Video: Why Earth looks like a potato in NASA’s new 3D visualization
Translated from French and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.
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Context piece
- NASA’s 3D geoid visualization maps variations in Earth’s gravity rather than showing the planet’s actual shape.
- Unevenly distributed mass in continents, mountains and seafloors creates areas where gravity attracts water into virtual rises and depressions.
- NASA exaggerated the relief 10,000 times, so Earth does not actually resemble a potato.
It looks like a strange, lumpy potato floating without a drop of water. But NASA’s new 3D image is not showing Earth’s real shape. It is showing its geoid, a model of the planet’s gravitational field.
The visualization maps how gravity varies from one place to another. If Earth were perfectly smooth, its oceans would form a regular sphere. In reality, the planet’s mass is distributed unevenly across continents, mountains and the ocean floor.
Denser areas exert a stronger pull on water, creating virtual bulges. Other areas appear as depressions. These differences are too subtle to see in their real proportions, so NASA dramatically enlarged the relief.
The agency exaggerated the variations 10,000 times. The result is an unusual image that makes invisible changes in Earth’s gravity visible, but it does not mean the planet is actually shaped like a potato.
About this summary
Originally published by Le Temps in French. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.
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