Ben van Kerkwyk

Distance and in time, given that it's this significant number that measures the amount of seconds in 12 hours, it also encodes geodetic data.

So the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, right?

We deviate from being a perfect sphere because – and this is, thank Christ, because it's like that rotation that – the oblate spheroid nature of the Earth that the –

um what's it called the the spin the um i won't die these the the spin motion of the earth essentially like these the like a dryer some reason i can't think of the word uh it's it's flattening our tops a little bit and we bulge a little bit at the center around the equator right

So it's like that spin force is making us bulge a bit.

So what it means is that if you measure the Earth this way, like north to south around and then east to west, it's going to be slightly longer east to west.

How slight?

I think it's something like 70 or 80 – no, 40 miles I think is the difference, something like that.

Maybe that's the radius difference.

But it's – I think, yeah, radius or diameter might be 30 or 40 miles difference.

It's just this – it is this slight equatorial bulge.

And what it means is that –

You know, when you draw latitude and longitude lines on the planet, and latitude being north-south and longitude being east-west, if you get down to the equator, now obviously the shapes of them change as you go up towards the poles, but the latitude lines are straight.

I saw this recently.

I don't know how accurate it is.

It says it's accurate.

That's Earth without water?

Without water.

That's nuts.

Yeah.