All About Earth

I am in the final stages of completing the first online rockhounding adventure. As usual, it is taking longer than I had hoped. There is no question that communication with just the written word is easier than communicating with movies and animations. There is part of me that wants to launch with just this first adventure, but I think it makes more marketing sense to launch with the first two adventures. Editing of the second adventure on the Lake Superior agate should go a bit quicker since I am using mostly my own photography. Thanks everyone for being patient.

I had planned on hiking yesterday, but the weather did not cooperate. Yesterday afternoon when I was going to go out, it was in the mid 30s and raining. We'll see what the weather brings this afternoon...

So for today's blog posting, I decided to post information about our cosmic home -- the Earth.

Our planet is the third planet from the Sun and the fifth largest.
   
It was not until the 16th century that the idea began to spread and be accepted that the Earth is a planet in the same sense as the other planets that orbit the Sun.  

Our planet travels through space at 67,000 miles (107,826 km) per hour.

 

The Earth weighs 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.

The earth rotates on its axis more slowly in March than in September.

If the Earth were compressed to a sphere with a 2-inch diameter, its surface would be as smooth as a billiard ball's.

If the world were to become totally flat and the oceans distributed themselves evenly over the earth's surface, the water would be approximately 2 miles deep at every point.

Glaciers occupy 5.8 million square miles, or 10 percent of the world's land surface, an area as large as South America.

Mother Earth has a generous waistline: At the equator, the circumference of the globe is 24,901 miles (40,075 kilometers).

The population density of the 7 billion humans who live on the Earth's land area of 150 million km² (58 million sq. miles), is 45.3 per km² (117.2 per sq. mile).  Monaco has 41,970 people squeezed into an area that is less than a square mile.  Singapore is the country with the highest population density where nearly 5 million people live in 268 square miles resulting in 16,540 people per square mile (7,301 per square km). The population density in the United States is 142nd among the 192 countries in the world at 80 people per square mile. Mongolia only has 5 people per square mile.

The world is not round. It is an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator.

The temperature of the Earth's interior increases by 1 degree every 60 feet down.

Earth has a magnetic field because of the ocean of hot, liquid metal that sloshes around its solid iron core, or that's what geophysicists are pretty certain is the cause. This flow of liquid creates electric currents, which, in turn, generate the magnetic field. Since the early 19th century, Earth's magnetic north pole has been creeping northward by more than 600 miles (1,100 kilometers), according to NASA scientists. The rate of movement has increased, with the pole migrating northward at about 40 miles (64 km) per year currently, compared with the 10 miles (16 km) per year estimated in the 20th century.

Photos are from NASA.  Facts are from:
http://www.planetfacts.net/Earth-Facts.html
http://www.livescience.com/19102-amazing-facts-earth.html