Fact Check-Ocean pulled to Earth by force of gravity
The ocean is pulled down to Earth due to gravity, despite a viral post shared online falsely claiming that the planet’s oceans are held inside a “container,” with Antarctica forming the external ridge. The posts allude to flat earth conspiracies.
The claim shared online can be viewed (bit.ly/3n0TOfW). A photo bears the text, “The ocean isn’t spherical.”
The caption reads, in part; “The continents are large islands that are popping above the ocean level, therefore they are “dry land”, inside contained, flat water with elevation features,” later saying, “Antarctica HAS shorelines its not completely ice. It wraps 360* degrees around the earth. OUR CONTAINER.”
The ocean is pulled down to the irregular ellipsoid-shaped Earth due to gravity (here), however, and is not held together by containers on a flat surface.
On Earth, per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “gravity pulls all objects ‘downward’ toward the center of the planet” (bit.ly/41XcxYq).
Antartica does not form a ridge around the planet and instead, is located in the southern hemisphere (here). A 25-year NASA data visualization of Antarctic ice land mass change published in 2019 can be viewed (here).
The post also claims that the oceans do not have any “elevation features” and instead, continents are “islands.”
Like islands, continents are “also surrounded by water, but because they are so big, they are not considered islands,” per the National Geographic (here).
Per NASA, orbiting satellites “make highly accurate measurements of the height of the ocean surface” and topographical measurements (here).
The United States Geological Society (USGS) conducts ocean floor mapping featuring oceanic topographical data (pubs.usgs.gov/imap/2089/c/), (pubs.usgs.gov/imap/2091/c/).
Images of Earth captured from the European Space Agency (ESA) (here) and NASA satellites (here) show it is not flat.
A livestream of Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) can be viewed (eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ESRS/HDEV/).
VERDICT
False. The ocean is pulled to Earth due to gravity.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work (here).
