Earth
From RationalWiki
Earth is one of nine eight eleven (so far) n [2]planets (specifically, a rocky one due to its solid surface, as with the rest of the first four planets, though much of the the majority of the rock on our own planet is underwater). in the solar system orbiting a star, sometimes called Sol in random science fiction stories. While some believe there is intelligent life on Earth, others are too smart to really believe this.
Earth is also one of the four fundamental elements the Greeks philosophised about, the others being water, air and fire. Some people consider their philosophical ruminations to be somewhat naive. If you consider that they were doing said philosophizing a good few thousand years ago, and the four elements line up pretty well with solid, liquid, gas and energy, perhaps they were not too far off the mark after all.
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[edit] Fun facts about the Earth
- Most humans believe that the Earth is a mostly spherical, just slightly appearing to have been "pushed in" a bit on the poles so the equator "bulges out" a bit more than on a perfectly spherical object. A highly vocal, loony, and nasally minority seem to think that it is flat, presumably squarish. This RationalWiki editor believes that it is a dodecahedron.
- There is a heck of a lot of water on the Earth's surface. Curiously, while water is absolutely vital to continued life as humans know it, most of the Earth's water, if consumed in sufficient quantities, would kill humans.
- The Earth's environment is seemingly quite fragile. However, since it is our God-given right to trash it, dammit we're gonna do it.
- Everyone that has ever lived and everyone you have ever known has been from Earth. Deep, ain't it? Alien abductionists may disagree with this.
- Earth's star, Sol (though possession probably should belong to Sol and not Earth), is considered to be average as stars go. How's that for weird?
- Earth lost out to Mars when all of the planetary bodies of the Solar System voted for Most Likely to Support Life.[citation needed] But, who's laughing now?
- "Mostly Harmless" (caps intentional)
- It is the only planet in the solar system not named after a Roman god / goddess in the English language.[3] However, the dwarf planets Haumea and Makemake are named after Hawaiian and Easter Island deities respectively, whilst Eris is named after the Greek goddess of discord.
[edit] Fact sheet (serious)
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[edit] See also
- Age of the Earth — Yes, people really deny its age, hence this page's purpose of debunking that idea.
- Evidence against a recent creation — Evidence that our ball of dirt is really approximately 4.54 billion years old.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Voyager 1, 1990
- ↑ fuck the IAU and its fascist definition of what a planet is!
- ↑ For the sake of gratuitous pedantry, the names are in the Latin language, and borrowed into English.