Marvelous Things About Planet Earth

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Marvelous Things About Planet Earth

By Trista - September 9, 2019

22. The planet is constantly recycling itself.

We all know about the water cycle, but do you remember the rock cycle? When you were in middle school, you probably learned the three main kinds of rocks: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphosis. The rock cycle roughly goes like this: molten magma inside the Earth’s mantle and comes to the surface through fissures and volcanic eruptions. The rocks that the magma cools into are known as igneous. As the igneous rocks from the explosions, like pumice and obsidian, erode and break down, they become transformed into sedimentary rocks, like sandstone. As layers of sedimentary rocks get pushed down and heated, they turn into metamorphosis rocks.

They can continue to get pushed down into the mantle and get spewed out as igneous. All that is to say, the cycle forms old rocks into new rocks. Another version of the planet “recycling” itself is crustal recycling. Though the terminology for this process can become quite cumbersome, the process itself is more or less straightforward: the interaction between the land and water on the Earth’s crust causes rocks to be heated, changed, melted, or eroded. Sediment is then transported and deposited, where it is impacted by whichever elements (buried, compressed, or lithified, for example) until it goes through the cycle all over again.

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21. Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent.

There are seven continents: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. The largest, both by landmass and population, is Asia. The smallest continent by size is Australia, but Antarctica is the fifth-largest. This icy continent contains 90% of the world’s ice and 70% of its freshwater. Though Antarctica is significant, it doesn’t have any permanent population. Other than the wildlife that thrives in its extreme cold, it is populated only by international teams of scientists, who stay on research bases. There have been squabbles over who will get first dibs on its mineral resources as the ice continues to melt.

Antarctica is our southernmost continent and contains the geographic South Pole. Its name is derived from the Greek word meaning “opposite to the Arctic,” or “opposite to the North.” Climate-wise, it is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, with the highest average elevation of all continents. It’s called a “polar desert,” as we have mentioned previously, so it’s not exactly an ideal living place. Interestingly, it was the last region on Earth to be discovered; it was not recorded in history until as late as 1820 when a Russian expedition found one of its ice shelves.

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20. The largest stalagmite is 220 feet tall.

You, like many others, may have a hard time telling stalactites from stalagmites. Here’s a helpful trick to remember: G for Ground and C for Ceiling. Now, onto the real facts! Stalagmites build upon the floors of caves because of minerals that get deposited, usually from dripping water. Their cousins are stalactites, which grow on caves’ roofs when dripping water leaves minerals behind, which accrue into the spiky formations. They only form in specific conditions when the pH conditions are suitable, which is why they’re not found in every cave. They shouldn’t be touched because skin oils can alter the surface tension of the formation’s growth and can even stain the formation’s coloring.

Stalactites and stalagmites are usually only a couple of feet in height. However, at the Cuevo San Martin Infierno cave in Cuba, spelunkers found a stalagmite that measures 220 feet tall! Unfortunately, the Cuevo San Martin Infierno cave is not open to the public. If you still need a stalagmite and stalactite cave to scratch that itch, try the Jeita Grotto in Lebanon. That’s where you’ll find the world’s largest stalactite! The grotto is a system of two interconnected caves spanning a length of nearly nine kilometers. The lower cave can only be explored with a boat because it channels an underground river that provides fresh drinking water to over 20% of the Lebanese population!

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19. Rocks run races in Death Valley.

At this point, you’re already familiar with Death Valley, an immense desert where scientists have recorded the hottest temperature ever. However, you may not know that it has a unique area called Racetrack Playa, aptly named for the rocks that seem to race each other. A playa means a dry lakebed, and this one is best known for its strange moving rocks. About ten thousand years ago, the region experienced severe climate changes, which resulted in the lake evaporating and leaving thick mud at least 1,000 feet thick. The desert there is quite fragile, and tracks from the rocks or even tire tracks can remain visible for years after they are made.

The playa is surrounded by mountains, which receive snow in the winter that melts, sending slippery, ice-covered rocks into the playa. When conditions are just right, a windstorm can sweep through and cause the slippery rocks to slide across the surface of the playa. Some of them weigh hundreds of pounds and leave behind tracks to show just how far the wind brought them. Some of the moving rocks have traveled as far as 1,500 feet, though they can sit for a decade or more without moving. Scientists have even set up GPS tracking to monitor the rocks’ movement and learn more about this crazy phenomenon!

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18. Mount Everest is not the tallest mountain.

What sets Mount Everest apart is that its summit is the highest above sea level, making it the world’s highest place. However, if you ask what the highest mountain on Earth is, you might get a few different answers. Mount Everest is just over 29,000 feet from base to summit, making it an infant compared to Mauna Loa, one of the Hawaiian Islands’ volcanoes. Mauna Loa is nearly twice as high as Everest, reaching 56,000 feet. Most of Mauna Loa is underwater, as its highest point is only 13,680 feet above sea level. The mountain is so massive that it has warped the seafloor’s base into an inverted cone because it applies so much pressure.

Another option is Mount Chimborazo, whose peak is the furthest point on Earth from the center. The summit is 20,548, making it over 6,800 feet farther from the Earth’s center than Mount Everest’s summit. This mountain is not a mountain – it’s a stratovolcano in central Ecuador. So the answer to the question of “highest mountain” really depends on a lot of variables and qualifiers. Do you measure from sea level, from the base of the mountain, or the center of the Earth? You’ll get a different answer based on your criteria!

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17. Africa has exploding lakes.

We’ve heard of killer bees, but killer lakes? Nyos, Monoun, and Kivu are all water bodies formed in the craters of active volcanoes, but these aren’t your average hot springs. Magma in the Earth’s mantle has been putting pressure on the lake beds, causing carbon dioxide from the mantle to seep into the waters. There, it turns into carbonic acid, which can explode and kill any passerby. Usually, the gases would just bubble out, but Lake Kivu is so deep at 1,500 feet that the pressure underwater dissolves the gas before it can escape. The mixture of liquefied gas and saltier water increases the water’s density in the lake, creating layers of different thicknesses that don’t mix. The CO2 methane that is trapped in the deep layers worries scientists, mostly because of what happened with Lake Nyos.

Lake Nyos, which is located in Cameroon, was the site of the only known natural event that caused large-scale asphyxiation. In August 1986, a landslide was suspected of causing the lake to emit a large cloud of carbon dioxide that caused an estimated 1800 nearby villagers to suffocate. Events like this are called limnic eruptions, and scientists are worried that Kivu is a disaster waiting to happen, mainly because of its size. In fact, scientists have discovered evidence of one previous limnic event at Kivu between 3,500 and 5,000 years ago. Since the Lake Nyos incident, degassing tubes have been placed inside the lake to keep the carbon dioxide levels checked.

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16. Earth is covered with water.

The Earth is often called a blue marble by astronauts because of the prevalence of water on its surface. Though humans can only live on land or in a highly modified marine environment (like in a submarine, and even then only temporarily), the vast majority of the Earth is water, not land. About 71% of the planet is water, and most of that is the saltwater found in the oceans. As we’ve discussed in other entries, 96.5% of the Earth’s water is contained within the oceans, while the remaining 3.5% of the water is freshwater and frozen water.

Not only is the Earth covered in water, but there is water below the surface as well. You may have heard of Pangea, the giant supercontinent from which all of our present-day continents derived. There was also once Panthalassa, a superocean that held all of the water that is now dispersed in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Arctic Oceans. Some scientists believe that water was brought to Earth by icy comets and asteroids that collided with the Earth some 4.6 million years ago. The surface of the Earth as a baby was initially just an ocean of magma!

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15. Earth is also covered with cosmic dust.

Earth is continuously being bombarded by comets and meteorites, most of which are relatively small and burn up in the atmosphere. Every single day, 100 tons of cosmic dust, most of it from these space rocks that disintegrate, descends on the Earth in the form of interplanetary fairy dust. NASA collects many of these particles for study. Why? Because they reveal much about what is going on in our solar system. Most of the particles fall safely to the ground, entirely unbeknownst to us. This dust is full of the minerals that compose much of the Earth’s surface, so we welcome it.

Most cosmic dust particles are minuscule, measuring between a few molecules and a few micrometers in size. Larger ones are called meteoroids, which is something we’re usually more familiar with. This cosmic dust, or space dust, can cause zodiacal light in the Solar System. This dust includes comet dust, asteroidal dust, and interstellar dust. They all contain complex organic compounds that can reveal necessary information about phenomena like the Solar System formation. The dust grains are irregularly shaped, with their porosity ranging from fuzzy to compact. It’s fun to think about fluffy cosmic dust.

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14. The most active volcano is in Hawaii.

The Hawaiian Islands are a chain of volcanoes, most of which are still active. There are six active volcanos on the Islands of Hawaii and Maui being monitored by the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. Mount Kilauea, Mauna Loa, Hualalai, Mauna Kea, Loihi, and Haleakala. These are not the explosive volcanoes that can kill vast swathes of people and cause the global climate to shift. No, these volcanoes erupt quietly and sometimes continually, and they are always adding land to the islands. In fact, each island is made of one or more volcanoes that first erupted on the ocean floor and eventually emerged above sea level.

Mount Kilauea in Hawaii is the most active volcano in the world, spewing out the most lava. It erupted continuously from 1983 to 2018 along the volcano’s East Rift Zone. From 2008 – 2018, there was a lava lake at the volcano’s summit. Mauna Loa, the world’s largest volcano, has erupted 33 times since 1843. The latest eruption lasted over three weeks and produced lava flows within 5 miles of Hilo, the largest population center in Hawaii. However, Mount Stromboli, off the coast of southern Italy, has been blowing smoke nearly continuously for nearly 2000 years. Both Stromboli and Mount Kilauea have been the site of human habitation for a long time.

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13. Trees provide our oxygen.

Next time you consider cutting down some trees, stop and think that trees are the lungs of the Earth. They breathe in carbon dioxide, the by-product of our own respiration, and exhale oxygen – our polar opposites in that sense. Of course, they use oxygen when they break down glucose to release energy and power their metabolism, but their production is more than their intake. They are regularly cleaning the air and making it safe and healthy for other animals and us. Deforestation is one of the biggest drivers of climate change, as it removes our planet’s lungs and replaces them with artificial structures, usually made of cement, which absorbs heat.

If we want to continue having a world to live in, we need to preserve our trees better and plant new ones. If you’re interested in relevant math, it has been determined that it takes about seven or eight trees worth each year to produce enough oxygen for one person. Think about the number of people on the planet, and imagine how many trees we genuinely need for better quality air. Not all trees are created equal, though; Douglas firs, spruces, true firs, beech trees, and maple trees are among the top oxygen-producing trees. That is primarily due to their leafiness; it has been determined that oxygen release is proportional to overall leaf mass.

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12. The largest living thing is a giant mushroom.

General Sherman is a giant sequoia in California, and it is 52,500 cubic feet in size. It is the largest tree in the world measured by volume, and for a long time, it was the largest thing in the world. However, in 1992, a giant mushroom took the title of the most incredible living thing in existence. It took up a whopping 2200 acres in the state of Oregon’s Malheur National Forest! Interestingly, someone discovered it because trees were dying off in the forest, so a team from the US Forest Service decided to investigate the cause.

They soon determined that most of the trees in the area had been infected with the fungus. Its age had been calculated to be somewhere between 1,900 and 8,650 years old! Even after the fungus killed a tree, the tree could remain standing for years before toppling. The humongous mega fungus was a collection of mushroom shoots that were all connected to one central organism. They were probably either cloned or directly related, but there is a slight chance that they were not clones. Still, a 2200-acre mushroom is impressive either way. If this piques your interest, check out the Pando organism in Utah.

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11. There are other planets like Earth.

Seeing just how impressive our planet makes us want to believe that there is no place like home. However, that is most likely not true. Scientists have been discovering exoplanets are planets outside the confines of our solar system. Moreover, they have found some that may be remarkably similar to Earth. We should be pleased to know that there may be other Earth-like planets out there because life is too precious to be confined to one small corner of our solar system. Also, the presence of other earth-like planets does not make our home any less unique.

The “habitable zone” is the distance from a star at which liquid water could exist on orbiting planets’ surfaces – basically where conditions are right for life. Life on other planets may not be anything like what we can fathom, but it makes sense to start with something familiar. Since our star, the sun, has nurtured life on our planet for over 4 billion years, it makes sense that the same conditions could be replicated elsewhere. Scientists have found nearly two thousand alien planets since they’ve started looking, and there is an abundance of small, rocky worlds like our own little Earth. Of these 2,000 planets, there are six planets that NASA considers “similar” to Earth: Gliese 667Cc, Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, Kepler-62f, Kepler-186f, and Kelpler-452b. The last one is the most Earth-like so far, according to scientists.

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10. Plate tectonics keep the Earth comfortable.

Earth is the only planet in the solar system with plate tectonics. The outer crust of the Earth is broken up into regions known as tectonic plates. There are seven or eight major plates (depending on the criteria) and many minor plates. These are floating on top of the magma interior of the Earth and can move against one another. When two plates collide, one plate will go underneath the other, and where they pull apart, they will allow a fresh crust to form. This process is vital for a variety of reasons.

Not only does it lead to geological activity such as earthquakes, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation, but it also is intrinsic to the carbon cycle. When microscopic plants in the ocean die, they fall to the bottom of the sea. Over long periods, the remnants of this life, rich in carbon, are carried back to the Earth’s interior and recycled. That pulls carbon out of the atmosphere, ensuring that we do not suffer a runaway greenhouse effect. Without the actions of plate tectonics, there would be no way to recycle this carbon, and the Earth would become an overheated place.

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9. Although many people believe Earth is round, it is almost a sphere, but not entirely!

Some people indeed think the Earth is flat. Although we really didn’t know at one point, it is easy to prove that the Earth isn’t flat. So, it is safe to say that many people tend to think that Earth is a sphere. However, thanks to modern astronomy and space travel, scientists have since understood that Earth is shaped like a flattened sphere or an oblate spheroid. This shape is similar to a sphere, but the poles are flattened, and the equator bulges. In the case of the Earth, this bulge is due to our planet’s rotation.

That means that the measurement from pole to pole is about 43 km less than Earth’s diameter across the equator. The feature that is the furthest from the center of the Earth is Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador. Keep reading to find out more amazing facts about the planet Earth. You can discover what the planet is made of, how much water it has, and more.

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8. Iron, oxygen, and silicon comprise the Earth — mostly.

To better understand the Earth’s components, you should also understand the basics of the Earth’s layers. The ocean basins and continents make up the ‘crust’ layer, which is the Earth’s outermost layer. It varies between three and 46 miles deep. If you could separate the Earth into piles of material, you would have four main components: iron, oxygen, silicon, and magnesium. The majority would be iron at 32.1%; the second would be oxygen at 30.1%. Silicon would come in third at 15.1%, and lastly, magnesium at 13.9%.

However, most of this iron is located at the ‘core’ of the Earth, which is the innermost layer. The core has two parts: a solid inner core and a liquid outer core. The inner core rotates at a different speed than the rest of the Earth. If you could get down and truly sample the Earth’s core, it would be 88% iron. On the other hand, if you tested the Earth’s crust, you would find that 47% of it is oxygen. The ‘mantle’ is between the crust and the core. It is about 1800 miles deep and is mostly composed of magnesium and iron. When this mantle layer is pushed through the crust, we experience volcanoes.

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7. Water covers 70 percent of the Earth’s surface.

When astronauts first went into space, they looked back at the Earth with human eyes for the first time. Based on their observations, the Earth acquired the nickname the “Blue Planet.” The nickname came as no surprise seeing how 70 percent of our planet is covered with oceans. In fact, our planet looks blue from outer space because of this vast amount of water. Ironically, our human bodies are also comprised of water. In fact, the body has about 50 to 70 percent of water — just like Earth!

The remaining 30 percent is the solid crust located above sea level. That is why scientists call it the continental crust. Underneath the water that fills the oceans and the dirt and plants covering the continents, the Earth’s surface is made of rock. The rocky layer under the Earth’s soil is called the crust which comprises the continents and ocean basins. Keep reading to discover how thick the Earth’s atmosphere really is. And what does that mean for us.

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6. Earth’s atmosphere is thickest within the first 30 miles from the surface.

Although the atmosphere is thickest within the first miles from the surface, it reaches over 6,000 miles into space. It comprises five main layers – the Troposphere, the Stratosphere, the Mesosphere, the Thermosphere, and the Exosphere. The Troposphere starts at the Earth’s surface and ends about 9 miles out. That is the densest part of the atmosphere, and this is where we experience all weather. The Stratosphere starts right after the Troposphere and extends to about 31 miles high. It is where you’ll find the ozone layer, which scatters UV radiation and protects us from the sun’s rays. The Mesosphere starts next and ends at about 53 miles away from the Earth’s surface. That is where meteors burn up.

The Thermosphere is the next layer and is a larger layer that extends out to 372 miles! It is where satellites orbit and where you’ll see auroras. The Ionosphere overlaps the Mesosphere and extends to the edge of space at about 600 miles. That is the layer that makes radio communication possible. As a rule, air pressure and density decrease the higher one goes into the atmosphere and the farther one is from the surface. The bulk of the Earth’s atmosphere is down near the Earth itself. The Exosphere merges with the emptiness of outer space, where there is no atmosphere and is composed of low densities of hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide.

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5. The Earth’s molten iron core creates a magnetic field.

Have you ever thought about the Earth’s core? Or how magnetic fields work? You know all of these things exist, but do you understand them? After all, our planet is quite amazing! The Earth is like a giant magnet, with poles at the top and bottom near the actual geographic poles. The magnetic field it creates extends thousands of miles from the Earth’s surface and forms a region called the magnetosphere. Scientists think this magnetic field is generated by the molten outer core of the Earth, where heat creates convection methods of conducting materials to generate electric currents.

Without the magnetosphere, particles from the sun’s solar wind would hit Earth directly, exposing the planet’s surface to significant amounts of radiation. Instead, the magnetosphere channels the solar wind around the Earth, protecting us from harm. Thank goodness for those fields. Certain things happen to us every single day without us even realizing it. Keep reading to learn how long a day — and year — truly is on Earth!

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4. Earth does not take 24 hours to rotate on its axis.

Try to stay in your seat for this fantastic science fact about the Earth. You might not even believe it, but you should check the sources. It takes 23 hours, 56 minutes, and just over four seconds for the Earth to rotate once completely on its axis, referred to as a Sidereal Day. You might think that this makes a day four minutes shorter than we think it is. You may also question how day after day and within a few months, that day would be night, and night would be a day.

However, Earth orbits around the sun. Every day, the sun moves compared to the background stars by about one degree. Suppose you add up that little motion from the sun that we see because the Earth is orbiting around it and rotating on its axis. You get a total of 24 hours. People call this particular day Solar Day. Keep reading to learn how this affects the rest of the calendar. After all, if a day isn’t a full 24 hours then a month can’t be what it is, right? What about the entire year? Is it still 365 days? It’s time you learn the truth about our marvelous planet.

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3. The Earth completes one orbit every 365.242199 solar days.

There are 365 days in a year. This is common knowledge, right? You probably even learned that fact when you were a child in school. Ever since the 16th century, scientists have worked tirelessly to understand the relationship of how the Earth revolves around the sun. While most years are calculated for 365 days, the extra .242199 is a fact that goes a long way towards explaining why we need an extra calendar day every four years, aka during a leap year. The planet’s distance from the sun varies as it orbits.

The Earth is never the same distance from the sun from day today. If the year is divisible by 400, then it is a leap year. The exception to this rule is if the year in question is divisible by 100. Keep reading to learn more about the Earth’s moon. Do you know about the moon’s two co-orbital satellites? It’s time you learn more so you can share your knowledgeable information with your friends and family. You can impress them with your science smarts!

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2. Earth has one moon and two co-orbital satellites.

While many people know and understand that the Earth has one moon, did you know that two additional asteroids are locked into co-orbital orbits with Earth? People call them 3753 Cruithne and 2002 AA. They belong to a larger population of asteroids — Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). Scientists also refer to them as Earth Trojans. Experts sometimes call the asteroid 3753 Cruithne is as Earth’s second moon. But it doesn’t actually orbit the Earth but is even following its own distinct path around the sun. However, 2002 AA is making a horseshoe orbit around the Earth that brings it close to the planet every 95 years.

Other small, natural objects in orbit around the sun may enter orbit around Earth for a short period, making them temporary natural satellites until they exit our orbit. The only confirmed examples of this have been 2006 RH120 during 2006 and 2007 and 2020 CD3 between 2018 and 2020. There are also objects called “quasi-satellites.” The difference between them and standard satellites is that the orbit of a satellite of Earth depends on the Earth-Moon system’s gravity. In contrast, the quasi-satellite’s trajectory would not change if the Earth-Moon system were removed because it is orbiting the sun.

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1. The world boasts several million species of life, living in habitats from the bottom of the deepest ocean to a few miles from the atmosphere.

While there has been past discovered evidence of water and organic molecules on Mars and building blocks of life on Saturn’s moon, Titan, Earth is the only known planet to have life. Scientists have speculated about the possible existence of life beneath the icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Titan. As we’ve discussed, scientists have even looked for other planets that look like they could support similar life forms, perhaps in some search of connection. They also look for chemical combinations that could signal alien life: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, sulfur, and hydrogen.

However, Earth remains the only confirmed place of life. Scientists are building experiments that will help find life on other planets if it exists. For instance, giant radio dishes currently scan distant stars, listening for intelligent life’s characteristic signals reaching out across interstellar space. NASA’s entire exoplanet program is to find life signs on a planet other than Earth, though this could take decades if not longer. One promising landmark in the search is the James Webb Space Telescope, launching this year! The Webb will be the largest, most powerful space telescope ever built and launched into space. Scientists hope that it could pick up signs of an atmosphere like ours, so keep your fingers crossed!

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