The answer wasn’t obvious to me
You would think factual science, even physics, explains the shape of our planet (and there is some science that I’m gonna explain in a moment)
But when I read the following, it dawned on me
It’s pure psychology
The earth is round because it couldn’t handle the pressure of being edgy anymore
Having an edge means standing out
To stand out is when you’re different from most folks
And do you know how tiring it is to be the weird guy all the time?
Because you get comments like:
"Oh, you must have a jolly good time just being yourself"
What the F**K
No, I don’t
But I also wouldn’t want it any other way
Because the alternative would be a boring life, a life as flat as Keira Knightley
Scientifically speaking when people on a planet have a life as flat as Keira then flat earth theory is correct
Because how people are shaping their lives directly informs the shape of our planet
But if however people have a life as volumptuous as the curves of Beyoncé then maybe we have to revisit flat earth theory again, maybe
Which is why this planetary self-help program comes in handy
At Thicc Theory™ we believe earth needs more Beyoncés to keep our mother round
Imagine a planet without hills and mountains
A planet with just a couple of Keira bumps on the road and then nothing
We need drama in our life, is what Kurt Vonnegut says [1]
And so does earth
But no curves no drama
Ask curvy women
They know
(I do)
So, for $10/month, you get the curves you want, the earth can keep doing rounds, and we keep the drama we crave
Enter code "CURVY50" at checkout for 50% off for the next 1,000 purchases
Buy now or stay flat FOREVER
Your choice
But seriously —
Even though the Earth looks round at first glance, it’s not quite spherical in shape.
It’s flatter at the poles in the north and south than at the equator — the part that divides the Earth into a northern and southern hemisphere.
That’s why the Earth looks a bit bald at the poles and has a tiny belly at the equator.
But where did the belly at the equator come from?
Good question.
Let’s see what actual physics and astronomy say:
Mr. Gravity and Mrs. Bing-Bong.
Sorry, I meant Big Bang — that one supermassive shock moment that brought everything into existence (unless you believe our Creator did).
Anyway.
After Big Bang, we’ve had planets and our solar system.
The Earth was formed.
And since then our planet has been rotating in a certain orbit around the Sun.
This orbit is almost round, it has the form of an ellipse or a compressed circle.
The fact that the Earth keeps the orbit around the sun evenly is due to the mutual attraction of the celestial bodies.
Instead of attraction you could also say "gravitation" or "gravity".
But what is gravity for f*ck’s sake?
Glad you asked.
Gravity determines not only the orbit of the Earth around the Sun or of the Moon around the Earth, but also, for example, the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe.
Gravity is one of the four basic forces of physics and it causes all particles of the Earth to be pulled towards the center.
The shape where the attraction to the center works best is the sphere.
You gotta imagine, when the Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago, the freshly born Earth was hot and liquid.
However, gravity was already at work then too, which is why all massive objects attracted each other.
This allowed the Earth material to flow into the shape that gravity dictated.
If a piece of Earth material moved further out, it was attracted by the rest until the surface was smooth and until the same gravity was acting in all places.
Since the force of gravity is the same in all directions, the shape of a sphere was automatically created, because only in a sphere are all points on its surface equidistant from the center of gravity.
Earth’s surface is, therefore, everywhere equally far away from the Earth’s center of gravity—almost everywhere on the Earth.
Because we still don’t know why the Earth is not completely round, but a little bit more curved outward at the equator than at the two poles.
The reason for the curved or convex equator is the Earth’s rotation:
In the course of a day, within 24 hours, the Earth rotates once around its axis.
This rotation creates a force called centrifugal force.
You know the centrifugal force from a swing ride; when you are pulled outward in the swings and more or less fly away.
With the Earth, the centrifugal force causes the rock masses to slide outward a bit from the axis of rotation, that is, from the poles towards the equator.
There, at the equator, the diameter of the Earth is about 42 kilometers larger than between the north and south poles.
That’s why the Earth has a belly at the equator and is not completely round.
That’s it.
You learned today:
* The Earth is round because of gravity.
* Gravity goes out from the interior of the Earth, because all particles feel almost magically attracted to the Earth’s center.
* The Earth is not round, but rather elliptically formed, because the Earth turns around itself within one day, whereby centrifugal force develops and rock masses slip a little from the two poles to the equator-because notice: the Earth is a ball made out of rocks and in the Earth’ interior it is still infernally hot.
That’s all you need to know.
So if it all was too long for you, just remember:
The Earth is round because gravity pulls equally from all sides toward the center.
Which is exactly what happens when you open Twitter.
And if this was insightful and you laughed at least once, you extended your life expectancy by the duration of your laughter.
I recommend you laugh longer next time and collect your Longevity Points → longlife.lol — unless you wanna die.
And if you had an aha moment because you learned something that’s at least 3 quarters of a haha, not bad!
Next time you go from aha to haha
And next time you won’t miss your new daily dose of laughter
So get on my email list for daily laughs
Until then...
DON’T DIE
LOL4LIFE
@bryan_johnson is cool
Footnotes:
[1]: sive.rs/drama