8 fascinating facts about Planet Earth

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!
(Image credit: ThinkStock/Comstock)

1. The Earth is not a perfect sphere. It's actually an oblate spheroid, thanks to a a slight equatorial bulge (the difference between the equatorial and polar diameters).

2. Gravity changes across the surface of the Earth — so dieters might want to avoid the poles, where you weigh 0.5 percent more than at the equator. This gravity disparity is largely due to that equatorial bulge creating non-uniform distances from points on the planet's surface to center of the Earth, and to the fact that the Earth spins.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.