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The equatorial radius is often used to compare Earth with other planets. The Earth's polar radius b, or semi-minor axis: 11 is the distance from its center to the North and South Poles, and equals 6,356.7523 km (3,949.9028 mi). Location-dependent radii Three different radii as a function of Earth's latitude.
Measured around the equator, it is 40,075.017 km (24,901.461 mi). Measured passing through the poles, the circumference is 40,007.863 km (24,859.734 mi). [1] Measurement of Earth's circumference has been important to navigation since ancient times. The first known scientific measurement and calculation was done by Eratosthenes, by comparing ...
The Earth's radius is the distance from Earth's center to its surface, about 6,371 km (3,959 mi). While "radius" normally is a characteristic of perfect spheres, the Earth deviates from spherical by only a third of a percent, sufficiently close to treat it as a sphere in many contexts and justifying the term "the radius of the Earth".
An Earth ellipsoid or Earth spheroid is a mathematical figure approximating the Earth's form, used as a reference frame for computations in geodesy, astronomy, and the geosciences. Various different ellipsoids have been used as approximations. It is a spheroid (an ellipsoid of revolution) whose minor axis (shorter diameter), which connects the ...
Earth is rounded into an ellipsoid with a circumference of about 40,000 km. It is the densest planet in the Solar System. Of the four rocky planets, it is the largest and most massive. Earth is about eight light-minutes away from the Sun and orbits it, taking a year (about 365.25 days) to complete one revolution.
The transition between the inner core and outer core is located approximately 5,150 km (3,200 mi) beneath Earth's surface. Earth's inner core is the innermost geologic layer of the planet Earth. It is primarily a solid ball with a radius of about 1,220 km (760 mi), which is about 19% of Earth's radius [0.7% of volume] or 70% of the Moon's radius.
Aristarchus of Samos. Eratosthenes ( c. 276 – c. 194/195 BC ), a Greek mathematician who calculated the circumference of the Earth and also the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Hipparchus ( c. 190 – c. 120 BC ), a Greek mathematician who measured the radii of the Sun and the Moon as well as their distances from the Earth.
The gravity g′ at depth d is given by g′ = g(1 − d/R) where g is acceleration due to gravity on the surface of the Earth, d is depth and R is the radius of the Earth. If the density decreased linearly with increasing radius from a density ρ 0 at the center to ρ 1 at the surface, then ρ(r) = ρ 0 − (ρ 0 − ρ 1) r / R, and the ...