The Galaxy is fraught with many questions, but no one doubts the shape of the Earth. Our planet has the shape of an ellipsoid, that is, an ordinary ball, but only slightly flattened in the region of the poles: South and North. Such an idea of the planet Earth has been formed over the centuries in a complex confrontation between religion and science. Today, every elementary school student will be able to answer this question absolutely correctly.
The history of the formation of modern information about the Earth
About what form of the Earth corresponds to reality, argued a lot throughout the history of the development of natural sciences. Homer suggested that our planet looks like a circle, and Anaximander argued that it looks like a cylinder. Probably, everyone remembers the bright pictures from the 5th grade atlas, where the shape of the Earth looks like a disk and rests on a turtle, which relies on three elephants, etc. Once there were even suggestions that our planet was inin the form of a boat floats on the boundless ocean or rises above it in the form of the highest mountain!
Different versions of the Earth's motion
Not only the question of the shape of our home planet, but also the versions about the movement of the Earth have undergone many changes in the history of civilization. At the end of the 19th century, it was believed that the Earth was absolutely motionless in general. Then official science began to adhere to the opinion that the Sun moves around our planet, and not vice versa. In the society of different times, such a topic as the shape and movement of the earth excited the minds of not only scientists. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain the cruel execution of D. Bruno, whose opinion about the motion of the Earth at that time differed from the generally accepted opinion. Unfortunately, official science did not always rely on advanced discoveries, but preferred reliable paths trodden by religious beliefs. The first encyclopedist who expressed a really correct hypothesis about the movement of our planet around the Sun, and not vice versa, was the Pole N. Copernicus.
Modern discoveries
F. Bessel, the German scientist who was the first to calculate the Earth's compression radius at the poles, came closest to the truth. These figures were obtained in the 19th century and remained unchanged for hundreds of years. Only in the 20th century F. N. Krasovsky, a Soviet scientist, published new information that was much more accurate than the figures obtained earlier by his predecessor. Since then, the ellipsoid with the exact dimensions of the planet bears its name. The shape of the Earth really has the form of a ball, flattened at the poles, and the difference in radii -equatorial and polar - is 21 kilometers. This figure has remained constant since 1936.
Conclusion
Well, to be even more precise, according to the latest scientific data, the shape of the Earth is a geoid. This is the most accurate figure, which is closest to the true model of the Earth. The geoid, like our planet, has depressions and elevations. Also, according to the studies of A. A. Ivanov, a Russian scientist, the hemispheres of the Earth do not have symmetry, and the equator is an ellipse, not a circle. This is how science develops, and who knows what else we will learn about our home planet in 100 years? In the meantime, in every school office there is a globe familiar to everyone, by which we study the secrets of the Earth.
