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Brian Cox was challenged to sum up science in two minutes and did it in one tweet

240 characters of sheer knowledge

Brian Cox was challenged to sum up science in two minutes and did it in one tweet
08 November 2018

Brian Cox, the floppy-haired, perma-smiling pop-star-turned-scientist-turned-telly-man, seems to have life pretty much worked out. He travels around the world handsomely saying “Wow” a lot, hangs out with interesting people all the time and is great at making jokes that feel like they require at least a couple of decent A-levels to totally understand but still seem like they’re probably pretty funny. That’s not a bad lifestyle really. 

Plus he was once named as one of People Magazine’s 50 Sexiest Men Alive. That’s probably above the PhD on his CV.

He was recently challenged on Twitter to sum up all of science in two minutes - this was in response to a video that summed the Bible up similarly briefly. 

Rather than taking a full, ridiculously-lengthy 120 seconds, Cox responded by summing up all of science in just one tweet, writing:

“No experiment can tell us whether we are moving. The speed of light is a universal constant. Things fall at the same rate under gravity. There are atoms and they emit light of particular colours. The nucleus of an atom sometimes decays into a different element. That’s it really.”

That’s… pretty comprehensive, for a tweet. It doesn’t answer every question we might have about science (How do you make a Frankenstein? Is Blu-Tack a solid or a liquid? Is the moon made of cheese? It is isn’t it) but does pretty dang well, with room to embed the tweet that spurred it. That’s efficient as all hell.

He was also on hand to clarify a few questions that the general public had:

He was also big enough to admit that he hadn’t quite nailed everything

But there was even time for a classic gag from one of his followers:

LESS OF THE ARGUING AND MORE OF THIS ON TWITTER PLEASE EVERYONE. THANKS!

(Pic: Getty)