Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Earth radius (denoted as R 🜨 or R E) is the distance from the center of Earth to a point on or near its surface. Approximating the figure of Earth by an Earth spheroid (an oblate ellipsoid), the radius ranges from a maximum (equatorial radius, denoted a) of nearly 6,378 km (3,963 mi) to a minimum (polar radius, denoted b) of nearly 6,357 km (3,950 mi).
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".
[88] [89] Earth's shape also has local topographic variations; the largest local variations, like the Mariana Trench (10,925 metres or 35,843 feet below local sea level), [90] shortens Earth's average radius by 0.17% and Mount Everest (8,848 metres or 29,029 feet above local sea level) lengthens it by 0.14%.
The square root appearing above can be eliminated for such applications as ordering locations by distance in a database query. On the other hand, some methods for computing nearest neighbors, such as the vantage-point tree , require that the distance metric obey the triangle inequality , in which case the square root must be retained.
The square root of 3 is the positive real number that, when multiplied by itself, gives the number 3. It is denoted mathematically as 3 {\textstyle {\sqrt {3}}} or 3 1 / 2 {\displaystyle 3^{1/2}} . It is more precisely called the principal square root of 3 to distinguish it from the negative number with the same property.
A data set which describes the global average of the Earth's surface curvature is called the mean Earth Ellipsoid. It refers to a theoretical coherence between the geographic latitude and the meridional curvature of the geoid. The latter is close to the mean sea level, and therefore an ideal Earth ellipsoid has the same volume as the geoid.
These proportionalities may be expressed by the formula: where g is the surface gravity of an object, expressed as a multiple of the Earth's, m is its mass, expressed as a multiple of the Earth's mass (5.976 × 10 24 kg) and r its radius, expressed as a multiple of the Earth's (mean) radius (6,371 km). [9]
This page was last edited on 9 November 2007, at 12:34 (UTC).; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may apply.