Earth is the third planet from the Sun and is the largest of the terrestrial planets. The Earth is the only planet in our solar system not to be named after a Greek or Roman deity. The Earth was formed approximately 4.54 billion years ago and is the only known planet to support life.

• The Earth's Crust
• The Earth Is The Lord And The Fullness Thereof

• The Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing.
  This deceleration is happening almost imperceptibly, at approximately 17 milliseconds per hundred years, although the rate at which it occurs is not perfectly uniform. This has the effect of lengthening our days, but it happens so slowly that it could be as much as 140 million years before the length of a day will have increased to 25 hours.
• The Earth was once believed to be the centre of the universe.
  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. Eventually, the view that the Sun was at the centre of the universe was postulated by Copernicus, though this is also not the case.
• Earth has a powerful magnetic field.
  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.
• There is only one natural satellite of the planet Earth.
  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.
• Earth is the only planet not named after a god.
  The other seven planets in our solar system are all named after Roman gods or goddesses. Although only Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were named during ancient times, because they were visible to the naked eye, the Roman method of naming planets was retained after the discovery of Uranus and Neptune.
• The Earth is the densest planet in the Solar System.
  This varies according to the part of the planet; for example, the metallic core is denser than the crust. The average density of the Earth is approximately 5.52 grams per cubic centimetre.

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Earth Diagrams

Facts from Leo:

-70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water
When astronauts first went into the space, they looked back at the Earth with human eyes for the first time, and called our home the Blue Planet. And it’s no surprise. 70% of our planet is covered with oceans. The remaining 30% is the solid ground, rising above sea level.

-Earth is mostly iron, oxygen and silicon
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 down at the core of the Earth. If you could actually get down and sample the core, it would be 88% iron. 47% of the Earth’s crust consists of oxygen.

-Earth doesn’t take 24 hours to rotate on its axis
It’s actually 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds. This is the amount of time it takes for the Earth to completely rotate around its axis; astronomers call this a sidereal day. Now wait a second, that means a day is 4 minutes shorter than we think it is. You’d think that time would add up, day by day, and within a few months, day would be night, and night would be day.

-A year on Earth isn’t 365 days
It’s actually 365.2564 days. It’s this extra .2564 days that creates the need for leap years. That’s why we tack on an extra day in February every year divisible by 4 – 2004, 2008, etc – unless it’s divisible by 100 (1900, 2100, etc)… unless it’s divisible by 400 (1600, 2000, etc).

-Earth has 1 moon and 2 co-orbital satellites
As you’re probably aware, Earth has 1 moon (The Moon). But did you know there are 2 additional asteroids locked into a co-orbital orbits with Earth? They’re called 3753 Cruithne and 2002 AA29. We won’t go into too much detail about the Moon, I’m sure you’ve heard all about it.

3753 Cruithne is 5 km across, and sometimes called Earth’s second moon. It doesn’t actually orbit the Earth, but has a synchronized orbit with our home planet. It has an orbit that makes it look like it’s following the Earth in orbit, but it’s actually following its own, distinct path around the Sun.

2002 AA29 is only 60 meters across, and makes a horseshoe orbit around the Earth that brings it close to the planet every 95 years. In about 600 years, it will appear to circle Earth in a quasi-satellite orbit. Scientists have suggested that it might make a good target for a space exploration mission.

-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.

-The Earth tilts at roughly 66 degrees.

-Only 3% water of the earth is fresh, rest 97% salted. Of that 3%, over 2% is frozen in ice sheets and glaciers. Means less than 1% fresh water is found in lakes, rivers and underground.

-Asia Continent is covered 30% of the total earth land area, but represent 60% of the world’s population.

-Each winter there are about 1 septillion (1, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 or a trillion trillion) snow crystals that drop from the sky.

• The atmosphere and hydrosphere
• Development of Earth’s structure and composition

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Earth, third planet from the Sun and the fifth largest planet in the solar system in terms of size and mass. Its single most outstanding feature is that its near-surface environments are the only places in the universe known to harbour life. It is designated by the symbol ♁. Earth’s name in English, the international language of astronomy, derives from Old English and Germanic words for ground and earth, and it is the only name for a planet of the solar system that does not come from Greco-Roman mythology.

Since the Copernican revolution of the 16th century, at which time the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a Sun-centred model of the universe (seeheliocentric system), enlightened thinkers have regarded Earth as a planet like the others of the solar system. Concurrent sea voyages provided practical proof that Earth is a globe, just as Galileo’s use of his newly invented telescope in the early 17th century soon showed various other planets to be globes as well. It was only after the dawn of the space age, however, when photographs from rockets and orbiting spacecraft first captured the dramatic curvature of Earth’s horizon, that the conception of Earth as a roughly spherical planet rather than as a flat entity was verified by direct human observation. Humans first witnessed Earth as a complete orb floating in the inky blackness of space in December 1968 when Apollo 8 carried astronauts around the Moon. Robotic space probes on their way to destinations beyond Earth, such as the Galileo and the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft in the 1990s, also looked back with their cameras to provide other unique portraits of the planet.

Viewed from another planet in the solar system, Earth would appear bright and bluish in colour. Easiest to see through a large telescope would be its atmospheric features, chiefly the swirling white cloud patterns of midlatitude and tropical storms, ranged in roughly latitudinal belts around the planet. The polar regions also would appear a brilliant white, because of the clouds above and the snow and ice below. Beneath the changing patterns of clouds would appear the much darker blue-black oceans, interrupted by occasional tawny patches of desert lands. The green landscapes that harbour most human life would not be easily seen from space. Not only do they constitute a modest fraction of the land area, which itself is less than one-third of Earth’s surface, but they are often obscured by clouds. Over the course of the seasons, some changes in the storm patterns and cloud belts on Earth would be observed. Also prominent would be the growth and recession of the winter snowcap across land areas of the Northern Hemisphere.

The Earth's Crust

Scientists have applied the full battery of modern instrumentation to studying Earth in ways that have not yet been possible for the other planets; thus, much more is known about its structure and composition. This detailed knowledge, in turn, provides deeper insight into the mechanisms by which planets in general cool down, by which their magnetic fields are generated, and by which the separation of lighter elements from heavier ones as planets develop their internal structure releases additional energy for geologic processes and alters crustal compositions.

Earth’s surface is traditionally subdivided into seven continental masses: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. These continents are surrounded by four major bodies of water: the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans. However, it is convenient to consider separate parts of Earth in terms of concentric, roughly spherical layers. Extending from the interior outward, these are the core, the mantle, the crust (including the rocky surface), the hydrosphere (predominantly the oceans, which fill in low places in the crust), the atmosphere (itself divided into spherical zones such as the troposphere, where weather occurs, and the stratosphere, where lies the ozone layer that shields Earth’s surface and its organisms against the Sun’s ultraviolet rays), and the magnetosphere (an enormous region in space where Earth’s magnetic field dominates the behaviour of electrically charged particles coming from the Sun).

The Earth Is The Lord And The Fullness Thereof

Knowledge about these divisions is summarized in this astronomically oriented overview. The discussion complements other treatments oriented to the Earth sciences and life sciences. Earth’s figure and dimensions are discussed in the article geodesy. Its magnetic field is treated in the article geomagnetic field. The early evolution of the solid Earth and its atmosphere and oceans is covered in geologic history of Earth. The geologic and biological development of Earth, including its surface features and the processes by which they are created and modified, are discussed in geochronology, continental landform, and plate tectonics. The behaviour of the atmosphere and of its tenuous, ionized outer reaches is treated in atmosphere, while the water cycle and major hydrologic features are described in hydrosphere, ocean, and river. The solid Earth as a field of study is covered in geologic sciences, the methods and instruments employed to investigate Earth’s surface and interior are discussed in Earth exploration, and the history of the study of Earth from antiquity to modern times is surveyed in Earth sciences. The global ecosystem of living organisms and their life-supporting stratum are detailed in biosphere.