Here are some science notes I found on a recent trip. I found the information attractive as it squashed flat my own concepts of the seven seas and the way the world truly is. The article comes from a German scientist with a PhD in Physics named Horst Güntheroth but I have abbreviated it somewhat and changed some of the descriptive elements to make it easier to read. I wouldn’t want to bore you all to tears. He writes:
"Gravity commands the entire universe, brings the cosmos under control, keeps planets circling the sun and shapes gigantic galaxies. Gravity is an elementary property of mass. All mass exercises an attraction and the greater the mass, the stronger the attraction. Yet the gravity of our earth is not equally strong in all directions. The reason for this is that the rocks deep within the planet’s core are unevenly distributed. More mass has accumulated in one place, less in another. Such anomalies make their presence felt on the ocean, for instance.
In areas where the gravitational pull is powerful, there are dips in the surface of the ocean, whilst in places where the pull is less pronounced, hills rise up out of the sea. To the south of India, for instance, there is a hollow in the ocean surface 360 feet deep and close to Papua New Guinea the sea swells 260 feet skyward. A ship sailing from such a hill into such a velley would pass through a difference in elevation of 620 feet.
As for objects further away from the planets surface such as aircraft high up above 10,000 mtrs the gravitational forces are not as strong. The pull of the earth diminishes the further away you travel from its surface, another side effect which causes this reduction is that effect of gravitational force is lost in the up and down pressure fluctuations in the atmosphere enveloping our planet. As a result when gravity wains down below, the difference in the altitude of the aircraft is at most 2 or 3 cm – at any rate, too little for anyone to notice."
Cool, heh ! If you were paddling your canoe across the ocean in the wrong direction you would have to be wondering what was giving as you to tried to paddle up a 620 feet hill. What a mongrel ! It would make for a tough days fishing expedition. It would be like trying to paddle over the Rialto Towers in Melbourne or Sydney‘s Centrepoint.
