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A person can weigh differently at various place on Earth because of the fluctuations in Earth's gravity, according to a new high-resolution map.
Gravity is often assumed to be the same everywhere on Earth, but it varies because the planet is not perfectly spherical or uniformly dense, researchers said.
Earth's gravity is weaker at the equator due to centrifugal forces produced by the planet's rotation. It's also weaker at higher altitudes, further from the planet's centre, 'NewScientist' reported.
Researchers led by Christian Hirt of Curtin University in Australia combined gravity data from satellites and topographic data to map gravity changes between latitudes 60 degree north and 60 degree south, covering 80 per cent of Earth's land masses.
The map consists of more than 3 billion points, with a resolution of about 250 metres. Computing gravity would take 5 seconds per point on an ordinary computer, however, researchers used a supercomputer.
Researchers found the model pinpoints more extreme differences in gravitational acceleration than previously seen.
Hirt's model revealed unexpected locations with more extreme differences in acceleration due to gravity.
Researchers said Mount Nevado Huascaran in Peru has the lowest gravitational acceleration, at 9.7639 m/s2, while the highest is at the surface of the Arctic Ocean, at 9.8337 m/s2.
"Nevado was a bit surprising because it is about 1000 kilometres south of the equator. The increase in gravity away from the equator is more than compensated by the effect of the mountain's height and local anomalies," said Hirt.
These differences in gravity mean that in the unlikely event that you found yourself falling from a height of 100 metres at each point, you would hit the surface in Peru about 16 milliseconds later than in the Arctic Ocean, the report said.
That means you would also lose one per cent of your body weight in moving from the Arctic Ocean to the Peruvian mountaintop, although your mass would remain unchanged.
