PLANET EARTH.

Among the celestial bodies existing in infinite space, there is the planet on which we live - Earth. The earth was not always the way we know it now. Like the rest of the planets, it appeared about 5 billion years ago from a rotating cloud of hot gases. At this time, solid particles began to form in it. There were more and more of them, and gradually the cloud thickened, which turned into a hot, dense ball.

The surface of this ball gradually cooled, and finally a hard crust formed. That's what they call it - the earth's crust. Beneath it the Earth still retains heat.

In the youth of our planet, the earth’s crust was thin and fragile, its hot interiors and magma often burst out through volcanic openings. During the eruptions of these numerous volcanoes, hot magma poured onto the surface of the Earth, and with it gases, including water vapor, escaped. Gradually, they formed the air shell of the planet - the atmosphere. As the globe cooled, the steam turned into water, giving rise to the World Ocean, which covered most of the Earth's surface, where life arose about 1.5 billion years ago.

The earth has the shape of a ball. But it's hard to notice. Therefore, in ancient times there were different ideas about the Earth and its shape. The ancient Greeks, Phoenicians and Indians believed that the Earth was flat, like a pancake, and surrounded by mountains on all sides. And above the Earth, on four huge pillars, lies a crystal bowl - the sky. The Indians of North America were sure that the world worked like this: the Earth is a whale swimming among endless waters; the man and woman are the personification of Humanity, and the sky is a soaring mighty eagle. And in Asia and Ancient India it was believed that the Earth was a flat or slightly elongated disk, like a drop on a table, that rested on the backs of four giant elephants (according to the number of cardinal directions). The elephants, in turn, stand on the back of a huge turtle. When elephants get tired and shift from foot to foot, earthquakes occur. In the center of the earth rises Mount Meru - the center of the universe, around which the sun, planets and stars revolve. In Ancient China, they believed that the Earth was a cake with cut off edges. In the Middle Ages, scientists thought that the Earth was covered with a cap on which the stars were mounted.

The first to understand that our Planet has the shape of a ball were the sages and philosophers in Ancient Greece. Already two and a half thousand years ago they knew that the most perfect figure in nature is a ball. This means, they reasoned, that the Earth must be spherical. They managed to find a simple proof: when a ship goes out to sea, we, standing on the shore, first see it in its entirety, then the deck disappears, then the sail slowly sinks. But the ship did not sink to the seabed, it was simply hidden from our view by the convex surface of the Earth. It was not only Europeans who came to the idea that the earth was spherical. The Aztec Indians in North America depicted the planets in the form of balls with which the gods played.

For the first time people began to talk about the Earth as a ball in the third century BC. In the Middle Ages, the church forbade talking about the Earth as a ball, declaring it heresy. So how did people know that the Earth is a sphere? A long time ago people noticed that the higher you rise, the farther you can see. Climbing a tree allows you to see something that you cannot see standing on Earth. And once you climb the mountain, you can see very far away. All this comes from the fact that the Earth is not flat, like a table, but round, like a ball. And a person, compared to the Earth, is too small to see it all at once. So he sees only to the horizon, where heaven and earth meet. You rise higher and the horizon moves away. In addition, the horizon in open areas (in the sea, in the steppe) is always seen as a circle.

Important evidence that the Earth is spherical was the sea voyage of Ferdinand Magellan, a native of Portugal. It took his expedition about three years (1519 - 1522) to travel around the globe: going to the west and returning to the same port from the east. After this voyage there was no longer any doubt about the sphericity of the Earth.

Another proof of the sphericity of the Earth was lunar eclipses. During lunar eclipses, the Earth's shadow on the Moon is round.

And finally, on April 12, 1961, Yu. A. Gagarin, the first cosmonaut of the Earth, was able to see our planet from the outside, from space, which also provided evidence of the sphericity of the Earth. The picture shows that the Earth has the shape of a ball. The darker areas in the image are water, the lighter areas are land, and the lightest areas are clouds. Scientists have been able to calculate the size of the Earth. It turned out. To go around the globe, you need to travel 40,000 km.

Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the largest of the terrestrial planets. However, it is only the fifth largest planet in terms of size and mass in the Solar System, but surprisingly, it is the densest of all the planets in the system (5.513 kg/m3). It is also noteworthy that Earth is the only planet in the solar system that people themselves have not named after a mythological creature - its name comes from the old English word "ertha", which means soil.

It is believed that the Earth was formed somewhere around 4.5 billion years ago, and is currently the only known planet where the existence of life is possible in principle, and the conditions are such that life is literally teeming on the planet.

Throughout human history, people have sought to understand their home planet. However, the learning curve turned out to be very, very difficult, with many mistakes made along the way. For example, even before the existence of the ancient Romans, the world was understood as flat, not spherical. A second clear example is the belief that the Sun revolves around the Earth. It was only in the sixteenth century, thanks to the work of Copernicus, that people learned that the Earth was actually just a planet orbiting the Sun.

Perhaps the most important discovery about our planet over the past two centuries is that the Earth is both a common and unique place in the solar system. On the one hand, many of its characteristics are rather ordinary. Take, for example, the size of the planet, its internal and geological processes: its internal structure is almost identical to the three other terrestrial planets in the solar system. On Earth, almost the same geological processes occur that form the surface, which are characteristic of similar planets and many planetary satellites. However, with all this, the Earth simply has a huge number of absolutely unique characteristics that strikingly distinguish it from almost all currently known terrestrial planets.

One of the necessary conditions for the existence of life on Earth is without a doubt its atmosphere. It consists of approximately 78% nitrogen (N2), 21% oxygen (O2) and 1% argon. It also contains very small amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases. It is noteworthy that nitrogen and oxygen are necessary for the creation of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and the production of biological energy, without which life cannot exist. In addition, oxygen present in the ozone layer of the atmosphere protects the planet's surface and absorbs harmful solar radiation.

What's interesting is that a significant amount of the oxygen present in the atmosphere is created on Earth. It is formed as a byproduct of photosynthesis, when plants convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into oxygen. Essentially, this means that without plants, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be much higher and oxygen levels much lower. On the one hand, if carbon dioxide levels rise, it is likely that the Earth will suffer from a greenhouse effect like this. On the other hand, if the percentage of carbon dioxide became even slightly lower, then the reduction in the greenhouse effect would lead to a sharp cooling. Thus, current carbon dioxide levels contribute to an ideal comfortable temperature range of -88°C to 58°C.

When observing the Earth from space, the first thing that catches your eye is oceans of liquid water. In terms of surface area, oceans cover approximately 70% of the Earth, which is one of the most unique properties of our planet.

Like the Earth's atmosphere, the presence of liquid water is a necessary criterion for supporting life. Scientists believe that life on Earth first appeared 3.8 billion years ago in the ocean, and the ability to move on land appeared in living creatures much later.

Planetologists explain the presence of oceans on Earth for two reasons. The first of these is the Earth itself. There is an assumption that during the formation of the Earth, the planet's atmosphere was able to capture large volumes of water vapor. Over time, the planet's geological mechanisms, primarily its volcanic activity, released this water vapor into the atmosphere, after which in the atmosphere, this vapor condensed and fell to the surface of the planet in the form of liquid water. Another version suggests that the source of water was comets that fell to the surface of the Earth in the past, ice which predominated in their composition and formed the reservoirs that exist on Earth.

Ground surface

Despite the fact that most of the Earth's surface is located under its oceans, the "dry" surface has many distinctive features. When comparing the Earth to other solid bodies in the solar system, its surface is strikingly different because it does not have craters. According to planetary scientists, this does not mean that the Earth has escaped numerous impacts from small cosmic bodies, but rather indicates that evidence of such impacts has been erased. There may be many geological processes responsible for this, but scientists identify the two most important - weathering and erosion. It is believed that in many ways it was the dual impact of these factors that influenced the erasure of traces of craters from the face of the Earth.

So weathering breaks surface structures into smaller pieces, not to mention chemical and physical methods of atmospheric exposure. An example of chemical weathering is acid rain. An example of physical weathering is the abrasion of river beds caused by rocks contained in flowing water. The second mechanism, erosion, is essentially the effect on the relief of the movement of particles of water, ice, wind or earth. Thus, under the influence of weathering and erosion, the impact craters on our planet were “erased”, due to which some relief features were formed.

Scientists also identify two geological mechanisms that, in their opinion, helped shape the Earth's surface. The first such mechanism is volcanic activity - the process of release of magma (molten rock) from the interior of the Earth through breaks in its crust. Perhaps it was due to volcanic activity that the earth's crust was changed and islands were formed (the Hawaiian Islands are a good example). The second mechanism determines mountain building or the formation of mountains as a result of compression of tectonic plates.

Structure of planet earth

Like other terrestrial planets, the Earth consists of three components: the core, mantle and crust. Science now believes that the core of our planet consists of two separate layers: an inner core of solid nickel and iron and an outer core of molten nickel and iron. At the same time, the mantle is a very dense and almost completely solid silicate rock - its thickness is approximately 2850 km. The bark also consists of silicate rocks and varies in thickness. While continental crust ranges from 30 to 40 kilometers in thickness, oceanic crust is much thinner, only 6 to 11 kilometers.

Another distinctive feature of Earth relative to other terrestrial planets is that its crust is divided into cold, rigid plates that rest on a hotter mantle below. In addition, these plates are in constant motion. Along their boundaries, as a rule, two processes occur simultaneously, known as subduction and spreading. During subduction, two plates come into contact producing earthquakes and one plate rides on the other. The second process is separation, where two plates move away from each other.

Earth's orbit and rotation

It takes the Earth approximately 365 days to complete its orbit around the Sun. The length of our year is related largely to the average orbital distance of the Earth, which is 1.50 x 10 to the power of 8 km. At this orbital distance, it takes on average about eight minutes and twenty seconds for sunlight to reach the Earth's surface.

At an orbital eccentricity of .0167, the Earth's orbit is one of the most circular in the entire solar system. This means that the difference between Earth's perihelion and aphelion is relatively small. As a result of this small difference, the intensity of sunlight on Earth remains essentially the same year-round. However, the position of the Earth in its orbit determines one season or another.

The Earth's axial tilt is approximately 23.45°. In this case, the Earth takes twenty-four hours to complete one rotation around its axis. This is the fastest rotation among the terrestrial planets, but slightly slower than all the gas planets.

In the past, the Earth was considered the center of the Universe. For 2000 years, ancient astronomers believed that the Earth was static and that other celestial bodies traveled in circular orbits around it. They came to this conclusion by observing the obvious movement of the Sun and planets when observed from Earth. In 1543, Copernicus published his heliocentric model of the solar system, which places the Sun at the center of our solar system.

Earth is the only planet in the system that was not named after mythological gods or goddesses (the other seven planets in the solar system were named after Roman gods or goddesses). This refers to the five planets visible to the naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The same approach with the names of the ancient Roman gods was used after the discovery of Uranus and Neptune. The word “Earth” itself comes from the old English word “ertha” meaning soil.

Earth is the densest planet in the solar system. The density of the Earth differs in each layer of the planet (the core, for example, is denser than the crust). The average density of the planet is about 5.52 grams per cubic centimeter.

The gravitational interaction between the Earth causes tides on Earth. It is believed that the Moon is blocked by the Earth's tidal forces, so its rotation period coincides with the Earth's and it always faces our planet with the same side.

It is so nice to know that planet Earth has proven to be the most suitable for various forms of life. The temperature conditions here are ideal, there is enough air, oxygen and safe light. It's hard to believe that once upon a time none of this existed. Or almost nothing but a molten cosmic mass of indeterminate shape, floating in zero gravity. But first things first.

Explosion on a universal scale

Early theories of the origin of the universe

Scientists have put forward various hypotheses to explain the birth of the Earth. In the 18th century, the French claimed that the cause was a cosmic catastrophe resulting from the collision of the Sun with a comet. The British claimed that an asteroid flying past the star cut off part of it, from which a whole series of celestial bodies subsequently appeared.

German minds have moved further. They considered a cold dust cloud of incredible size to be the prototype for the formation of planets in the solar system. Later they decided that the dust was hot. One thing is clear: the formation of the Earth is inextricably linked with the formation of all the planets and stars that make up the solar system.

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At what speed does the Earth move around its axis and the Sun?

Today, astronomers and physicists are unanimous in the opinion that the Universe was formed after Big Bang. Billions of years ago, a giant fireball exploded into pieces in outer space. This caused a gigantic ejection of matter, the particles of which had colossal energy. It was the power of the latter that prevented the elements from creating atoms, forcing them to repel each other. This was also facilitated by high temperatures (about a billion degrees). But after a million years, space cooled to approximately 4000º. From this moment, the attraction and formation of atoms of light gaseous substances (hydrogen and helium) began.

Over time, they grouped into clusters called nebulae. These were the prototypes of future celestial bodies. Gradually, the particles inside spun faster and faster, increasing in temperature and energy, causing the nebula to shrink. Having reached a critical point, at a certain moment a thermonuclear reaction began, promoting the formation of a nucleus. Thus the bright Sun was born.

The emergence of the Earth - from gas to solid

The young star had powerful gravitational forces. Their influence caused the formation of other planets at different distances from accumulations of cosmic dust and gases, including the Earth. If you compare the composition of different celestial bodies of the solar system, it will become noticeable that they are not the same.

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Earth collisions with meteorites

Mercury is mainly composed of a metal that is most resistant to sunlight. Venus and Earth have a rocky surface. But Saturn and Jupiter remain gas giants due to their greatest distance. By the way, they protect other planets from meteorites, pushing them away from their orbits.

Formation of the Earth

The formation of the Earth began according to the same principle that underlay the appearance of the Sun itself. This happened approximately 4.6 billion years ago. Heavy metals (iron, nickel) as a result of gravity and compression penetrated into the center of the young planet, forming the core. The high temperature created all the conditions for a series of nuclear reactions. A separation of the mantle and core occurred.

The heat generated melted and ejected light silicon to the surface. It became the prototype of the first crust. As the planet cooled, volatile gases burst out from the depths. This was accompanied by volcanic eruptions. Molten lava later formed rocks.

Gas mixtures were held at a distance around the Earth by gravity. They formed an atmosphere, initially without oxygen. Encounters with icy comets and meteorites led to the appearance of oceans from condensation of vapors and melted ice. Continents separated and reconnected, floating in a hot mantle. This was repeated many times over almost 4 billion years.

The entire part of the Universe known to us is, in fact, a lifeless desert, through which iron and stone balls silently fly...

All except for one small multi-colored ball, which is literally seething with the wonders of life!

UFO WORLD has collected a selection of interesting information about our huge home - planet Earth.

1. Such different colors of the sky

The aurora occurs when charged particles that emanate from the Sun reach our planet's magnetic field and are destroyed in the upper atmosphere near the poles. The particles become more active during the period of maximum solar activity, which occurs cyclically every 11 years. Near the South Pole, people are less likely to observe the aurora due to the fact that they rarely appear off the coast of Antarctica.

2. Who got to the South Pole?

The first person to successfully cross the Antarctic desert to reach the South Pole was the Norwegian Roald Amundsen. He and 4 other people, using a sled pulled by dogs, reached the Pole in December 1911. Amundsen said that his luck was due to careful planning.

3. Driest place

The driest place on the planet where humans sometimes appear is the Atacama Desert in Chile and Peru. There are places in the center of this desert where rain has never been recorded. Although in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica there has been no rain for millions of years.

4. Open spaces

People who sometimes like to be alone are advised to go to Greenland. This island has the lowest population density on Earth. So in 2010, only 56,534 people lived on an area of ​​2,166,086 square kilometers. Most of Greenland's inhabitants can be found along the coast.

5. Most populous city

Don't like densely populated cities? Then we do not advise you to go to Manila. This city, the capital of the Philippines, is the most densely populated city on the planet, where most of the country's population is forced to huddle on a relatively small piece of land. According to the 2007 census, 38.55 square kilometers contained 1,660,714 people!

6. The tiniest mammal

There are a large number of tiny creatures living on Earth, some of which consist of only one cell. But the smallest mammal can be called the pig-nosed bat. This vulnerable bat species is native to southeast Asia. The mouse reaches a length of about 3–3.3 centimeters and weighs about 2 grams. This bat can compete with the pygmy shrew, which is approximately the same size.

7. The largest organisms

The largest organisms on the planet can be called, oddly enough, mushrooms. Most of the fungal organism is hidden underground. In 1992, scientists reported in the journal Nature that honey fungus in Oregon covered an area of ​​0.89 hectares.

8. Breathing giants

When we try to think of the largest living creatures on the planet, whales and elephants come to mind. The giant sequoia "General Sherman" is the largest tree on the planet by volume and grows in Sequoia National Park, California. The tree trunk contains 1486.6 cubic meters of material.

9. The largest pool

The largest ocean basin on the planet is the Pacific Ocean, which covers an area of ​​155 million square kilometers and contains more than half of all the water on Earth. It is so big that all the continents could fit in the same area.

10. The most powerful volcanic eruption

The most powerful eruption witnessed by man occurred in April 1815 at Mount Tambora, in Indonesia. On the VEI scale, this eruption reached 7 points, with the highest point of the scale being number 8. According to eyewitnesses, the eruption was so powerful that the sounds of the roaring volcano could be heard even on the island of Sumatra, 1930 kilometers away. The eruption claimed the lives of about 71 thousand people; clouds of black smoke could be seen on islands located quite far from the volcano.

11. The most active volcano

The most active volcano can be called the Stromboli volcano, which is located on a volcanic island in the Mediterranean Sea, southwest of Italy. Over the past 20 thousand years, the volcano has erupted almost constantly. In the dark, thanks to the illumination of the lava, the volcano can be seen from the sea, which is why it is sometimes called the “Lighthouse of the Mediterranean”.

12. Formation of mountains

Although the shifting layers of rock, called tectonic plates, are hidden from our eyes, we can see the results of their movement on the surface of the planet. Between India and Tibet are the Himalayas, which stretch over a distance of 2,900 kilometers. This long mountain range was formed approximately between 40 and 50 million years ago, when plate movements brought India and Eurasia together.

13. Supercontinent

It is believed that over the 4.5 billion years of our planet's existence, the continents of the Earth once joined to become a single continent, and then separated again.

The most recent single continent was Pangea, which began to split into its component parts approximately 200 million years ago. Scientists suggest that in the future the continents will come together again.

14. Formation of the Moon

Many researchers believe that some large objects collided with the Earth a long time ago, as a result of which a fragment broke off from the planet, from which the Moon was later formed. It is not yet clear whether the object was another planet, an asteroid or a comet, but some scientists suggest that the culprit was the planet Theia, similar in size to Mars.

15. Distance to a star

The Earth is approximately 150 million kilometers from the Sun. It takes sunlight 8 minutes and 19 seconds to reach the surface of our planet.

16. Space dust

Every day, cosmic dust falls onto the surface of our planet: approximately 100 tons of interplanetary material (mostly in the form of dust). The smallest particles are released by comets when their ice begins to evaporate as they approach the Sun.

17. The riches of our planet

The largest seas on the planet contain more than 20 million tons of gold, but getting it is not so easy. Gold is so dissolved in seawater that on average only 13 billionths of a gram of gold can be found in each liter. Gold in undissolved form is hidden deep in the depths of the rock, at the bottom of the ocean, so it is not yet possible to extract it. But if this happened, every person on the planet could potentially own 4.5 kilograms of the precious metal, but would it still be precious?

18. Water world

Oceans cover about 70% of the earth's surface, but people have only explored 5% so far. The remaining 95% of the ocean has never been seen by humans.

19. Natural electricity

Thunder and lightning are among the most terrible phenomena of nature. Just one lightning strike can heat the air to about 30 thousand degrees Celsius, which causes the air to expand greatly and create a blast wave, as well as a strong rumble, which we call thunder.

20. She was purple

The Earth was once purple, but today it has changed color to green, suggests Sheel Dassarma, a microbial geneticist at the University of Maryland. Ancient microbes, he says, may have used molecules other than chlorophyll to harness the sun's rays. Such molecules could give them a purple tint.

Dassarma believes that chlorophyll came after another light-sensitive molecule called retinal, which already existed on the young planet. Retinal can now be found on the plum-colored membranes of the photosynthetic microbe Halobacter; it absorbs green light and reflects red and purple, and when they mix, violet light appears.

21. Measuring the age of glaciers

People leave their marks on the planet in many ways. For example, nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s released radioactive particles into the atmosphere that eventually fell in rain and snow. These sediments settled in glaciers, where they formed layers from which scientists are trying to determine the age of the ice.

21. Loss of water

With climate change, glaciers are losing ice, causing global sea levels to rise. It turns out that if one single glacier melts, it will increase the amount of meltwater by 10 percent. The Canadian glacier has already lost a lot of ice between 2004 and 2009, turning it into water equal to 75 percent of Lake Erie.

22. Explosion of lakes

Lakes can also explode. In Cameroon, on the border with Rwana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there are 3 threatening lakes: Nyos, Monoun and Kivu. All these lakes are crater lakes, they are located on the top of the volcano. The magma beneath their surface releases carbon dioxide, which accumulates in the layers under the lake bed. If carbon dioxide escapes, anyone nearby will have trouble breathing.

23. Lowest point on land

The lowest point on land can be easily reached. This is the Dead Sea, located between Jordan and Israel. The water level is 423 meters below sea level and continues to fall by about 1 meter per year.

24. Deepest point

How deep into the bowels of the Earth can a person reach? The deepest point on the planet is the Mariana Trench, which is 10,916 meters below sea level. The deepest point on the planet not covered by an ocean is 2,555 meters below sea level, but it is barely accessible. This is the Bentley Deep in Antarctica, which is filled with a thick layer of ice.

25. The richest ecosystems

Coral reefs attract the largest number of living creatures per unit area than any other ecosystem on the planet. Only tropical forests can compete with them. Reefs are made up of tiny coral polyps that build calcareous structures. They are the largest living structures on the planet, which can be seen even from space. Unfortunately, due to deteriorating ecology and climate change, coral reefs are dying faster and faster.

26. Longest mountain range

If you wanted to see the longest mountain range, you would have to go deep underwater. The underwater chains extend over a distance of 65 thousand kilometers - this is a chain of underwater volcanoes that encircles the Earth. Lava erupts at the bottom of the oceans, forming seamounts.

27. Stones can walk

Rocks can move on the surface of the planet, at least on the surface of the dry lake Racetrack Playa, in Death Valley, California. Sometimes the wind can move stones weighing tens or even hundreds of kilograms. Most likely, the clay surface of the plateau becomes more slippery when snow melts in the nearby mountains. This allows the wind to push and move rocks across the surface.

28. Earth may have another Moon

Some scientists claim that the Earth has another satellite besides the Moon. According to research, the results of which were published late last year in the journal ICARUS, a cosmic body at least 1 meter in size rotates in Earth's orbit at any time. That is, it is not always the same body, but the so-called “temporary moons,” scientists say. According to their theory, the Earth's gravitational field can capture asteroids that fly near our planet while revolving around the Sun. When such an asteroid approaches the Earth, it begins to revolve around it and makes 3 revolutions, remaining in orbit for about 9 months, and then moves away again.

29. Two Moons?

Once upon a time the Earth had two large satellites - two moons. The second satellite, with a diameter of about 1,200 kilometers, according to scientists, revolved around our planet until it collided with the Moon. This catastrophe may explain why the two sides of the modern Moon are so different from each other.

30. Changing the direction of the magnetic field

Over the past 20 million years, on our planet every 200–300 thousand years there has been a change in the direction of the magnetic field, although this process does not have any particular periodicity. Change cannot happen overnight. This process takes hundreds and thousands of years.

31. The highest mountains

Mount Everest or, as it is also called, Chomolungma, is the highest mountain. Its peak is located at an altitude of 8848 meters above sea level. However, if you measure the mountain from its very base to the top, it reaches 17,170 meters.

32. Magnetic field

The Earth has a magnetic field thanks to an ocean of hot and liquid metal that is concentrated around its solid iron core. This flow of liquid metal creates an electric current, which in turn creates a magnetic field. Since the beginning of the 19th century, the Earth's magnetic north pole has moved north by 1,100 kilometers, according to NASA researchers. The speed of movement is increasing, with the North Pole currently moving at a speed of 64 kilometers per year. In the 20th century it moved at a speed of 16 km/year.

33. Strange gravity

Due to the fact that our planet is not a perfect sphere, its mass is distributed unevenly. Fluctuations in mass cause fluctuations in gravity. One example of anomalous gravity is Hudson Bay in Canada. In this area, gravity is lower than in other places on the planet. In 2007, scientists discovered that melted glaciers were to blame. The ice that covered the area during the last ice age melted, but the planet did not have time to recover from this burden.

34. Largest stalagmite

The world's largest stalagmite was found in Cuba. This formation has a height of 67.2 meters.

35. Extreme continent

The southernmost continent - Antarctica is the very edge of the Earth. The Antarctic ice cap contains 70 percent of the planet's fresh water and 90 percent of the world's ice.

36. Coldest point

It won't be a big surprise to learn that the coldest place on the planet is in Antarctica. However, the thermometer there drops to an unprecedented amount. In winter, temperatures can reach minus 73 degrees Celsius. But the most extremely low temperature was recorded on July 21, 1983 at the Russian Vostok station and was minus 89.2 degrees Celsius.

37. The hottest place

The hottest place on the planet is Libya, where the thermometer showed 57.8 degrees Celsius above zero in September 1922. It is possible that there are hotter spots somewhere in the desert, but they are located outside the observation stations.

38. The strongest earthquake

The strongest earthquake recorded by modern seismologists is considered to be the earthquake in Chile, which occurred on May 22, 1960. Its power was 9.5 points.

39. Moonquakes

Moonquakes, or “earthquakes on the Moon,” also sometimes occur, but not as often and not with the same intensity as on Earth. Scientists believe that moonquakes are associated with the tidal forces of the Sun and Earth, as well as some other reasons. Moonquakes can occur at great depths between the surface of the Moon and its center.

40. Age of the Earth

Scientists have calculated the age of the Earth by examining the oldest rocks and meteorites that have been discovered on the planet. Meteorites and the Earth were formed around the same time as the formation of the solar system. According to scientists, the Earth is already 4.54 billion years old.

41. Journey around the Sun

The Earth rotates around its axis and also moves around the Sun at a crazy, by our standards, speed - 107,826 kilometers per hour.

42. On the move

It seems to you that you are standing motionless, but in fact you are moving very quickly. Depending on what part of the Earth you are in, you will move at different speeds. People who are located at the equator move the fastest.

43. The planet has a waist

Mother Earth has a waist - its circumference is 40,075 kilometers.

44. Flattened shape

The earth has an irregular shape. During the rotation process, gravity is directed towards the center of the planet, and centrifugal force goes to the side. Due to rotation, a bulge is created at the planet's equator, so the equatorial diameter is 43 km larger than the diameter between the poles.

45. Third planet

Our home planet Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only planet in the solar system where conditions exist, an atmosphere with free oxygen is maintained, there are oceans of liquid water on the surface and, most importantly, where there is life.