Earth is not a sphere, but an oblate spheroid due to its rotation.
Geodetic and physical evidence demonstrates that Earth's rotation causes it to bulge at the equator and flatten at the poles, making it an oblate spheroid rather than a true sphere.
The claim is a specific, well-established scientific fact about the shape of the Earth. Retrieved papers explicitly support the concept that Earth is an oblate spheroid (or ellipsoid) due to rotation and gravitational forces, with zero papers providing contradictory evidence.
Xuanyu Hu, C. K. Shum, Michael Bevis. A triaxial reference ellipsoid for the Earth. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-023-01717-1
The paper discusses the Earth's shape in terms of a reference ellipsoid and triaxial geometry rather than a simple sphere.
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Milan Hvoždara, Igor Kohút. Gravity field due to a homogeneous oblate spheroid: Simple solution form and numerical calculations. 2011. https://doi.org/10.2478/v10126-011-0013-0
The paper details the gravitational field and properties of an oblate spheroid representing the Earth.
Meyer TH, Rittenhouse TAG, Elbroch LM, Pozdnyakov V, Yan J, Hu C, Félix F, Guzmán HM, Meynecke JO. Accounting for Earth's curvature and elevation in animal movement modeling.. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70167
The study explicitly refers to the macroscopic, ellipsoidal shape of the Earth when modeling spatial coordinates.
Susan D'Agostino. Pay attention to details, as Earth is an oblate spheroid. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198843597.003.0020
The text confirms that due to rotational and gravitational forces, the Earth is accurately described as an oblate spheroid rather than a sphere.
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