Hacker News Reader

I think you're talking about different things. It's true, the Earth is substantially non-spherical. But things like mountains are tiny irregularities on a smooth (not-perfectly-spherical) surface.

View on HN

A better way to talk about this is something like: given a globe of Earth, say a 50cm diameter one, finished with plate Bristol paper, the texture of the surface would not be as smooth as a perfect model of Earth at that scale.

If I remember correctly, the term is ‘rugosity’. Hah, yup! [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugosity]

No the dominant deformation on earth is that it is flattened at the poles and bulges at the equator. This is because of axial momentum and makes the earth an oblate spheroid.

If you stand at sea level at a pole you are much closer to the center of the earth than if you stand at sea level at the equator.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com