THE FIGURE OF THE EARTH

Abstract

A purely numerical method has been devised for the treatment of Darwin and de Sitter's theory of the figure of a rotating earth in hydrostatic equilibrium. This has been applied to the density distribution suggested by Bullen. De Sitter's numerical constants λ1, and K1 are found to have the values λ1=0.00016±0.00018, K1= 68 × 10‐8. The ellipticity, on the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium, is found to be ∈–1=297.338 ± 0.050. Copyright © 1948, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved