

Gravity satellite yields 'Potato Earth' view - JacobAldridge
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12911806

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JonnieCache
As xkcd points out, this kinda makes a mockery of the pole vault. Certainly at
the olympic level anyway.

<http://xkcd.com/852/>

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Deestan
Of the world record, at least. The actual olympic competitions are still
valid.

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d2
This also proves that it's not McDonalds fault.

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westbywest
Looks like there is a patch of substantially reduced gravity near Sri Lanka. I
wonder if India has already taken this into account for the launch pads at the
Satish Dhawan Space Centre.

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tricky
So, does that mean i live "longer" if I stay in a city that has less gravity?
With the right kind of advertising, it looks like India's real estate could go
through the roof.

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oozcitak
Also see GRACE (launched in 2002), which measures the time variation in
Earth's gravity field, albeit with a much lower spatial resolution than GOCE:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Recovery_and_Climate_Ex...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Recovery_and_Climate_Experiment)

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mturmon
And GRAIL, to be launched September of this year, which will do the same thing
for the interior of the Moon:

<http://moon.mit.edu/>

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loganlinn
I'm curious as to why stronger gravity areas are portrayed by outward growth
(aka growth in the opposite direction of gravity) and not inward to portray
compression. Is this a common representation or might it be to improve the
potato-effect?

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adambard
I believe the elevation of each point relative to the center represents the
distance that one would have to be from earth's centroid to experience the
same gravitational acceleration (relative to some baseline, presumably an
average).

So, if you're in a stronger-than-average gravity spot, you move away from the
centre until you are experiencing the same gravitational force.

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ChrisCooper
Personally, I like the explanation they gave in the article: "It is the shape
the oceans would adopt if there were no winds, no currents and no tides ...
magnified nearly 10,000 times".

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hansy
It would be nice if the article gave analogies to the varying effects of
gravity depending on your location in the world (e.g. jumping up and down on
the north pole would be like jumping up and down in North America with a 5
pound brick attached to your shoes.)

At least for humans, it would be fascinating to learn if evolutionary
discrepancies among different people across the world can be attributed to
differing gravitational effects.

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Seth_Kriticos
They emphased the data with a factor of 10.000 to get the differences through,
so I'd guesstimate the weight in the ballpark of a gram (0,0022 pound nugget).

As for what it's good for, the article has a good example: "Now, with Goce, we
can unify this so that we don't get the sort of surprises we had when they
built the Channel Tunnel and discovered a half-metre offset between the UK and
France."

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ck2
Wow so I could lose some weight just by traveling to... hmm, any desirable
locations to visit?

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VladRussian
but you'll live less (faster) as less gravity speeds the time up

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javert
Come on, BBC.

 _It looks like a giant potato in space._

Really? A giant potato?

 _Scientists say the data gathered by the super-sleek space probe_

Ooh, super-sleek! But is it shiny?

(other than that, very interesting article.)

