• Question: why is the earth round?

    Asked by to Rory, Juan, Joe on 21 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by , colebrown.
    • Photo: Juan Carlos Lopez-Baez

      Juan Carlos Lopez-Baez answered on 21 Mar 2014:

      Hi @lolly1

      This has to do with the gravitational pull of the Earth. The gravitational pull comes from the core of the Earth and should pull everything around it in a similar way. The roundness is because a circle is the only shape that has the same distance from its centre to its edges (in mathematics this is called a radius), which is the reason why the Earth is round.

      HOWEVER (you know this however is important because I placed it in capital letters), the Earth is not a perfect circle. In fact it is wider in its centre (the Equator) and more pulled in in its poles. This is because, in fact, the gravitational pull is stronger in the poles than in the middle of the planet. This creates a round structure called an ellipsoid.

Comments