Foucault pendulum 2010, the cable suspending the bob in the Musée des Arts et Métiers snapped, causing irreparable damage to the pendulum and to the marble flooring of the museum. An exact copy of the original pendulum has been operating under the dome of the Panthéon, Paris since 1995. At either the North Pole or South Pole, the plane of oscillation of a pendulum remains fixed relative to the distant masses of the universe while Earth rotates underneath it, taking one sidereal day to complete a rotation. So, relative to Earth, the plane of oscillation of a pendulum at the North Pole
Earth's rotation gathered support for the theory of the rotation of the Earth. Earth's rotation implies that the Equator bulges and the geographical poles are flattened. In his "Principia", Newton predicted this flattening would occur in the ratio of 1:230, and pointed to the pendulum measurements taken by Richer in 1673 as corroboration of the change in gravity, but initial measurements of meridian lengths by Picard and Cassini at the end of the 17th century suggested the opposite. However, measurements by Maupertuis and the French Geodesic Mission in the 1730s established the oblateness of Earth, thus confirming the positions of both Newton