Page 229 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

cause the earth’s ‘paper bag’ to bulge outwards at the equator. The
corollary is a flattening at the poles. In consequence, our planet deviates
slightly from the form of a perfect sphere and is more accurately
described as an ‘oblate spheroid’. Its radius at the equator (3963.374
miles) is about fourteen miles longer than its polar radius (3949.921
miles).
14
For billions of years the flattened poles and the bulging equator have
been engaged in a covert mathematical interaction with the recondite
influence of gravity. ‘Because the Earth is flattened,’ explains one
authority, ‘the Moon’s gravity tends to tilt the Earth’s axis so that it
becomes perpendicular to the Moon’s orbit, and to a lesser extent the
same is true for the Sun.’
15
At the same time the equatorial bulge—the extra mass distributed
around the equator—acts like the rim of a gyroscope to keep the earth
steady on its axis.
16
Year in, year out, on a planetary scale, it is this gyroscopic effect that
prevents the tug of the sun and the moon from radically altering the
earth’s axis of rotation. The pull these two bodies jointly exert is,
however, sufficiently strong to force the axis to ‘precess’, which means
that it wobbles slowly in a clockwise direction opposite to that of the
earth’s spin.
This important motion is our planet’s characteristic signature within the
solar system. Anyone who has ever set a top spinning should be able to
understand it without much difficulty; a top, after all, is simply another
type of gyroscope. In full uninterrupted spin it stands upright. But the
moment its axis is deflected from the vertical it begins to exhibit a
second behaviour: a slow and obstinate reverse wobble around a great
circle. This wobble, which is precession, changes the direction in which
the axis points while keeping constant its newly tilted angle.
A second analogy, somewhat different in approach, may help to clarify
matters a little further:
1 Envisage the earth, floating in space, inclined at approximately 23.5°
to the vertical and spinning around on its axis once every 24 hours.
2 Envisage this axis as a massively strong pivot, or axle, passing
through the centre of the earth, exiting via the North and South Poles
and extending outwards from there in both directions.
3 Imagine that you are a giant, striding through the solar system, with
orders to carry out a specific task.
4 Imagine approaching the tilted earth (which, because of your great
size, now looks no bigger to you than a millwheel).
5 Imagine reaching out and grasping the two ends of the extended axis.
6 And imagine yourself slowly beginning to inter-rotate them, pushing

Figures from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 27:530.
14
15 Ibid.
16 Path of the Pole, p. 3.

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