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People Stunned To Discover The Earth Is Not Completely Round
Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock/BRIGHT SIDE/YouTube

People Stunned To Discover The Earth Is Not Completely Round

A bunch of people have been shocked to find out that the Earth isn't completely round.

It turns out that the Earth is not completely round and people are stunned to be making this discovery about the world we all live on.

In school, we're taught that the world we live on is completely round and how our lonely little blue marble orbits our sun in one tiny little part of the infinitely vast universe.

But now, people are finding out that the Earth isn't, in fact, completely round and they've been stunned to discover this.

Posting on TikTok, Holly Moffatt shared the revelation with the caption: "Like it makes sense but also makes absolutely no sense." Take a look below:

She shared images of the true shape of the Earth, which looks far more misshapen than the perfectly spherical images we're used to seeing of our planet.

The TikTok, which has been viewed almost seven million times, sent commenters into a spin with many freaking out.

While the images she was showing were exaggerated and not a perfect representation of what the Earth really looks like, but many were stunned to discover the world wasn't completely round.

According to NASA, the Earth is indeed mostly round, but rather than being a perfect circle, it's best described as an ellipsoid - which is basically a deformed sphere.

The rotational force of the Earth means both the North and South Poles are slightly flat, while our world is always changing shape as it spins around space.

Humans first worked out the world was round more than 2,000 years ago thanks to ancient Greek mathematician Eratosthenes, who used that mightiest of measuring tools, the stick.

He worked out from the shadow cast by his stick at noon that the surface of the Earth was round, as in a city south of where he lived the sun was directly overhead and cast no shadows at noon.

To be fair, the Earth was never going to be perfectly round considering that the surface of our planet isn't entirely smooth, we've got hills, mountains and seas to jumble things up.

While the Earth isn't a perfect circle it is still round, if a little squashed and smooth in some places.
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In short, the Earth is still pretty round in the same way that an incredibly spherical potato could accurately be described as round even if it has a few tiny bumps or slightly flatter parts.

While that potato might not be a perfect circle nobody would be calling you out as wrong for saying it was still round, except maybe for whatever the potato equivalent of the Flat Earth Society is.

If they exist they're probably some kind of crisp fan club.

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Topics: Science, TikTok