How come the world...?

Question

is a giant sphere and is floating in space...yet we feel its flat....like how come we don't fall offf....

besides gravity....that keeps us down...

like why don't the people in the SOUTH POLE...FEEL ITS FLAT....even though THEIR UPSIDE DOWN????

Answer 1

Due to the gravitational pull coming from the center of our planet, an equal amount of "pull" is given off. Since our planet is such a large sphere, you do not see it as a sphere on a daily basis. You can see the curvature of the surface when you go to the top floor of a very tall building, for example the Empire State Building. Since you have such a panoramatic view of a huge surface, it is possible to view a curvature on the surface.
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Answer 2

Scale

If you got a huge ball the size of a 10 story building and put an ant on it then the ant would probably think it was a flat area that it was walking on.

We are so small, compared to the earth, that even though it is a sphere it appears to be flat to us because we see so little of it at any one time.

The earth is a sphere, well almost one, because a sphere is the most efficient container for volume when you are talking about a volume that is trying to reach one point at the core. The earth's massive weight crushes itself into a ball; a sphere. This is part of the definition of a planet, only planets and stars have enough mass to do this. In a sphere the pressure is uniform and it is all trying to push itself into as small a shape as possible; that shape will be a sphere.

In the case of the earth the distribution of the rocks and crust plates is not uniform so the planet has a slight egg shape to it. It is not a perfect sphere, but for all intents and purposes it is a spherical shape. The gravity is fairly uniform at 32 ft/sec or 9.8 m/sec at sea level. In some areas the rate of gravity is slightly different; not enough that you would notice, but our satellites have. This is because the earth is not uniform.

The effect of gravity is trying to crush the entire object together. In a star or a planet the mass is large enough that it can do that and do an efficient job. In the case of a star the pressure is so great that it creates fusion, and that is how a star is powered. What creates all that heat and pressure which starts the fusion process is simple gravity.

In the case of a planet the crushing force of gravity isn’t strong enough to create fusion, but it does try to push all the matter into the core. Thanks to this pressure, the tides of the moon, and some radioactive material underground the Earth’s core is molten. The crust plates are only a few miles thick and they are floating on a huge sea of lava. Below that it is even hotter as the pressure increases. In some planets or moons the core has had a chance to cool. We think this is the case with our moon; it is a dead world with no volcanic activity. The craters we see on the surface are not the action of old volcanoes but meteor impact craters.

The force of gravity is a strong powerful and uniform one. It is such a minor force that a simple magnet can defeat it, but gravity is always there and it is always working. The strongest force we know of is a black hole; a hole of pure gravity. The black holes are so powerful that they destroy some of the matter falling into them before they reach the center. In this case, and more often at the poles x-rays and other radiation can be released. A Quasar is a black hole where we see the pole and the huge gamma ray bursts coming form it. The poles have these gamma ray bursts because there is less space for the matter than at the equator of the black hole, so the collisions of matter are stronger and more violent at the poles of the black hole. Think of the black hole as a series of huge mouths that can never be filled; there are more mouths at the equator than at the poles.

Since gravity is a uniform force we walk around on the planet like it is flat and every direction down leads to the center of the Earth. At the South Pole the center of the earth is where all the gravity is pulling you to, it is that same at the North Pole, and at the equator. In fact anywhere on the Earth the pull of gravity is always down. If not then the earth wouldn’t be spherical shaped.

Asteroids are large clumps of rock and they can have odd shapes, they were never their own planet, but are pieces left over from the formation of the universe and the solar system. The more irregular ones are probably pieces of former planets that were broken apart. If you walk on an asteroid then large ones will have some gravity, but the gravity force isn’t strong enough to force most asteroids into a spherical shape. In this case the pull of gravity would not be uniform, because the asteroid isn’t uniform. When you get to the scale of a planet though the pull of gravity is strong enough to make it a more uniform shape. The larger mass of the planet will crush it into a sphere.

Answer 3

It's a sphere because that's the shape that has all of it as close together as possible. It seems flat because we're not very tall compared to its radius, as the first respondent said. The south pole is no more or less upside down than anywhere else, since down is always toward the center of the earth.

Answer 4

Now, why do you think that the north pole is at the top of the earth? We sell globes and maps that make it seem that way, but there's no reason that we couldn't have South America on the top half of a globe.

In fact, the science museum I work for has a huge globe mounted just that way, and we wait for people to ask why the globe is mounted 'upside down.' But it isn't upside-down because there isn't any up or down in space.