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We pawed through our archives to gather together just 50 of the most amazing and interesting facts about Earth. It was updated in March of 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 — the big one — life. Earth is one of the four terrestrial planet: Like Mercury, Venus and Mars, it is rocky at the surface. Earth is not a perfect sphere.
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. This imbalance adds up at the equator, where gravity pushes extra masses of water and earth into a bulge, or "spare tire" around our planet.
Mother Earth has a generous waistline: At the equator, the circumference of the globe is 24, miles 40, kilometers. At the equator, you would weigh less than if standing at one of the poles. You may feel like you're standing still, but you're actually moving — fast. Depending on where you are on the globe, you could be spinning through space at just over 1, miles per hour.
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. The photo shown here is a true-color image taken on May 5, , by an instrument aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft, over the North Pole, with sea ice shown in white and open water in black. Oh yeah, and the Earth isn't just spinning: It's also moving around the sun at 67, miles , km per hour.
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. Earth is about 4. Photo shown here, what may be the oldest known rocks on Earth, called the Nuvvuagittuq Belt on the coast of the Hudson Bay in Northern Quebec, and dating back to 4. How Old Is Earth? The ground you're walking on is recycled. Earth's rock cycle transforms igneous rocks to sedimentary rocks to metamorphic rocks and back again.
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. 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. Earth's moon looks rather dead and inactive.
But in fact, moonquakes , or "earthquakes" on the moon, keep things just a bit shook up. Quakes on the moon are less common and less intense than those that shake Earth.
According to USGS scientists, 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. As of March , the largest earthquake to shake the United States was a magnitude Photos shows the Four Seasons Apartments in Anchorage, a six-story lift-slab reinforced concrete building, which cracked to the ground during the quake.
And the world's largest earthquake was a magnitude 9. There have likely been hotter locations beyond the network of weather stations. 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 degrees F minus 73 degrees C.
Tectonic processes uplift that rock to the surface, where erosion shaves bits off. From Sidney Harris, a long-time New Yorker , American Scientist , and Hippocrates magazine cartoonist, comes a hilarious and thought-provoking collection of original cartoons on the earth's changing climate and environment. Of those cartoons, 51 are by Sidney Harris. And thus there was just one giant sea, called Panthalassa. Ancient microbes, he said, might have used a molecule other than chlorophyll to harness the sun's rays, one that gave the organisms a violet hue, he suggests. Nyos, Monoun and Kivu.
The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth came from Russia's Vostok Station, where records show the air plunged to a bone-chilling minus The southern continent is a place of extremes, with the Antarctic ice cap containing 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.
This behemoth rises feet Shown here, a photo of a stalagmite in a northwest Yucatan peninsula cave. 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 shown above. This area has lower gravity than other regions, and a 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. 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 miles 1, 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. In fact over the past 20 million years, our planet has settled into a pattern of a pole reversal about every , to , years; as of , 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. And 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, feet 8, meters high.
However, when measured from its true base to summit, Mauna Kea takes the prize, measuring a length of about 56, feet 17, m , according to the USGS. Here are some of Mauna Kea's detailed measurements: The highest point is 13, ft 4, m above sea level; the flanks of Mauna Loa continue another 16, ft 5, m below sea level to the seafloor; and the volcano's central portion has depressed the seafloor another 26, ft 8, m in the shape of an inverted cone, reflecting the profile of the volcano above it. Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench ].
Earth may once have had two moons. A teensy second moon — spanning about miles 1, 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. Some scientists claim Earth has two moons currently. According to researchers reporting in the Dec. 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.
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 whoosh, the rock is off. On May 8, , climbers Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler became the first to summit Everest without the aid of oxygen. Messner described his feelings upon reaching the top like this: To find the world's longest mountain range you'd have to look down, way down.
Called the mid-ocean ridge , the underwater chain of volcanoes spans some 40, miles 65, km. It rises an average of 18, feet 5. As lava erupts from the seafloor it creates more crust, adding to the mountain chain, which stretches around the globe. Do you know what are the largest living structure? The answer will almost surely surprise you. Coral reefs support the most species per unit area of any of the planet's ecosystems, rivaling rain forests. And while they are made up of tiny coral polyps, together coral reefs are the largest living structures on Earth — a community of connected organisms — with some visible even from space, according to NOAA.
How low can you go? The deepest point on the ocean floor is 35, feet 10, meters below sea level in the Mariana Trench. The lowest point on Earth not covered by ocean is 8, feet 2, meters below sea level, but good luck walking there: That spot is in the Bentley Subglacial Trench in Antarctica, buried under lots and lots of ice.
The lowest point on land, however, is relatively accessible. The surface of this super-salty lake is 1, feet m below sea level. In Cameroon and on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo there are three deadly lakes: Share your thoughts with other customers.
Write a customer review. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Harris, this time with a number of other cartoonists, does it again. He brings his unique combination of of incisive wit and real understanding of the science to global warming and other ecological issues. This collection differs from other Harris compendia in a few ways, though.
For one, it includes contributions by Gahan Wilson and others, many quite recongizable. On the whole, though, I found Harris's to be the strongest in the collection. Some material in the collection actually writes itself, leading to the second unusual feature of this collection.
In a half-dozen cartoons, Harris just pens a loose sketch of some famous figure and lets that luminary's own bone-headed words speak for themselves, for example "We've got to ask ourselves: You can't make that stuff up; no one would believe it. Issues like these are so important the we must bring all of our resources to bear on them, and humor is that most human of resources. I loved this book! This is a charming collection of black-and-white rib-tickling cartoons spoofing various global warming issues. As indicated in the title, the book contains cartoons, a few occupying more than one page.
Provocative, timely, and endlessly funny, Funny Things About Global Warming fits into the growing trend of ecocentric public events and media coverage by. Is it possible to laugh about global climate change? New Yorker cartoonist Sidney Harris thinks so. Harris and his New Yorker colleagues have.
Of those cartoons, 51 are by Sidney Harris. As in all cartoon collections, and depending on the reader's mindset, some cartoons will likely be hilarious, some may be more difficult to grasp, while others, well Some of these cartoons had me rolling on the floor - well, almost. But the beauty of Sidney Harris's work is that his cartoons are simple, to the point and, over time, can be reviewed over and over again, inducing just about as much pleasure as the first viewing.
The other cartoonists who contributed to this collection have their own different styles, but they share a similar insight as Mr. Anyone who's had the pleasure of perusing Sidney Harris's cartoons will not be disappointed in this collection, even if he's only produced half of them. See all 4 reviews. Customers who viewed this item also viewed. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations.
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