Noah’s Ark could have floated even with every land animal on the planet packed inside it, according to a bright Bury St Edmunds student.

Ben Jordan was part of a group of masters students at Leicester University who calculated the Ark’s buoyancy with the weight of 70,000 animals aboard, using the dimensions of the Ark as described in The Bible.

The group’s work has since been seized on by the national press, but it is not the first time the talented 21-year-old’s quirky approach to physics has made the headlines, having previously helped publish a paper about the dangers of space debris to coincide with the release of the film Gravity.

The former County Upper School student is due to finish his four-year Masters degree this year and go on to a PhD at University College London.

He said: “The module is quite good fun – taking slightly more interesting problems and applying some physics.”