Is gravity the same over the surface of the Earth? No — in some places you will feel slightly heavier than others.
The featured Earth map video shows in colors and exaggerated highs and lows where the gravitational field of Earth is relatively strong and weak. A low spot, where you would feel slightly lighter, can be seen just off the coast of India, in blue, while a relative high occurs in the mountains of Chile in South America.
The cause of these irregularities does not always follow present surface features. Scientists hypothesize that other important factors lie in deep underground structures in Earth's mantle and may be related to the Earth's appearance in the distant past.
The featured map was composed from data taken by NASA's twin GRACE satellites that orbited the Earth from 2002 to 2017. GRACE mapped Earth's gravity by carefully tracking tiny changes in the distance between the two satellites.
Credit: NASA, GSFC, GRACE, SVS
by Busy_Yesterday9455
34 Comments
This explains why I gain weight on vacation, thanks!
Not the same as…
It is because “on earth” is not precisely defined. You can be on a mountain on the equator or under the sea at the north pole.
And yes, the center of mass is most likely not at the mathematical and/or geographical center anyway
Its not that useful without the scale. I can guess the difference is less than .5% which is very low.
I said this decades ago when my friend peter was back home from college which was thousands of miles away and he kept missing his beer pong shots at a party and usually hes good so I said maybe the gravity is different here and everyone laughed and thought I was dumb but I was right
“Slightly” is pretty vague. Can we get at least an order of magnitude?
So that explains why i am short!
What is the percentage difference between the red and blue areas? Would be helpful to know
This is why in Metrology many high accuracy versions of standards use local gravity like deadweight pressure testers, high-precision weighing scales, force transducers, and gravimeters.
Also, nobody is going to actually feel slightly heavier. If you are talking about the most extreme difference across the planet you are talking slightly more than a pound difference. Altitude sickness would be what you would notice in the low gravity mountains.
I can see your mom from here!
This shows the visulaization of geoid relative to the ellipsoid. In short, geoid undulation.
You certainly don’t feel heavier. The difference is very slight.
So I’m not heavy, I’m just in the wrong country
“in some places you will feel slightly heavier than others.”
lol, no
Yoga float
damn chile has some chonk
This is like saying your feet age faster because they are moving slower
So I should go to the gym in those regions
That is not what the video shows. It shows the anomaly which is the difference between the gravity on an ellipsoid with homogenous density and actual gravity.
At the poles gravity is higher than at the equator. This would absolutely show up on that video if the video would display gravity.
Artificially accentuated curves—I’d say that fits the definition.
Because mass isn’t the same all over. Plus the earth is slightly squished so there’s more around the equator
Why not use the real shape of the earth with the same legend of coloring?
Example: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2010/04/Earth_Explorers_The_Earth_s_true_shape
It would also help why it affect the gravity at diferent place on the world.
Is it constant?
So why are indians than smaller than Europians while the earth is less pullig over there?
[https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260324.html](https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260324.html)
The world is so beautiful
Yes gravity is the same, it’s amplitude is not
Of course, it’s higher near OP’s mo… okay I’ll stop. 😅
But jokes aside, yeah I heard about this before but never saw it visualized. Fascinating stuff. Isn’t this how they essentially found where the KPg-impactor had to have come down?
Interesting that high gravity locations were found on high points of earth’s surface. The gravity equation would make one think it would be the other way around.
This is explained in Einsteins theory of general relativity. Along with Newton’s law (which is measured from earth center) this map seems backwards tho
Son
Seeing my obsessions for space and seismology intersect is always awesome.
For anyone interested, most of the big red/orange lines here are tectonic plate boundaries, which can be seen especially clearly in the case of the [convergent plate boundaries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_boundary), where one tectonic plate is being pushed into (and then often [under](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subduction)) another. More rocks in one place = more gravity
Isn’t this just a topographical representation? Yeah, no shit gravity fluctuates when so does the distance to the centre of the earth and the massive objects on the surface. It’s just not enough for anyone to notice.