As they grew in mass, gravity took over in gathering yet more mass, releasing the potential energy of their collisions and in-falling as heat.

Grains of matter accreted through electrostatic interaction. The Solar System formed from a dust cloud that was at least partially the remnant of one or more supernovas that produced heavy elements by nucleosynthesis.

The modern value as determined by the US DoD World Geodetic System since the 1960s is close to 1/298.25. In the early 19th century, the flattening of the earth ellipsoid was determined to be of the order of 1/300 ( Delambre, Everest). The realization that the figure of the Earth is more accurately described as an ellipsoid dates to the 17th century, as described by Isaac Newton in Principia. Other speculations on the shape of Earth include a seven-layered ziggurat or cosmic mountain, alluded to in the Avesta and ancient Persian writings (see seven climes). The concept of a spherical Earth displaced earlier beliefs in a flat Earth: In early Mesopotamian mythology, the world was portrayed as a disk floating in the ocean with a hemispherical sky-dome above, and this forms the premise for early world maps like those of Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus. A practical demonstration of Earth's sphericity was achieved by Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano's circumnavigation (1519–1522). This knowledge was gradually adopted throughout the Old World during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. In the 3rd century BC, Hellenistic astronomy established the roughly spherical shape of Earth as a physical fact and calculated the Earth's circumference. The earliest documented mention of the concept dates from around the 5th century BC, when it appears in the writings of Greek philosophers. Spherical Earth or Earth's curvature refers to the approximation of figure of the Earth as a sphere. Image from space: The curved surface of the spherical planet Earth Medieval artistic representation of a spherical Earth – with compartments representing earth, air, and water (c.

Earth is round or flat