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Peru continues to be an absolutely surprising place, with many mysterious, unexplored places and hostile conditions, thanks to which it more than once deserves not only recognition, but also the view of the scientific community.
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Its rugged geography, varied climates, abundant flora and fauna, among others, are still the subject of study and discovery that continues to bring our country to light. a unique place that stands out all over the world.
So one of the many records that Peru holds is related to gravity, a force that acts throughout our planet, but in a certain area of the country it suffers from a slight anomaly.
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When we talk about gravity and places where it is very little, we automatically refer to space, because we are used to watching how astronauts cope with its lack thousands of kilometers from Earth. However, there are places on the planet where this power is slightly altered and diminished.
According to a scientific study by Geophysical Research Lettersfrom 2013, called “A new ultra-high-resolution image of Earth’s gravity field”, the place with the lowest gravity in the world is located in peak of Nevado Huascaránprecisely in the region of Ancash, Peru, where this force drops to 9.7639 m/s², which is slightly below the average value that the Earth has: 9.807 m/s².
This frozen mountain rises above 6,000 meters above sea level and belongs to the so-called Cordillera Blanca, one of the most representative geographical areas of our nation.
According to the scientific paper, the work carried out was the first of its kind to model gravity at “ultra-fine scales”, but with almost global coverage, as all continents were taken into account to provide a better understanding of the Earth’s gravitational field.
It should be added that according to this study candidate sites were considered in the Andes and Himalayan regions, however, the surprising result that ranks our snow-capped mountain as the place with the lowest gravity is due to the shape of the Earth, which is not perfectly spherical, being wider at the equator than at the poles .
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Unlike the Peruvian Andes, the study also detailed where the gravitational pull is strongest on Earth. It is located no less than in The surface of the Arctic Ocean.
These gravity differences between the Arctic and Huascarán would mean that in the unlikely event that a person fell 100 meters at each of these points, they would hit the surface in Peru 16 milliseconds later than in the Arctic.
Likewise, another effect would be to lose 1% of your body weight if you hiked from the Arctic to the top of snow-capped Huascarán without affecting your weight, reports NewScientist magazine.
Although at first glance the results of the study look like data that have an impact only on a scientific level, the truth is that the knowledge of gravity variations on Earth has applications in areas such as hydro-engineering, satellite systems or the improvement of spatial scales.
On the other hand, it enables fix existing gravity models, something that will affect the calibration of precision balances associated with seismometers or astronomy and in fields such as topography, geophysics, engineering and more.
