10 Shocking Facts You Didn’t Know about our Planet
We live on the most amazing planet in our Solar System. And if you look from up there, the life on our planet with its volcanic eruptions, meteorites falling and ocean bottom monsters seems much like a Hollywood blockbuster.
There are tsunamis, wars, people are born and die all the time. You might say it’s pretty bizarre! I wonder if we really know anything about our planet at all.
1. Even when you think you stand still – you move. In fact, you’re moving pretty rapidly right now. It’s because the earth spins on its axis.
Depending on where you are on the globe, your speed is different, the average speed is about 160 km. per hour.
People who live close to the equator area move faster and those who live close to North or South Pole move slower.
The movement never ever stops as the earth revolves around the sun with an impossible speed, about 108 thousand km. per hour.
2. The lowest temperature ever registered on the planet Earth is -89.2 degrees Celsius. It was measured on 21 of July in 1983 at the station in Antarctica. The highest temperature ever registered was 56.7 on the 10th of July in 1913 in the Death Valley in the USA.
3. The Earths inner core creates a magnetic field. It is called magnetosphere. The planet itself is kind of a huge magnet with poles.
Scientists are saying that magnetic field is generated in the core of the Earth where the heat creates a so-called dynamo action in the liquid outer core. Without magnetosphere the planet would be doomed. The solar wind would destroy the Earth by sending an inexplicable amount of radiation.
It is believed that this is what happened to planet Mars that in a very distant past used to be a fertile planet.
4. The Earth used to have a twin-planet called Theia. Scientists believe it’s possible that before there was another planet, similar to Earth.
Hypothetically, the planet was about the size of Mars and was 60 degree ahead or behind our planet. It is believed that around 4.5 billion of years ago, Theia collided with Earth, which later formed the moon.
Why scientists believe that? The Moon is too big of a satellite for our kind of planet and also has similar kind of isotopic compositions.
5. The Earth isn’t a ball and it’s not an ideal sphere. It’s rotating because the force of gravity is directed towards the center of the planet and the centrifugal force does the opposite.
As the Earth’s axis is tilted the centrifugal force isn’t the same everywhere, which is why the Earth is rough and has ledges.
6. The Earth we know is green and full of vegetation. But it wasn’t always like this. Geneticists and biologists presume that earlier, instead of chlorophyll, microorganisms were processing retinal, which till this day can be found in halo bacteria microbes that are of deep purple color.
Those absorb the green light and convert it to red or dark blue. So, it’s possible that in former years our planet seemed purple blue. This theory is proven by the fact that the sun sends most of its energy in green specter and chlorophyll absorbs red and blue rays.
7. Scientists think that there are seven giant crustal plates on Earth and that they move by 10 centimeters each year.
According to the modern geological theory, when plates collide, they form mountains and when they diverge, they make cavities.
Same process produces volcanoes and create earthquakes. The positive outcome is a renewable carbon, which is so important for our existence.
8. Lately there’s been a lot of talking about the end of the world. According to NASA it’s gonna come anyways. And pretty soon I ll have you know.
It’s all due to Earth changing its magnetic poles. Since the beginning of the 19 century poles shifted to 1100 meters and this movement speeds up every year. the latest figures show that each year poles move by 64 meters.
9. We have already been on the moon, we have launched our technology on Mars, but at the same time we didn’t really explore much of our oceans.
People have studied less than 10 percent of the ocean territory. 97 percent of the water and 99 percent of creature’s habitat territory are in the oceans.
We might find a lot of species but there might be even more of those we have never seen. It’s still possible that the Loch Ness monster does exist.
10. Having summoned all the Earth history in one hour then in the first 50 minutes there is basically nothing, it is only at the start of the last 10 minutes, first microbes and celled organisms will appear and all of the human history will take a hundredth of a second.
So, do you guys know any interesting facts about our planet? Definitely share those in the comments! Thank you for Reading. See you next time!