Can anyone answer why the earth is round, and not square?

Answer 1

Gravity pulls all mass towards a central point. When there is enough mass the gravity is so great that it overtakes the other forces that hold the structure in another shape. If gravity is pulling everything towards one point it will make everything equidistant from its center. If the Earth had a very large lump on it, for instance if you stuck the huge volcanoe Olympus Mons on the Earth, the Earth's strong gravity would pull that mass towards its center and flatten it out. Olympus Mons can exist on Mars because there the gravity is less (since it is a smaller planet). If the Earth were square (or a cube rather) the corners sticking out would gradually be pulled in towards the center.

Interesting note: this is one of the circumstances that a planet and dwarf planet must meet to be called one of those names. It must me large enough that its gravity is so great that it has evened out its surface into a more or less spherical shape. There are of course many asteroids and comets that are very oddly shaped because they are small enough that their mass isn't able to overcome the structure of the material. Similarly if you put a human in space, they will have their own mass and gravity but since it is so small they wont collapse into a ball-- the gravity is unable to overcome the structure of our bones and muscles.

Answer 2

Earth is round for much the same reason a bubble is generally spherical rather than square. That is, nature likes to take the easy way out and conserve energy in what it does.

As our molten Earth (millions of years ago) formed, it took on a sphere-like shape because that is the lowest possible energy shape. A square, for example, would require more energy to form.

Recognize that Earth is not a perfect sphere. It has a bulge down around the equator. This means that more energy than needed to form a perfect sphere was used to form the Earth.

Where do you suppose that extra bit of energy came from?

It came from the spin of the Earth. As the Earth cooled down, the spinning kept pushing out its mass near the equator farther from the center than it would have gone without the spinning.

Answer 3

The Earth could have started out as a square (bear with my fantasy here) or more precisely a cube, but if it did, physical forces would have quickly turned the cube into a spheroid.

The Earth is actually not "round" but an oblate spheroid (smooshed ball, if you will). Its round-ish shape comes from the physical forces acting on it, such as gravity pulling all matter into the center (making our sphere) and centrifugal force from the Earth's rotation (making our sphere "smooshed" as the equator is pushed out farther than the poles).

Additionally, the environment helps the process along. Were the earth not spinning and weather continued to function as it does today the Earth would eventually become a perfect sphere with all the mountains and hills worn down by erosion.

Other factors make the "perfect sphere" scenario impossible, as falling debris and plate tectonics constantly reshape the planet, but if you were to carve out chunks of the Earth to make it a cube, wait a while (long while) and the Earth would eventually return to its spheroid shape.

Answer 4

An interesting question. Now, the first question that comes to
my suspicious mind is "IS the earth round?" And the answer is no, at least not perfectly round. But it is round compared to your average cube, that is for sure! Now, my understanding of how solar systems form is pretty inadequate; all I can tell you is what I see on "Nova." But basically, I guess it has to do with gravity, which is a CENTRAL FORCE. What that means is that gravity pulls things together along a straight line, and the more massive one of the things is, the stronger it pulls. When the earth was forming, it was basically a big ball of dust left over from an exploded sun (a supernova). Gravity caused a lot of the matter to condense into a big fiery ball (our sun), but some of the dust was far enough away from the Sun so that the stronger forces were between planetary dust particles and not the sun. SO, they swirled together into a ball. You can see something similar when you make a painting with one of those "spin-art" machines; you put a card on the spinner, which whirls around real fast, and then you squirt paint on the card. The whirling causes the paint to go out away from the center (this is like the explosion of the supernova) and droplets go out along an interesting path until they stop, which happens when the spinning force is equal and opposite to the force which attaches paint to the card (this is like gravity). Now, if the force attaching paint to the card were not so strong,eventually the drops would get bigger - "planets."

Answer 5

From what I even have examine by way of the years people who taught that the bible says the earth grew to become into flat used an analogous verses as those used via people who observed the bible as asserting it extremely is around. it could be very thrilling to work out what the unique mauscripts pronounced approximately all of it.

Answer 6

It's theorized that the earth coalesced from a cloud of rubble that was orbiting our proto-sun. Since it came together from gravitational action, it's much more natural to form a sphere than a cube.

Answer 7

Because of gravity. The gravity of the earth and of the earth's orbit makes it the shape it is.

Answer 8

Because we are not the Borg. A sphere is the natural way for mass to gather. It's just very obvious.

Answer 9

If it was a square then people would fall off the edges of the square silly.

Answer 10

The earth is not round it's geoid.