The Galaxy is fraught with many questions, but the shape of the Earth does not cause any doubts. 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 for centuries in the complex confrontation of religion and science. Today, every elementary school student will be able to answer absolutely correctly this question.
The history of the formation of modern information about the Earth
A lot has been argued about what shape of the Earth is true throughout the entire history of the development of natural science knowledge. Homer assumed that our planet had the form of a circle, and Anaximander argued that it looked like a cylinder. Probably everyone remembers vivid pictures from the 5th grade atlas, where the shape of the Earth looks like a disk and rests on a turtle that rests on three elephants, etc. There were even some assumptions that our planet in the form of a boat floats along the boundless the ocean or rises above it in the form of the highest mountain!
Different versions of the motion of the earth
Not only the question of the shape of our home planet, but also the version of the Earth’s movement underwent many changes in the history of civilization. At the end of the 19th century, it was believed that the Earth was generally completely motionless. Then, official science began to take the view that the sun was moving around our planet, and not vice versa. In a society of different times, such a topic as the shape and movement of the earth worried the minds of not only scientists. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain the brutal execution of D. Bruno, whose opinion about the motion of the Earth at that time differed from generally accepted judgment. Unfortunately, official science was not always based on advanced discoveries, but preferred reliable paths trodden by religious beliefs. The first encyclopedist who expressed a truly true hypothesis about the motion 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, an ellipsoid with the exact size of the planet bears its name. The shape of the Earth really looks like a ball flattened in the region of the poles, and the difference in radii - equatorial and pole - is 21 kilometers. This figure has remained constant since 1936.
Conclusion
Well, to be 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 Earth model. A geoid, like our planet, has hollows and elevations. Also by A.A. Ivanov, a Russian scientist, the hemisphere of the Earth does 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 room there is a globe familiar to everyone, according to which we study the secrets of the Earth.