There’s a gravity ‘hole’ in the Indian Ocean and now we may know why

The area of Earth with the lowest relative gravity is located just south of India in the Indian Ocean. This gravity “hole” may be due to low-density plumes of magma disturbed by the sinking slabs of a former tectonic plate.

Neither Earth nor its gravitational field are a perfect sphere. Because gravity is proportional to mass, the shape of the planet’s gravitational field depends on the distribution of mass within it. One way of representing this field is …