PARTS 5
1966 Words
50 interesting facts about Earth
References
By Stephanie Pappas, Robert Roy Britt, Ailsa Harvey published February 04, 2022
From extreme climates to peculiar creatures, here are some top facts about Earth.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
PAGE 1 OF 5:
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Jump to:
1. Position
2. Squashed shape
3. Earth's waistline
4. On the move
5. Planet's orbit
6. Earth's age
7. Recycled planet
8. Moonquakes
9. Largest earthquake
10. Hottest spot
Did you know that our planet is rocketing around the sun at 67,000 mph? Or that it may once have been purple? Here are 50 facts about Earth.
1. WE'RE THE THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Our home, Earth, is the third planet from the sun and the only world known to support an atmosphere with free oxygen, oceans of liquid water on the surface and life. Earth is one of the four terrestrial planets, according to NASA: Like Mercury, Venus and Mars, it is rocky at the surface.
2. EARTH IS SQUASHED
(Image credit: Markus Reugels, LiquidArt)
Earth is not a perfect sphere. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as Earth spins, gravity points toward the center of our planet (assuming for explanation's sake that Earth is a perfect sphere), and a centrifugal force pushes outward. But since this gravity-opposing force acts perpendicular to the axis of Earth, and Earth's axis is tilted, centrifugal force at the equator is not exactly opposed to gravity.
3. THE PLANET HAS A WAISTLINE
(Image credit: Jessmine | Shutterstock)
Gravity pushes extra masses of water and earth into a bulge, or "spare tire" around our planet. At the equator, the circumference of the globe is 24,901 miles (40,075 kilometers), according to Space.com. Bonus fact: At the equator, you would weigh less than if standing at one of the poles.
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4. EARTH IS ON THE MOVE
(Image credit: Getty Images)
You may feel like you're standing still, but you're constantly moving — fast. Depending on where you are on the globe, you could be spinning with the planet at just over 1,000 miles per hour, according to Space.com.
People on the equator move the fastest, while someone standing on the North or South pole would be perfectly still. (Imagine a basketball spinning on your finger. A random point on the ball's equator has farther to go in a single spin as a point near your finger. Thus, the point on the equator is moving faster.)
5. THE PLANET MOVES AROUND THE SUN
(Image credit: Getty Images)
The Earth isn't just spinning: It's also moving around the sun at 67,000 miles (107,826 km) per hour, according to the American Physical Society.
6. EARTH IS BILLIONS OF YEARS OLD
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Researchers calculate the age of the Earth by dating both the oldest rocks on the planet and meteorites that have been discovered on Earth (meteorites and Earth formed at the same time, when the solar system was forming). Their findings? Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, according to the National Center for Science Education.
7. THE PLANET IS RECYCLED
(Image credit: NASA’s NPP Land Product Evaluation and Testing Element.)
The ground you're walking on is recycled. Earth's rock cycle transforms igneous rocks to sedimentary rocks to metamorphic rocks and back again.
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The cycle isn’t a perfect circle, but the basics work like this: Magma from deep in the Earth emerges and hardens into rock (that's the igneous part). Tectonic processes uplift that rock to the surface, where erosion shaves bits off. These tiny fragments get deposited and buried, and the pressure from above compacts them into sedimentary rocks such as sandstone. If sedimentary rocks get buried even deeper, they "cook" into metamorphic rocks under lots of pressure and heat, according to Dorling Kindersley.
Along the way, of course, sedimentary rocks can be re-eroded or metamorphic rocks re-uplifted. But if metamorphic rocks get caught in a subduction zone where one piece of crust is pushing under another, they may find themselves transformed back into magma.
8. OUR MOON QUAKES
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Earth's moon looks rather dead and inactive. But in fact, moonquakes, or "earthquakes" on the moon, keep things just a bit shaken up. Quakes on the moon are less common and less intense than those that shake Earth. The total seismic energy released by the moon is about 80 times less than that released by Earth, according to the Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology.
According to the Journal of Geophysical Research, moonquakes seem to be related to tidal stresses associated with the varying distance between the Earth and moon. Moonquakes also tend to occur at great depths, about midway between the lunar surface and its center.
11. THE COLDEST PLACE IS IN ANTARCTICA
(Image credit: Josh Landis, National Science Foundation.)
It may come as no surprise that the coldest place on Earth can be found in Antarctica, but the chill factor is somewhat unbelievable. Winter temperatures there can drop below minus 100 degrees F (minus 73 degrees C).
The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth came from Russia's Vostok Station, where records show the air plunged to a bone-chilling minus 128.6 degrees F (minus 89.2 degrees C) on July 21,1983, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
12. ANTARCTICA IS AN EXTREME CONTINENT
(Image credit: Getty Images)
The southern continent is a place of extremes. According to the American Museum of Natural History, the Antarctic ice cap contains some 70 percent of Earth's fresh water and about 90 percent of its ice, even though it is only the fifth largest continent.
Did you know Antarctica is actually considered a desert? Inner regions get just 2 inches (50 millimeters) of precipitation a year (typically as snow, of course).
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13. THERE ARE GIANT STALAGMITES
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Spelunkers ahoy! The largest confirmed stalagmite in the world can be found in Cuba in the Cuevo San Martin Infierno, according to the journal Acta Carsologica. This behemoth rises 220 feet (67.2 meters) tall. (Shown here, a photo of a stalagmite in a northwest Yucatan peninsula cave.)
14. THERE'S UNEVEN GRAVITY
(Image credit: K. Cardon)
Because our globe isn't a perfect sphere, its mass is distributed unevenly. And uneven mass means slightly uneven gravity.
One mysterious gravitational anomaly is in the Hudson Bay of Canada . This area has lower gravity than other regions, and a 2007 study finds that now-melted glaciers are to blame.
The ice that once cloaked the area during the last ice age has long since melted, but the Earth hasn't entirely snapped back from the burden. Since gravity over an area is proportional to the mass atop that region, and the glacier's imprint pushed aside some of the Earth's mass, gravity is a bit less strong in the ice sheet's imprint.
The slight deformation of the crust explains 25 percent to 45 percent of the unusually low gravity; the rest may be explained by a downward drag caused the motion of magma in Earth's mantle (the layer just beneath the crust), researchers reported in the journal Science.
15. THE MAGNETIC POLE CREEPS
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Earth has a magnetic field because of the ocean of hot, liquid metal that sloshes around its solid iron core, or that's what geophysicists are pretty certain is the cause. This flow of liquid creates electric currents, which, in turn, generate the magnetic field.
Since the early 19th century, Earth's magnetic north pole has been creeping northward by more than 600 miles (1,100 kilometers), according to NASA scientists.
The rate of movement has increased, with the pole migrating northward at about 40 miles (64 km) per year currently, compared with the 10 miles (16 km) per year estimated in the 20th century.
16. THE POLE FLIP-FLOPS
(Image credit: Dreamstime)
In fact, over the past 20 million years, our planet has settled into a pattern of a pole reversal about every 200,000 to 300,000 years, according to the journal Nature. As of 2012, however, it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal.
These reversals aren't split-second flips, and instead occur over hundreds or thousands of years. During this lengthy stint, the magnetic poles start to wander away from the region around the spin poles (the axis around which our planet spins), and eventually end up switched around, according to Cornell University astronomers.
17. THERE'S A TIE FOR TALLEST MOUNTAIN
(Image credit: Getty Images)
The title for tallest mountain goes to either Mount Everest or Mauna Kea. The summit of Mount Everest is higher above sea level than the summit of any other mountain, extending some 29,029 feet (8,848 meters) high, according to the Indian Journal of History of Science. However, when measured from its true base to summit, Mauna Kea takes the prize, measuring a length of about 56,000 feet (17,170 m), according to the USGS.
Here are some of Mauna Kea's detailed measurements, according to the Hawaii Center for Volcanology: The highest point is 13,680 ft (4,170 m) above sea level; the flanks of Mauna Loa continue another 16,400 ft (5,000 m) below sea level to the seafloor; and the volcano's central portion has depressed the seafloor another 26,000 ft (8,000 m) in the shape of an inverted cone, reflecting the profile of the volcano above it.
18. EARTH ONCE HAD TWO MOONS?
This computer illustration depicts a collision between Earth’s moon and a companion moon that is 750 miles wide and about 4 percent of the lunar mass. This late, slow accretion could explain the moon's farside highlands, scientists say. (Image credit: Martin Jutzi and Erik Asphaug)
Earth may once have had two moons, according to Space.com. A teensy second moon — spanning about 750 miles (1,200 km) wide — may have orbited Earth before it catastrophically slammed into the other one. This titanic clash may explain why the two sides of the surviving lunar satellite are so different from each other, said scientists in the Aug. 4, 2011, issue of the journal Nature.
19. WE MAY STILL HAVE A SECOND MOON?
(Image credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi/TWAN (twanight.org))
Some scientists claim Earth still has two moons. According to researchers reporting in the Dec. 20, 2011, issue of the planetary science journal ICARUS, a space rock at least 3.3-feet (1-meter) wide orbits Earth at any given time. They're not always the same rock, but rather an ever-changing cast of "temporary moons," say the scientists.
Their theoretical model posits that our planet's gravity captures asteroids as they pass near us on their way around the sun; when one of these space rocks gets drawn in, it typically makes three irregularly shaped swings around Earth, staying with us for about nine months before hurtling on its way.
20. ROCKS CAN WALK
(Image credit: Lukich, Shutterstock)
Rocks can walk on Earth, at least they do at the pancake-flat lakebed called Racetrack Playa in Death Valley. There, a perfect storm can move rocks sometimes weighing tens or hundreds of pounds. Most likely, ice-encrusted rocks get inundated by meltwater from the hills above the playa, according to NASA researchers. When everything's nice and slick, a stiff breeze kicks up and moves the rock.
9. CHILE HAD TH L
ARGEST EARTHQUAKE
Chile has had many sizeable earthquakes. (Image credit: Getty Images)
As of March 2016, the largest earthquake to shake the United States was a magnitude-9.2 temblor that struck Prince William Sound, Alaska, on Good Friday, March 28, 1964.
The world's largest earthquake was a magnitude 9.5 in Bio-Bio, Chile on May 22, 1960, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
10. THE HOTTEST SPOT IS IN LIBYA
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