50 amazing facts about the Earth

A selection of very interesting facts about our ball.





1. These different color of the sky

Aurora occurs when charged particles emanating from the sun, get to the magnetic field of our planet and are destroyed in the upper atmosphere near the poles. The particles become active in the period of maximum solar activity, which occurs cyclically every 11 years. Near the southern pole aurora people are less likely to be observed due to the fact that rarely appear off the coast of Antarctica.

2. There are other planets like ours

Scientists believe that in the universe there are many planets similar to our own. There was evidence that a planet like Earth, revolve around distant stars. For example, a planet called Kepler 22-b orbits the star at the same distance from it, as well as our planet from the Sun, and this indicates that this planet may be favorable for life. While there is life on these planets - is a subject of controversy in the scientific world.

3. Who has reached the South Pole?

The first man to successfully crossed the Antarctic wilderness to reach the South Pole was Norwegian Roald Amundsen. He and another 4 people using sledges pulled by dogs, reached the Pole in December 1911. Amundsen said he was lucky thanks to careful planning.

4. driest place

The driest place on the planet, where sometimes there is a person - the Atacama Desert in Chile and Peru. At the heart of the desert, there are places where there was never recorded rain. Although the Dry Valleys of Antarctica rain not seen for millions of years.

5. Open spaces

People who sometimes like to be alone, it is advised to go to Greenland. On this island, the lowest population density in the world. So in 2010 on an area of ​​2,166,086 square kilometers lived all 56534 person. Most of the residents of Greenland can be seen off the coast.

6. The most populous city

Do not like the densely populated city? Then we do not advise you to go to Manila. This city - the capital of the Philippines - is the most populous cities in the world where a relatively small piece of land forced to live most of the population. According to the census in 2007, 38, 55 square kilometers placed 1,660,714 people!

7. tiniest mammal

On Earth, inhabited by a large number of tiny creatures, some of their body consists of only one cell. But the small animals, mammals can nazvatsvinonosuyu bat. This vulnerable species of bats inhabit the south-eastern Asia. Mouse reaches a length of about 3-3 cm 3 and weighs about 2 grams. This bat can compete with the Etruscan shrew, which is roughly the same size.

8. The largest organisms

The largest organism on the planet can be called, oddly enough, mushrooms. Most of the fungal organism hidden underground. In 1992, scientists reported in the journal Nature that the estimates of location in Oregon occupied the area 0, 89 hectares.

9. Breathable giants

When we try to remember the biggest living things on the planet, come to mind whales and elephants. Giant sequoia "General Sherman" is the volume of the largest tree in the world, which grows in the National park "Sequoia", California. The trunk of the tree contains 1486, 6 cubic meters of material.

10. The largest pool

The largest ocean basin in the world is considered to be Pacific, 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 it could fit all the continents in the same area.

11. Human coastlines

Coastlines occupy only 20 percent of the US, excluding Alaska and are home to more than 50 percent of Americans, or most of them prefer to live near the sea.

12. The most powerful volcanic eruption

The strongest eruption was witnessed by man occurred in April 1815 at Mount Tambora in Indonesia. On a scale eruption of VEI is reached 7 points, the highest point of the scale is the figure 8. According to eyewitnesses, the eruption was so powerful that the sound of rumbling volcano could be heard even on the island of Sumatra in 1930 kilometers. The eruption killed about 71 thousand people, black smoke could be seen on the islands, located quite far from the volcano.

13. The most active volcano

The most active volcano Stromboli can be called, which is located on the volcanic island in the Mediterranean Sea, south-west of Italy. Over the past 20 thousand years a volcano erupts almost continuously. In the dark, thanks to the illuminated lava volcano can be seen from the sea, so it is sometimes called the "Lighthouse of the Mediterranean».

14. Education mountains

While moving layers of rock, which are called tectonic plates, are hidden from our eyes, the results of their movement, we can see on the surface of the planet. Between India and Tibet Himalayas located, which extend at a distance of 2,900 km. This long mountain range formed approximately between 40 and 50 million years ago, when India and Eurasia of the movement of the plates connected.

15. supercontinent

It is estimated that 4, 5 billion years of our planet Earth's continents once joined to become a single continent, and then separated again. The most recent one was a continent Pangaea, which began to be separated into its component parts about 200 million years ago. Scientists suggest that the future of the continent will come together again.

16. Formation of the Moon

Many researchers believe that some large objects long ago faced the Earth, resulting in a broken away from the planet splinter from which later formed the Moon. While it is not clear whether this object is another planet, asteroid or comet, but some scientists suggest that the culprit was the planet Theia, the size corresponding to Mars.

17. The distance to the star

The land is about 150 million kilometers from the sun. In order to reach the surface of our planet, sunlight is necessary to 8 minutes 19 seconds.

18. Stardust

Each day, the surface of the planet is showered cosmic dust: approximately 100 tons interplanetary material (mainly in the form of dust). The smallest particles emit a comet when the ice begins to evaporate them with the approach to the sun.

19. The riches of our planet

In the largest seas of the planet contains more than 20 million tons of gold, but to get it is not so simple. Gold is so dissolved in sea water, in each liter of the average can be detected only 13-billionth of a gram of gold. Gold undissolved hidden deep within the rocks on the ocean floor, so get it while it is not possible. But if it happened, everyone on the planet could be a potential owner of the 4, 5 kilograms of the precious metal, but if he was still precious?

20. Water World

Oceans cover about 70 percent of the earth's surface, but people have learned while only 5 percent. The remaining 95 percent of the ocean people have never seen.

21. Natural electricity

Thunder and lightning - one of the worst natural phenomena. Just one stroke of lightning can heat the air up to about 30,000 degrees Celsius, which causes the air to expand strongly and creates a blast wave, as well as a strong rumble that we call thunder.

22. It was purple

Once the Earth was purple, but now changed to green, suggests Scheele Dassarma (hil DasSarma), a microbial geneticist at the University of Maryland. Ancient microbes, he said, could not use chlorophyll and other molecules in order to rein in the sun's rays. Such molecules could give them purple.

Dassarma believes that chlorophyll appeared after another light-sensitive retinal molecule called that already existed on the young planet. Retinal today can be found on the membranes of photosynthetic microbe plum halobacteria it absorbs green light and reflects red and purple, and when mixed appears violet light.

23. Measuring the age glaciers

People leave their mark on the world in different ways. For example, the testing of nuclear weapons in the 1950s led to the release of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which eventually fell with rain and snow. These sediments settled in glaciers, which formed a layer on which scientists are trying to figure out the age of the ice.

24. Loss of water

With climate change, glaciers are losing ice, which leads to rising sea levels. As it turned out, that if a single glacier melts, it will raise the amount of melt water to 10 percent. Canadian glacier between 2004 and 2009 had already lost a lot of ice, which is transformed into water by volume equal to 75 percent of Lake Erie.

25. Explosion Lakes

Lakes can also explode. In Cameroon, on the border with Torn and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are 3-threatening lakes Nyos, Monun and Kivu. All these lakes are the crater, they are located on the top of the volcano. The magma beneath its surface releases carbon dioxide that accumulates in layers under the bed of the lake. If carbon dioxide break free, to anyone who will be nearby, nothing to breathe.

26. The lowest point of land

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

27. The deepest point

How deep into the bowels of the earth is able to reach people? The deepest point in the world is the Mariana Trench with a depth of 10,916 meters below sea level. The deepest point of the world not covered by the ocean, at a depth of 2555 meters below sea level, but there can hardly be reached. This depression Bentley, in Antarctica, which is filled with a thick layer of ice.

28. The richest ecosystems

Coral reefs attract the greatest number of living beings per unit area than any other planet's ecosystems. They can compete unless the rainforests. Reefs are made up of tiny coral polyps that build calcareous structures. They are the largest living structures on the planet that can be seen even from space. Unfortunately, because of the perishable ecology and climate change, coral reefs die faster.

29. The longest mountain range

If you would like to see the longest mountain chain, you would have to go down deep into the water. Underwater chain extends to a distance of 65 thousand kilometers - is a chain of underwater volcanoes that surrounds the Earth. Lava erupts on the ocean floor, forming seamounts.

30. Conquering the peaks

May 8, 1978 Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner, together with Peter Habeler reach the summit of Mount Everest to climb to the highest point on the planet without the use of oxygen.

31. The Stones are able to walk

Stones are able to move along the surface of the planet, at least on the surface of dry lake Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California. Sometimes the wind is able to budge stones weighing dozens or even hundreds of kilograms. Most likely, the clay surface charge becomes more slippery when in nearby mountains the snow melts. This allows the wind to push and move the stones on the surface.

32. The Earth may be another moon

Some scholars argue that the Earth has one satellite in addition to the moon. According to studies, the results of which were published late last year in the Journal of ICARUS, the outer body of at least 1 meter spins in Earth orbit at any time. That is, it is not always one and the same body, and the so-called "moon time", the researchers say. According to their theory, the Earth's gravitational field can capture asteroids that pass close by our planet revolving around the sun. When such an asteroid approaching Earth, he begins to revolve around her and makes 3 turns, staying in orbit about 9 months and then deleted.

33. Two Moons?

Once the Earth had two major satellite - two moons. The second satellite with a diameter of about 1200 kilometers, the assumptions of scientists, revolved around our planet until it collided with the Moon. This disaster may explain why the two sides of the moon today are so different from each other.

34. The direction of the magnetic field

Over the past 20 million years, the planet every 200-300 thousand years is a change in the magnetic field direction, although this process has no particular periodicity. Change can not happen in an instant. This process requires hundreds or thousands of years.

35. The highest mountains

Mount Everest, or, as it is called, Mount Everest is the highest mountain. Its peak is located at an altitude of 8848 meters above sea level. However, if we measure the mountain from the bottom to the top it - it reaches 17,170 meters.

36. The magnetic field

The Earth has a magnetic field due to the ocean and the hot liquid metal, which is concentrated around its solid iron core. This stream of molten metal produces an electrical current, which in turn generates a magnetic field. Since the beginning of the 19th century, the north magnetic pole of Earth shifted to the north at 1,100 kilometers, according to researchers at NASA. Speed ​​increases, thus, now a north pole is moving at 64 kilometers per year. In the 20th century it was moving at a speed of 16 km / year.

37. Strange gravity

Due to the fact that our planet is not a perfect sphere, its weight is distributed unevenly. Fluctuations in weight cause fluctuations of gravity. One example of the anomalous gravity is the Hudson Bay in Canada. In this area, gravity lower than elsewhere in the world. In 2007, scientists discovered that the reason thawed glaciers. Ice, who during the last glacial period covered the area, melted away, but the planet does not have time to recover from this burden.

38. The largest stalagmite

The world's largest stalagmite found in Cuba. This formation has a height of 67 m 2.

39. Extreme continent

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

40. The coldest point

There will be no great surprise to learn that the coldest place on the planet is in Antarctica. However, there is a thermometer thermometer drops to an unprecedented magnitude. In winter, temperatures can reach minus 73 degrees Celsius. But the extremely low temperature was recorded July 21, 1983 at the Russian Vostok station and was minus 89, 2 degrees Celsius.

41. The hottest place

The hottest places on the planet is Libya, where the thermometer showed 57, 8 degrees Celsius above zero in September 1922. Perhaps somewhere in the desert there are more hot point, but they are outside the observation stations.

42. The most powerful earthquake

The most powerful earthquake, which occurred in the United States - it was an earthquake measuring 9, 2 points, which occurred in Alaska, March 28, 1964. But the strongest earthquake that seismologists recorded date, it is considered an earthquake in Chile, which occurred on May 22, 1960. Its capacity was 9, 5 points.

43. moonquake

Moonquake or "earthquake on the Moon", also happen sometimes, but not often and not with the intensity as in the world. Scientists believe that moonquakes related to the tidal forces of the Sun and the Earth, as well as some other reasons. Moonquake may occur in deep water between the surface of the Moon and its center.

44. Age of the Earth

Scientists have calculated the age of the Earth, exploring the oldest rocks and meteorites that have been discovered on the planet. Meteorites and the Earth were formed about the same time when the solar system was formed. According to scientists, the Earth has 4, 54 billion years.

45. Movement of rocks

The land on which we walk, made of recycled materials. In the course of certain cycles of volcanic rocks are transformed into sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks, and then all over again. This cycle is not perfect: the magma from the earth rises and cools and turns into volcanic rock. Tectonic processes raise the rock to the surface, where erosion destroys it. Tiny fragments are added, and the pressure compresses them and turn into sedimentary rock, such as sandstone. If sediments accumulate even deeper, they can turn into metamorphic rocks under great pressure and at high temperature. During the process sediment may be destroyed, and metamorphic rocks rise above.









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