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Is the earth a ball or a sphere

Earth

The Earth isn’t flat, that’s for sure. And if you look at a photograph, the Earth really looks round. But how round is it?

The actual shape of the Earth is actually an oblate spheroid – a sphere with a bulge around the equator. The Earth is bulged at its equator because it’s rapidly rotating on its axis. The centripetal force of the rotation causes the regions at the equator to bulge outward. And it actually makes a pretty big difference. The diameter of the Earth, measured across the equator is 43 km more than when you measure the diameter of the Earth from pole to pole.




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