some facts about earth

[vijayant.saini12387]

The Earth is not actually round in shape; in fact it is geoid. This simply means that the rounded shape has a slight bulge towards the equator.

So what causes this geoid shape? This happens solely because the rotation of the Earth which causes the bulge around the equator.

Earth is the third planet from the Sun. This is also the fifth largest planet in the entire solar system.

Did you know this interesting fact about Planet Earth that it is the only planet whose name has not been derived from the Roman or Greek mythology? The name has originated from the 8th century Anglo Saxon word- Erda. This means ground or soil. 30 percent is covered by land.

The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.
The Moon formed soon after the Earth.

The astrological name for Earth is “Terra.”

The Earth is 93 million miles from the Sun on average.

The Earth has tectonic plates, which allow the crust to recycle itself.

The Planet Earth takes approximately 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.091 seconds to rotate around its axis. Therefore, on an average, the Planet Earth takes around 24 hours to complete a full rotation.

[essellar]

I've tried to resist, but my inner pedant won't let it go...

"Geoid" literally means "Earth-ish", so saying that the Earth is geoid is a tautology ("Earth is Earth-shaped") -- the statement would always be true, regardless of the shape of the Earth. The geometry ("Earth-measurement") of the geoid ("Earth-ish shape") is defined in terms of the geometry of the Earth (oddly enough). Better to say that it's approximately an oblate spheroid.

The English name for the planet (and the modern English word for soil) is derived from the Old English "eorða". Note that the consonant after the "r" is and eth and not a dee*. "Th" sounds (the sounds represented in the IPA by theta and eth) are fragile in use, often becoming "t", "d", "f", "v" or "z", so it's likely that the "th" sound is older, and that other Germanic cognates with a "d" (such as the German "Erde") are newer variants.

We had our own names for the "five planets" (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) in ancient times as well -- Jupiter was "Thor", for instance. Ah, well. These things happen when you give up your gods. Ours were certainly no more bloody-minded than the Greek (and later Roman) gods -- maybe the mental picture of the planets getting together in the mead-hall to swill beer and swap sagas was a bit too unscientific for the clerics and philosophers who worried about the meaning of the sky.

*The letters eth ("ð") and thorn ("þ") were essentially interchangeable in Old English orthography; there was never a strict voiced/voiceless distinction made between them. (In other languages, eth is generally voiced/soft, as in the sound at the beginning of the word "the", while thorn is generally voiceless/hard, as in the word "thick".) Spelling of individual words tended to be consistent within a dialect (broadly, Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon) at any given period in time, regardless of whether the consonant was voiced or voiceless in context (whether it came between stressed/unstressed vowels, etc. when inflected or compounded with other roots). The "th" sound in "eorð..." words would seem to make more sense as a voiceless consonant most of the time (if we can assume that inflectional endings are generally unstressed in Old English), yet it is almost always spelled with an eth rather than a thorn in existing sources.

[tim4rd]

Theres also one I read in a smarties book somewhere that when you add all the roads in the world together it can reach the moon and back over ninety times!

[puurchoco47]

Very interesting info here. I knew most but learned some new stuff.

[sandurz37]

This is almost cool!

[kinley3]

Aw, where's the info on how the Earth's axis is not vertical, but tilts to one side? And how this accounts for summer in the Northern Hemisphere/winter in the Southern Hemisphere? What about the magnetic field, which shields us from solar radiation, and is used by sea creatures to help in navigation?

I think I learned all that stuff in like 3rd grade.

[goldblue]

interesting

[ved.gov.net21]

Earth is awesome :P

[CoolFinalFan]

thanks for the info people
earth science is fun to learn!!

[-GH0ST-]

Here's a rather interesting fact that nobody tells you about -

The oldest seafloor has been radiometrically dated to only about 200 million years (Duxbury et al. 2005:114)

And

whereas continental rocks have been dated to four billion years, and the earth is thought to be about 4.6 billion years old (Dalrymple 2004).

There's a theory floating out there that's based solely off the above information and it goes something to the tune of, since the sea floor is merely 200m years old and the earth itself is approx. 4.6b, one can only conclude that the earth is growing and there was no such thing as Pangaea. Here's more info on this very interesting theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_Earth

I know wikipedia isn't a viable source for college-based data collecting, however I posted it anyhow as this article does cover the major points and has pretty good outside link sources especially in the Notes section.

Think and believe what you will, I'm curious to find out what other's might have to say on this

/discuss