Planet Earth.
That shiny blue marble that has fascinated
humanity since they first began to walk across
its surface.
And why shouldn’t it fascinate us?
In addition to being our home and the place
where life as we know it originated, it remains
the only planet we know of where life thrives.
And over the course of the past few centuries,
we have learned much about Earth, which has
only deepened our fascination with it.
But how much does the average person really
know about the planet Earth?
It actually takes 23 hours, 56 minutes and
4 seconds for the Earth to rotate once completely
on its axis, which astronomers refer to as
a Sidereal Day.
Now wait a second, doesn’t that mean that
a day is 4 minutes shorter than we think it
is?
You’d think that this time would add up,
day by day, and within a few months, day would
be night, and night would be day.
But remember that the Earth orbits around
the Sun.
Every day, the Sun moves compared to the background
stars by about 1° – about the size of the
Moon in the sky.
And so, if you add up that little motion from
the Sun that we see because the Earth is orbiting
around it, as well as the rotation on its
axis, you get a total of 24 hours.
It’s actually 365.2564 days.
It’s this extra .2564 days that creates
the need for a Leap Year once ever four years.
That’s why we tack on an extra day in February
every four years – 2004, 2008, 2012…
Due to the apparent movements of the Sun and
planets in relation to their viewpoint, ancient
scientists insisted that the Earth remained
static, whilst other celestial bodies travelled
in circular orbits around it.
This phenomenon is caused by the nickel-iron
core of the planet, coupled with its rapid
rotation.
This field protects the Earth from the effects
of solar wind.
As a percentage of the size of the body it
orbits, the Moon is the largest satellite
of any planet in our solar system.
In real terms, however, it is only the fifth
largest natural satellite.
If you could separate the Earth out into piles
of material, you’d get 32.1 % iron, 30.1%
oxygen, 15.1% silicon, and 13.9% magnesium.
Of course, most of this iron is actually located
at the core of the Earth.
If you could actually get down and sample
the core, it would be 88% iron.
And if you sampled the Earth’s crust, you’d
find that 47% of it is oxygen.
Unlike other planets, no real historical data
can be found on the person (or group) that
named our planet "Earth."
The term Earth comes from Old English and
High Germanic and is the only planet not named
after a Greek or Roman god.
"We’ve never seen anything larger than 9.5
and it was longer than the state of California.
It would be theoretically impossible to have
a magnitude 13 earthquake since it would require
a fault bigger than the Earth.”
Planet Earth is shaped more like a oblate
spheroid which looks like a flatter circle.
But it's definitely not flat.
Earth is teeming with viruses.
There are an estimated 10 nonillion individual
viruses on the planet.
That's "enough to assign one to every star
in the universe 100 million times over.
