40 Mind-Blowing Facts About The Earth That We All Take For Granted

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40 Mind-Blowing Facts About The Earth That We All Take For Granted

By Joe Burgett - July 30, 2019

3. The Only Tolerable Atmosphere

Looking at how lucky we became, it is not a wonder why some alien species may not consider us worth visiting. They may assume we did not have to do much at all to live. To be honest, they would not be that far off. The Earth, as well as everything that happened to it, gave us this amazing planet that eventually became possible for human life. The biggest of all of this is our atmosphere.

It is so thick that outer space and its nothingness cannot randomly take away our precious oxygen resource or cool the Earth to a ball of ice. Mars and the Moon apparently at one point did have a true atmosphere before collisions with the Earth. We took a little from everyone to eventually form out a planet that can sustain life, with an atmosphere type found nowhere else in our solar system.

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2. There Are Actually 8 Continents, Not 7

Growing up in school, we were always taught about our major continents. This involved North America, South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, and Europe. However, we were not taught correctly. You should not get mad at your Elementary/Grade school teachers or science teachers from high school. To be fair to them, they didn’t know this either.

For some time, the 7 continent theory held perfect ground. That was until the discovery of an eighth that science is trying to officially recognize as a Continent. Known as Zealandia, most of the continent happens to be submerged in the ocean. However, a tiny part of it managed to survive the ages to become the New Zealand we know today. We feel Zealandia should certainly be recognized as the eighth continent on Earth, despite its underwater status.

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1. There Have Been 5 Mass Extinctions And Somehow We’re Still Here

Mind-blowing facts about the Earth like this make you truly consider if you’re worthy of such an honor. However, it is completely true that the Earth has suffered a mass extinction 5 times now. While there have been several extinction level events beyond this, the major 5 are our big focus, of course. The first happened 444 million years ago called the End Ordovician where 86% of species were killed.

The next up are the Late Devonian (375 million years ago, 75% of species lost), End Permian (251 million years ago, 96% of species lost), End Triassic (200 million years ago, 80% of species lost), and the End Cretaceous (66 million years ago, 76% of species lost). As weird as it might be, if not for these extinctions and the world-changing events that came with it, we would not be here today. Consider yourself lucky, human.

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