Ah, Earth. We may not think about our planet on a day-to-day basis, but the world we live in is a pretty interesting place. The third rock from the sun—and to this day, the only one with known intelligent life—there are plenty of fun Earth facts that we all learned from a young age. Still, there are even more fascinating facts about Earth most of us don’t know.Yes, we’ve all been taught that the Earth is not flat, but it may shock you to learn that it’s not perfectly spherical either. As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) points out, Earth spins while gravity pushes toward the center and a centrifugal force, perpendicular to Earth’s axis, pushes out. This results in a bit of a tilted shape—not a perfect sphere.That’s 40,075 kilometers and here’s how it works: According to Space.com, gravity is constantly pushing bodies of water and earth into a kind of “spare tire” shape (remember: not a perfect sphere).The surface of Earth is rocky and bumpy, so it can’t have an even gravitational field. It would, however, if it was perfectly spherical. Instead, Earth has lots of gravity anomalies—both positive and negative.
