New satellite imaging from the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer, GOCE for short, has given us a much more detailed picture of Earth's gravity field, and thus a more accurate knowledge of the planet's geoid. The geoid is basically a depiction of the planet devoid of land masses, where the planet is pure ocean, shaped by the gravitational field. It's pretty lumpy. After all, Earth is by no means a perfect ellipse, so the planet's gravitational field isn't either.
The image below is representative of our current knowledge, and a much more detailed version will be able to be created from the GOCE's data. The image above was the result of only two months of gathering, so in a short time we will have an even more detailed sense of the Earth's gravitational field and be able to create an analglyph better than that below.
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