planet has overtaken Jupiter, which has only 95 moons, according to the University of British Columbia.

The International Astronomical Union, which has the final say on orbiting bodies, agrees that 28 ‘moons’ can now be added to Saturn’s haul, bringing its total to 117.

As the largest planets in the solar system, Saturn and Jupiter have so many moons because their mass creates enough gravitational pull to drag space rocks rotating the sun into their own orbit.

But, to be absolutely sure they have extra moons, objects must be tracked for several years before they can be designated as definitely orbiting the planet.

The University of British Columbia says it has recorded 62 new moons around Saturn, catapulting the planet back into first place in the Solar System’s ‘moon race’.

However some astronomers take issue with relatively small lumps of rock being classified as moons alongside enormous moons like Jupiter’s Ganymede, which is larger than the entire planet of Mercury, at more than 1,600 miles in diameter.

Gareth Williams, who recently retired from the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Centre, said: ‘Saturn’s new moons have certainly been discovered, and they are certainly confirmed, so their reality is not in doubt and they are definitely Saturnian satellites.

‘But Roman numerals, given to moons which are often named after Roman, Norse and Inuit gods, are not assigned immediately.

‘That happens after the object has been seen several times over a number of years, and the resulting orbit can be used to predict the future motion of the moon.’

Space expert Professor David Rothery, from the Open University, said: ‘Surveys by powerful telescopes, on the ground or in space, are finding additional small moons all the time at both Jupiter and Saturn.

‘These are mostly kilometre-size chunks of comet or asteroid that were long ago captured into orbit by the strong gravity of the giant planet.

‘They are not the spectacular world-sized moons with internal oceans like Europa and Enceladus.

‘We will probably never know for sure which out of Jupiter and Saturn really has the most moons, because the harder we look, the more we find, and there is no agreement on the lower size limit that a piece of debris orbiting a planet must have before you can call it a moon.’

It comes as a study has concluded Saturn’s rings are no more than 400 million years old – much younger than the planet which formed more than four billion years ago.

Researchers used data gathered from Nasa spacecraft Cassini, which was destroyed via a controlled crash in 2017, on the later of cosmic dust which has built up around the planet’s rings, and can therefore indicate their age, like telling how old a house is by running your finger along its surfaces.