• Question: why is the earth round?

    Asked by anon-199033 to Natasha, Alex on 11 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-198905.
    • Photo: Natasha Dowey

      Natasha Dowey answered on 11 Mar 2019:


      Put simply, the Earth really likes being round. As you’re trundling through space, gravitational forces are constantly trying to pull all of your mass into the most efficient shape possible, which is a sphere. When the Earth formed, it was created by the process of lots of chunks of space rock (planetismals) being pulled together by gravity, and as they bunched up, they became rounded.

      Although the Earth isn’t totally round- It bulges a little bit, because of the way it turns on it’s axis… and also, there are big mountains and valleys that make it pretty rough!

    • Photo: Alexander Allen

      Alexander Allen answered on 11 Mar 2019:


      So in space, objects are attracted together through gravity. The bigger the mass the more gravitational pull things have. When the earth formed, it formed from tiny pieces of dust and rock that crashed into each other and stuck together. The thing is though, there is no preference for the direction that things come from so all sides get coated equally.

      It’s like making a snowball. You can start with something not round but when you roll more snow from all different sides it becomes rounder and rounder. Then bigger balls hit bigger balls and they all combine to be bigger and bigger. Before you know it, it’s so round that you can’t tell it’s rough on the surface.

      Just one of those “interesting factoids” for you. If you magnified a snooker ball to the size of the earth, the hills and valleys on the ball would be much bigger than the hills and valleys on earth, we’re talking mountains bigger than Everest as common things… That’s how smooth and round the Earth is!

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