It's a Square World

Well not quite; we now know our Earth to be an oblate spheroid. Something that comes as a surprise to children raised on the works of Michael Bentine.

I am listening to Hugh Sykes reporting on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme. He is broadcasting live from Karachi in Pakistan. As I crop this image, I hear him explain that the city lies under "an almost full Moon, almost directly overhead".

I had taken this photo of the same "almost full Moon" as it rose above Alice Park in Bath, England, just a few short minutes before.

How small is our World becomes apparent when we communicate world-wide at the speed of light. And near simultaneous reports of wildly different elevations of nearby celestial bodies makes it clear our Earth is no longer Flat.

And possibly not even Square. Another innocent tenet of childhood shattered.