Top 10 Amazing Earth Facts
Published on November 20, 2007 - 40 Comments
As well known and well traveled as our planet is, there are still new things being discovered every day. In fact, most of our oceans haven’t even been explored yet which is why when new depths are located; they often come with hundreds of new species. Rain forests offer up new animals and plants as often as we can explore them. The Earth is constantly changing, shifting, and exposing new secrets for humans to marvel at. It took many years and many great minds to solve the problem of getting through Earth’s atmosphere into the wide expanse of space beyond. Here are ten amazing facts about our home that you may not be aware of.
10. The Atmosphere
Many layers of atmosphere coat our planet including the mesosphere, ionosphere, exosphere, and the thermosphere, but it’s the troposphere, closest to the planet itself, that supports our lives and is, in fact, the thinnest at only about 10 miles high.
9. Deserts
Believe it or not, most of the Earth’s deserts are not composed entirely of sand. Much, about 85% of them, are rocks and gravel. The largest, the Sahara, fills about 1/3 of Africa (and it is growing constantly) which would nearly fill the continental United States.
8. The Big Blue Marble
The Earth is, in fact, not really round. It is called an oblate spheroid meaning it’s slightly flattened on the top and bottom poles.
7. Salty Oceans
If you could evaporate all the water out of all the oceans and spread the resulting salt over all the land on Earth, you would have a five hundred-foot layer coating everything.
6. Lakes and Seas
The largest inland sea (or, sometimes called a lake) is the Caspian Sea which is on the border of Iran and Russia.
5. Mountains
The Andes Mountain range in South America is 4,525 miles long and ranks, as the world’s longest. Second Longest: The Rockies; Third: Himalayas; Fourth: The Great Dividing Range in Australia; Fifth: Trans-Antarctic Mountains. For every 980 feet you climb up a mountain, the temperature drops 3-1/2 degrees.
4. Deep Water
The deepest lake in the world is in the former USSR and it is Lake Baikal. It has a length of 400 miles, a width of roughly 30, but its depth is just over a mile: 5,371 feet down. It is deep enough, so is speculated, that all five of the next largest lakes: The Great Lakes could be emptied into it.
3. Shaky Ground
Earthquakes can be catastrophically destructive and many a year are deadly. However, the Earth releases about 1 million a year, almost all are never even registered.
2. Hot, Hot, Hot
Most people believe that Death Valley, California, U.S.A. is the hottest place on Earth. Well, occasionally it is, but the hottest recorded temperature was from Azizia in Libya recording a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) on Sept. 13, 1922. In Death Valley, it got up to 134 Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913.
1. Dust in the Wind
Experts from the USGS claim that roughly 1,000 tons of space debris rains down on Earth every year.
Source: Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader
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1. Charles - November 20th, 2007 at 6:28 am
but its depth is nearly a mile: 6,360 feet down.??
2. jfrater - November 20th, 2007 at 6:32 am
Charles, actually, it is 5,371 - I have corrected the article - that makes it around 1.01 miles deep.
3. dangorironhide - November 20th, 2007 at 7:41 am
Antarctica is the biggest desert of any type on the planet, bigger than the Sahara in area by around 1.5 times. The Sahara is the largest HOT desert.
4. ben - November 20th, 2007 at 8:30 am
AWESOME THIS SITE WORKS AT MY HIGHSCHOOL
oh yea and good list too
5. aplspud - November 20th, 2007 at 8:45 am
Really neat stuff, amazing pictures. Reminds us how amazing this planet that we live on really is. My favorite US desert is in Utah.
6. jfrater - November 20th, 2007 at 8:51 am
ben: That is great news - now you can get lots of extra study done
7. jfrater - November 20th, 2007 at 8:52 am
aplspud: I agree - I always tend to focus on the sky - not the earth.
8. ben - November 20th, 2007 at 8:55 am
lol jfrater:count on it
9. amanda - November 20th, 2007 at 9:43 am
That picture of the Caspian Sea is amazing. Thrn again, all the pictures are amazing!
10. Kelsi - November 20th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Ooo, cool list. On the one about the deepest lake, you say that it is located in the former USSR…haven’t we all reverted back to calling it Russia by now? Or is it not exactaly Russia?
11. StewWriter - November 20th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Kelsi: Yeah, the whole of the land is indeed Russia, but the lake is withing stringent enough boundaries to not precisely be Russian,I believe.
12. Anne - November 20th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
i was expecting that the marianas trench off the coast of the philippines would be included… its the first thing to come to my mind when deep waters are mentioned, if my memory serves me right it’s 10,000+ meters deep. but then again, nice list…
13. Adam W. - November 20th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
I think the marianas trench is about 7 miles deep. Can’t wait to see what creatures are lurking down there.
14. rbR - November 21st, 2007 at 12:49 am
hi, i might mention that the earth shape is flattened yes, but also more pear shaped. with the majority of ocean water in the southern hemisphere and the rotation of the earth, it bulges a bit down under.
15. jfrater - November 21st, 2007 at 12:52 am
rbR - thanks for that additional information
16. Charly - November 21st, 2007 at 1:21 am
Mmm, if almot all the earthquakes are never registered, how they know they exist????
17. surfboy - November 21st, 2007 at 6:26 pm
hey! I did some quick research on cool earth fact #7(salty oceans). At an average depth of 12,400 feet and an average salinity of 3.5 percent, this equals about 419 feet of salt just for the current ocean areas(71 percent of the earths surface). If you spread it out over the remaining 29 percent, it’s under 400 feet. In fact, it’s about 298 feet, if my algebra(something I never thought i’d use!) is correct. Someone please check me. Facts are courtesy wikipedia. By the way, do they know where the salt came from yet? Thanks!
18. StewWriter - November 21st, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Charly: Ha! Never thought of that! I should have rethought my phrasing!
surfboy: MATH HURTS! If you’re right, I am damn impressed! I’m assuming the salt is trace minerals from eroding rocks… or, some huge lad with a giant shaker. Not sure.
19. chadster - November 22nd, 2007 at 1:32 am
Many of Earth’s quakes occur within the Mantle. Minerals that are being drawn towards the core suddenly succumb to the immense pressure and actually change into something else, something much more dense. In other words they become smaller. This sudden tranformation can cause earthquakes.
20. Sarah - December 1st, 2007 at 4:02 pm
wow…the earth really isnt round
21. sup - December 4th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
hi
22. sup - December 4th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
duh itz oval
23. davross23 - December 20th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
You should have included the worlds biggest supervolcano, 55 kilometres by 72.
At yellowstone national park in the USA.
erupts every 700,000 years, last erupted 630,00 years ago, having the same effect as a meteor hitting the earth.
called the yellowstone caldera
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera
24. neat freak - December 30th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Awesome! Nothing better than learning about what we really are on Earth and how old the Earth we stand on is.
Thank you for the wonderful facts.
25. Matt Bishop - February 7th, 2008 at 8:26 am
In regards to #9, Antarctica is actually classified as the largest and driest desert. It may be covered in ice and some snow but it’s precipitation is recorded as the lowest on Earth.
26. tasha - February 18th, 2008 at 11:52 am
omg this is useless y did they make this website lollollollol haha u doofs
27. SlickWilly - February 18th, 2008 at 11:56 am
omg ftw!! tasha is ignorant y did ne1 evr give hr acceess to an computor lawlawlawlawlawl she should go bck to hr brtney speers 4rum
28. Mom424 - February 18th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Slickwilly; you are hilarious, I’m gonna become yer stalker,,,
29. SlickWilly - February 18th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Mom424: Hahaha….get in line.
30. Tom Wang - February 18th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Another interesting Earth fact is its incredible smoothness; That if the Earth were shrunk to the size of a ping pong ball, its surface would be smoother than a ping pong ball’s. In fact its about on par with the smoothness of a billiard ball.
Sounds crazy, but we are like bacteria to an Earth that size.
31. jfrater - February 18th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Tom Wang: that is quite amazing - it is hard to comprehend in fact!
32. ashlee :) - February 24th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
omg this is soooooooooo hot. im a nerd. :):):)
33. stormy617 - February 24th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
This is another great list. I am still reading in the archives, and still havent read them all.
Wonderful pictures to. I love pictures like that. Ones that show how beautiful our planet is.
34. Sophie :) - March 3rd, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Ashlee
is sooo hot.
and i am in love with the world. its like…THE BEST!
:):):)
35. Ryan - April 23rd, 2008 at 5:49 pm
rbR- science is mostly guess work.
surfboy- I think it means if you could take all the salt from the ocean and spread it over the current land area (the 29%) it would be 500 feet deep.
36. cheese - June 19th, 2008 at 3:43 am
this site is sweet
37. Davo - June 24th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
yeah interesting stuff
38. Muttley - July 10th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Highest temperature: Coober Pedy - the major opal-mining town located in Central Australia (top end of South Australia, close to the Northern territory border).
February 2002 - 57.6 degrees Centigrade = 135.68 degrees Fahrenheit - only 0.36 degrees cooler.
Hottest place on earth consistently - Marble Bar, Wwestern Australia regularly goes 120 days per year consecutively reding temperatures of 125 degrees Fahrenheit + (51.67 deg. Centigrade)!