When we’re told about newly released satellite images of our Earth, we imagine beautiful swathes of green and blue with the occasional white of swirling storm clouds or snow-topped mountain ranges.

It may look like a mangled lump of Play-Doh, but this colorful object is actually the most accurate digital model yet of Earth's gravity field, scientists say. Released last week, the gravity map is ...

A sophisticated satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) has mapped Earth's gravity with unprecedented precision, helping scientists have clearer understanding of the variation in the ...

Lumpy planet Scientists have unveiled the most accurate map of the Earth's gravity ever produced, which shows it to be shaped not like a sphere but a potato. The new data is expected to improve our ...

For decades, textbooks and science articles have pointed to the Indian Ocean as home to Earth’s deepest geoid low, the term scientists use for depressions in the planet’s gravity field. Pull up a ...

AMAZING GRACE Data collected by the twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) satellites have produced the most accurate map yet of Earth's geoid, or gravity field, even before the ...

The Earth’s geoid is the shape the planet would assume if its surface were made of water. Naturally, there’s little dispute over the shape of the geoid over the oceans, where it varies by only 100 ...

No audio available for this content. This column discusses the results of the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) beta hybrid Geoid18 model and the differences between the beta model and the official ...

[UPDATE (April 5, 2011): It turns out some of the descriptions I used below to describe a geoid were not accurate. I refer you to this page at the University of Oklahoma for a good description. I've ...

What shape is planet Earth? It's a sphere, right? Well not exactly. OK, so it's a bit flatter at the poles and bulges in the middle. An oblate spheroid? That's a better approximation, but still not ...