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Summary A table is provided of the external and dynamical ellipticities of the Earth for different values of the ratio I/Mb2, I being the mean moment of inertia and b the mean radius, on the first order Radau theory. A simplified model is used to find the corrections for the slight inaccuracy of the Radau approximation and the terms of the second order. The dynamical ellipticity and J2 as given by artificial satellites are used to estimate I/Mb2, and it is shown that on the hydrostatic theory 106J2 would be 1072.1 ± 0.4, in contradiction to the direct determination 1082.78 ± 0.05. The departures from the hydrostatic state indicated by J2 and J3 imply stress differences of 4 × 107 to 8 × 107 dyn/cm2 in the interior.
Harold Jeffreys (Mon,) studied this question.