Earth

Can you find the Earth in this picture? (1990)

Mostly Harmless

It's not rocket science, it's... Astronomy

The Final Frontier

Gliese 581c Saturn Tharsis Extraterrestrial Heliocentrism Aristarchus of Samos CW Leonis Vatican Observatory Alternative cosmology Eclipse Mercury (planet) Centre of the universe

The abyss stares back

Arthur C. Clarke Johannes Kepler Patrick Moore Jason Lisle Hypatia of Alexandria v - t - e

Earth (Latin: Terra) is one of eight planets (specifically, a rocky one due to its solid surface, as with the rest of the first four planets, though 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 philosophized 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 plasma, perhaps they were not too far off the mark after all.

Fun facts about the Earth

• Most of its inhabitants believe that the Earth is an oblate spheroid, a sphere 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 icosahedron.
• Despite the fact that "Earth" means dirt, most of Earth's surface is covered by water. 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. But, who's laughing now?
• It is the only planet in the solar system not named after a Roman god / goddess in the English language. 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.
• It is the only known planet with RationalWiki, Minecraft, and feminism
• It is also the only known planet with MRAs, the Religious Right and Scientology.
• Its inhabitants are "Mostly Harmless"^{(caps intentional)}
• It has yet to create a sustainable civilization.
• Intelligent life is rather rare on earth.

Quantitative facts about the Earth

Radius (volumetric mean) = 6371.0 km Equatorial = 6378.1 km Polar = 6356.8 km Crust depth = 25 km (variable) Mantle thickness = 2860 km Core = 3480 km Mass = 5.97×1024 kg Atmosphere = 5.1×1018 kg Hydrosphere = 1.4×1021 kg Crust = 3.4×1022 kg Mantle = 4.0×1024 kg Core = 1.9×1024 kg	Distance from the Sun = 1.50×1011 m Distance from the Moon = 3.84×108 m Escape velocity = 11.186 km/s Bond albedo = 0.306 Surface temperature = 288 K Gravitational binding energy = 2.5×1032 J Moment of inertia = 8.02×1037 kg m2 Density = 5514.8 kg/m3 Atmosphere (surface) = 1.217 kg/m3 Crust = 2700 kg/m3 Mantle = 4500 kg/m3 Core = 1.1E4 kg/m3

Future

Unless someone gets it right much earlier, it's expected that the increase of the Sun's luminosity as it ages will cause an increased weathering of minerals, lowering atmospheric CO₂ concentrations so much that in around 600 million years plants will begin to disappear as they will be unable to use photosynthesis. No plants means no animals, and in roughly 1 billion years from now just bacteria will remain. Meanwhile, that very same increasing luminosity will also mess with the Earth's climate causing a moist greenhouse and the evaporation of the oceans, leaving Earth as a pink and brown bone-dry wasteland with dunefields on its equator, salt-rich flats with scattered ponds marking the former place of the oceans, an oxygen-rich, Venus-like crushing, atmosphere, and most of the little water just at the poles, this assuming there's not abrunaway greenhouse that will render Earth a Venus-like planet or much worse if the oceans do not evaporate fast enough.

Given that no oceans means no plate tectonics heat may accumulate on Earth's interior until, as is thought to have happened in Venus, the planet's surface is covered in lava by extensive volcanism killing whatever managed to survive by then. Alternatively, if plate tectonics stopped before the loss of oceans erosion could transform Earth into a water-covered planet at least for a while.

Temperatures will eventually be so hot that the remaining life is expected to become extinct 2.8 billion years from now. It's also expected that Earth' magnetic field will go away within a similar timeframe and that, if you had not enough, Moon's recession may cause the Earth's obliquity to go nuts within a similar amount of time, leaving a dead planet in all senses behind except for some large volcanoes over mantle hotspots.

Nothing more of interest except temperatures keeping its rise as the Sun evolves is thought that will happen for some more billions of years until the Sun exhausts its hydrogen five billion years from now and goes full red giant 2.6 billion years later, moment in which it will absorb Earth but not before causing it to become a hell of a planet.

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.
• Rotation of the Earth
• Earth Day
• Humans, one of the dominant species on this planet.
• Goats, the dominant species on this planet.

References

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