NASA published an image on its website in mid-July depicting Earth as a "geoid," a mathematical model representing the planet's gravitational field. The image showed Earth with pronounced lumps and indentations, leading some viewers to conclude it resembled a deformed potato.
The model's features were deliberately exaggerated to highlight regions affected by gravity variations, NASA said. Because the exaggeration was intentional, the image was not drawn to the scale of reality, prompting the space agency to issue a clarification.
The geoid is an important tool in geodesy and satellite navigation, capturing variations in Earth's gravitational pull that would be imperceptible to the human eye. The actual planet remains, as observed from space, roughly spherical.
